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.