Marketing a bankruptcy practice can be tedious. How many stop signs can one possibly look at? How often can you say in your ads, “Stop repossessions! Stop foreclosure! Free consultation! Evening and weekend appointments available! Payment plans!”

You already know you aren’t saying anything unique, not standing out from the crowd. So you blend in, doing the same old thing forever. But here’s a lesson for you:

If your marketing blends into the crowd, nobody is ever going to have a reason to hire you!

So what do you do? Stand out!

Easier said than done, right?

There’s a great post over at Web Ink Now about letting your personality shine through in your online marketing efforts. David Meerman Scott says:

It is important for all organizations to create a distinct, consistent, and memorable Web site or blog, and an important component of that goal is the tone or voice of the content. As visitors interact with the content on your site, they should develop a clear picture of your organization. Is the personality fun and playful? Or is it solid and conservative?

Look at your law firm’s website or blog. What does it say? How does it say it? Can someone tell anything remotely interesting about you, any reason whatsoever that might make them want to actually connect with you on a personal level?

Do you show YOUR personality? If not, take out the pencil and start writing – you’ll be glad you did.

Photo courtesy of Joe Penniston.

It’s no secret that people who search the web for information sometimes slip up in their typing.  Maybe they type in “bankruptcy,” maybe they type in “bankrupcy.”  Either way, it’s important for you to consider the options when doing your SEO and pay-per-click advertising.

Why?  Well, chances are pretty good that the cost-per-click for “banjruptcy” is significantly less than “bankruptcy.”  And just because someone slipped up when hitting the “k” key doesn’t mean they aren’t looking for your service.

Just to show that people misspell stuff all the time, check out this post on the top misspellings on Yahoo.

Google buys You Tube for $1.6 billion. And why do you, a mere mortal, care about this?

It’s simple.

If you don’t know how to use audio and video in your marketing… if you don’t know how to do “audio and video copywriting”… soon you will be left behind.

Consider the facts: You Tube has 46% of the downloaded video market, and Google has 11%. Together, they have half of the market.

Not impressed yet? Well, how about an idea that will let you effectively recycle your TV ads and expose your practice to MILLIONS of additional visitors on a daily basis?

Well, how about if you could do that at no cost whatsoever?

Yup, free.

You’re listening now, right?

If you have a TV ad – you know, the world’s worst return on investment – you can post it on You Tube for viewing by the general public. Then, put a link into your web site so your visitors can watch it embedded on your system. You Tube pays the hosting bill, your visitors get to make a personal connection by seeing you, and your profitability goes up.

In addition, now that You Tube is going to be part of Google, your ad will come up on Google’s video search.

Let’s see. Free way to promote your firm, no hosting and bandwidth costs, and more exposure. Nope, I can’t think of a way this isn’t a great way to market your practice.

The key to improving your email marketing and autoresponder results is to increase the relevance of their messages. Here are some tips for making that happen:

Be relevant – use personalization

The greatest capability of e-mail marketing technology is personalization. Messages that resonate most, through personalized subject lines, offers, articles, product showcases, and follow-up e-mails based on recipient activity, will be the clear winners for eyeballs.

Resolve or minimize deliverability issues

There are a ton of spam filtering systems, so be sure to test your message before sending it. If it doesn’t get through when you send it to yourself, go back and re-work the message.

Never a second chance to make a first impression

Engage new subscribers immediately with an organized program that includes a welcome message upon confirmation, followed by the current newsletter or promotion, and e-mails offering a set of “best-of” newsletter articles or even an exclusive offer just for newcomers.

Make sure you’ve got permission

Review permission practices across your web sites. Permission-based email is becoming the acknowledged best practice. Besides, why waste your good will on people who don’t want to hear from you?

I’ve long been frustrated at the advertising I see from my colleagues. The headline screams, BANKRUPTCY and is followed by Free Consultation, Payment Plans, Debt Relief or something like that. Someone, please wake me up!

If your ads look anything this then your advertising stinks. I’m sorry to be the one to say it, but your prospects don’t even notice you.

John Jantsch over Duct Tape Marketing likens most advertising to dating, and posits that the approach most advertisers take is akin to asking a prospect to marry someone they’ve barely or never met.

Here’s my ad, here’s my phone number, you don’t know anything about me, but call me so I come on over and sell you something.” – more or less the same as if you walked into a crowd of people and ask the first person that appealed to you if they would like to get married. Flash around enough cash, ask enough people, and maybe you get lucky with this approach every now and then, but it’s no way to build a small business.

Advertising, he says, should be approached more like dating. Give your prospects a compelling reason to mget to know you better, enabling you to set yourself apart from the rest of the yokels in the bar. Buy them a proverbial drink, twirl around the dance floor, make pleasant conversation. Then, once you’ve established that you’re a good catch, ask for a date. Let the date turn into two dates. If it works out, get engaged. Then get hitched.

How do you do this? Offer free, valuable information that they can gain access to with very little commitment. Use ads to attract and educate the public with information that will let prospects come to the conclusion that you’re the best one for the job.

Remember those goofy guys from Saturday Night Live who went to the clubs every night only to get turned down because they were goofy and brazen?  You know, the Night at the Roxbury guys?  The skit was hysterical precisely because you knew they were going to strike out.

Don’t be those guys.

I use autoresponders extensively in marketing my practice. In fact, I can confidently state that using autoresponders has enabled me to reduce my acquisition costs by half for each new consumer bankruptcy client I take in. Conversely, it allows me to double my ROI for my consumer bankruptcy practice.

What, exactly, is an autoresponder? An autoresponder is a computer program that automatically answers email sent to it. They can be very simple or quite complex. The simplest ones are those set up using your e-mail program that send out a response to a pre-defined type of e-mail. Common ones are those you set up for when you go on vacation; every time someone sends you an e-mail, they get an automatically-generated message that tells them you’re not there.

The complex ones, however, are the best to use. They allow you to set up not one, but a series of pre-determined messages to a particular recipient at set intervals. For example, when someone sets up a consultation appointment for a bankruptcy case they automatically receive a confirmation with a list of documents to bring to the office and directions. A few days later they get another e-mail from me about bankruptcy, and a few days after that they receive another one. In fact, over a 24-day period a new prospect receives a stunning 10 e-mails from me, all personalized and addressing a specific concern or answering a question usually asked by bankruptcy clients.

I’ve also got a series of what I call “Bankruptcy Information Reports” that prospects sign up for through a special landing page on my web site. Over a 20-day period, prospects receive 10 e-mails from me with crucial information about bankruptcy.

The best part is that I don’t do a thing to make this happen. It’s all automatic. But to the prospect, I’m a caring professional who wants to give them information. I’m an expert, a guru, the lord of all things related to bankruptcy. People love it, and send my e-mails along to friends and relatives. They come to trust me, which makes them more likely to hire me when they want to file for bankruptcy.

By giving out this free information I am able to knock down the distrust people have of lawyers. This causes prospects to get to know me a little better, and feel more at ease in coming to my office (or completing my Online Consultation). They are less sensitive to the price of my services because they are confident that I know how to help them effectively.

How can you use autoresponders in marketing your consumer bankruptcy practice?

Confirmations: Using autoresponders to send instant confirmation emails to your clients when they make an appointment to see you. Autoresponders free you from having to manually send out confirmations, giving your time to focus on more profitable areas of your business.

These instant confirmations boost your credibility and give you the ability to continue your marketing message of excellent service from a knowledgeable professional. You respond immediately to your customer’s request , letting them now that yours is a reliable, professional firm.

Newsletters: Offer a newsletter sign-up on your web site. Every time someone signs up they receive an instant autoresponder thanking them and confirming their subscription. This e-mail also includes a link to your site for more information about bankruptcy. Each newsletter you send out also has your office phone number and an offer for a free consultation appointment.

White Papers And Information Series: These are my favorite uses of autoresponders because you can set them up once and mail them out automatically. Someone signs up on your web site and receives multiple e-mails from you over a period of time – it can be a day, a week, a month, or even a year.

Each time a prospect sees your name, you make more of an impression. It takes seven distinct impressions for someone to even remember your name. By using an autoresponder system, that problem is solved.

Oh, and what system do I use? AWeber. They’re reliable, inexpensive (under $200 for a full year of unlimited service), and are used by many of the major online marketers.