In my previous blog post, Get More Clients By Providing Them With Something Useful, I talked about using a different approach when marketing in the Yellow Pages. Basically, the point was to stand out from all of the other pages and pages of lawyer ads by providing something useful to your prospects. Now I want to go into more detail about direct response marketing and how it has worked for my law firm.
There are three basic steps to my direct response marketing campaign:
1. Attract prospects’ attention with a unique headline (such as a book title) and enticing bullet points
2. Make it simple for them to request the information
3. Stop their search
I have found this method to be successful for many reasons. People can request the information without having to feel pressured or intimidated by an aggressive salesperson. They learn that in most cases, they don’t have to rush out and hire an attorney right away. Therefore, they take their time in learning more about how to hire the right lawyer for them. The result is that I end up with a group of higher qualified potential clients who want me to take their cases.
If you advertise in the Yellow Pages, you need to find a way to stand out from all of the competing ads. Standing out doesn’t mean dropping more money on your ad, by making it bigger or adding color. You don’t need to shout louder, you just need to shout something different. That means you need to have useful information to offer your potential clients that will make them stop their search and contact you.
Our law firm has been successful with this technique. We focus our Yellow Pages ads on our free consumer books. These books are so simple to write and provide helpful information to prospects. Plus, you are able to use your books to educate your potential clients on how your law firm is the obvious choice for their case.
We make it easy for people to obtain the free books, by using a recorded message line and through one-page websites that we have created. This approach allows prospects to request the information in a non-threatening environment. It is also good for our office, because no one has to be there “live” to answer these requests.
So here is a summary of what you need to do if you are advertising in the Yellow Pages – offer something that is different and make it easy for people to get it.
Every once in a while someone will come up to me in the halls during one of our Great Legal Marketing conferences and say “but Ben, you don’t understand, my business/community/clients are different. They will never go for this style of marketing.” (The real losers say “my spouse/mother/law partner will never let us market this way.”
I’m not sure how these folks get in the door since we make it pretty clear in our marketing that we are all about
no excuses
no limits
making a profit
hanging out with winners only
looking out side the industry to ‘steal’ ideas and bring them into the lawyer industry.
Recently I attended a meeting here in Northern Virginia of a bunch of firms that were interested in improving delivery of legal services to the poor. I was the only lawyer there as most were mega firms who had sent their “pro bono coordinators” to the meeting to figure out how to get their legions of lawyers to volunteer.
I’m not sure how to get 60 patent attorneys to volunteer to do uncontested divorces but I do know what it takes to get a solo or small firm attorney to do more pro bono: they have to have a profitable practice. If you are making money and working only with clients you like working for then, yes, you’ll have time to get involved in another case that it interesting for which you will not be paid.
But, if you are worried about whether the likes can be turned on next Monday then no, you shouldn’t be taking pro bono cases.
You need to have the mindset of a business owner. You are an entrepreneur. Never be shy about running your law practice in order to make a profit–hopefully a big one for you, your family and (yes) for your employees.
You are the economic engine and many are depending on you to get in new cases, develop a group of raving fans and make more money this year than you’ve ever done before.
10 years ago, if you knew what you were doing, you could easily dominate the search engines with your law firm web. site. It didn’t even need to be that good.
Today, the competition on the Internet is enormous-with thousands of new law firm websites and blogs popping up each year. Your website has to stand out and these templated websites that some of these mega web designers are pumping out are doing your more harm than good.
Here are some of the big mistakes I see being made.
the top third of the first page of your site is devoted to your logo (no one cares about your logo)
there is no introduction video on your site. Your competition has video–yes, some of it is crappy, but you have to be thinking about this in 2010
your copy is all about your. Does your website begin “Mr. Jones is a graduate of XX, he’s been practicing since XX and he really, really works hard for his clients?” That’s boring.
You really can’t afford to give up the thinking about your website to some designer who has no clue about how to really attract clients. And most have no clue.
As you read the newspaper do you read every article?
Of course not. You look at the headlines first and if the headline is interesting you start reading.
People look at lawyer ads the same way.
I’m reading a book about David Ogilvy, one of the masters of modern avenue. He is described as talking about “headless” ads–ads without headlines. In his advertising agency he made it a rule that they would never again create an ad that didn’t have a headline.
Now, look at what doesn’t count as a headline–silly things like your name, your firm’s name or “Personal Injury” lawyer.
These aren’t headlines…they are symbols of laziness on your part (or its all a part of the Yellow Page rep’s scheme to keep all ads the same.
There are still lawyers who spend millions per year on TV ads.
Good for them. Think of the enormous difficulty of the task.
You choose which of 250 stations to advertise on.
You hope they are watching the one you picked
You hope they didn’t TIVO it
You hope they didn’t get up to make a sandwhich
You hope your ad interrupts their thinking
You hope they were actually in an accident
You hope that if they were in an accident that they didn’t already get a lawyer
You hope they aren’t some bozo who is going to waste your time with a ‘free consultation’ about some really stupid lawsuit they’ve been thinking about bringing for the last 14 years (but they heard you give free consultations.)
