5 ways to increase your income

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You probably know (most of) this, but you may not be doing most of it. Sometimes, it helps to have a list in front of you, so here you go:

1. Increase your fees

Many lawyers don’t charge what the market will bear. Increasing your fees is one of the simplest ways to increase your income. 

You may lose some clients along the way. If you don’t, you may not be increasing your fees enough.

The point isn’t how many clients you retain, however, it is how much you earn from the ones who stay and the new ones who come along who don’t know what you used to charge.

2. Increase your average “sale”

Raising your fees does this, of course. You can also do it by increasing the percentage of clients who hire you again, how frequently they do that, and by increasing the number of services the average client “buys”. 

You can also do this by bringing in bigger cases.

3. Bring in more new clients

Improving your marketing, increasing your ad spend, doing more marketing in more channels, will all help you bring more new clients to your door. 

If you also improve your website, follow-up processes, offers, sales skills, and the frequency with which you stay in touch with prospective clients, you will sign up more of them. 

4. Bring in better clients

You want clients who hire you more often, have lots of contacts they can refer or introduce you to, pay their bills on time, and let you do your work without micromanaging. 

How do you attract them? By targeting better target markets and/or ideal clients. Then, once you have them on board, getting them to refer people they know, who are likely to be a lot like themselves.

5. Decrease your overhead/marketing expenses

Building a referral-based practice will do this. So will lowering your cost per lead. You can also do it by improving your productivity, so you get more work done in less time and at lower cost. 

Which of these do you like best? Which ones will you work on first?

This can help you sort everything out

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How to get free publicity–even if you don’t play the flute

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Legendary rock group, Jethro Tull, is lending it’s name to a new hand sanitizer. We’re told it’s reasonably priced, at a time when there’s a lot of price gouging, and all proceeds go to charity.

Nice.

I’m not sure if Ian Anderson stands on one leg to promote this but the radio spots I’ve heard do feature a lick or two of him wailing on flute.

Anyway, can you do something like this? Promote a product, service, or cause with a charitable tie in? Even if you’re not legendary?

Why not?

It’s good to do good, and you’ll look good while you’re doing it.

When your clients and prospects hear what you’re doing, they’ll likely see you in a favorable light, and tell others about what you’re doing. The cause (and you) get more exposure, more traffic to your website, and more good will.

As you get publicity, your name will get mentioned, meaning you get publicity, too.

More:

  • The charity may mention you in their newsletter and on their website. They may thank you publicly, too.
  • You can issue press releases and otherwise contact media outlets, which may mention your cause and book you for interviews.
  • You can use contact influential people in your target market, tell them what you’re doing, and ask them to join you by promoting the cause or offer to their list. In addition to helping the cause, this could lead you to marketing alliances, referrals, and introductions to others in the niche.
  • You (may be able to–check with the Bar) advertise the cause or promotion and get your name mentioned as a sponsor, without directly advertising your services

Sound like a plan?

Find a charity or cause you’d like to promote. If there is something about it that’s in the news, like the need for hand sanitizer, even better.

Talk to the company that makes the product or performs the service, and ask them what you can do to help them get the word out. See if they’ll provide you with a special offer to sweeten the deal.

And then promote it.

Let me know what you’re doing. I might mention it in a future post. If I really like it, I might bend over backwards to do it. Just don’t expect me to stand on one leg.

If you’re ready to take a quantum leap in your marketing, here you go

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Should you market your firm or your services?

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Should you market your law firm or your individual services?

Both.

When someone searches for information about estate planning, filing a tort claim, or getting out of their lease, that’s what people want to know. You should provide them with information about those problems, and the solutions you offer via your services.

People also want to know about your firm–your experience with matters like theirs, the kinds of clients you represent, and why they should choose you instead of any other lawyer or firm.

They want to know why they should trust you, how much you charge, how long the work will take, and how to get started.

So, market both your firm’s capabilities and your services. But there’s something else you should market that’s even more important. In fact, it is the essence of all professional services marketing.

I’m talking about you.

Market yourself. Let people see you, hear you, get to know you. Let them see what it’s like to work with you, to have you advising them, advocating for them, and helping them solve their problems and achieve their goals.

Law firms are faceless, cold and impersonal. Legal services are technical, abstract, and boring.

And then there’s you. A complex, competent, and caring human being.

People want to talk to you, hear your words of wisdom, and cry on your shoulder. When they’re in trouble, they want you by their side.

Market your services and your firm, but more than anything else, market yourself. Because people buy you before they buy your services.

The Attorney Marketing Formula

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How to get more clients without advertising

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One of the simplest ways to get more clients is to work with professionals, business owners, bloggers, and other influential people in your niche.–people with clients, customers, or subscribers who might need your services or know someone who does.

Typically, you meet and network with them and eventually get some referrals.

That works, but there’s a faster way.

Step One: Find people in your niche who don’t compete with you and who have a following–a blog, a newsletter, a channel, a podcast, an active social media platform, or other list of people who know, like and trust them.

Step Two: Talk to them about “working together” for your mutual benefit.

That means using your respective lists to promote each other’s practice, newsletter, offer or event.

If you handle estate planning, for example, you might work with divorce attorneys and propose one or more of the following:

  • I’ll write about your practice, you write about mine
  • We do guest posts for each other
  • We interview each other
  • We mention each other’s offer in the P.S. of our newsletters
  • We promote each other’s upcoming events, book launch, or giveaway
  • And so on

You might close your newsletter with something like this:

“My friend Joe Lawyer has a successful family law practice and is offering a free report, ‘How to Lose Your Spouse Without Losing Your Shirt’. If you know anyone who might like a copy, give them this link: xxxx”

It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

Step Three: Rinse and repeat. Run more promotions with them and find others with whom you can do the same.

I show you everything you need to know in my Lawyer-to-Lawyer Referrals course. You can read all about it here.

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The most important page on your website or blog

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When someone visits your website for the first time, statistics tell us they’ll probably click on and read your “About” page. What they see, or don’t see, often determines whether they stay on your site, or leave and never return.

That’s why your About (“About me,” “About us”) page is the most important page on your site.

Visitors are looking for information about you and your firm. They want to know what do you and for whom you do it. They want to know how you can help them and get a sense for what it would be like to work with you.

They also want to know something about you, the person.

Your About page is the portal visitors take into your world, and the first step towards getting to know, like, and trust you.

Your About page doesn’t need to be brilliant. It just has to present the important information visitors want to know, in a clear and compelling way.

If you want to see what a good About page looks like, check out this blog post: 29 Best About Us & About Me Pages (+ Why They’re So Good)

Use these examples for ideas and inspiration and then create or re-create your About page.

Learn more about the elements of an effective website here

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You only need a few

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You can’t serve thousands of clients. That’s okay because you only need a few. A few good clients will lead you to more good clients; soon, you’ll have all you can handle.

If you don’t have a few good clients right now, or you want to speed up the process, you need more new people coming into your world.

You need new leads, new subscribers, new referral sources, new prospective clients, to help fill your pipeline.

But, once again, you don’t need massive numbers. You only need a few.

In marketing your professional services, seek quality, not quantity.

How do you do that?

First, define your ideal client.

  • What’s their background? What type of business or industry?
  • What’s their legal situation?
  • How much work might they have for you?
  • What’s their timetable?
  • Do they need anyone’s approval?
  • How much do they already know about their legal situation?
  • What do they need or expect from a lawyer like you?
  • What’s important to them
  • Etc.

See The Attorney Marketing Formula for help defining your ideal client.

Second, what’s the source of the lead or prospect or subscriber?

Search leads are better than leads from a directory or rented list because they are actively looking for the solutions you offer.

Leads that come via your book or report or by hearing you speak are better than search leads because they know more about what you do and how you can help them.

Referred leads are better still because someone they trust is recommending your content or endorsing your services.

Third, what’s your message?

Tailor your content to appeal to the types of leads you want to attract. Use buzzwords they use in their industry. Talk about benefits that are important to them. Use examples and stories of people like them.

Talk about what they’re talking about. Show them you understand them and can help them, as you have done for other clients like them.

That’s how.

50 of the right people, brought to you with the right message, from the right sources, are worth more to you than 5,000 people who are wrong for you.

That’s why you only need a few.

The Attorney Marketing Formula

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The 5 pillars of digital marketing

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Once or twice a year, it’s a good idea to review and update your digital marketing plan. This will help you get more leads (and convert them), stay in touch with clients and contacts, stimulate repeat business and referrals, and build your “brand”.

Here’s a brief checklist of things to consider:

  1. Your website(s)
    • Home page layout, first impressions, navigation
    • “About” you page
    • Images
    • Contact information/forms
    • Content about legal problems and solutions
    • Content about your services/offers
    • Keywords/focus
    • FAQs
    • Landing pages
    • Mobile friendly
  2. Social media presence
    • Which platforms?
    • Your bio/links
    • Promote your website and other content
    • Promote your clients’ businesses/causes
    • Promote other professional, bloggers content, events
    • Engagement (if that’s your thing)
    • Posting schedule
  3. Content marketing strategy
    • Blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts, interviews, reports, ebooks, brochures and handouts
    • Valuable and/or interesting information
    • Tailored to prospective clients and referral sources in your target market
    • Demonstrate your knowledge and expertise
    • Educate about legal problems and solutions
    • Help people get to know, like, and trust you
    • Testimonials, endorsements, success stories
    • Easy to read and understand
  4. Traffic
    • Guest posts on other blogs, sites
    • Social sharing
    • Advertising
    • Social media posts
    • Speaking/presentations/networking
    • Marketing alliances with other professionals
  5. Newsletter/email
    • Stay in touch with clients, prospects; stimulate repeat business, referrals, social sharing, reviews
    • Sign-up forms on website/landing pages
    • Lead magnets/incentives (to build your list)
    • Schedule (weekly, daily, other)
    • Content ideas
    • Building engagement/fans
    • Stimulate feedback, questions

You don’t have to go “all in” on all of these strategies. I don’t. But you shouldn’t ignore any of them.

Get to together with your team to review your current digital footprint and consider what you need to add or update.

This will help you sort out your website

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Oh the pain, the pain

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If you ever watched the campy 1960’s TV series Lost in Space, you may recall one of Dr. Smith’s signature expressions.

If not, perhaps you recall the old Verizon TV commercials where the spokesman walked around town, speaking on the phone, repeatedly asking the other party, “Can you hear me now?”

What do these two have in common? Right, the pain.

The Verizon spots dramatized the biggest pain point for customers of other carriers, poor signal quality and dropped calls.

We all literally said, “Can you hear me now?” as we moved to find a better spot.

This demonstration set the stage for Verizon’s promise of better coverage and clearer signals, which landed them a lot of new customers.

In your marketing, you should do what Verizon did: market to the biggest frustration felt by your prospective clients.

Find your prospective client’s pain point, about their legal situation or their current attorney, and build your marketing message around this.

What makes them angry or keeps them up at night? What troubles them most about their legal issue? What is their biggest complaint about their current attorney?

Talk about that, and promise they won’t have that problem when they hire you.

Make the pain, and the relief you promise to deliver, specific to your practice area and market, because not everyone is frustrated by the same things. But if you need an idea, consider the nearly universal pain point for clients, “My lawyer never calls me back”.

Build your marketing around your prospective clients’ pain and promise to take away that pain. You can’t go wrong with that formula.

By the way, you may have noticed that the actor who portrayed the spokesman in the Verizon ads is now the spokesman for Sprint.

Oh the pain, the pain.

More

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Starting or restarting your law practice

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When you first opened your practice, no doubt you notified everyone you knew. You told them what kinds of cases and clients you would be handling, gave them your contact information, invited them to visit your website, encouraged them to follow you on social media, and asked them to keep you in mind if they need your help or know someone who does.

And maybe you got some business that way. But for most new attorneys, merely telling people your “store” is open for business isn’t enough.

That’s because most of the people you know don’t need your services right now. It is statistically improbable. They are also unlikely to know anyone who might need your services.

Some day, that will change. Some of your contacts will need your help. Others will talk to people they could refer.

Will they favor you with their business or referrals?

Maybe. If they remember you and what you do, and understand why they should choose you instead of any other attorney.

That’s why you hear me haranguing about the importance of staying in touch, so that you can be “in their minds and their mailboxes” when that day arrives.

And why the best way to do that is to build an email list.

Social media is fine but it doesn’t hold a candle to email. Never has, never will.

(I should do a video, “Email is king; change my mind”.)

Anyway, when you announce your new practice, offer everyone an incentive to sign up for your newsletter.

Create a report, a checklist, a video, or other freebie that would be of value to your contacts and the people they know, and tell everyone it’s available.

When they sign up, they get your report, learn more about solutions to their problem or the path to their objective, and get to see the kinds of benefits you deliver.

You get to stay in touch with them, tell them more, and remind them that you’re still available to help.

The good news is that you can do this even if you’re not a new attorney or opening a new office.

If you want to know how to write a report that brings in business, this will help.

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It’s easier to keep your clients happy than to get new ones

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We hired a new gardener recently because our previous one didn’t show up, or call, or text. He’s missed days before, but always let us know, so we figured he’d flaked out and moved on to greener pastures.

Turns out he hadn’t.

We got a text from him yesterday, asking why we removed him from our gated community’s guest list. “Is there a problem? Did I do something wrong?”

We filled him in. He got angry. But didn’t explain why he didn’t show up, contact us, or respond to our numerous texts.

So, he lost our account, and the tree-trimming gig he was booked to do later this month. We know he needs the money because he continually nickled-and-dimed us about everything, and because he mentioned needing the money in his last text.

We have needs, too. We need to know that our yard is being taken care of by someone we can count on.

Maybe he’ll learn a lesson from this. Maybe he’ll realize how important it is to take care of your customers, and that it’s easier to do that than to find new ones.

Hey, I hear a lawnmower outside. Guess out new gardener is here. Right on time. Just like he promised.

Marketing is everything you do to get and keep good clients

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