Integrity Marketing

You Talkin’ to Me? Are Your Law Firm’s Marketing Messages as Good as it Gets?

We have a friend who builds boats, but they are more artwork than boats. The care and attention to details is amazing, and whether they are in the water or in dry dock, these are masterpieces. Every now and then, someone offers him a lower price and they are treated to a masterful harangue on their ancestors’ failure to add intelligent offspring to the planet. Most of the time, his buyers are awed by the quality of his work and more than willing to pay full price.

Your estate planning and elder law practice should operate in much the same way, except for going off the deep end on bargain hunters.

Competition in every professional service field will only continue to ramp up as more “disrupters” find ways to monetize legal services. Succeeding in the face of today’s constantly changing environment requires providing an exceptional experience for your clients. Unlike our friend the boat builder, whose handiwork can be seen and touched, much of what you do for clients isn’t experienced until after they are gone. That makes client education and targeted marketing an even more important part of your firm’s success.

How well-targeted are your marketing messages? Are you focused on price? That’s a completely different message than one geared to a multi-million estate plan that requires experience in complex areas. If you do market to a price sensitive consumer, don’t be surprised when clients push back for an even lower price. Be prepared to explain, however briefly and politely, that their experience with an online estate plan is not the same, and wish them well. Important note: keep your bargain hunters on your marketing lists. They may be back, especially if your marketing to them includes a look at the problems created by online estate plans.

Is your message going to the right people? Email lists are not set-it-and-forget-it tools. Let’s say your practice is seven years old. Are you marketing to the same clients? Has your community undergone any kind of socioeconomic changes that would have an impact on your client bases? Use your E2 CRM to review and analyze your list. If you’d like assistance, submit a support ticket and we’ll help you dig into the data.

When Law Firm Marketing Meets Client Satisfaction

Depending on the source, it either costs ten times, seven times, five times or 30 times more to bring a new client into your estate planning/elder law practice, versus serving the needs of existing clients. Whichever number you choose, the bottom line is that new clients cost more than current clients. Many law firms are so focused on new clients that they forget to consider their current clients. That’s an expensive mistake.

Your current clients have the potential to be brand ambassadors and referral sources. They can also provide you with testimonials and online reviews. In a perfect world, they should all be raving fans, telling friends and family members about you. Many, if not all, should be repeat clients, coming to see you every four or five years to review and if needed, update their estate plans.

But if you ignore them, you lose all of these opportunities.

How do you keep them in the fold? Exceed expectations. Provide amazing service, be responsive to needs and concerns before they are even articulated, and stay in touch with a steady stream of communications.

Remember, you are competing every single day with a host of messages from other estate planning attorneys, arriving in the form of giant postcards, advertisements, invitations to seminars, media coverage on estate planning topics, bylined articles, invitations to client appreciation events and eNewsletters. Add to that the national ad campaigns of online estate planning websites, who have to be considered as serious competition.

If they are not hearing from you, you risk losing them.

How often should you be reaching out to them? Well… there are just as many different numbers for how often to stay in touch with clients as there are for the cost ratio of retaining new clients versus existing clients. This is where you’ll want to lean on the data. Your data is the best source of all. What eNewsletters were opened the most? Which of your blog posts received the most views? What did you do that prompted phone calls?

If you are not collecting and reviewing data, you may be losing out to practices that are.

Here’s a radical thought for 2017: schedule phone calls to current clients. Make time to make one phone call a week. They will probably be surprised to hear from you. By the end of the year, you will have reached 52 people that otherwise would not have heard your voice. Call them after reviewing their files so that you can ask about family members and situations that were discussed when they came into your office most recently. If your call goes to voicemail, leave a pleasant message, stating that you were just thinking of them and hoping all is well. Even if you don’t hear back from them, the personal connection and the effort will be appreciated.

Here’s Why Good Marketing Keeps Attorneys Sane

An estate planning/elder law firm with a powerful marketing program has the one thing that we all want: options. The ability to make yes/no, go/no go decisions based on what will be good for the firm’s overall strategic growth is something that you don’t have without a steady stream of new clients who you and your colleagues enjoy. That almost always goes along with a healthy cash flow.

This is not an impossible dream.

When you have the ability to pick and choose among clients, you and your team has the ability to avoid problematic personalities that frankly, can wreak havoc in an office. If you and your team relish the opportunity to work on the multi-million estate of a brilliant Type-A personality who lacks any basic social skills and isn’t in a hurry to pay his invoices, that’s great. But having the freedom to choose whether or not to take on that kind of client promotes a healthy workplace and lifestyle.

With strategic marketing, your law firm can target the type of clients who would be best suited for your practice. Everything from the content on your website to the logo design for your firm should be aligned with your ideal client. That’s where a strategic marketing plan puts you in the proverbial driver’s seat.

There are probably many reasons why you chose this particular type of law. One of them is certainly because you want to make life better for your clients and their families. But your practice should make your own life and your family’s life better too. Part of that is having the ability to grow the practice with the clients and colleagues that suits your vision.

If you want to grow a regional powerhouse, then you’ll want to target a wider field of clients from an economic and geographic standpoint. For a boutique practice with limited to high net-worth clients, you’ll hone your strategy to focus only on high income communities.

One of the things we explore with clients during the IMS strategic retreat is getting a much clearer vision of where they want to take their practice. They are often surprised at the level of detail we get to, but without an in-depth understanding of where you want to go, it’s not likely you’ll get there.

How Involved Should You Be in Law Firm Marketing?

Managing partners and founding partners often fall into one of two camps when it comes to involvement with law firm marketing. They want either total control or they want someone else to deal with everything. Either extreme is a bad choice for growing a law firm. A managing partner needs to be aware of marketing efforts, understand the big picture and be part of the overall strategic plan for firm growth. Same for the founding partners. But if he or she is involved with lengthy discussions about the use of a semi-colon versus a comma, there might be a problem.

What about you?

Big Picture and Strategic Planning. Best practices discussions for the overall growth and forward motion of the firm should include founding partners, senior partners, even senior associates. You want all hands on deck because you want feedback from the senior level. Is the firm’s branding on track? What is the vision for growth, and how are you measuring success?

Ongoing Marketing Tasks. A lot of your marketing should be automated by now. When a visitor fills out a contact form from your website, they should automatically receive an email message, their information should automatically be entered into your CRM and a live person from your office should reach out with a phone call within a very short window of time.

Meeting New Clients. Yes, client relations is part of marketing. But senior level partners should not be meeting clients until all information has been gathered and a decision is made as to who meets with the clients. If it is a simple matter, it makes more sense for an associate to meet with the client, and have the founding partner stop by for a quick hello. If it is a multi-million dollar estate, then the founding partner or a managing partner should be in the initial meeting.

Email Marketing and Blog Posts. With prepared content from IMS, these key elements of your marketing program are ready to go. You may want to have a look, modify them to suit your target market, and then get them out the door. If there’s someone in your firm who is a member of the grammar police, by all means have him or her take a look. This prepared content means that your marketing keeps going, whether you are knee-deep in preparing documents or cheering at your kid’s soccer game.

Networking and Volunteering. This is one where you need to be present, but to add more impact, bring along others from your team. That presents a unified front, shows that your team is in alignment with you and demonstrates your firm’s commitment to networking or volunteering or both.

Bylined Articles. You’re in charge of the ideas, but an associate should be in charge of the first draft, unless there’s no one in the firm who understands the issues and/or has the legal expertise to do so. Your task should be picking the topic, outlining major points, and editing the final version.

Law Firm Influentials: Who They Are and How to Reach Them

We have a client whose own clients come in clusters. One started from a financial advisor, another was made up of a group of people who worked at the same corporation, and a third originated from an insurance rep who sent one person to the firm, and then she recommended friends to the estate planning law firm. At the center of each group is a trusted person known as a key influential. Every practice wants them, but how do you find them?

Identify influentials in business settings. Any local business or professional association has a few people who others naturally gravitate to. Attend meetings and watch the dynamics. You’ll be able to identify the leaders in the room. Get actively involved with their committees, make connections and develop relationships.

Look for leaders in local not-for-profits. Influentials are often found as leaders of not-for-profits in the community. You might find them running the local community chest, or serving as president of a social service organization. Here’s the thing: anyone can volunteer, but leaders take the next step to do the heavy lifting.

Give it time. This is a long-term relationship that you are looking for, and does not happen fast. Referrals from influentials require building trust as well as camaraderie. And it can’t be one sided. If you are asked to take a foursome for a golf outing, say yes, and then, ask if there’s anything else you can do to help.

Are you an influential and don’t know it? Many IMS clients are leaders in their communities because they recognize the value of giving back, whether to members of the legal profession, their local community, or faith-based organizations. If you aren’t involved, start in 2017. Start with a committee position or even a monthly volunteering commitment, but start.

“Hidden” influentials. Not every influential is easy to spot. There may be a PTA mom in your community who is in the thick of every activity and knows everyone in the school district. The owner of a popular restaurant where business people gather for networking events may have his pulse on the merchants in the area. Look beyond the obvious for these influentials to further develop your influential “radar.”

Are Your Law Firm Clients On Your Marketing Team?

Your marketing team is a lot bigger than you think. It includes every person in your office, the entire IMS team and your clients. Yes, your clients. They are your brand ambassadors. They know you, they know your practice, and they know if you have been able to help them.

Here are a few suggestions to increase the chances that your clients become brand ambassadors for your firm:

Make sure every client becomes a brand ambassador. Every law firm has clients who are difficult, those who are easy to deal with, and those who they develop a deep connection and friendship with. Developing brand ambassadors means taking the time and making the effort at every step of the way, to ensure that clients have an optimal experience. That means from the minute they visit your website to the day they leave with a folder of documents.

Build loyalty by being more than a transactional law practice. If your practice currently works with clients to prepare an estate plan and then disappears from their world, you’re losing the ability to build a connection that could otherwise lead to referrals, reviews and endorsements. Using IMS’ E2-CRM makes it easy for you to stay in touch with clients at a number of points throughout the year: birthdays, changes in the law, updating their wills, holidays, speaking engagements, news about the firm, and more.

Ask brand ambassadors what you’d like them to do. Clients are not mind readers, and you are not the first thing on their minds. Don’t be surprised if you need to ask them more than once. Asking for referrals is an art, requiring a gracious approach and gratitude. If it helps, create a script that becomes part of your follow up conversation after your work for them has been completed.

Ask for a testimonial that you can share. Testimonials for estate planning and elder law firms are different than product testimonials. Don’t use client names without their permission, and don’t  provide too many specific details, but do share their comments about the level of caring, professionalism and other positive descriptions of their experience with your firm. Some clients will post on AVVO without being asked, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Only ask for testimonials from clients who you are certain will provide a positive review.

Say thank you. There are many other law firms your clients could have used. Let them know that you appreciate their selecting your firm to help them with their estate plan and/or elder law matters. Say thank you by providing an amazing client service experience and in small ways, like making sure they are comfortable in your office, that they are treated with respect and concern by every member of your team, and that your work for them is exceptional.

Connect outside of your office. Give clients and prospects the opportunity to connect with you at community events, senior law days, fundraisers and other places where you are on neutral turf. It gives them an opportunity to see you as a person as well as a trusted professional on the other side of the conference table. Follow up when you’ve seen them with an email or a hard copy note.

Building brand ambassadors is about building relationships. Your estate planning and elder law practice is a highly personal field of law. The more you can connect with your clients, the better!

What Your In-House Law Firm Marketing Team Needs To Know

No matter the size of your estate planning and elder law firm, you have an in-house marketing team that needs easy access to a fair amount of information. Certain things are basic, like your website URL (you’d be surprised by the number of staff members who are not familiar with their own firm’s website URL or don’t even know that their firm has a resourceful website!). Others take a little more thought and effort. All are important.

What’s Your URL? Here’s what happens: you think of a great website name, or the perfect term for your practice. It’s usually variations on the phrase “Your State Elder Law” or “Your Town Estate Planning,” and as many as your creative mind can come up with. You visit GoDaddy and buy them. All 30 of them. One of them becomes your website, but you’re in love with some of those terms, so you have us point them to your regular site. At some point, you’ll want to know what your other URLs are, or even what your real URL is. But you can’t find the list of the URLs, you don’t remember your GoDaddy log in, etc…. Not to worry, IMS has your real URL address. But it is a good idea for someone in your office to have that list and log in information to avoid unnecessary confusion.

What’s on Your Website? We know how busy our clients are, and often that means that their websites take a back seat to many other marketing activities. However, over extended periods of time, your website may need refreshing. That includes content, images and overall look and feel. Even though they don’t come with expiration dates, websites do become out of date.

What Are You Sending? Whether your marketing communications are all digital, all print or a combination of the two (our preference), make sure that you and everyone on your team is on the email distribution list. Also, be sure to add your firm’s postal address to any hard-copy distribution lists. That way, you will see the same things, at the same time that your clients and prospects are receiving.

Where Is Your Log In Information Stored? We’ve all been there: when you really, truly have to log in and the one person who knows where everything is located is out of the office. Your log in information needs to be secure, but it also needs to be known by more than one person. By implementing protocols that require cross-training and ensuring that log ins are accessible by more than one team member, you can be sure to have access to your important accounts.

What’s Your Brand, Message and Mission? Once you’ve covered the more practical aspects, don’t forget to make sure your team is all on the same page when it comes to branding, messaging and mission. We know that it’s hard to see the forest when you are busy bushwhacking your way through the undergrowth of daily work. Your team may need a gentle reminder every now and then. If you have a weekly staff meeting, make sure to build in some time when your brand, message and mission is discussed.

You’ve Got a Friend in Your Law Firm Marketing – Actually, You’ve Got an Entourage

Call it a deep bench, call it an entourage, call it a team: as an IMS client, you’ve got a group of highly talented and experienced marketing professionals working on your behalf with one goal: the success of your estate planning and elder law practice. If you haven’t yet made your way to Kansas for a strategic retreat to meet us in person (and we hope that you will put that on your agenda for 2017), here’s a look at the people on your marketing team:

Dana Alley, Account Manager, is one of the team members you’ll spend time with when starting at IMS. She welcomes new clients onboard and takes them through our marketing system. She’s also our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) guru, monitoring performance metrics and keeping your website at the top of the page.

James Campbell spends a lot of time listening to estate planning and elder law attorneys as they outline their challenges and frustrations in marketing their practice. With a national perspective on law firm marketing and his long experience at IMS, James guides lawyers to the solutions they need.

You may not meet Michael Campbell until you begin working on a lawyer video, but once you do, you’ll be amazed at how skillfully he captures your personality and professionalism on video. He is a gifted and creative producer who makes clients feel at home in front of the camera—not an easy thing to do.

Our graphic genius, Angela Hong, has an uncanny ability to take in a wealth of information about your firm and distill it into design elements that convey your firm’s identity and values. It may seem like magic, but it’s not: she works really hard to make it look effortless.

Nathan Kelly joined IMS only a few weeks ago and has already proven himself to be an outstanding part of our team. He works with clients to grow their digital presence across multiple channels and is also part of our growing video team.

Josh Langfield works behind the scenes but you know his work well—after all, it’s your website! As IMS’ lead website developer, Josh stays at the forefront of technical advances in website development and IT.

Think of April Leabo as IMS’s air traffic controller. She keeps everything running smoothly, coordinating all of our team members and making sure that things happen as scheduled. Her certification in Google Analytics, extensive knowledge about IMS processes and online marketing makes April an invaluable resource for IMS team members and our clients.

Last but by no account least is Kelly Myers, account coordinator extraordinaire. Kelly works with IMS clients on all aspects of their marketing strategies, from building websites to training them on using our E2-CRM and everything in-between. Kelly is certified in Google Analytics and her experience in SEO and social media platforms helps IMS clients maintain their leads in competitive markets.

This is your team, a group of highly skilled legal marketing professionals who understand your marketing and business needs. We are here for you!

Now That You Know More About Your Lawyer Website…..

Once you have a better understanding of how visitors to your estate planning and elder law website behave, you may want to consider a few tweaks to enhance its performance. We know that the addition of lawyer videos makes a significant difference on website engagement, for example. Frequently updating your blog gives visitors the confidence that you are actively engaged yourself with your website, boosting their confidence.

A few other performance elements to consider:

Are you easy to reach? Website visitors have very little patience for sites that make them work. Your phone number should be prominent on every page in more than one location. If you don’t have a “click to call” link on your site, you may be missing mobile opportunities.

How many calls to action (CTA) are provided? There are different kinds of CTAs, and limiting yourself to one reason—a free consultation—might not be enough. Do you have a good print brochure or white paper? A bylined article? Offer more reasons to contact you, and you’ll have more contacts.

Another reason to use videos on your website. Data from all sources shows that adding a video increases visitor engagement and improves bounce rates. Here’s another reason: your target audience may already have begun shifting from boomers to millennials. Millennials grew up on YouTube. They don’t read as much as their parents and they expect to see videos everywhere.

Put down the microscope. It is so easy to get lost in the weeds when looking at statistics on website performance. If you are feeling overwhelmed, submit a support ticket and your account manager will help you figure out what matters, what’s working, and what could be better.

Put down the magnifying glass too. You will do better looking at the larger picture. Tracking behavior one week at a time will only cause distress and confusion. When you are looking for trends, you need to see data at the macro level: year over year performance is best, followed by comparing quarterly periods. Even if you look month-to-month, it may not reveal the trends that a bigger perspective can provide.

Don’t ignore device reports. What browser and devices are your visitors using? If the majority of your visitors are looking at your website on a desktop computer, it’s likely they are doing so during the workday and are sneaking a quick peak. If they are on mobile—smart phones or tablets—they may be surfing during another activity (like a meeting or while watching television at night).

Here’s one for a select group: if your website has not been updated for responsive design, don’t expect millennials to find you online. And realize that your device reports will be skewed by visitor’s inability to navigate your site on smart phones or tablets. Ready to make the change? Submit a support ticket and we’ll bring you and your practice into the mobile world.

What Prospects are Doing on Your Attorney Website

By Dana Alley, Kelly Myers and April Leabo  

Now that we know who is visiting your site, let’s take a look at what they’re actually doing once they’re on your site. Look at Pages per Session and the average number of pages a user visits when they land on your site. More pages per session means that users are being engaged with your content and want to explore your site. Most clients on average have two page views per session, mainly because viewers are interested in a specific need. Maybe a couple has just had their first child and are curious about Estate Planning, or an adult child’s parent suddenly needs long-term care. These users are more likely to visit one web page with the area that applies specifically to their concern.

Next, look at the Average Session Duration: how long visitors are staying on your site. This is not how long a user stays on a single webpage, but the duration of the entire visit to your site. An average of two minutes is standard for the legal industry. In two minutes, a user can fill out a contact form and read a practice area page. If you average less than two minutes, you might need more engaging content or design, or a stronger call to action.

The Bounce Rate indicates the number of sessions on your website that resulted in only one page view. The user clicked on your website, stared at that one webpage for a few seconds and clicked the back button. The lower the Bounce Rate, the better. For the legal industry, a bounce rate of 60% is average. If you have an older site and a bounce rate at a concerning level, it may be time to evaluate your site for a redesign; however, if your site is relatively new or a high bounce rate is a rare occurrence, it is not likely that major changes will need to be made. Adding video to your site, especially on the home page can help decrease the bounce rate as it serves the dual purpose of engaging visitors immediately and initiating a personal connection with your firm.

Integrity Marketing Solutions configures a series of Goals for you in Google Analytics. The first Goal is the Contact Us/Thank You page, the webpage a user is directed to after submitting a Contact form or a Request a Consultation form. Lastly, there is an [entrance] field. This is meant to track your phone calls from the website via the call tracking number.

This is where Goals can be confusing. A Goal does not track when a website visitor lands on the webpage with the form. The Goal tracks when a website visitor reaches the webpage that appears after submitting the form, which is the Thank You page. One visitor to a Thank You page is considered one Goal Completion. Why is this? Since visitors to your website are directed to one of these “Thank You” pages only after they have completed and submitted a form on your website, your goal completions track only those leads who have taken the initiative to reach out to your firm. Likewise, one phone call, based on the call tracking number on your website, is equal to one Goal Completion for [entrance]. These numbers give your firm an idea of how many people your website is converting. Once a lead has made a call or submitted a form, your firm has the opportunity to close the lead and welcome them into your client family.