Help, my website isn’t getting me any traffic (or clients)!

May 3, 2012 by
Share

“If you build it, they will come,” may have been true of fictional baseball fields, but it’s clearly not true when it comes to web sites. More like, “if you build it and do nothing else, the only ones who will see it are the ones you send there.”

But you know what? That’s a pretty good reason to have a web site. Being able to send clients and prospects to learn all about what you can do for them is a good thing.

Not only that, your clients and prospects can send their friends and collegues to your web site, and that’s even better. I’ve said it before, you don’t have to be a social media maven to take advantage of social media. If you have the right buttons and links on your site, your visitors will promote it to their social media contacts.

But there are things you can do to get more traffic to your web site. This blog post about how to start getting traffic to a new web site can obviously be used with an existing web site:

  1. Set up a listing in Google Places (et. al.) A law practice is a local business. When someone searches for an attorney with your practice area in your city, your page will be much more likely to show up in their search results.
  2. Set up a content plan. Attorneys frequently object to the idea of blogging because they don’t have time to keep it up. As mentioned, you don’t have to add a lot of content to your blog or web site if you are relying on your existing network to send visitors. You certainly have time to put up a handful of good quality articles to showcase your experience. But if you want the search engines to send you more visits, regularly updating your content is something you should do. Add something once a week, if possible. It’s not as challenging as you might think.
  3. Get some links. The author suggests asking for links from associations or groups you belong to because incoming links “tell” the search engines that you have some content others should read. If you represent businesses, ask your clients to post a link from their site to yours. You can do the same to theirs.
  4. Set up Google Analytics. The more you know about where your traffic is coming from and what key words your visitors are using to find you, the more you can “tune” your site to get more of the same.
  5. Mobile enhance your web site. Many people use their mobile devices to find businesses today. If your site isn’t easy to view and navigate on a mobile device, you may be losing traffic and clients. I’m currently updating my blog and this is one thing I’ve been itching to take care of. It was as simple as installing a free plug-in.

If you have a new web site or want to bring more traffic to your existing site, these are five good ways to do that. If you don’t have a web site, as a friend of mine frequently asks, “how’s that working out for you?”

Share
Filed Under: Blogging, Online Marketing, Social media marketing, Web traffic Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to be more persuasive in your writing and speaking

May 2, 2012 by
Share

When I was in law school I helped a friend with her divorce. I prepared the Petition (yes, under supervision) and served it.

In those days, even though there were no children or real property and the matter was uncontested, she had to appear in court. I went with her to the hearing in downtown Los Angeles and we waited in the hallway for the courtroom to open.

I’d never seen my friend so nervous. She had never been in a courtroom and was afraid she wouldn’t know what to say. I told her this was a very simple case, the judge would ask a few basic questions and everything would be over in a few minutes. I kept talking, trying to calm her down, but nothing seemed to work. She was visibly shaking and barely able to speak.

Finally, I said, “Oh, here comes the judge.” I was looking over her shoulder behind her. She turned to look. Coming towards us was a shabbily dressed old man with dirty, unruly hair and an unshaven face. It was not the judge of course but a homeless man and the sight of him shuffling down the hall made her laugh.

A good laugh was exactly what the doctor ordered. My friend was able to get through the hearing and soon, we were on our way home.

In the car, she thanked me for helping her and especially for helping her to calm down enough to get through the hearing. It meant a lot to her that I cared enough to do that. We are still very good friends today, more than thirty years later.

So, why did I tell you this story? I could have simply made the point that your clients want to know you care about them and really do appreciate the little things you say or do.

Telling you that story was a better way to make that point, don’t you think?

I talk a lot about using stories in your writing and presentations. You’ve often heard me say, “facts tell but stories sell” and I’ve explained why:

  • Stories have people in them and the reader or listener can relate to them and their experiences.
  • Stories have a dramatic theme; people want to know, “what happened next?”
  • Stories have verisimilitude; they “show” instead of “tell,” and are often more persuasive than a logical argument
  • Stories appeal to human emotion. When you make people feel something, you connect with them on a deeper level.
  • People remember stories long after the facts are forgotten.

As you read my story, I hope you were you able to see my friend and me in that hallway and you could relate to the experience of trying to comfort a nervous client. If you could, then my story did double duty–it made the point about showing clients you care and it showed you why you need to put more stories in your writing and presentations.

Share
Filed Under: Blogging, Client loyalty, Client relations, Communication, Copywriting, Marketing legal services, Presentations, Public Speaking, Salesmanship, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to get more clients to choose YOU as their attorney

April 30, 2012 by
Share

You have a list of prospects, don’t you? These are people who get your newsletter or ezine, who read your blog, or with whom you otherwise communicate on a regular basis.

Some will hire you. You don’t have to say or do anything special. When they are ready, they will call.

Others will never hire you. No matter what you say or do. It doesn’t matter why they won’t hire you, that’s just the way it is. They can help you in other ways: referrals, traffic to your web site, Likes and follows.

Then there are the “maybes”. They may hire you, they may not. The fence sitters represent the biggest potential for you. What you say and do can influence them to get off the fence.

How do you get more people off the fence and dialing your number?

One way is to make an offer. Something that compels them to act.

One of my subscribers sent me the ezine he sends to his list. In it is an offer he makes to the “new clients” who lurk on his list. His offer: “Mention this newsletter and we will credit one hour of billable time against your first monthly invoice.”

Simple. You have to become a new client to take advantage of the offer. From the attorney’s perspective, it’s certainly worth one hour of credit to get someone to become a first time client.

Is he giving away that one hour credit to people on the list who would hire him anyway? Yes. But it doesn’t matter. It’s small potatoes. He earns much more by getting the fence sitters as new clients.

But let’s be honest, a one hour credit is only mildly enticing to someone who might have to pony up $10,000 or $20,000 to hire you. It’s not going to get someone who isn’t ready to hire an attorney off the fence. What it might do is get someone who is ready to hire an attorney to choose you instead of any other attorney.

You must assume that yours isn’t the only newsletter your prospect reads. If you’re the only one offering a one hour credit to new clients, however, when the fence sitter is ready to hire someone, it could tip the balance in your favor.

For prospects who aren’t ready to hire an attorney, you will have to do more than offer a one hour credit. How do you convince someone who isn’t ready? I’ll cover that tomorrow.

Share
Filed Under: Blogging, Closing the sale, Copywriting, Email, Marketing legal services, Newsletters Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Are you a lawyer or an attorney? Actually, it DOES make a difference.

April 12, 2012 by
Share

I always thought that lay people use the word “lawyer” more than “attorney” and that attorneys do the opposite. “Attorney” has a slightly more professional ring to it, doesn’t it? After all, it’s “District Attorney,” “Attorney General,” and, “Attorney at Law”.

It turns out that our clients also prefer “attorney.” At least that’s what the search statistics tell us.

Search engine expert Mark Sprague found that attorney has nearly twice the search engine traffic as lawyer. “Consumers favor the term attorney over lawyer. You should use both, but attorney should be the dominant term in your web page copy,” he says.

This applies, of course, to articles, blog posts, tweets, social media profiles, and other online content.

You can read the results of search study here. Hat tip to Larry Bodine who brought this to my attention.

The data also show how people with a legal issue go about their searches. They don’t start by looking for a lawyer, they start by seeking information. This confirms the need to focus your online marketing efforts on creating content that speaks to those issues. You can do this with articles, blog posts, case studies, FAQ’s, and success stories.

Help prospective clients find you by providing information about the law and procedure as they relate to their legal issues. Describe their rights and their duties. Tell them their options, the possible penalties and available remedies.

What do prospective clients and new clients always ask you? Put the answers to those questions online.

You can spend a lot of time and money tweaking your web site to maximize search engine traffic. A much simpler approach is to provide the information people search for before they search for an attorney. When they go to your web site first, there’s a good chance they will see you as the solution to their problem and never look anywhere else.

Share
Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing legal services, Online Marketing, Technology, Web traffic Tagged With: , , ,

Why some lawyers shouldn’t bother with marketing

March 22, 2012 by
Share

On a discussion board I follow, a link had been posted to an article about why attorneys should write a blog. Several attorneys added their comments, most of which were in agreement.

One poster said, “In an industry which is increasingly commoditized, blogging allows a a lawyer to show creativity and wit — skill sets that are underrepresented in the profession, but vital for client development and practice management.”

Another mentioned that blog posts provide a record of your ideas and create an inventory of material you can use elsewhere in your marketing.

Good stuff.

But one comment in particular caught my attention: “I would be concerned that if the public began to know you too well, legal strategies could be predicted.”

Sure, we all have a few tricks up our sleeves we don’t want everyone knowing, but c’mon, that’s not a reason to avoid blogging.

Want to know what I think? I think she’s afraid. She’s afraid that if she writes a blog, she will no longer be able to hide behind her technical skills, she will have to expose her true self to the world.

And she’s right.

Building a law practice means building relationships. You have to meet people and make them like and trust you. You can’t do that without showing them who you really are.

When you write a blog or a newsletter, or do any public speaking or networking, you must do more than state the facts and provide the citations. You must give color and contrast to what you write or say, and that means injecting your personality, your opinions and your experiences.

Clients buy us before they buy our services. If you want people to like and trust you, you have to expose yourself to them and if you’re not willing to do that, you probably shouldn’t bother with marketing. You’ll be happier in a job where client development isn’t required or with a partner who is good at bringing in new business while you handle the paperwork.

There are many reasons why you should write a blog. There’s only one reason you shouldn’t: you don’t want to.

Share
Filed Under: Blogging, Career satisfaction, Image, Marketing legal services Tagged With: , ,

Guy Kawasaki on social media and SEO

March 5, 2012 by
Share

If you’re like me, you (a) want more search engine traffic, (b) you don’t know much about SEO, and (c) you find the whole subject to be overwhelming and frankly, boring.

If so, you may like what Guy Kawasaki said about the subject in a recent interview:

My recommendation for SEO is very simple. It’s Write Good Stuff. In my mind, Google is in the business of finding good stuff. It has thousands of the smartest people in the world, spending billions of dollars to find the good stuff. All you have to do is write the good stuff; you don’t need to trick it. Let Google do its job and you do your job.

Relax. Don’t worry. Write what people want to read. They’ll find you.

Of course that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t help them find us. When I can, I put key words in my blog post titles and body, but I don’t contort myself to make that happen. Yes, I want you to find me but more important to me (and you) is that when you do find me, you get value out of what you read. It means you’ll come back and read some more and you’ll tell others and they’ll come, too.

SEO is not the only way people find things on the Internet. Word of mouth is very powerful.

On the subject of social media, Kawasaki says many entrepreneurs want to hire consultants and formulate a plan before they get started. He has different advice:  just dive in. Set up a profile and “just have at it”. You’ll learn more by actually doing it.

I subscribe to a few blogs that write about SEO and social media but to be honest when I get to their posts my eyes glaze over. Most of the time I don’t read them. I use that time writing.

If the growth in the readership of this blog is any indication, I’ve made the right choice.

Write Good Stuff. People will find you. And hire you.

Share
Filed Under: Blogging, Online Marketing, Social media, Social media marketing, Web traffic Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

How to get more clients with joint venture marketing

February 9, 2012 by
Share

John Jantsch shared a great marketing idea today and he used attorneys as an example. The idea is to get together with other professionals and businesses who target the same market you do and create a content-filled blog as a resource for that target market.

So the small business attorney pairs up with an insurance broker, an expert in employee benefits, a CPA, and a marketing expert, all of whom contribute articles or blog posts speaking to the issues business owners want and need.

The site or blog will get search engine traffic, attracting prospects who will learn about the individuals who write the posts and the services they offer.

Jantsch provides recommendations for WordPress plug-ins that will help you organize and run the blog. Here’s another post I saw today that recommends 15 plug-ins for multi-author blogs.

But what if you’re not up to the task of organizing and running this little venture just now? Is there anything else you can do to utilize this idea?

Yes there is and thanks for asking.

You can organize a one time collaboration where you and other profoessionals contribute articles, posts, reports, audios, or other content. You can put that on a web site that won’t necessarily attract a lot of search engine traffic because the site wouldn’t be regularly updated, but it would be a tremendous resource for each of the contributors who send traffic to the site.

You can put the content on a cd or dvd or in an ebook and use it as a reward for opt-ins to your regular web site. Or as a gift to people who attend your seminar, webinar, or teleconference. Or as a giveaway to your clients and contacts, encouraging them to send copies to their friends and contacts.

You can also organize a live event in your local market, with half a dozen speakers, each of whom invites guests.

The value of a collaborate marketing effort like this is that each of the participants is repsonsible for creating only their article or report, but each of you benefits from the content of the others. In addition, with each of you sending visitors to the site or otherwise distributing the content, each of you will get the tacit recommendation of the other professionals, as well as exposure to their clients and prospects.

If even a simplified version of this idea seems like too much work to take on right now, find one other professional or business owner who targets your market and do something together.

Send an en email to each other’s lists, offering a free consultation or a free report. Do a guest post for each other’s blog or newsletter. Invite each other to attend a networking group you belong to and introduce each other to centers of influence you know.

Cooperative marketing is effective because it instantly exposes you to a large group of prospective clients, all of whom have the implied or explicit recommendation of a professional they know, like, and trust. It’s a great idea no matter how you go about it.

Share
Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing legal services, Online Marketing, Referrals, Relationship marketing, Web traffic Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Attorneys: are you spending too much time on blogging and social media?

February 8, 2012 by
Share

The big knock on blogging and social media is that it takes up too much time. And so many attorneys give up on it before they see any appreciable results. Many others never start.

It takes two things to be successful marketing online:

  1. You have to know what to do, and
  2. You have to do it long enough to see results.

You can’t just throw up some content or tweets and expect the world to come rushing to your (virtual) door. You need to know the fundamentals. And you need to put in some time and effort.

But you don’t need to take courses or read countless books. You don’t need to keep up with the latest plug-ins or stake your claim on every new site. Read a few blog posts, watch a couple of videos, and you’ll be on your way. The real learning comes from the doing, as this post clearly shows.

How much time do you spend on blogging and social media? Now, how much time do you spend reading about blogging and social media, or thinking about it and wondering if you should? What if you traded in some of the reading and thinking time and used it to actually write a blog?

Blogging and social media (the doing part) don’t require a lot of your time. It’s not the quantity of time that’s paramount, it’s the consistency. A few minutes a day, every day. Do that for six months and you’ll be amazed at what can happen.

Share
Filed Under: Blogging, Productivity, Social media, Social media marketing, Time Management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »