The Alternative to the Internet
Just about every day someone calls me with a question about Internet advertising.
Lawyers looking for a marketing panacea are flocking to Search Engine Optimization and Social Media. They chase good money with bad, trying to find one way to attract one hundred new clients. This leaves them disappointed and a little lighter in the wallet.
My role in the complex world of law firm marketing is to help you sift through all the hype and develop a cost effective strategy for attracting new clients. This strategy is based upon the belief that finding one way to attract one hundred clients is risky, expensive and unrealistic. Instead, we focus on developing a client acquisition strategy that is based in reality. Our goal: Find many ways to develop one deep client relationship instead of one way to attract several clients.
Remaining true to that mission, today I offer you a viable alternative to the Internet. It is education-based marketing and it will definitely help you attract more clients – if you have the guts to give it a try.
Here is an example of an effective education-based marketing strategy:
Step one: Prepare a seminar on a topic of interest to your target audience. Example:
- Personal Injury Attorneys – Topic: Insurance Coverage
- Criminal Attorneys – Topic: Keeping kids out of trouble in the age of the bully
- Trust and Estate Attorneys – Topic: Asset protection for doctors and entrepreneurs
Step two: Invite everyone you know to attend this seminar. This means you should invite all of your friends and have them invite all of their friends. The idea is to get as many people in the room as possible.
Step three: Deliver great content at the seminar.
Step four: Capture the attendee’s contact information.
Step five: Follow-up like crazy.
If you have 50 people in the audience at each seminar, and you follow the steps listed above, you can expect to acquire 5-10 new clients per year from this strategy (provided you host 4-6 of these seminars each year).
When I work with my private clients, this is one of the first strategies I recommend they implement. It is a low cost way to begin developing relationships with people who can refer you business, engage you, or both. This strategy works.
Yet most lawyers will never attempt it.
Why?
You tell me.
I just gave you a gift. A way to attract a few new clients each year. Will you follow these simple steps?
Is this strategy as sexy as the internet? No.
Is this strategy as easy as paying someone to get you on the first page of Google? No.
Does this strategy get as much publicity as Social Media? No.
But it works consistently. It just requires some thought and some effort from you.
I don’t know what your plans are for your law firm. I’m not certain what your income goals are. But I know what I hear from lawyers all over the world. They all want cost effective ways to attract new clients.
Here’s one.
How fast can you integrate this into your marketing activity?
Print
EmailProductive Attorney Advertising vs. Expensive Attorney Advertising
There are a couple of myths that are particularly damaging to an attorney’s ability to attract clients.
The first myth is the idea that marketing and advertising are the same thing. They are not. Marketing is a series of systems and processes designed to develop business for your law firm. Advertising is the representation of your firm in print, electronic or display media. Advertising is a type of marketing Just like broccoli is a type of vegetable.
The second myth in law firm marketing is the idea that advertising is all about billboards, television commercials and announcements in trade journals.
There are two different forms of advertising. The most common type of advertising is called “image advertising” or “institutional advertising”. These ads make up most of what you see on television or hear on radio or see in the newspaper of magazine. The ads display a message and promote a brand.
The second type of advertising is called “direct response advertising”. This form of advertising carries a specific message aimed at a target market and it includes a “call to action”. A call to action is a means of responding specifically to that advertisement.
Image advertising is difficult to measure. If you advocate using this form of advertising you will need to run your ads over and over again to make certain your message is seen by as many people as possible as many times as possible. Image advertising is very expensive.
With direct response advertising, you can measure the success of every single advertisement. Each advertisement is required to produce a return on investment or it is not run again.
In working on law firm marketing projects, we almost always advocate using direct response advertising. We focus on this form of advertising because law firm marketing budgets are usually tight and they need to generate a substantial return on investment from each advertisement.
If you are approached by someone selling advertising you should ask two questions:
1). How will we measure the return on my investment in this ad?
2). Can you show me other ads like the one you are trying to sell me and let me talk to the firm that ran it to discuss their success?
The answers to these questions will help you understand what type of advertising you are being sold and how effective it will be for your law firm.
Attorney Marketing: Avoid the three “B’S”
Whenever an attorney comes to me with a question about where to spend his marketing dollars somehow three forms of media that I absolutely despise almost always enter into the discussion. These three forms of media are: Billboards, Buses and Benches.
Why do I hate these forms of media so much?
Three reasons:
Reason one: Their effectiveness is questionable. Let’s say you are a criminal lawyer and you plaster your face on the side of a bus. What are the odds someone who is charged with a crime or is the subject of an investigation will have a pen and paper in his hand right at the time the bus with your face passes by? How about the odds of this person picking up his cell phone and calling you, from the street, to discuss his robbery charge?
This is true for all three of these forms of media. They are expensive and their effectiveness is questionable.
Reason two: You cannot track the results. With all three of these forms of media you could use a special phone number dedicated just for that advertisement. This would allow you to track how much business was coming from each bench, billboard or bus. The problem is that just the tracking alone is expensive. Forget about the fact that there is no way to measure how many people will actually look at, and read your ads.
Reason three: The ads make you look desperate. I do not care how you try to spin it. Plastering your face on the side of a bus or on a billboard looks desperate. It degrades the legal profession and it degrades you. There are plenty of alternatives to these three forms of media. I highly recommend you look into them.
Advertising on buses, benches and billboards is the worst of the worst when it comes to attorney marketing. Don’t do it.
Lindsay Lohan and Bad Law Firm Marketing
Everyone’s favorite spoiled brat Lindsay Lohan has been in the news for violating her parole and going back to jail. While her behavior is unacceptable and I certainly do not condone it, we can take it as instructive to some lawyers.
And no, I am not talking about lawyers who are addicted to drugs.
I am talking to lawyers who keep making the same mistakes over and over again with their law firm marketing. These lawyers use bad law firm marketing. By bad law firm marketing I mean placing ads on public benches, using huge billboards, running cheesy television commercials, plastering their face on the side of a bus and spending a fortune on double size Yellow Page ads.
These lawyers are addicted to bad law firm marketing.
Here are three things lawyers who are addicted to bad law firm marketing (and Lindsay Lohan) can learn from the events of the past few weeks:
Address the Problems Deep Down Inside
Lindsay Lohan uses drugs because of an issue deep within her. She needs to first admit she has a problem before she can get help.
There is a reason lawyers keep throwing good money after bad at horrible advertising. It is because they do not know any better. And that is because they have never asked for help. The first step is to admit they have a problem.
Trust me; if you have your face plastered on the side of a bus, you have a problem. Take the first step: Admit you have a problem and get some help. Bad advertising does not have to happen to good lawyers.
Take Your Lumps and Move On
Lindsay Lohan cries and whines and tries to worm her way out of the consequences of her actions. She should just accept the fact that bad behavior has consequences and move on. Help is available and she needs to avail herself of the best resources money can buy.
If you’ve got some bad advertising out there, you need to get it taken down and move on with more ethical and effective marketing methods. If you do not know how, or if you cannot do it alone, there are options available to you.
Once You are Rehabilitated, Stay Rehabilitated
Lindsay Lohan can still have a great career. She needs to manage her life carefully and maintain her support system so that her addiction does not get the best of her.
You can follow the same course with your law firm marketing. If you want to attract clients ethically and effectively you can follow a law firm marketing system and rely on the people around you to keep you on track. This is much easier to do than you think.
There is no reason to use unethical or ineffective marketing methods to attract clients. Help is available but you have to be ready to accept it. Make the call today. We can help you. 888.692.5531
Lawyers Marketing Can Be Professional
There are many lawyers who struggle with the balance between the law being a business and a profession. I am not quite sure why this issue is even up for debate. A business has a responsibility to its owners to deliver a profit. A professional must live up to the standards he has sworn to uphold. These two things are not mutually exclusive.
Strategy and marketing are business disciplines that many lawyers use effectively to attract and engage high quality clients. Marketing is a broad term that encompasses developing a message (highly strategic when done correctly) selecting a target market to receive the message (also a strategic endeavor) and selecting a form of media and executing message delivery (this is tactical).
Ethical decisions must be made in each marketing discipline. In helping lawyers with the strategic marketing decisions I focus my clients on educational marketing. We want the lawyers to help their clients make good decisions when selecting a lawyer. We want them to help their clients understand the issues they are facing or may face. We want our clients (the attorneys) to be truthful and transparent when they provide information to their prospective clients. This is not just ethical; it is a good business practice.
If you have good information to share you should use every possible vehicle you can afford to get that information to the public. Some forms of media are better for educational marketing than others. Selecting the message, the market and the media are business decisions. They are also ethical decisions.
The mission of the lawyer should be to improve the client’s condition. Lawyers marketing should keep in mind that any decision that is made in their marketing will also determine the quality of the client they attract. In other words, bad marketing (unethical marketing) usually attracts bad clients.
How to Create a Killer Law Firm Ad
Long ago there was much debate about whether or not lawyers should advertise at all.
It’s clear today, however, that legal advertisements are becoming part of the norm. Even the most respected and largest international law firms place advertisements in well known national publications.
The good thing is that a quality print advertisement does not have to push the limits of the legal ethics envelope. The goal is not to convince potential clients that your law firm will win their case no matter what. If you simply want to let potential clients know that you’re out there and that your law firm provides quality legal services, then this article is for you.
With that said, in today’s competitive market, advertising really is a necessary part of building a successful legal practice. There are a variety of ways to get your name out there and to let potential clients know about your law firm. One of the most common is the printed advertisement. In an ideal world, you would simply hire someone to design an advertisement for your small law firm or solo practice. In the real world, your law firm may not have the extra cash to do this.
If this is your firm’s situation, then you’ll need to design your own advertisements from scratch. The good news is that you don’t need a degree from design school to come up with a killer advertisement for your law firm. With Photoshop and even some of the more advanced features in Word, you can often create the general look of the ad yourself and then work with a freelance designer to get the layout in the formats required by the publishers you’re working with.
Even if your firm can afford to hire someone else to create your ad, you should still know what makes the perfect advertisement.
What Is the Goal?
Before you do anything, you must know what you want. If you want your law firm’s advertisement to simply get people in the door, that’s fine. However, spend some time to see if you can get a little more creative and specific with this goal. If there is stiff competition in your area, then you may want to highlight something your law firm offers that you know other firms don’t.
Use the print advertisement to drive traffic to your website. The space in a print ad is often very limited. If you have more to say than the print space allows, then try to find a way to get readers to come to your website. There, you can go into more detail about your firm, its attorneys and their achievement.
Think about your target demographic. What types of messages will be the most effective at getting through to them. Consider their average education level. Think about what is important to your potential clients. Are you advertising to people who may be in legal trouble or to people who need an attorney to handle estate related documents for them? Write as if you’re talking to potential clients one on one.
Where to Advertise
One of the most important decisions you’ll make is where to place your law firm’s advertisement. This decision will be based on a variety of factors like cost and the demographics of your target audience. If you decide to advertise in the newspaper, here is what you’ll need to consider. If you live in a large city, there are probably several newspapers for you to choose from. There may be a large paper that covers the entire metropolitan area, and regional papers that cover the smaller cities, and then even newspapers that cover certain neighborhoods. Consider each paper individually. Look at cost, the demographics of their readership, and more.
If you advertise in your metropolitan area’s large Sunday paper, your ad could get lost in all the coupon clutter. However, more people read their Sunday paper than the ones they receive during the week. You’ll also have to decide if you want a large ad that you can only afford to run a few times, or do you want a small ad that you can run for several weeks. Keep in mind that you may want to make changes to the ad based on the responses you get.
Advertising in magazines is another excellent opportunity for law firms to gain exposure. Your firm may not be able to place an expensive ad in one of the large, national magazines, but there are countless local and trade magazines that may be just the fit for your firm. Look online to see what magazines and newspapers publish in your area and contact them for their rates. Not only will they be able to tell you about the demographics of their readership, but they will also be able to advise you on when and where to advertise within their publication.
Cohesion
One of the most important things to keep in mind whenever you set out to create anything for your firm, whether it’s a print ad, a website, firm letterhead, or business cards is that the look needs to be cohesive. You shouldn’t have professional, serious letterhead, and then have a lighthearted, goofy print advertisement. Inconsistency sends two messages. First, that you don’t know who you are and second, that you’re so desperate for business that you’ll compromise your own brand. As a law firm, you need to know who you are and then you have to stick with it.
Advertising in print publications is not out of reach for your law firm.
Don’t Interrupt: Ask Before You Advertise
Law firm marketing as we know it has changed radically. While the landscape may look the same, certain forms of advertising and marketing your firm are simply no longer as cost effective as they used to be.
Traditional law firm marketing relied on interruption based marketing models to get the word out. Times have changed. Permission based marketing is now one of the most effective ways to market a small law firm or a solo practice. Understanding these two marketing models can truly make all the difference in how successful you are at marketing your law firm and its attorneys.
There was a time, long ago, when potential clients had no choice but to listen to a law firm’s advertisement. However, with massive technological advances, the world of law firm marketing has changed and it has changed dramatically. It used to be that a powerful, far reaching ad campaign had to include television, radio, and print. Today, however, the Internet has provided law firms with a myriad of marketing options that include ways to speak to potential clients without annoying them. This is good news for solo practice law firms and small firms, because many of the new marketing models can be fairly inexpensive to utilize.
All forms of marketing, including law firm marketing, used to rely heavily on interrupting the consumer. To really understand the value of permission based marketing it’s important to understand how traditional marketing models worked and why.
As the name implies, interruption based marketing is a way of communicating with customers at times when they may or may not want to hear from you. For example, television ads are interruption based marketing because most people watch television for the shows not the ads. Commercials interrupt what the potential client is trying to do. When television advertising first became popular, people were more likely to watch a commercial in its entirety. This was due in part to the fact that there were so few channels to choose from, and also because people were not bombarded all day with advertisements.
Today, most people have several hundred channels to choose from. DVR’s like TIVO have also made it tough for television advertisers to get their commercials seen. Most people zip right past the commercials, only stopping if they recognize the face of a favorite actor or see a product that they want additional information about. With television ads getting more and more expensive every day, you may not get the most bang for your law firm’s buck in today’s market because people are less likely to let your ad play through to the end.
Radio is another form of interruption based marketing that is starting to lose its value. If someone is listening to a radio station, they usually don’t want to have their programming interrupted by advertisements. That is one of the main reasons why more and more people are deciding to spend a few extra dollars for satellite radio. With well over 100 channels to choose from, more and more consumers are making the switch to satellite, which happens to be commercial free.
Even print ads are interruption based. When you turn the page of your magazine or newspaper, you are looking for a story, not an advertisement. Online articles are also interrupted by advertisements that cut into the text to get their message across.
The more that companies and law firms relied on interruption based marketing, the more that consumers and potential clients found ways to avoid the noise of too many commercials and advertisements. One of the main problems with interruption marketing is that it’s everywhere. If you drive in your car you see advertisements on billboards, benches, and buses. If you’re on the Internet there are pop up ads banner ads, and more. People have learned to simply tune them out.
What is the solution?
Law firms have many more marketing options today than they did even just 10 years ago. Traditional law firm marketing relied on interrupting potential clients in order to get their attention. The new trend in law firm marketing is permission based marketing. The basic idea behind permission based marketing is that potential clients make the choice to hear from you and your law firm. Building a strong permission based law firm marketing campaign is not difficult.
When you use permission based marketing to grow your law firm you will still need to rely on some traditional forms of marketing to get consumers to know that your law firm and its website even exist.
For example, banner ads on the Internet are a form of interruption based marketing that can be effective when done well. If you include a giveaway or a contest of some sort, potential clients are more likely to click the ad and supply you with their email address.
Law firms can give away anything from a free hour of legal consultation to a $100 shopping spree at the local grocery store. It can be anything at all. Your goal is to give potential clients a reason to give your firm their contact information. Potential clients will only give you permission to contact them if there is something in it for them. They give you their attention, if you give them the chance to get something for free. Once you have their contact information, you can maintain contact and build an online relationship with prospects and potential referral sources by providing valuable web content.
Once you have someone’s information, use it to get them to your website. Every time anyone visits your website, whether it is a client, a referral source, a potential client, or a journalist, they are having a marketing experience. Permission based marketing for lawyers has everything to do with developing a strong, user friendly, interactive website.
Time spent building a strong website is time spent building your practice.
You can spend an hour and a half reaching out to a referral source over lunch, or you can spend that hour and a half crafting web content that will be accessed by hundreds or even thousands of people. You do the math.
When people visit your website to get information, they’re giving you the opportunity to market yourself to them. Not to market someone else by having ads all over your site, but to market your law firm. Take them up on it by giving them quality content and proving that you are a step above the competition.
When you build a website that seeks to utilize permission based marketing, it is important to remember that people want to be educated. As an attorney, you are in a unique position to offer people information that is not so easy to find on the web. Your firm’s website should be a great place to get information related to your legal specialty. It should include a database of cases in your field of law that interested readers can access. These can be your cases or those that are considered to be benchmarks in your niche. People facing legal battles often want to read up on other cases that may be similar to theirs. Make your website the place to go for information on cases in your field of law.
Use your website to keep people informed. Changes in the economy, political representatives, and more can often make people wonder how those changes will affect your area of law. Your firm’s website can be the place where people go to get the answers. A great way to use permission based marketing is to have a blog that is useful and interesting. Ask other lawyers to write guest posts on your blog. Use your blog to inform potential clients and current clients about what you’re doing, what you value and why you chose to go into this field of law.
Clients love to feel that their attorney has been bitten by the public service bug. Let clients know what drives you and what your passions are. If you’re involved in any charities, talk about it. Include photos and video on your website of events you have attended or sponsored. These types of things will make people want to do business with your firm.
Another great way to provide value on your website is to have a discussion board. Allow anyone from past clients to prospects to friends and family the chance to log in and discuss or debate anything related to your field of law. If there has been a controversial legal decision, write a short introduction about it and invite people to discuss it. You can send out a weekly email with that week’s discussion topic to encourage people to post. After a few months, you can stop sending the emails because people will be coming to your site on their own to get into interesting legal discussions.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, a website is no longer an option, it is a must. In today’s fast paced, over stimulating environment, a strong website, coupled with an interesting permission based marketing campaign, can be the difference between having potential clients pass over your ads and having them go to your website on a weekly basis to check your blog, get tips, and more.
An Attorney Makes An Offer in Her Advertising and Secures More Clients
Marcy is one of the most successful attorneys in the state but it hasn’t always been that way. For almost 10 years she held down a mid-level position in an established law practice in town.
I remember many conversations with Marcy during those days and I can attest to the fact that she wasn’t very happy with her job. Then something interesting happened. Her neighbor Ed, who happened to be the publisher and editor for our local newspaper, became involved in a real estate dispute.
The dispute was an issue of adverse possession. For years, the publisher of the paper had allowed one of his neighbors to use part of a driveway that sat on the border of their property. Without getting too technical, the neighbor felt he had a legal right to continue to use the publisher’s driveway because he’d never been challenged on the matter. Since he wanted to sell his house, he was positioning himself to file for an easement on the property that would ultimately weaken the title held by the publisher.
Ed came to Marcy for help. At first she told him he’d need to take the matter up with one of the senior partners in her law firm. Ed didn’t want to go that route because he felt it would create too much attention in town. He appealed to her for another option.
The option that Marcy proposed lead not only to her becoming a rainmaker at her firm – it lead to her starting her own law practice and becoming a very successful solo practitioner.
Here’s how:
After doing some checking at the courthouse Marcy had a tentative solution. She proposed writing a strongly worded letter to the trespasser along with filing a cease and desist order. Ed agreed and Marcy had the filing and letter done inside of a day. And without another word on the matter the challenging neighbor backed off. Her publisher friend was delighted.
In exchange for her services the publisher offered Marcy unlimited free advertising in his newspaper. He promised that she’d be welcomed to take out a 10-inch, two column ad once a week.
At first she declined. She was worried that she would look a little silly running an ad as an individual attorney in a big firm.
But within a short time she placed a small ad offering legal services - document review in particular. And she got a few takers. This was nice as it added a little more income to her law firm and gave her some visibility among her partners.
One of Marcy’s duties at her firm was drawing up living trust documents. So she placed another free ad in the newspaper and found herself quite busy with estate planning work. Marcy loves estate planning.
For several months Marcy continued to run the ad. And the response was such that she needed to farm some of the work out to other attorneys. Within a year she was seriously considering opening her own office. The work in her area of expertise was steadily coming in and Marcy was referring cases to other attorneys. This lead to a good deal of additional work as the lawyers she referred to were happily reciprocating.
Eighteen months after placing the first ad, Marcy was ready to make her big move. She resigned from her position with her old firm and went into business for herself. Doing so seemed to give Marcy a new lease on life.
As business continued to grow Marcy plowed much of her income into advertising. She started by enlarging her newspaper ad. But that didn’t seem to be enough. Before long she had ads on the radio, on TV and in print. Marcy learned that successful advertising most often came with a hook, something that identifies links the advertiser with her client base. So she decided to literally brand her practice by becoming known as the two-for-one special attorney. This was a gimmick where she would offer to review two documents for the price of one. It seemed like every month she offered a special on legal services of one kind or another. Here are a few of the crazy offers she’d put out there.
• A one-hour on site free consultation with every one-hour paid consultation. This basically doubled the amount of value her clients received.
• A free living trust with every two paid living trusts. This was a terrific offer to get clients to bring in other family members.
• A free 30 minute phone consultation (this was a standing offer). This helped people get acquainted with Marcy and it also helped her qualify them.
• A free will review. Again, this served as a way to qualify prospective clients.
• Two for the price of one document review. This was a high value offer for small business clients.
Of course, none of these offers were really crazy or all that unusual. But it was the relentless advertising that made them seem larger than life – and Marcy would heavily play on the great deal people were getting with the two-for-one specials. And as an additional way of being remembered, many of Marcy’s radio and TV spots were just peculiar enough to be memorable. She was definitely building a presence. And when someone without their own attorney needed legal services it was almost a given they’d be calling Marcy.
I know that when she started to pick up momentum with her advertising I thought to myself that she must be spending a fortune. I had the chance to talk to her in the early going and she assured me that every ad had been bought and paid for with profits generated by her new firm. In other words the ads were more than paying for themselves.
And the cool thing about all of this is that Marcy created nearly all of the commercials and ads herself. Some were silly, quirky, irreverent, unusual, zany and some were actually pretty mainstream. But one thing is for certain, all of Marcy’s ads were memorable, they all offered a great ‘perceived-value’ deal on service, and they all drove in the clients.
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