Most consumer oriented law practices have a big problem. Lawyers who practice family law, bankruptcy, criminal defense, estate planning, personal injury, real estate, and other areas, have a preponderance of "one time" clients. Once the initial case or engagement is completed, the attorney gets no additional revenue, or at best, very little.

The problem is worsening. It costs more to bring in a new client today, and overhead and manpower expenses to service those clients are also higher. But clients aren't willing to pay more, and they don't have to. With more lawyers competing for the same clients, clients have more options.

I just spoke to an attorney who is spending $13,000 a month on yellow pages. The good news is that her ads bring in a lot of new clients. The bad news is that she loses money on every one.

The solution to this problem is for attorneys to develop their "back end"–services and other profitable initiatives they can offer their clients after the initial engagement.

In any business, most of the profits are made on the back end. There is a cost to acquire a new customer, and while it is hoped that this can be done at a profit, it's not required. So long as the business can make enough profit after the initial sale, if the back end is big enough, most businesses are willing to lose money on the front end.

How can an attorney develop a back end?

Some attorneys are branching out into new practice areas. So the bankruptcy lawyer who sees a downturn in new clients starts offering family law or estate planning services. The problem with this is that it makes it much harder to get referrals from family law and estate planning attorneys with whom you are now competing. It's also more difficult to market a general practice than a specialized one.

Instead of taking on new practice areas, here are two things an attorney can do to develop a back end:

1. Expand and systematize referrals. Focus on getting more referrals, better referrals, and more frequent referrals from your clients. In this way, each client you bring in on the front end represents more profits on the back end. If you spend $1000 to bring in a new client who pays you $1000 on the front end, but you earn an average of $3000 from their back-end referrals, you can afford to bring in as many "break even" clients as possible. You can even lose money on the front end.
2. Market the services of other lawyers to your clients. Instead of you taking on a new practice area, associate with other attorneys who are specialists in those areas and offer their services to your clients in return for a share of the fees (if ethically permissible) or in exchange for marketing your services to their clients. (You aren't limited to working with other attorneys; you can also market the services of other professionals and businesses.)

A key number every attorney must know is the "lifetime value" of a new client. This includes the value of their repeat business, their referrals, and other revenue derived as a result of having them on your list. Take some time to determine this number and then work on increasing it.

If you have a smart phone, the chances are you've seen more than a few law firm apps coming through the app store. A lot of law firms are getting them and you may be tempted to do the same. With all the smart phones out there, it's got to bring you some business, right? Hey, even one new client will pay for the app.

Before you get out your checkbook, there are some things you should consider.

Most apps fall into two categories. The first is of the "digital brochure" variety. This may do a great job of showing your firm's capabilities but you're not going to bring in much business with an app that nobody downloads and if a brochure is all you've got, not many will.

The second category of app falls into the utilitarian category: it does something useful. Personal injury lawyers seem to have a preponderance of this kind of app, of the "what to do in case of accident" variety. There are places to fill in information about the other parties, witnesses, insurance information, and also some pointers on what to do.

This sounds good but think about it: when you're in an accident, nervous, waiting for the police or ambulance or tow truck, will you really want to launch an app and start typing with your thumbs?

Some of these apps have audio recorders, but still, in the heat of the moment, most people aren't going to use it.

"Ah, but the point isn't that they use it, it's that they have it so that when they get home, they'll remember they have it, look through it, and call us."

This is true, but you don't need an app for that. An old fashioned booklet in the glove box will accomplish the same thing. A booklet is a lot cheaper (free if the client prints it themselves from your pdf) and a booklet is something people might actually use.

Another form of utilitarian app is one that contains information. It might be a summary of bankruptcy laws, divorce options, or tips for protecting your small business. If a prospective client is browsing through the app store and sees an app that promises to inform him about something that's currently on his mind, this could get his attention. The big question is, "will he see it?"

When an app is released, it appears in the list of new apps for a few days, and then it's no longer "new". Unless an app is extremely popular, very unlikely for a law firm app., the odds are that nobody will ever see it again in the app store.

What good is an app that nobody knows about?

It will be up to you to promote your app via your web site, newsletter, and social media. If it's good, people will download it and promote it. But you can accomplish the same thing without an app. All you need to do is put your information into a report or ebook.

Can an app bring in some business? Yes, it can. But before you rush into having one made, lest you be "left behind" by your competition, remember that getting the app made is just the beginning. If you're not willing to invest in promoting the app, don't bother getting one. If you are prepared to promote your app, you might simply write a report and save yourself several thousand dollars.

Does your law firm have an app? Has it brought in any business? Please share your experiences in the comments.

About a year ago, I wrote and "produced" a simple video about a new lawyer attending his first ABA Convention. This was around the time the ABA was considering new rules to regulate attorneys behavior online and the video played off that theme and an ad hoc write-in campaign to tell the ABA to back off.

The ABA didn't go nuclear on us, but I don't think my video was the reason. What my video did do was get a lot of attorneys watching it and sharing the link with others. I got a lot of traffic from it.

No, it wasn't a big hit on youtube, but in my niche market, it did okay.

My challenge to you is to create your own video and put it on youtube and on your blog.

You can use the free service I used, Xtranormal, which allows you to give voice to animated characters. Or, you can act out a skit with other live "actors". You can narrate slides on your desktop, or simply talk into the camera.

Your best bets for going viral are to use humor or to take a controversial stand, but I would stay away from politics. How about a funny commercial by one of your "competitors"? Or something about one of the new laws that take effect in January?

Anything goes, but remember, your clients are watching (and so is the ABA!)

Keep it under five minutes. Watching my video today, I realized I could have achieved the same effect with a much shorter spot.

You may not see a ton of results from your video but you will learn some things that might allow you to create another video that does. And you'll have a lot of fun.

Send me the link to your video. I'll choose a winner and feature it in a future post.

I'm sure you read the story about the blogger in a defamation case who got hit with a $2.5 million judgment because, the judge said, she is not a journalist and was not protected by the state's shield laws.

Interesting story. Important subject.

You read the story but did you make any money with it?

Attorneys can easily leverage a story like this to get more media attention, more traffic to their web site, more prospects, more referral sources, and more clients. And I'm not talking about the attorneys who handled the case itself, I'm talking about you.

Interested? Here's all you have to do.

First, write a two or three page report summarizing defamation laws in your jurisdiction. You don't have to practice in this area to do this, Uncle Google will help you, or you can ask an attorney friend who does (and tell him about this idea so he can do it, too).

In your report, mention the case about the blogger. Offer your opinion. Include a few citations, maybe a few resources.

Now, go back to Uncle Google and ask him to give you a list of bloggers in your target market(s) who are in your state or province.

Next, contact these bloggers (a personal email will do) and tell them you wrote a report for bloggers about how they can protect themselves against lawsuits like the one in the news. Offer to send it to them, free of charge. Tell them they are welcome to send it other bloggers they know and care about. (If you know the blogger, you could just send them the report in your first email).

In one day, you can get your report into the hands of dozens of people who every day write and influence the people you are targeting for your services. You have provided value to the blogger on a personal level, and asked nothing in return.

Where can this lead? Interviews, hosted webinars for their readers, guest posts, referrals, introductions, you name it.

It doesn't matter if you don't practice tort law. If you do, that's an added benefit, but the point of this effort isn't to show these bloggers you can help them in this particular area of the law, it's to meet them.

Now, what else could you do with your report? Here are a few ideas:

• Send it to local media with a cover letter letting them know you are available for interviews.
• Call or email your clients and contacts: Who do you know in (your area) who writes a blog? Tell them you have a report that can help them.
• Offer it through social media; post a video on youtube, opining on the story and linking to your report; offer it via forums, chat groups, listserves, and other areas where bloggers and people who know bloggers congregate.
• Contact local blogger groups, business groups (anyone who has a blog), and offer a lunch talk.
• Write about it on your blog or in your newsletter.
• Take out ads and offer the report, as a "public service".
• Send it to lawyers in your practice area in states or provinces where you don't practice. Tell them what you're doing with the report in your area, invite them to do the same in theirs. (If you have to ask how this could help you, forget about this idea.)
• Do a presentation at your bar group's next function on how you used a news story to market your services.

You get the idea.

Oh, and you don't need a news story to do this, you can write about anything that affects people in your target market or they people who influence them.

It's about providing value in a leveraged way. It's simple and it works. And if your report goes viral, it could help you take a quantum leap in the growth of your practice.

Let's be honest, most attorneys don't like marketing. Or so they say.

"I didn't go to law school to be a salesman," they'll say, or, "I'm good at what I do, I shouldn't have to promote myself."

I understand how they feel.

And to some extent, their "good work" will serve as a magnet for referrals or repeat business. But to categorically dismiss marketing of any kind is foolhardy.

Advertising isn't so bad, is it? Even Abe Lincoln advertised:

Do you have a web site? Guess what? You're advertising. Same goes for a directory listing.

Do you ever answer the question, "What do you do for a living?" Well, whatever you say in response is selling.

In fact, every letter we send, every conversation we have, every article, blog post, or speech, is an opportunity not just to deliver words and ideas but to sell the reader or listener on us and our ability to deliver benefits.

When a client signs your retainer and gives you a check, a sale has taken place.

The sales aspects of our communications are more subtle than an informercial pitch, but it's sales, nevertheless.

And I'm not even going to mention that negotiating, demand letters, motions, and closing arguments are sales of the highest order.

Lawyers sell. (But that doesn't make us sales people.)

Lawyers "do" marketing. Marketing is defined as everything we do to get and keep clients.

Sales, marketing, public relations, publicity. . . what's the difference?

I've found no better explanation than this one:

If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying, “Circus is coming to Fairgrounds Sunday,” that’s Advertising.

If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk him through town, that’s a Promotion.

If the elephant walks through the Mayor’s flower bed, that’s Publicity.

If you can get the Mayor to laugh about it, that’s Public Relations.

If the town’s citizens go the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales.

- M Booth & Associates

When attorneys are getting fewer clients and their income is waning, it's only logical to look at cutting expenses. After all, every dollar you don't spend on overhead is a dollar more in net income.

There are a lot of ways to reduce overhead. Go through your ledger (or bank and credit card statements) and I'm sure you'll find many small items that can be reduced or eliminated. $30 or $50 a month expenses may not jump out at you, but when you add them up, you may find yourself spending thousands of dollars you don't have to.

Also look at big items. Can you move to a smaller office? Can you work from home and use another attorney's office to see clients? Can you get by with a less expensive car?

There's one category of expense that you should not cut. In fact, when times are tough, it's the one expense you should look at increasing. When times are tough you should spend more on marketing.

Attorney Philip Franckel explains why on his blog:

Reducing your advertising and marketing budget will cause your law firm. . . to fall further behind and allow your competitors to gain a substantial advantage. When revenues increases, you will have to start all over again. Additionally, all previous work and investment in branding will have been for nothing. In a bad economy, this is preciously the time to take advantage of lower marketing costs.

I agree completely. Think about it, the business is out there, at least enough business for YOU. If they aren't finding you now, what makes you think they will find you later? You've got to help them find you. So when business is down, you must increase your marketing, not cut it.

Franckel also commented on another attorney who boasted that his firm had cut expenses by eliminating advertising contracts in favor of "variable" marketing expenses, ostensibly allowing the firm to spend more when they can and less when they cannot. Franckel points out that this strategy will wind up costing the firm more, not less:

Fixing marketing costs can be a huge benefit. When entering into a large five figure advertising spend on TV, I committed to a 12 month budget to fix the cost of media. This allowed me to pay the same known cost for media every month. Otherwise, I would have faced huge increases, or have been forced to temporarily discontinue advertising, because of temporary changes in media demand such as elections.

I agree with this, too. In the past, when I was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on advertising, I saved as much as 70% and sometimes even more by locking in a yearly contract, versus what I would have paid "month to month". (NB: I only agreed to the contracts, however, after testing the ads and the publications.)

Now, what about attorneys who don't spend money on advertising or marketing? It may be time to consider it. You don't have to start advertising if you've never done that before and don't want to do it now. But how about improving your web site or joining a new networking group? How about doing a mailing to your former clients?

Note also that your time (spent marketing) is another expense. Don't cut down on this, either.

When business is slow, yes, cut your overhead but don't cut marketing. Investing more time and more dollars in growing your practice will always be the best way to increase your net income.

My recent post on holiday greeting cards elicited a comment from Bruce Brightwell, an attorney who sends his list a magnetized refrigerator calendar. "People love the calendars, and I am in front of them for the whole year," he said.

This is smart marketing. A practical gift that keeps your name and contact information in front of clients and prospects that is inexpensive and effective.

Calendars are a great year end gift. What can you do the rest of the year?

Do a search for "advertising specialties" or "ad specs". That's what they are called in the trade. You will find a mind numbing array of possible items you can offer:

• Pens
• Key chains
• Calendars (wall, refrigerator, desk, wallet)
• T-shirts
• Baseball caps
• Book bags
• Book ends
• Paper weights
• Coffee mugs
• Thermoses
• Book bags
• Mouse pads
• Business card cases
• Book marks

I like pens. You can get them in bulk for under .25 cents, and nice ones for under a dollar. People use pens and carry them, and if they lose one, someone else will pick it up.

I also like note pads. They are very inexpensive (any printer can make them for you) and you can get them in different sizes. Real estate agents send them pre-printed with lines for a grocery list. This is good for consumers. For businesses, I like a 4 by 5 1/2 size that can sit on a desk or next to a phone. While taking notes, your prospect looks at your name and smiling face at the top of the pad, draws a mustache and eye glasses and darkens your teeth. It's a note pad and a game!

A disadvantage of note pads is that once they have been used, they're gone. But this gives you an opportunity to get in front of clients and prospects several times a year to replenish their stock.

In choosing an item, keep in mind the amount of room available for printing. A pen has very limited space; a calendar has much more. More space lets you include an "advertising" message: your practice areas and/or an offer, e.g., "'Free Report: How to save 20 to 50% on legal fees this year' at www.mywebsite.com".

You can, of course, have more than one gift item. You could mail everyone a calendar at year end, give coffee mugs to visitors to your office, and give a more expensive item (e.g., Polo shirt) to new clients.

Have you used ad specs to market your practice? Did it bring you new business?

Lawyer TV ads are often criticized for being tacky. "The Tackiest Lawyer Ad. . .Ever," is a fine example. A lawyer advertising firm, hoping to attract lawyers for their services, created a parody of bad lawyer TV ads, but does it work? Would you hire the firm that created this spot?

[mc src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSKe42bxMZ0" type="youtube"]Bad ad about bad lawyer ads[/mc]

Do you think this is funny?

I didn't laugh. Isn't that the first objective of advertising that purports to use humor? In the first few seconds, I thought this was a cheesy lawyer's attempt to advertise and I was embarrassed–for him and for our profession. Once I got the joke, I thought, "ah, a spoof, okay, we can all laugh at ourselves once in awhile." But I still didn't laugh; did you?

True, parody doesn't always demand LOL and if this was just someone fooling around and poking fun, well, okay, it worked for some and not for others, but this is an ad by a company that wants us to give them their business.

Would you hire this firm?

The ad says, "lawyers' ads are tacky and don't work; we can produce an ad that's not tacky and does work." But they use a tacky ad to make that point. Is that good psychology? Is that good advertising?

I don't think it is. At least not in this case.

If they showed us a successful ad they produced for one of their clients, would that be better? Yeah, I think it would. Show us what you do, not what you don't do. Ads that demonize or make fun of "the other guy" can sell. But they have to get all the elements right and in this case, I don't think they did.

What do you think? Click on the balloon above to add your comments.

For the last several years, the demise of the yellow pages has been repeatedly predicted, but they will never die.

In the same way that AT&T and other "wire" phone carriers re-invented themselves as mobile carriers, the yellow pages has reinvented itself in search engines and online directories. These new and improved directories allow advertisers to have a bigger presence, with more information about their firm, at lower cost. Smart attorneys (and other advertisers) are taking advantage of these changes by creating better web sites (and more of them), optimizing their sites to improve search engine ranking, and promoting their sites through social media.

There are other improvements. Technology makes it easy to see which ad is working best, allowing you to adapt immediately instead of having to wait until next year's print edition. You can increase or decrease your advertising investment with a click or two and you can just as easily change your headlines and copy and offers, making the same dollars bring in even more business.

If you previously spent $1,000 a month on yellow pages ads, that same $1,000 spent online could yield a much greater return. A small firm that had been limited to smaller ads in print directories can, with some marketing smarts, compete with firms with a bigger budget. Consumers obviously benefit by the added information and convenience of the online world.

So, for advertisers and consumers, the changes are positive. But what about the publishers of print directories? What will happen to them?

Some have already made the shift to online and are will thrive. Others, will die out. And some will see a void in the market left by the disappearance of their competitors and make a killing in the next frontier.

What do I mean? Our mailboxes today contain far fewer pieces of mail compared to ten years ago. As a result, direct mail advertising is potentially more effective. Smart advertisers will eventually shift dollars into mailings–catalogs, solo sales letters, coupon books, and so on, and I believe we'll eventually see phone (and web site) directories being delivered by the post office. But, as more and more advertisers shift dollars from online to offline, the effectiveness of that advertising will decline and advertisers will shift yet again back to the Internet or to the next big thing.

Change is inevitable in business and advertisers need to be nimble to survive. Gone are the days when an attorney could write a check to "the" yellow pages, the only viable advertising option, and forget about it until the following year. Attorneys today must understand that advertising online is just one facet of an integrated marketing plan and they must be prepared to continually acquire the knowledge and resources needed to stay competitive.

The top people in any industry, whether sports or business or the arts, have coaches. Attorneys should, too.

A coach can provide training and mentoring and yes, some hand holding, but perhaps the most valuable service they offer their clients is providing a mechanism for accountability.

My coach taught me that accountability is one of the most powerful forces in motivating human behavior. I know when I have to report my progress to him at the end of the week, I get the work done. Without that accountability, it's too easy to delay and defer. I don't know why I listen to my excuses, but I do. I'll bet you do, too.

If you want to get more done, especially in the area of marketing your legal services, you should consider hiring a coach. Actually, you should hire me.

As an attorney, I built a successful practice by implementing marketing strategies and techniques that I learned through a lot of trial and error and a lot of study. As a marketing consultant, I've helped hundreds of attorneys with different backgrounds and practice areas in all phases of marketing and business development.

When we work together, you'll be able to:

• Get more repeat business and referrals
• Determine the best markets for you to target
• Get better clients and bigger engagements
• Develop a web site or blog that builds your brand and brings in new business
• Create compelling content for your web site or newsletter or for a speech or seminar
• Build targeted lists of prospective clients and referral sources
• Use social media to drive traffic to your web site
• Create marketing documents that make your phone ring
• Increase your gross income and your net income
• Earn more while working fewer hours
• Create a marketing plan that works for you, your practice, and your market

If you are on my newsletter list, you will be notified when the next group coaching program is open.

If you're interested in one-on-one coaching, please call me at (949) 888-2800 or use this contact form.

I can also provide referrals to experts in other fields. Please contact me if you're interested in any of the following:

• Copy writing (web, brochures, sales letters, landing pages, radio/TV)
• Media buying
• Email campaigns
• Print ads
• Web site (and blog) development
• SEO
• PPC
• Videos (scripting, shooting, editing, publishing)
• Social media campaigns
• List rental
• Web site metrics

If you want to be at the top of your profession, surround yourself with experts who can help you achieve more than you can achieve on your own. Hire someone to help you determine your most important goals, equip you with the tools and resources for achieving those goals, and hold you accountable to the monthly plans and daily activities that will help you accomplish them.