marketing your law firm

Marketing Your Law Firm Online With A Domain Name

March 18, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Marketing your law firm online can be a struggle, especially where you don’t know where to begin. One of my students calls it, “analysis paralysis,” and I like the alliteration. But it’s true.

The domain name you choose for your law firm blog or website is like the color of your home’s front door. It says something about who you are, what you stand for, and where you want to position yourself in the marketplace.

Too often, lawyers will choose their firm name as their domain name. They think they’re branding their firm when in reality they’re just obscuring the truth about who they are and what they do.

Let’s say you’re looking for a lawyer to handle a nasty dog bite case in San Francisco. Like most Americans, you’re going to hit a search engine to begin your search. You enter in your search term and it comes back with the following:

Which website are you going to click on? The one that stands out, if you’re like most people. And the things that stand out most are the title, the description and the domain name.

Why? Because Google puts in boldface your search terms. So if you search for “dog bite” then anywhere those words appear they will be in bold. The goal is to help draw your eye to the most relevant search results, and it works darn well.

To be sure, the title and description are also critical to drawing the eye to your website. But the domain name is the single thing you can begin to get a handle on immediately when setting up your website.

Marketing your law firm online requires you to use every single tool to your advantage, and the domain name is clearly one of them. Every other lawyer in your area is going to look to that holy grail of a keyword search term, which is why it’s doubly important to pull out the stops.

Will your domain name be the single thing that catapults your law firm website to #1 on the search engines? Not at all. But getting a leg up surely isn’t a bad idea.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: domain name, domain name system, domain names, firm, firm names, law firm, marketing, marketing your law firm

Blogging For Your Law Firm? There Is No Middle Ground.

March 11, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Marketing your law firm with a blog is a romantic notion in a certain sense.

Law firm marketing folks – heck, all marketing folks – extol the virtues of blogging. Create a law firm blog and your business will soar, setting you apart from the competition and bringing you accolades of all sorts. Your law firm marketing efforts should center around a blog, they say.

Actually, that’s not true. Creating a law firm blog as part of your marketing efforts will set you apart from the competition, but maybe not in a good way.

Blogging is a content marketing mechanism that’s designed to provide useful information and show your stuff. By creating a law firm blog you build trust your prospective clients and the public, enhancing your reputation. It’s also terrific for search engine optimization, which exposes your words and thoughts to a wider audience and increases the reach of your message.

But unless you’re adding content on a regular basis, you’re not going to look so terrific to people to visit your law firm blog.

I’m not telling you to create content every day because I know it’s not realistic for lawyers to take that kind of time. But would it kill you to put down something on your law firm blog once a week, something valuable and helpful?

There’s a lawyer in my area who, in a fit of “I want to market my law firm,” went out and hired a designer to do two new sites for his bankruptcy law firm. The sites are beautiful, and very easily navigable. And they both have blogs.

OK, I can see someone creating more than one law firm blog – in fact, I have more than one. The problem is that both of the blogs cover exactly the same topic, with the only difference that one site allegedly covers New York City and the other covers Long Island (a distance of under 60 miles).

Since he launched these beautiful sites over six months ago, he’s suffered from a bit of over extension.

On one blog he’s done 10 posts since September 2009, which is respectable.

On the second blog he’s done 2 posts since September 2009. And one of them is a duplicate of a post on the first site.

A failure of consistency tells a visitor that you’re not serious. And if you’re not serious about this aspect of your marketing, how reliable are you as a service provider? Your law firm blog signals a commitment to provide information and share knowledge; your lack of consistency signals a failure to live up to that commitment.

In addition, failing to consistently publish content onto your legal blog will lower your site traffic. If there’s a blog I like, I’m going to visit it more frequently (as much as I love it, I recognize that RSS readers never really caught on with the masses). Once I show up a few times and see nothing new, I’m not visiting anymore. It’s like when I turn on the television every week to catch Big Bang Theory (which you should watch), I expect to see Sheldon in a new episode. If all I get is repeats for a few weeks I’m going to find something else to do on Mondays nights.

So, too, with your legal blogging activities. If you’re going to do it, understand that you’re in this for the long haul. If you’re in that’s cool. And if not, you need to go find some other way to market your law firm.

Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers, Legal Marketing Tagged With: blog, blogging, computing, content marketing, internet, law, law firm, law firm blog, law firm marketing, Legal Marketing, marketing, marketing your law firm, Search Engine Optimization, social information processing, technology

Legal Marketing – Wash, Rinse, Repeat

February 22, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Legal marketing efforts are important – we all know it. We need to keep the new business (and repeat business) flowing in the front door in order to keep the coffers full, the staff busy, and the lights on.

We learn everything we can, we soak up information, we read as much as possible. And in so doing, we think that our legal marketing efforts are going to take off.

It ain’t necessarily so, as they song goes.

Education doesn’t transform into results without action. That action needs to be yours, and opening your wallet for education or a legal marketing consultant doesn’t count.

But here’s something the legal marketing gurus won’t tell you – half the time, you’re going to be wrong when you do something.

In my own bankruptcy practice, my efforts as marketing my law firm have failed just as often as not. In 1997 I did a ton of direct mail and lost my shirt. Then in 1999 I paid a big-name web design company a bunch of money and thought a slick website would be the panacea I sought – it wasn’t. I blew a chunk on television only to see no ROI whatsoever.

But I learned from my mistakes, changed my tactics, and made each of these areas work for my law practice.

The point is that I tried. I took the risks, I failed. Then I learned. But I would never have learned had I not tried and failed the first time out.

Your website will suck. Your direct mail piece will bomb. Your news release won’t be optimized so it will disappear into a black hole. Your Twitter account will languish in obscurity.

And that sucks. Sucks your money down the train, sucks your time there as well.

But if you don’t try something, you can never succeed. You can never really learn what will and what will not work for you unless you give something a shot.

You can pay all the money in the world to a legal marketing consultant. You can pick up a bunch of courses. You can listen all you want, taking good notes all the way. But unless you take something and give it a shot, you’re out of the game.

Twitter? Facebook? Blogging? Podcasting? It’s all pretty much free, and it’s well known that you’re not going to be able to break the Internet. So why not give it a whirl?

Pick one thing. Dive in. Make mistakes. Fix them.

Rinse and repeat.

Photo courtesy of icathing.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: law firm, Legal Marketing, marketing, marketing guru, marketing your law firm, repeat business

10 Legal Marketing Tips For Slow Times

November 26, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

Thanksgiving begins the strange time of year when most lawyers don’t have much new business to handle. People are more concerned with their holiday shopping than with their legal issues, so the pipeline dries up a bit. You can rattle around in your office surfing the Internet all day or you can take some action to make sure your legal marketing efforts continue to roll on once people come back to reality when the ball drops on January 1.

Here are 10 of my legal marketing tips for slow times:

Review your business card: Your business card is for many people the first impression they have of you. When you hand it out, the recipient often puts it into a pocket or wallet and forgets about it until later. Does your card show your field of practice? Your direct dial phone number? Your website address and email account? If not, get cracking on an update.
Update your website: When you’re busy, your home on the web goes stale. Check the bio section to make sure everything is fresh and up-to-date. If you’ve spoken at an event, had a decision published, or done something interesting then you need to make sure it’s online. One more thing – if your picture wasn’t taken in this decade then it’s probably a good idea to replace it with something more current.
Look at title and description tags: The title and description tags for your web pages are critical to your search engine optimization success. Take a look at them and make sure they’re optimized with your keywords and other critical information to create not only better placement in the search engines, but also to spur searchers to click on your listing rather than someone else’s.
Install Analytics: Google Analytics is simply the best way to track your website or blog traffic. It provides a mess of tools and data to help you keep your site on top of the search engines.
Prepare Client Satisfaction Surveys: Whether you survey your clients online or by snail mail, getting feedback is critical to improving your processes. You’ll never know how to do a better job for your clients than asking them. Caution: send them out after Christmas or they’ll get lost in the shuffle of holiday cards.
Brainstorm blog post topics: One of the reasons you don’t blog is because you don’t have time to think of stuff to write. Well, now you’ve got time. No excuses!
Call a colleague for coffee: Making a human connection is the cornerstone of getting referrals. Go out and meet a colleague for an hour – not to talk shop, but just to talk. It’s the original social networking platform!
Hop onto Twitter and start playing around: 140 characters never seemed so intimidating. But the good news is that you can’t break the Internet. Sign up, log on and poke around a bit. Listen and learn, then dip a toe in the water.
Clean your office: That mess in your office isn’t going to get any prettier when the new clients come flooding back in January. Clean up – it makes a better impression on people who are deciding whether you’re organized enough to be trusted with their legal issues.
Relax: This lull in business isn’t going to last for long. You’ll need all your energy if you’re going to do good work for people when they show up asking for your help.

Photo courtesy of sfllaw.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: internet marketing, legal blogging, Legal Marketing, marketing, marketing your law firm, Search Engine Optimization, slow

Marketing Your Law Firm – A Signed Retainer Doesn’t Equal Success

February 26, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

Marketing your law firm is often thought to begin with an ad or some promotional piece – a blog, an article, press release, whatever. And the legal marketing ends when the client signs the retainer agreement. We breathe a sigh of relief. Game over.

Not so much.

Have you ever had a client who was just perfect? Showed up in your office with everything organized, fee in hand, patient and happy to be with you?

Maybe they brought along all the documents on CD-ROM as well as in hard copy, just in case you wanted them on your computer?

How did that make you feel about how well you were marketing your law firm – the fact that you could attract such a PERFECT client?

How much easier did that make your job?

Now . . . why couldn’t ALL bankruptcy clients be just like that? The world would be a better place, roses would smell sweeter, and you’d whistle as you walked into the office each morning.

The mantra of the consumer bankruptcy lawyer is, “If I can get ‘em in the office, I can get ‘em to sign up with me.”

Though that’s laudable, it’s only a small portion of the equation. Marketing your law firm begins here, it doesn’t end here.

Why? Because the real work starts the minute the prospect becomes a client and signs a retainer agreement. Whether $100, $200 or more changes hands it is not enough to compensate you for the work you need to do merely to get the Petition into shape for signature.

Tax returns, bank statements, bills, financial information . . . not to mention the seemingly endless barrage of phone calls from clients demanding your attention.

But that’s only the beginning. Your client is undoubtedly paying your fees in installments. So that means you’ve got to chase the client down for money. And if that money doesn’t come in fast enough you’re looking a whole new round of documents to be provided.

Round and round it goes.

If you’re lucky, the client comes back (eventually) and signs the Petition.

But we all know there’s a decent chance Mr. Debtor is gonna fall off the dark side of the moon. Someone put a bug in his ear that bankruptcy is the end of the world, or maybe he thinks his world is better merely for having hire you in the first place.

Let me ask you to do this simple exercise:

List the number of clients who have retained you in each month since June 2008;
List the number of clients from each month who have paid your fees in full as of February 25, 2009.

Is there a disparity, even a small one?

There’s a reason WHY this phenomenon occurs in the world of the consumer bankruptcy lawyer.

It’s called . . . the effective marketing of your law firm.

Ouch!

Every day I hear a bankruptcy lawyer tell me that he or she doesn’t need and legal marketing strategies . . . there are plenty of clients. The problem is in juggling the workload!

But here’s the rub. If you have solidified your marketing into a system designed solely to attract your most compliant and desirable clients then they will make your life easier.

Market like a blindfolded kid playing “Pin The Tail On The Donkey,” however, and you’re going to get people you don’t want – people who are just not a good fit for you, and who will be tougher clients to work with.

Do the exercise. Let me know how it turns out.