Ready, Fire, Aim: Attorney Marketing Ideas

Finding your optimum selling strategy – meaning the ability to sell one product or service successfully into one market – is a crucial sales and marketing concept emphasized in the book Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat, by bestselling author and fellow Delray Beach resident Michael Masterson.

Customer acquisition in an early stage law firm (to apply the concepts in this book to the legal market) requires accuracy in targeting your audience, pricing your legal service, and convincing prospects to choose your firm.

The author suggests researching the market to identify how other firms are achieving success in attracting clients, then taking similar actions. For lawyers, this is likely to be SEO and Internet marketing, referrals, TV or billboard advertising, speaking, publishing, and organizational networking.

Even though you may be offering similar legal services, however, you want to make yours stand out in the mind of the buyer. Your “Unique Selling Proposition” (USP) should highlight a single compelling benefit of your service above all the others. Finding a way to make your law firm different can translate into revenue and client retention on the bottom line.

By the way, nothing is more important than selling when first building your book of business cautions the author. Especially if you have your own firm, don’t get sidetracked by “nice to have” trappings or systems.

This is an informative book written by a master of marketing. While it is particularly well suited to information and consumer products, it reveals many highly effective direct marketing techniques.

Google Caffeine and Legal Marketing

SEO algorithms and Internet marketing techniques are changing as a result of Google's new web indexing system called Caffeine. A news story, blog post, or other item of user-generated content will now benefit from Google Caffeine's 50% faster, fresher results for web searches.

Searchers will find links to relevant content much sooner after publication than was possible ever before. This is Google’s competitive response, in part, to Twitter and Facebook.

Here are the implications for law firms and legal marketers:

• Google index now is updated on a real time basis
• Fresh web site content increases in importance
• Sitemaps need to be updated in real-time or at least more frequently
• Upsets the apple cart for SEO algorithms, although meta tags and inbound links remain important
• Social media content enhances integrated web visibility

Overall, marketers need a content strategy (website-social media-SEO-etc.) across platforms to maintain high visibility.

 

Google Caffeine was launched in June, and you may notice that things like Google Alert notifications are appearing faster. Read Google's announcement here.

 

 

Inactive Clients are a Goldmine of Potential $

Call one every day this week to say hello. 12 legal marketing hints:

Before the Call

1. Visit the client’s website in advance and Google their name to find out what’s new.
2. See if they are active on LinkedIn or Twitter. If so, read their profiles before you call. You may learn something to help start the conversation.
3. Be ready with some legal fact or breaking news that you think would be of interest to the client. If so, perhaps you could schedule a consultation with them off the clock.

During the Call

4. Ask how their business is going, and what kind of new clients they are seeking. Perhaps you can give them a referral.
5. Tell them about a new service you are offering.
6. Share news about a case you recently handled.
7. Consider setting up a lunch if there appears to be any interest.
8. Ask if they know of anyone who might need your services

If you don’t get through on your initial call, leave a voice mail and also send an email.

After the Call

9. Take follow up action as appropriate.
10. Send an email to thank them for their time.
11. Send the client an informative article that they may find useful.
12. Mark your tickler file for your next contact.

Learn more about Marketing to Inactive Clients

Chapter 7 of my legal marketing book Courting Your Clients is titled “Mine Your Client List.” Watch for the 2nd edition of this fact-filled book, due out in early September. Add your name to our notification list via email to author Margaret Grisdela.