Integrity Marketing

Only 51% Have Basic Estate Planning

NEW YORK, Feb 25, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- A new national survey has found that the percentage of Americans possessing estate planning documents such as wills, trusts or power of attorney has dropped considerably to only 51 percent. The survey also suggests that the ailing economy may be the reason for the slide, with three quarters of those surveyed saying the current downturn has made it even more difficult for them to plan for the future, and nearly half saying they are more focused on "the essentials" right now.

via www.marketwatch.com

Here are some statistics you may find helpful to update your workshops and presentations.

Special People... Special Plans - Kansas & Missouri Estate Planning

Have you heard the news? The federal government is out of money and so are most state governments. Certainly, that is not good news for anyone, especially those who are most vulnerable among us - Americans with special needs. Why, you ask?

via blog.kylekrull.com

Excellent blog post by Kyle Krull re: Special Needs Estate Planning

Kyle Speaks Out on Special Needs Planning

See and hear what Kyle Krull, Esq., has to say about Special Needs Planning, and the new IMS marketing support program on our website: http://www.estateplanningpartners.com

This comprehensive marketing campaign is designed to get you in front of families, health care providers, and financial advisors with a targeted message about special needs estate planning. The package includes:

1. Consumer Workshop -- designed for families and health care providers, this full-color Power Point workshop is personalized for your law firm, and comes complete with a sample attorney-written script.
   
2. Financial Advisor Workshop -- this workshop is perfect to educate financial advisors about special needs estate planning, including answering the inevitable "what's in it for me?" questions. Again, this is a full-color Power Point workshop, personalized for your law firm, and complete with an attorney-written script (written by our company president, Kyle Krull).
   
   Topics covered in the workshops include:
   
   • What is Special Needs Estate Planning?
   •  Overview of the planning process
   •  The Letter of Intent
   •  Explanation of Trust Terms and Trust Planning
   •  Protecting Your Options .... and more!
   
   
3. Personalized Special Needs brochure -- included in your package is a personalized, full-color, ready-to-print special needs brochure. Use this brochure as a hand-out at your workshops, or as a follow-up mailer. Print it on your office color printer, or upload the digital file to an online printer and have them shipped in quantity to you. Print as many or as a few as you need -- as you need them.
   
4. Workshop Planning Guide - this short insight planning guide includes our best tips, gathered from more than two decades and hundreds of successful workshops for setting goals, establishing a budget, etc.
   
5. Sample Follow-Up Letter
6. Tracking Form -- track your revenue, capture all of your expenses and evaluate your progress.
7. Workshop Hand-Out -- This is the KEY to turning your workshops into successful marketing campaigns. The hand-out form includes a consultation request, interests indicator, and a check-box for your attendees to subscribe to your e-newsletter for continued drip-marketing.

For complete details, visit our website or call James or Michael toll-free at 1-877-352-2021. They will be happy to send you samples, and get you that $300 savings this week.

Diary of a Website Optimization

A few months ago, we set about the task of optimizing Kyle Krull's website. Kyle is the president of Integrity Marketing Solutions, and a full-time, practicing estate attorney in Overland Park, KS. Kyle has had a website for many, many years ... but his site suffered from the "Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes" syndrome. We hadn't really touched it, except to add new content and an occasional cosmetic face-lift, for several years. Despite good traffic to his website (primarily through off-site, off-line marketing efforts), his site was virtually invisible to the search engines. A quick analytics report showed that his site did not rank within the top 50 results on any of the three major search engines for local search "Overland Park Estate Planning Attorney."

So, we finally decided we simply could not live with the situation any longer and moved Kyle's website from the back burner to the front. The first step was to analyze his old site. Here is what we found ... and if your website is more than a few years old, you are likely in the same boat:

The Problems (aka Opportunities)

1. Kyle's site had virtually no SEO coding. Title, description and keyword tags were haphazard at best, non-existent, and/or duplicative.
2. The site-structure was out-dated and not optimized for the web crawlers to even FIND his key content.
3. The content, while abundant, was not keyword-optimized by topic or geography.
4. The layout was out-dated and did not take advantage of current browser technology.
5. The navigation was abysmal ... primarily because the site had been up for many years, it had truly outgrown it's navigation structure.
6. We had inadvertently allowed his domain renewal to approach it's lapse-date. Search engines penalize you if your domain is set to expire in less than a year. The longer-out your expiration date, the better.

The Good Points

1. Kyle's website has been up on the web for a very long time. This is a good thing (as well as a challenge as outlined above). The search engines give you extra points for longevity.
2. Inbound Links -- Kyle's site enjoyed an abundance of quality inbound links, because of his consistent off-site and off-line marketing efforts. He has written for and been quoted in a number of quality publications, including regular appearances in Kiplinger's various financial publications.
3. Good Traffic -- Again, because of Kyle's consistent off-site marketing efforts, his website had excellent local traffic. In fact, his profile on Martindale was consistently ranked as the #1 viewed attorney profile in his market area.

And #4 -- but perhaps the most important -- Kyle gave us carte-blanche to design, update, and optimize his website. I say this was perhaps the most important aspect of this project because, for once, we were not constrained by the "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" syndrome. So often, clients ask us to work on their website, but because they simply cannot surrender control, they give us so many constraints that the project is doomed before it ever starts. They have read a book, talked to their friends, done some online research ... and they just KNOW that we need to set up six new domain names for their website before we even start. They have a string of obtuse keywords for which we MUST optimize the entire site ... every . single . page. Or they only want us to work on one key page. Or they refuse to allow us to use the name of their city on their pages because, they insist, they serve a much larger market area.

Stay tuned for more discussion of how this project developed...

But for a sneak-peek at the outcome, hop on over to Google and search for "Overland Park Estate Planning Attorney." (Hint: You'll find www.kekpa.com on page one!)

Special Needs Estate Planning

Special Needs Estate Planning is a growing niche market for estate and elder law attorneys. And it's no wonder. This is a growing field of need for those whose loved ones have disabilities requiring special care, and it is an aspect of estate planning totally independent of federal estate taxes. Entering this field opens a wider market, and rich opportunities to build quality referral relationships with financial professionals.

We have just launched a comprehensive marketing support package for attorneys who work, or want to work, in this field. We have taken the best practices of online and offline marketing and integrated them into a comprehensive marketing solution.

First -- the website component. We have developed a fully-optimized Special Needs practice center that you can license for your website. This essential, fundamental component positions you in the market place as an expert in Special Needs Estate Planning. It also positions you with the search engines, so potential clients, health care providers and financial professionals will FIND you when searching for information online.

In addition to the Practice Center, we offer an optional Lead Capture component with a FREE REPORT DOWNLOAD. The lead capture works fairly simply. In order to download the free report, visitors must first register, sending you their contact information and requesting the information. When your website visitors press the SUBMIT button, an email is generated and sent directly to you with their contact information. Your visitors are automatically sent to download the report. In this way, you can build a database of potential contacts for your e-newsletter, future workshops, or off-line direct mail marketing.

Second -- we offer the integrated workshop component. The workshop package includes two workshop presentations, one suitable for a consumer audience and the other geared toward use with financial professionals. Each workshop is full-color, personalized for your firm, and includes a sample script. We also provide a full-color, personalized ready-to-print brochure, "Special People...Special Plans." Print as many or as few of these as you need. Hand them out at your workshops, or use them afterward for a follow-up mailing. In fact, your package includes a sample follow-up letter, follow-up strategies and complete seminar planning guide. One key element of this package is the strategic "registration form" hand-out. Use this form to allow your attendees to request more information, request a consultation, or subscribe to your e-newsletter. Finally, we've included our exclusive workshop tracking form -- use this form to capture and track all of your workshop expenses, appointments, and revenue. Use this form to evaluate your marketing efforts, and make changes in the future if necessary.

Third -- we're offering special introductory pricing on the workshop package through March 1, 2010, with a savings of $300!

If you would like to learn more, visit our website at www.estateplanningpartners.com. For samples and pricing information, contact James at 1-877-352-2021, ext. 0