The problem with video marketing

August 8, 2012 by
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Everyone (and his brother) is touting video as THE marketing tool you MUST use. You have to deliver content using sight and sound and movement. You have to entertain people. Nobody reads anymore. Yada yada yada. . .

Of course it’s true that a well done video is a great way to engage people. Video also allows you to control the staging of your material, so you can deliver it for maximum effect. Millions of youtube views per day demonstrate the public’s appetite for video content.

But there’s a problem with using video in marketing: there are too many of them.

With everyone (and his brother) using videos, with so many coming at me every day, I don’t have time to watch them. So I delete the email or close out the web page. Or I bookmark it to watch later, and we all know that later never comes.

A brilliant video that nobody watches is worthless.

The written word is, and always will be, better than video.

People can skim a written message, and get the gist of it. If they like what they see, they will find the time to read more.

People can print a written message. When it’s in front of them on their (real) desktop, they are more likely to read it.

People can read a written message in their email inbox, without doing anything more than opening it.

And if people read your message, even if it is only mediocre, it will always outperform the brilliant video they do not watch.

I’m not saying ‘don’t use video’ in your marketing. Use it if you can. Audios, too. A lot of people like to listen while they are commuting or at the gym.

But if you don’t also use the written word, you’re missing out on a boatload of people who might be interested but didn’t have the time (or bandwidth) to find out.

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Filed Under: Advertising, Communication, Email, Marketing legal services, Presentations, Technology, Web traffic, Writing Tagged With:

Using LinkedIn to get more traffic to your blog or web site

July 30, 2012 by
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Are we connected on LinkedIn? We should be. Send me a request to connect and mention this blog as our connection.

I like LinkedIn. It’s an excellent social media platform for professionals. No LOL cats, vacation photos, or game requests.

Our LinkedIn profiles lets others learn about what we do, and if that’s all it did, that would be great. But LinkedIn is a giant directory of professionals and business owners we can reach out to and network with, and with a little effort, it’s also a mechanism for actively generating more traffic to our sites.

Here is a very basic example to illustrate:

Let’s say you represent small businesses and you connect with commercial real estate attorneys, brokers, bankers, et. al. One of them posts a link to an article on new government programs for small businesses. You like the article and

  • Comment on their LinkedIn post, which exposes your brilliance to others and brings traffic to your profile, and then to your blog.
  • Comment on their blog, which can also bring traffic.
  • Reach out to the author and tell him you like the article, which may lead to future networking opportunities, guest posts, etc. You can do the same with the person who posted the article if they aren’t the author.
  • Share the article with your clients and prospects, which earns their appreciation.
  • Learn something you can use in your practice and in your marketing.

There are lots of ways to network and share content on LinkedIn. This excellent article on how to use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your blog shows you seven ways to do precisely that. Some of these I’m doing; others are now on my “Next Action” list.

There’s a link in the article to LinkedIn applications you can install to help automate some of these tasks. I use the WordPress app to sync this blog and recommend it. A few applications are designated for legal professionals and I’m going to check them out.

Are you using LinkedIn to get traffic and make new connections?

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Networking, Social media, Social media marketing, Web traffic Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What do you do when the case is over?

July 9, 2012 by
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Think of a file you closed in the last thirty days. The work was done, the client was paid or got their final papers, there’s no more work left to do.

What now? What’s your plan?

If you think in terms of “cases” or “files” or “work,” probably not much. You finished what you were hired to do and you were paid. Gotta go find someone else who needs you.

If you think in terms of “clients” and “repeat business” and “referrals,” you’re just getting started.

Your clients are worth far more to you than what they paid you to handle their case or file. Over time, they may be worth 50 times that amount. But if you leave it up to them to come back when they need you again, or refer someone who needs you, you’re making a big mistake.

It’s up to you to stay in touch with your clients, now, at the end of their case, and forever–until you retire or one of you dies.

It’s called “lifetime value,” and many attorneys never see it because once the work is done, so are they.

Call your client: “Do you have any questions?”

Mail to your client: “Thank you for the opportunity to serve you. Please fill out this survey and tell us how we did.”

Mail something every month: “Here’s something I thought you would like.”

Most of tomorrow’s business should come from the clients you have right now. Even if those clients never hire you again and never refer a single client, they can help you by sending traffic to your web site, promoting your seminar, or distributing your report or video.

So, when the case file is closed, open another file for the client. You have more work to do.

You need to stay in touch with your clients and let them know you appreciate them. Remind them about the (other) services you offer. Ask them what you can do to help them with anything of a legal nature, or anything else. And once in awhile, ask them to help you by liking your page or forwarding your email to someone they care about.

The work is not difficult and it pays extremely well.

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Filed Under: Client loyalty, Client relations, Marketing legal services, Referrals, Relationship marketing, Thank you letters, Web traffic Tagged With: , ,

3 smart ways to create content your prospects really want to read

June 5, 2012 by
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Have you ever struggled to come up with ideas for your blog or newsletter? After you read this blog post, you’ll never have that problem again. Even better, you’ll be able to create content your target market actually wants to read.

It makes no difference whether you have a static web site, a blog, an ezine or a paper newsletter. There are three proven ways to find out what people want to know. You can use these strategies for any kind of content–seminars, webinars, white papers, articles, audios and videos–and come up with the perfect idea every time.

CONTENT CREATION METHOD NO. 1

Let’s start with the most obvious way to find out what your target market wants to read: asking them.

You can email (or write) your list, or ask via your blog or through your social media channels, to find out what people want to know. A free online poll service like Surveymonkey makes it easy.

When a lot of people say, “I want to know X,” you can be fairly certain that this will be a popular topic for a blog post or newsletter article.

For best results, give people a choice of topics: “Do you want to read about A or B?” “Rank these five titles in order of preference. . .”. Of course, this means you will have to come up with the titles you are asking them to choose between so you might want to start your inquiry with one of the next two methods.

CONTENT CREATION METHOD NO. 2

Every day, your target market searches online for information and solutions. A keyword tool like Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker.com will tell you precisely what words are being searched for and in what volume.

You should have a list or spreadsheet of your keywords and phrases. If not, using a keyword tool will help you get one started. Searching on words like, “Los Angeles divorce lawyer” will lead you to related words and phrases to add to your list.

You’ll also be able to see the volume of searches for each keyword, and the number of web sites that use them, i.e., your competition.

Although optimally, you want a combination of a high number of searches and a low number of competing sites, the purpose of this exercise isn’t to find the best keyword deals for you to bid on, it’s to find keywords that allow you to create content people want to read. Therefore, for writing purposes, it doesn’t matter how much competition you have for those keywords.

Nevertheless, if you can find variations of high-ranking keywords with low competition, i.e., “Certified family law specialist Torrance,” instead of “Los Angeles divorce lawyer,” you will increase your chances of getting search engine traffic, especially if  you use those keywords in the title, in subheads, in the text itself, and in the image tags.

CONTENT CREATION METHOD NO. 3

In school, we were punished for copying off of someone else’s paper. In marketing, copying others can get you a gold star.

The simplest, and arguably the most accurate way to find out what your prospects want to read is to look at what they are reading on other blogs. If a particular topic is popular on the blog of another lawyer with a similar target market, you can be fairly certain that topic will be popular on yours.

Create a list or spreadsheet of your competition’s blogs and add the urls of the posts they’ve published recently. Then, look at each post and note how many tweets or Likes those posts received. If they don’t have buttons for Twitter or Facebook, type the URL into twitter to see the number of re-tweets or mentions. You could also find a non-competitive lawyer, i.e., in another state or province, and ask them which of their posts is getting the most traffic.

Now you know exactly what your target market wants to read and you can write content related to those topics. Don’t plagiarize the post. Write your own unique content, a different take on the subject, your own stories and so on, and change the title.

For example, if a lawyer is getting a lot of re-tweets and shares for a post entitled, “How to get joint custody in California,” you could write a post with the title, “Strategies for men seeking joint custody in a California divorce.”

With all of these methods, the key is to first let the market tell you what it wants, then go create it. You’ll save time, you’ll never run out of ideas, and you’ll always give people content they really want to read.

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Filed Under: Blogging, Communication, Marketing legal services, Newsletters, Online Marketing, Social media marketing, Web traffic Tagged With: , ,

Build a more profitable law practice by relaxing and doing less

May 9, 2012 by
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Yesterday, I spoke with an attorney who is on the verge of burnout. I could hear it in his voice. After thirty years of practice, he’s struggling to attract clients, he’s stressed out and he doesn’t know what to do.

He tells me he’s competent and people like him when they meet him. “Put me in front of someone and they’ll sign up,” he said. He doesn’t do a lot of networking and admits he doesn’t get in front of enough people.

He has a web site and a blog for each of his five practice areas. He’s spent considerable time and money creating content for his blogs and optimizing them for search engines. Unfortunately, the clients who have contacted him through his site have had little money or were looking for free advice.

Within a couple of minutes, I could see his problem and told him what I thought. I could do that because his “ailment” is so common. Like many attorneys, he’s spread too thin and trying to do too much.

I told him he needed to slow down and get focused. Choose one practice area, the one he likes and is best at, and stick with it. His background is in business law. He doesn’t like doing divorces but that’s the kinds of clients his web site seems to be attracting so he added that to his repertoire. While you can’t ignore what the market wants, you are never a slave to it.

I also told him to specialize in the kinds of clients he represents. Some clients are better than others. They have more money and more legal work, the kind you enjoy doing, and you should concentrate on attracting them. Choose an industry or market niche where you have some knowledge and experience and own it. Everything is easier when you do.

His blogs have a lot of content but I suspect it is content created for search engines more than for real people. When you write for SEO purposes you often wind up with content that is mechanically correct but lifeless. When your content is organic, coming from your experiences with real clients, you attract similar clients who resonate with your message.

The process I recommended was one of subtraction: getting rid of most of what he was doing and starting over with a clean slate. Most of his good clients had come through referrals and that’s where they will continue to come from, once he stops trying so hard.

Marketing professional services should be a natural outgrowth of who you are. It starts with knowing what you want and giving yourself permission to have it, choosing your clients instead of letting them choose you.

Relax, do less, but do what you are, not what an SEO expert says you should be.

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Filed Under: Blogging, Career satisfaction, Communication, Dealing with stress, Marketing legal services, Online Marketing, Specializing, Web traffic Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

If I were starting my law practice today, here’s what I would do to bring in clients

May 7, 2012 by
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If I were opening a law practice today, my “marketing plan” would be very different than it was when I opened my office thirty-plus years ago.

The Internet changes everything.

So. . . here’s what I would do:

I would start by setting up a web site to showcase what I do. It would be my online brochure as well as a mechanism for networking and lead generation. It would be an information hub, the center of all of my marketing activities.

My web site would be a self-hosted WordPress blog so I could update it without depending on anyone else. I would spend less than $10/yr. for a domain, and less than $10/mo. for hosting.

I would keep things simple, with a clean, professional look. I would favor quality content over bells and whistles. The look would say, “competent, confident, accomplished and approachable,” because that’s what I would want if I was looking for an attorney.

I would add articles and other content to the site, to provide value to visitors and generate search engine traffic. I would continue to add content, seeking to make my site the most comprehensive in my practice area. When someone needed an answer, everyone would point them to my site.

I would make it easy for visitors to contact me through the site and I would encourage this. I want people to ask questions. My answers bring me one step closer to an appointment and a new client. Their questions and my answers would also give me fodder for new content.

I would add testminonials and success stories to the site, providing social proof of my capabilities and add a dramatic aspect to otherwise dry material.

I would set up a lead capture system, using an autoresponder to deliver an online newsletter. I would encourage visitors to subscribe so I could stay in touch with them. Over time, I know they will become clients, provide referrals, and generate even more traffic to my site through their social media channels.

Once my hub was set up, my focus would be to drive traffic to the site and grow my list. I would start by leveraging my existing contacts, telling them about my site and the benefits of visiting. I would ask them to spread the word to the people they know.

Every piece of printed collateral, including my business cards, would include a link to my web site. Every email I sent would link to the site. Every article I wrote would include a resource box and a link to my site.

I would become active in forums and on social media. I would do some networking and speaking to meet new contacts and to stay up to date with the news in my target market.

I would look for other professionals who target my market and propose writing for each other’s blogs and newsletters. If they were physically near me, I would meet them for coffee and explore other ways we could help each other.

I would regularly email to my list, notifying them of new content on the site and sending them other content I found that I thought they might like to see. I would stay in touch with them so that I would be “in their minds and their mailboxes” when they needed my services or encountered someone who did.

I would let people know I appreciate their referrals and thank those who have provided them in the past. I would suggest other ways they could help me, i.e., forwarding my emails to their friends and contacts, promoting my seminar or other event, or introducing me to people they know that I should meet.

I would look for ways to provide added value to my list and even more so to my clients. I would give them information and advice, but not necessarily in my practice area or even anything legal.

I would smother my clients with attention, exceeding their expectations in every way possible, because I know the best way to build a law practice is with referrals from satisfied clients and other people who know, like, and trust me.

Wait. . .  the Internet doesn’t change everything. Marketing is the same today as it was thirty years ago. The Internet just makes it easier, quicker, and less expensive.

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Filed Under: Client relations, Email, Image, List building, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Newsletters, Online Marketing, Referrals, Social media marketing, Technology, Web traffic Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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

May 3, 2012 by
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“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?”

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

Marketing legal services like Starbucks or Amazon

April 18, 2012 by
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Whether expressly forbidden by ethical rules or just inappropriate for a professional practice, attorneys can’t do many of the things a retailer can do to bring in business.

Like have a sale or special promotion. Or an army of affiliates.

But don’t you sometimes wish you could?

Actually, there is a way. All you need to do is create a product you can sell to the people in your target market.

A book or audio course. A set of forms or checklists. A do-it-yourself kit.

Take your expertise and turn it into a product. Not only can it bring you more clients, it can become an additional source of income.

You have a body of knowledge that people are willing to pay for, don’t you? Your expertise is valuable. Take a portion of that knowledge and “product-ize” it.

It could be a $5 ebook or a $5,000 8-week seminar. It doesn’t matter. Anything you can offer to the market place will do. Promote that, not your services, and watch your traffic and leads grow.

Now before you say, “it won’t work for my practice,” (you were going to say that, weren’t you?) go to your closet, get out your thinking cap, and put it on your head.

What’s that? You don’t have a thinking cap? No problem. I can get you one wholesale. Just need to find my affiliate link. . .

If you have trouble creating something your prospective clients would buy, find something that’s already available and sell that. Someone else’s book perhaps (e.g., an expert in a related field, a consumer advocate), or even a product.

You could even sell t-shirts if you wanted to. The trick is to tie it to a cause. Find something you’re passionate about (literacy, rain forests, cure for cancer) and donate the proceeds to an appropriate charity. They get the money, you get the customer list.

Anyway, don’t be so quick to dismiss the idea. If you can make it work, it would open up all kinds of marketing possibilities.

Yes, check with your bar association to make sure. We know how fussy they can be. They may claim that because the purpose of selling your book or widget is to bring in clients, the same ethical restrictions apply. Argue it, if you can. Find a way around it.

And stay tuned. Next week, I’m having a sale on thinking caps. You’ll want to stock up.

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Filed Under: Increase your income, List building, Marketing legal services, Web traffic Tagged With: , , , ,

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

April 12, 2012 by
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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.

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

Guy Kawasaki on social media and SEO

March 5, 2012 by
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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.

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