Marketing legal services Archives - Page 2 of 128

The easiest clients to sign up

August 12, 2024 by David M. Ward

Not all (prospective) clients are created equal. Some are easier to sign up and are likely better clients than others.

The top three categories are:

Existing and former clients. Clients who have hired you once are the most likely to hire you again. Easy sale, zero marketing costs, and because they’ve worked with you before, they should be easy to work with. That’s the theory, at least.
Referrals. Someone they trust vouched for you and introduced them to you, so, if they need you and can pay your fees, they should be relatively easy to sign up. You don’t have to invest time or money to find them or court them so they are profitable, too.
Prospects. Leads, opt-ins to your newsletter or list, attendees at your presentation, consultations, people who answered your ad, were, at some point, interested in what you do and how you can help them. If you stay in touch with them, when they need your help (and are willing and able to pay for it), it should be relatively easy to get them to take the next step.

What about everyone else? Look for people who have hired an attorney in the past. They know the value of representation and advice, have a general idea of what it might cost and how long the work might take, and have experience working with attorneys and the legal system.

They should be easier to sign up than someone who has never hired an attorney.

But I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to watch out. Why are they talking to you if they have or did have another attorney? You need to know.

It’s one thing if there’s a conflict, the other attorney doesn’t practice the type of law they need or is otherwise unavailable. If there was a personal issue or their case is a stinker, well, that’s different.

They may be easy to sign up, but do you want to?

Filed Under: Closing the sale, Marketing legal services

A simple formula for attracting more clients

August 9, 2024 by David M. Ward

If you want to attract more clients, your job is simple. Share some of your knowledge, the benefits and solutions you provide, the way you do what you do, and how to get in touch with you, and put this where prospective clients will see or hear it.

Online, you can do that by writing articles, a blog, a newsletter, videos, or via advertising or social media.

Offline, you can do this via presentations, networking, speaking, advertising or direct mail.

Disseminate it wherever your ideal clients live, work, or “hang out”.

What are you good at? What benefits and solutions do you provide? Share this with people who need or want your help.

You can also share this with your clients and referrals sources so they can share it with their clients and friends.

As people discover you and read or watch or listen to your message, if they like what they see or hear, they will ask for more information and eventually hire you.

That’s how you attract clients.

But it takes time. Time for your audience to discover you, get to know, like and trust you, and decide to take the next step.

So keep showing them what you do and how you help your clients. Keep showing them your passion for your work. Keep telling them the benefits and solutions you offer.

And invite them to contact you to get more information or ask about their situation.

And they will.

The Attorney Marketing Formula

Filed Under: Content creation, Marketing legal services

Too much of this, not enough of that

August 5, 2024 by David M. Ward

It’s all important: Legal work, client relations (internal marketing), cold market (outside) marketing, community relations, admin, CLE, and more.

My guess is you prioritize billable work, but don’t always do enough of the marketing.

Including market research. Understanding your target market and the people in it. Including your competition.

I suggest you allocate time to study your competition. It can help you do everything else better.

Study the firms in your market or niche. See what they’re doing well and what they could improve.

Start with a visit to their website. Is it professional looking, up-to-date, and informative? Does it sell visitors on the value of taking “the next step”?

Look at the structure and content of their website, review their offers, sales copy, and lead magnets.

What do they do to get visitors to call them, follow them, sign up for their next event, or subscribe to their newsletter?

Do they have a blog? How often do they publish? How long are their posts? What do they write about?

Do they have a podcast, make videos, do seminars, or speak at live events?

How do they position themself in the market? What do they say about their capabilities? What services and niches do they focus on or do they not focus at all? What do they say about you (their competition)?

Spend a couple of hours reading their content, follow them on social media, and subscribe to their newsletter. Immerse yourself in their marketing and what they do to promote their services.

Make sure you also check out their reviews (and endorsements) and see what others say about them.

While you’re at it, see if you can figure out which keywords they target in their marketing.

Study your (strongest) competition. What can you learn, what can you do that they do, what can you do better?

Take notes and study them again next year to see what they’ve changed or added.

They are your strongest competition for a reason. Do yourself a favor and find out why.

Filed Under: Marketing legal services

Start before you’re ready

July 16, 2024 by David M. Ward

It’s not new advice, but is it any good? If you don’t know how to swim, should you jump in the pool and flounder about, or should you take some lessons first or find someone to show you what to do (and stay by your side while you do it)?

Jumping in the deep end without knowing how to swim or doing legal work you’ve never done without some help or preparation is ill-advised, but for many things you want or need to do, getting started is often the best way to do it.

If you’re procrastinating because you overwhelmed with everything you need to do, or you are a perfectionist and convinced that you shouldn’t start because you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re going to mess up, you don’t need to take a course or hire a consultant. You need to start.

Before you’re ready.

That’s how you get good at marketing.

Go to a networking meeting and talk to some people. Take out your first ad. Write an article or blog post. Record a video, even if you don’t have a script, a decent camera, or know anything about editing.

Do something. Anything. You might be terrible at it (or you might be a lot better than you expected), but in either case, you’ve started and are on your way.

You don’t need to have experience to get experience. You get experience by taking the first step.

So, when in doubt, start. Before you’re ready.

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, success

Maybe you need some new friends

July 2, 2024 by David M. Ward

Not friends necessarily, business connections—influential people who can send you referrals, introduce you to key people in your target market, give you information or advice, or inspire you.

Your business network, which you should continually expand and improve.

Start by identifying categories of people you’d like to know. “Business leaders in the health care field,” for example. Then, make a list of candidates—names of people in that field—and learn as much as possible about them and their industry or market.

Then, find someone who knows them and ask them to introduce you. Or, reach out yourself, tell them you’ve heard good things about them, and want to introduce yourself.

Ask them something about their company or association or news about their industry. Ask questions. Let them do most of the talking. Listen and learn.

Follow-up with an email telling them you enjoyed meeting them.

What’s next?

You might see an article about the health care industry and send a copy to your new contact. Or write an article and send that.

You might follow up with a question, ask for advice, or invite them to speak at an upcoming event where you know the organizer.

If you meet someone else who knows them, you might compare notes. Learn more about the contact, what they do, who they know, and what they want. If you hit it off, you might invite them to coffee. Or that might come later. Months later.

Stay in touch with them. Be of value to them. Find ways to help them or someone close to them. Don’t ask for anything just yet. That time will come.

Or it won’t.

You don’t know what will happen and you might need to meet many people before you find one who clicks with you.

But one might be all you need.

Here’s how to do it

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Networking

What, are you chicken?

June 26, 2024 by David M. Ward

If you want your practice to grow, one of the best things you can do is stand out from other lawyers and firms.

Most lawyers and firms don’t.

They offer the same services, make the same promises, charge similar fees, and use the same marketing strategies. They look and sound and smell like everyone else.

Think about your competition. Very few stand out. They play it safe, because they think “safe” is smart.

I did that when I was starting out. I wanted to do what other lawyers did. I DIDN’T want to stand out. (That came later when I saw I was getting nowhere fast and needed to do something different).

You don’t have to do anything radical. Just different in a material way. Add a new service, offer an additional benefit, change your fee and billing structure. Or use different marketing strategies than everyone else uses, or do them differently.

It could be something as simple as changing up your writing style. That’s what I did. Other lawyers wrote formally, very lawyer-like (and boring), and I wanted to try something different.

I added some variety and spice to my writing, using a little humor and drama, shorter paragraphs and sentences, and went out of my way to make things interesting (not boring).

I got noticed. Opposing counsel commented, and seemed to be a little more willing to talk instead of firing missiles in my direction. My clients noticed and told me they enjoyed the new me.

You don’t have to do the same thing, but whatever you do, start small. Because if you don’t start small, you might overreach and be afraid to continue, or never start at all.

Try a new billing format, for example. Give it a test run. See how you feel about differing from everyone else (and differing from what you’ve always done), and see how others react. If you’re nervous about how your clients might react, start with new clients who don’t know what you’ve done before.

Let’s say you decide to communicate with your clients and prospects more often, via a newsletter, blog, podcast, or by sending them articles about their industry or market. If you already do these things, try sending them more often, adding your comments, or branching out to other subjects.

If other lawyers in your space don’t do these things (or do it much), you will stand out. Clients will see you as different. They’ll see an advantage in working with you, not just because what you send them or do is amazingly better, but because it is different.

Be different. You’ll thank me later.

Filed Under: Communication, Legal industry, Marketing legal services

Common sense email marketing

June 18, 2024 by David M. Ward

Everyone gets unsolicited email and I’m no exception. It’s usually from complete strangers but sometimes it’s from people I know (or knew), who apparently believe that because I know them, or subscribed to their list at some point or bought something from them in the past, it’s okay to continue to send me offers even though I opted out or never opted in.

It’s not okay. It’s annoying, and doesn’t make me want to do business with them. No matter how attractive their offers might be.

Why do they go to the bother? Because they get enough response to their offers to be profitable and not enough complaints to deter them.

Word to the wise. Don’t be that guy. Don’t send unsolicited commercial email, even if it works.

For one thing, it may violate the rules of professional conduct and anti-spam laws in some countries.

It’s okay to send a personal email to someone you don’t know, inquiring about or inviting them to something you have reason to believe might interest them, but don’t sign them up for your newsletter or put them on an email list.

But also don’t be that guy who refuses to offer free information (or services) because you don’t want to be tarnished with the same brush as those spammers. Offering free information or services to people who ask for it is not only a respectable way to market your services, it’s a great way to market your services.

It can help you get more inquires or leads, more sign-ups for your seminar or followers for your channel, help you build a bigger and more responsive mailing list, and bring you a lot of new clients.

Just use a little common sense. And treat people the way you’d like to be treated.

Always tell people what you will do with their email when they sign up, e.g., subscribe them to your newsletter or send them your report, and also what you won’t do, e.g., spam them or sell their email address to third parties. Tell them you respect their privacy and they can opt out at any time.

Your prospects and clients will respect you for respecting them, and reward you for it.

Email marketing for attorneys

Filed Under: Email, Marketing legal services, Online Marketing

Uncle!

June 14, 2024 by David M. Ward

In marketing legal services, we typically show people something they didn’t know or confirm something they thought they knew. We educate them about the law, the risks, the penalties, the options, and the benefits of taking action, i.e., hiring us.

Besides “telling,” we also persuade them by dramatizing what they know (or what we’ve just told them) by making the risks and penalties more formidable and urgent, and/or the benefits and relief more enticing.

We do the latter by providing more information, arguments, or examples, or agitating what we’ve told them by adding more fuel to the fire. Some copywriters call this “twisting the knife”.

We want them to feel more emotions, enough to tip the balance in favor of taking the next step. If they’re scared, that means scaring them more, but not so much that they shut down.

A little can go a long way.

The key is to talk about things they care about and make the threat or promise more likeable and believable.

The most important place to do that is in your headline or title. Show them you understand them and have something important for them, and they will be more likely to notice, click, and read your message.

In the body of your message, you continue to twist the knife.

Enough to make them cry ‘Uncle,’ but not enough to kill them.

Filed Under: Copywriting, Marketing legal services

Lion or cow?

June 10, 2024 by David M. Ward

I saw a post that said, “Creative people shouldn’t work Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, moving slowly, like a cow who grazes throughout the day.

Instead, they should work like a lion:

Sit
Wait for prey
Sprint
Eat
Rest
Repeat

So, naturally, I thought about attorneys and marketing.

Here’s how I see things:

Unless we’re new, we should focus primarily on our warm market, e.g., our existing clients and contacts, and rely mostly on repeat business and referrals. When you’ve been around long enough and built a sizeable client base, you might never have to do anything else.

But when we’re new, or hungry, or want to be the King of the Jungle, we go into the cold market and bring in some fresh meat.

There’s a time to run and catch new clients and a time to do our work and let the clients catch us.

How to get more referrals

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Referrals

What kind of work do you do?

June 5, 2024 by David M. Ward

Lawyers typically answer that question by talking about their practice area or services. “I’m an estate planning attorney,” for example. It may be accurate, but from a marketing standpoint, it’s not the best response.

Yes, you want to tell people what kind of work you do, but you also want them to know what that means to them (and people they know).

So, make sure to them the benefits your clients get when they hire you.

For example, “I help people protect their assets from the tax collector,” or, “I show high-income individuals how to use legal strategies to improve their financial future,” are ways to do that. Follow that with, “I’m an estate planning attorney.”

Alternatively, you could state your practice area or job description first, “I’m an estate planning attorney,” and follow that with the benefits you offer.

You can also add something about the types of clients you represent, problems or services you focus on, or other specifics, to give the listener more information and help them see that you are a good match for them. But that might be too much information at first blush and you might want to wait until they ask questions or otherwise show interest in your initial response.

Tell them what you do; but also tell them how you can help them or the people they know.

For more, check out my book, How to Sell Your Legal Services in 15 Seconds or Less