In Law Firm Marketing Success Follows Action
It is very easy to tell the difference between winners and losers. There is one particular quality winners possess. I guarantee if a person has this quality they are a winner.
In this context, the term winner refers to someone who seeks a desired outcome and then makes it happen. It does not mean they are rich. Some rich people are winners and some are losers. It does not mean they are famous. Some famous people are winners and some are losers. My definition of a winner is someone who sets their mind to achieve a goal and then they achieve it.
Winners talk differently than everyone else. They carry themselves differently than everyone else. But most importantly, they act differently than everyone else.
Winners have a bias for action.
Here is an example:
Three weeks ago I attended a party at the home of a friend. Several attorneys were present and a few of them and I gathered in the kitchen. We had a conversation about a specific marketing strategy I have been experimenting with for six months. I told the group I was happy with the results. This strategy was consistently delivering about three leads a week to my firm and to the firm of an attorney with whom I was working. I said I would be looking to teach this strategy to some clients over the next few months to see how it worked in various different kinds of legal practices.
There were four lawyers standing with me listening to me describe the results. They all asked questions. They all nodded their heads in agreement. But only one of them called me the next day to ask about the specific steps involved in this new strategy. In fact, this guy not only called and asked about this strategy, he made an appointment to come to my office and see it in action. He took copious notes and he implemented it within 48 hours.
This particular lawyer and I had a follow-up conversation yesterday. He has already gotten two new clients as a result of this particular strategy.
Action.
It is what separates the winners from the losers. A winner hears a good idea and he finds a way to use it. He makes it a reality in his business as soon as possible.
Here is a little added bonus: People with an action orientation overcome failure more easily than stagnant people. Why? Because if they take action and it doesn’t work, they immediately take more action. To these folks, failure doesn’t exist. They view each action as a test. Even if the test produces positive results, they tweak it to make it better.
Now I have two questions for you.
Question one:
What was the last great idea you thought of or heard?
Question two:
What did you do about it?
It is not too late. You can still be a winner. Waiting is for losers. Take action now.
If you want to learn how to take action repeatedly give me a call. In 90 days I can instill this quality in even the most sedentary lawyer.
But you have to take the first step.
You have to make the call.
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EmailLaw Firm Marketing and The Benefits of a Narrow Practice Niche
Trying to be everything to everyone is a recipe for failure. There are dozens of reasons to focus your law firm marketing efforts in a narrow law practice niche. Here are a four:
Perception of Expertise: Prospective clients will perceive you as a qualified expert if you focus your marketing resources on a specific area. Educating people in this area will help demonstrate your understanding and mastery of it. Clients want to work with experts. Use case studies from actual client cases in your law firm marketing. This will help demonstrate your expertise and it will affect your clients’ perception.
Experience: The client will trust the person who has done this work previously. The patient who needs heart surgery wants to hire the doctor who specializes in this procedure. He doesn’t want the obstetrician who dabbles in this work on a part time basis. In your law firm marketing you should reflect back upon the number of matters you have handled in a particular area. Highlight your successful track record and your length of service.
Client Confidence: This goes hand-in-hand with experience. Your clients will have greater confidence in you if they know you have dedicated your practice to their area of need. The will believe in your ability to help them and they will trust your advice. Nothing boosts client confidence like testimonials. Once a client has called and asked for information about your law firm, ask them if they would like to “check your references”. This is an opportunity to pass along any testimonial letters you have received. Testimonials boost client confidence.
Competitive Advantage: A focus on a specific area of the law is a competitive advantage. While all other lawyers are touting that they can be everything to everyone you can point to your dedication and focus as a way to separate yourself from the crowd. This will allow you to win many more clients than your competition.
Focusing your law firm marketing in a narrow niche will help you attract more clients, gain their confidence and respect quicker and it gives you a competitive advantage. Start thinking of a way you can narrow your marketing focus and you will notice the difference in the clients you attract.
Attorney Marketing and Client Selection
Sometimes attorney marketing helps you decide which clients NOT to work with.
The most difficult decision for any attorney is one that involves turning away business. There are times with the client in front of you has enough money to work with you, has a problem you can solve and is ready to get started but you just can’t work with them.
How could this ever happen?
Here are three reasons to turn away a client:
Lack of Integrity
Clients lie to their attorneys all the time but this doesn’t mean you have to tolerate it. If someone comes to you with a matter and their initial story sounds “fishy”, walk away. Your gut instinct is always right. You do not need the headache of guessing which lie will take down the whole case.
Use your marketing as a tool to screen your clients. Have a member of your team conduct a thorough interview with the prospective client before agreeing to the initial meeting. Use the results of this interview to inform your initial consultation. Look for inconsistencies. If you find any, decline the case.
Lack of Engagement
Some clients will ask you to “just handle it” when it comes to their matter. The extent of their involvement ends when they sign the check to pay your fee. Unfortunately these clients usually become re-engaged right about the time the whole case blows up. That’s when they file the bar complaint.
In your pre-meeting packet (you should send your clients something before the initial consultation) stress the importance of the attorney-client relationship. Highlight it as a partnership designed to achieve the optimal result. Clearly spell out the consequences of a lack of client participation.
Lack of Decisiveness
Clients who are irresolute will kill you. They will waste your time and drain your resources. An indecisive client will take a victory and turn it into a defeat. Run away from clients who have difficulty in making decisions.
Many attorneys think it will be difficult to spot these people. It is easier than you think. In your screening interview ask questions about major decisions they have made in the past. Ask about things like home purchases, auto purchases and selecting other professional service providers. Finally, ask the prospective client how many lawyers they met with before they came to see you. If they have visited with more than one attorney prior to seeing you, decline the matter.
Attorney marketing is sometimes about the cases you do not take. Making wise decisions in client selection will save you money, it will save time and most importantly, it will save your sanity.
7 Legal Marketing Methods to Implement Immediately
There are lots of legal marketing methods that work. Many people are confused about where they should start. Here are 7 legal marketing methods that will help you get started growing your law firm.
Legal Marketing Method 1: Blog Daily
Writing an article each day is a great way to develop a relationship with your prospective clients. If you can’t get to it daily, three times a week will work. Legal marketing means building relationships. People who read your blog want to have a relationship with you. These are terrific potential clients.
Legal Marketing Method 2: Email Weekly
Each week pick your best blog article and email it to the people in your contact database. This will help you develop a deeper relationship with them. And no, weekly email is not too frequent. Communication becomes annoying when it is not interesting and engaging. As long as your content is good, you will be successful with a weekly email. That is one of the secrets to legal marketing. Good content is always appreciated no matter how frequently it is delivered.
Legal Marketing Method 3: Print and Mail a Newsletter Monthly
Regular mail works better than ever. People pay more attention now to regular mail than they do to email. Compile your best few articles from your blog, put them in a newsletter format, and mail them out. You will capture a portion of your audience that typically does not read blogs or email. This is a classic legal marketing method that never goes out of style…because it works!
Legal Marketing Method 4: Court Bankers and CPAs
Bankers and CPAs need to establish relationships with their clients just like you do. It makes good sense to develop relationships with these professionals. You can add value to the relationship your banker or CPA has with his clients and he can add value to your client relationships. Adding value is good legal marketing strategy.
Legal Marketing Method 5: Take on a Leadership Role in the Community
People want to be lead. They like leaders. Step up and take a leadership role in your community. It will show that you are responsible and reliable. It will help inspire confidence in your prospective clients. You can’t just sit back and wait to be successful. You must earn your success. Your leadership skills and your legal marketing will help you.
Legal Marketing Method 6: Share Your Friends
One of the fastest ways to gain favor with prospective clients is to connect people to others who can help them. If you do this, it benefits three people: First it benefits the two people you are bringing together and then it benefits you. If you selflessly share your connections with others, you will reap the rewards as both people will be appreciative.
Legal Marketing Method 7: Become a Follow-up Maniac
This is the cardinal rule of legal marketing. You must follow up with everyone, constantly. People need to hear your message a minimum of seven times before it begins to sink in. Follow up early and often and you will be successful.
Legal marketing is effective when you take action. Above are seven ways you can begin to grow your law firm. The next step is up to you.
Do Internet Directory Services Work for Lawyer Marketing?
This is a question I am receiving with more and more frequency. As the economy deteriorated these services ramped up their marketing efforts so that almost every lawyer in America received a call from one of them at some point (or so it seemed). Many lawyers added an online directory listing to their marketing and signed up for the service. Others remained skeptical and called me looking for my input. Since I have now seen more than my share of lawyers who have used the various directory and “client matching” services, I can offer some fair commentary about them.
Directory services are essentially the Internet replacement of the phone book. You list your law firm in there with other attorneys who do the same thing as you do. You provide your information packaged in the same way as all the other lawyers marketing their services. You even have the opportunity to list prices for your services. Then people call you. Some call seeking free advice and some call shopping around for the least expensive lawyer.
That’s right. You will get phone calls from most of these services. And in many cases you will get clients. In a few cases, you may even get enough clients to do better than break even on your investment. Many people would say this is a good lawyer marketing tactic since you are receiving a positive return on investment.
The problem with directory services is that they make you a commodity. You become the same as a can of peas on the shelf in a supermarket. Potential clients cannot see the difference in your service from all the other attorneys in the directory. You all look the same. When everything looks the same the only criteria the client has to make a decision is price. This is not good.
Let’s see how the directory services stack up against the three main elements of lawyer marketing:
Visibility: Will it help people find you? The answer here is “yes”.
Credibility: Will it help people believe your message? The answer here is “maybe”. I say “maybe” because credibility is in the eyes of the receiver of the message. To some potential clients, being in a directory service may signal legitimacy but to others it may signal desperation. It all depends on your potential client.
Differentiation: This is where we put the nail in the coffin. These directory services offer no way to differentiate you from everyone else. In fact, they make you a commodity which is the opposite of what good lawyer marketing is supposed to do.
In the end, advertising in a directory or a client matching service will not do any harm to your law practice. You will, if you have the time and the patience to sort through all the calls from price shoppers, probably get a few clients over the course of a year. But if you have other opportunities to invest in more productive lawyer marketing vehicles, I recommend staying away from them.
Lawyers Marketing and the Two Percent
The biggest complaint I receive about the work I do with lawyers marketing is that there is never enough time to execute the tactics we develop. Lawyers say marketing is important but it isn’t important enough to set aside two hours a day to work on. Lawyers say marketing makes all the difference but most of them don’t know how much of a difference it makes because they have not given it a full effort. Lawyers say marketing is the key to growing a large law firm that will allow them to hire more people and make more money, yet they can’t budget the time for marketing.
Helping lawyers marketing their services is like looking for a specific needle in a stack of needles. Less than ten percent of all lawyers understand the value of marketing to their law firm. Less than twenty percent of those lawyers can actually execute on the plan we develop. That means that out of all the lawyers marketing their firms only about two percent do it right.
That is two out of every one hundred lawyers. Marketing is a science and an art. You can master the science part of it with practice. Less than 14,000 lawyers in the United States even give it a fair shot. (Two percent of the 700,000 lawyers in private practice is 14,000.) But that two percent make more money than everyone else and they have more free time (since money allows you to hire more people and more people can mean less work for you).
You can be in the two percent. You just have to be a lawyer who makes the time. Are you one of those lawyers? Marketing is a learned skill. Are you willing to give it a try?
Hey Big Law Firms: Marketing is About Relationships
I work with very few big law firms on marketing. This is by design. Most big law firms have significant overhead and even more significant egos and both are a hindrance to profitability. Give me a guy in a two room office who is hungry, tired and broke with a law degree from a state school and I’ll help him double his profit inside of a year. A big law firm guy would need a tutorial to understand the hungry guy’s financial statement.
My biggest beef with big law firms is their marketing. Brochures, event sponsorships and congratulatory ads in the local business paper are what pass for good marketing at most big law firms. Forget the fact that nobody has ever hired a lawyer because his firm sponsored a tennis tournament; explain to me how you measure the effectiveness of this kind of marketing.
Now let’s say the kick ass brochure pulls in a client. What is the first thing the partner at the big law firm does? He estimates how many hours he can bill them. Yes, he listens to the problem. Sure he comes up with a legal solution. And ultimately the client’s company will benefit from that solution. But not before the partner bills 20 hours to the client’s account and his associate bills 15 hours to it and the paralegal bills 36 hours to it etc. etc.
My clients have learned the art of stealing business from big law firms by charging flat fees or value based fees to clients who have been beaten up by big law firms for years. They build relationships with their clients BEFORE they become clients. They deepen those relationships with the work they do for them. They charge them a fair price that the client agrees to in advance.
Suffice it to say that attorneys at big law firms should be required to wear a mask and hold a gun when walking into the office of a client. Hourly billing is horrible. Clients hate it. It destroys relationships with clients. But for the big law firms, marketing and billing are not about relationships.
Big law firms could use their size to their advantage. They could conduct seminars that educate potential clients. They could follow up with attendees by sending them a monthly newsletter on the very topic covered in the seminar. They could offer legal audits for clients by the preeminent attorneys in specific areas of the law…FOR FREE. They could do hundreds of things the small firms don’t do with their marketing. If they did, the small guys would have trouble competing.
But I guess the big law firms don’t get it. Maybe they never will. My clients get it. Their clients get it. Before you know it, the big firms may just become small enough to try it.
The Reason You Don’t Get Hired
A Real Estate broker called me recently. She wanted me to recommend her to my clients when they needed office space. I was reluctant to take the call as I already know several excellent people in this field and I don’t make recommendations on office space all that often.
Since the broker was referred to me by a client I decided to take the call (she originally wanted a face-to-face meeting). In advance of the call, I asked for an email detailing why her firm was different than all the others.
What I received back was an email with seven points that were all about her firm. Nothing about how the client would benefit. Nothing about how the client would save money by using her firm, make more money by securing a better location, save time because her firm does thorough due diligence, etc. I didn’t see any of that. All I saw as chest thumping, me, me, me.
This is the number one reason why clients don’t select you as their lawyer. Until you tell the client how you can help them, they will not care where you went to law school or which judge you clerked for or who you know in the local government.
Legal marketing should be all about the client. Show him how you can solve his problem. Help him understand his options. Show him you know how he feels (empathize).
Put the client first in your marketing, just like you do in your legal work.
The Loneliest Number in Marketing for Lawyers
A couple of days ago I had lunch with a smart lawyer. He receives a few referrals each month from former clients and other lawyers and he is ready to take his practice to the next level. This was the purpose of our lunch. He called me to talk about how we could work together to improve his marketing.
Lunch started off great. We discussed the value he provides to his clients. We also discussed his competitive advantage (the thing that makes his law firm different and better than everyone else). He had both of these down cold. As far as marketing for lawyers goes, he was off to a good start.
Things started to get a little off track when we discussed specific marketing tactics. (A tactic is an action you take to achieve a desired result.) When we discussed newsletters he said: “I tried that and it didn’t work”. I asked: “How long did you send out newsletters?” “One month” he replied. “And I didn’t get any clients from it.” We moved on to the blog on his website. I asked him how many times he updated the content. His response was that he updated it for a month (a couple of times) and again, nothing. Finally we discussed networking. He said he joined a networking group. The group met each week and he attended for a month and guess what…yep…nothing.
“I just don’t know if marketing will work for my law practice” he concluded.
We discussed three tactics that he tried for one month each and he got no results.
This makes him a victim of loneliest number in marketing for lawyers…the number one.
Any time you implement a new marketing initiative you need to give it a fair shot. Doing anything once is never going to produce a fair return on investment. Some initiatives (like blogging, newsletters or networking groups) take several months (like six or more) in order to be effective.
The first step in building a marketing plan is to get your head on straight. You must give each tactic a fair opportunity to succeed.
Think of marketing like sex. If you only do it once there’s a chance it will work but you definitely won’t be satisfied.
Law Firm Marketing: You are Probably Doing It Wrong
Most law firm marketing is done incorrectly, if it is done at all. You know your marketing is bad if:
Everything in your law firm marketing material is about you. This is a common marketing mistake. Great law firm marketing educates the client about solutions to his/her problem. Clients come to you for solutions. They don’t come to you to ask about your background.
At some point in the marketing process it may make sense to let the client know about your qualifications, experience and education. But in the beginning, it is best to focus on educating the client about the situation and provide them with solutions to their problems.
You only work on your law firm marketing when you need clients. Many lawyers come to me when they are in this position. They get in an alternating cycle of client overwhelm followed by a dearth of business. For three months are franticly busy and then for three months there is nothing. Then one month of client work and two months of nothing. They fall into the trap of ignoring the marketing while the client work is plentiful and that leads to double the amount of time without client work.
Law firm marketing is something that must take place consistently. In good times and in bad times you must be focused on building your client base.
The cornerstone of your law firm marketing is networking. Since there are restrictive rules governing the marketing process in each state, many attorneys believe the only true way to market their services is by networking. Networking is a very effective way for attorneys to attract clients but it should only be one in a series of client attraction tactics.
The right way to use networking in your law firm marketing plan is to set a goal for each networking event. Decide who you want to meet, how you can help them (giving is the best way to start any relationship) and how you will follow up.
You only have one way to find new clients. This is a common problem we find in semi-successful law firms. The law firm has developed one way to attract a great deal of clients. But when that particular marketing tactic loses its effectiveness the firm has no new clients.
Your law firm marketing must always include several (at least 10) different ways to attract and retain clients. This diversity affords you the luxury of testing new tactics because you are not financially devoted to one specifically.
You think law firm marketing is all about billboards, bus stop benches and television ads. Many attorneys believe that television and billboards are the only forms of media successful attorneys use. This is far from the truth. In fact, most successful attorneys will never use these media. They have dozens if not hundreds of other ways to attract clients.
If your law firm fits one of these five criteria, help is available. To change your view of law firm marketing and get more clients, give us a call today. 888.692.5531. We can help you develop some smart, ethical and effective law firm marketing tactics that will drive clients right to your front door.
