Three Tools That Lead to Lawyer Marketing Success
Lawyer marketing doesn’t have to be complicated. Attorneys often tell me they only have time to do a few things related to marketing each week. That’s fine. You don’t have to implement 100 different marketing initiatives in order to increase the number of clients that find your law firm.
Here are the three lawyer marketing initiatives I recommend you implement if you have limited time to focus on business development:
A Blog
Lawyer marketing is about communication, education, differentiation and motivation. You must help your clients choose you. This starts with communication. A good blog is like a conversation. The more you speak with someone the more they will begin to know you, like you, and trust you.
If you can post a short article (between 250 and 500 words) to your blog a few times each week, you will dramatically increase the visibility of your website on the Internet. An increased frequency of posting will also improve your relationship with your readers (many of whom are potential clients).
Email Newsletter
A weekly update via email is one of the most effective lawyer marketing tactics ever invented. That is not an exaggeration. If you email your clients once a week and you provide them with a pithy anecdote (about life, about business, about sports, essentially about something you would discuss with your colleagues around the water cooler) you will grow your business dramatically.
Many attorneys believe this type of communication is too frequent. They believe they will be annoying their clients and prospective clients. They are wrong. As long as the information is interesting, weekly communication is an effective lawyer marketing tool.
Monthly Printed Newsletter
A printed newsletter mailed monthly is another highly effective tool for lawyer marketing. Once again, the information must be interesting. If it’s not, the newsletter will be thrown in the garbage. But if you engage your reader, he will welcome your monthly newsletter.
There are a number of reasons why you will not implement these three lawyer marketing tools into your law practice. Ultimately, they will provide you with a huge return on investment if you do. It’s up to you. Do you want to give in to excuses or do you want to be highly effective at lawyer marketing?
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EmailWhy Blogging is Great for Law Firm Marketing
Sitting with a client yesterday I found myself falling into a familiar conversation. The client is a busy attorney with an intellectual property practice. Most of his work comes from local companies. His law firm marketing plan involves speaking at industry trade events, sending a weekly educational email to his clients, publishing a monthly newsletter and membership in several networking and trade organizations.
This lawyer’s practice does a fair amount of business. He is well known within the local community as a good intellectual property attorney. There are three main reasons he (and you) should add a blog to your law firm marketing plan. They are:
Deepen the Relationship with Clients and Prospective Clients
A blog is like a daily conversation. Readers feel like they sit down with you on a regular basis and share ideas. It is similar to the feeling you have when you read a good book that you can’t put down. Clients are engaged. They feel as though they are part of the story.
Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader
Everyone can benefit from greater visibility. This is even true for attorneys who have a thriving local law firm. Blogging provides you with additional credibility. You are viewed as an authority on your subject matter. Since the Internet has no boundaries, people from all over the world will be able to read your writing.
Clients doing research on a legal issue within your area of expertise will read your blog articles. They will consume the information. More importantly, they will begin to trust you.
Leverage Your Knowledge as a Competitive Advantage
Most attorneys (over 90%) do not provide educational information on their website. Your blog can be a significant competitive advantage for your law firm. As one of the few people providing educational information, you will be different from and better than your competition. This is one of the primary objectives of law firm marketing.
Adding a blog to your law firm marketing plan involves additional work on your part but the return on investment of your time will be substantial.
Law Firm Marketing Required Reading Part 1
Many people have asked me what blogs I read regularly or what websites I visit to keep up with the ever-changing world of law firm marketing. Since there are dozens of blogs that are great resources for lawyers interested in finding clients, I decided to highlight a few each week and bring them to your attention.
Tom Kane’s Legal Marketing Blog is a terrific resource for law firm marketing information. Tom has been blogging for over 6 years and the information he provides is timely and accurate.
Amy Campbell has been blogging since 2003 and her blog is a must read. Start with her article on the benefits of blogging.
Larry Bodine’s blog is a great place to get the latest information on law firm marketing. He is not only on top of the trends but his commentary is spot on.
Kevin O’Keefe offers the best insight into the world on on-line marketing for lawyers. He is a pioneer in blogging for attorneys and you would be smart to read everything he writes about law firm marketing and blogging.
Carolyn Elefant is The Dean of Solo and Small Law Firm Management. You’re crazy if you don’t read her blog each week. Start with this article titled “When You’re the Boss, You Don’t Beg For Work Life Balance. You Make It So.”
I’ll point you to more blogs I love to read in the days and weeks to come. Rest assured there are dozens of them out there that focus on law firm marketing. The majority of them have something of value to offer.
Marketing for Attorneys and The Magic Beans
Marketing for attorneys is just like Jack and the Beanstalk. Every attorney I meet wants to plant the magic beans, go to sleep and wake up with a beanstalk that will lead him to a beautiful place in the sky that contains untold riches. Of course there is a giant who guards this place and he enjoys eating attorneys who climb the beanstalk. Occasionally, one or two attorneys will make it down from the beanstalk with the hen that lays the golden eggs. But most of them spend a lot of time and money and in the end; they get devoured by the giant.
In marketing for attorneys, the magic beans are their website. The attorneys believe you plant the seeds, go to sleep and wake up with a vehicle that will lead the clients to your doorstep. In a few cases, this actually happens. But in most cases, fees, costs, and unforeseen expenses (the giant) beat you up pretty well before you even sniff any gold.
Don’t get me wrong, a website is a critically important tool in marketing for attorneys. You must include it in your arsenal but success doesn’t happen overnight. Here are four things you must do if you want your website to deliver qualified clients to your doorstep:
Post New Articles at Least Three Times per Week
Static web pages are as useless as brochures. (In case you didn’t know, I hate brochures. They provide no value and they only enrich the printers who sell them to you.) You must have dynamic content on your website and it must be updated a few times each week to drive your webpage to the top of search engine rankings. The articles you post do not need to be long but fresh content is critical.
Focus the Content on the Client
Don’t write about you and your firm. Someone who just arrived at your website is searching for help in solving a problem. Write about solutions to problems. You must enter the conversation that is going on in your client’s mind. Provide the information the client needs and he will check out your background once he sees what you can do for him. This doesn’t just apply to the Internet; it is a fundamental principle of marketing for attorneys.
Offer Information for Free in Return for Contact Info
The thing that separates your website from a brochure is the response device. This is a little section on the website where you offer information in return for the client’s contact information. It can be in the form of a little box at the top of the page that says: “Enter your first name and email address for my free report titled: ‘Five Things You Need to Know About Hiring a Personal Injury Lawyer’” or whatever your practice area may be.
Follow-up, Follow-up, Follow-up
Marketing for attorneys is all about follow-up. The web is no different than any other media. Once you get a lead you need to call and email that person within 24 hours. After your initial contact, if they don’t ask to come into your office for a consultation, you should keep them on your mailing list forever. That’s right. I said forever. Your goal is to be the FIRST and ONLY attorney they think of when they have an issue in your area of expertise.
In marketing for attorneys there are no magic beans but your website can eventually help you live happily ever after.
Five Reasons Why Nobody Visits Your Law Firm Blog
Many of the calls that come in to my office are about Law Firm Blogs and attracting visitors to attorney websites.
Blogs or blawgs as some have taken to call blogs written by attorneys are terrific resources for clients and prospective clients. They also serve a valuable marketing purpose for your law firm but they are much like a tree falling in the woods—if nobody is there do they matter. And this is why I get the phone calls.
Attorneys complain that they have poured their heart and soul into their blog and nobody has visited.
They want to know where all the prospective clients are.
They want to know why people aren’t reading their information.
They want to know what is wrong with a world that cannot recognize their Pulitzer Prize-worthy ability and intellect.
The problem is not with the clients. The problem is with the attorney and how they are managing or NOT managing their blog.
If any of this sounds familiar to you, here are five reasons why nobody is visiting your blog:
Reason 1: You don’t add new content to your law firm blog frequently enough
A blog is a conversation you have with your readers.
Even if your blog is primarily educational and you are the person doing most of the “talking”, frequency of interaction is important.
If you want to develop a relationship with your reader you must add new content to your law firm blog a few times each week.
How much is enough?
That’s up to you. In most cases, three new articles per week will keep your readers interested.
Once a month is too infrequent.
Please click on continue reading for the remaining four reasons why nobody is visiting your law firm blog.
Attorneys: Claim your Blog on Technorati
If you are new to blogging you need to do two things immediately. The first thing you should do is read through all the articles that we have on RainmakerLawyer on blogging. This will help you get up to speed on what to write, how often to write and how to maximize the exposure of your blog.
The next thing you should do is set up your Technorati Profile. Technorati is the ultimate search engine for blogs. Creating a profile on Technorati will help your search engine rankings and allow your content and you website to be found easily.
If you are serious about using blogging to attract clients, you need to invest the time to set up your Technorati Profile correctly.
Only Blog if You Can Handle More Clients
One of the questions I am asked most often by attorneys is: “Should I have a Blog?”
The answer is a resounding and emphatic “YES”.
This is true even though many attorneys complain that their blog has not helped them develop new business. They go on and on about how they post new content and they don’t see any improvement in their website traffic. And they talk about how much time it takes to blog.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard:
- “There is no payoff from blogging. It is too time-consuming. I have to think of something to write, actually write the content and then look it over and post it to the website. It sometimes takes me over an hour just to write one article. At my billing rate it is actually COSTING me money to blog!”
Sound familiar?
These folks also complain that the blogging software is challenging and they have trouble formatting the content and making it “look right”.
These complaints are absolutely true.
Unfortunately, the blog, the Internet or even the software are not to blame.
These issues – including the new business lead-generation issue- are cause by user error. Blogging has proven to be a high-payoff activity for many attorneys.
If it isn’t working for you, you may want to examine your approach. There are ten keys to building a successful blog – a blog that attracts qualified traffic and helps convert that traffic into paying clients.
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