Tag: Marketing

Serve Up a Strategic Marketing Approach

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Here it is more than halfway through the year and a lot of you who began 2014 committed to changing your marketing approach now realize “wow, nothing has changed.”

Below are ten steps to be more strategic in this year’s marketing planning:

1. Having good intentions in January is not the same as making marketing a priority.In other words, you jotted down some ideas, threw them in a drawer and went about your business. Marketing is often an afterthought.  If you do not make building and growing your practice a priority by scheduling it into your daily calendar and then “live and breathe” the concepts, how do you expect progress to be made, by you and other team members?

2. Develop cash flow budgets and projections are imperative so that you would have something to measure progress by. Businesses run with numbers. Law firms are no different. When creating a marketing plan, be as specific as possible. Set concrete goals as such as below:

  • Increase employment law cases by privately-held businesses cases by 15%
  • Acquire at least one new client each quarter with billings of at least $90k per quarter.
  • Increase revenue per existing top five clients by 20 percent

3. Creating metrics to measure the success or failure of your plans and activities against projections developed in number 2 is an ideal way to track your marketing initiatives by results achieved. Items such as response rates, average new billings per new clients, average billings from repeat work of existing clients…etc.  Do you have any written metrics and do you constantly monitor them? If not, this is a critical component for measuring success.

4. Assemble the right team.  Get the right people “on the bus and the wrong people” off the bus.  If your firm is full of worker bees, you will be challenged to produce marketing results.  However, if you support and empower those lawyers who are motivated to become a producer, a rainmaker, you are more likely to have a stronger marketing focus and better marketing results.

5. Retain professional training.While many lawyers “think” they know what to do, and they may, most do not know “how” to engage in high impact business development endeavors successfully. Effectively marketing and promoting a law practice ain’t what it used to be. Gone are the days when deals are just a handshake away and a matter of spending the afternoon on the golf course.

Seeking outside support to fully learn, from soup to nuts, the sales process, how to efficiently fill your pipeline AND persistently track your sales (i.e. new client engagements) are things that do not materialize from amorphous. Retain a professional trainer/coach and you will never go back.

6. Set a clear and powerful direction.  It is a powerful exercise to have regular meetings with your team to cultivate a marketing culture within a firm and to outline the marketing expectations.  Team meetings can serve multiple purposes of parlaying business opportunities, sharing knowledge, and achieving positive marketing results.

7. Turn up the focus dial. Most likely, if you do not focus like a laser on identifying targeted clients, markets and niche areas of practice, you will likely become discouraged and ease up on your marketing commitment. Thus, it is imperative to narrow down exact targets so you know who you are looking for. An example of this for a construction litigation practice may be commercial developers on the East Coast with revenues between $50-150 million a year. That description will narrow the companies you are looking for and are simple to find with basic online market research.

8. Assemble the marketing tools. Having the right tools is essential to ensuring you derive the most out of your marketing strategies. Tools are no longer limited to printed brochures, email and promotional items. Video, social media networking, SMS texting, webinars, podcasts, and creative interactive websites can also be highly effective, depending upon your marketing goals and objectives. The increase in marketing tools equates to greater options in your toolbox. It also means that selecting the right tools is more important than ever.

9.Invest in the right things.  Decadent offices, random acts of lunch, and token “shotgun” expenditures in the name of marketing do not attract new clients. Invest instead in strengthening relationships with key clients, communicating to existing clients and prospective clients how you are improving their businesses and/or personal lives.

10. Action, Action, Action. One of themost impactful ways you can be more strategic in your marketing planning is simply to execute on the plan. Marketing must be an integral part of your business, not a “set it and forget it” aspect of your business. In order to ensure that your marketing plan succeeds, you must be actively engaged in working that plan.

The means by which to instill a more strategic approach to your marketing are vast. Reiterating my mantra that marketing success comes with “consistent, persistent massive amounts of action over a prolonged period of time”, all the strategic marketing spokes (Internet marketing; communications program; reputation management, etc.) must be moving forward at the same concurrently. Anything less and the wheels just spin.

Article By:

Kimberly Alford Rice
Of:
KLA Marketing Associates

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

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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.

Tips for Growing Your Fan Base on Facebook

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One of the biggest challenges for anyone seeking to have a large social media following is growing your audience to a healthy level.  Sometimes it almost feels like we’re back in grade school, looking for other kids to like us!

Inbound marketing firm Hubspot has a number of informative presentations on Facebook marketing, but this quick slide guide with five tips on how to grow your audience is particularly useful since it visually walks you through the steps you need to take on your Facebook page to reap the rewards from each tip:

One of the biggest challenges for anyone seeking to have a large social media following is growing your audience to a healthy level.  Sometimes it almost feels like we’re back in grade school, looking for other kids to like us!

Inbound marketing firm Hubspot has a number of informative presentations on Facebook marketing, but this quick slide guide with five tips on how to grow your audience is particularly useful since it visually walks you through the steps you need to take on your Facebook page to reap the rewards from each tip:

5 Quick Tips For Growing Your Facebook Audience from HubSpot

Article By:

Stephen Fairley
Of:
The Rainmaker Institute

The Importance of the First Impression For Attorneys

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It is often said that a first impression can be a last impression. For attorneys, especially Personal Injury Attorneys who have to fiercely fight for business in such a highly competitive market, making a great first impression is essential!

Studies have shown that it takes approximately 3 seconds for a person to evaluate you based on appearance, body language, demeanor and mannerisms. This first impression sets the tone for the relationship to follow. Just as you are judging whether they are a good fit for you as your client, they too are judging whether you are the type of attorney they see fit to represent them in their case.

Although many first impressions can be misconceptions, they are almost entirely irreversible. As you know, trying to grow your firm and acquire good clients with strong, lucrative cases, can be very difficult. Putting in the extra effort to make the best impression possible, can give you that edge many of your competitors don’t have!

As obvious as it seems, not only should you present yourself physically professional with appropriate clothing, grooming and hygiene, but you must also present yourself conversationally with excellent manners. As simple as this is, these small things are what “makes-it or breaks-it” when signing a new client. If you appear to be too casual, you may give the impression that you will approach their case with the same casual attitude and not with the urgency and concern they feel is needed.

We are all guilty at times for forgetting to put our best foot forward. Sometimes we are having a bad day or have other things on our minds and it can come across negative. In order to cultivate a good relationship and maintain a high standard of service, here are some tips we can all use for making a great first impression and leaving behind our other daily stresses:

  • Show interest in their case immediately
  • Be confident
  • Demonstrate knowledge and competence
  • Be positive
  • Have a smile on your face and in your voice
  • Be courteous and attentive to their needs
  • Be reliable

You are being judged from the moment a potential client reaches out to you. Bringing in new cases is what keeps your firm in business and you cannot bring in new cases without clients. Your first impression is the key to your success.

Article By:

Anush Alexander
Of:
RW Lynch Company, Inc.

The One SEO Rule You Need to Know About Alt Tags for Images

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Wikipedia says alt attributes (alt tags) are used in HTML documents/Web pages “to specify alternative text (alt text) that is to be rendered when the element to which it is applied cannot be rendered.”

Alt Tags Images

To optimize your website’s content for search, remember one simple rule for image alt tags: An image’s alt attributes should describe the visual. Including keywords in alt tags is a good practice as long as it’s not spammy. Alt attributes used to have a larger SEO impact in Google searches before the company changed its Google Image search design. Traffic has decreased considerably from image search since then.

 

 

 

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.

To Satisfy New Search Algorithms, Legal Websites Need Quality Content

The success of a law-firm website is determined by how many clients and potential clients visit the site, spend time there and take action based on what they discover.

Over the years, law-firm marketers focused on keyword and link strategies to enhance search engine results and increase traffic to their websites.  While these are still valuable tools, recent developments in the search universe have shifted the emphasis to content strategy.

Quality content includes well-written articles, blog posts, videos, webcasts, presentation slide decks, infographics, eBooks and white papers.  Quality content addresses client needs.

Sixty-seven percent of the time, online searchers use Google to find what they are looking for.  To provide the best results, Google is constantly tweaking its search algorithm. (An algorithm is a process or set of rules to be used by a computer in calculations or other problem-solving operations.)  These algorithms are designed to maintain search engine integrity and punish violators.

Sara Downey Robinson and Chris Davis discussed the changing landscape of digital marketing and search engine optimization at the monthly meeting of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association, held May 13 at Guard and Grace in LoDo Denver.

Davis is business development director at Burns Marketing, a full-service B2B marketing agency that combines traditional and digital marketing to help clients drive demand.   Robinson is marketing coordinator at Inflow, a top inbound-marketing firm specializing in search.

Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird

Panda and Penguin are two major changes to the existing Google algorithm made in 2011 and 2012, respectively.   In 2013, Google released a totally new algorithm called Hummingbird (which incorporates and enhances the updates made by Panda and Penguin).  These three developments have completely changed the way law firms must look at search.

“Law-firm sites that regularly showed up on page one now find themselves on page 20,” said Robinson.  “Since searchers rarely go beyond the second page of results in an online search, this is a real problem.”

Google Panda focuses on keywords.  Sites with keyword “stuffing” are demoted or flagged as spam.  Panda also penalizes low-quality content, thin content, duplicate content and the amount of advertising compared with the amount of useful content on a site.

Google Penguin focuses on links.  It focuses on “black hat” tactics like links that come from poor-quality sites, from sites that aren’t topically relevant to a target market, paid links, and links where the anchor text is overly optimized (exact-match anchor text).  Use natural language in your links, and vary it.

“Quality inbound links are not found at garage sales, “said Robinson.  “Steer clear of link farms.  A few high-quality, carefully developed links perform much better than a large number of weak, irrelevant links.  It takes time and perhaps a dedicated staff person to develop and nurture quality links.”

The new Google Hummingbird algorithm looks for a steady stream of high-quality, relevant content and natural language on webpages – and rewards those who provide it.  Hummingbird attempts to decipher a search engine query by using the context of a question rather than the specific keywords within the question.  Thin content, keyword stuffing and lack of relevant content will cause significant demotions.

“Content marketing is a technique that creates and distributes valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience,” said  Davis, “with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Identify client personas and clarify their needs

Before a law firm can create relevant content, it needs to know with whom it is communicating.  In marketing talk, this is called the “user persona” – or target market.

“In user-centered design and marketing, personas are user types that might use a legal service in a similar way,” said Davis.  “A small law firm might target one user persona.  A large law firm will target numerous user personas.”

One law-firm user persona might be high-income individuals going through divorce.  Another might be small businesses in need of venture capital.  Another might be large medical equipment manufacturers facing product liability lawsuits.  The more specific the persona, the more specific a law firm’s content can be.  Relevant content will answer the questions these users are asking, using natural language.

A user personal is a representation of the goals and behavior of a hypothesized group of users.  In most cases, personas are synthesized from data collected from user interviews.

“An effective law firm website will focus not on the firm’s capabilities, but on the identified needs of a persona or personas,” said Davis.  “It will use industry- or interest-specific terminology within a context familiar to the targeted persona.”

Create relevant content

Law firms that want to prevent or correct loss of search engine result page rankings and traffic should publish meaningful, original content on a regular basis.  The goal is content that will establish a firm, practice group or lawyer as a though leader in an area relevant to a user persona.

“Take the time to discover the common questions your clients have, and provide the answers to these questions,” said Davis.  “Relevant content can be written, but it also can and should be visual.  Video content posted on YouTube (which is owned by Google) is particularly powerful as ‘Google juice.’”

Instead of using keywords like “car accident,” use more specific terms like “car accident lawsuit” or “car accident insurance”, or better yet natural language terms like “What should I do if I am sued for a DUI car accident?” or “What should I look for when buying car insurance for an older vehicle?”  Think in terms of full-fledged questions that a person might ask Siri on a smartphone.

Once search brings users to a law firm’s site, there must be a way to create and nurture a relationship and convert the potential client into a real client over time.  Each item of posted content should contain a call to action – some way for the user to interact with the site so that the firm can capture data.  This could be a way to comment on a white paper or download information about an upcoming event.

Use analytics to measure success

“Take advantage of Google Analytics to collect data that can be used to improve the quality of your webpages – adding more of what works and eliminating what does not,” said Robinson.  “In Google Analytics, which is currently free, law firms can set up specific goals to study how users are entering and interacting with your website.”

Google Analytics lets a law firm know which content is most-viewed and acted upon, so that similar content can be added.  It lets the firm know which content is ignored, so that it can be eliminated or improves.  It lets a firm know the exact path users take through its site, so that adjustments can be made to create a better user experience.

If observation and analytics show that a law firm website is not getting the results it wants, an audit can help determine the source of the problem, take steps to fix the problem, measure the results of these steps, and look for any others areas that could be improved.

“Increasing inbound traffic to your website is not magic – it is a combination of art and science,” said Robinson.  “You should select any agency that makes you feel comfortable and uses language that is easy to understand.  You should never feel intimidated.

“At the same time, do not expect miracles,” said Robinson.  “Go into the process with reasonable expectations.   It takes time to make changes, add quality content and wait for the search engines to find and reward this content.  Each day, more than one million pieces of new content are posted to the Internet.  It takes time to rise above the fray.”

A law firm that has experienced worsening search engine results in the wake of Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird can take positive steps to restore performance.   Google will continue to reward webpages with strong content marketing efforts, including answer-driven content.  It also rewards sites that generate social media buzz – especially an active presence on its proprietary YouTube and Google+ platforms.

Article By:

Janet Ellen Raasch
Of:
Strategic Writing And Ghostwriting

One week until the LMA P3 Conference, June 12-13 in Chicago

The National Law Review is pleased to bring you information about the LMA P3 Conference to be held in Chicago June 12-13, 2014.

LMA_P3_WB250x250_Frame2

 

When

Thursday – Friday, June 12-13, 2014

Where

Hyatt Chicago Magnificent Mile
633 N. Saint Clair St.
Chicago, IL 60611

Dig deeper into project management, pricing and process improvement.

The 2013 LMA P3 Conference set the bar high with fantastic breakout sessions, partner presentations and networking opportunities, but this year’s conference looks even more promising.

Join us for P3 – The Practice Innovation Conference, where pricing, project management, and practice innovation experts will discuss the use of various tactics to explore solutions to real issues face by law firms today.

This execution-focused conference will have attendees roll up their sleeves and collectively work out solutions. Click here to view the full conference schedule.

There is still time to register! Register now!

2 more weeks until LMA P3 – Practice Innovation Conference, June 12-13, Chicago, IL

The National Law Review is pleased to bring you information about the LMA P3 Conference to be held in Chicago June 12-13, 2014.

LMA_P3_WB250x250_Frame2

 

When

Thursday – Friday, June 12-13, 2014

Where

Hyatt Chicago Magnificent Mile
633 N. Saint Clair St.
Chicago, IL 60611

Dig deeper into project management, pricing and process improvement.

The 2013 LMA P3 Conference set the bar high with fantastic breakout sessions, partner presentations and networking opportunities, but this year’s conference looks even more promising.

Join us for P3 – The Practice Innovation Conference, where pricing, project management, and practice innovation experts will discuss the use of various tactics to explore solutions to real issues face by law firms today.

This execution-focused conference will have attendees roll up their sleeves and collectively work out solutions. Click here to view the full conference schedule.

There is still time to register! Register now!

Facebook for Attorneys: How to Double Your Likes in No Time

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Yesterday’s post detailed how business attorneys can double their connections on LinkedIn, but for consumer attorneys the most likely social media platform for your attention is Facebook.

And just like all social media networks, the lion’s share of the attention goes to those who interact frequently – and genuinely – with followers and fans.

Knowing how valuable and limited your time may be for social media marketing, you need to make efficient use of it to get the maximum benefit.  The infographic below from WhoIsHostingThis.com gives you specific steps you can take to double your Facebook “likes” in just five minutes a day:

Facebook Social Media Likes

Article By:

Stephen Fairley
Of:
The Rainmaker Institute