Law Firm Newsletters
April 20, 2009
Every business should be sending a montly newsletter to clients, customers and prospects. Its a huge mistake to be spending money on mass advertising before developing and maintaining a relationship with those who already know you.
Here is the April 2009 edition of the BenGlassLaw monthly newsletter.
Atlas Shrugged, Very Relevant Today
April 11, 2009
This is one of those books that every student should be tested on before being allowed to graduate from high school.
Your Perfect Client is Not “Everyone”
April 3, 2009
Many lawyers waste their marketing dollars by trying to be all things to all people. Forget about that!
Its way too expensive to try to be a big fish in a very big pond.
You must decide who your perfect client is (and I’m giving you permission to do that) and develop a marketing message for that client.
Dan Kennedy calls this hitting the right target. Here’s a lesson on why YOU pick who you SHOULD be representing.
What Not to Do: A Lesson from College Football
March 11, 2009
Lane Kiffin, head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers, is taking some heat this week for reportedly telling highly recruited wide reciever Alshon Jeffrey that if he went to South Carolina he would end up pumping gas for the rest of his life. This threat came at the end of a long and heated recruiting battle between South Carolina, Southern California and Tennessee.Â
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Jeffrey had orally committed to Southern Cal, but later backed out to stay close to home (he’s a South Carolina native). Early in the recruiting, Southern Cal had actually threatened to pull the kid’s scholarship offer if he even visited another school… a threat they didn’t make good on after he took official visits to South Carolina and Tennessee.
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A couple lessons from this story:
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First, your recruiting (or marketing) should focus on what makes you better – not what makes the other guy worse. Kiffin’s pitch should have been based on his own (albeit short-lived) head coaching career in the NFL and the fact that Tennessee has 37 players currently on NFL rosters. Who cares what the other guy? Your potential clients need to know why they should come to you, not why they should avoid someone else. And do you think Coach Kiffin is going to have credibility with players he calls next year to promise an NFL career to?
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Same goes for Southern California. If I’m Pete Carroll (USC’s head coach), I want you to go visit other schools. I know the LA Collisseum is a great stadium, our players date movie stars, and Will Ferrell comes to our games… think you’re gonna find that in Tennessee? Carolina? Nope.
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The more important lesson is that you’ve got to focus on what the prospect wants and tailor your marketing to that thing. For Jeffrey, it was the desire to stay close to home, something neither Southern Cal nor Tennessee could provide. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how big the TVs in your locker rooms are. If you can’t provide that one thing the client is looking for, he’s going somewhere else.
Will Your Firm Thrive in this Recession
March 9, 2009
Around every Wal-Mart is a successful mom and pop hardware store. That small business does something different from the 80% who would otherwise fail when Wal-Mart comes to town.
The legal industry is no different. There are some small firms (I talk to a different one just about every day) that only knows there is a recession going on by reading the gloom and doom headlines.
What do they do differently? I suggest its not any one thing. Its how they think about the world, their lives and their businesses.
Go here to see Why Some Law Firms Continue to Thrive in this Economy.
Cyber Technology / WebOpts – Are You Getting Calls From Them
March 5, 2009
Foster Web Marketing Clients Contacted by Dubious “SEO” Firm
Seems that times are tough for some search engine optimization companies. There’s a group in California that’s been cold calling a bunch of Foster Web Marketing clients to “warn” them about impending doom with their sites and Google.
Then, they launch into a sales pitch.
They actually sent a pretty interesting email, too.
When pressed to get on a three way call with Foster, they declined. It’s pretty obvious that this company was using some less than morale sales techniques in an attempt to steal Foster Web Marketing’s clients, but luckily all of their folks are very satisfied with the services they are receiving and brought it to Tom’s attention as soon as they were contacted.
Anyway, there’s one very detailed message about Cyber Technology here and another about WebOpts here.
As always, do your due diligence.
Who’s Coming for Your Clients?
March 4, 2009
When the first few BigLaw firms started laying people off last fall, the job market was flooded with resumes. Attorneys were moving to in-house, switching firms, doing anything to hold onto their jobs. Well, it seems like there ain’t no more BigLaw jobs left. Firms that used to wine and dine law school students for the summer (while paying them $3K a week) are now not only limiting the number of summer spots they have, but they’re asking this years graduates to defer their start dates for months (or even up to a year). Many of my friends, who are still in school down at William & Mary, are having a hard time finding a job.
With “more resumes” being no longer being a viable option, the National Law Journal is recommending that those highly skilled attorneys who are being laid off start their own firms. Good news for the commercial real estate market… bad news for you.Â
There’s a finite number of clients out there and in this economy, most of them are choosing to compete on price. What are you doing to demonstrate your value? The above article suggests that the way to lure clients away from BigLaw firms is price – the firm did it at $600/hr., so I’ll do it at $300/hr. Seems no one over at the National Law Journal has figured out that you can also price your services at flat rates and then ask prospective clients to compare that price against what the last deposition a BigLaw firm sent 2 partners, 5 associates, and a paralegal to cost them.
Free Critique of Your Attorney Yellow Pages
March 2, 2009
As a follow up to yesterdays post about starting your own law firm I got some emails asking me to review/critique Yellow Page ads. I’m happy to do this and in fact get ads each week from lawyers across the United States and Canada.
Here are the terms and conditions of my free review of your attorney Yellow Page ad.
- You can’t be a Yellow Page rep asking me to do your work
- Offer limited to firms with 5 attorneys or less (see name of this blog)
- Fax only… 877-576-6752
- Must include your letterhead with fax.
- Allow three weeks for turnaround. I am busy. Please don’t fax and say “rep is coming in three days, please help!”
Multi-Media Marketing
March 2, 2009
When choosing where to spend your marketing money, there are so many choices. Determining whether to invest in one media over another is always a challenging decision and it often rattles your mind after the check is written as to whether or not that was the right choice. The secret is that all media works. When marketing and advertising is not successful it is usually because the message, not the media, is not working.
I believe that all media can be made to work. It’s just what’s the message and the goal? While one of the goals certainly is to get cases that are going to pay now, a secondary goal in our office is to grow a herd of people who are giving me permission to market to them. I’m looking to offer them something in a media that says let’s start a relationship, even if they don’t have a case yet. Now I’ve gotten permission to market to them and now they think of us, hopefully as an interesting person. So, if we’ve got media that at least we’re not losing money on, but we’re growing a heard of people who find us interesting, it’s an advantage that is incalculably large.
There are two different kinds of advertisements that are found in the Yellow Pages. First of all, brand-image advertising is: I am a lawyer and I offer free consultation. On the other hand (the more important hand) we have lead generation ads and lead is a word. It’s all about doing marketing that provokes a response. The important steps in lead generation marketing are grabbing their attention, provoking a response, making them stop their search until they get our materials, and only accepting the cases that don’t fit your perfect practice.
One way that these ads generate leads is by bringing people to our recorded message that allows them to order our books for free. I’ve got lots of different messages for different practice areas, each tied to a specific extension, which is tied to a particular ad, so one way that they might initiate that conversation with you is toll-free, free recorded message. Now, why would I do that? There are a lot of people that are afraid to call and get someone live on the phone. They’re afraid they’re going to be sold by some slick-talking lawyer, afraid they’re going to be made to sound dumb, because maybe they don’t know the answers to the questions the lawyer’s asking.
They’ve gone through the yellow pages or seen another print ad and you’re lowering the resistance barrier to them initiating that conversation with you. In this case, they get a message that really is in essence a three-minute radio ad, played only to someone who’s already said that their interested in it, all in an effort to get them to leave me their name and contact information.
