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Business thought leader Elmer J. Fudd was speaking at a Saturday morning seminar when I was a kid. Decked out in a brown suit and jaunty cap, Fudd spoke the words that every law firm should remember at all times.
Be Vewy, Vewy Quiet – I’m Hunting Wabbits
I live by that statement each day and use it when marketing my bankruptcy practice. And you should, too.
Though Fudd didn’t win all the time, he WAS a millionaire. He owned a mansion and a yacht, so he must have been onto something.
But seriously, let’s think about this for just a minute. If you shut up and stop trying to move so fast, you will be able to observe how well your legal marketing efforts are going. You’ll see your clients and how well they react to you. You’ll notice which marketing sources are working best for you, and which are tanking. If you watch closely enough, you’ll almost see the legal marketing dollars walking into, and out of, your office.
We spend so much time working on our practices that we stop paying attention to how we’re spending our money. We write checks, swipe our plastic cards and pay the bills without asking ourselves whether the benefit justifies the cost.
Over time, our wallets get lighter and our long-term commitments to marketing firms and advertising venues get heavier. We’ve got no idea what’s working and what isn’t – we just keep on keepin’ on.
But we’ve got to be mindful of those costs, don’t we? Without paying attention to the bottom line we’re going to end up spending far more than we should for even the most basic of services.
Case in point: some years ago I was chatting with a fellow bankruptcy attorney on the listserv for the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys. This lawyer had a video on his site way before it was common, and I was impressed. This guy was on the cutting edge, marketing his law firm online with the newest technology.
During our conversation he stunned me by letting me know that he was paying hundreds of dollars each month to host his spartan website. He’d stopped paying attention to the costs associated with marketing his law firm online, and they had gotten away from him. Blissfully ignorant of the cost overruns, he went on his merry way.
Yes, I talked him out of that cost and into a far more attractive hosting plan. We’ve been good friends ever since.
It just goes to show you that it’s important to be vigilant at all times about how you spend your marketing dollars. Whether it’s marketing your law firm online or any other type of legal marketing – heck, even if it’s the cost of pens and paper in the office – be mindful always.
Once you listen to your law firm and see the truth, you’ll be better able to define the problems that exist. Then it becomes an issue of finding the solutions. But you need to know those problems first, or you’ll never know which questions need to be answered.
Fudd makes sense to me. How about you?
You put up a blog or a website for your law firm, full of hope that this will solve your online legal marketing woes. But how do you get people to show up and read what you’re writing?
You’re sitting in your office and the phone rings, or that annoying little ping signals you’ve got an email. It’s a new potential client! Stop the presses! All work halts! Why? Because when a new client contacts you, it means you’re on the precipice of making money. This is what marketing your law firm is all about. But is that the right way to do business?
With all this talk about virtual law firms, we need to examine the message we’re giving to our clients when we engage in lingo. To do so may enable us to positively effect a change in buying attitudes.
