Marketing for Lawyers: Time, Money, and Effort
The challenge of resource allocation and marketing for lawyers is something that surfaces regularity among my clients. It is more relevant when we talk about how much time should be spent with each form of media and specifically with each marketing vehicle.
These days lots of people are pouring resources into the Internet. They’re spending their time and money on search engine optimization, social media and pay per click advertising. All of these things are excellent vehicles in marketing for lawyers. The trouble comes when this is the only form of media the lawyer is using for marketing. (Remember the Internet is still a form of media, just like speaking or magazine advertising, writing articles or a billboard.)
Diversity of media is not only important, it is critical to the success of any law firm marketing plan. Here is a formula I share with my clients for marketing diversity:
Ideally, no marketing vehicle would be responsible for more than 10% of your lead generation and no media would receive more than 10% of your time, money and effort. This forces you to have at least 10 different ways to attract clients and spread your effort and your dollars across all ten of them.
How does this work?
Let’s say you have 10 hours each month to spend on marketing. This simply means you spend one hour on each of the tactics in your marketing plan. If you have $1,000 to spend on marketing, then you spend no more than $100 on each tactic.
When it comes to marketing, if you diversify your time, money and effort, you will source your clients effectively and keep the pipeline flowing.
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EmailNobody Respects a Cheap Lawyer
I bet you are a good lawyer. You might even be one of the best in town. Yet at the end of the day you have a conversation with your partner or spouse and it goes something like this:
“I do not understand why I keep getting these crappy clients. They demand EVERYTHING and they want it YESTERDAY. They call my cell phone at all hours of the day (and night). They have unreasonable, no not unreasonable; they have CRAZY expectations for their case. And then, when I deliver the best result possible…a true miracle…when I pull a real rabbit out of my hat…they complain about my fee.”
This conversation plays itself out over and over again in one form or another. It seems like a good portion of the clients who come to you have Champaign expectations on a Schlitz budget. No matter how hard you try you cannot seem to shake this syndrome.
So you wake up in the morning, you get out of bed and splash some cold water on your face. You brush your teeth, comb your hair and head off to the office. You do this with the hope that today will be different. You do this with the hope that the Good Client Fairy will sprinkle some pixy dust on your desk chair and a rational client with a reasonable budget will walk through that door and beg you to work with him.
Unfortunately, hope is not a strategy. Hope makes you feel good but it does not change anything. Hope will not feed your kids and it sure as hell will not pay your mortgage.
What is the answer? How can you solve this problem?
The answer starts with the value you place on your services. Most attorneys set their fees based upon the rates they think will attract clients. They view their fee as bait they put into the water to attract fish. The problem is that the smelliest fish go for the smelliest bait. Bad clients are attracted by low fees.
There is a three step process I take my clients through when we first begin working together. This process is designed to help them reposition themselves in the market. It is designed to help them attract better clients who pay higher fees. Once my clients accept the fact that they deserve more money; once they accept the fact that they can charge WHATEVER THEY WANT; once they realize that people pay a premium for things they find valuable; their entire client base changes.
It is transformed from a parade of lunatics making outrageous demands, to an environment where the client views his lawyer as a trusted advisor.
But you have to take the first step.
You have to want to change this endless cycle of torture.
You can do it but you have to make a decision to take action.
Will you?
Marketing for Lawyers: Three Ways to Get More Referrals
When it comes to marketing for lawyers it is not as sexy or as sophisticated as sourcing clients via the Internet, but a good old fashioned referral strategy is one of the best ways to attract new clients. Here are three ways to remain relevant to your colleagues, clients and friends.
Introduce Him to Someone. If you introduce a colleague, friend or client to someone who is good for their business, they will be more likely to return the favor. By making the introduction you are doing two specific (and valuable) things: First, you are giving them something. That creates a psychological bond between you. It makes it more likely that they will want to return the favor. Second you are demonstrating the behavior you want them to exhibit. This is called behavioral modeling and it is highly effective.
Keep in Touch: I talk about this constantly. Follow-up is one of the key components to success in life and success in marketing for lawyers. If you send your potential referral source something every month (a newsletter, a card, a note, an email) he will be more likely to refer business to you because you will stay top of mind.
Send Him a Client: Although this seems simplistic it is the truth. If you send someone a client they are far more likely to refer business to you then if you don’t. May lawyers who pay referral fees think that just because they pay a referral fee they never have to reciprocate with a referral. That’s just not true. Sending a referral is about more than money. It is also about trust. If you send someone a referral you are saying you trust that person. That is important in any relationship.
Although these three referral building tips may seem like basic marketing for lawyers, you would probably be amazed at how many people do not practice them regularly.
If you want more referrals, look for a way to incorporate one of these three tips into your daily marketing routine.
Quality Law Firm Marketing Means Quality of Life
Law firm marketing is usually not something that is given priority. This is precisely the reason lawyers fail at marketing. If you want to be certain that your time is well spent on any activity, you should always give your best effort. Marketing is no different.
How many times have you attended a networking even only to briefly shake the hands of people you know, have a drink and leave early?
How many times have you thought about posting something to your blog only to put it off because you were too tired and though you could get to it tomorrow?
When seeing something another lawyer implemented, have you ever thought to yourself: “That’s a great way to attract clients, I could do that.” Yet you failed to give it another thought…
All of these responses are perfectly normal. But that is the problem. Normal actions get normal results. And normal means average. And the average attorney is terrible at law firm marketing.
If you want to take control of your destiny you must become adept at attracting the right kind of client. This means you must become adept a law firm marketing.
When I say “adept” I mean you must approach it with urgency and purpose. In other words, you must have marketing intensity. Even if you only have twenty minutes per day to work on marketing, those must be twenty focused, powerful minutes.
Here are three examples of marketing intensity in action:
Blog Articles: Each blog article should be meaningful to the reader. Do not post an article just to say that you posted an article. Do not write something just to add more keywords to your website. You should provide so much valuable content in your blog articles that readers will be impressed with your depth of knowledge and advice.
Speaking Engagements: You should speak on topics that the audience will find interesting and informative. You should offer follow-up information to the audience. You should include a call to action to allow the audience to become a part of your email and newsletter lists.
Direct Mail: Do not just mail one letter, one time. All mailing should be conducted in three letter sequences (at minimum). Most people need to hear a message at least seven times before they are receptive to it. If you want to get through to your target audience, repetition is key.
This article should serve as motivation. If you are going to do some law firm marketing, you owe it to yourself to do it correctly. Put together an action plan that includes law firm marketing and then TAKE ACTION. Give it 100% and you will be surprised and amazed by the results.
Attorney Marketing Takes Away the Sting of Losing
The sting of losing a client never goes away completely. But attorney marketing does help keep the pipeline full of good qualified prospective clients.
This means that if one client leaves (or a prospective client elects not to work with you) you have an opening for another qualified client to step into.
If you are anything like me and you hate losing, then having many new clients waiting to come to work with you is helpful at getting you past the disappointment of not closing the last deal that walked through the door.
Attorney marketing also makes you less needy. This is always a good thing.
You never want to sign up a client because you NEED them to work with you. You should only sign up a client because they are the right client for the way you practice law.
Attorney marketing helps you get to that point. But it requires time, energy and focus.
When They Show Up, Bill ‘Em
Do you feel like you need to offer a free consultation?
Isn’t that part of law firm marketing 101?
No it is not. In fact, it is terrible law firm marketing.
Free advice is worth what you pay for it.
If you want to do anything for free, have an administrative assistant or an associate interview the prospective client to see if they qualify to work with you.
Yes. I know. Your competitors all offer free consultations. They all sit with clients for an hour at a time and listen to their tale of woe. They empathize and then, if they are lucky, the client signs up with them.
Did they teach that in law school? Was the class called; “How to be a doormat?”
The lawyers I work with do not give free consultations. They realize the value of their time and they demand clients respect it.
This is one of the easiest changes to make in your law firm yet it gives so many attorneys anguish. I am not sure why. Maybe it is insecurity or maybe it is fear of the competition.
If you do none of the other things I recommend on this website, at least start charging for consultations.
And so that you know that I remain congruent with my own advice: I charge $1,500 for a consultation. But that payment can be applied to any subsequent work we do together.
Few people waste my time. But you don’t have to be a law firm marketing expert to have people respect your time.
If you want people to respect you, you must respect yourself. That starts with respecting your most valuable resource, your time.
Law Firm Marketing Plan Starts With Client Selection
Most attorneys do not link their law firm to their lifestyle so linking their law firm marketing to their overall life design is not even in the realm of possibility.
Before I start sounding like someone you would see on Oprah, let me explain what I am getting at:
Your work should enable you to live the kind of life you want. For example: If you want to spend every Friday with your kids, then you should come up with a plan to be able to take Friday’s off. If you only want to work on certain types of matters you should come up with a plan to source only the kinds of clients who have the type of work you are seeking.
If this sounds a bit far-fetched to you, you are too close to the situation to be objective.
Take a deep breath and think about why you started your own practice (or why you assumed your current role) in the first place.
You work to live you do not live to work.
Here is how law firm marketing can help you achieve your goal of developing a practice that will fulfill your lifestyle needs:
Law firm marketing is a broad term for the systems you put in place to attract and retain clients. As with any system, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. If you put nothing in, you get nothing out.
The first step in developing a law firm marketing system that will help enable you to build a fulfilling law practice is to decide who your ideal client is.
Once you have targeted the ideal client, you can then lay out the necessary steps to attract and retain the ideal client.
And herein lies the problem.
Most attorneys never get beyond this step. Most lawyers cannot decide who their ideal client is, or should be.
Take a few minutes right now and think about the clients you have worked with over the last few years. Who were ideal? What qualities did they possess? What type of matters did they bring you? What made those matters better than others you have worked on?
Answering these questions is step one in reshaping your law firm. You need to know who to target before you develop a law firm marketing plan to attract them.
Attorney Marketing So Good The Competitors Can’t Keep Up
The title says everything you need to know.
If you truly want to dominate attorney marketing you must be a master at executing on a plan. I am talking about simultaneous execution not just doing one thing at a time.
Your marketing has two different goals.
First: You want to do everything possible to attract and retain clients. You should master the basics and then move on to the more advanced techniques. Executing these with precision is key.
Next: You should intimidate your competitors. You want them to think that it is impossible for them to keep up with you. You want them to think it is impossible to even try.
It is the second component that I am focusing on today. As an example, I will give you some of the marketing initiatives I execute on a monthly basis:
I write a daily blog post here on the Rainmaker Lawyer Blog. My first blog post was written over two years ago. I have taken a couple of days off, here and there, but overall I have been pounding the keyboard a few days each week for two years. That gives me a huge presence on the Internet.
I also write a blog post on a different topic each and every day over at Legal Marketing For Lawyers. This content is supplemented with video but there is still a good deal of content up there.
We record a video every weekday and post it on The Rainmaker Lawyer YouTube Page. Over 1 million people have viewed my videos.
I update my Facebook page at least once each day and I include on of my videos up there.
On a weekly basis, I attend a local networking group meeting in Miami. This happens to be one of the top groups of its kind in the world (as measured by dollars of business developed). I have a leadership role in that group.
I also write and distribute a weekly newsletter via email each week. This is called the Rainmaker Minute and it is sent each week on Wednesday precisely at 12PM.
On a monthly basis I write and distribute a printed newsletter to clients and VIPs. This newsletter is my way of keeping people updated even if they do not have on line access to the things I publish.
Keep in mind that this is just a portion of my marketing activity. It does not include some of the secret stuff that I don’t want my competitors finding out about. It also doesn’t include some of the experimental stuff I have not perfected yet.
What does this mean for you, an attorney marketing his services to the world?
It is illustrative of the amount of marketing that a sole practitioner (I have one employee, an assistant) can accomplish while still running a functioning practice (I have a marketing firm with more than 100 active client engagements).
The bottom line on all of this is that attorney marketing can be a competitive advantage on many levels. If you were doing all of this, or even half of it, how many more clients would you have right now?
Law Firm Marketing is Your First Step Toward Freedom
Sometimes success can be overwhelming.
Many of the lawyers who implement my recommendations find themselves inundated with new clients inside of a year. This success leads to additional recommendations that are much harder to follow.
Meaning: I instruct busy attorneys to hire associates to take care of most of their clients (do the legal work) and simultaneously to increase the fees they charge clients who work directly with them. The associates should bill at a lower rate than the partner - who presumably has significantly greater experience, skills, knowledge and some kind of unique ability.
A good portion of my clients resist acting on this advice. This resistance stems from two specific fears:
1). Attorneys fear they will lose the clients they currently have and
2). They fear appearing different when compared to everyone else who does what they do.
Both of these fears inhibit the growth of the law firm. Both are as deadly as a bullet fired from a gun.
Here’s why:
Raising fees for new clients may result in a decrease in volume. The clients who choose not to pay your fee do not appreciate the value of working with you. They do not want the guidance and support of a true expert. Rest assured new and better clients will fill the vacuum created by the absence of these shortsighted individuals.
Appearing different is what marketing is all about. Your difference is a competitive advantage.
Most attorneys are sheep marching silently and compliantly into the slaughterhouse of the fee-cutting-client. If you provide more value, and you present that value in a unique way, you stand out from the flock. Not only do you avoid slaughter, but you establish ownership of your own flock. And if you are smart, you harvest wool from your sheep multiple times instead of slaughtering them once.
But this is old news. You have heard this from me before.
Yet you did not take action.
I realized something important a couple of years ago. I was speaking at an event and I was passionately advocating that attorneys raise their fees and fire problem clients. After I was finished with my speech, an attorney came up to me and informed me that she wanted to do everything I described. She wanted to attract valuable clients for life and she wanted to charge premium fees and she wanted to have an exclusive practice with fewer, more valuable clients.
But she didn’t know where to start.
She did not know what the first steps were or how to take them.
That was my fault. I had not been clear about specifically how to make this change in your law firm and develop the practice you deserve.
So I made a change. I did something I had never done before.
I took the information I use to help my clients get started and I packaged it into a system that not only shows you what to do but how to do it. I felt like this was my responsibility. I wanted to give you a cost effective way to get off to a fast start in building the law firm you truly deserve.
This is the exact system, with the exact recommendations that I follow. It works. In fact, I guarantee that it will work for you.
If you want to take a look at it, you can find it by clicking on this Legal Marketing Fast Start link.
Why does this fast start system work?
Because it allows you to make small, incremental changes to your law firm marketing each day. You move at your own pace.
Of course the faster you act, the more clients you attract.
If you seriously want to improve the quality of the clients you attract and you want to grow your law practice and you want to develop the kind of law firm you deserve, you need to take action.
What are you going to do today to take your practice to the next level?
Take that first step now. I want to help, but it really is up to you.
Please note that the reason I want you to visit http://LegalMarketingFastStart.com now is because the investment in this system will increase dramatically in a couple of weeks. If you have ever thought about making a quantum leap in your law practice, now is the time.
Law Firm Marketing Increases the Value of Your Practice
How Does This End For You?
Have you given any thought to what will happen when you decide to retire?
Even if you have a couple of decades before this becomes a reality, now is the time to think about THE END.
Why?
Because everything you do influences the value of your law firm. This is especially true of your law firm marketing.
Over time, you may accumulate some assets that your law firm will own. Some of these will appreciate and some will depreciate. But the most valuable assets you have are your client database and your business systems. Let’s take a brief look at each of those to see the value they provide.
Business Systems
Ideally, your law firm can (and does) run efficiently whether you are there or not. Everything from client intake to some of the basic services you provide should be automated and scripted so that they can be handled effectively and efficiently without you. On most cases, the input you provide should be limited to development of case strategy and marketing strategy. The execution of the day-to-day tactics (both operational and marketing) should be left to your team. (On cases where clients have specifically asked for you, a premium fee should be charged and you should work the case personally).
These systems not only make the office run smoothly, they also provide you with better quality of life. That is what the attorney who eventually purchases your law firm will pay for. This is a tremendous advantage.
Client Database
Included in your database of past and current clients is your database of referral sources. All of the people in this database are folks who know you, like you and trust you. And they are not shy about sharing your information with people who ask for it.
This is valuable because it provides an ongoing revenue stream for the future owner. In most cases, when an attorney starts a new law practice, they have to start from scratch. In the case of your law firm, someone taking over can simply continue to communicate with the client and referral database and they will enjoy the same stream of referrals you have, for years to come.
Realizing that these two areas provide the most value for your law firm is one thing. Doing something to create and increase value from these areas is something completely different. This involves work. That means:
1). Creating systems that make the day-to-day operation of your law firm foolproof and
2). Developing and nurturing your client/referral source database.
Law firm marketing does not just make things easy for you now; it helps you prepare for the future. You should be building equity so that your life’s work can provide you with a significant return when you are ready to sell.
