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Testing the entrepreneurial waters can be exciting and risky. That's why it's helpful to explore prepaid legal services for small business owners. Using the right legal services can have a huge impact on the life span of a company. Here are reasons to consider prepaid legal plans when launching a startup.
Why Businesses Pay Legal Expenses
Although not every business needs a legal team, small businesses that aim for large markets need legal protection for various reasons. You never know if some other business is going to accuse you of stealing a product or marketing idea. Another way companies get sued is if their products or services create financial damage or bodily injury. Contractors who don't follow through on agreements face legal battles as well.
Even if you run just a local shop someone might get injured on your commercial property, leading to litigation. A small store can also face court cases that require an attorney if the owner doesn't comply with local, state, or federal laws. You simply must establish a plan for legal protection. The solution to avoiding high legal costs is prepaid legal services for small business operations.
There are many free to low-cost legal services available online such as Legal Zoom and LegalShield, as well as local Chamber of Commerce sites that promote local businesses. Directories with customer reviews such as Yelp! can help you navigate through the long list of low-cost legal services available. Before deciding on a firm that offers prepaid legal services, it's best to explore several firms and decide which option provides the most benefits for your business.
How Prepaid Legal Services Help Small Businesses
LegalShield is the company that pioneered prepaid legal plans five decades ago. Over the years the company has refined its plans and built a network of 39 law firms across North America. The firm offers plans that allow for easy cancellation with a month's notice, giving customers more flexibility. Here are some of the other advantages for businesses to sign up with a prepaid legal plan:
- Avoid all types of lawsuits
- Let legal professionals handle customer or competitor complaints
- Focus more on your business
Legal Issues with Promoting Workplace Productivity
One of the reasons for working with prepaid legal services is to limit your company's exposure to workplace complaints. It's now common for businesses to aim for greater productivity to help boost profit margins. Demanding too much from employees, however, can lead to labor disputes and dangerous situations that trigger a decline in the worker's health or well-being. So it's important when employers attempt to increase productivity in the workplace to remember employee health matters.
When employees are forced to work in dangerous situations employers can be held accountable for medical bills. Manufacturing plants that use toxic chemicals particularly must have policies in place to protect employees. Companies cannot afford to be careless about worker safety, so any strategy involving physical activity has to take into account the risks toward the individual being overworked. When employees get worn out productivity declines and the company might be obligated to pay for the worker's medical bills.
Launching Prepaid Legal Services for Small Business
If you plan on launching your own website that provides prepaid legal services for small businesses, be aware the market is flooded with competition. The key is to stand out online using the best SEO techniques, particularly with local directories such as Google My Business (GMB). One of the ways to stand out in Google is to offer a well-defined niche that other legal services don't offer.
That doesn't mean you can just invent your own market online. You still need to do the research to find out who your competitors are and what holes can be filled in the market. Market research reveals what consumers want and what they may not be getting from existing industry players. Maybe your niche is specializing in prepaid legal services for small retail shops in your zip code.
Once the website is launched it's important to fill it up with useful quality content and not fluff that anyone could have written. Search engines aren't fooled by fluff and even penalize websites for posing as relevant despite offering very little original content. One way a legal team can generate online interest is to create a blog series that gets deep into legal issues and stories of how cases played out.
Google looks for experts to showcase, so it helps the site's authority to be owned and represented by professionals with relevant career backgrounds. The more your blog shares unique expertise that can't be found on other websites, the more search engines will consider the blog useful enough to be listed in search rankings.
How Legal Firms Benefit from Digital Marketing
Search engine optimization is at the core of digital marketing, as it can help create a steady stream of endless leads at low cost for a wide range of businesses. Sole proprietors with web development knowledge might not have any costs, but it will take plenty of time and creative energy to build resourceful websites that attract repeat followers. That's why small businesses often outsource to digital marketing agencies as well as prepaid legal services.
While digital marketing has general principles that apply to all industries, certain industries have specific ways SEO can be maximized. Legal firms must follow Federal Trade Commission regulations in how they promote themselves online. Individuals without proper credentials, for example, cannot pose as legal professionals. Google looks for authentic authorities in its quest to weed out phony companies and fraudulent opportunists trying to scrape into professional markets.
Successful websites and blogs are tied to well-crafted content by experts in their fields. So for a new website offering prepaid legal services to stand out, unique keywords that go along with industry buzz words will need to be tested in search engines. If your business is the only one of its kind in a town called "Creeksville," then ideal keywords to build deeper content on are "Creeksville prepaid legal services."
If you write hundreds of blogs or articles and create videos based on keyword phrases that you own as a niche, Google may give your site high visibility in search rankings. From there you can promote your content on social media to generate engagement that sends signals to search bots. If it sounds like a tremendous amount of work, it is. That's why businesses outsource to digital marketing agencies to do this work.
Sharing Stories Relevant to Legal Services
Offering a regular blog series on prepaid legal services that mix text, images, and video can attract a loyal following if the content provides solutions to consumer problems. One way to give the content more impact is to focus on storytelling, such as offering stories of how clients made it through legal battles. This type of content, though, may require permission from the client. The point is audiences enjoy storytelling, whether it's through blogs or videos.
Some of the topics that a firm offering prepaid legal services may cover in-depth in blogs include the following:
- How businesses can save thousands of dollars with low-cost legal services
- Ensuring your company follows applicable laws
- Why being proactive at avoiding and preventing lawsuits pays off
- Researching company name availability in a local jurisdiction
- Tax issues involving businesses depending on how they're structured
Data from a recent study published by LegalShield shows that about 60 percent of business owners have experienced some type of serious legal issue the past year. The main reason businesses avoid legal help is because it's too expensive for their budget, as owners may think it's more practical to handle the case themselves or even shut down the business. When the average cost of a business attorney is over $7,500, it makes more sense for small owners with limited resources to go with prepaid legal services.
It's imperative that the firm builds a track record of positive reviews online, which can stimulate a steady stream of leads. Just because a website offers low-cost services doesn't mean customers will automatically be satisfied. Capturing positive reviews from satisfied customers is a healthy way to build online authority with search engines.
Conclusion
Whether your business is offering prepaid legal services or something as harmless as art, it helps to work with experienced digital marketers who can take your website to the next level. Contact the emarketing management experts at E-Marketing Associates to learn more about strengthening your company's online digital marketing efforts and gaining greater online visibility.
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