You know the disclaimer that appears on most attorney websites: Prior performance does not guarantee future results. The same can be said about past marketing efforts and future marketing plans. Marketing programs that worked well six years ago may or may not have the same impact on your practice today as they did then. Or, they might be giving you a windfall of new clients. What we do know for sure is that is that we can now gather, measure and analyze marketing data with a far greater degree of precision than in the past.
Here are a few other things that we are quite sure of for past and future marketing efforts:
Every market is different. Even something that your practice finds wildly successful may not work at your friend’s law firm, even if it’s just twenty miles away.
Just because one of your colleagues launches an ambitious program that she’s excited about does not necessarily mean the program is succeeding. It just may be that you are aware of what her firm is doing and you might feel like maybe you are missing an opportunity.
Don’t go half-way. If you begin an initiative, whatever kind it may be, be prepared to see it through and be prepared to make an investment in all of the needed support and systems. If it’s too much of a resource commitment, then wait until you are ready to go all in.
Don’t stray too far away from your core business of being an estate planning and Elder Law firm. We’ve seen firms come up with all kinds of great ideas—usually relating to mutually beneficial referrals for senior resource companies that, it is hoped, will result in referrals to the law firm—that all too often fall flat.
Social media is your new best friend. If you are not incorporating social media into your marketing plan, you are leaving money on the table. One attorney told us that he simply does not have time for all of this “social media nonsense.” If you are not present in some way shape or form in social media, we hope that you have a massive budget for print ads, direct mail and events. We have made it as simple as possible: all you have to do is post the IMS blogs on a weekly basis and have the posts auto-populate Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. That way you’ll at least have a fighting chance to hold your own.
Social media does require time and effort. It is not free. It requires a human being to strategically plan out what your messages are going to be, then create content, post the appropriately-styled content on whatever channels you focus your efforts on, and to monitor those channels and follow up on the resulting data.