Legal Marketing Archives - Page 16 of 34

How to Set a Simple Social Media Strategy for Your Law Firm

With the proliferation of new social media networks and seemingly constant changes to existing ones, attorneys aren’t the only ones confused about how to tackle social media for marketing.

Add to that the fact that most attorneys don’t have much time to devote to social media — nor do they have a department of experts at their beck and call — and you understand the need for setting a strategy that is as simple and sensible as possible for busy lawyers.

I used to recommend that attorneys be somewhat active on all social networks. That was when there were two or three of them. Now it would be silly to make that recommendation. Instead, you need to narrow your focus to the networks that your clients frequent. And how do you know what those are? You begin by defining the key demographics of your target audience.

Those key demographics include gender, age, income, occupation, industry and education level. These will guide you to which social networks you are likely to find your ideal clients. You can find demographic information for most social networking platforms on the Pew Research Center website.

This social media checklist from the Whole Brain Group will provide you with a how-to guide for completing the important exercise of setting a simple social media strategy that will work for your law firm:

Article By Stephen Fairley of The Rainmaker Institute

2016 Legal Marketing Challenges Opportunities – Jim Matsoukas [PODCAST]

Legal marketing can be a challenge, but it also comes with numerous opportunities. Jim Matsoukas from Pierce Atwood, LLC talks about a variety of marketing tactics in this podcast. Learn about what works, what doesn’t work, and how to use these tactics for your firm.

John McDougall: Hi, I’m John McDougall and welcome to the Legal Marketing Review Show on National Law Review. Today my guest is Jim Matsoukas, CMO and Director of Business Development at the Law Office of Pierce Atwood. Welcome, Jim.

Jim Matsoukas: How are you doing, John?

Legal Marketing Challenges for 2016

John: Really good. So what are some of your biggest legal marketing challenges for 2016?

Jim: That’s a good question. I think one definite challenge is actually a challenge and an opportunity. [We need to] be smarter about how we go about marketing ourselves digitally and making our website more friendly and more efficient and convenient for people that come to take a look at it. I think that’s very important. That’s something that we have to keep working on. The technology keeps developing and the competition keeps increasing. People keep using digital methods to shop more often, so we need to keep on top of that. That’s definitely one. I think this might be related to that, but SEO optimization is always top of the mind. What we’re finding is that our traffic is increasing in terms of people finding us through organic search. We have to be more sophisticated and more strategic about the language we use on the site and the language that we use in our ads and in our alerts, articles, and publications and how that matches up with people looking for legal services. I think that’s important.

John: Those are two good ones. On the first one, I don’t know if you’ve heard this stat and I’m trying to think of where I’ve heard it, but Chief Marketing Officers are now spending more than Chief Technology Officers. Marketing has become more technical.

Jim: I couldn’t agree more with that. I sort of consider myself a CMO/CIO, because you have to be these days. Obviously I don’t deal with the intricacies of the technology as much as a CIO does, but I have to know a hell of a lot about it, because I have to understand how the technology works in order to take advantage of it in the best possible way. So, I keep up with that constantly. I think you have to continue to read and go to panels that are technically oriented and so on.

Legal Marketing Opportunities for 2016

John: Yeah, it changes like the wind. What are some of your biggest legal marketing opportunities for 2016?

Jim: Like I said before, the challenge and the opportunity are similar there. Like in digital and website and SEO optimization – those are all key opportunities, but they’re very challenging. It’s two sides of the same coin. Other things that I consider opportunities are to focus more on what we do best and what we do well. Continue to provide proportional support across the firm. What makes a firm different from a corporation is that corporations are more hierarchical and are more able to market and select things and sacrifice other things for strategic reasons. That makes sense for them as a business. We do the same thing, but when you’re a firm, you have to make sure that everybody within your firm, regardless of whether they’re a leading service or supporting service or a niche service, they all have a role to play. So when you’re the CMO of a firm, you have to make sure that you’re balanced and a little bit adventurous in the right way and everybody’s getting that level of investment that they should and they deserve. That’s a continuing challenge, but it’s an opportunity. If you do it well, if you don’t squander resources and you sell what the firm is best at and everybody understands the role they play in sales activity, which is really healthy. That’s something we focus on a lot. Another opportunity is we’re growing quite a bit in Boston, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and DC. We want to keep that momentum going. A real opportunity for is us that we’re finding [people] are finding us more and more attractive because they see us as a high quality firm that has a relatively low overhead, so we can get people that are lead practitioners who want to lower their rates a bit for their clients, but still socialize and be part of a firm that has a very high level of performance. So far, that’s been a real success for us and we want to try to keep that going, while at the same time making sure that there’s a cultural fit with the people we bring on. We’re a team oriented firm, so everybody shares information and credit. That’s important. I guess the last thing I was saying would be I constantly advise people and train people who focus on clients before leads and look backwards. A lot of times the natural reaction in marketing is to develop more leads and raise more awareness. That’s all very important and we do that continuously, but you have to balance that with knowing where your current contacts are and what your current clients need, and branch out from that. We always know where our bread and butter [comes from] and how developing our leads relates to what we’re currently doing well with and who we’re working for.

John: So being more strategic about the whole process, where it’s easy to just hop on the latest tactic.

Jim: Exactly. You have to balance a lot of different variables when you’re managing the place. So we want to bring the latest techniques in and we want to do it in a way that fits within our current structure and our current approach to the market.

SEO vs. Social Media vs. Paid Search

John: What about tactically? What holds the most promise – SEO, social media, or paid search? I know mentioned SEO quite a bit, but what do you think in 2016, given what you just said and aligning to your positioning and growth plans, what tactically do you think matches well with that?

Jim: As far as digital marketing tactics go, I think SEO is definitely number one for us. We have to be more and more intelligent about how to do that. We’re working hard on that. Then, we’re trying to integrate all of the different digital initiatives that we have, whether they be the way we invite people to events, the way we communicate with our contacts regarding new legal developments, publications and articles, and all participation. What we’re trying to do is bring all of that together so that everything we do has a rationale and supports our search engine optimization strategy. In everything we do, we’re trying to make sure that it fits into how people find us and then build on the way in which people are currently finding us. That also opens up other paths for them to come in. So, that’s what holds the most promise for us. I think SEO is definitely the focus. We don’t do as much paid search, because we don’t think that given what we do, it really helps us a whole lot. We did do a lot of social media, in terms of keeping the word out there and spreading information about the firm, and we’re continuously pushing that out. So I don’t mean to say we ignore social media, but SEO has a more direct connection to our sales process.

John: I was just going to ask if you had to only budget for SEO, or social media, which would you do and why? But I think you can probably knock that one off pretty quick given what you just said.

Jim: Definitely, it would be SEO. Before the advent of a lot of digital marketing, let’s go back to 20-25 years ago, if you think about people being out and about and constantly going to events and socializing, networking, and circulating, you have to do that when you’re selling knowledge and you’re selling professional services. To me, social media is the current version of that, where you have to be out there and constantly interact in putting information up and sharing with others. And then interacting with people within this social media realm. A lot of that is very similar to in-person networking, it’s just another layer that you have to do today. That’s more of like a routine investment that you have to constantly make. But if I had to budget and choose, I would definitely put more money towards SEO than social media.

John: Right, and just to further elaborate on where you’re headed with that, it sounds like the thought leadership piece and doing SEO, not in just the old way where it’s just kind of cramming keywords in. You have to put the keywords there, but within reason and Google is looking for topics and in-depth content. But it has to now really be based on thought leadership, right?

Jim: I couldn’t agree more. One of the key challenges we have though is when you’re dealing with law, inserting the keywords becomes a real challenge because the way in which the law is expressed is very technical. When you’re translating legal knowledge into every day conversation, which is usually what you do on the web and in advertisements, you have to be very careful what language you use. You can lead people down the wrong path very quickly if you say things the wrong way. So we have to be real careful about that. I think it’s a bigger challenge for not only a law firm, but for anybody that is selling a complex service. The way you phrase things sometimes is in conflict with the way they should be phrased to be successful in the search engines.

Legal Compliance Issues

John: That’s a nice lead actually into the next question. Are compliance issues for content marketing getting in the way of your legal marketing, or are they manageable?

Jim: You know, the answer to that is they always get in the way. In terms of compliance issues, they’re pretty strict in the legal marketplace, and if you’re dealing with individual consumers, they’re very strict. If we’re marketing things like that our trust & estates practice or if we’re marketing services to individuals or maybe residential real estate or something like that, we have to be very, very careful. You can’t deceive someone who is not sophisticated about the law and you can’t go after them in a way that persuades them of something they shouldn’t be doing. For our more important market, which is the commercial market and in-house counseling and corporate officers and things of that nature, regulation is still strict, but the regulations are really designed to protect the person who is unsophisticated. That market is more sophisticated, so we can be a little more liberal. We still adhere to what we need to adhere to. When you’re talking to someone who knows a product very well that you’re trying to sell, there’s less of a chance that you’re going to deceive or mislead them, or possibly persuade them to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do. So we’re very careful. The bottom line is, they get in the way, but it’s manageable. It’s a skill that you develop over a number of years in this industry. You begin to understand how to phrase things so that the regulators are okay, the bar associations are okay, but you’re still getting your job done. It’s a constant tug o’ war.

John: That is what you do as an attorney. It’s definitely tough for attorneys and banks and financial services and certain things, but at the same time, the good news is that you’re attorneys, so you have a leg up in that sense. But it’s still challenging.

Jim: It’s something you always have to pay attention to, and you can’t be too free and loose about it.

PPC Marketing

John: We talked a bit about paid search, but do you think it’s a good alternative to or in addition to content marketing, or were you basically saying you haven’t had great energy towards PPC?

Jim: We haven’t had great luck with it. We’ve tried it a couple of times, and what we find is that our market is not as likely to pay attention to paid search or not as likely to use it to find legal services. A lot of times, when you look at the sponsored listings in search engines versus the organic listings, our market tends to go to the organic. When we tried paid search, it had some effect and some success, but we find that the market we’re going after is less likely to come to us through that path. The reason for that is a lot of the phrases that people are paying for are very, very expensive in the legal realm, or at least the more popular ones. So, what we might do in the future is we might look for specific niches, language-wise and practice-wise, that we can use in paid search that are not as popular but that we happen to be particularly strong in. Then we’ll do some tests and see what might work there. That’s been a challenge for us.

John: Yeah, I think it’s a challenge with all of legal. We’ve managed quite a bit of legal [marketing.] Millions and millions of dollars of paid search, like mesothelioma, lawyers, auto accident attorneys. These clicks are the most expensive. It was interesting. Hubspot came out with the top most expensive paid search clicks in an infographic recently. Even mesothelioma got beat out by auto accident attorneys in specific cities. So it’s fascinating, you know, $670 per click.

Jim: I think those personal injury type practices are more likely to use that. I think for a good reason. They’re economic model is different. They spend a lot of money in bringing leads in, and then filtering them and hoping that they hit the right lead and make a lot of money on a contingent basis with a good case. Whereas our business model is very different. We’re not in the personal injury market, so what we do is a lot of corporate defense and working with people to strategize with them about how they can move their businesses forward and still be legally compliant and taking advantage of different things that the legal system might offer. When you do that, we don’t spend a lot of money up front and get it back on contingency, we’re much more of a retainer billed and hourly billed type of thing. This makes spending a lot of money on paid search a little more difficult.

John: Back to our earlier thought on how thought leadership is important. Your potential customer, if they think you’re just buying ads, they’re not as likely to be impressed either. So that’s part of the reason organic is just so critical for your market. They want to hire services and legal providers that are at the top of the real results with authentic content. Not that paid search is bad, we love paid search for the right things and even non-personal injury work. We’ve certainly been doing that quite well. But the ultimate is having that organic presence.

Jim: At least for our business. So there’s a perception of different tactics that you use in addition to the content. So if, like you said, if you used too much advertisement or too much paid search or too much push, sometimes a brand like ours gets tarnished a bit by overdoing it. So, we have to balance that very carefully. I guess the phrase would be “tasteful” marketing, because some of types of clients that we have are more likely to be impressed by our ability to pick our spots and have some restraint with what we do and not to be too over-the-top. That’s for our brand.

Legal Marketing & Blogging

John: That makes a lot of sense. What about challenges and opportunities from blogging? What do you think the issues are there?

Jim: You know John, I think blogging is great. I’ve pushed that as much as I can here. The biggest challenge we have with blogging is content generation. To make a blog work, you have to have a certain level of frequency with posting. It’s very difficult sometimes for attorneys that have high billable hours that are always working, and then they have other things that they’re doing with their non-billable time like other marketing opportunities and other professional opportunities. It becomes difficult for them to be a consistent blogger. Sometimes, they can get around that by having [other people] writing for them and having them review it. But what I’ve found is that only gets you so far because it’s the attorney’s knowledge that is driving the blog and it’s their ability to know what to say about what topic that really drives the interest of the blog. So there’s just so much you can help them with that. They really have to generate a lot of that on their own. So that’s the main challenge for it, but as far as a tool, it’s one of the best tools, especially for establishing your authority and your thought leadership and making sure that you have content out there all the time that is being clicked on or looked at. It opens up conversations. I think it’s a wonderful too.

John: Yeah, you just have to keep working on creative ideas, like podcasting and video, and doing things with the attorneys that might get content out of their voice without always having them write. You know, balance I’m sure.

Jim: It’s just making it as easy for them as possible and getting them to commit to some type of routine. Which is difficult, because their lives go up and down. You have peaks and troughs. When the peaks come, things tend to fall off the map and then the trough comes and they’re back. It’s hard to keep it going sometimes.

John: I think the good news though is that you have quite a few attorneys, so even if they got on a once a quarter schedule, but it was enough attorneys so you at least have a blog post a week, then the challenge is partially back on the marketing team to then go promote the content. And the attorneys too should share the links to the content they create, so it’s not just post it and hope that Google does everything. It should really be a matter of sharing that content. That’s where it’s a little easier for your marketing staff to actually go share that content and these days, it’s important to have a lot of content, but a big mistake we see people making and we certainly made it for a while, was putting 90% of effort into the blogging and 10% into the promotion. It really needs to be somewhat split, if not more towards the promotion than the creation.

Jim: That’s a good point. I agree with you, and we have to work harder at that.

LinkedIn & LinkedIn Pulse in 2016

John: Some of that, the attorney doesn’t have to do. That sort of leads into LinkedIn, where you can certainly use LinkedIn to help attorneys share their content, whether it’s LinkedIn Pulse or doing a status update with a post that they created. Whether it’s once a month or even once a quarter for that attorney. LinkedIn can help. What do you see opportunities are for doing more with LinkedIn, or not, in 2016?

Jim: We’ll definitely do more. In fact, LinkedIn has lowered the threshold to get the information out there than having the blog discipline. We’ve gotten to a point now where the attorneys are pretty savvy, at least the ones we’ve talked to and explained it to and that’s quite a few, and they post what they do on LinkedIn routinely. If they have a new alert that goes out, or a new article, or a panels discussion, or an engagement that they’re allowed to talk about, those things are posted on LinkedIn relatively routinely. We’re getting much more sophisticated in terms of searching for particular groups and affiliations and getting people to use their list of contacts in a very strategic way. The right people are getting the right information. I see us doing more investment in LinkedIn in 2016.

John: That’s great, and I really appreciate your tips today Jim. How can people get in touch with you?

Jim: They’re welcome to either go on the website at pierceatwood.com, they can see my bio on the website and all the attorney bios. They’re also welcome to call if they want to call, it’s (617) 488-8206 and I’ll be happy to talk to them. Then look at information that’s going out from the firm. Hopefully there’s enough out there that people might find out about us.

John: Absolutely. Well, thanks again Jim for speaking to us today.

Jim: Thanks for the opportunity, John.

John: Check out legalmarketingreview.com as well as the National Law Review at natlawreview.com for more information and interviews on legal marketing. I’m John McDougall, thanks for listening.

Article By John McDougall of McDougall Interactive

Coaching Tips for Partners and CMOs

“I tried coaching that associate but it didn’t work.”

“Well,” I asked, “What did you say to him?”
“I told him to stop annoying the clients, but he keeps doing it.”

Unfortunately, both supervising lawyers and leading a law firm are far more complicated than simply telling people what to do. When facing an environment of change and uncertainty, or even when helping a single associate overcome some professional hurdle, coaching can be an invaluable strategy. With its increasing popularity, the word “coaching” is often used colloquially as a proxy for giving advice, providing direction, consulting, and other activities. Whereas, professional coaching organizations define it as helping people explore and discover answers for themselves. Have you ever repeated the same wisdom or advice to someone a dozen times but they just didn’t get it? It is frustrating, isn’t it? You have something valuable to contribute, but it just isn’t getting through. Most people give up at this stage, thinking that they have done everything they can, and dismissing the person as “hopeless” or “impossible.” Obviously, one’s ability to manage such situations improves with training and experience; but even a basic understanding of coaching principles can make a huge difference in your effectiveness in circumstances where your usual approaches simply are not working. Here are some tips to consider when coaching associates and partners.

The Relationship is the Foundation

Your ability to be effective with someone is directly proportional to the strength of your relationship. If you don’t like them, don’t try to coach them. You can be the most brilliant and knowledgeable person in the world, but if you don’t like the person or if you suspect that he or she don’t like or respect you, game over. That lawyer won’t listen to anything you have to say. You might think, “I’m really good at hiding my opinions,” but people are far more perceptive than we imagine. Unless you have an Academy Award for acting, don’t even try. What you can do, however, and what does make a difference, is to make a concerted effort to improve your relationship. Go to lunch. Find shared interests, talk about family, look for common values and beliefs, etc. Once you have established a rapport, you are in a position to initiate much more meaningful discussions.

What if the person is too busy and doesn’t seem interested in taking time for lunch? Building a relationship in this situation is very similar to the challenge law firm lawyers face when approaching corporate counsel. No one has time for trivial conversation. People are busy and may not be inclined to talk about their weekends. Nonetheless, they will appreciate anything you can do to actually help them. In such circumstances, making a key introduction or sending them an article related to their practice areas, for example, are substantive ways to generate a more positive relationship with someone, even if there have been tensions or disagreements in the past. In turn, this paves the way for more in-depth conversations and the opportunity to offer coaching or guidance.

See Their Greatness

In the world of coaching, we start with the premise that, as human beings, we all have wonderful qualities that are part of the fabric of who we are, such as integrity, generosity, caring, creativity, humor, commitment, joy, among many others. These essential characteristics are different from person to person. On the other hand, human beings also have a less delightful side, the part that comes out when we are stressed or just trying to survive in the world. In your role as a coach, your job is to focus on the positive and help people to act in alignment with that side of themselves. For example, a lawyer may be angry, frustrated or recalcitrant; but those traits may be manifesting in reaction to a deep level of commitment. Lawyers who genuinely care about doing a great job for clients or creating a supportive and collegial work environment may become angry or upset when their goals and commitments are stymied. To coach such a person effectively, you should appreciate and acknowledge that he or she is, fundamentally, a caring, committed person (rather than focusing on the fact that, in the moment, he or she may be acting like a jerk).

Ask, Don’t Tell

As smart, capable human beings, we tend to look at other people’s problems and see simple solutions. Yet, think back for a minute to a time when you were stuck, really stuck. This could be when you were trying to decide whether to leave a job or a relationship, or perhaps when trying to achieve a seemingly impossible goal. Lots of people gave you advice, and it probably didn’t make much difference. Still, maybe you got lucky, and there was someone in your life, a friend, a relative, a coach, who asked you questions and helped you to figure out what you needed to move forward.

This principle of asking rather than telling applies at all stages of coaching. Just because you see a problem doesn’t mean the person wants to talk about it. If you saw an obese person, you wouldn’t automatically assume that he or she were ready to dive in and discuss a weight loss program. It’s the same with coaching. Everyone has issues that they are working on, or that they know to be obstacles, but which they don’t necessarily wish to discuss. To coach effectively, you need to work with whatever the person wants to talk about or whatever seems most important to them. As the conversation develops, you can look for opportunities to bring up what you see as their opportunity for growth. For example, an associate may mention that he is frustrated that he can never seem to leave work early enough to see his children before they go to bed. Maybe you think that he should be more organized or delegate more. Clearly, there is a relationship between these respective agendas. Once you start looking for it, there are usually ways to connect the concerns of the person you are coaching with whatever issue you would like them to address.

Motivation is Key

The lawyers you work with are smart and capable; or, if they are not, you will want to rethink your hiring and firing practices. Therefore, if your attorneys are not making progress with something critically important for their careers, like business development or improving an important skill, then there may be a lack of true motivation. This is tricky because even the lawyers themselves may not be clear about their own desires. I had a client recently who was of counsel and hired me because she wanted to become a partner. She wanted to make more money, have more independence, and gain more status. We came up with a great business development plan. It was aligned with her skills, talents and interests; and it inspired her. Nevertheless, it soon became clear that she wasn’t making much progress. When we examined the situation more closely it became evident that she didn’t really want to become a partner. Although, theoretically she liked the idea, when she really thought about the partners’ lives, from her perspective, they did not look appealing. The partners worked even longer hours, spent all their social time with clients, and had even “less of a life” than my client. Once her true feelings became clear, she realized she would prefer to work elsewhere and is now employed in the federal government. Another client with similar concerns about becoming a partner decided to stay at her firm, but with the understanding that she is creating a version of partnership that works for her, rather than emulating the life and work choices exemplified by her colleagues. Of course, it is unlikely that your lawyers will confess to you if they have mixed feeling about partnership or practicing law. However, it is useful for you to recognize, as someone trying to encourage, mentor or coach them, that one reason for resistance or lack of progress could be that they are ambivalent about their present career trajectory.

Accept Emotions

Lawyers often think that work should be separate from emotions, and that we should be objective and professional at all times. Yet, in reality, people get frustrated and scream at colleagues, burst into tears, wake up in the middle of the night worried about cases, careers, status, and work relationships. To dismiss the emotional component is like ignoring the wind’s impact on a sailboat. Thus, in order to coach effectively, one must always consider the emotions under surface of any presenting issue.

I spoke at a legal marketing conference recently and asked participants to brainstorm about how to coach lawyers who are having trouble with follow-up. One group said they would delegate the organizational aspect to the lawyer’s assistant. When I asked what they would do if the lawyer still didn’t take the follow-up actions, one person responded, “This is why I think all firms should have an in-house psychologist.” While many, no-doubt, would echo her frustration, there are more practical alternatives. If a lawyer is behaving in a way that seems irrational, it generally is not because he or she is crazy or stupid. Rather, that lawyer is just like every other human being on the planet in that fear, anger or upset may occasionally divert him or her from making the best choices.

Consequently, when people are acting irrationally, it is very likely that fear or other emotions under the surface may be getting in the way. While some individuals may need serious psychological interventions, for most lawyers, simply having a chance to talk about and acknowledge fear or upset makes a huge difference in their ability to move past it. If you are serious about coaching, it is important to accept individuals’ emotions just as they are. Telling someone that his or her feelings are irrational or illogical will be counterproductive. Emotions are not rational. But, on the plus side, they are also temporary. If given attention in a meaningful and appropriate way, people can move from fear to purposeful action much faster than you might think possible.

Trying to coach your associates and partners may seem daunting or frustrating, at times. Yet, the effort is well worth it. When your best associate stops eyeing the door and reengages with the firm; two key partners resolve a conflict that has been creating tension in the firm for months; or that one attorney finally gets proactive about developing clients it will become clear just how useful and effective this approach can be.

Article By Anna H. Rappaport of Excelleration, LLC

Legal Executive Institute 23rd Annual Marketing Partner Forum – January 20-22 Orlando

Join Thomson Reuters’ Legal Executive Institute this month as Marketing Partner Forum heads to Orlando for a three day summit on transformative value in law firm profitability and business development. Set against the Tuscan luxury of the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel, Marketing Partner Forum will welcome law firm marketing partners, rainmakers, practice group heads, business development leaders and esteemed corporate counsel for a dynamic and vibrant conference designed for the industry’s elite.

For more information and to register, call 1-800-308-1700.

Why You Should Attend

Hear from venerable thought leaders both within and outside of the legal industry.
Network with colleagues and enjoy the family-friendly adventure of Universal Orlando®.
Broaden your horizons through a number of interactive seminars that ask participants to collaborate.
Participate in a number of compelling sessions designed for law firm partnership.
Interact with clients and network for new business.
Focus on global business development and the impact of “glocalization” on legal services.
Depart the event with practical takeaways to share with peers and firm leadership.

Who Should Attend

Law Firm Partners
Managing Partners
Marketing Partners
Practice Group Heads
Chief Marketing Officers
Senior Business Development Professionals

Ten Rainmaking Tips for Finders, Minders and Grinders

This past week, I was speaking at an IP firm here in Chicago. The Managing Partner and I met ahead of time and discussed the group dynamics. He said, “Steve there are three types of attorneys that you’ll be presenting to today; the finders, the minders and the grinders. The finders are out there looking for business. The minders are thinking about looking for new business. And the grinders are too busy and disinterested to even think about developing new business.”

While I had heard these terms and definitions before, it struck me funny because I have worked well with all three of these groups to successful outcomes. Whether you are indeed a finder, minder or a grinder, remember that all you need to be successful in developing new business is the right motivation and education. If you are interested in learning how to improve your business development skills and see value in doing so, there’s hope for you yet.

Regardless of what group you fit into, here are TEN solid tips to motivate and educate the finders, minders and grinders.

You must become a great lawyer, before becoming a great rainmaker. Without understanding the law and how it applies to the real world, it is nearly impossible to speak intelligently about your services. I have worked with hundreds of attorneys and they all agree that selling legal services requires knowledge and experience of the law.
Developing your skills as a networker right out of law school can dramatically help you in advancing your career 2-3 years ahead of your peers. Building new relationships and leveraging existing contacts can unearth all types of opportunities. Make sure you have a solid elevator speech or a few sentences that describe what you do and how you help people. Also, be ready and willing to find ways to help the people you are meeting with. Networking is all about reciprocation, so try to think strategically about whom you are helping and how that help might be reciprocated over time.
While social media is all-the-buzz, the only one you need to really think about is LinkedIn. The reason I say this is because LinkedIn has become the Google for business professionals. Instead of going to google to find an attorney, people just use LinkedIn. So be sure to have a complete profile with a picture. Also, it’s incredibly easy to find good connections through LinkedIn if you know how to use it. If you are looking for introductions from your clients, connect with them on LinkedIn and search through their contacts to see who they know. It’s just that easy!
One of the biggest mistakes attorneys make in trying to grow a practice is not having a plan for growth and success. This plan doesn’t have to be a fifty page MBA level plan, just a 2-3 page plan that outlines how you will focus your time on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. The key is to write a one sentence objective, followed by strategies and tactics. A strategy could be; develop quality introductions from my existing clients. The tactics would then describe how, when and what you are going to do in order to accomplish those strategies.
Talking about your goals with your peers is another way to push yourself into achieving them. If you commit to losing ten pounds and never tell anyone, it’s easy to back out of it. On the other hand, you’re more likely to stick to the goal if you tell everyone because of the possible embarrassment of not following through. It also can be helpful to partner up with someone for accountability. Find a partner at your firm or a lawyer at another firm and share your goals. Speak or meet monthly to discuss progress and encourage one another. This works for losing weight and also works for building books of business. A little friendly competition never hurts as well.
Hiring a coach or finding a mentor can change your life! Why do all the top athletes have professional coaches? Aren’t they already at the top of their game? The reality is that we can all learn from people more experienced than ourselves. I have personally hired 4 coaches over the past ten years and it has been the best investment I have ever made. Do your research and find a coach or mentor that is highly regarded and recommended. Meet with the coach and discuss your issues and goals. If it feels right, pull the trigger and give it your all. Waiting for things to change on their own rarely improves one’s book of business.
Finding a niche’ is another way to grow your book of business. Every lawyer knows who the top specialists are in different categories. How about the best generalists? Not so much. Find an area of law that you excel in and enjoy and start working more aggressively in that area. Read the paper and try to find the legal issues that are trending. If you are in health care law, look into medical marijuana laws right away. You might have an edge in getting an article published or speaking on the subject.
Stop those awful “pitch meetings” that you keep having. No one wants to be sold to and no one likes a fast talking blowhard. My mantra has always been “Prescription before diagnosis is malpractice.” This means that we should focus on learning about the prospect’s needs and wants before saying too much. Ask open ended questions and really try to listen. You’ll be amazed at how well the meeting goes. Plus, think about how good your presentation will be once you understand more about your prospective client’s needs.
Always target and go after low hanging fruit. You may have clients, strategic partners and friends around you that could be referring business your way. Before investing huge amounts of time attending new networking events, think about your best contacts. Spending an hour calling them to set up coffee or lunch meetings will be a much better return on your investment of time and energy. Once you’re meeting with your best contacts, be sure to ask for quality introductions. Some of my clients are amazed at how easy this was to accomplish once they actually did it.
In addition to being a good attorney, it has never been more important today to be a resource for your clients. The Godfather had a consigliore, so why not be a counselor for your clients. This means helping your clients achieve their goals beyond simply doing the “work.” To have client loyalty you must go way above and beyond their expectations. I recommend finding them business, being a source of new information and investing time to know them personally.

By thinking about and using these ten tips, you can dramatically improve your practice. Whether you find, mind or grind, everyone needs to do his part in assuring your firm is successful today and well into the future. Try to select one or two of my top ten points to help guide you in your journey. Sometimes even small steps forward can produce a dramatic result for someone who is interested in learning.

Article By Steve Fretzin of Sales Results, Inc.

Legal Executive Institute 23rd Annual Marketing Partner Forum – January 20-22 Orlando

Join Thomson Reuters’ Legal Executive Institute next January as Marketing Partner Forum heads to Orlando for a three day summit on transformative value in law firm profitability and business development. Set against the Tuscan luxury of the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel, Marketing Partner Forum will welcome law firm marketing partners, rainmakers, practice group heads, business development leaders and esteemed corporate counsel for a dynamic and vibrant conference designed for the industry’s elite.

For more information and to register, call 1-800-308-1700.

Why You Should Attend

Hear from venerable thought leaders both within and outside of the legal industry.
Network with colleagues and enjoy the family-friendly adventure of Universal Orlando®.
Broaden your horizons through a number of interactive seminars that ask participants to collaborate.
Participate in a number of compelling sessions designed for law firm partnership.
Interact with clients and network for new business.
Focus on global business development and the impact of “glocalization” on legal services.
Depart the event with practical takeaways to share with peers and firm leadership.

Who Should Attend

Law Firm Partners
Managing Partners
Marketing Partners
Practice Group Heads
Chief Marketing Officers
Senior Business Development Professionals

How to Be Better at Email Marketing

To succeed at email marketing, you need to catch prospects at the right time with the right message. This is very difficult to do unless you automate the process. In fact, Emarketer research shows companies that connect with their customers via automated email marketing see conversion rates as high as 50%.

Here are some other email marketing automation stats, courtesy of myemma.com:

Companies that automate emails are 133% more likely to send messages that coincide with the purchase cycle of their customers.
Relevant emails drive 18x more revenue than broadcast emails.
Personalized emails generate up to 6x higher revenue than non-personalized emails.
The #1 reported benefit of email marketing automation is the creation of more and better leads.
Automated emails get 119% higher click rates than broadcast emails.

Using email marketing automation will increase your open and click-through rates, which will in turn increase your conversion rates.

And while automating the process is a critical key to email marketing success, you also need to know how to create great marketing emails that capture your prospect’s attention and encourage them to actually read it.

The folks at QuickSprout have created this infographic that details all the working parts of a great marketing email. Use it as a guide the next time you sit down to pound out your monthly e-newsletter:

Article By Stephen Fairley of The Rainmaker Institute

Legal Executive Institute 23rd Annual Marketing Partner Forum – January 20-22 Orlando

For more information and to register, call 1-800-308-1700.

Why You Should Attend

Hear from venerable thought leaders both within and outside of the legal industry.
Network with colleagues and enjoy the family-friendly adventure of Universal Orlando®.
Broaden your horizons through a number of interactive seminars that ask participants to collaborate.
Participate in a number of compelling sessions designed for law firm partnership.
Interact with clients and network for new business.
Focus on global business development and the impact of “glocalization” on legal services.
Depart the event with practical takeaways to share with peers and firm leadership.

Who Should Attend

Law Firm Partners
Managing Partners
Marketing Partners
Practice Group Heads
Chief Marketing Officers
Senior Business Development Professionals

Best Practices for Creating Landing Pages That Convert

Landing pages — dedicated web pages that a visitor to your website, blog, social media post or e-newsletter is guided to after clicking on a link — are critical when it comes to converting those visitors into qualified leads.

landing pages internet If you have been directing traffic to the home page of your website, you are missing a big opportunity to capture more leads. Landing pages have been proven to more than double conversion rates when compared with website home pages. This is because they are created specifically for converting leads, featuring specialized content and offers that appeal to a targeted audience.

To make your landing pages pay, you need to know the basics about how to create a highly effective landing page. Here are 10 steps you need to take in developing landing pages for your law firm:

Have a singular goal. You want your landing page to do just one job for you — get the visitor to download that free report, sign up for a seminar, subscribe to your newsletter, etc. Don’t clutter them up with multiple offers. One page. One job.
Use a single, relevant visual. Choose an illustration or photo that is relevant to your offer.
No false endorsements. Don’t create false endorsements for your offer. Avoid cheesy endorsement copy that turns visitors off.
Use simple design. Keep your design simple with minimal, impactful copy that consists of a headline, subhead and bullet points that make the content easy to scan.
Quick load. Be sure your landing page loads quickly; you only have a few seconds for it to pop up or your visitor will lose interest and click off.
Compelling copy. The worse thing you can do is bore your visitor. Your copy needs to be readable, believable and lead the visitor quickly to your ultimate goal.
Eyes on the prize. Write and design your land page with your singular goal in mind. Do not clutter the content with irrelevant prose.
Inform and educate. Don’t waste the visitor’s time by not delivering anything of benefit. And don’t ask for too much information — a name and an email address should be sufficient.
Be truthful. If you have actual testimonials that would be appropriate, use them but be sure you are not making any false promises or guarantees.
Provide value. Make it clear what the value and benefits of redeeming your offer will provide to your visitor. If they are entrusting you with their information, you need to let them know it is a fair exchange for what you are providing with the offer.

Article By Stephen Fairley of The Rainmaker Institute

Part 2: Influencing the Client Experience – Takeaways from LMA Capital's Half Day Program

On October 29th, a record number of legal marketers attended LMA Capital’s half day program to discuss how to best influence the client experience. Part one discussed how marketers can address a few major concerns of clients: how the firm can add value to the representation, how a firm can build a strong client team to address issues like credit and succession planning, and how to grow client relationships through better scoping and budgeting. This part will wrap up the final three TED-style talks for the program.

Communication and Managing Expectations – Exceed Their Expectations Every Time: How to Communicate with Clients in Good Times and Bad

Mary Panetta, of Blank Rome LLP, took to the podium in her talk about managing client expectations. Understanding the goal of why you are at the table is crucial to understanding client’s expectations. Sometimes the goal of litigation isn’t always to win, sometimes it’s to acquire the client, or to settle. Ms. Panetta emphasized that it’s important to make no assumptions about what the clients goals are; always ask. If partners are not involved in connecting on a daily basis with the clients to find out what is going on at the company, the client is not going to feel like the firm understands their needs and they are not going to come back with return business. Another key point Ms. Panetta hit on is that it’s important to tell the truth about everything, including budgets. For the firm, it’s important to monitor the budget aggressively and if there is an issue or potential overage on the horizon, share the information with the client early and without alarm. Marketers can help the firm’s lawyers in the process as well by understanding what’s at stake and helping deliver the news to the client either by scripting a dialogue or being present when the call needs to be made. Clients are much more amenable to scope changes when they are appropriately notified and walked through what happened. Also, in this market, there is potential for the client to seek out other services that may cut into the work that the law firm does. Ms. Panetta advises firms to embrace these inevitable market disruptors and present them to your client as a collaborative process. This may be counterintuitive to the firm’s bottom line, however, partnering with a disruptor is a way the firm can bring value to the client and builds vast amounts of goodwill.

Affinity Group Initiatives – Developing Client Relationships Through Affinity Groups

When it comes to working with affinity groups in the firm, Dawn Afanador, of Gibbons P.C., reminded the audience that the groups are still client focused. The Women’s Initiative at her firm is focused on educating women and their clients, give back to the community and their client’s causes, mentor their women and their clients, and provide networking opportunities for women and their clients. Ms. Afanador has found that their women’s initiative to be one of their best client relationship building programs. Rather than focus on having bigger events with high attendance, her firm scaled back the size of the events and narrowly focused on areas of law that address their key client’s needs. The intimacy of the smaller programs, such as focused roundtables, succeeded in helping client engagement and presented opportunities for cross marketing. Firm groups also have an opportunity to help their clients with initiatives they may not be able to achieve on their own. For example, a company might want to get more involved in meaningful pro bono work, but has a small legal department and limited resources. The firm’s pro bono group would be able to collaborate with the client to help them further their pro bono initiative by providing them with support and training. Affinity groups can also add value to networking opportunities: people don’t have time to simply network anymore, so providing programs where your in-house team can learn something and network with others is invaluable. When starting an initiative, it’s important to have some small wins to generate excitement about the initiative. As the initiative grows, don’t be afraid to evolve the program based on client’s needs and feedback from folks internally.

Complacency and Responsiveness – Using Innovation to Motivate and Empower Attorneys and Connect with Clients

To round-out the TED-talks, Jennifer Castleberry of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, discussed how her firm uses innovation to motivate and empower attorneys and connect with clients. Her firm has created an innovation initiative, DWT De Novo, that focuses on technology, process improvement and people. When they began the program in 2013, they started by first listening to the client’s pain points, which eventually led to the appointment of a chief innovation partner that promoted the initiative at all of their offices. On this roadshow, they worked with people in the firm to solicit their pain points so they can figure out how best to create an initiative that is focused on addressing everyone’s concerns. In response to these concerns, the firm was able to create several tools that are designed to help placate client concerns. For example, their team developed a template for attorneys to summarize, for the client, how the firm has added value, in some ways that aren’t apparent to them. Attorney’s customize this to their clients so they get a clear picture of their relationship with the firm. They also spent a lot of time listening to what client’s wanted in a client dashboard, and used their input to create a “dashboard of the future”. Their dashboard includes realtime matter tracking, financials, as well as curated pieces that are specific to the client using the dashboard. These tools were designed specifically to provide efficient, transparent, and cost-effective legal services for their clients.

Following the TED talks, the audience broke-out into discussion tables where each table was tasked with coming up with five action items specific to a particular TED talk, and we all came together in the end to share the action items. Firms should rally their teams to create their own action items so that they are able to better address the myriad of client concerns. Considering these major areas of concern, adding value, credit, succession planning, billing and budgets, communication, managing expectations, and responsiveness, is crucial to creating a positive client experience.

Article By Nicole Cudiamat Minnis

The National Law Review / The National Law Forum LLC

Tag: Legal Marketing