Sometimes it feels like the most successful bankruptcy lawyers have some sort of a secret, a hidden password that allows them to unlock the door behind which hides thousands of clients. Their offices are jammed, they have multiple locations, their names are all over the court calendars . . . in fact, they’re everywhere.
How do they do it?
Wouldn’t you just LOVE to know?
For years I walked around, scratching my head like a chimp and wondering just HOW they did it. It seemed almost effortless, as if clients were finding them by some magnetic force.
Then I learned the answer. The secret that successful consumer bankruptcy lawyers hold close to the chest.
It’s called “consistent marketing,” and it’s not that difficult to do it successfully.
Most lawyers – heck, most business owners regardless of industry – market when they need the business. Then, once things perk up they find that they are too busy to think about marketing. So they stop.
And eventually, their new business drops off so they go back to the drawing board in desperation.
Yes, you can turn your marketing spigot on and off. The problem is that any effective marketing campaign takes time to bear fruit – you don’t just dream up a strategy, push it out the door and start collect money the next day. So when you use the “spigot marketing” approach you sacrifice valuable planning and testing time – not to mention consistency.
It’s like making soup on the stove. You bring the flame up to he highest level until the soup boils (too hot) and then shut the flame off until it’s too cold. Then you raise it all the way up to heat it, but you boil it again and so have to shut it off.
Too hot, too cold. Just like your marketing.
Let’s say you need to bring in 10 new clients each and every month. You could use a spigot approach and get 20 clients one month, 5 the next, 12 the month after that and 3 the next. That gets you 40 clients in four months, but there’s no consistency. You can’t be sure of what works and what doesn’t, and you can’t fine-tune it. Your business suffers from peaks and valleys of income, causing you to lose sleep in the “off months.”
Too hot, too cold.
Compare that with a consistent marketing strategy that includes regular tweaking for increased optimization. Your marketing brings in a consistent 10-15 clients per month, simmering at the perfect temperature. You get to decide whether to raise the flame or lower it . . . but you never turn off the burner.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t change your marketing message from time to time or try new things. In fact, you need to do just that in order to maintain success. But if you aren’t always marketing then you aren’t running a stable business that provides for a reliable means of supporting itself.
Photo Courtesy of Sterlic.
