Tag: law firm marketing

Marketing: How to Identify Your Ideal Target Market

The Rainmaker Institute

When it comes to marketing your law firm, identifying your target market is job #1.  If you don’t do that, nothing else you do will matter.

Many attorneys may struggle with developing a concise, detailed description of their target market, but it is vital that you do this or your marketing efforts will fall flat.

Ask yourself these 10 questions when trying to determine your target market:

1.  Who would pay for my service?  People that have legal issues need attorneys, so what specific problems do you solve and who is willing and able to pay for that solution?

2.  Who has already purchased my legal services?  Take a look at your current client base and search for commonalities.

3.  What is the extent of my reach?  What geographic area can you realistically serve?  Based on the type of law you practice, you may need to restrict or expand your area of service.  For example, a divorce attorney will probably have a smaller geographic area than an IP attorney.

4.  Am I making the right assumptions?  As I have said many times, you are not your client.  You need to talk to your existing clients or prospects to see what resonates.

5.  What do people who know me think?  Check in with your network peers to get feedback on who they think is your ideal client.  They may give you some ideas you might never have considered.

6.  How am I going to make money?  Are you charging by the hour or by the case?  This can determine who will be best able to afford your services.

7.  How am I going to sell my services?  Different marketing methods appeal to different demographics.  If your target skews young, social media will probably be a top priority for you.

8.  What are my competitors doing?  Looking at what your competitors are doing can help you define your target market – and then you can develop strategies for differentiating yourself.

9.  How will I find clients?  Once you have started identifying your target market, you will need to determine how you can market to them efficiently.  If you plan to use a website and social media as a key strategy, you will need to understand their online behavior patterns.  If you plan to get referrals, you will need a strategy to build a good referral partner base.

10.  Are there options to expand my target market?  This will largely depend on your practice area, but one way to expand your target market is by creating a niche within your practice area.  For example, if you are an estate planning attorney, you may want to develop a sub-specialty in asset protection for wealthy professionals.

ARTICLE BY

Stephen Fairley
OF
The Rainmaker Institute

I’ve Never Seen ANYTHING Like This Law Firm’s Holiday Card. Never.

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I’ve ranted about and railed against boring or clichéd holiday cards for decades, yet nearly every day in December another one or two (or ten) bland and politically correct cards featuring snowy landscapes or skylines, ice skaters, or children’s holiday artwork arrive, unsigned, in my mailbox.  <Open. Glance. Toss.>

Today’s mail, however, was pretty interesting.  I received just two cards, juxtaposed below. The one on the right was a fairly typical example, from an old friend, a terrific T&E lawyer I’ve known since we were ten years old.  Great guy, but I don’t love his annual too-safe “Seasons Greetings” cards.

Two different holiday cards

The card on the left was from California’s Springer & Roberts, “Disability Lawyers You Can Trust ®.”

Disability Lawyers You Can Trust ®

(First, I’ve never liked the “…  you can trust” tag lines, because it implies that your competitors are liars or cheats.  Plus, I’m immediately wary of anyone who promises that I can trust them.  But that’s not the point here.)

The card shows two lawyers dressed up in ballerina costumes while holding (1) a Benefits Law book and (2) a legal pad. Four adorable jammie’d kids, obviously their children are asleep below, “while visions of ERISA lawyers danced in their heads.”

Close-up of Holiday Cards featuring two Attorneys dressed up as Ballerinas

Now THAT is pretty gutsy, and the card certainly caught my attention. I don’t know these lawyers, but I can infer that they’re family-oriented and don’t take themselves too seriously.

The card’s punny headline, “We never dance around insurance companies, and our ERISA litigation is always en pointe!” is pretty forced.

We never dance around insurance companies, and our ERISA litigation is always en pointe!

But overall, you must respect the effort.  These lawyers clearly know who they are and their clients apparently like this about them.  They’ve broken through the clutter and conveyed their message pretty effectively.  They took a big risk, but I think it worked well for them. (I wonder what their card looked like last year? Is this an annual thing? )

while visions of ERISA lawyers danced in their heads

Of course, if you wanted to learn more about them, their website contains 2,000-word biographies, possibly the longest I’ve ever seen (that’s 8 double-spaced pages!).  I obviously only skimmed them, but I still got the sense that they’re nice, smart, and dedicated lawyers.

I’m glad these lawyers sent me their card.  And that’s not something I say every day. 

All images are copyrighted.

ARTICLE BY

Ross Fishman
OF
Fishman Marketing, Inc.

How to Measure Your Email Marketing Performance

The Rainmaker Institute

Email newsletters have proven to be one of the most effective methods for attorneys to market themselves to prospects, clients and referral sources.  Every year, email marketing service provider MailerMailer provides a report on email marketing metrics across 34 different industries, including Legal.

They have just issued their 2014 report, based on data gathered from 62,000 newsletter campaigns totaling 1.18 billion emails sent between Jan. 1, 2013 and Dec. 31, 2013.  Here are the results — and what should be your new benchmarks — for your law firm newsletter:

Open rate (what percentage of your recipients opened your email):  13.5%

Click rate (what percentage of your recipients clicked on a link in your email)::  1.6%

Click-to-open rate (of the recipients who opened your email, what percentage of them clicked on a link):  11.8%

Bounce rate (the percentage of emails that cannot be delivered):  2.4%

Every email service (Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, iContact, etc.) provides these statistics for each newsletter you send out.  If your newsletters are not delivering at rates that meet or exceed the benchmarks above, you have a problem.

Here’s what you should consider to improve your click, open and bounce rates:

Are your subject lines engaging to entice people to open your email?  Short subject lines — 4 to 15 characters — generate the highest open and click rates.

Are you sending emails on the right day and at the right time?  The highest open rates occur on Mondays and the highest click rates occur on Sundays.  Open rates peak during the early part of the day, between 8 a.m. and noon.

Is your email list updated regularly and cleaned of old, undeliverable email addresses?  Bounce rates are inescapable but can be improved if you send out emails on a regular basis.

Have you segmented your email list so you can tailor your content to your different audiences?  Targeted emails deliver 18 times more revenue than general blast emails.

Are your emails personalized? Personalizing the message content can boost open rates significantly.

Do you use a responsive design template so your emails are displayed properly for every screen size?  More than half of emails are now opened on mobile devices.

If your newsletters are performing at or above these benchmarks, you may still have some work to do: if you don’t know the source of your success, you can’t repeat it.

ARTICLE BY

Stephen Fairley
OF
The Rainmaker Institute

A 10-Point Health Check for Your Law Firm Marketing

The Rainmaker Institute

A legal news aggregation website called LawFuel.com recently ran a post with a 10-point checklist of how law firms can gauge the health (and effectiveness) of their legal marketing programs.

Here’s the list — how are you performing?

1.  Does your firm encourage cross-selling among attorneys?  If you have multiple practice areas and lawyers who specialize in each area, then those lawyers should be cross-selling your services.  Make sure all your attorneys understand your total offerings.

2.  Is your staff involved in marketing?  Your legal marketing efforts should touch every member of your staff, who are your ambassadors to pass along your expertise to their contacts.

3.  Do you have a program for keeping in touch with former clients?  This is a no-brainer.  Add them all to your monthly e-newsletter list and establish a system for sending out keep-in-touch emails that doesn’t require any babysitting from busy lawyers.

4.  Are all your lawyers engaged in business development?  If not, implement a training program on your marketing messaging and encourage them to get out and network.

5.  Is your website current?  An out-of-date website tells prospects that your firm is out of date.

6.  Is anyone managing your online reputation?  Reputation management is critical for law firms.  You should have this task assigned to someone (internal or external) who regularly conducts online searches for your firm name and attorney names. If something bad pops up, you should have a process for dealing with it effectively.

7.  Are all your attorney bios up to date online?  Every attorney should have a complete and current bio with a professional photos on LinkedIn, Avvo, Martindale, etc.

8.  Do you have a blog?  A blog is one of the best ways for you to market to your niche, highlighting your practice areas and pumping out fresh content that showcases your expertise in each.

9.  Are you providing added value to clients?  Providing clients with value above and beyond what they are paying for will keep them coming back.

10. Are you micro-managing the client experience?  Do clients have to wait when they show up for an appointment?  Are you offering them something to drink and making them feel at home?  If not, you need to take another look at how your firm treats clients because they are measuring you not just against other law firms but against every service provider they know.  And if they don’t like the fit, they won’t be back.

ARTICLE BY

Stephen Fairley
OF
The Rainmaker Institute

Grow Your Email List for Free in 5 Simple Steps

The Rainmaker Institute

Lots of law firms struggle with compiling and maintaining a robust email marketing list, and they really struggle with how to keep adding qualified names to help them build a better list.  If you are recognizing yourself as you read this, then the good news is that you can actually build a great list for your firm and it doesn’t need to cost you a dime.

Here are five simple steps you can take to keep growing that important list of people you want to market to:

Grow Your Email List for Free in 5 Simple Steps, Money Tree

1.  Provide something of value.   Take the top 5 or 10 questions that clients ask you most often, write down the answers and turn that content into an e-book or report.  Post this on your website and blog and offer it as a free download to people who provide you with their name and email address.  The people who take you up on your offer are good prospects since they are clearly interested in the kind of problems you solve.  Add their names to your email marketing list to continue the conversation.

2.  Tell them what to do.  Your e-newsletter, your website and your blog should always contain easy-to-find calls-to-action that invite readers to subscribe, download a free report, make an appointment for a free consultation — anything you’d like them to do that could lead to business for you.  All your calls-to-action need to be simple and have the ability to collect email addresses for you.

3.  Keep reviewing your offers.  If your readers are not responding well to your calls-to-action or offers, then what you are offering is clearly not appealing to them.  First be sure that they are easy to understand.  If you’re still not getting a good response, change up your offers.  You should do this anyway every few months to keep things fresh.

4.  Use social media.  Using social media to spread the word about your valuable content and offers is a great way to attract more prospects that you might have otherwise missed.   LinkedIn groups are a great way to spread the word, but be sure you’re not being too promotional too often.

5.  Pay attention to the analytics.  You can gain valuable insight into what people are responding to on your website and in your e-newsletter by scouring the statistics.  Google Analytics is a free add-on for your website and blog and provides great information on what pages people are spending time on, and what isn’t working so well.  If you use Constant Contact or a similar service for your e-newsletters, these services provide information on how many people opened and read your newsletter and what they clicked on. 

By using these five simple steps, you are not just adding names to your list, you are getting truly qualified leads for your marketing efforts.

ARTICLE BY

Stephen Fairley
 
OF
The Rainmaker Institute

How to Get Amazing Attention for Your Firm on Social Media

The Rainmaker Institute

Human beings are wired for loving the spotlight.  When you post something on social media and no one comments or likes, it feels almost like a personal rejection.  And when you’re posting to get attention for your business and no one cares what you’re writing, you are wasting your time.

social mediaOne of the most important ways to get noticed on social media — especially on Twitter — is to make sure your post has a great headline.  There are actually very good psychological reasons for using certain words that makes it almost irresistible for people to click.  Here are 8 proven formulas to craft your headlines around:

  1. Surprise — using words that surprise or startle captures attention because we love novelty.  Words that break the pattern stand out.
  2. Questions — using questions works because a question mark stimulates the human brain to seek an answer.
  3. Curiosity — using incomplete information in your headline to pique curiosity.  A famous example of this is the 1926 ad with the headline, “They laughed when I sat down at the piano…but when I started to play…!”
  4. Negatives — using negative superlatives like “worst” or “stop” intrigues us because we want to know if there is something we shouldn’t be doing.
  5. How to — we all want to get better, so using “how to” in your headline makes a promise of improving the reader’s knowledge.
  6. Numbers — because humans dislike uncertainty, we respond well to numbers in headlines.
  7. Reader referencing — using phrases like, “For those who don’t know what to do after a car accident” or just the word “you” are powerful drivers.
  8. Specifics — quantifiable facts and figures that elicit an image in our head are incredibly intriguing.

Here are more than 180 power words to use in your headlines, courtesy of CoSchedule.com:

power words

ARTICLE BY:

Stephen Fairley
OF:
The Rainmaker Institute

Making These 3 Errors in WordPress Makes Your Law Firm’s Blog Less Effective

Correct Consults Logo

Here are three common WordPress mistakes that will make your legal website less effective than it should be:

  1. Posting content that is not unique, engaging or well designed. Unstructured information, filler materials and overly general articles do not motivate a user to interact with the site. Your goal should be to create content that users want to share or bookmark or research further by following your in-text links.
  2. Getting caught up in finding the perfect WP template and design. Many inexperienced website authors expend all their energy before even considering content development. A lot of sites use generic content that reads like it was added as an afterthought. It is hard to schedule time to generate good content but when most people say, “Oh, I’ll come back to improve that later,” they never do.
  3. Failing to design each page for its intended purpose. Out-of-the-box WordPress themes use similar forms and sidebars on every page. It is important for the design (as well as the content) to serve the page’s purpose.
Article By:

Tanner Jones
Of:
Consultwebs.com, Inc.

The Right Way To Get Free Publicity

Great Legal Marketing

 

There’s a saying that goes “any publicity is good publicity,” and while I’m not so sure about that, I do know that positive publicity can do wonders for your law firm. But do you know what’s even better than positive publicity? FREE positive publicity.  That’s right, you can get great publicity that won’t cost you a single penny and I’m going to tell you how:

  • Contact your local TV news station.  Email, fax, or call your local news station and introduce yourself. Tell them who you are and what you do, and don’t forget to mention what you specialize in. Tell them that you are available if they ever need an expert to speak on a legal topic, especially in your niche.  Do this once a month until they contact you to be interviewed. If you do a good job, they’ll keep coming back to you and your face will continue to be broadcast on local television for free.
  • Notify different mediums of the media.  Once you’ve been interviewed on TV, let your local radio stations and newspapers know. They will see you as a leading expert in your field and they will follow you and want to ask you to interview with them.  This way, you can recycle interviews and information without being redundant.
  • Clip and recycle.  Once you have been interviewed on TV a few times, you’ll want to compile all of your interviews into one video that you can share online and use on you website to show potential clients that you are the leading expert in your field. With an easy editing software, you can clip the highlights of all your interviews and recycle them into one powerful, credibility-building video.
  • Testimonials.  If you host an event or seminar, bring a cameraman along with you.  After the event, have your cameraman politely ask attendees if he can interview them about their experience. If you’re a great lawyer, then I’ll bet you can host a great event, so you know that everyone who agrees to do an interview will do nothing but rave about you and the knowledge you possess. Take these testimonials and upload them to YouTube, your website, and social media so everyone can see how awesome you are.
  • Be educational.  The best way to show that you are a credible expert in your field is to prove it rather than just advertise it. In order to prove this, you need to be the source of information for all questions and topics in your field of law. So, you should blog, write articles, make videos, and even publish books on your wealth of information that you have about your practice area(s). When you hand someone a book that you authored instead of a flimsy advertisement with your face on it, you are creating great publicity and credibility for yourself and your firm.
Article By:

Ben Glass
Of:
Great Legal Marketing, Inc.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Investing in a Lead Generation Service

RWLogoWide

 

In order to grow your firm, you need to invest in a reliable marketing and advertising program. Lead generation services are a great alternative to investing and managing your own campaigns, which can be both costly and time consuming for the average attorney. Lead generation services can not only offer you consistent, quality leads but also provide you with a total marketing package that allows you to manage those leads. There are a slew of companies that will make you a lot of promises, but how do you know which ones are legitimate?

What steps should you take before you decide the right company for your firm’s needs?

Lead Generation Service Marketing Law Firm Legal

Do Your Research

Not all lead generation services are equal. Some will scam you. Some will give you old or undesirable leads. Some will give you leads but don’t offer additional marketing services and support that will ensure continued success.

Research several companies and find out their reputation. Look for a company with longevity, positive client testimonials and a desire to see your law firm succeed. One who knows that their best interest as a marketing firm is to do whatever it takes to grow your law firm; their success is 100% dependent upon yours. No other lead generation service will be worth your hard earned dollars if they don’t care enough to be the best.

Do Make a Long Term Commitment to Your Firm’s Success

Be wary of companies that encourage a short-term approach to your advertising needs. Marketing and advertising is an ongoing commitment. Any successful advertising program, whether it’s done internally or through lead generation services requires two things: patience and time. A consistent stream of new potential clients is the key to long-term, sustained growth for any firm. This can’t be done with a stop and start approach to your marketing.

Don’t Ignore Industry Trends

Effective marketing for a personal injury practice is changing and evolving. It is imperative that you invest in an advertising service that follows closely with potential client’s search behaviors. The firm must employ a diversified approach that will reach at anytime a wide variety of potential clients. Advances in media means potential clients use various devices to stay connected. Whether it’s TV, internet or mobile, the right company will employ more than one of these sources to generate leads for your firm. Using an agency that employs only one of these methods means you are putting all your eggs in one basket – which is never an effective way to spend your advertising dollars.

Getting your firm’s name out there and making it effortless for potential clients to reach you in their time of need is critical to growing your practice. Paid lead generation can be beneficial when used and managed correctly.

Finding the right legal marketing firm that can provide you the ultimate lead generation service, that has exclusive, quality leads in your geographic area in combination with a marketing package that is all inclusive, can be a challenging process.

Article by:

Anush Alexander

Of:

RW Lynch Company, Inc.

Bad Precedent: Lawyer Censured for Buying Google Keywords for Other Lawyers and Law Firms

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I thoroughly disagree with this anti-competitive, anti-consumer censure. It’s bad precedent.

Google Keywords

I was the defense’s law firm marketing/social media expert witness in Habush vs. Cannon & Dunphy on this very issue (although the lawsuit was filed under a Wisconsin state “invasion of privacy” statute).

This is common practice online.  When you Google “Avis,” a sponsored link for Hertz shows up in the margin.  The user isn’t deceived and everyone gets more information and more choices, which is good for consumers.  It’s a strategy that helps smaller firms with smaller marketing budgets compete against big-name, big-budget firms.

This keyword-bidding strategy is certainly aggressive, but it shouldn’t be considered unethical or unprofessional; it’s simply an issue of taste, which is subjective.  We shouldn’t legislate taste.

 

Article by:

Ross Fishman

Of:

Fishman Marketing, Inc.