The Truth About Self Promotion and Lawyer Marketing
Are you a good lawyer?
You can be the best lawyer since Clarence Darrow but if nobody knows who you are and if nobody knows what you know, you will starve.
The only way to be certain that people will know who you are and what you know is to tell them.
Yeah, sure, you can take some pro bono work; do a good job, and hope that somebody notices. You can also go to work in a big firm and slave away for a decade or so and hope to have the freedom to select your clients one day.
Or you can be smart.
You can work on stuff other people are afraid of, do a good job, and tell everyone about it.
Here are some simple truths about working as a lawyer today:
Truth 1: Working in a big firm is the equivalent of slave labor. If you take a job in a big firm you will go unrecognized and under rewarded.
Truth 2: Working for someone else is ok as long as you get the full breadth of experience you need to be successful. This means you have to be free to make decisions on cases. You have to be free to select the cases you will work on. You have to learn by getting bloodied in the real world.
Truth 3: Marketing is essential to building relationships and relationships are essential to long term success. You must promote yourself. You must put your talent on display every chance you get. Sometimes you will look like a jackass. But more often than not, you will get noticed.
Truth 4: If you do not define yourself and your law practice, somebody else will. People will occasionally talk about you. If you do not dictate the terms of the conversation, you will not be happy with the reputation you develop.
Why have I chosen this day and this time to put these seemingly unrelated thoughts together? This is exactly the conversation I had with a highly successful lawyer this morning. They were thoughts formulated over a 30 year career.
I asked one question:
Given your success and experience, what would you tell a lawyer graduating from a top law school today?
I find it interesting that Lawyer Marketing and self promotion were top of mind when a successful lawyer provides career advice. There are a lot of soggy old lawyers who will not like that. After all, if you just be a good lawyer business will come…right?
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EmailThe Easy Way to Select a Niche Market For Your Law Firm
Much of my work focuses on helping lawyers position themselves. Our goal is to make them stand out from the crowd. This is no easy task as lawyers do everything possible to look, sound and act just like other lawyers.
I want lawyers to be perceived by their clients as experts in a specific, focused area of law. This is a powerful and highly effective strategy for those who choose to employ it.
Why is this so effective?
Well, for too many reasons to enumerate here but it starts with the fact that an expert can always command a fee premium and an expert is always in demand. Think about the Heart Surgeon at The Cleveland Clinic and your Family Doctor. Who makes more money? Who is in such demand that people from all over the world fly in to see him for his opinion?
Quite frankly, I do not want to sell you too hard on this strategy because it is a huge competitive advantage for the lawyers I work with. But I am willing to give you a step-by-step process you can use to develop your own specialized, niche market focused, law firm marketing plan.
These six factors are the keys to developing a law firm that will allow you to call the shots. If you get these things correct, you can effectively set your fees at will and select your clients as you see fit.
Factor 1: Who You Work With
Marketing to everyone is the kiss of death for a lawyer. Marketing to everyone in a specific, focused area of practice is slow but still certain death. Marketing to everyone in very specific, focused aspect of the law in a specific focused practice area is the key to success.
Example:
Criminal Defense Attorney – Not specific enough
Criminal Defense Attorney with Expertise in Handling DUI Cases – Better
Criminal Defense Attorney with Expertise in Handling DUI Cases and a History of Getting Great Results for Repeat Offenders – Best
Second Example:
Intellectual Property Attorney – Not specific enough
Intellectual Property Attorney Focused on Licensing of Business Methods – Better
Intellectual Property Attorney Focused on Licensing of Business Methods for Service Businesses – Best
Factor 2: What You Do
You must have an approach the client perceives as unique. The experience of working with you must be different than the experience of working with every other lawyer who does what you do. There is something that makes your law firm different and special. You need to highlight that in your marketing.
Factor 3: When Your Clients Need Help
Timing is a critical component of establishing a niche marketing plan for your law firm. You must be present in the mind of the prospective client when he needs help. If this factor does not exist, you will not be successful no matter what you try.
Example:
A divorce attorney focuses his practice exclusively on working with doctors and dentists. He partners with financial planning professionals and delivers seminars on the importance of having a prenuptial agreement before entering into a marriage. Each month he sources between 6 and 10 new prenups with this marketing strategy. Who do you think these people call when they need a divorce attorney? By focusing on prenuptial agreements this lawyer has his name in front of the doc when the marriage falls apart. His timing is perfect.
Factor 4: Where You Can Find Them
Your ideal clients have to be easy to find and they must be easy to communicate with. Targeting undercover CIA agents is not a good idea. You need to be able to source your target clientele in at least five different ways (with dozens of sub variations).
This requires research and it requires creativity.
Factor 5: Why They Should Work With You Now
This factor has two components to it. It involves selecting you, and making a call to you now. This means you must have a compelling message with a direct, powerful call to action. You must be tastefully forceful at convincing the client to get out of his comfortable chair, put down his remote and walk a mile through a snow storm to come work with you.
That is an exaggeration but it demonstrates the kind of effort it takes to get someone to make a move…now.
Factor 6: How To Reach Out To Them
This is about using a message delivery device (also known as media). If you want your prospective client to move, you need to reach them with the right message delivered in precisely the right way with the right media.
These six factors are literally the keys to the castle for lawyers. If you want to build a law firm that is truly special, a law firm that will allow you to take control of client attraction, this is how to do it.
If you want more details on how to structure your marketing to build this kind of law firm, call my office for an appointment today. 888.692.5531
Some Thoughts On The Giants of Law Firm Marketing
I speak with dozens of lawyers every day. During the course of a month I probably meet (either virtually or in person) over 100 new lawyers. At least 70% of them have had experience, as a consumer, with one of the big law firm marketing service providers.
Without fail, in all cases, this experience has been negative.
I am talking about one of the two big law firm marketing groups out there. One of them is the opposite of East and the other has a funny spelling of the combination of a car and a shampoo.
I’m not sure why most small firms and solos have negative experiences with these companies but I am willing to wager it is systemic. I’m also willing to bet that the leadership of these behemoths do not know how badly damaged their brands are at the grass roots level.
I’d like to tell them and see if they have an interest in changing.
That’s why I am launching a campaign to get in touch with Senior Executives of both companies. I will first speak with them off the record and see what their reaction is to some of the comments I’ve heard from their clients. But I would also like to interview them for my experts and authors interview series. I would like to understand what their vision is for their company and I’d like to hear their perception of the current state of the legal industry.
These folks may not be interested in speaking with me. They may not care about solo and small practice law firms. We’ll see.
I’ll keep you posted.
First Class vs. No Class – What Kind of Law Firm Are You Running?
This past week I had to fly from Miami to New York to attend a funeral. Things happened pretty quickly so I really didn’t have time to plan my travel. I left South Florida on a Thursday evening and returned the following day. I wanted the most convenient airline in terms of schedule and airport. That meant flying into White Plains, NY and flying out of JFK.
On my trip up to New York I was forced to fly on Jet Blue. That was the only airline that met my schedule and arrival location constraints. On the way home I flew American Airlines. I had a little more flexibility on the return and there were some distinct advantages to this choice. Money was not a consideration in this situation. I needed to be in New York at a certain time and I needed to maintain my schedule prior to leaving.
The experience on each airline could not have been more different. The crew and the equipment were great on both legs of the trip. This is not about them. Both companies did a fine job. Unfortunately, it was the bigger picture – the airlines’ strategy that caused my experience to be significantly different.
On my trip up to New York I was on a small plane in the middle of the cabin. There is only one class of service on Jet Blue (you can pay $15 more for a bigger seat but those were all gone). I sat next to a lady who snapped her gum for two hours and twenty five minutes. There was a dog under the seat behind me which kept barking. The guy across the aisle was wearing a jogging suit and smelled like he had not bathed in a week. An elderly gentleman in front of me fought with the flight attendant over his second carry-on bag not fitting in the overhead bin, which resulted in a delay as they checked it. His first bag was placed four rows behind me. This created a problem when it was time to deplane as he insisted on pushing his way past me and six other people to get his bag before we got off. There was no power port for my laptop and no room to fit it between the seatback in front of me and my legs. I could not work and I could not sleep (barking dog).
Prior to leaving, I stood in front of the gate for 45 minutes. All of the seats in the gate area were taken and Jet Blue doesn’t have an airline lounge. Even the bar area in the terminal (which resembled the Cantina in Star Wars) was full. I did my best to make phone calls while dodging screaming kids and tourists on their way home.
Generally, this leg of the trip was an uncomfortable experience I have no desire to repeat.
On my flight back to Miami I flew in First Class on a 767. I got to the airport early but the terminal was crowded. I breezed by everyone on line and went right to the first class check in counter. After three minutes, I was on my way to security. A special line for first class passengers had nobody on it and I was through the screening process in less than five minutes.
During the 90 minutes prior to boarding, I worked on my laptop at a desk in the Admiral’s Club while I sipped an adult beverage.
On board the plane, I powered up my laptop with the power port at my seat and worked during the two hours of the three hour flight. During the other hour I ate a decent meal and had a great conversation with the attorney sitting next to me.
The second experience was clearly different than the first.
My question to you is:
What kind of law firm do you want? Do you want to build the bargain basement of law firms – offering competent service to low class clients? Or do you want to offer luxury service to clients who will pay more for a better experience? I assure you there are more than enough of both kinds of clients out there.
Your law firm marketing will determine which clients you attract. You have a choice. Are you first class or no class?
In Legal Marketing You Can’t Fake Class
This past weekend I was driving along a major highway in Miami and I saw a billboard with the big fat face of a local attorney holding a traffic ticket in his hand. This was definitely a candidate for the legal marketing hall of shame. The headline on the billboard read:
“Don’t Pay That Ticket!”
This is the same guy who sends out ridiculous flyers in the mail to people who get traffic tickets. He looks like a total goofball.
I am wondering if this is what this guy had in mind when he went to law school. Did he say to himself:
“When I graduate with all of this knowledge I want to go out and make myself look like an ass to get some people in to my law firm?”
This is the kind of legal marketing that makes lawyers look bad and makes people think I am the Dean of Clown College.
When it comes to legal marketing you need to ask yourself one question:
“If my mother sees this ad/article/direct mail piece/speech would she be proud to admit I was her son (daughter)?”
If you hesitate at all when you answer, you should not use that legal marketing vehicle.
Attorney Marketing Creed: Do No Harm
Your goal in marketing as an attorney should be to attract better quality clients as well as a greater number of clients. Your focus is on both quality and quantity.
If attracting the ideal client means you have to become some kind of circus sideshow, you should probably rethink your career choice.
The lawyers we see on bus stop benches or billboard with cute phone numbers (you know what I’m talking about, they spell CASH or PAIN) are a joke. They harm the legal profession and they harm those of us who make our living trying to help LEGITIMATE attorneys build a law firm.
Your law firm is a business but it is also a profession. Attorney marketing should be designed to build relationships with clients. The sleazy, cheesy, pursuit of fast cash from people who are often in a difficult situation is deplorable.
In the medical community, the creed of DO NO HARM governs at all times. As a combative measure to the onslaught of bad attorney marketing that exists, I tell friends who need a lawyer to follow the same practice as if they were selecting a medical specialist.
First: They should ask their family physician for a referral. In the case of a lawyer, they should ask a lawyer they trust for a referral. The lawyer who handled their real estate closing knows a criminal attorney. The attorney they use for their business transactions knows a divorce lawyer. The lawyer who prepared their will knows someone who can help with a tax matter…and so on…
Next: The client should check licensing body for disciplinary action. Every state has a governing body that regulates the conduct of lawyers. In Florida we have The Florida Bar. The Bar’s website has a member search area which allows clients to check the disciplinary history of any lawyer in the state. It also allows the attorney to complete a profile. As an attorney, you should fill in complete profile information and encourage prospective clients to check your credentials at the site.
Third: Interview them. I tell friends to ask the tough questions of their prospective attorney (not about the matter at hand but about the attorney’s experience and background). Would you let a surgeon cut into you without meeting them first? Only in an emergency. The same should hold true for a lawyer.
Finally: The attorney should provide references and contact information from past clients. All attorneys should have at least three references they can provide to prospective clients. Even attorneys in highly secretive and confidential practices should be able to point to three people, somewhere on the planet, who will vouch for them.
Smart clients will not hire an attorney base upon a billboard or a bus stop bench. An attorney who is good at marketing would never allow his firm to place that kind of advertising. DO NO HARM also holds true to when it refers to your profession.
What You Don’t Know About Marketing for Law Firms Can Kill You
This past week I met the leader of a law firm that is on life support. His firm is literally hanging on by the thinnest of threads. This guy is hoping that they will land a big client “within the next few weeks” to help him make payroll.
Not good.
He called me to “pick my brain” on law firm marketing. He wanted me to show him the magic beans he could plant that would help him grow his revenue overnight. He asked about pay per click advertising, newspaper ads, handing out flyers at flea markets, etc.
Unfortunately for this guy (and the 40 employees of his law firm) it is too late.
He can do all that stuff and some stuff he didn’t mention but even if he gets 20 new clients he will be in the same predicament within the next six months. Why?
Because there is nothing that makes his law firm different from any other law firm in his area. Clients have no compelling reason to work with him. He is the same as everyone else. There is no law firm marketing trick that can fix that overnight. It takes time and it takes some careful planning.
The one question I ask every new client before I decide if I work with them is the question this guy can’t answer:
Why would someone choose your law firm over everyone else who does what you do?
Ultimately your clients decide if your answer is correct…and they vote with their wallets.
Your Law Firm is Leaking
Each and every month you lose influence over your clients. Each month some of the people who have paid you the highest fees or done the most work with you become less and less interested in you. Each month your stellar reputation fades a little more in the minds of the folks who refer you new clients And most people are probably not doing anything about it.
Why?
Because most people are lazy.
You lose 10% of your influence with your clients, prospects and referral sources for every 30 days you do not have contact with them.
This means ten months from now, the great client you had lunch with today will have forgotten all about you. It means the doctor who sent you that great referral last week will have a hard time remembering what you do for a living. It means the business owner you met at the networking event yesterday will not recognize you if you hit him with your car next spring.
So what is the solution?
The answer is to start communicating with these people. Each month you should have some kind of communication with your clients, prospective clients and referral sources. This communication can be a newsletter, it can be a card or it can be a phone call or an email. It really doesn’t matter how you interact with them. You simply want to remind them that you are here and ready to help them and the people they know.
Some people will say: “I don’t have the money!”
Do you have a real business or are you just playing around? You need to invest money in your client acquisition efforts in order to develop a real business (a law firm is a business by the way).
It costs less than a dollar to purchase and mail a greeting card each month. It costs about $2 to send out a printed newsletter (in small quantity). Email is practically free – just type and hit send.
But some people will need to be convinced. Here’s how the math works:
You mail 1000 newsletters at $2 each (the cost for printing and mailing). You mail 1000 greeting cards at $1 each. You type and send 1000 emails to the people within your database (only to those from whom you have received permission). You do these three things every month. That is a total monthly expense of $3000.
Let’s say it takes you three months to see any business from these efforts. So you have spent $9,000 in keeping up with the most valuable 1000 people in your database.
On the first day of the fourth month you get a client as a direct result of these efforts. This client is your average client. And your average client pays you $10,000 in fees.
Was your investment worth it?
Yes.
Will you get more than one client from these efforts?
Most likely. There is a cumulative effect to this kind of system. After about six months you will start to see more and more interest in your services. It takes some people a little longer to absorb the information and react.
Will you get more clients by doing this compared to doing nothing?
Definitely.
What are you waiting for?
If you need a kick in the rear end and want some help in setting up this type of system, give me a call. If you want me to show you how, I will. If you want me to set it up, I will. If you want me to do this for you each and every month I will.
You can be lazy and outsource this system to me or I can show you how to do this for yourself. The choice is yours but doing NOTHING is the worst choice you can possibly make.
Call now. 1.888.692.5531
Even a Small Law Firm Has a Brand
Branding is the relationship between the legal services you provide and your clients. Yes, you read that right. Believe it or not, all consumers have relationships with brands. Think of your favorite soft-drink, restaurant, or anything you use that you paid money for. Like all consumers, you have emotions, memories, and ideas that spring to mind when you think of that special product. These emotions, memories and ideas create a connection between you and the product. This connection is actually being managed by the company that markets the product. This is called branding. The legal services you offer are your product and your potential clients will view you, your firm, and your services as a brand.
Branding has everything to do with how clients and potential clients perceive your practice. This perception needs to be planned, executed, and managed by your firm.
Potential clients evaluate you in a variety of areas. Are you professional, ethical, and competent? Are you the experts in a particular area of law? Does working with your firm bring a level of prestige? Are you innovative? Are you overpriced or are you a discount firm? Before you even see a potential client, they have already made up their mind about most or all of the above questions. They have a sense of who you are and what you stand for before they even walk through your door.
The Elements of a Brand
From the first time a client hears the name of your firm to when they send in their final bill, they are having a brand experience. This experience should be peppered with clear, well-planned, cohesive messages. These messages are the building blocks or critical elements of your brand.
One of the most important elements of branding that law firms must consider is the brand promise. Your clients need to believe not only that you are capable, but also that they can trust you with their privacy. Your brand promise is what gives your firm credibility. No amount of talent or discount specials can make up for a firm that as lost the trust of its client base.
Another crucial element of branding is brand positioning. Your brand position explains the services you offer. Law firms need to be very careful about how they position their brand. You may offer several services that do not generate much revenue for your firm. Decide on which services you want to become known for and consider these first when deciding just how to position your brand.
Another aspect of brand positioning is determining and expressing to clients what it is that makes your firm unique. What sets you apart from other firms? Consider your price, your reputation, your geographical location, and any hidden talents or strengths in the lawyers that are a part of your firm.
Your brand identity is who you are beyond your promise. You need to decide how you want potential clients to view your firm. Do you want clients to see you as innovative, well established, small and personable, or large and competent? Consider how you want clients to describe your firm. Jot down a few words that you would like clients to associate with your firm. These words are the basis of the brand identity that you want to develop.
One of the most critical elements in legal branding is your brand reputation. It is important that your branding efforts don’t stop once the client has hired you to represent them. Your marketing efforts and networking got the client in the door, but when they leave they are a walking, talking advertisement for your firm. A client’s experience with every person they encounter within your firm needs to confirm the brand promise, brand position, and the brand identity that you are trying to build.
First Things First
Before you can decide where you are going, you first have to know where you’ve been. Find out how your current clients view your firm. This can be done by sending your clients a questionnaire or having potential clients check a list of attributes that lead them to your firm. Research what other firms of your size and specialty are doing. How you compare to them in price, technology and other areas, will give you an idea of how clients view your firm.
If you have not been managing your brand, you may have established a brand that is not one you’d like to keep. If this is the case, then you will need to rebrand your firm through marketing. Whether you are branding or rebranding, consistency is critical.
Consistent Messages
Once you have defined the elements of the brand you would like to project and you have done research to determine your position in the marketplace, it is time to create a multi-faceted marketing plan that promotes and reflects your brand. Decide from the beginning that all of your materials will be cohesive. A mistake commonly made by larger firms is that they allow lawyers to make adjustments to their printed materials. At times it is a slight change to the letterhead, other times it is a change to the format of the business cards, some firms will even allow different departments to choose their own styles all together.
Your color scheme, logo, and fonts all play a part in the building your brand. Keeping them consistent will help to solidify your message.
Today marketing is more than commercials and mailers. Many firms are using blogs, search engine optimization, email newsletters, and podcasts to stay in touch with clients and to get their name out. Regardless of what form your marketing takes, it is critical that the brand you are trying to portray comes across loud and clear.
Your brand is crucial to your practice. Even though this basic fact of marketing has been known for decades, many law firms still fail to grasp it. Don’t be one of them. In order for your firm to thrive, you need to manage your brand with clarity and consistency.
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