Integrity Marketing

Film Noir – Great for Movies, Bad for Estate Planning Practice Development

We love old movies, especially the greats of Film Noir – those black and white mysteries where the men wear suits and hats, the dialogue is crisp and fast and takes wise-cracking banter to a new level.

But what works for film noir has no place in an estate planning or elder law firm.

Your practice needs to strike a balance of professional and personal. Prospects are likely coming to you at a time of great worry, when their lives need careful handling as much as they need strong legal representation. Your approach needs to be the opposite of the hard-bitten detective who sits behind a big desk and questions a potential client who only knows that she has a problem and needs help.

We often encounter situations where we want to get a lot of information in a fairly efficient manner. And the client sitting across from us is carrying stories that they want to share, or gets off on tangents about their brother’s kids. They are often nervous; for some, this is the first time they are in an attorney’s office.

It’s your job, along with that of all of the members of your staff, from the receptionist who takes the first call to the paralegal who works with the clients to move the process along, to convey a caring, warm and concerned atmosphere.

Dare we say it? You set the tone in your office. Your team will pick up on it, and treat your clients the same way that you do. If they hear you talking in a disrespectful manner or making glib jokes about clients or their situations, they will take that as a cue to do the same.

And what happens if someone who is not a team member in the office hears those kinds of comments?

The cinema’s polar opposite to film noir may well be the 1937 movie Heidi, starting Shirley Temple as a sweet young orphan who is sent to live in a cabin in the Swiss Alps with her grandfather, who wants nothing to do with her, until he realizes how wonderful she is.

Let’s be sure that your clients walk out of your office feeling better than when they first walked in. There may be tough situations and big decisions to make. But you want them to leave knowing that they have just met with someone who understands their situation and will be able to help. This may be contrary to today’s version of film noir – the snarky atmosphere of sarcasm and “whatever” – but we think it is a far better way to go.

Do Business Cards Have a Role in a Digital World?

By Kelly Myers

There is no doubt that we are living in the digital age. Everything we do, from sending mail to attending meetings to networking, is done electronically. However, the tried and true business card is something that digital will not replace anytime soon. It may seem that business cards are overrated but here are a few reasons why business cards are still relevant – and why you should keep them with you at all times.

First and foremost, business cards always have been and always will be personal. Business cards are a great way to create meaningful connections, whereas technology can sometimes seem impersonal. When you exchange contact information with a person, it’s almost considered disrespectful to pull out your phone or tablet, stare down and start tapping away. With business cards, you can keep eye contact and continue interacting. Nothing beats meeting someone in person, shaking their hand and having a conversation. Plus, creative and quality business cards can sometimes make for a good conversation piece!

Business cards will always be convenient. They’re always accessible, even in a power outage or dead zone, or a place where technology is frowned upon like on an airplane or in a hospital. The possibility of encountering a connection can happen at any time and it’s best to be prepared. When you pass along a business card, those on the receiving end will have something tangible to remember you by. No matter where you are, your business card will follow, making them an essential marketing tool.

Of course, business cards provide a first and hopefully lasting impression of your brand. A first impression is crucial when meeting a prospect or connection. A high quality business card does more than just pass along your contact info. If you’re going to invest in business cards, they should show off your brand, be durable and memorable. If you only purchase cheap looking business cards, that is how your brand will be remembered.

Fortunately, business cards are an enhancement that Integrity Marketing Solutions excels in. We provide cards for you and your team that are tailored to your firm and represents your brand in a positive light. Call us to learn how we can help your business card better reflect you and your practice.

The Cheese Stands Alone

Has it been a long time since you have thought about that children’s song, The Farmer in the Dell? The farmer takes a wife, the wife takes the child, the child takes the cow, the cow takes the pig… we’ll spare you the whole tale, but at the end of the song, the cheese stands alone. Poor cheese.

Your website, unless you have made the right pairings, is like that cheese, standing alone.

Is your website the heart of a world of marketing success or it is a lonely slice of cheese?

Your website needs:

A robust and heartfelt “About Us” page. This is the first or second page that most visitors to your site are going to check out. This area of law is personal and they want to know who you are. Leave it for last, or forget to complete it and you may lose prospects for ever.

A contact form that is welcoming and not too intrusive. If you ask for too much information, they are going to balk like a horse before a jump. You’ve also got to provide several options for contact. Serious visitors who have done their homework won’t use a contact form at all. They will either pick up the phone or look for an email that will reach you directly. No options? Pass to the next law firm website.

An integrated CRM – Contact Relationship Management system – that will gather information from the contact form or phone calls received by your office and move information from you out to your prospects. That includes moving information about and from you to traditional mail boxes. Yes, brochures and letters still have a role.

Testimonials from real people who believe in you. This grabs people in their emotional, “I want to believe in this person, but I need evidence” place. If your clients are comfortable sharing their challenges, your website readers will identify with them and you will have overcome a large obstacle between you and them: lack of trust.

Ratings from third party sites. Not everyone is a Super Lawyer, Best Lawyer or AV Preeminent Martindale lawyer. But if you have a good practice and you ask clients - only your raving fans please-to post positive reviews on Avvo, that’s an improvement over nothing.

Social media traction. Check your blog posts and the social media sites they are supposed to be linking to. Links break – the internet is a crowded highway on a high plains road subject to freezing temperatures, overloaded 16-wheelers and a lot of precipitation. Every week, you or someone in your organization should check to make sure that your blogs are going where they are supposed to go.

If your website is not performing, give us a call and let’s take a look. We’ll make sure your farmer, wife, child, cow, pig, dog, cat, mouse and, the formerly lonely cheese, are all happy together in the dell.

A Big IMS Shout Out to the Florida Bar Association’s Elder Law Section Annual Meeting

If you were among the crowds at the Florida Bar Association’s Elder Law meeting earlier this month, we hope your trip was as good as ours. James and I really enjoyed ourselves this year, from meeting up with current clients to an introduction to what felt like a huge group of Elder Lawyers who are committed to excellence in their practices.

It’s always rewarding to be invited to speak before a group, but it’s even better when you have a sense that everyone in the audience really gets what you are talking about. That was my experience at this year’s presentation. Most of you don’t expect to hear about Sherlock Holmes when you are learning about marketing your practice, and yet everyone was open to the concept, which let me expand into the many new and exciting areas that are helping our clients ramp up their practices in 2016.

The pace of change in running an Elder Law practice has moved into hyper drive. We’re not talking about changes in the law, although there are plenty of those. We are talking about dramatic changes in how you run your practice, how you embrace the technology now available for practice management and marketing, and frankly, how you measure your success.

The best way to move your practice forward?  Carve out some time to create a strategic plan. Set specific goals, review metrics from the past five years, and get a clear picture of what you and your team need to accomplish to get there.

If you want to know what the future could hold for your practice, take a look at this Strategic Planning Retreat webinar. If what we’re doing makes sense to you – growing your profitability, streamlining processes and giving you the tools to make your practice hum like a fully restored 1967 Ford Mustang G.T. 500, give us a call. Not a fan of pony cars? That’s okay – we can help you too!

Who’s Minding – or Mining - Your Data?

One of the things that makes our E2-CRM so valuable is the level of security and flexibility that it provides for one of your most valuable resources: your client and prospect database.

Let’s start with what your database should and should not contain. Ethical email marketing requires that your databases should be permission based, that is, it should only contain the names and contact information of people who have opted in: those who asked to be included on your email list, or who you have had direct contact with in some way.

Email lists that you buy or lists that you create from court records, business groups or association lists are not considered to be permission based and honestly, they are rarely as effective as contact with people who know who you are.

Does it cost you more to add 5,000 names to your email program? No, sending email is inexpensive.

But here’s the difference:  if you are sending out vast quantities of email through your own server, you may create several problems for your operations and your email marketing campaigns.

Your local internet service provider or larger internet provider – Google, Yahoo, etc. – might tag you as a spammer. You might not even know it, but your URL could be listed on industry blacklists. One sign – some of your emails will start bouncing unexpectedly, and your IT person won’t see any reason for it.

If you use Mailchimp and the number of bounce backs or emails from people requesting to unsubscribe from your list meets certain metrics, they might ban you from adding new contacts, or worse, shut your account down. We’ve seen it happen to attorneys who thought that they knew better. They didn’t realize that the email list they uploaded – even though it was legitimately purchased from a professional organization – was not the same as an opt-in or permission granted email list.

Your effectiveness rates may be disappointing. People who know you, who have seen you speak at a community event, read your name in the local newspaper or met you at a senior center are more likely to open your emails. If they are not currently ready for your services, the email campaign reminds them of your services and authority in this area. It often takes more than one or two or even three touches before your message gets to them. When they are ready to meet with you, they’ll know who to call!

Permission based or opt-in email lists have better effectiveness than emailing to strangers.

And something we have seen all too often -how secure are your lists? Could anyone on your staff get into your database with no restrictions and duplicate your list?

The Essentials Solution E2-CRM has features that protect your list in a number of ways:

• The export function works only after you have emailed the administrator – IMS – and permission is granted.
• Permission is granted for a limited period of time – 36 hours in most cases.
• User rights are set and specific. You can grant people access or control on a person by person basis.
• You can also control what each person can do -view only, change or not change records, delete or not delete and export.
• Reporting is built in. An activity log is generated every time the database is accessed.
• Because every person must have their own log in, we know exactly who has been in the system and what they have done.
• Want to shut someone out of the system? Just change the password.

Your list took years to build. Treat it like you would any valuable part of your practice. IMS can help you use it, grow it and protect it. Have questions? Call James at 1 (877) 352-2021 x80 to learn more.

Who Are You? How to Write an Engaging Bio

By Kelly Myers

There it is. That blinking cursor on a brand new document mocking you as you attempt to write a decent bio for your website. You have so much to share about yourself but don’t quite know where to start.

Writing a bio is actually very simple. The first and most important tip when it comes to creating a bio: include your name! Sure, it’s already highlighted numerous times on your website, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be in your bio too. Start by introducing yourself in third person and move on to your background. Here are a few other tips on writing a bio like a pro:

Know your audience

Odds are, someone in need of an estate planning or elder law attorney is going through a sensitive time. Share your passion about your work with viewers by including what made you interested in this practice area in the first place. This will show that you’re more than just an attorney, but a compassionate and understanding person.

Share your personality

Add flavor to your bio by using a sentence or two to expand on your personal interests. Mention the family vacation you take every year to hike in Colorado or that you are a dedicated film fanatic. Try to include something witty or unexpected so that prospects can see that you are a real live person as well as a professional. By making yourself relatable, your reader can see what they may have in common with you. This will give them a better feeling about letting you into their lives.

Establish credibility

Viewers want to know more about you and what makes you the best choice for their estate planning or elder law needs. Include where you attended law school, any special awards you’ve received or if you’ve been featured in any type of media outlet like a book or local news show. It’s not necessary to include all your credentials; remember, this is your bio, not your resume.

How much is too much?

The idea of a bio is to inform visitors to your site about who you are and what you do. A long bio has the possibility to seem boring, while a short bio may leave your viewers with unanswered questions about you. Best bio? Two paragraphs that cover all the ‘need to knows’ with a few personal tidbits, followed by your credentials and recent awards/memberships is a best-practice solution without being overwhelming.

Be yourself. Wouldn’t you rather clients came to see you? It causes confusion when the bio that clients read on the website sounds like one person, and then the person they meet in the office seems like a different person. Shakespeare said it best – To thine own self be true.

Parental Wisdom as Applied to Business

By Anneliese Krull

My parents are wise. Their lessons both shaped me and, more often than I would like to admit, kept me alive.

Whether it was my mom telling graphic stories to protect me from dying as a result of my own stupidity or my father snapping a pencil in a door hinge to demonstrate the dangers of slamming doors, I gained practical experience. While not all of their advice applies to estate planning and elder law as a business, much does.

Here are a few things I learned from my parents:

1 - Krulls don’t cry. In a household with three daughters, my dad did not succeed in establishing a tearless home. He did, however, teach us to be proactive. Feeling sorry for yourself and playing the victim does the world no good. It’s okay to be upset. Emotions are good but not when they defeat you. Instead, do something about it.

2 - Write down your goals. The odds of a person completing their goals goes down significantly if they are not written down. Put pen to paper and dream big.

3 - Leave it all on the field. Although this specifically applied to my efforts in athletic competition, it applies to work. Even if the odds are against you (at 5’1”, they often were for me), give it your all. The worst losses are when you defeat yourself. Go to work every day and do your best for each client and each employee in your office.

4 - You are not your sister. My sisters and I are within three years of age and one of them is my twin. With siblings so close, comparison was a constant struggle. My parents tried to help us find our unique strengths. As an attorney, do not compare yourself to the next lawyer; instead, find what makes you unique.

5 - Say please and thank you (and blow your nose in a Kleenex). I received this admonition every time I went to a friend’s home. As simple as it seems, manners show others that you value them. Your clients, like my friend’s parents, invite you to enter into their personal lives. Treat them with courtesy, and they will remember you by the impression you leave. Remember: You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

IMS can help you put all of this wisdom (and more) into practice through our private strategic planning retreats. Visit our website or call James at 877-352-2021 to learn more!

Four Signs You Need a Website Redesign

By Kelly Myers

In the ‘90s or early 2000’s, having a website meant your business was a part of the digital revolution. Many websites were decked out with animated text, graphics and colored backgrounds. Needless to say, website design had not yet reached its peak. Now, having a well-designed and easily operating website is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. Every so often, even the best websites need to be redesigned due to changes in technology, evolving devices and modern design trends. Redesigning your website can seem like a big commitment, so if you’re hesitant about moving forward, read below to see if your website may be ready for a new look!

It simply looks outdated

Web design trends are constantly changing and if your website is a few years old, it may look outdated. A website is one of your first impressions on clients, prospects and referral sources, and it’s important that it relays your brand and professionalism. Your online presence is a prime opportunity to put your best foot forward with an aesthetically pleasing design that aligns with the values of your firm. The design of your website can influence your visitor’s perception of you. Therefore, the experience visitors have on your site should reflect the experience they’ll have engaging with you or your firm. If your site looks old and dried out, it may be time to give it a facelift.

Your website is not engaging as well as it should

A feature of being an Essential Solutions Attorney is receiving a monthly Google Analytics report. This report is where you can see how people are responding to your website. If you notice that the bounce rate is high or visitors are spending less than 30 seconds on the site, odds are they are not finding what they want easily, or aren’t engaging with the site. That’s a good sign that it’s time to add some videos, change up the navigation to be more modern, or make some other changes that will bring your website up to date and boost it’s performance.

You’ve updated your services

As a lawyer, it’s possible that you’ve altered your practice over the years. It’s important that your website reflect the services you offer. Maybe you’re an estate planning attorney that is interested in gaining more elder law clients. Or perhaps you highlight Long Term Care Planning as your main service but find that Probate is more profitable. No matter what your circumstances are, if your practice is changing, your website should too.

Your site is not responsive

A responsive website is a must have for any and all businesses. A responsive site is crafted to automatically provide optimal viewing and interaction across a multitude of devices. With a site that is non-responsive, viewers must manually resize, pan and scroll on their devices. Mobile traffic is increasing and your firm’s website needs to be compatible with the way your viewers are using your site.

If you believe one or more of these components describe the circumstance of your website, consider the opportunity to have Integrity Marketing Solutions create a re-designed website built to fit your firm.

There's No Place Like Home

By Kelly Myers

We all know the story of Dorothy and her enchanted journey down the yellow brick road to find her home in Kansas. The world of marketing is much like the Land of Oz. There are trials and tribulations, but at the end of the road, you’ll be well on your way home to success.

Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead

Odds are, when you signed with Integrity Marketing Solutions, you were relieving some kind of challenge standing in the way of your law firm’s growth. You may have been a new firm that needed help getting its feet wet in marketing or maybe you were looking to increase your business. Just like the munchkins cheering for the end of their tormentor, the death of the Wicked Witch of the East, you too rejoiced that your marketing challenges would soon be gone.

Use your brain, heart, and courage

Law firm marketing requires what the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion all find in The Wizard of Oz: brains, heart and courage. Like any good marketing plan, brains, or strategy, is the biggest component. Multiple elements make up a marketing strategy. Thankfully, you’ve got a team of highly qualified professionals working together to be the brains of your marketing.

Estate Planning and Elder Law also requires heart. The clients coming through your office are more likely than not, in need of help dealing with sensitive topics. It’s important that lawyers treat their clients with compassion but that their marketing is sensitive too. Of course, law firm marketing also takes courage. Signing up with Integrity Marketing Solutions means investing in something you’ve never done before. You’re clutching on to the medal of courage and hoping for the best.

Embrace the man behind the curtain

As a lawyer, you are the front man, or woman, of your business. Integrity Marketing Solutions is behind the scenes working hard to help you grow. Trust that we are putting our best marketing foot forward and want nothing but success for your firm. We’ll make sure to keep your marketing on the yellow brick road and lead you, arm in arm, to the Emerald City.

Essential Solutions Clients - Still Time to Register for Tomorrow's Webinar

Essential Solutions clients still have time to register for this 20 minute webinar on the power of a private strategic retreat presented by Jennifer Campbell-Goddard, CEO of IMS, set for Tuesday, January 19^th at 12 noon (Central). We think you’ll agree that it’s a short period of time, considering how much of an impact a retreat could have on your practice. Note that this is a private session, for Essential Solution clients only.

Register now:  https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8419741558456805634