David M. Ward – Page 137

Why nobody reads your newsletter

October 24, 2019 by David M. Ward

I see a lot of attorney’s newsletters. I see them but I don’t read them because, well, why should I? I can get that information anywhere.

The same goes for a lot of blogs, articles, videos, and other content.

The information is often good. Legal and business or consumer tips that can help the reader accomplish something or learn something useful.

The problem is the author doesn’t give anyone a reason to read their version of the information.

Fortunately, there’s an easy fix.

Put some of “you” into the writing. Tell readers your experience with or opinion of the information.

Instead of sending your readers an article or a link to an article about how to take better photos, for example, tell them why you wanted to take better photos of your kids and that you found a site that helped you do that in less than 30 minutes, and now your family loves your photos.

Instead of telling them how insurance companies trick people and what to watch out for, tell your readers about a client who got tricked by an adjuster into settling his case for much less than it was worth, or a client who wisely called you for advice before they signed a release and didn’t fall into that trap.

Instead of sending a list of books everyone should read in their lifetime, tell them about a book you read recently and why you recommend it. Tell them what you liked, what you got out of it, what you agreed with, and where you differed.

In other words, instead of sending your readers an information dump, tell them how you or your clients or others have used that information, and benefited, or failed to use it, to their detriment.

Stories, bub. Context. Examples from your practice or personal life.

Not just “the information” but what you think about the information.

Put some personality into your writing.

Do that, and your subscribers will not only read and enjoy your newsletter, they’ll look forward to reading your next issue.

If you want to learn more ways to write a newsletter your subscribers will love to read, get my email marketing for attorneys course

Filed Under: Newsletters, Writing

Once is not enough

October 23, 2019 by David M. Ward

Marketing legend Dan Kennedy who passed away recently once noted something he learned from consulting clients in the dry cleaning industry. He said that if you get a new customer to return to your store three times in a relatively short period of time, they’re likely to be your customer for life.

The banking, insurance and investment industries also know that getting a customer to open three accounts or buy three of their products makes it much more likely the customer will stick with their company.

I can’t imagine why this wouldn’t also be true for lawyers and firms.

Get your clients to hire you for three different matters or cases, and the odds are they will keep you as their lawyer for life.

Assuming you don’t give them a reason not to, of course.

Does this fall into the category of interesting information or can you do something with this little gem?

No doubt you do whatever you can to get first-time clients to return and “buy” your other services, and you don’t stop with three.

But perhaps now, knowing the magic of the number three, you’ll work a little harder to get a first time client to hire you again, and a client who has hired you twice to hire you a third time.

Maybe you’ll work a little harder to get them to do that sooner, rather than later.

Maybe you’ll offer your clients an incentive to do that.

Invest a little at the beginning of your relationship to create a lifetime of client loyalty.

Yes but, what do you do if most of your clients only need your service one time and you don’t have any other services to offer?

You might break down your service into smaller parts. Get them to hire you for part one and then offer them parts two and three.

You might promote to them the services of another lawyer you recommend and stay involved during the engagement (ie., go to the first meeting, get cc’d on progress reports, etc.)

You might get clients to engage with you in other ways such as attending a seminar in your conference room or online. They might not need to hire you again but attending your seminar does fill in the gap between first time/one-time client and lifetime client (and source of referrals).

Get your clients to hire you again, sure, but if you can’t do that, get them involved with you in some way after the first engagement.

Good client relations leads to referrals

Filed Under: Client loyalty, Client relations

Are you focusing on your market or your marketing?

October 22, 2019 by David M. Ward

It all comes down this: generic marketing (which most lawyers do) vs. marketing that is customized to your target market.

Generic marketing is “one size fits all”. It focuses on the lawyer or firm, not the market or client. Because of that, their marketing tends to produce poorer results because one size does not fit all.

If you handle family law, for example, every service you offer could be (should be) packaged and presented differently for each of the different types of clients you target.

The prosperous professional fighting tooth and nail to modify a visitation order is very different from the millennial who just wants to get things over with.

Your marketing must reflect those differences.

That’s why you need to decide who you are marketing to (and who you are not) and understand what makes them tick.

What do they want? What will get their attention? What will persuade them? What type of lawyer will they relate to?

Study your target market. What are their highest values, most painful problems, and most fervent desires?

When you’ve figured that out, your marketing is much more effective.

You spend less time and less money marketing to them. Your words and examples resonate with them. You get more of them to make an appointment and more to sign up.

Because they see that you understand them.

Generic marketing is simple. But so much less effective. Everyone hears the same message, and most people tune you out.

You have to work harder and spend more time and more money getting your message out into the world. You have to make sure your fees are “competitive” because the clients you’re likely to attract are comparing your “offer” to everyone else’s.

If you want your marketing to be more effective, if you want to get a higher percentage of people saying yes and paying more, don’t focus on your marketing, focus on your market.

As a friend of mine puts it, “Go so deep into a single niche that you know your customers [he advises businesses] better than they know themselves.”

I show you how to do that in my email marketing course

Filed Under: Marketing legal services Tagged With: Market research, Niche marketing, target marketing

Another easy way to write a book

October 21, 2019 by David M. Ward

You often hear me encourage you to write a book to promote your law practice. I’ve said it isn’t as difficult or time-consuming as you might think.

I’ve mentioned that one way to do it quickly is to have someone interview you and publish the transcript. I did this with an interview of a successful appellate attorney I did and another book based on an interview another attorney did of me.

If you’re interested in writing a book based on interviews, you can learn what to do in my book, The Easy Way to Write a Book.

Today, I want to show you another way to quickly publish a book.

I just uploaded a book to Kindle: How to Sell Your Legal Services in 15 Seconds or Less. It’s roughly 6000 words (so, short) and is essentially an updated version of a report I previously offered to new subscribers to my list.

You may have read a copy of the original report. If not, you can get the revised “book version” here.

So, there you go. Take something you’ve written before–a report, a presentation, or the transcript of an interview, and re-purpose it as an ebook.

If you don’t have anything suitable, you can write something in a day or two.

Take something you know well that your prospective clients might want to know, write it down or speak and record yourself. One hour of dictation (or an interview) should yield approximately 10,000 words.

And then, you’ll be able to add to your bio that you are a published author. You’ll also have a book published that can bring traffic to your website.

And that’s good traffic. Anyone who reads your book and comes to your website to learn more about you is “interested” in you.

You’ll also have something you can give away, to build your email or newsletter list.

Let me know if you have any questions about any of this, or you want some help getting your book written and published.

How to Sell Your Legal Services in 15 Seconds or Less

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Online Marketing, Writing Tagged With: Self-publishing

What would you do with an extra hour a day?

October 18, 2019 by David M. Ward

If you had an extra hour a day available what would you do with it?

More client work?

More marketing and practice building activities?

More time off?

Would you start a new business project? Work on your hobby? Get in shape? Write a book?

It would be nice, wouldn’t it? It could be life-changing.

But it’s not going to happen. You’re never going to find an hour a day in your busy schedule.

Unless you decide to.

If you do, here are some questions to ask yourself that could help you free up that time:

Look at your calendar and task list. What do you regularly do that you could safely stop doing or cut back on? Yesterday, I talked about eliminating unnecessary expenses. Why can’t you do the same thing with your time?
What project are you working on you could indefinitely defer?
What could you outsource or delegate? (Give this a lot of thought; it could free up days, not hours.)
What could you do more quickly by improving your skills, acquiring tools or tech, or streamlining your work-flow or systems?
What content, marketing collateral, or work product could you re-purpose or re-use (so you don’t have to spend time creating more)?
What marketing activities (networking, presentations, podcasting, videos) could you eliminate, shorten, or replace with something simpler and less time-consuming?
Do you have any services or practice areas that take up a disproportionate amount of your time and focus (and could be eliminated)?
What meetings could you eliminate or shorten? What boards or committees could you step down from?
Could you shorten the commute to your office? Could you work from home or a second office a couple of days a week?

It’s important to ask yourself these questions because you might like the answers.

And because one hour a day is 250 hours per year.

Extra.

What would you do with that time?

If you want some help finding an extra hour per day, let me know.

Filed Under: Productivity, success

Thinking small pays big

October 17, 2019 by David M. Ward

I’ve written before about the wisdom of regularly examining your expenses and ruthlessly cutting them. All those $5 or $25 per month charges may seem insignificant but they add up.

When you cut them, you not only reduce your overhead and increase your net income, you increase the overall value of your practice because one of the most important elements in the value of your practice is your cash flow.

Cutting $20 per day off your expenses will increase in net income of $600 per month. That may increase the sales value or borrowing power of your practice by five or ten times that amount.

It also frees up cash you can invest in marketing.

The same dynamic applies to increasing your income. Adding a few hundred dollars per month to your (net) income via additional fees will similarly improve your bottom line.

So, what if in addition to targeting bigger cases and clients you also paid attention to bringing in some smaller ones? All those $1000 fees also add up.

A few new small clients per month might allow you to hire more staff or buy more ads which could bring in many times what they cost. And, don’t forget that smaller clients and cases can lead to bigger ones.

You should also regularly consider your options regarding increasing your fees. A five or ten percent increase in your billing rates or fees could have a profound effect on your net income.

Don’t obsess over any of this but if you want to increase your net income, don’t ignore the little things.

Because every dollar counts.

How to increase your fees without losing clients

Filed Under: Attorneys fees, Law office management

How to get paid more for your services

October 16, 2019 by David M. Ward

If you want to earn more than other lawyers in your field and do it more consistently and with less effort, I have some advice for you:

Target people with money.

Not the low end of the market. Not the price shoppers. Not merely people with problems you can fix but people with problems you can fix who have the money to pay for the solutions you offer.

Capice?

Hold on. In order to land this type of client, you need to persuade them that you can give them what they want.

What do they want?

They want an expert. A lawyer who specializes in problems like theirs and clients like them.

They’re willing to pay more for that lawyer because they believe a specialist has a higher degree of knowledge and experience and, more than anything else, they want a lawyer they can count on to get the job done.

They want to know that if they hire you, you will take care of the problem, without unnecessary delays or complications.

They’ve buying peace of mind, and they’re willing to pay top dollar for it.

There are many ways to convince these clients you can do the job, but the simplest way is to get referred to them.

The referring party, client or professional, essentially vouches for your expertise and reliability.

You don’t have to persuade the client you can do the job, the referring party does it for you, in great part simply because they are referring you.

So, if I were in your shoes, I’d do what I could to make referrals the core of my marketing.

And, in order to get referrals to clients with money, I’d make sure I got some clients with money and made friends with professionals who represent clients with money, so they can refer their friends and clients to me.

Because you get referrals to clients with money by targeting clients with money.

This will help you get more referrals

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Referrals, Specializing Tagged With: Niche marketing, target marketing

Maybe you need a new box

October 15, 2019 by David M. Ward

“Think different,” Apple used to say in their ads. Today, everybody tells you to “think outside the box”.

Maybe you’ve tried that. You’ve tried coming up with different ways to promote your services but you’ve run out of ideas.

Maybe you need a new box.

Instead of promoting yourself or your services, aka your box, how about promoting something else. Something you don’t promote now. Something that’s not you.

Like a book.

Write and promote a book and let the book promote your services.

With your book in hand, you can do things you may never have considered regarding your services.

Like cold calling someone to tell them about your new book and offering to send them a review copy.

Like advertising your book, maybe even at a discount (egads!)

Like setting up a table at a trade show and selling your book.

Like conducting a contest and giving away copies and cash prizes.

And other things you wouldn’t be caught dead doing as a lawyer.

As an author, you can do these things (or hire someone to do them), because these things are normal in the world of books.

It’s a different box.

So, when people hear about your book, they want to hear more about you.

Bloggers hear about your book and want to interview you.

Event planners hear that you’re an author and want you to speak at their event.

Your book gets reviewed or mentioned and people visit your website to learn more.

People read your book and want to talk to you about their case or issue.

So, there’s your new box. Write a book (it’s a lot easier than you think) and self-publish it (also easier than you think), and start promoting that sucker.

If you want some help, let me know.

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan Tagged With: writing a book

Lawyers are big babies

October 14, 2019 by David M. Ward

Lawyers are cautious creatures, as they should be, but their cautious nature often prevents them from reaching their potential.

We see it all the time.

We see lawyers emulate their competition because it seems like the smart and safe approach, but you can’t stand out from the crowd when you are a part of it.

We see lawyers majoring in minor things, making incremental improvements in what they already do instead of trying big ideas that might help them achieve next-level growth.

We see lawyers settle for low hanging fruit, targeting average clients and charging average fees, instead of reaching for the sweetest fruit that’s a little bit out of reach.

We see lawyers stifling their productivity by riding the wave of perfectionism, not realizing that done is better than perfect.

We see lawyers working hard and staying busy, because that’s what’s expected of them, instead of looking for ways to achieve exceptional results with less effort.

It’s fear. Fear of failure, fear of being different, even fear of success.

Are you guilty of any of this?

You can’t change overnight but you can change. You can adopt a new mindset, one that values being different and the lessons taught by failure.

A mindset that says success doesn’t depend on the elimination of all risk but on the intelligent management of it.

A mindset that focuses on what you want instead of what you think you’re supposed to do.

Fear can be tamed. Optimism can be learned. Success is available to all.

Even lawyers.

If you’re ready to get to the next level, this is how you get there

Filed Under: Inspiration, success

Calculation fatigue

October 11, 2019 by David M. Ward

That’s the title of an article in this month’s Chess Life magazine. The sub-title is, “The dangers of delving too deeply into one particular variation”.

The article is an examination of a botched game by a strong player, a game that might have been awarded a brilliancy prize but for the player’s errors occasioned by following one idea too far and losing the central theme of the game.

What does this have to do with practicing law? Everything.

Because lawyers (and other very smart people) often do what this Grandmaster did. They focus too much on the details, the minutia of a case or an issue, and sometimes lose a won game.

I’ve done it. I’m sure you can think of times when you’ve done it, getting lost in researching an issue to the nth degree, perhaps, making a big deal about a small point.

You see it during oral argument when the judge or jurors eyes glaze over and you know they’re didn’t follow your last point, or no longer care.

You see it in marketing. You get bogged down in choosing better keywords or creating better funnels, months go by and thousands of dollars have been spent and you find you could have gotten better results with something simpler.

You see it in a lot of websites. A would-be client visits, hoping to learn something about his problem and what you can do to help him and is confronted by a library of information. There’s too much to read, he doesn’t know where to start, so he leaves.

(NB: keep the library but hide it and link to it for those who want more information.)

We see it in presentations where we try to make too many points and leave no stone unturned and we simply confuse the audience (and a confused mind says no).

What should we do? We should periodically stand down from business as usual, put aside all the small stuff and focus on the big picture.

The strategy, not the technique. The main argument, not the “Hail Mary” we throw in just in case.

You started practicing with a few simple ideas and you did okay. If you’ve found yourself getting off track lately, a return to fundamentals might be just what you need to reset and revitalize your practice.

It might even earn you the brilliancy prize.

The Attorney Marketing Formula can help you get back on track

Filed Under: Law office management, Marketing Plan, success