In Law Firm Marketing Be a Leader
When it comes to membership in groups or associations you really need to weigh your options carefully. You want to be certain you help fulfill the mission of the group but you also want to help your business in the process.
Making the most of your membership (from a law firm marketing perspective) means that you must take the lead. It means rising up from the rank and file members and helping to make the organization successful.
Assuming a high profile position does three things:
It elevates your status. Leadership in any group will automatically confer status upon you outside that group. People who view you as a leader will almost always view you as a leader in multiple settings.
It shows you are up to the challenge. Well not just THE challenge, any challenge. Leadership is difficult. Most people know this. Taking the lead in one group is a great example of how you can take the lead in almost any situation (in the eyes of others).
It develops trust. Once you are elevated to a leadership role in an organization people immediately feel as though they can trust you. Psychologically, people sense that you must have been elected or appointed because you are a trustworthy person.
There are many reasons (beyond law firm marketing) to give back to a group or organization by taking on a leadership role. You will benefit in many ways from volunteering your time and energy.
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EmailThe $192,000 Law Firm Marketing Plan
If you have limited resources and limited time there are five things you can work on immediately that will make a big difference in your law firm marketing. These five things are relatively inexpensive and they have a significant impact. Think of them as a “Mini Marketing Plan”.
Newsletter
This is one of the most important marketing tools and yet it is the one that lawyers give me the most resistance to implementing. A weekly email newsletter and/or a monthly print newsletter are both great ways for you to enter the conversations taking place in the lives and the minds of your prospective clients.
In many cases, prospective clients do not know when they will need a lawyer. If you are entering their lives frequently, you will be a resource for them and they will call you with many of their issues. Some of them you will handle. Others you can refer out. In either case your relationship with these people will grow and you will have an opportunity to help them learn how to bring you a good case.
Educational Website
Most law firm websites are online brochures. This is the wrong approach. Your website should be an education center that will help your clients learn how to deal with the issues they are facing. This does not mean it becomes a do-it-yourself-guide. It means you educate them on topics in your field of expertise and you help them understand their options. Once they know what they are facing, they will know how to hire a good lawyer.
Appreciation Events
You simply cannot spend time with all of your clients and referral sources during the course of a year. Yet personal interaction is critical to developing a bond with them and keeping your law firm on the top of their mind. An annual client/referral source/community appreciation event accomplishes this goal and it allows you to take an opportunity and announce a new initiative or create some buzz in the community.
Host your appreciation event during a time of the year when people are in town but not otherwise preoccupied. November and December are the worst months for this as this tends to be a time of year when people are preoccupied with holiday plans.
Structured Networking Group
Referrals are the lifeblood of any law firm. Eighty percent of your referrals will come from twenty percent of your colleagues. It is in your interest to develop a group of people you can trust consistently with your referral business. Once you begin sending referral business to the same people over and over, you will be amazed at how quickly good matters come back to you.
Every month you should hold a meeting of your referral partners. You should exchange ideas and discuss issues that concern everyone in the community. Some of our clients even have their referral groups share advertising and marketing expenses or host joint events. The key is getting this idea off the ground. Once you host the first meeting, you will notice that good ideas immediately begin to surface.
Media Presence
What you know is not as important as people knowing what you know. You must be perceived as an expert. This expertise starts with being quoted in the media. Many lawyers do not like to take a high profile in the media as they feel it makes them look less humble. Other lawyers choose to avoid the media because they feel it is often “not friendly” to their type of practice of their type of clientele.
As an alternative to being quoted in the media (and to be used in conjunction with being quoted in the media) you can write articles and submit them regularly to publications your clients read. These should be articles showcasing your opinion, your expertise or both. A good place for consumer lawyers (criminal law, family law, immigration law) to start is with some of the small local publications. Your neighborhood newspaper always needs content and editors are often happy to have well written stories submitted from expert columnists.
No matter how much you may hate taking a high profile, remember: Famous lawyers don’t starve.
Implementing these five things as your mini marketing plan will not help you attract clients en mass. What it will do is help you consistently attract 4 or 5 new clients each month (conservatively). That is a minimum of 48 new clients each year. While those numbers do not seem overwhelming, if your average client matter is worth $5,000, this mini marketing plan just made you $192,000.
I am not sure why you would not implement these five initiatives immediately, unless of course you don’t need an additional $192,000…
Return On Your Law Firm Marketing Investment
How do you evaluate law firm marketing investments?
How do you decide if you should sponsor an event, place an ad in a trade magazine or join a referral service?
The best way to make this decision is to look at the potential Return on Investment from each initiative.
There are three things to take into account when looking at Law Firm Marketing ROI. They are:
- Target Client and Referral Source Profile
- Lifetime Value of the Relationship
- Cost of Acquisition of a New Client
These are all complex ideas which must be covered in detail but here is a brief summary:
Target Client and Referral Source Profile
If you are targeting consumers (family law, criminal law, immigration) your approach to marketing will be different than a lawyer who is targeting companies as a client. Once you know who your ideal client is, it becomes easier to attract them with your marketing.
Referral sources are important to all lawyers and you must market to them as heavily as you would market to a prospective client. This marketing should be measured in exactly the same way as you measure direct-to-client marketing initiatives.
Lifetime Value of the Relationship
Once you have attracted and engaged a client or referral source, how much is that relationship worth to your law firm?
A client (or referral source) who brings you 10 matters each year for a value of $100,000 per year is worth far more than 100 clients who bring you one matter valued at $1,000 during your lifetime relationship with them. You can spend more to attract the client with 10 matters per year because you will receive a better return on your investment.
Knowing this lifetime value number is critical to determining how much to invest in marketing. High value targets can withstand significant investments.
Cost of Acquisition
What is it going to take to attract this client?
As stated above, you can spend more to attract better clients. But knowing what it is going to cost to do so is important. If you are targeting corporate clients, there is a good chance they already have a lawyer. It is much more difficult to unseat the incumbent in the relationship than it is to establish a business relationship with someone who has no lawyer.
Understanding client acquisition cost is important to determining your marketing budget.
We just touched on these important metrics. Give them some thought.
How will they impact your law firm marketing decisions?
Attorney Marketing: You Can Do It Yourself
This may sound strange coming from someone who makes his living, in part, by helping attorneys with marketing, but you can do it yourself.
If you want to capture one or two new clients each month, work on their matters, and live happily ever after, you do not need to work with me (or any other attorney marketing expert). In fact, I will give you the formula.
Here is what you need to do to get a couple of clients each month:
Network
Join a structured networking group. This will help you put some discipline into your marketing. It will take you about six months but the leads will come. As you get to know the people in your group, they will trust you and the leads will get better.
I posted a video on networking on my YouTube channel. Click here to watch it.
Follow Up
You need both weekly follow up and monthly follow up. And you should follow up with everyone you meet, referral sources and prospective clients. The monthly follow up should be in the form of a print newsletter. The weekly follow up should be in an email.
Here is a link to a video on newsletter follow up.
Here is a link to a video on email communication and follow up.
Educate
Conduct an educational event at least once each month. Identify a good target audience and conduct an event each month that helps them understand the value of working with you. You do this by raising the issues they struggle with and offering your services as the solution.
This video on conducting and educational event will show you how to do it.
You may be asking yourself why I am giving away all of this information. The answer is because I practice what I preach. I know that this information will be helpful for many attorneys who struggle with marketing. But I also know some attorneys will implement this and want more. My firm specializes in working with attorneys who want more from their marketing.
Please take the ideas I listed above and run with them. They work for many attorneys. Implement them today and down the road you will reap the benefits of better clients engaging you more frequently.
Legal Marketing Expert Criteria From Dave Lorenzo
The other day I was introduced to someone as Dave Lorenzo Legal Marketing Expert. While I like the sound of the term Legal Marketing Expert associated with my name I am also aware that people are fast and loose when they throw around titles.
Since there is no regulating or governing body to create criteria for the status of legal marketing expert, I am going to do it.
Below are the official criteria for being an Approved Dave Lorenzo Legal Marketing Expert:
A legal marketing expert must focus full time on legal marketing. He/she cannot have another part time job (like selling Amway, Mary Kay Products or practicing law). The legal marketing expert must be totally focused and dedicated to legal marketing.
A legal marketing expert must be a student of marketing and must be able to demonstrate his/her willingness to learn and keep current in this field. This means the legal marketing expert should be enrolled in some form of on-going education program that keeps them up-to-date with the latest trends and developments in legal marketing.
A legal marketing expert must have focused on marketing exclusively for a minimum of five years. This five year rule stems from the theory that it requires 10,000 hours of practice to develop expertise in any particular field or discipline. If you work 40 hours per week exclusively on legal marketing and you work 50 weeks per year, you reach 10, 000 hours in five years.
A legal marketing expert must demonstrate knowledge of marketing outside the legal profession. This is important because there are many things that are transferable from business to legal marketing. All ethical, professional and legal guidelines must always be followed, of course. But having a broad base of knowledge is required of a legal marketing expert. This may be demonstrated by experience: Ten years of marketing experience in various industries is a good objective criterion. This should also be demonstrated by education. A masters degree in marketing, strategic communications, business administration or integrated marketing communications is also a good criterion.
The final requirement for a legal marketing expert is a demonstration of good moral character. This means that information proclaimed by the individual to be true should, in fact be true, and verifiable.
These are the five basic criteria for becoming an Approved Dave Lorenzo Legal Marketing Expert. I will accept applications and begin interviews immediately.
Finding What’s Missing From Your Marketing
When it comes to attorney marketing I find there is of the one thing missing, even from the law firm marketing plan of the most dedicated attorney. That one thing is tying as many of your daily actions to a goal as possible.
This is one of the keys to success I share with my clients. Here is how it works:
Take a look at your list of daily action items. (If you do not have a list of daily action items, make one). Each of those daily action items should bring you one step closer to one of your goals.
For example, one of your action items could be: Write an article for my law firm newsletter. That action item gets you one step closer to obtaining a new client, which helps you fulfill your goal of making a certain amount of money.
Another example could be to follow up with an event planner on a specific speaking opportunity. This will also get you closer to your revenue goal because you could secure some new clients as a result of speaking at this event.
Ultimately you want to fill your list of daily action items with tasks that help you get closer to your goals and you want to eliminate or delegate all the things on your list that do not help you achieve this objective.
Implementing this slight change in the way you organize your daily work will have a dramatic effect on your success in attorney marketing.
Attorney Marketing Takes Away the Sting of Losing
The sting of losing a client never goes away completely. But attorney marketing does help keep the pipeline full of good qualified prospective clients.
This means that if one client leaves (or a prospective client elects not to work with you) you have an opening for another qualified client to step into.
If you are anything like me and you hate losing, then having many new clients waiting to come to work with you is helpful at getting you past the disappointment of not closing the last deal that walked through the door.
Attorney marketing also makes you less needy. This is always a good thing.
You never want to sign up a client because you NEED them to work with you. You should only sign up a client because they are the right client for the way you practice law.
Attorney marketing helps you get to that point. But it requires time, energy and focus.
When They Show Up, Bill ‘Em
Do you feel like you need to offer a free consultation?
Isn’t that part of law firm marketing 101?
No it is not. In fact, it is terrible law firm marketing.
Free advice is worth what you pay for it.
If you want to do anything for free, have an administrative assistant or an associate interview the prospective client to see if they qualify to work with you.
Yes. I know. Your competitors all offer free consultations. They all sit with clients for an hour at a time and listen to their tale of woe. They empathize and then, if they are lucky, the client signs up with them.
Did they teach that in law school? Was the class called; “How to be a doormat?”
The lawyers I work with do not give free consultations. They realize the value of their time and they demand clients respect it.
This is one of the easiest changes to make in your law firm yet it gives so many attorneys anguish. I am not sure why. Maybe it is insecurity or maybe it is fear of the competition.
If you do none of the other things I recommend on this website, at least start charging for consultations.
And so that you know that I remain congruent with my own advice: I charge $1,500 for a consultation. But that payment can be applied to any subsequent work we do together.
Few people waste my time. But you don’t have to be a law firm marketing expert to have people respect your time.
If you want people to respect you, you must respect yourself. That starts with respecting your most valuable resource, your time.
Law Firm Marketing Plan Starts With Client Selection
Most attorneys do not link their law firm to their lifestyle so linking their law firm marketing to their overall life design is not even in the realm of possibility.
Before I start sounding like someone you would see on Oprah, let me explain what I am getting at:
Your work should enable you to live the kind of life you want. For example: If you want to spend every Friday with your kids, then you should come up with a plan to be able to take Friday’s off. If you only want to work on certain types of matters you should come up with a plan to source only the kinds of clients who have the type of work you are seeking.
If this sounds a bit far-fetched to you, you are too close to the situation to be objective.
Take a deep breath and think about why you started your own practice (or why you assumed your current role) in the first place.
You work to live you do not live to work.
Here is how law firm marketing can help you achieve your goal of developing a practice that will fulfill your lifestyle needs:
Law firm marketing is a broad term for the systems you put in place to attract and retain clients. As with any system, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. If you put nothing in, you get nothing out.
The first step in developing a law firm marketing system that will help enable you to build a fulfilling law practice is to decide who your ideal client is.
Once you have targeted the ideal client, you can then lay out the necessary steps to attract and retain the ideal client.
And herein lies the problem.
Most attorneys never get beyond this step. Most lawyers cannot decide who their ideal client is, or should be.
Take a few minutes right now and think about the clients you have worked with over the last few years. Who were ideal? What qualities did they possess? What type of matters did they bring you? What made those matters better than others you have worked on?
Answering these questions is step one in reshaping your law firm. You need to know who to target before you develop a law firm marketing plan to attract them.
Law Firm Marketing is Your First Step Toward Freedom
Sometimes success can be overwhelming.
Many of the lawyers who implement my recommendations find themselves inundated with new clients inside of a year. This success leads to additional recommendations that are much harder to follow.
Meaning: I instruct busy attorneys to hire associates to take care of most of their clients (do the legal work) and simultaneously to increase the fees they charge clients who work directly with them. The associates should bill at a lower rate than the partner - who presumably has significantly greater experience, skills, knowledge and some kind of unique ability.
A good portion of my clients resist acting on this advice. This resistance stems from two specific fears:
1). Attorneys fear they will lose the clients they currently have and
2). They fear appearing different when compared to everyone else who does what they do.
Both of these fears inhibit the growth of the law firm. Both are as deadly as a bullet fired from a gun.
Here’s why:
Raising fees for new clients may result in a decrease in volume. The clients who choose not to pay your fee do not appreciate the value of working with you. They do not want the guidance and support of a true expert. Rest assured new and better clients will fill the vacuum created by the absence of these shortsighted individuals.
Appearing different is what marketing is all about. Your difference is a competitive advantage.
Most attorneys are sheep marching silently and compliantly into the slaughterhouse of the fee-cutting-client. If you provide more value, and you present that value in a unique way, you stand out from the flock. Not only do you avoid slaughter, but you establish ownership of your own flock. And if you are smart, you harvest wool from your sheep multiple times instead of slaughtering them once.
But this is old news. You have heard this from me before.
Yet you did not take action.
I realized something important a couple of years ago. I was speaking at an event and I was passionately advocating that attorneys raise their fees and fire problem clients. After I was finished with my speech, an attorney came up to me and informed me that she wanted to do everything I described. She wanted to attract valuable clients for life and she wanted to charge premium fees and she wanted to have an exclusive practice with fewer, more valuable clients.
But she didn’t know where to start.
She did not know what the first steps were or how to take them.
That was my fault. I had not been clear about specifically how to make this change in your law firm and develop the practice you deserve.
So I made a change. I did something I had never done before.
I took the information I use to help my clients get started and I packaged it into a system that not only shows you what to do but how to do it. I felt like this was my responsibility. I wanted to give you a cost effective way to get off to a fast start in building the law firm you truly deserve.
This is the exact system, with the exact recommendations that I follow. It works. In fact, I guarantee that it will work for you.
If you want to take a look at it, you can find it by clicking on this Legal Marketing Fast Start link.
Why does this fast start system work?
Because it allows you to make small, incremental changes to your law firm marketing each day. You move at your own pace.
Of course the faster you act, the more clients you attract.
If you seriously want to improve the quality of the clients you attract and you want to grow your law practice and you want to develop the kind of law firm you deserve, you need to take action.
What are you going to do today to take your practice to the next level?
Take that first step now. I want to help, but it really is up to you.
Please note that the reason I want you to visit http://LegalMarketingFastStart.com now is because the investment in this system will increase dramatically in a couple of weeks. If you have ever thought about making a quantum leap in your law practice, now is the time.
