Blog – Page 273

Using sales funnels in your law firm marketing plan

March 13, 2014 by David M. Ward

When you create your law firm marketing plan, I strongly suggest you consider using sales funnels.

A sales funnel simply means that on the front end of the sales process (the narrow part of the funnel), you offer something inexpensive (relative to everything else you offer) or free. The idea is to get as many people as possible buying something on the front end, to get them into your funnel, where they will be offered progressively more expensive products or services.

On the front end, you can offer products, services, or both. So, your front end offer might be a free report or a free consultation. It might be a $5 or $10 ebook or a $99 document tune-up.Â Once they have purchased something, or availed themselves of your free offer, you have their contact information and tacit permission to contact them with additional offers.

A sales funnel is useful because it helps you to identify prospects (leads) and build a list of prospective clients. You then invest time and money marketing to these higher probability clients.

A sales funnel also works because someone who buys something from you, however inexpensive, is more likely to buy something else. When they buy two products or services from you, the odds that they will buy a third go up exponentially.Â And, clients who buy more than one service or product are also more likely to buy your more expensive services. Their lower priced “purchases” help build trust in you and help them to see the need for additional work.

Studies in the banking industry prove that if you have multiple accounts with a bank, the odds of you staying with that bank increase dramatically. It works the same way with legal clients.

You can have multiple sales funnels bringing in clients from many directions. One of your funnels might start with advertising a free report to build your list. Another funnel might start with offering your basic package (e.g., estate planning, corporate formation, etc.), followed by offers for more expensive services.

You can also work with other professionals to create packages that both of you can offer on the front end. For example, an estate planning attorney and financial planner could offer packages that include information, consultations, and/or actual paid (or free) services, to get prospective clients into your sales funnels.

Sales funnels all come down to two things: giving prospective clients a sample of your work or your expertise, and building your list. Make sure you use them in your law firm marketing plan.

For more on creating a law firm marketing plan, see The Attorney Marketing Formula

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan Tagged With: sales funnel

What are you working on?

March 12, 2014 by David M. Ward

The life of a practicing lawyer is fairly predictable. Cases and clients come in, we do the work, and then we’re done. Some clients come back, new clients come in, and the cycle continues.

Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing. Let’s break out the booze and have a ball. If that’s all there is. (Big Peggy Lee fan, here.)

This can’t be all there is. There has to be something else. Something you’re working towards.

I’m not talking about formal goal setting here. I’m talking about something exciting that you are working on, outside of your regular daily work.

Renowned plastics surgeon and author of Psycho Cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz, put it this way:

“People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no personal goals which are worthwhile… Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a projectâ€¦ Always have something ahead of you to ‘look forward to’ – work for and hope for.”

You might be starting a side business, writing a book, or training for your first marathon.

It should be something that puts a smile on your face every morning when you wake up and think about it. Something that makes you feel better when you’re having a bad day.

We all need a project. We all need something to look forward to.

So, what are you working on?

Filed Under: Inspiration, Personal development Tagged With: Maxwell Maltz

“Here, call my law firm,” said nobody ever

March 11, 2014 by David M. Ward

Your clients may write their check to your law firm, but they hire. . . wait for it. . . YOU.

They know you. When they call the switchboard, they ask for you. If you leave the firm, they will probably follow you. And when someone needs a referral, they hand them your card and say, “Here, call my lawyer”.

Not your firm. So, if you are marketing your firm, stop it. Market you.

When you send an email, it should be from you@yourname.com, not you@yourfirm.com.

If your firm has a blog, posts should be by-lined by you, the individual lawyer, not the firm. If you don’t want to take my word for it, here are seven reasons why you should be the author. And if your firm doesn’t have a blog, you should start one. You, not the firm. It should be hosted at yourname.com or yournamelawyer.com.

Social media pages and profiles, you guessed it, should feature you, not your firm. Your firm can have a page, too, but you should promote yours, not theirs.

This is not just for branding purposes. It’s also for self-preservation. If everything is in your firm’s name and not yours, what do you do if your firm dissolves or you leave? You start from scratch, that’s what you do.

Now, what if you own the firm? Same advice. Brand yourself. You can promote and brand the firm, too, but don’t forget to get and keep your name in front of your target market. Because people hire lawyers, not law firms.

Filed Under: Blogging, Law office management, Marketing legal services Tagged With: Branding, branding-law-firm

What I learned about marketing legal services at my car wash

March 10, 2014 by David M. Ward

The car wash I go to has a nice touch. When the car is ready, one of the employees comes into the waiting room (or the outside waiting area), walks up to me with my keys and says, “Mr. Ward, your car is ready.”

He doesn’t shout out my name to the crowd or wave a rag and expect me to notice. He comes and finds me.

The first time this happened, I was impressed. How did he know? When it happened the second time, I asked. When they take my car at the entrance, the employee asks for my last name and writes it on the ticket. He also writes down what I’m wearing: “blue shirt, glasses” or “tall, dark, and handsome”.

Simple.

Now, when you go out to your waiting room to meet a new client (you do go out yourself, right?), do you walk over to the client and greet him by name? You should. It’s a nice touch. Much nicer than shouting his name or waving a rag.

All you have to do is have the receptionist write down what the client looks like or what they are wearing.

Your clients will appreciate the gesture.

I’ll tell you what else they will appreciate. When they come back for another appointment and the receptionist (and you) recognize them and greet them by name. Or when you meet the client for his court appearance and find him in a crowded hallway.

How do you do this? At the first appointment, ask the client if you can take their photo for your file. It’s for their protection. So nobody can pretend to be them and pick up their settlement check. Or, because you have many clients and you like to get to know them.

You often hear that marketing legal services is mostly about the little things. If you’ve ever wondered what that means, now you know.

Marketing is everything we do to get and keep good clients. Here’s The Formula

Filed Under: Client relations, Law office management, Marketing legal services

And another thing about social media marketing. . .

March 7, 2014 by David M. Ward

I have an addendum to yesterday’s “enough-with-the-social-media-blitzkrieg” rant.

One of the keys to social media marketing, we are told, is engagement. “It’s a conversation, not a speech,” they say. We are told not to simply push out information, but to engage people, befriend them, earn their trust, and eventually invite them to see what we do.

But what if we don’t want to have a conversation? What if we don’t want to engage? What if we want to use social media to make a speech, for fun, or not at all?

Will we be visited by the social media police? Will our Facebook privileges be revoked? We we be remonstrated by a 26 year old billionaire and told we’re not worthy of being online?

The truth is, engaging on social media is only one way to bring clients to your tent. It’s not the only way.

I just hired a new accountant and a new dentist. Neither one engaged with me before I hired them, on social media or otherwise. One was a referral, the other was found through search. In both cases, I looked at online reviews posted by other clients and patients. It don’t think the CPA or the dentist engaged with them, either.

Could they bring in even more clients by engaging on social media? I’m sure they could. I know a lot of professionals who bring in a lot of traffic and clients with social media marketing. They chat and share throughout the day, and they love it. They are successful, no doubt, because they love it.

If I were to guess, I would say there are many more professionals who use social media sparingly, like I do, or don’t use it at all. Are we missing out on something big? My friends who bring in a lot of business through social would say absolutely, and urge us to get on the bandwagon. So, should we force ourselves to do something we don’t want to do? If we don’t love it, like they do, should we do it anyway?

No.

Don’t let anyone tell you how you must use social media in your practice, or that you must use it at all.

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Online Marketing, Social media, Social media marketing

Take your LinkedIn marketing webinar and shove it

March 6, 2014 by David M. Ward

Enough already!

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest. . . it never stops. Every day I am inundated with invitations and solicitations to webinars, courses, videos, books, reports, plug-ins, consulting offers. I don’t even have time to read the emails or web pages, let alone watch the videos or read the pdfs, let alone buy anything, let alone implement any of the stuff I bought.

And I’m in the marketing business. How on earth are you supposed to keep up with this stuff and still have time to practice law?

(Do I get an amen?)

Look, I love the Internet. I must love it. I spend all day in front of it. I can’t begin to enumerate the ways it has enhanced my life and I would never want to go back to the days before you could carry the world in your pocket. But there are times when you have to step away, take a breath, and put things in perspective.

You know you cannot ignore Internet marketing (even if it’s not your favorite thing), but you can’t keep up with everything everyone tells you is a “must do”. To maintain your sanity (is that an oxymoron–I’m talking to lawyers, right?) you have to be selective.

You need your own website. Not a page on your firm’s site or on M-H or a legal directory, your own hosted website that you control. Yourname.com

You can put it up yourself (it’s not difficult) or you can hire someone to set it up for you and show you how to update it yourself. I suggest a self-hosted wordpress site (not wordpress.com). You could set this up in about an hour, and that includes watching a couple of youtube videos that show you how.

You need some content that shows visitors what you do and why they should choose you. Add some articles you’ve written, a list of your practice areas, and an “about” page.

And that’s it. You can start with that. This is the most important part.

Now, you have something to show people who want to know about what you do.

Traffic? Don’t worry about it right now. There are lots of ways to get it. You can start by contacting your clients and everyone you know and tell them to “come see my new website!” Okay, you can leave out the exclamation point. They’ll come, they’ll read, they’ll share.

What about social media? What about it? It’ll drive you crazy, if you let it. Don’t let it. Set up accounts with the majors (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and G+), tell your clients and contacts, and when you post new content on your site, post a link to that content on your accounts.

That’s pretty much all I do, when I’m not deleting emails about the latest Facebook or LinkedIn marketing webinar.

Okay, that’s enough marketing for the day. Get back to work.

Make the Phone Ring is the Internet marketing bible for attorneys. Check it out here.

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Online Marketing, Social media, Social media marketing

Draft: a simpler way to write, edit, collaborate, and share documents

March 5, 2014 by David M. Ward

After yesterday’s post about a new cloud-based document sharing service, SavvyDox, I remembered that I was a subscriber to an even easier to use service: Draft.

No downloads, a very simple interface, and the ability to see your editor’s draft or comments side-by-side with your original. And, it’s accessible from any browser, so no problems for tablet users. And, you can export documents in a variety of formats, including Word, PDF, and ePub.

One limitation, at present, is that you can only import documents in text or Markdown. So you probably wouldn’t use this to show clients a work in progress. But this a natural for sharing drafts with editors, partners, and administrative staff, who can edit or add comments without modifying your original.

I like being able to see my editor’s changes, in a different color, side-by-side with my original. I can respond with my comments about their suggested edits. In fact, we can go back and forth with multiple versions of the document, until it’s right. This makes Draft a great tool for collaborators.

Draft also has many additionalÂ features for writers, including Hemingway mode, which prevents you from deleting anything, forcing you to bang out a first draft without stopping to edit. And, if you want to hire a professional editor, you can do that through the Draft interface at very reasonable cost.

Draft is “donate-ware” (I think that’s the term). You can use it without cost, but you are asked to support the service by paying $4 a month.

I can see a place for both SavvyDox and Draft in a lawyer’s writing arsenal. SavvyDox is probably more appropriate for business clients with whom you can share formatted documents. Draft is useful for writing and editing the document, which you can then export and email to the client.

Check them out and let me know what you think.

Filed Under: Technology, Writing Tagged With: Draft, Draftin.com

How clients evaluate lawyers before they hire them

March 3, 2014 by David M. Ward

According to a recent study, prospective clients evaluate lawyers (and other professionals) before they hire them in a few common ways.

81% go to your website. (Do you have an effective website? Does it show what you do? Does it tell visitors why they should hire you instead of any other lawyer? Does it invite them to take the next step (i.e., call for an appointment or to ask questions? Does it capture their email address so that if they’re not ready to take the next step you can stay in touch with them?)

63% google you. (Is your website and/or blog optimized so that they can find you? Will they find favorable ratings and comments about you on sites like Yelp and Avvo? Will they find articles or guest posts by you on reputable blogs? Will they find interviews of you and articles about you? Will they see that you have received awards or been mentioned for your achievements?)

62% ask friends or colleagues if they’re heard of you.Â (If someone knows you or your reputation, will they say good things about you? Will they say you work hard and care about your clients? Will they say you provide added value beyond your core services? Will they say you are good at what you do? Will they say you are fair and honest? Are you asking your satisfied clients to rate you on these sites?)

60% use social media to research you, and 70% use LinkedIn. (Do you have a complete LinkedIn profile? Do you have a presence of any kind on other social media platforms? Do your social media accounts invite people to visit your website? Are you asking your clients to Like your page and share your content?)

So, you need an effective website and a decent LinkedIn profile. (Your profile will show up in search results, so don’t dismiss it’s importance if you have a consumer practice.) And, you need to do a good job for your clients so they will say nice things about you.

What do you think? Marketing isn’t really that difficult, is it?

How to build an effective website

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Online Marketing Tagged With: Internet marketing for attorneys

Goal setting for lawyers and other smart people

February 28, 2014 by David M. Ward

After yesterday’s post about goal setting and the value of having both “result” goals and “activity” goals, an attorney emailed me and said that when he sets results-based goals and doesn’t meet them, it is discouraging. “By establishing activity based goals, I largely control whether I meet them or not. Therefore I am much more motivated to achieve them.”

Exactly.

Results-based goals are inspiring, but if you continually miss them, you get to where you don’t want to set them anymore.

Before you give up on them, there are a couple of things you can do.

The first thing you can do is to break the rules about “when”. In other words, instead of saying you want to earn $20,000 this month, let go of “this month”. Focus on what you want, not when.

It’s a “law of attraction” thing. The ticking clock is a constant reminder that you don’t have what you want, and when you think about that, all you get is more of what you don’t want. You attract the “not having”.

So, set (results) goals that feel good when you think about them. What and why, but not how or when.

The second thing you can do is to change your thinking about what a goal is. Normally, a goal is a fixed target that you either hit or you don’t. Since we usually set goals that are somewhat out of reach, we get conditioned to missing them, and that quickly gets old.

The answer isn’t to set goals that are so low we always hit them. It is to set three version of the goal:

The minimum (what you absolutely know you can do without much in the way of extra effort);
The target (a realistic goal that will take reasonably significant effort but is not out of reach);
The dream (you probably won’t reach it but it’s not impossible).

If $20,000 is your dream goal, $12,000 might be your target, and $8500 might be your minimum.

Another way to do it is to keep the goal at $20,000 but change the month for hitting it: Six months from now is your target, one year from today is your minimum, and next month is your dream version of the goal.

This way, you almost always hit your goal and are almost never discouraged.

Goals are meant to serve you, not the other way around. If setting goals isn’t working for you, change how you do it, or let it go completely. Leo Baubata, having been a strong proponent of goal setting, relinquished it completely and found that he is just as productive, if not more so.

Filed Under: Goal Setting, Personal development, Productivity Tagged With: goal-less, law of attraction, zenhabits.net