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The most overlooked legal marketing tool in your arsenal is your database. I’m not just talking about the people in the contacts file of your PDA. I’m talking about everyone with whom you interact. Everyone who knows you and everyone you come into contact with on a regular basis should have an electronic “record” stored somewhere that is easily accessible to you and your team.
If you don’t do anything else this year, you should invest in a good tool to manage the information you collect on the people you know. Sometimes these tools are called client relationship management systems. Sometimes they’re called database marketing systems. And sometimes they are just called contact management systems. The point is that you have some system to communicate with everyone you know – regularly.
Legal marketing is about building and maintaining relationships. Frequency of communication is critically important in relationship building. Email, snail mail, phone calls, and meetings – all of those forms of communication shape the relationship you have with someone. You need to keep track of all of these communication events.
I am a big advocate of weekly communication with your database. One short educational email, sent once a week, can position you as an expert and keep you in the mind of people who can hire you and refer clients to you.
If you have any desire to be successful at legal marketing, you need to manage, maintain and utilize your database.