Stop it, you’re putting me to sleep

October 14, 2016 by
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It’s nice hearing from readers who say nice things about my emails. It’s even nicer when they tell me I’m full of it.

If your readers don’t at least occasionally tell you that you missed something or you said something they strongly disagree with, you’re missing the boat.

You’ve want to be edgy. Controversial. Provocative. You want your readers to feel something, even if that something makes them want to take a swing at you. If you never lose subscribers over something you said that offended them, you may be guilty of the cardinal sin of being boring.

If you’re boring, readers won’t read you. If they don’t read you, they may forget you. If they forget you, they’re not going to hire or recommend you.

Now, someone is reading this and thinking they would never go that far. They cherish their subscribers and would never do anything that might get a complaint or, hell-to-the-no, cause someone to unsubscribe.

Too bad. So sad.

If you never take risks with your writing or marketing, if you don’t do anything to stand out and be remembered, you run the even greater risk of living a life of mediocrity.

Because boring is one step away from irrelevance.

Besides, do you really want subscribers who can’t stand a little heat and never get the joke? Who are easily triggered and need to hide in their safe space?

I don’t. I want them to go away and make room for people who get me and support me and buy from me.

You should, too.

You want fans. You want champions. You want people who look forward to reading you, and who might sometimes disagree with you, or get perturbed with you, stick with you, no matter what. Because they love you and know you love them.

<Group hug>

One of the best tools for building your practice: email

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Filed Under: Email, List building, Writing Tagged With:

Do you make this mistake when replying to email?

October 12, 2016 by
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I don’t reply to every email I get and neither should you. Vendors and people pitching you something don’t expect a reply and you aren’t obligated to give one.

Prospective clients are another story.

Respond to prospects, even when they ask dumb questions or annoy you. Say ‘thank you’ for the inquiry, answer their question, and tell them what to do next.

You can use a (mostly) canned response. You can have an assistant respond on your behalf. You can point to a page on your site where they can get the information. But always reply and do it as soon as possible. They might be your next client. Or send traffic to your website. Or promote and share your content. Or send you referrals.

Capiche?

Of course, that goes double for clients and former clients.

When a client emails, you should do everything possible to reply within 24 hours (or the following weekday if it is a weekend or holiday). Actually, try to reply within two hours, even if it is to say you’re not able to respond fully just yet but will do so as soon as possible.

People who have paid you money (or sent you referrals) deserve as much respect and attention as you can give them.

Now, for an example of what not to do.

I recently bought somewhat expensive video course. After I went through everything, I had questions. I emailed the guy who produced the course seeking to clarify some points and to ask about a few things he didn’t address.

What happened? Nothing happened. Several days went by with no reply. I emailed again to ask if he had received my first email. Crickets.

I had asked several questions that could have been answered with a yes or no. He should have replied, if only to refer me to the section of the course where the issue was explained.

There is some good material in the course but I’m not inclined to recommend it to anyone, provide a testimonial, or purchase anything else from him. Too bad.

It takes a lot of effort to create a new client or customer. It takes but a simple error in judgment to lose them.

How to use email to get more clients

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Filed Under: Email, Law office management, Marketing legal services

How long does it take to build a successful law practice?

August 31, 2016 by
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How long does it take to build a successful law practice? It takes as long as it takes. That’s my smug, lawyer-like answer, a variant on “it depends”.

In lay terms, I would say, “I don’t have a clue”. Because everyone is different.

What is your practice area? What’s your target market? How much experience do you have with marketing? And a slew of other questions that are a part of the equation.

Actually, there is one question that should be at the top of the list. In 80/20 parlance, it’s one of the “precious few,” a 20% factor that can determine 80% of your results.

How big is your list?

How many prospective clients do you know? How many prospective referral sources do you know? And, if you’re not starting from scratch, how many former clients and existing referral sources do you know?

Why is this more important than things like skills, experience, reputation, or work ethic? Because the shortest path to success is through other people. That’s true for any business, and even more so for a professional practice.

If you know lots of people who can hire you, for example, it only makes sense that the odds of your getting hired are better than the lawyer who knows very few. The same is true of referral sources.

You may not (yet) be very good at inspiring them to hire you or refer, but knowing more people (and staying in touch with them) can give you a big edge.

So, how big is your list?

Now, by list, I mean any kind of list–paper, digital, or even the list in your brain (note to self: write down the list in my brain so I don’t forget it).

In years gone by, we would talk about the size of your Rolodex. (Please, no selfies of your massive Rolodex.) Quality was important, but all things being equal, the bigger your Rolodex, the better.

Today, your list is predominantly digital. Quality is still important. And size still matters.

But today, there is another factor that can make a big difference.

If you’re doing it right, you have everyone’s email address and permission to use it. Which means you can increase the speed and frequency of communication. Which means you can achieve more results (i.e., bring in more clients) faster than you could if you only had their phone number and address.

No, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t call and talk to people. Talking (and meeting in person) allows you to build deeper relationships. Email will never supplant that. But with a couple of clicks, email allows you to tell hundreds of people or thousands of people about your upcoming seminar, updated web page, or special offer.

Can’t you do that on social media? Maybe. You don’t have any control over who sees what. It’s also less personal and thus, less effective.

Okay, you have a big list. I still can’t tell you how long it will take to build a big practice. But I can tell you that it will be quicker for you than for most other lawyers.

How to build an email list, and how to use it: go here

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Filed Under: Email, List building Tagged With:

How to never run out of ideas to write about

August 18, 2016 by
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Think about your target market and answer me a few questions:

  • What is the market’s biggest problem right now? The one that keeps people up at night?
  • What’s the latest news in that market? What are people talking about?
  • Name three websites, podcasts, or newsletters that focus on this market.
  • Who is the top lawyer, CPA, insurance or real estate professional in that market?
  • Name two organizations dedicated to that market that have networking functions in your area.
  • Name three profitable keywords for blog posts, books, or ads for that market.

Okay, that’s enough to make my point, which is that if you can’t answer these questions, you probably don’t know your target market well enough.

Or you don’t have one.

Which is why, when you set out to write an email or article, you “don’t know what to write about”. Which is why you aren’t writing, or if you are, your writing is too general and doesn’t stand out.

If your last blog post or article or email is written to appeal to “anyone,” there’s a good chance it appeals to “no one”.

When you know your target market well, which you must if you want to dominate it, you won’t have that problem. You’ll have plenty of things to write about, specific to that market. In fact, you’ll have so many ideas, your biggest problem will be deciding which one to write about.

Which is a nice problem to have, don’t you think?

Need help choosing a target market? Use this

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Filed Under: Blogging, Email, Newsletters, Writing Tagged With: ,

Eh, What’s Up Doc?

August 15, 2016 by
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What’s new? Something, I hope. Because if you and your practice are exactly the same right now as you were last week and last month, I might think you’re not accomplishing anything noteworthy. If I were your client, that might make me nervous.

Your clients want their lawyer to be alive and growing and in tune with the world. They want to know what’s new.

When they come to your office, they don’t want to see an ancient IBM PC, they want to see you with the latest laptops and tablets. When you write to them, they don’t want to hear the same tired things you’ve said before, they want to hear something new.

Most law practices are staid and boring and have little news to report. Don’t be like that. Always have something new going on, and make sure your clients and prospects and business contacts know about it.

Tell them about your new services or new features or new ad campaign. Tell them about your new web page, blog post, or article. Tell them about your new client, new speaking engagement or new employee.

Let clients know that things are happening at The Law Offices of You.

Always having news to report not only shows your clients that you are growing, it gives you a great excuse to contact them. It also allows you to connect with people on an emotional level. When you have exciting news, let them know you are excited and tell them why. If your news involves a serious topic, let them know about your concerns.

But don’t get out of character. You’re still a member of an esteemed profession and you don’t want to appear to be anything but. Your clients want to know that their lawyer is stable and reliable, so avoid radical news and keep news about major changes to a minimum.

But always have news to share.

Look at your calendar and notes for the last 30 days. What did you do that might be considered news? Do the same thing for the next 30 days. What are you working on? What’s going to change?

You can almost always find news to share, but if you are finding that difficult, then, by all means, get busy and create some.

Email is the easiest way to share your news. Here’s how to do it right

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Filed Under: Email, Newsletters

How do you know your email marketing is working? 

July 14, 2016 by
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You’ve started an email list or newsletter. How do you know your email marketing is working?

Well, you’re getting more clients. Year-to-year your numbers are growing. If you pay close attention, you realize that your growth is accompanied by less effort because frankly, writing emails is about as easy as marketing gets.

If you’re doing it right, you’re also hearing from subscribers who thank you for your emails. They like your tips and have benefited from them and shared them with others. They tell you that when your email arrives they read it first thing. They look forward to your emails because they know they contain valuable information, and even more, they are fun to read.

Note to self: make emails fun to read.

If you’re really doing it right, they tell you that you are the only lawyer they read, or that they only read a few lawyers’ emails and yours is definitely one of the few.

You also get questions they’d like you to answer. It’s called engagement. It’s also called giving people what they want, not what you think they want or need.

I know these things because I hear them from you. I appreciate your feedback and kind words. I also appreciate you for buying my products and hiring my services, and for sharing with me the results you are getting because of my advice. I also appreciate your telling other lawyers about me and my site.

All of these things come from or are greatly enhanced by my email marketing.

Now, how do you accomplish these things?

Frequency. Write as often as possible. Once a month is not often enough. Once a day isn’t too often.

Consistency. Whatever schedule you choose, stick to it.

Value. Give them information they can use. Tips, links, reviews, resources, ideas, examples, explanations, how-tos.

Entertainment. Make them smile, tell them stories that make them ask, “What happened next?”

Personal. Talk about the people in your life and the things that happen to them, and to you.

Relatable. Don’t talk about your BMW if your subscribers primarily drive Toyotas.

Original. Tell them things they don’t ordinarily hear from lawyers.

Surprising. Don’t be boring or predictable.

There, that’s not so difficult, is it? (See that, I asked you a question. That’s another thing you should do).

But don’t hide your wares. Don’t be shy about telling them to hire you or take the next step. Do it often. Every email isn’t too often.

They need to hear this. They expect it. And as long as you are also delivering value, they don’t mind it.

If you believe they need what you offer and will be better off by hiring you, you owe it to them to do whatever you can to help them get it. So tell them what to do, remind them why, and remind them what might happen if they don’t.

Your clients will be grateful that you helped them finally do what they knew they needed to do but didn’t. They’ll be glad they chose you because, through your emails, they believe they know, like, and trust you. They’ll be glad to know that if they don’t need you today, you’ll be there tomorrow when they do.

And you and your bankbook will be glad that they’re glad.

Email marketing will make your phone ring. Here’s how

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Filed Under: Email, Marketing legal services Tagged With:

Out of sight, out of luck

July 12, 2016 by
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One of the main reasons people who could refer you business don’t do so is that they “don’t think about it”. They’re busy and have other things on their mind. Unless they have a legal need, they don’t think about you or your services.

Out of sight, out of luck, me bucko.

You can change that, and get more repeat business and referrals, by doing the following:

1) Stay in touch with them

The easiest way to do that is via email. One of my subscribers, an associate in a firm that severely limits his ability to do any marketing, told me that he now emails his clients and prospects and referral sources every two weeks.

He writes about legal matters, and also about what he’s doing in his practice and, I suppose, in his personal life.

He’s staying “in their minds and their mailboxes” and getting repeat business and referrals, and lots of it.

He tells me, “It has worked like a charm. When you write email blasts “right where they live” you are reaching out to them, and many think it is personal. You establish your credibility. You establish a reputation.”

2) Talk about referrals

Another reason you don’t get as many referrals as you could is that you’re not talking about referrals. There are many ways to do that, but one of the simplest is something I suggested to the lawyer mentioned above: put a blurb at the bottom of your emails asking the recipient to forward it to their friends, colleagues, etc., who might like to receive his updates. Spell out what those people should do if they want to be added to the list.

People read your wisdom, tacitly endorsed by the friend or colleague who forwared it to them. They like what they see and want to see more. They ask to be added to your list. You stay in touch with them and they hire you and send you referrals.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

You can make this work better by using an autoresponder to manage everything and offering an incentive to join your list–a report, ebook, or a collection of some your best prior articles–but you don’t have to.

3) Make it easy to refer

Many clients and contacts come close to referring but don’t do it because they don’t know what to do. Do they tell the referral about you and give them your number? Do they send the referral some information about you, and if so, what should it be? Do they tell you about the referral? If they do that, what will you do?

Of course, when it comes to making it easy, “forward this email” is about as easy as it gets. Your contacts don’t have to refer people to you, they can refer them to your content and then your content refers you.

Get this if you want to learn how to get more referrals

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Filed Under: Email, Marketing legal services, Newsletters, Referrals

Is your online presence costing you business?

July 5, 2016 by
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Our washing machine is failing so we’ve been shopping for a replacement. My wife spent lots of time reading reviews before making her selection. Unfortunately, the one she wants is slightly too big for the space occupied by the current machine. There is a cabinet overhead and the lid of the new machine wouldn’t clear it.

We went to a store to see if there was anything we could do. We talked to a friendly sales person and asked about switching the positions of the washer and dryer, which would solve the problem (our dryer is front loading), and the sales person told us that they do this all the time.

Only they don’t.

According to another sales person at that store, due to legal concerns, their installers won’t move the dryer. We would have to buy a new dryer, which we don’t need. He also pointed out some other issues with respect to the position of the existing hookups.

Was the first sales person telling us what we wanted to hear? Was the second sales person being overly cautious?

We didn’t know so went to another store and asked the same questions.

That sales person told us there should be no problem switching the machines, but he would check with their installers and let us know.

His shirt indicated that he was the head of the department and we wondered why he didn’t already know the answer to this question. In addition, he made absolutely no eye contact with us while he said “no problem.” My wife and I walked away thinking we couldn’t trust him.

Now, do you think prospective clients go through a similar process when they are shopping for a lawyer?

Yes indeed. And if they don’t trust you, they won’t hire you.

If a lawyer doesn’t have a website, many clients will pass them over, even if the lawyer was referred by a friend. In addition, according to one study, 75% of consumers say that not having a professional email address (you@yourdomain.com) is an important trust factor.

I’ve mentioned this before. If you have a generic gmail or hotmail or aol email address, you’re probably losing business.

Prospective clients don’t hire lawyers they don’t trust and if you don’t want to lose business, you need to tick as many “trust” boxes as you can. Start with your online presence, which is what they see first. Your website doesn’t need to look snazzy, but it should look professional, be easy to navigate, and have lots of good content.

And when they come to see you, make sure you make eye contact and tell them the truth, not what you think they want to hear.

The 9 elements of an effective website

 

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Filed Under: Email, Online Marketing Tagged With:

How to put (a lot of) your marketing on autopilot

June 21, 2016 by
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Writing a weekly blog post and emailing that post to your email subscribers is one of the smartest things you can do to build your practice. If you don’t have an email list and a sign-up form on your website or blog, put that at the top of your project list under the category of “incredibly effective marketing”.

Don’t argue with me, just do it. And then email something to that list at least once a week. You’ll thank me later.

See, one reason many lawyers don’t do this is because it seems like too much work, relative to what they believe will be the outcome. That’s because they don’t know how effective this can be in bringing in new clients, repeat clients, referrals, and other marketing goodness.

If you found out that doing this could double or triple your client intake this year, would it be worth it?

One way to ameliorate the “burden” of writing a weekly email is to collect some of your past emails and add them to your autoresponder sequence.

Autoresponders let you send “broadcasts,” which is what you do when you write and send fresh material, and “newsletters” when you want the software to automatically send emails you have already written on a schedule of your choosing.

Are you with me?

Go through the emails you previously sent to clients and prospects and website visitors and select the best ones that are “evergreen”. You may have some that you can edit (remove dates and time-bound offers and “current” events) and add them to your list.

Still with me?

If you have 20 evergreen emails, you can put them in your autoresponder queue and send them to new subscribers automatically. Those new subscribers won’t know (or care) that you wrote them in the past; to them, the information is new and valuable.

That’s 20 weeks of new emails you don’t have to write. You can also send these to “old” subscribers, many of whom have already received those emails. Just because you sent it to them before doesn’t mean they received them, read them, related to them, or were ready to act on them.

When you have 52 evergreen emails, you can add them to your queue and take the next year off. When the year is over, you can instruct the autoresponder to repeat the process and start sending those emails again.

You’ll want to add new emails (broadcasts) throughout the year, however. To notify your list when you have a new article or blog post on your site, invite them to your event, or make a special offer. But that’s easy to do because you won’t be writing emails every week. Unless you want to. But that’s a subject for another day.

Here’s how to do it: Marketing online for attorneys

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Filed Under: Email, Marketing legal services, Online Marketing Tagged With:

A simple way to be more productive

May 12, 2016 by
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If you ever sent me an email, whether by replying to one of my emails or by using the “contact” form on my site, there’s a very good chance that you didn’t get a reply. One of the ways I stay productive is by saying “no” to most of the things that cross my path, and that definitely includes email.

I do read my email and I encourage you to write to tell me what’s on your mind or to ask questions. I get a lot of ideas for blog posts from your questions and comments, so please don’t stop writing. But don’t be disappointed if you don’t hear back from me, or if you get a one or two-word reply.

Time is money. Tempus fugit. I love ya, but I get a lot of email and I can’t spend hours every day replying to everything.

How about you? Do you answer all of your email? Do you “say no” to most of it? Or do you do something in between those two extremes?

I’m not going to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do because everyone is different. But I encourage you to think about your situation and establish a policy that works for you.

Obviously, you shouldn’t ignore emails from clients or prospects. Nor should you discourage them from writing. In fact, you should do just the opposite–the more you communicate with them via email, the less time you’ll need to spend on the phone.

The point is that email (and regular mail) takes up a good portion of the day for most professionals and it is okay if you don’t reply to everything. If you can shave off 30 minutes a day by not doing so, doesn’t it make sense to move in that direction?

A good place to start is by deleting or archiving emails from people who want to sell you something or do business with you. It’s not rude to ignore unsolicited email, however personal and polite (or known to you) the sender might be. Your refusal to reply is, in itself a reply that says, “thanks, but no thanks”.

It’s also okay to have someone reply for you. And to use form replies that require no more than a couple of clicks.

Start by making yourself aware of how much time you spend responding to email, and to whom you are responding. You might want to keep a log for a week or two and then imagine that time being spent doing billable work.

If you want to get more done in the course of your day, you need to say no to most things that cross your path, and email is a good place to start.

How I got my email to “inbox zero”

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Filed Under: Email, Law office management, Productivity
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