Laura Lee Sparks
Monday - Friday | 9am - 5pm Central
Laura Lee Sparks
Our mission here at Legal Marketing Maven is to make law firm marketing easy, efficient and affordable. We do this by offering a wide range of services that will allow you to have access to professionally developed marketing that works. No matter what your budget is, we have something for you. But, there are a lot of things that you can do on your own that cost you nothing to catapult your law firm on the top of the heap of your competitors.
Here are a few very simple ideas for you:
Attend events in your community.
Business networking events are great, but the events that you attend don’t have to be situations where you sell. Attend community celebrations, fundraisers, religious events, the PTA at your child’s school, or any other gathering in your local area. The idea here is to be seen. People want to do business with people they are familiar with so give them the opportunity to get to know you.
Look for opportunities to teach.
You could offer free classes in your community or even serve as an adjunct professor in your local community college or university. Not only do you benefit from getting to know more people, you’ll also be in a position to demonstrate your expertise.
Remember that referrals go both ways.
You know how valuable referrals are to your law firm, right? They are also valuable to others so send referrals to other attorneys and other colleagues. Not only will you be doing a very nice thing for them, you are increasing the likelihood that you will get more from them.
Get to know your clients before you meet them.
Research your potential clients before they meet with you. You might want to pick the brain of the person who referred them or talk to others who may know them. You can even give Google a try. I’m not suggesting that you stalk them, but having an idea about who they are could go a long way in your first meeting.
Knock their socks off!
It probably doesn’t really need to be said because for most it is common sense but do a great job and provide great customer service to each and every client. This will set you up very nicely for repeat clients, but it will also help your reputation in your community.
Take advantage of social media.
There are just too many lawyers that fail to take advantage of social media. This is a big marketing miss. Unless you truly live off the grid, you must know that this is where people are communicating. Even if you aren’t using social media personally, you can still have a professional presence there. Social media can be used to attract new clients and to keep your past clients interested.
Regularly update your blog.
With so much information available on the internet people tend to turn to search engines for almost every purchasing decision they make. You should be the one who provides that information. You can attract the attention of a lot of potential clients simply by sharing your thoughts and providing basic information. Also, all that new content gives the search engines something to work with. T
Create a marketing plan.
Rather than aimlessly working your way through the year throwing money at this marketing agency or that ad publication, create a plan that allows you to more forward confidently and with much less risk. Not having a marketing plan is like constructing a building without blueprints. You might be able to muddle through, but you won’t be happy with the results. A strategic marketing plan allows you to understand the direction you want to go and determine the actions to take to get you there. Oh, and once you develop a marketing plan, don’t just sit it on a shelf. Use it! As they say, “Plan the work and work the plan.”
I understand that some of these things might not be easy for you to do. In particular, the more technical marketing things. That is why I created this “Keep it Consistent” program. In a nutshell, it is a very affordable service where we do all the heaving lifting to create your blogs, social media content and email newsletter – and, we even manage the implementation. If, while you were reading this blog, you thought, “Oh yeah, but who has the time!” you should take a look to see if this will work for you.
These are just a few of the things you can do to accelerate your marketing efforts. Do you want to talk about other strategies to help you implement your marketing plan? Feel free to schedule a time on my calendar for a no strings virtual cup of coffee to chat about your business. I promise you will come away with a good plan for turning your ideas in actions!
It’s good to be validated.
Not that we needed it, but it is a good thing to find a widely-respected publication affirm the very advice that you have been giving for years. That happened to us recently when the online publication Search Engine Watch published an article about the future holds for effective marketing.
In short, the article points out the fact that “being found” is much more than writing articles with the appropriate keywords and meta tags. It is about integrating SEO tactics into marketing. What this means is that it is simply not possible to focus heavily on one aspect of marketing and expect it to be effective.
This is not news to us at Legal Marketing Maven. Even back in the day when everyone else was pushing rankings, we recognized that this was just a small part of a commanding online presence. We recognized that marketing tactics should be looked at as holistic, integrated approach and not individual parts. It was with this idea that we developed our Done-For-You marketing program.
We recognized a long time ago that an effective marketing program only works if you include Branding, PR, and demonstration of thought leadership through articles, videos and social participation. We put a package together that allowed estate planning attorneys to easily implement this marketing strategy on their own and managed to keep the cost very low. That was 2 and ½ years ago.
Are we tooting our own horn here? Probably. But, sometimes when you are leading the pack you should let people know about it. In fact, we hope you are doing the same! Toot away!
Would you like to talk about how we can help you save time on your marketing and help you turn ideas into action? Simply schedule a time on my calendar for a no-strings virtual cup of coffee.
Over the years we’ve worked with many lawyers who have easily spent 6 figures on coaching and mentoring services to get their law firms off the ground. A lot of these coaches are really great. The attorneys come away with a great understanding of what marketing needs to be done, yet they fail to see results. When we’ve worked with these attorneys and peeled back the layers we typically see the same disconnect.
The attorney doesn’t have a marketing problem; they have an IMPLEMENTATION problem.
What we’ve found is that the knowledge and strategies that they’ve paid 6-figures to learn isn’t being implemented because there is an expectation that everything they learned can be done in-house. We’ve identified 2 common reasons why this isn’t happening for them.
The good news is there are solutions to these issues. You can get the benefit of great attorney coaching programs and get things implemented. Here’s a little help.
1. Involve key team members in your coaching and training programs.
If you go to a marketing or practice management event, bring your staff! The extra cost will be well worth the benefit of having the team all on the same page and receiving the training that you have gone out of your way to receive. You can’t do it all yourself but you also can’t expect your staff to be mind readers or overnight gurus either…so bring them!
2. If you are a solo and don’t have staff, you must start blocking time to work ON your business and not just in it.
Having all of that knowledge in your head and doing it sporadically when you can find the time is not going to bring results. If you want your pipeline full, you need to set aside regular time to implement your marketing campaigns. Block off an hour to make phone calls and touch base with new referral sources. Set aside a Saturday morning to write your email newsletter and print newsletter for the month. If you don’t start intentionally making time for it, it will never happen.
3. Get a head start by getting help.
We created our Done-For-You program to get you over the barriers. We give attorneys and their teams a “head start” on creating their marketing each and every month. As much as you may hate marketing, it’s a necessary evil and has to get done if you want new business. With a program like DFY, you don’t have to worry anymore about more starting from scratch and expecting your team to be marketing gurus and wasting hours that should be better used servicing your clients. We create the campaigns, have everything designed by a professional designer, write the blog posts, do the newsletter so all you are doing is editing and making tweaks where you see fit. It’s easy for you and easy for your team, and it is affordable! Take a look.
If you’ve felt frustrated by the lack of clients coming in the door, don’t blame your coach or mentor. Just take the necessary steps to turn all of the terrific training into
reality and make it happen!
Would you like to talk about how we can help you save time on your marketing and help you turn ideas into action? Simply schedule a time on my calendar for a no-strings virtual cup of coffee.
In most professional fields, people seem to equate the word “marketing” with “magic”. Maybe you’ve unknowingly done it in your practice, too. You create a marketing plan, hire the appropriate staff members, run some campaigns and nothing happens.
Sound familiar?
I know the frustration of this from personal experience. Typically around the second or third month of working with a new client, this becomes the topic of our private coaching calls. They express concern that their phone is not ringing off the hook, no one seems to notice what they are doing and it feels like their money is getting wasted in the process.
They are striving for magic, not momentum.
After effectively talking them off the ledge, I’m able to teach them how REAL, relationship-based marketing works. Typically it’s front-end loaded, requiring a small investment of time to lay a foundation in which you are REGULARLY reaching out to prospects and potential referral sources in the community.
It’s a further understanding that you can’t just swipe a cold mailing list of financial advisors or CPA’s from the Internet, mail to them one time and expect business like crazy. Instead, it’s recognizing the Rule of 7 at play and making a plan to constantly stay in touch.
And, especially when it comes to internet marketing, it’s understanding that the website you spent ZERO time marketing in the past will not show up on page one of Google just because you posted a blog or two.
You have to do these things consistently, usually over a period of a few months before you can accurately gage results!
So back to my coaching calls. Once I’m able to help the client see that business relationships and momentum are not built overnight (much like relationships in real life!), it never fails that within the next 30-60 days I’m getting emails from the SAME EXACT CLIENTS like this:
“I don’t know what happened but the largest nursing home in my
community just called. Said they’ve seen my name all over the
place and I was also mentioned by someone on staff. They’ve
invited me to speak to their residents. I had two similar calls this week for smaller speaking engagements. I’ve had zero invites prior to this”.“I’m finally starting to get calls from my website and ranking all over the place. And not just waste of time calls before, but these are actually quality cases. Amazing how this works”
“We engaged a very lucrative client today. She inquired about our services a year ago but put it on the backburner. I started sending my newsletter and after reading it for the past two months, she knew she had to come in and get everything taken care of. She thanked us for the push…but I should probably be thanking you for the same”.
I encourage you to take a cold, honest look at your marketing expectations today. Are you expecting magic or are you realistically focused on building momentum and long-term relationships?
It’s wise to expect some form of ROI (return on investments) but make sure you are allowing the proper timeframe for that to happen. Just like you probably wouldn’t agree to marry someone after the first date, you also need to allow for proper “courtship” and “wooing” before a client is willing to fork over $5,000-$10,000 on your services.
Would you like to talk about how we can help you save time on your marketing and help you turn ideas into action? Simply schedule a time on my calendar for a no-strings virtual cup of coffee.
Attorney Outsourcing: How To Get Started
The first step you should take when looking to outsource is to really determine what you are spending your time doing. I suggest keeping a list of everything you do for a week and how much time you spend doing it. At the end of the week, make three columns:
Things Only “I” Can Do
Things I Do NOT Enjoy
Things I LOVE
Next, Put a checkmark next to each item in the applicable category. Be very careful selecting the “Things Only “I” Can Do” category! Is that really true?
Next evaluate your list, the only things you REALLY have to be doing are those things only you can do. Of course, I usually recommend continuing to do the things you LOVE to do, IF it is not a huge time zapper.
Once you have the list of things you can let go of, it’s time to start determining the type of vendor you need to outsource to.
Here is a short list of some items that I see attorneys (and other small businesses) commonly outsource:
In Part II, we’ll talk about each of these categories and how to find the best vendor to outsource to.
Hint – it’s NOT finding a Virtual Assistant who can do it all!
Would you like to talk about how we can help you save time on your marketing and help you turn ideas into action? Simply schedule a time on my calendar for a no-strings virtual cup of coffee.
