Integrity Marketing

How to make the most of your law firm blogs to boost online visibility

Successful law firm marketing, particularly for estate planning and Elder Law firms who face intense competition, requires taking every opportunity to enhance your website’s visibility. That’s why we send you blog posts every single week. The topics are carefully curated to appeal to prospects who are searching online for information about wills, estate planning, Elder Law, Medicaid issues and other related topics. Why should you assign this task to someone, or even do it yourself?

Fresh and related content matters to Google bots. For the algorithms, every new blog post is another fresh page of content to your website. Unless you are expanding existing pages on a regular basis, blogging is the best way to add new content. Although expanding those pages is a good idea too!

Humans like to see fresh posts on your blog. They may not notice updates and expansions to pages on the website, but if your last blog post was in 2014, that creates concern. Visitors to your estate planning law firm will wonder if you have forgotten about your blog and if that same lack of attention might occur in your law practice. It’s not how you want to appear to website visitors.

Are you using images in your blog posts? Attention spans are shrinking and we are more of a visual society than ever before. An engaging photo that reflects the people you serve, a cute photo that may elicit a smile or an image that engages the emotions will make your blog posts better. If you have great videos, consider using them within your blog posts as well. Yes, you may need to invest in stock photos or make more attorney videos than you had planned, but everything that you purchase is an investment in your estate planning practice.

Don’t leave your blogs hanging out by themselves. Leverage, leverage, leverage. Include blog posts in eNewletters, share them on social media platforms, cross promote by linking to relevant posts within new blog posts.

If that’s not enough of a reason for you to add a daily blog post to your own website, think about this: IMS posts blogs daily. We do it to educate and inform our clients, but we also do it to enhance our own online visibility.

What’s New in Law Firm Websites for 2017

Law firm marketing and law firm websites specifically are undergoing some major changes, and this is another example of being on the bus, or under it. Some of the changes are big, like the use of graphics, increasing use of videos and typeface as a much bigger part of website design. Others are things we have been telling you about for years: engaging content that seeks to tap the emotion as well as the intellect of your visitors and fresh content, added to your website on the blog and practice area pages.

Here’s more of what’s coming. Giddy up!

Mobile first, then desktop, in designing websites. Instead of designing a website for a desktop computer and then tweaking it to make it work for a phone or tablet, the starting point will be mobile responsive.

Visual elements are growing in importance. That means more videos, more graphics and more color. A page of text, no matter how well written, won’t stand a chance on its own. Have you seen the GIFs—high quality animations—that you can now send along with a text message on your phone? Expect to see them on websites, as a screen background as well as “little movies” on your website.

Videos with Hollywood-quality production values. The days of tabletop interviews with lawyers in legal libraries are gone. That’s why IMS has invested in state-of-the-art video production, including the use of video drones and high quality editing equipment. Also, videos on lawyer bio pages, letting lawyers show their human side. Key phrase for the year: emotional engagement.

Color is coming back! The traditional forest green website evolved into today’s grey and blue website. Around the corner are vibrant colors, including contrasting colors, the use of gradient (shading from intense to an almost white fade across the screen), paired with bold graphics.

Want to move the needle in 2017? Your website is a good place to start. Submit a support ticket or call James at 877-352-2021 ext. 80.

Is Your Law Firm a Ferrari or a Ford?

No knock on Ford, but the Ferrari lives in a different universe. You don’t expect a Ford Taurus to drive like a Ferrari 488 GTB. But you wouldn’t take the Ferrari out for a quart of milk. Both have different roles to play. One’s a very expensive toy, the other a mundane but practical vehicle. The difference is in performance, construction and, yes, marketing. The same qualities distinguish your estate planning and Elder Law firm from your colleagues. If one of your dreams is to own a Ferrari 488 GTB, you’ll need the profits that a high-performance law firm marketing program can yield.

Implement the data that your systems collect. You know that feeling when something arrives in your inbox that’s exactly what you were looking for a few days ago? That company used its marketing data to target you. It’s not a coincidence. Your firm can do the same thing, if you are using the data collected by your E2 CRM.

Save your marketing budget from wasteful spending with targeted campaigns. There is no need to market to people who are not going to be receptive to your offers, whether they are arriving by email, snail mail or television. You have the data in hand? Then you can make better decisions about how to spend your marketing dollars.

Use marketing to educate. Are you tired of explaining why people need a will to new clients? That may mean that your law firm marketing isn’t educating them in advance of your initial meeting. Ideally, by the time they walk into your office, they have been emotionally engaged through videos, educated by spending time on your law firm website, and filled out several forms, short and long, through your automated intake system.

Automated marketing solves the need for repeated messages. We don’t necessarily believe that a consumer will not respond to a marketing message until they hear it seven times, but we do know that successful marketing often requires repeated messages. Move your messages out automatically through social media platforms, including your blog, eNewsletters and website, and you increase the messaging automatically.

Client experience must be excellent. Here’s the sad truth. If new clients are busting down your door, but when they get to your office they are met with rude employees, documents that are not prepared correctly, or no one calls to confirm their appointments, they are not going to stick around. The result of poor client experience today will come out, through poor client reviews and outright rants on sites like Avvo and while you may be able to carry on for a little while, eventually your reputation will be tarnished.

Want to put that Ferrari in your driveway? Pair great marketing with a great client experience.

Did you Know? You’re Also a Legal Marketing Leader

Law firm owners who double as legal marketing leaders have enviable practices. They are forward-looking, keep their team focused and in a positive mind-set, and are skilled at anticipating issues before a crisis point. Legal marketing leaders also understand that these skills help their firm, their clients and often the community around them. Best part: even if you are not a born leader, these are skills that can be learned.

How does law firm marketing tie into leadership? If you are an attorney who has embraced the idea of thinking of your estate and Elder Law practice as a business that requires strategic planning, you are ahead of many of your peers. If you’ve implemented a full-on digital marketing program, from website with responsive design to an automated intake process, that’s leadership.

If you are not a born leader, not to worry. Leadership skills can be learned. Here are some other indicators of leadership in law firm marketing.

Embrace the new. The legal profession has never been a bastion of change, but that’s what success in today’s landscape requires.

Think in terms of transforming your firm. Go past the concept of your firm as one that prepares wills and estate plans. You are solving problems for families, untangling estate disasters, preventing families from fracturing.

Anticipating needs. To be a leader, you need to be able to see what your clients need, even before your clients do. You already know they need a will and an estate plan, but what else do they need?

Don’t be afraid to be wrong. Nothing dooms growth faster than a refusal to make mistakes. You don’t know what will work if you don’t try it.

Know your market. Dig into the data. Learn how to aggregate data to spot trends. For example, take a broad view of the last five years. How old were most of your clients five years ago? How old are they today? What were they asking for five years ago, versus today? Understanding your target market’s history will help you understand what is happening right now.

Here’s why you want to do this: a successful estate planning and Elder Law firm gets to decide which clients they want to work with. You can decide how to shape the future of your firm. And, best of all, when you’ve got more clients, you’ve got more profits and more choices.

Does Multi-Channel Digital Marketing Calibration Sound Like a Late Night Commercial?

Fragmented data, uncalibrated channels and humans who can’t see the forest for the trees are a few reasons why it is sometimes challenging to measure the success of your digital marketing. The challenge is assigning a value so that all of the tools can be measured accurately. An additional challenge: constant change in the marketplace and the tools themselves.

Does it matter? You bet it does. If one channel is generating all of your new client appointments, you need to know. You also need to know the difference between a channel that is really busy and one that is not as busy but leading to new clients. For example, if your Twitter account is blowing up the internet, that’s great, but you need to know if that is the channel driving new clients to your practice.

The continually changing consumer journey makes assigning a value to digital activity even harder. Did your latest round of new clients meet you at a senior center where you were speaking and sponsoring an event? Or maybe they found your website because they were looking for key search terms like “estate planning special needs Dayton, Ohio.” By the way—you should always ask your clients where they learned about the firm, even if you don’t expect them to remember or provide accurate information.

The beauty of digital marketing is that it can be measured, but it has to be calibrated also. Know the difference between 80 people visiting your website on any given day and 80 people following you on Twitter. Consider this: the 80 people following you on Twitter are getting repeat messages from you, which is great. But bear in mind that of those 80 people following you on Twitter, some maybe following a handful of estate and Elder Law attorneys, some may be following 400 different Twitter feeds in a variety of interests and others may have signed up once and never visited Twitter again.

Of the 80 people who visited your website, you’ll need to drill down into the data to find out how many of them devoted time to watching your videos, reading your attorney profile and filling out a Contact Us form that got them into your automated marketing system. Are they more valuable than the 80 Twitter followers? Those who stayed long enough to engage and convert definitely are.

The value of the E2 CRM is that you’ll have the information you need to understand how the different channels of your marketing are working, and how they are working together. With more data, you can make better strategic decisions.

Digital Marketing Trends for Estate Planning Law Firms

If you thought it was challenging to own an estate planning practice in an age of fierce competition from other law firms and the increasing popularity of online legal services, try walking a mile in our shoes. The pace of change in digital marketing is beyond exponential. IMS has made a commitment to staying on trend so that your practice can flourish but we need you to be an active participant.

Your clients are part of your digital marketing strategy. Reviews on lawyer websites like Avvo, or on Google or Yelp, whether you want them or not, are searched and read by anyone considering working with you and your practice. The reviews can’t be ignored. If you don’t already have a Google alert set up for yourself, your firm and—don’t leave this part out—every person who works at your law firm, set them up. Right now. And if something shows up that isn’t flattering, you’ll need to address it. Best practices for a bad review? Glowing reviews by raving fans.

More social media channels are coming and they will be even faster. Maybe you thought Snapchat was too fast, giving users a means of sending videos that disappear in a matter of seconds. In digital marketing time, Snapchat is ancient history. Soon, Instagram and Pinterest may feel too slow for members of Generation Z. What we know for sure: video remains one of the single most powerful ways to engage prospects, regardless of what channel it appears on.

Digital marketing today must work across different devices: Your website visitors are looking at your site from smart phones and tablets. There was a time when most of your visitors were on desktops, but for most estate planning law firms, that’s not the case anymore. Go into Google Analytics (GA), look under Audience, and then look at Technology to see what devices are being used by visitors. If your site is not mobile friendly and most of your visitors are using smart phones or tablets, you are losing ground.

Maybe you can’t go it alone. We know that you are busy practicing law and running a business. If you are not able to keep your eyes on the marketing part of your practice, talk to us about making more of your marketing automatic. That includes our E2 CRM and CLIP^sm. If you need more help, talk to us and we can help you make some strategic decisions to ensure that your marketing continues to move forward.

Digital marketing needs to coordinate with everything else you do. Look at your biggest competitor’s social media feed. We bet their Facebook posts include photos of speaking engagements, charitable activities, leadership roles in the community, published articles and maybe even quotes from consumer media. And if it’s not on their Facebook feed, take a look at their LinkedIn page. A robust social media campaign needs to be coordinated with all of your other marketing efforts. Content is still king, but take it to the next level and leverage your content with everything the firm does.

Fiscal Transparency: Could It Help Your Estate Planning Law Firm?

The traditional model of law firm economics is changing, fast. An abundance of estate planning law firms and lawyers, competition from online legal service providers and elevated service expectations by consumers are all putting pressure on law firm fees and performance. If your team is not aware of the changing environment, perhaps now is a good time to open your books and let them get a reality check.

Unheard of in the past, sharing financial information is almost a necessity today, especially in smaller firms, where there’s less of a cushion when associates or partners aren’t pulling their fiscal weight.

Financial transparency has become more common in other industries. Privately held technology companies, for instance, routinely hold quarterly meetings where employees are given key financial information, including the company’s sales, expenses, cash flow and profits. Data on performance metrics, including client satisfaction, is shared as well.

How can this work in a law firm, and more specifically, how can this work in your law firm? This is a big cultural shift and law firms are traditionally resistant to making big changes. But imagine a conference room filled with partners and associates who are learning, some for the first time, exactly what it costs to run the firm. Without sharing information about expenses, they may have no idea what kind of cash flow is required to keep the lights on.

Note that transparency needs to be handled with kindness. Don’t single out any underperforming partners or associates in front of their peers. That’s a private conversation.

The goal is for everyone at the firm to understand what it takes to keep their salaries paid and their desks and computers in place. If you already do this with partners, it may be productive to extend the practice to associates. Engaging your team on this level may feel risky, but can also be engaging and empowering.

You may also get some questions. Be prepared to answer them, and if you don’t know the answer, get back to the individual. And don’t let the question linger for too long.

Whether you share the numbers or not, strategic reviews of your law firm financials and plans for growth should be regularly scheduled with partners. To make 2017 your best year yet, schedule a strategic planning retreat with IMS this year. You’ll learn how to grow your practice, define your firm’s sustainable competitive advantage, and set out a clear course for success.

Law Firm Marketing Includes Developing Engaged, Happy Employees

If you want your estate planning law firm clients to be happy, start by making your employees happy. That means everyone, from the receptionist who answers the phone and welcomes clients to the paralegal who assembles client documents and even the person in the mailroom who sends out those documents. An engaged and happy employee is productive, cares about their work and feels a sense of purpose.

Consider this scenario: one of your paralegals is feeling unappreciated and underpaid. She goes to a family gathering, where there are any number of relatives who could potentially work with your practice to create or update their wills and estate plan. But instead of raving about how much she loves her job, she is telling her family members that she’s miserable because of the simple foolish mistakes made by a colleague. You just lost potential clients and anyone they might have referred to you and you’ll never even know it.

Every employee is an ambassador for your firm. They may not know this: it’s your job to tell them.

Public perception. How employees discuss the firm, their jobs, colleagues and supervisors outside of the office or within hearing range of clients can have a big impact on the firm. If they are out at a restaurant bad mouthing you or the practice, there’s no way to know who hears their comments. Regardless of the job they hold, they represent the firm to the outside world. It is a responsibility.

Social media. This can get tricky. Your millennial employees may be posting as themselves on social media platforms of all kinds, but they are representing the firm also if their posts can be searched by their name and seen by the public. We know of an employee who thinks he has divided his posts for work and personal life but he’s wrong—and the posts couldn’t be more different. This also needs to be addressed in a policy and procedures handbook.

Marketing materials. If you use brochures, folders, promotional products (pens, coffee mugs, etc.), they only work if they are given away. If your supply closet is jammed up with custom-printed memo pads that never make it out the door, that’s a waste of space and marketing dollars. If access is restricted to minimize people taking items for their own use, we understand that. But everyone should have a supply and it should be explained that they are for marketing purposes–to be handed out whenever possible to clients and prospects.

Employees know when they are valued, and it’s not all about salary. Employees who are encouraged to take classes or sign up for webinars know that you are interested in their professional growth. This fosters loyalty, boosts employee retention rates and makes them feel proud to be part of the practice. They are happy because their work ethic and attention to detail is being recognized and rewarded. They are also happy because they feel like they are an important part of the practice.

Closing the Loop on Your Law Firm Marketing Efforts

The Achilles’ heel of law firm marketing is follow-up. There’s always something else that’s more important, another estate planning document that needs to be prepared and another will that needs to be reviewed. This is often the reason that people think that marketing doesn’t work. It’s also the reason people think that networking doesn’t work. Nothing works if you don’t move through a process from beginning to middle to end.

Two major reasons people don’t do follow up:

1. They’ll think I’m desperate for clients.
2. They’ll say no.

There’s an old sales expression, “Some will, some won’t, so what?”

In other words, not everyone you follow up with will retain your estate planning law firm. But if your follow up is strategic and systematic, you can dramatically increase your chances of closing the loop with new clients.

Internet leads need a fast response. We can’t say this often enough. The person searching for an internet source is going to look at websites, send information, and make a decision based in large part on when you get back to them. A week later, you’re history.

Have a system in place to move them through your process. We designed CLIP^SM for just this reason. Once your prospect has filled out a few forms and received some feedback—automatically and based on parameters that you define—they become invested and engaged. Remember, engagement takes place on an emotional level. After a few forms, they have invested time and effort in your practice. They are less likely to start all over again with another firm when they are already comfortable with your process and the idea of your firm taking care of their estate planning needs.

Lack of follow-up makes prospects feel like they don’t matter, you don’t care about them, and what’s worse, your practice is not operating efficiently.

Knowing how many leads come into your firm, where they come from and how many ultimately become clients is the missing data for many law firms. Another reason behind the success of our E2 CRM is the ability to run reports that get this information to your team. Maybe you are getting a lot of leads, but they are not converting. Is it because there’s no follow up? Knowing where the weak points in your follow up will help you grow your practice.

What’s the Best Way to Handle a Law Firm Client Complaint?

As a practicing attorney, you know that there are some clients who simply will not be happy, no matter how well you and your office handle their matter. The best defense is to have a robust enough practice so that you can spot the permanently dissatisfied prospect and decline to take them on. But if you are not able to turn away a client, or when your “problem client” radar fails and things go south, there are steps to take to protect yourself and your practice:

Fact Finding and Client Communication. First step: contact the client and apologize. If they are ranting on the phone, let them rant. Do not correct them. Stay calm, no matter how incensed or even how wrong they may be. Assure them that you are gathering information on the issue and are addressing it. Explain that you will be in touch with them frequently as you go through a fact-finding mission. At this point you are sorry that something has happened and you are investigating.

Fact Finding. Was a mistake made? Is it fixable? If so, fix it as fast as possible. Then find out if this is the first time this mistake has been made, and if not, determine what process needs to be put into place or fixed so that this is the last time that the mistake is made.

Communication. Call the client, again, and let them know what progress has been made. Tell them, if it is appropriate, what steps are being taken to remedy their situation. The client does not need specifics about general office procedures they just want to know about their situation and how it is going to be fixed. Apologize again and let them know you are really listening. If they are still ranting, let them rant.

Problem Solved? We’re hoping this is a simple matter that can swiftly be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Those are the best kinds of problems. Once the problem is solved, immediately call the client and let them know.

Problem Can’t Be Solved or Can’t Be Solved Quickly? Find a solution. You may need to call in your resources, people who you respect, whose judgment and legal knowledge surpass yours. Continue to communicate with your client if any progress is being made. Worst case scenario: call your risk management agent and a malpractice attorney. The problem is not going away, and while you may be able to delay dealing with it, that’s not the right approach.

Notice we are not communicating by email or text. A mistake requires a human voice, in real time. You also don’t want a thread of emails in your office with the client or among your colleagues. Pick up the phone to call the client and speak with your colleagues face to face. This avoids further misunderstandings that can occur when tempers are running high.

This is personal. You are a professional, your associates and paralegals are too, but mistakes are personal. To the client, it’s a personal insult that their matter has not been cared for properly. To a team member, it’s an assault on their reputation. Recognize that there are emotions involved on both sides of this issue. Try to maintain your calm at all times, both with the client and your team.

What if there was no mistake and this is a misunderstanding or a difficult client who is looking for attention? Here’s where your skills will be tested. You’ll need to communicate very clearly with your client, step-by-step, in as calm a manner as possible, until they fully understand the issue. If you have done this once, do it again. If they are still behaving badly, then this is a case of a bad client.

Speak with an attorney who focuses on professional malpractice. This won’t be your favorite phone call of the year, but if the matter is one that could threaten your practice or your license, it is necessary. You would not take on a complex medical malpractice case or a divorce matter because that’s not your area of the law. The attorney will know what further steps you need to take to protect yourself.