The number one factor in marketing legal services

June 9, 2015 by
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When we talk about marketing legal services we say that clients hire and make referrals to lawyers they “know, like, and trust”. Of the three, “know” is the most important.

Trust is essential of course, but not that difficult to obtain. Most people give you the benefit of the doubt regarding your competency and trustworthiness, until you do something to show them why that trust is misplaced.

The biggest factor in your success is familiarity. The more people who know you, or at least recognize your name, the more fruitful will be your marketing and successful will be your career.

In fact, familiarity is what causes most people to give you the benefit of the doubt. Familiarity builds trust. That’s why incumbents are almost always re-elected.

Studies show that the number one factor in email open rates isn’t the subject; that’s number two. The number one factor is the sender’s name. Make sure your emails come from you, not your firm.

Familiarity also means keeping in touch with subscribers and followers on a frequent basis. A short email once a week is much better than a detailed white paper once a year.

Does your firm have a website? That’s fine. Make sure you also have one for yourself (and promote that one).

Your primary objective in marketing your legal services is to get as many people in your target market to know your name.

It’s not about how many people you know; it’s about how many people know you.

How to get more clients online

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Filed Under: Email, Image, Marketing legal services, Publicity

Activating your list for fun and profit

May 8, 2015 by
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You have a list of clients, prospects, and professional contacts. What are you doing to activate that list and turn it into repeat business and referrals?

How do you get that list to DO SOMETHING?

Some of the people on that list will do something merely because you stayed in touch with them. When they need something you offer, or know someone who does, they will click or call.

What about everyone else?

What about the people who need you but think the problem will go away by itself? What about the ones who don’t know how bad the problem can get if they don’t do something?

What about the people who don’t realize all of their options? What about the ones who didn’t have the money before, or didn’t want to spend it?

What about the ones who know people who need your services but didn’t think about referring them?

You need to do something to get these people to do something.

But what?

How about creating an event and inviting them to it? A webinar, teleseminar, or video hangout.

Invite your list to see some new information, or new ways of looking at the solutions. Teach them how to stop the problem from getting bigger and keep it from happening again.

You’ve got to get them thinking about the problem again. Comparing solutions. Considering the options. What better way to do that than to invite them to access this free information from the comfort of their tablet or smartphone?

During the event, make them a special offer. A free consultation, perhaps, so they can discuss the specifics of their situation with you. Or a discount, bonus, or inexpensive partial solution. Tell them you now take credit cards or offer a payment plan.

Give them an incentive to do something and tell them what to do to get it (e.g., call, fill out a form, stop by the office).

Record the event so you will have something to offer to new subscribers. Transcribe the recording and turn it into a report or ebook.

You can create an event today and announce it to your list tomorrow. By next week, you can have more people calling, subscribing, and referring.

How to set up an email list for your website or blog

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Filed Under: Email, Increase your income, Marketing legal services, Newsletters, Online Marketing, Seminars and webinars

Another way to stand out and get noticed

May 6, 2015 by
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Yesterday I talked about making your ad look like an article or feature story and thus get noticed and read.

Because people tend to ignore ads.

If your ad looks like an article, more people will read it. More readers eventually means more clients.

Are there any other ways to make your ad get noticed?

I’m glad you asked.

Another way is to get noticed is to make your ad. . . what’s the word?. . . oh yeah, UGLY.

Lost of copy, tiny print, random layout, “noisy” messages—-anything but pretty, anything but normal.

Why? Because in a sea of normality and prettiness, ugly stands out. People will notice your ad because it looks different.

When all the other ads look like they were designed by a slick graphic artist, your ugly ad gets noticed.

You still want the ad to be easy to scan and read. White space, short sentences and paragraphs, bullet points and sub-heads. But it should look different.

The same goes for your website and emails.

Show people that you’re not “advertising” you are telling them something they need to know. Put the magic into the words, not the photos and design.

When other lawyers use html emails, make yours plain text. When other lawyer’s websites use the same templates and layouts used by every other lawyer, along with stock photos of The Scales of Justice, law books, and courthouse steps, make yours look anything but the same.

Be different.

Of course you don’t want to be so different that you scare people off. Clients have definite expectations about what a lawyer does and what they look like and you need to give them what they expect.

When you use a photo of yourself you should be wearing business attire. If you use a photo of your office, it needs to look like a law office.

Be different, but not weird.

Do you know what to put on your website? Find out here

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Filed Under: Advertising, Communication, Email, Image, Online Marketing

How to write faster than you thought possible

April 14, 2015 by
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I wrote the first draft of yesterday’s blog post in 5 minutes. I also wrote the first draft of today’s post in 5 minutes.

If you want to write faster, here’s how to do it:

STEP ONE: CHOOSE YOUR TOPIC

Choose a topic you know well. If you need to research your subject, do it before you sit down to write.

What do you want to write about? What point do you want to convey? Write down your topic.

My topic yesterday was, “How to promote an event or offer”.

STEP TWO: TURN IT INTO A QUESTION

Take the topic and turn it into a question. Why? Because when it is in question form, your subconscious mind gets to work and searches for answers. The question primes your mental pump and the words start flowing.

My question was, “How can I promote an offer or event?”

STEP THREE: WRITE DOWN 3 “SEED WORDS”

Think of three words related to your topic. Whatever comes to mind. These may change as you start writing but these 3 words will help you start.

My seed words yesterday were, “Excitement,” “Urgency,” and “Repetition”. They became the three points I wrote about to answer the topic question.

STEP FOUR: WRITE NON-STOP FOR 5 MINUTES

Set a timer and write. Don’t stop to correct spelling or do any editing. Just write, as quickly as you can, until the timer goes off.

I’ve heard that most people who do this will write between 200 and 400 words in 5 minutes, and that’s what I did. When the timer sounded yesterday, I had written 269 words.

The 5 minutes flew by for me. I had more to say so I continued writing for roughly another two minutes.

STEP FIVE: EDIT

Using this method, you will probably find that your first draft is quite good and won’t require a lot of editing. I found that to be true.

I did some cutting, added a thought or two, edited, and changed the title. Total time from start to finish was around 20 minutes. That included time to make notes about what I was doing, in preparation for today’s post.

Not too shabby.

By the way, although this method is meant for writing short pieces, you could also use it to write longer pieces. Yep, in 5 minute increments.

So, how many posts, articles, and emails could you write if you use this method to write your first draft in 5 minutes?

Why not try it and find out?

Need ideas for topics? Get this 

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

The biggest mistake lawyers make with online marketing

March 10, 2015 by
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Last week I referenced an article about “lethal mistakes” lawyers make with their online marketing. I agreed with some of the mistakes, disagreed with some, and was mystified by the absence of others.

I asked what you thought was missing, and by your responses, you showed me that you are paying attention.

Your list of mistakes included things like

  • The absence of fresh content
  • Too much about “the firm” and not enough about the client/visitor and his problems
  •  No call to action (telling visitors what to do)
  • Too impersonal, formal, unapproachable

Correctamundo.

You get it.

Why weren’t these in the article?

I don’t know.

Anyway, before I reveal to you the number one lethal mistake lawyers make with their website, I want to mention another article about lawyers’ websites that provided some alarming, but not surprising, statistics:

According to this article

  • Nearly 40% of small law firms don’t have websites
  • 70% don’t have a call to action on their home page
  • 97% of law firm websites fail to deliver any kind of personalized content
  • Only 35% have been updated in the last three years
  • 68% don’t have an email address on their home page [see my comments below]
  • 27% don’t have a phone number on their home page
  • Only one-third are optimized for mobile devices

The last issue is especially noteworthy in view of Google’s recent announcement about penalizing sites that aren’t mobile friendly.

The article also said that “only 14% of law firms send a triggered email to a visitor who submits a form online”. That number is skewed, I am sure, because most law firm sites don’t even have a form that allows visitors to email them.

Your site needs a contact form, so visitors who aren’t ready to call you can communicate with you by email. Posting your email is good, but using a form is better. It makes it easier for visitors to contact you, and that means more will (and that’s a good thing, yo.). A form can also reduce spam and allow you to direct visitors to supply information you will need when you reply.

That form should send an automated reply so people will immediately know “message received” and what will happen next. Without this, visitors are likely to keep looking.

Okay, now for the biggest mistake.

Your emails to me mentioned it. So you know it’s important. I’m not sure if you realize how important, however.

The biggest mistake is not having a form for visitors to subscribe to your email list or newsletter.

You need a form and you need to tell people to subscribe. Tell them on every page. And give them reasons why they should. Tell them how they will benefit by filling out your form. What will they get, learn, or avoid?

Why is it so important to get people to subscribe? Because most people who visit your website for the first time

(a) aren’t ready to hire you,
(b) aren’t ready to contact you to ask questions or schedule an appointment, and
(c) aren’t likely to return to your website.

First time visitors are gathering information, about the law and procedure and their options, and about lawyers who can help them.

News flash: yours isn’t the only website they visit.

If you don’t capture their name and email on the first visit, and use that to stay in touch with them, the odds are you will never hear from them again.

Which means you’re losing business. A lot more than you may realize.

When visitors subscribe to your email list, you can continue to send them information, remind them about the solutions you offer, and show them why they should choose you instead of any other lawyer. You can continue to sell yourself and your services.

Six days, six weeks, or six months from now, you can continue having that conversation and convert more people into paying clients.

Even if they’re not ready to hire you, even if they never hire you, they can send you referrals and traffic and promote your events and share your content and help you build your email list further.

But none of that will occur if you don’t know who they are.

Without a list, you can’t stay in touch with visitors, earn their trust, seek their feedback, ask for their testimonials, invite them to your seminars, tell them about updates to your site, or do anything else to build a relationship with them.

And that’s why building a list is numero uno.

Your website’s content is critically important. But if that’s all you focus on, you’re asking your site to do too much.

You could take away my blog, my social media accounts, remove any mention of me from search engines, and cancel anything else I do to promote my products and services, and I would survive because I would still have my list.

Building a list is the most important thing a lawyer can do to market their practice, and most lawyers don’t do it.

Learn how to build your list and market your practice online.

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Filed Under: Email, Legal industry, List building, Marketing legal services, Online Marketing, Web traffic

Email marketing for attorneys done right

February 26, 2015 by
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I read an article for real estate agents about ten ways email marketing beats social media. It’s a good article and I agree with all of it. I was going to tell you that it makes no difference whether you’re selling legal services or houses, email reigns supreme.

I even had a favorite “reason”–number 9 on the list: “Email is more intimate”. I was going to talk about how email allows you to have a simulated conversation with people, which helps you build a relationship with them, so that, over time, they come to know, like, and trust you, even before they’ve ever spoken to you.

But I’m not going to do that. Not today, anyway.

Instead of trying to convince you to make email your number one marketing tool, instead of beating the drum about how you are losing clients and money and making your life so much more difficult by not having an email list, I’m going to assume that you’re on board and talk about the right way to use it.

I see a fair amount of lawyers’ email newsletters, mostly because many of my readers think it’s okay to add me as a subscriber to their email list (it’s not). What I see, in my humble but accurate opinion, isn’t getting the job done.

For starters, just because it’s called a newsletter doesn’t mean it should look like a newsletter. Newsletters tend to be boring and self-serving, one small step removed from advertising. They “look” commercial–with stock photos and html layouts and links that say, “click here to finish this article”.

One glance at these and the reader knows that this email is probably not very important and doesn’t have much to say that is of interest to them. They know it’s probably all about the lawyer and not about them. The lawyer’s “exciting news” about how they are expanding or how they won a big case is exciting to the lawyer, but nobody else.

Most newsletters go unread because readers have come to know there’s nothing in them that interests them. There is some value to having subscribers see your name in their mailbox, reminding them of your existence, but it is so much better if they open and read your emails, appreciate them, and look forward to them.

So, for starters, your newsletter shouldn’t look like adverting or anything commercial.

It should look like a letter.

A letter (email) with some news or helpful, relevant information. Something readers care about, something that makes their life better, something worth reading.

It should also read like a letter, from a real person. Not from a committee or “the firm”. Not “canned” articles purchased from a newsletter company.

It should be written in “me to you” format, just like you would write a real letter to a real person. It should look like you sat down and penned a personal message to an individual. Because while you may be sending this same email to hundreds or thousands of people, each person who reads it is an individual.

Write to one person, not to “everyone”. Talk to that one person, as though he or she was sitting with you in your office or talking to you over the phone.

If you do it right, when your subscriber sees your email show up in his or her email, he should get a little excited. “I wonder what [you] will share with me today?”

Kinda like what you’re reading right now.

I share information I hope you find interesting and helpful. I tell stories from my days of practicing and stories about my life today, to add color and interest to that information. Sometimes I’m serious and preachy, sometimes I’m funny, but I’m never boring or irrelevant.

Yes, most of my emails are cut and paste jobs of my blog posts, but my blog posts are usually written like emails.

Many subscribers tell me they read my emails every day and look forward to them. Some tell me they are the highlight of their day.

That’s what I’m going for. A relationship. Intimacy. Transparency.

So, if you aren’t using email to build your practice, you need to. I’ll pound on that again at another time. If you are using email, but you believe social media is more important, go read the article. And if you understand why email is supreme and you want to get better results using it, take my words to heart.

Kill the fancy newsletter, write letters to the people on your list, and tell them something they want to hear.

Learn more about email marketing for attorneys. Go here

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Filed Under: Communication, Email, Marketing legal services, Newsletters, Social media

Paying for referrals and getting away with it

February 20, 2015 by
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Okay, let me first say that you need to check with whoever regulates you and make sure that this is something you can do. I’m covering my behind by telling you this so please cover yours.

It’s a very simple idea, really. But it could bring you a lot of business in the short term, and a lot more long term.

You’ll need a website (that you control) and a way to capture email addresses. An autoresponder is your best bet. You can see what I use and recommend here.

Yes, you can also do this “old school,” i.e., manually, but you’ll get better results if you automate everything and spare yourself some calluses.

Now, you’re not really going to be paying for referrals. You’re not even going to ask for referrals. Not directly, anyway. Instead, you’re going to ask people to help you build your email newsletter list. You ask them to refer subscribers, not clients.

As people come to your website to subscribe, they see what you do. Some of them hire you, or take the next step in that direction.

After people subscribe, you stay in touch with them. You send them helpful information, and information about what do. Over time, some of them hire you. Or send you referrals. Or send you other subscribers who hire you and send referrals.

Build your subscriber list and you build your client list.

You can stop right there if you want to. Simply ask your clients, friends, readers, subscribers, social media connections and anyone else who will listen to help you build your subscriber list. They’ll help you because they like you. They also want their clients and contacts to know about you and the goodness you offer.

Ask them to Tweet, Like, post, and otherwise recommend your newsletter or download link (for a report, ebook, or other incentive) and your list will grow.

No legal or ethical issues with this, right? Where it gets iffy is when you offer to compensate them for doing so. But doing so could multiply your sign-ups manifold. If you would otherwise get 100 sign-ups, offering compensation might get you 1000.

What you do is announce a contest. Anyone who sends subscribers has their name entered in a drawing for a prize.

How do you track this? How do you know who sent subscribers?

The simplest way is to hold another drawing for all of the new subscribers, with an equally spiffy prize. When you draw their name as the winner, you email them and ask them who referred them and they both get a prize.

There are other ways to “pay” people for their help in building your list. You can sell your book, for example, and set up an affiliate program. There are many others. But if you are allowed to do so, a drawing is a simple and effective way to pay for referrals and get away with it.

For more ideas, get The 30 Day Referral Blitz.

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Filed Under: Email, List building, Newsletters, Referrals

Never check email in the morning?

February 17, 2015 by
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Everyone and his brother says we should never check email in the morning. They say that doing so allows others to dictate our morning tasks and we should instead focus on our pre-determined agenda.

But I do check email in the morning. Voice mail, too.

Checking email and voice mail lets me scope out and plan my day. Yes, my task list and calendar show me the important things I will be doing but emails and messages can be important, too.

But while I check email and messages in the morning I don’t respond to them in the morning. I do that after I get my other work done.

My morning routine includes going through my inbox, purging junk, and starring (gmail) important emails that require a response. When I’m done, I know how many emails I will need to respond to later that day. If there is work to do associated with those emails, I know that, too.

Same thing with phone messages. I write down who called and why and call them back later.

And hey, emergencies happen. While that’s rare for me today, I feel better knowing that I’ve made sure everything is okay. That’s better than ignoring the outside world for several hours and wondering if I’m missing something important.

Want to know another secret? Don’t tell anyone but I also check email throughout the day. Many times, in fact. Texts, too.

Yikes. Do I break every rule in the friggin book?

Guess so.

Anyway, that’s what works for me. Your mileage may vary.

I use Evernote to organize all of my tasks and projects. Go look

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Filed Under: Email, Productivity, Time Management

If my dentist managed your law practice

January 23, 2015 by
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My dentist send me an email that said:

NORDSTROM GIFTCARD GIVEAWAY

INVITE A FRIEND AND WIN A NORDSTROM GIFTCARD!

Introduce friends, family and co-workers to our office, and when they come in for their appointment between now and February 19th, you will be entered into a drawing to win a 0 NORDSTROM Giftcard!

The rest of the message said when the drawing would take place and that the “New patient must complete routine exam, cleaning and x-rays to qualify for drawing entry. One entry per person seen in the office.”

Not bad. Get more referrals, total cost: $100.

Two things come to mind:

(1) You could use something like this in your law practice, and

(2) If you do, you can get more bang for your buck than my dentist

First, let’s put aside the notion that you can’t do something like this in a litigation practice. You can. Not necessarily to get clients immediately, although you might, but to build your email list, which will eventually lead to new clients.

Now, how could you get bigger results than my dentist?

For starters, how about something obvious like having the drawing for the referring parties instead of (or in addition to) the new clients?

Hello. . . ?

Yes, it’s nice that you’re going to enter my friend in a drawing if I refer him, but how about something for me? Give me a reason to think about this for more than the three seconds it takes me to delete your email. . . let me imagine that I might win this thing. . . let me get excited and start thinking about who I could refer. . .

Okay, what else?

How about not requiring the referral to actually hire you?

It should be enough if they only have a free consultation, or even if they just schedule one. Or only opt into your list.

The name of the game is getting people to know about you and how you can help them. It’s about building your list.

Get more people on your list and you’ll get more clients.

The prize doesn’t need to be won by someone who referred a client (or became a client). So what if the “winner” is someone who refers ten people, none of whom become an immediate client? As long as your list is growing, your practice will be growing.

What else?

Well, you might offer a bigger prize.

Assuming your margins are higher than a dentists (arguable, I know), you can afford to offer the winner more than $100. You may not have to, it’s true, because winning anything is exciting. But a $250 prize sounds much more exciting, especially at Nordstrom where $100 would only buy you one shoe. For another $150, you might get a lot more participation.

You could also offer more prizes, e.g., three or five winners. Or you could offer a big first prize and lesser value second, third, and fourth place prizes.

NB: if you’re thinking of awarding prizes based on the number of referrals, i.e., the winner being the one who refers the most clients, do your homework re possible legal and ethical issues.

One more thing.

How about promoting your drawing to people who aren’t your clients? Contact other professionals you know (and ones you don’t know) and offer the same deal. Why not offer this to anyone in town (through your blog, social media, ads or mailings, or word of mouth)?

Would it be okay if you got referrals from strangers, people who have themselves never hired you, people who only send referrals so they can get a shot at winning a prize?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

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Filed Under: Advertising, Email, Leverage, List building, Marketing legal services, Referrals

You get a lot done by consistently doing a little

January 15, 2015 by
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I just passed the 1000 blog post milestone. 1009 to be exact. That’s 1009 ways someone could find my blog through search engines. 1009 snippets of my wisdom that could convince a visitor to follow me. 1009 pages someone might share with their connections or link to from their blog.

It’s a body of work that brings prospective clients to my virtual door and convinces them to do business with me.

Sound good? Sure. And daunting. If you had told me a few years ago that I would write 1009 posts, I would have thought you were crazy. And yet here I am.

How do you write 1009 posts? You don’t. You write one post, and then you write another.

You get a lot done by consistently doing a little.

That’s why I say you can successfully market your practice in as little as 15 minutes a day. It’s not how much you do today necessarily, it’s what you do in the aggregate over time.

If you have some big projects you’re thinking about tackling, don’t let their immensity put you off. Any project, no matter how big, can be broken down into bite size pieces. Isn’t that how we eat an elephant?

Also, the more you do something, the better you get at it. I’d like to think I write better today than I did a few years ago. I’m also faster. I can knock out a blog post or email in just a few minutes.

What do you want to accomplish this year? Okay, hit the deck and give me 15 (minutes).

Do you know the formula for marketing your law practice? Here it is

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Filed Under: Blogging, Email, Marketing legal services, Newsletters, Personal development, Productivity, Writing Tagged With:
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