Success in legal marketing is yours for the asking

April 23, 2012 by
Share

Marketing your services is so much easier when other people help you. And help you they will. All you have to do is ask.

So ask.

Ask for referrals. Ask for introductions. Ask for advice from other attorneys. Ask your clients for information about your target market. Ask people to Like your Facebook page. Ask people to forward your newsletters and recommend your seminars. Ask clients what you can do to better to serve them and ask prospects how you can win their business.

Ask and ye shall receive. Seek and ye shall find.

Often, attorneys have trouble asking for help for themselves. They have no problem asking a judge or jury for relief for their client but when it comes to asking people to help them, they get uncomfortable. Their ego gets in the way. They think it makes them look weak. But the opposite is true. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of confidence and strength.

And people want to help you. It makes them feel good to do it. It makes them feel appreciated and important. You flatter them when you ask.

Don’t you feel good doing favors for others? You know you do. You like being asked and you like being able to help. It feels good when someone says, “thank you”. So look at asking for help as an opportunity to make others feel good.

Now, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to ask someone for help today and let me know what happens. It will make me feel good to know that my advice worked for you. So will you do me that favor? Thank you, I appreciate your help.

Share
Filed Under: Client loyalty, Client relations, Communication, Marketing legal services, Personal development, Relationship marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Marketing legal services like Starbucks or Amazon

April 18, 2012 by
Share

Whether expressly forbidden by ethical rules or just inappropriate for a professional practice, attorneys can’t do many of the things a retailer can do to bring in business.

Like have a sale or special promotion. Or an army of affiliates.

But don’t you sometimes wish you could?

Actually, there is a way. All you need to do is create a product you can sell to the people in your target market.

A book or audio course. A set of forms or checklists. A do-it-yourself kit.

Take your expertise and turn it into a product. Not only can it bring you more clients, it can become an additional source of income.

You have a body of knowledge that people are willing to pay for, don’t you? Your expertise is valuable. Take a portion of that knowledge and “product-ize” it.

It could be a $5 ebook or a $5,000 8-week seminar. It doesn’t matter. Anything you can offer to the market place will do. Promote that, not your services, and watch your traffic and leads grow.

Now before you say, “it won’t work for my practice,” (you were going to say that, weren’t you?) go to your closet, get out your thinking cap, and put it on your head.

What’s that? You don’t have a thinking cap? No problem. I can get you one wholesale. Just need to find my affiliate link. . .

If you have trouble creating something your prospective clients would buy, find something that’s already available and sell that. Someone else’s book perhaps (e.g., an expert in a related field, a consumer advocate), or even a product.

You could even sell t-shirts if you wanted to. The trick is to tie it to a cause. Find something you’re passionate about (literacy, rain forests, cure for cancer) and donate the proceeds to an appropriate charity. They get the money, you get the customer list.

Anyway, don’t be so quick to dismiss the idea. If you can make it work, it would open up all kinds of marketing possibilities.

Yes, check with your bar association to make sure. We know how fussy they can be. They may claim that because the purpose of selling your book or widget is to bring in clients, the same ethical restrictions apply. Argue it, if you can. Find a way around it.

And stay tuned. Next week, I’m having a sale on thinking caps. You’ll want to stock up.

Share
Filed Under: Increase your income, List building, Marketing legal services, Web traffic Tagged With: , , , ,

Are you a lawyer or an attorney? Actually, it DOES make a difference.

April 12, 2012 by
Share

I always thought that lay people use the word “lawyer” more than “attorney” and that attorneys do the opposite. “Attorney” has a slightly more professional ring to it, doesn’t it? After all, it’s “District Attorney,” “Attorney General,” and, “Attorney at Law”.

It turns out that our clients also prefer “attorney.” At least that’s what the search statistics tell us.

Search engine expert Mark Sprague found that attorney has nearly twice the search engine traffic as lawyer. “Consumers favor the term attorney over lawyer. You should use both, but attorney should be the dominant term in your web page copy,” he says.

This applies, of course, to articles, blog posts, tweets, social media profiles, and other online content.

You can read the results of search study here. Hat tip to Larry Bodine who brought this to my attention.

The data also show how people with a legal issue go about their searches. They don’t start by looking for a lawyer, they start by seeking information. This confirms the need to focus your online marketing efforts on creating content that speaks to those issues. You can do this with articles, blog posts, case studies, FAQ’s, and success stories.

Help prospective clients find you by providing information about the law and procedure as they relate to their legal issues. Describe their rights and their duties. Tell them their options, the possible penalties and available remedies.

What do prospective clients and new clients always ask you? Put the answers to those questions online.

You can spend a lot of time and money tweaking your web site to maximize search engine traffic. A much simpler approach is to provide the information people search for before they search for an attorney. When they go to your web site first, there’s a good chance they will see you as the solution to their problem and never look anywhere else.

Share
Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing legal services, Online Marketing, Technology, Web traffic Tagged With: , , ,

The future of legal services: demographic trends you need to know about

April 11, 2012 by
Share

Most lawyers have it backwards. They say, “Here’s what I do, world–call me if you need my services.”

Instead, they should look for a market that has a problem or a desire and present their services as the solution. Yes, they should “find a need and fill it.”

One of the ways to identify future needs is to look at demographic trends. In this article, the author identifies three “hot” demographics for businesses. Guess what, lawyers? That includes you.

The three groups are “Children,” “Twenty Somethings,” and “Seniors.” As I read the article, I couldn’t help thinking about how attorneys could simply re-focus their marketing messages to target these groups. You don’t have to offer new services, or change anything about what you do. Re-focusing means

  • Positioning what you do in a way that is attractive to the people who occupy these demographic slots, and
  • Identifying and networking with professionals and businesses who target these demographics.

For example, in the category of Seniors, the author notes that, “in-home medical or nonmedical care to assist with activities of daily living,” will be a growing market for the next 20 years. Where could your practice fit in? If you handle estate planning or elder law, the connection is obvious. But with a little bit of effort, you could find a connection for just about any law practice, business or consumer.

I suggest you read this short article with pen in hand or your note capture tool launched, and brainstorm ideas.

Also, do some additional reading. You may not know a thing about “in-home care” but a few hours online could not only educate you about the trends in the industry but also identify key people you could contact: start-up companies, mature businesses in the chain of distribution, bloggers, consultants, and professionals who already have a presence in the market.

A simple way to grow your practice is to align yourself with growing markets. But don’t just offer them your services. Find out what they need and then show them how your services will help them get it.

Share
Filed Under: Legal industry, Marketing legal services Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Great advice on starting a new law practice (or growing your old one)

April 10, 2012 by
Share

Marketing legal services is simple. A lot of common sense, really. You don’t need a bunch of high tech solutions or a complicated process. What you need are people.

An article in today’s Forbes Magazine tells the story of a Los Angeles lawyer who started her own practice in the summer of 2010 and in less than two years built a successful estate planning practice.

In, How I Got My First Client and You Can Too, attorney Sonia Tatiyants outlines what she did to get her first client and beyond.

She didn’t advertise or build a powerful web site. She didn’t have the money to do that, even if she wanted to. What she did is decidedly low cost and low tech. She began by contacting everyone she knew to announce the opening of her new practice.

It doesn’t get simpler than that.

By the way, if you’re not new, find a reason to contact everyone in your database and remind them that you are still here. Someone on your list needs your services, or they know someone who does.

Tatiyants followed that up by starting a lunch group where she could network with other estate planning attorneys. She also networked with “like minded, driven, entrepreneurial individuals. . .,” who collaborated with her and became a source of referrals.

Taking things a step further, Tatiyants also realizes that her clients can not only send her referrals, they can become a source of business for the professionals in her network. In positioning herself as a “trusted advisor,” her clients and contacts look to her for referrals when they have a problem or need. She refers them to the other lawyers, CPAs, financial planners, and insurance agents in her network.

She also understands the importance of keeping her clients happy. One way she does that by making sure they know what to expect with their case. By managing their expectations, her clients don’t get frustrated with delays or when they get something in the mail.

Finally, she understands that for her practice to continue to grow she needs to put systems in place that will allow others to do administrative tasks so she can focus on the lawyering (and marketing).

Great marketing advice for new lawyers and old. Even lawyers who are very old.

But there’s something she left out of the article that I know every lawyer would like to know. How did she get featured in Forbes magazine?!

Share
Filed Under: Law office management, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Can lawyers establish a brand?

April 9, 2012 by
Share

Investor, entrepreneur, and best-selling author Robert Kiyosaki said, “If you are not a brand, you are a commodity.” But can a lawyer be a brand?

Probably not in the sense that “Clorox” or “McDonalds” are brands. Most lawyer’s names will never be household words. But within our various market niches, and certainly among our colleagues, we can indeed establish a successful brand.

You are an estate planning attorney who targets physicians in your local market. If a survey is done of those physicians and a preponderance of them mention you when asked if they could name an estate planning attorney, I think we can agree that you qualify as a brand.

And that’s a good thing.

Being a brand gives you pre-eminence. You get more clients, more easily. You can charge premium fees. Clients tend to be more loyal. You’ll be thinner, better looking, and have whiter teeth.

Okay, but what about the opposite end of the spectrum: being a commodity. If we define that as being “average” is that necessarily a bad thing? No. Earning what the average attorney earns is nothing to be ashamed of. But why settle for less than you can achieve?

Developing a brand is not easy to do on a national scale. It’s much easier for a lawyer targeting a niche market.

How do you do it? By crafting the right marketing message for your target market and focusing all of your time and creative energy delivering that message, and no other. No mixed messages. No ambiguity.

But you don’t sell a product, you sell yourself. And so more than merely delivering a marketing message, you must “become” that message.

Your identity must be fully aligned with your message and market. You can’t merely be a lawyer who happens to handle a certain type of client or case. You must be perceived as the top expert in your market, completely dedicated to that market and the people in it.

Donald Trump is a brand because everything he does, and everything he is, is consistent and aligned with the image he has crafted. When you think of real estate and business, you think of The Donald. And when you think about The Donald, you think about real estate and business.

Donald Trump is the brand. You must become your own brand.

Fortunately, you don’t have to spend as much money as Trump, or engage in the pompous rhetoric that has become his trademark. And yes, you can have normal hair.

Share
Filed Under: Image, Marketing legal services Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Are you paid enough for the risks you take in your law practice?

April 6, 2012 by
Share

“The choice isn’t between success and failure; its between choosing risk and striving for greatness, or risking nothing and being certain of mediocrity.” — Keith Ferrazzi

Every day you make decisions in your law practice. You’re usually right but sometimes you make a mistake. It’s okay because when you make a mistake, you can usually fix it. If you can’t fix it and your client suffers a detriment, you have insurance.

Your clients pay you to make decisions. It’s what you do. It’s what you get paid for. Every time you make a decision, however, you take a risk. But are you being compensated for those risks?

In business, the bigger the risk, the bigger the potential reward. When you are the principal, your fortunes rise or fall on the outcome. As advisors, however, we are paid by the hour or the case or the work product. Other than contingency fees, our compensation is almost never commensurate with the risks.

You prepare a “simple” will. You get paid a few hundred dollars. But what if the client needed something different? What if you leave something out? Hundreds of thousands of dollars could be are at stake, but you are paid a few hundred dollars.

It seems to me we should be paid according to the risks we take in our work. Our insurance carriers are. Our business clients are. But we are not and we probably never will be. We can’t charge thousands of dollars for a simple will.

But while we probably won’t get paid more for taking risks in our legal work, we can get paid more for taking risks in our marketing. Ironically, these are risks most attorneys avoid.

If you want to reap bigger rewards in marketing your services, you need to take bigger risks.

Time, money, ego–invest more, risk more. Yes, you might waste that time or money, or take a big hit to your ego. But you might also get rich.

Share
Filed Under: Attorneys fees, Fees and Billing, Law office management, Legal industry, Marketing legal services Tagged With: , , , ,

How to find the time for marketing your legal services

April 5, 2012 by
Share

You’ll often hear me say that you can get appreciable results in marketing in just 15 minutes a day. Why is this so? Because marketing is doing a lot of little things, like taking a few extra minutes to make a new client feel welcome, writing the first draft of an article or blog post, or calling a fellow professional to invite him for coffee.

You can do a lot in 15 minutes. The key is to do something every day. An apple a day keeps the doctor away; seven apples on Sunday will give you a stomach ache.

But marketing is also doing bigger things, like joining a new networking group. You’ll spend a couple of hours a week at the meeting, plus additional time on committees, special events, and meeting with new contacts. This is a commitment of several hours a week. Where do you find the time?

The key to bigger marketing activities is being selective. You don’t join four networking groups, you join one. If it’s the right group for you, the extra time you spend will be well worth it.

When it comes to marketing, attorneys are often “a mile wide and an inch deep”. They try to do too many things and get poor results at most of them. Choose one or two marketing techniques or platforms and get good at them. Learn everything you can about LinkedIn, for example, and master it. Put your time and energy into it and don’t worry about Facebook or Twitter or anything else you could be doing.

When you approach the big things in marketing this way, you’ll find that not only do you have the time to do it, you get much better results.

Share
Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: ,

How to find out what your clients want (so you can give it to them)

April 4, 2012 by
Share

Attorneys ask a lot of questions. We ask to find out what our clients want and need so we can prepare the right documents. We ask questions through discovery, to avoid surprises, develop a strategy, and gain an advantage. Questions are how we tell a story in the courtroom or negotiate a settlement in the hallway. Questions are even how attorneys answer questions they don’t want to answer.

We’re good at asking questions.

We know when to ask open-ended questions and when to ask leading questions. We know how to question a hostile witness, an expert witness, and our own client. We know when a question is proper and when it is objectionable.

All day, every day, we ask questions in our work. Why don’t we do the same thing in our marketing?

Your clients and prospective clients can tell you what you need to do to grow your practice. They can tell you what you need to say to get them to say yes. They can tell you what you need to do (or not do) to make them happy. They can give you information you can use to improve every aspect of your practice.

All you have to do is ask.

You can ask about the specific handling of their case, what they liked best in your latest newsletter, or how they were treated when they called to make an appointment.

You can ask what topics they would like you to write about in your newsletter, whether they are interested in other services you’re thinking about offering, and whether they think your fees are too high, too low, or just right.

You can ask them what you did well for them, and where they felt you could have done better. You can ask which headline they like best, which blogs or magazines they regularly read, or whether they want paper copies mailed to them or if email is just fine.

You can ask in person or over the phone, through email or online surveys and polls. You can ask directly or, for more honest feedback, let them answer anonymously.

You can ask anything, and they will tell you, and what they tell you could be worth a fortune to you.

What if you have always assumed your clients wanted updates only when there is something important to report but in reality, most of them want to hear from you every month? What if you’ve been writing about how to avoid infringing on others’ patents but they want to know is how to minimize employee lawsuits? What if you have always assumed your receptionist is doing a good job but half of your clients think he is rude?

And guess what? People like being asked. They like giving their opinions and they will appreciate you for asking. It tells them that you care about what they think, and that you want to make them happy.

Make a list of questions to ask your clients and prospects and business contacts. Get in the habit of regularly asking people what they want, what they like, and what you can do to improve. And then do something even more important: listen.

Share
Filed Under: Client relations, Communication, Law office management, Marketing legal services, Salesmanship Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »