Integrity Marketing

Happy New Year from Integrity Marketing Solutions

 

We wish you health, happiness and prosperity in the coming year!

Changes Coming in 2017 for Your Estate Planning Law Firm

We’ll spare you the New Year’s resolutions. Instead, let’s look at changes that we believe will be important for the success of your estate planning and elder law firm in 2017.

Cybersecurity. This week’s New York Times reported on a huge data breach of a number of top law firms whose emails were allegedly hacked by overseas citizens searching for insider trading tips. Law firms and accounting firms are generally considered easy targets by hackers. If the Pentagon can be hacked, your firm can too. Take steps to secure your data.

Changes to tax laws. It is reasonable to expect that there will be changes to the tax structure in 2017. Will you be out ahead of the curve, or playing catch-up? If you don’t already have news sources in place, this is the year to get yourself set up with the right sources. We had a client who used to get federal updates every Monday at 2:00 AM. He simply stayed up on Sunday nights. Not every week brought big news, but when it did, he was the first to turn it around to media contacts.

Video, video, video. Lawyer videos are growing in use because they work on many different levels, including increasing prospect comfort levels and boosting search engine rankings. If you’re not able to come to our production studios, that’s no problem: we can travel to your office.

Mobile websites. Call it responsive design or call it mobile friendly, if your website is not up-to-date with this design requirement, don’t expect anyone to find you on the web. Love or hate it, your website visitor’s mobile experience must be a great one, or you’ll lose them to your competitors.

Online payment. Millennials who are heading up households and coming to your office haven’t written a check in years, since they pay all of their bills online. This may be a big transition for many firms, but more and more of your clients will want this option.

Does Your Law Firm Have a Plan?

We think Yogi Berra had it right: “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” That’s why we encourage you to have a law firm marketing plan and well-defined goals. This strategic planning is necessary for any successful professional business or practice, regardless of size or sector. Maybe 2017 will be the year that you’ll visit our offices for a strategic planning retreat, when you’ll dedicate a solid block of time and your full attention to figuring out where you want to go next.

Strategic planning just makes sense.

Setting goals for the quarter or the year doesn’t happen in a vacuum. How do you measure success? In some firms, it is in the number of people who come to your office and become clients. For others, it is a mixture of the number of matters and billable hours. Others count only billable hours, especially if theirs is a litigation-oriented practice.

What is your goal for your practice and your personal life? One attorney came to us because he wanted to have a law firm that made more money than any other estate planning attorney in his town. That was important to him. Others are concerned with striking a balance between a healthy law practice and being active in their professional community. There’s more variety than you might expect in what law firm leaders what to achieve, but without articulating these goals, it’s awfully hard to get there.

What do you want from your partners/colleagues/paralegals/admins? If you are surrounded by a dedicated team, that’s terrific. They have goals also. Are they with you for the long haul, as your office is a perfect fit with their lifestyle, or will they take years of training with them when they leave for greener pastures or retirement?

What do your clients want/expect from you and your practice? Are they “trained” to expect to hear from you throughout the year, either by snail mail or email blasts that arrive more than once a year? Do they see your name in the local newspaper, giving a presentation or heading up a local not-for-profit? Could this be the year that you distinguish yourself from other estate planning attorneys by raising your public profile? If so, how do you plan on doing that? Can you do it with your current staff, or do you need additional help?

These are just a few of the issues that are clarified on the way to developing a strategic plan. One thing we know for sure: every lawyer and every law practice is different, but they all benefit from having a plan in place!

Leading the Law Firm: Leading Through Change

Yesterday we worked with my horse, Cash, on better transitions -- moving smoothly from the walk to the trot and back down again. Like most of us, and even our businesses, Cash can get a little "sticky" in the transition -- he will sometimes get tense anticipating the change. I can feel this as a rider when his gait gets choppy, I can see it from the ground in a tension throughout his body.

 

The worst part of this stickiness? It's unpredictable.

 

Until now, I've just been riding through it. But it's a lot of work, it's not making Cash more comfortable, and when riding a tense horse, there's always the possibility of a blow-up.

 

Your team may react the same way -- getting a little "sticky" with change. You might see this as stress, tension, irritability, push-back, grumbling and even poor performance.

 

I see this every day when law firms attempt to implement new marketing systems, without first preparing their staff for the change. In the worst cases, the marketing initiative is abandoned and considered a failure.

 

This is really a failure of leadership, failing to lead through the transition.

 

So -- how can we smooth out those transitions?

With Cash, the first thing I did was decide to stop just riding (or pushing) through the tension. I got off and worked with him from the ground -- on his level. I showed him how I was going to ask the question -- ask for the transition -- and gave him time to prepare for it. When Cash became comfortable with the question and had time to prepare, his tension vanished. His walk was smooth and relaxed, the transition up was easy, the trot was reliable and smooth, and when asked again, he transitioned back down with ease.

How might this apply to you as the leader of your firm and your team?

Are you just riding your team through the transitions, pushing from the top down, insisting on compliance and dealing with the fallout?

 

What if you could lead your team through the transitions? How powerful would that be? How much more might your team achieve? Not to mention how much more enjoyable it would be to work together.

 

Think about it the next time you make a change in your firm. Be mindful of how you are Leading Through the Transitions. And let me know how it turns out!

Should You Embrace Contradictions in Your 2017 Law Firm Marketing?

As we enjoy this pause between holidays, here’s a bit of unexpected advice for successful law firm marketing: embrace contradictions. Try things in 2017 that you’ve never considered. Combine the new with a return to traditional marketing techniques. Here are a few contradictions to try in 2017.

Delegate more but also be more involved. As a law firm leader, you should not be in the weeds. Your associates and paralegals were hired to handle many tasks. Are you letting them do that, or micromanaging? Delegate everything you can. If your staff can’t handle the responsibilities, ask yourself: are they the right fit for your practice?

Get more involved. Knowing where you need to be more involved could have a dramatic impact on your overall practice. How involved are you with the financial details of your practice? Do you only do a twice a year review, or only look at the financials when cash flow tightens up?

If you don’t know how much you should be spending on overhead vs. staffing, you’ve already got a problem. Once you’ve got this under control, with cost-management systems and reviews in place, you will have a much better view on what needs to happen to grow your profitability.

Lean on the data and add tangible marketing tools. If you are part of the Essential Solutions marketing program make a commitment to log in read the monthly reports you get from IMS. If there’s something you’re not sure of, or if you’d like to dig deeper to understand trends and project areas of growth, submit a support ticket. We’re here for you!

Add some print to your practice. If you haven’t ever created a firm brochure, want to dress up your client folders or your business cards are plain vanilla, IMS has a complete graphic design studio that can help extend your visual identity and communicate your key messages to clients and prospects.

Lawyer videos on your website and a live presence in the community. People want to know who they are entrusting their legacy to. Videos that convey your unique personality put your practice light years ahead of those who limit themselves to pages of static content. At the same time, getting out into the community at special events, fundraisers and service organizations put a live person in the room. Put the two together, and you’ve got a powerful reach in both arenas!

The Ghosts of Law Firm Marketing Past

Ebenezer Scrooge isn’t the only one who stands to learn a lot from looking back at the past. We hope you won’t need a ghostly visit to scare you into looking at your estate planning and elder law firm marketing and business practices in 2016. It’s definitely easier to look at your successes than any flops, but the lessons from the flops are equally valuable for your go-forward planning.

Here are some factors to look at:

Profitability. Obvious, right? But don’t just look at the bottom line. Dig into your costs to find out where you may be overspending, or under spending. Are you investing in infrastructure—software, hardware, phone systems, etc.—that keep your office running smoothly? Are your marketing tools up-to-date? What about your staffing costs? Don’t be surprised if low salaries bring you a series of bad hires. Are your attorney’s entire compensation packages and overhead costs more than covered by their billable hours? Your profits are in the details.

Marketing campaigns. We all start out the year with great expectations, but all too often the business of a practice stops campaigns in their tracks. Automating as much of the process as you can and planning it out months in advance ensures that your marketing will roll out, even when you and your team are busy practicing law. Not on our E2-CRM platform yet? Send a support ticket if you’d like to learn more about how this can save valuable time and generate more profitability in 2017.

Data, data, data. Think about this: your website generates so much data that it takes special training to really understand everything that takes place. That’s why we provide you with monthly reports that are understandable. This is a valuable resource that can be used to guide your marketing efforts and your practice. Here’s a simple example: what if the data showed that the majority of people arriving at your website go to the Special Needs Trust page? Or that they left the website immediately after reading your About Us page? Both scenarios point to a need for a response.

What went wrong? Really wrong? This is definitely the pain point, but those pain points should lead you to fixing things that went wrong. Did an errant email give an adversary key information that led to a matter blowing up? That’s training and time management. Was a print ad campaign in a local luxury magazine an exciting opportunity that seemed promising but went nowhere? That’s an opportunity to see if you can negotiate some editorial content as a follow-up or a lesson in how not to do one-off print ads. Identify what did not work as well as what worked for lessons for the future.

Law Firm Marketing Perspectives During the Holiday Season

A long holiday weekend is a wonderful thing: the entire world is taking a deep breath, and we hope that you are spending time with family and friends, relaxing at home or traveling, and taking a break from the everyday routine of running an estate planning and elder law practice. This week, we are going to devote some time to the big picture of your practice, looking back at what took place in 2016 and what you’d like to accomplish in 2017.

A large part of your law firm success stems from your own hard and smart work. So let’s ask the biggest question of all: what is it that you are working for? Is it to build a firm that you can pass down to a family member? To create an institution that serves clients and is a major presence in providing support to seniors in the community, whether they are clients or not? Are you interested purely in financial gains? Or more control over your professional and personal life?

When you are so busy with the daily tasks of practicing law, serving clients, running a law firm and squeezing in a personal life around the edges, it’s easy to lose sight of your intentions.

This is a wonderful week for reflection. Give yourself the gift of time and think about where you are right now, and what it is you are working towards.

There are no wrong answers, only the answers that are best for you.

Wishing you all the joys of the season!

Wishing you a Wonderful Holiday Season

 

 

Warm wishes for the holiday season

from all of us at

Integrity Marketing Solutions!

 

 

Legal Marketing Leads Are Not All Created Equal

We know: you love the leads that come in through your referral network. They are pre-qualified (mostly), understand how a professional service firm works and how to be a good client. But your practice can’t survive on these leads alone. That’s where we come in, and that’s why you have an amazing website, lawyer videos, blog posts and the E2 CRM to power your marketing. It’s all good—but for the one link that sometimes needs a boost—your team.

We can hear you: that can’t be. My team is great. But the first human contact that the online lead has with a living, breathing person needs to be very strong, and if that’s not the case, those leads can be lost. Remember, these leads need to be responded to quickly.

Auto responder message that follows their filing out a Contact Us form. With the E2-CRM, each website form includes an auto-responder email that is sent to your prospect. This lets them know that you have received their inquiry and will be in touch with them. What matters next? Set a firm policy for when someone from your office will call them, preferably within four hours of their filling out the form. Remember, online leads are looking at more than a few law firms and who they chose to work with may depend on which firm responds first.

That first phone call to your office. Look, it’s our job to know what happens in your office. We have sat in waiting areas and listened to receptionists handle incoming calls from prospects. It is not always pretty. And it’s not easy. If yours is like many offices, your receptionist is a kind-hearted person who honestly wants to do right by you, colleagues and your clients. But without proper training and reinforcement, your online leads’ first human contact may be riddled with problems.

Prospects may be calling when they are upset, when they want more time on the phone than your receptionist can provide, or they may not be good with driving directions. These are challenges to your receptionist, who may be juggling multiple phone calls and administrative work. If this is where the wheels fall off the proverbial bus, additional training and back up support is needed. The receptionist needs to know that if she is drowning in calls from new and needy prospects, she can get help.

Those first calls are the result of your investment in marketing—don’t lose them!

What Do Clients Think of Your Estate Planning/Elder Law Practice?

When you think of a competing law firm, you think differently than a prospect. You think of the lawyers at the firm, if you have had an occasion to see their work, or if you’ve heard of a situation with the firm that created a problem for a couple who later became your client. But how a prospect considers your firm or your competitor’s firm is very different. You are looking at them as a colleague, competitor and fellow professional. Prospects are making decisions based on a wholly different set of criteria.

Try putting yourself in a non-lawyer’s mindset. Here’s what prospects are looking at before they get to your office:

• Website look and feel, ease of navigation
• Quality of content on the website, is there a video?
• How many attorneys are at the firm?
• Where is the firm located?
• When they call, how did the person on the phone make them feel?
• How easy is it (or hard) to make an appointment?
• If they are asked to fill out forms prior to the appointment, are the forms easy to use?

Remember that your prospects are not coming to you for a fun afternoon. But they are coming to you because they know they need to take care of this part of their lives.

Once they get to your office, the process of evaluating you and your firm continues. Here are more ways that they are judging you:

• How easy is it to get to your office?
• Is it easy to find parking?
• Office décor
• Bathroom cleanliness
• How long did they have to wait once they arrived?
• Was everyone in the office friendly and accommodating

Notice how little of this has anything to do with the quality of your legal services. New clients are consumers of professional services who, consciously or otherwise, are gathering data about their experience before they get to your legal skills.

Once they sit down with you or an associate, another series of perceptions are created:

• Did they meet with a partner or an associate?
• How well-prepared was the attorney?
• Were their questions answered?
• Were they treated with respect and dignity?

Working with an estate planning attorney is not a comfortable thing for most people, especially if their only experience with attorneys has been centered in a negative chapter in their lives. When they have a good experience with a highly professional law office, they will be relieved and pleased. Create an exceptional experience for your clients, and you will have their loyalty.