Spring time has arrived here in the Panhandle of Florida – it doesn’t last long, we move into summer-like weather rather quickly!  I’ve been enjoying the warmer weather with cool breezes by doing a little gardening, taking afternoon swims and working as much as possible out on my deck enjoying the fresh air.

As I’m sure you have heard this week, the south was hit hard with horrible tornadoes. My thoughts and prayers are with everyone in the South after the horrible storms that moved through leaving devastation in their path. I know from experiencing tragic losses during Hurricane Andrew how devastating Mother Nature’s fury can be.  I hope you and your loved ones were spared and my company will be donating 10% of our revenues next month to the relief efforts.

It makes me think about emergency plans, and my post that I did a while back on that subject, if you missed it you can read it here.  If you do not have an emergency plan in place for your business, I encourage you to do it, you never know when an emergency could strike, and as scary as it is we are seeing natural disasters becoming more and more frequent. ??Please feel free to leave a comment on that post or shoot me an email with any tips or resources you have for emergency plans, I’d be happy to compile them and share them with the readers.  I’m sure by putting all of our heads together we could come up with a plan that fills in most gaps!  Again this is all about creating a system that you would follow should the unthinkable occur .

Last week, I also interviewed Nate Hagerty and we discussed the importance of Social Media marketing and how to convert the time spent on those platforms into clients in the door.  If you missed the call, we have set up a replay page at http://www.lawyersocialmedia.com.  Nate gave his formula for successful implementation of social media marketing (it has proven results for his CPA firms) so be sure to go listen to the call if you have not already done so. I think you’ll also be very surprised by what Nate shared is the most important component of social media marketing – and I’m sure it isn’t what you think!

We also discussed what I feel is one of THE most important pieces of your marketing plan, and that is consistency!  Simply put, having a system in place so that you know it is getting done.

Nate and I did a little digging into some of the sites of the lawyers that registered for our call, both by signing up for their newsletters (for those that had them) and also by checking out their social media profiles (again for those that had them or we could find).

The results were that for most, when we signed up for a newsletter, we received a simple thank you note – sometimes – and that was it.  There were some social media profiles that were really doing a good job, but others that hadn’t been updated in a very long time, almost looking abandoned.

Is that what happens with your marketing?  You get gun-ho coming up with campaigns, putting yourself out there on social media, doing speaking engagements, etc…and then business picks up and you get busy doing the client work.  Leaving no time for the marketing, I call this the marketing merry-go-round.  I see it quite a bit, and it doesn’t have to be that way.

In order for your marketing to be effective it must be consistent.  You must be in front of your prospects all of the time, because you never know when they are going to decide that now is the time that they need your service.  And when they need that service you want them to call YOU not the new lawyer down the road that has suddenly gotten on their radar.  ??It’s all about relationships, and relationships have to have consistency.

They want to know, like and trust you and the like and trust factors sometimes can take a while to build.

Here are my suggestions (bare minimum) for keeping a consistent marketing plan going:

• Weekly Email to your list
• Daily Post on Social Media (not always about you but to drive conversation)
• Monthly Print Newsletter (you need to be getting in the MAILBOX of your prospects)
• Regular Videos – Multi-media marketing is important as it allows your prospects to “see” you and it is great for SEO
• Monthly press releases – you probably won’t get picked up every month but keeping in regular contact with your local media with timely advice and articles establishes yourself as the expert, and when you are picked up and your prospects see you in the news it is certainly a credibility boost that money can not buy.
• Blogging regularly – you must be updating a blog regularly if YOU want google to take notice of you, and let’s face it people are going to Google to find professionals to work with.

This can all be systemized so that it is happening on a regular basis without much effort from you at all.  I know this hard for a lot of lawyers to believe, but you have got to let go of the concept that YOU must do everything. Delegate these items to key team members.  If they need training we are happy to help or you can contact us to learn more about how we help law firms implement consistent, educational-based marketing into their firms.

If you are an Estate Planning or Elder Law attorney you may want to check out our DFY package that will give you all of the content you need on a monthly basis to begin getting a marketing system in place in your firm right away.

If this is an area you are struggling with and you would like to schedule a no-obligation 20 minute strategy call with me to brainstorm some next steps, please reply to this email and we’ll set something up.  There is nothing I enjoy more than helping lawyers get their ideas out of their head and into concrete action steps!