David M. Ward, Author at The Attorney Marketing Center

What’s the best marketing strategy?

October 8, 2020 by David M. Ward

A busy sole practitioner asks, “Of all the possible marketing [strategies]. . . how would you rank them in order of effectiveness or “bang for the buck”?

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know I’m going to put referrals at the top of the list. If I could only do one thing, that’s what I’d do.

That’s what I did to build my practice. That’s what I recommend for every lawyer.

You should also know my second recommendation: email.

Stay in touch with clients and prospects and professional contacts via email. Do it consistently and it will bring you new business, repeat business and. . . referrals.

My third recommendation: write a book. It’s one of the best marketing tools for a professional.

Fourth, advertising. Done right, there’s almost nothing that will allow you to scale faster.

After that? It depends. Ask yourself questions like these:

What’s working for me now? What’s worked in the past?
Where does my target market hang out? What do they read? Who do they follow?
What am I good at? What do I enjoy? Speaking, networking, writing?
How much time can I dedicate to marketing?
How much money am I prepared to invest?
What could I outsource?

He asked about direct mail. Depends on your target market. It can be extremely profitable (like advertising) but you have to get a lot of things right.

He asked whether adding additional content to an already decent website makes sense? It might. How much traffic are you getting now? Are you dominating organic search for your keywords? If you’re doing well, you might work on increasing opt-ins and conversions.

So yeah, it depends.

Look at your numbers and look at what your gut is telling you.

Don’t do something merely because it’s worked for someone else or it looks like it could be profitable. Don’t force yourself to do something you don’t want to do.

Choose something that feels good to you when you think about it and focus on that.

This can help you sort things out

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan

What to do when a client complains

October 7, 2020 by David M. Ward

It happens. Someone is unhappy about something. Often, that means that other clients are unhappy about the same issue, they’re just not telling you.

They just leave. Or don’t hire you again.

But you want your clients to tell you about their complaints. Why?

So you can fix the problem and avoid giving other clients the same bad experience.
So you can keep unhappy clients from telling the world about their bad experience with you on social media, et. al.
So you can assess weaknesses in your systems and improve them.
So you can build a reputation for listening to your clients and caring about them enough to respond to their needs and concerns.

Getting a complaint from a client also gives you the opportunity to turn that client into a fan.

Studies show that many of the most loyal clients (and sources of referrals) come from clients who previously had a complaint that the attorney addressed to their satisfaction.

So, you want clients to come to you if they have an issue with anything. Encourage them to do that. Provide forms they can fill out. Let them respond anonymously if they prefer.

And, when you get a complaint:

Listen to it; don’t argue or become defensive.
Thank the client for calling the problem to your attention.
Fix it.
Apologize and promise it won’t happen again.
Tell them what you will do/have done to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Consider offering something extra to “make it up to them”
Thank them again for telling you and giving you the opportunity to make things right.
Contact them again and make sure everything is okay.

You don’t have to hire expensive consultants to advise you on improving client relations. Your clients will tell you everything you need to know.

How to quickly grow a big(ger) practice

Filed Under: Client loyalty, Client relations Tagged With: How to handle a complain

Ten tips for writing faster

October 6, 2020 by David M. Ward

I’ll keep this short (which is my first tip for writing faster).

Most of my posts are a few hundred words. You don’t need more than that to get my point, and I don’t want to write more than that to make it.

So there.

Lower your standards. You’re not writing literature. Tell people what you want to tell them, do a quick edit, and get on with your day.
Keep a well-stocked supply of ideas. For me, deciding what I want to say takes a lot longer than actually saying it.
Avoid (most) research. Write what you know.
Write (something) every day. You’ll get faster and better.
Schedule it. Decide when you want to write and put the time on your calendar. You’ll train your brain to accept that it’s time to write, making it more likely that the words will start flowing.
Time it. Give yourself 15 minutes to write a first draft. (30 minutes if you must.)
Learn to type faster. You can practice here
Dictate. You speak several times faster than you can type and you can do it anywhere. Editing takes longer, though.
Re-cycle. Most of your readers haven’t read or don’t remember what you wrote on the subject last year so write about it again this year.

Still think you can’t write a weekly newsletter or blog post?

Think again.

How to (quickly) write an email newsletter clients want to read

Filed Under: Email, Newsletters, Productivity, Writing

The best piece of advice I ever received as an attorney

October 5, 2020 by David M. Ward

I didn’t learn it in law school. I don’t remember my father (attorney) talking about it. I didn’t read it in a book.

The best advice I ever received came from my grandfather.

He wasn’t an attorney, he was a business owner, farmer, and commodities trader. He made and lost fortunes in his lifetime and taught me a thing or two about business and life.

When I passed the Bar and opened my first office, he visited me, pointed at the top drawer in my desk, and told me that when I get a new client, the first thing I should do is open that drawer and tell the client to drop the cash in it.

Indelicate, yes, put but sound advice.

And I wish I had always followed it.

Clients who didn’t pay me, or pay me in full, were usually the ones I didn’t ask to pay in advance.

Lesson learned.

I hear from lawyers with clients who haven’t paid or slow-pay or try to weasel out of paying in full. Maybe you’ve had one or two.

Getting paid in advance, or at least getting a big retainer, will eliminate most of that, I tell them.

Yeah, but it will also eliminate them from hiring me, I can hear them thinking. And that’s true. But is that a bad thing?

Even if you need the money and believe it’s worth the risk, in the long run, having a (reasonably) strict policy about getting paid up front will serve you well, but not just in terms of cash flow.

It will also help you build your practice with a better crop of clients.

Clients who can and do pay you, on time or early, refer other clients who can do that, too. These types of clients also tend to have more legal matters and are prepared to pay higher fees if you give them what they want.

Should you ever make exceptions? Sure. But make them exceptions, not the rule.

Get the Check: Stress-Free Legal Billing and Collection

Filed Under: Attorneys fees, Fees and Billing, Law office management

This marketing strategy may be the only one you ever need

October 2, 2020 by David M. Ward

If you like referrals, if you like working smarter not harder, if you don’t want to spend a lot of time or money on marketing, if you want to build your practice organically and know you will never run out of clients. . .

I have some advice for you.

You can start doing this immediately. You can take tiny steps or go whole hog. You can do it in addition to everything else you do to bring in clients, or you can replace everything else with this one, simple strategy.

This:

Get to know everyone your clients and contacts know.

If you handle consumer matters, get to know your clients’ friends and neighbors and the owners and employees of the businesses they patronize.

If you have business clients (even if you don’t practice business law), get to know their customers or clients, vendors or suppliers, colleagues and competitors.

Instead of building your practice linearly, one new client or new contact at a time, build it geometrically–10, 50, 100 at at time.

Because each new client or contact is the gateway to hundreds more.

Because everyone knows other people who might need your services at some point, or know someone they can refer.

The average person knows 250 people. If you have 250 people on your current list of clients and contacts, your list can potentially reach 62,500 people.

Think about the leverage this gives you. People who know, like and trust you recommending you to people in their warm market.

When you meet someone new, don’t just look at them, look “through” them, at the people they know, because there are a lot of them.

How do you implement this? There are many things you can do.

Here’s a great place to start.

Filed Under: Networking, Referrals, Relationship marketing

When it comes to writing, law school messed us up

October 1, 2020 by David M. Ward

We present the facts. We present the law. We argue our side, or both sides, and report what happened.

That works when you’re briefing cases, but if your blog and newsletter readers wanted to learn the law, they would have gone to law school.

So, you tell stories. And that helps. You write about what your client said or did. And how they felt.

You talk about how they were scared and worried. How they tossed and turned the night before court. How they gave you a big hug after they won.

But what about you?

How did you feel?

Did the case make you tear your hair out? Did the outcome make you smile ear to ear? Did you have tears in your eyes when the client said you saved his life?

Attorneys rarely talk about their feelings. In fact, it seems we usually go out of our way to hide them, perhaps thinking they make us look weak.

Not so.

When we share our feelings, it humanizes us and endears us to our readers and listeners, clients and colleagues. It shows that we care about what we do, and the people for whom we do it.

Have you ever had a client who made you so angry you wanted to throw their file at them? I remember one such client in particular who, in the middle of mediation, on a case that should have settled, changed her mind about what she’d previously told me she would accept.

Okay, that happens, But then, in front of the mediator, she blamed me for not getting her what she wanted, and told me I didn’t know how to do my job.

What? Where did this come from?

I suggested she find another attorney, she did, and life went on. But today, decades later, I still remember her name.

Something tells me you can relate.

Want more referrals? Here’s how to get them

Filed Under: Client relations, Writing

How to make marketing a habit

September 30, 2020 by David M. Ward

A lawyer wrote and said the things he’s learned from me “really work and I see results in a very short time.”

That’s good.

He mentioned his email newsletter and said, “unfortunately, it is not yet a habit.”

I told him to commit to writing once a week and put it on his calendar.

Simple. But does it solve his problem?

Note, he didn’t say he doesn’t have time or he’s not a good writer or he doesn’t know what to write about. Those are different problems, with different solutions.

As for habits, there are countless books, articles, videos, and courses that explain the psychology and present strategies and much of it is useful.

But no strategy works if you don’t use it.

And keep using it.

Which means making it a habit, which leads us back to where we started.

My advice?

You either want to write a weekly newsletter (or create any other habit) or you don’t.

If you don’t want to do it, you won’t do it. You’ll never start or you’ll start and stop. Or force yourself to do it, be miserable, and then stop.

If you want to do it, however, you’ll do it, and you won’t have to depend on strategies or tricks or willpower.

Much better, yes?

There are many strategies that can help you start, and starting is the most important part. I encourage you to do that. You might find you like it after all.

Try lots of things. And variations. If you don’t want to write a weekly newsletter, write one every other week. Or don’t write a newsletter the way others write newsletters, share your thoughts in a few paragraphs and call it a day.

Give things a reasonable tryout. If they don’t make the cut, bench them and try something else.

The good news is you only need one. You can build a massively successful practice with just one marketing strategy.

Don’t listen to all the goo-roos who say otherwise. Just listen to yourself.

How to build a successful email newsletter

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Newsletters Tagged With: habits

You’re more interesting than Steve Jobs

September 29, 2020 by David M. Ward

I’ve written my share of articles and posts that mention something Steve Jobs said or did. At least one of those posts, around the time of his death, went viral.

I got a lot of traffic and feedback. So did others who wrote about him.

And that’s the problem.

When everyone writes about the same people, news stories, issues, or subjects, nobody stands out or is remembered.

People might remember the anecdote or quote from Jobs you shared, but unless you’re telling about a time you met him or did something you learned by reading about his life, they won’t remember YOU.

Traffic is nice. Feedback can be interesting or helpful. But the primary reason we write is to help people get to “know, like, and trust” us.

That’s why you must write about yourself.

Write about your practice, your life, how you work with your clients, interesting cases and what you did with them, the world the way you see it, things that make you angry.

Write about conversations you’ve had with the people you work with, your professional contacts, friends, family, experts, and vendors.

Write about what you do, what you think, and what you’re like. Because that’s what people are interested in and will remember.

Because that’s how you build a practice.

Don’t make everything all about you, of course. Just make sure you’re in the picture somewhere, sometimes as a protagonist, sometimes as a bit player, and sometimes as a passionate narrator, but your presence should be felt.

You don’t have to do this in everything your write. I didn’t do it in this article. But do it often enough so that, like the bar on Cheers, everyone knows your name.

How to write interesting emails that bring in clients

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: stories

Your fees are too high

September 28, 2020 by David M. Ward

What do you say to a client or prospective client who says your fees are too high?

Do you negotiate? Offer to reduce your fees?

Yeah, don’t do that.

Do you tell them that’s what you charge and they can take it or leave it?

Don’t do that, either.

Instead, say something like, “When you say my fees are too high, what are you comparing this to?”

Let them tell you about other lawyers who charge less.

And then show them why you charge more because you are worth more–to them.

Show the client what they get with you they won’t get from other attorneys.

The best way to do that, of course, is to let your other clients do it for you. Show them your positive reviews and testimonials and share success stories about what you’ve done for other clients.

But maybe the client doesn’t have anyone they’re comparing you with, they think all lawyers fees are too high.

In that case, go over their current problem or situation and ask how much this is costing them now, in terms of time and money and mental anguish.

Let them see how they will be better off hiring you than continuing to live with their current situation.

Finally, if they can’t see things your way, say something like this:

“I don’t want to take your money if you don’t think this is going to work for you. I understand you want to solve this problem but I don’t want to work with you if you’re not committed to working with me to solve it”.

C’mon, you know you want to.

Referred clients make the best clients. Here’s how to get more

Filed Under: Attorneys fees, Closing the sale, Fees and Billing, Salesmanship, Uncategorized Tagged With: posture

Do you want to see something really scary?

September 25, 2020 by David M. Ward

Lawyers sell hope and opportunity. We sell money at a discount. We sell relief.

We tell stories to show prospective clients what it will be like when they hire us to help them.

But we also tell stories of what it will be like if they don’t.

Fear is an important tool in our toolbox and we use it to motivate people to act.

We describe the worst case scenario, enumerate the potential losses, and estimate the potential expense. We dramatize this in our web copy and consultations, and it works. People sign up because they’re afraid of what might happen if they don’t.

So, use fear. Scare your prospects into taking action. You’re doing them a favor, motivating them to do something they need.

But. . . don’t overdo it.

Because if you scare them too much or too often, many people shut down.

They stop listening. They stop reading your emails. They cancel appointments.

So, how much fear is enough but not too much?

Publicly, meaning on your website, newsletter, articles or presentations, offer lots of hope and a sprinkling of fear. Let them know about potential risks or problems, share a story or two of things that went wrong for people in their situation, but don’t go into a lot of detail–or do it too often.

You want them to take the next step, not keep looking for a lawyer who offers hope and opportunity.

Privately, in a consultation or on the phone, you can give them more than a sprinkling of fear. How much, you’ll have to decide in the moment.

How much is at stake? What’s their level of sophistication? How do they feel about their current situation?

Ask lots of open-ended questions and get them talking. They usually tell you everything you need to know to get them to take the next step.

How to get more people on your list to take the next step

Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Newsletters