Law firms have been skittish about using client satisfaction surveys since the days when surveys were done by phone on paper. That’s too bad, because client satisfaction surveys can yield important information about your practice, how clients feel about the attorneys and support staff in your office, and provide you with feedback that may indicate the need to make changes, big or small.
The problem: no one wants to hear bad news or complaints, so the usual response is, let’s not ask.
That kind of head-in-the-sand thinking could be deadly to your practice. There are so many alternatives for clients when it comes to choosing an estate planning and Elder Law firm. They can go to the next law firm that appears on their phone, or click on an online legal services company. You know the difference between having a will and estate plan created by an attorney, but your prospect may not. So you need to make sure that your client’s experience is the best it can be. And the only way to be certain is to ask.
How can you improve your client’s experiences with your firm, with the desired end game being a great survey result?
Focus on building relationships with clients at every point of contact. Every client who walks in the door, sends an email or makes a phone call presents an opportunity to ask them a few questions: “Have I answered all of your questions? Is there anything here that is not clear? Do you understand how x and y work together to achieve your goals?”
Make sure that you end every conversation or interaction by offering an opportunity to contact you any time in the future, by offering your email or phone number as a point of contact. Schedule a follow-up call, using the information stored in your E2-CRM to ask about specific people in their lives or events that you discussed during your last conversation.
Share your cell phone number and the option to send a text. Millennials will appreciate your availability and the fact that you are communicating in the same medium that they are. Most people understand the difference between being given an office phone number and a personal cell phone number. The average person will not abuse this information, and it has the added bonus of making the client feel that they have been admitted to your inner circle.
Don’t forget to ask your employees about their experience of dealing with your firm. The receptionist, paralegal and associate attorney who are in the day-to-day client work of the practice should have their ears attuned at all times to what clients are thinking. They should also be sharing that information with you on a regular basis, from compliments to complaints. If there is an issue, they should be noting it in the E2 CRM so that others in the firm will be aware of any problems. If employees are oblivious to client satisfaction, then you have some training to do.
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.
Competitive Intelligence, or CI, is not new to the legal profession, but its use as a strategic tool for small to mid-sized law firms is on the rise. Defined as the collection and analysis of actionable information about competitors to support strategic decisions, CI can be applied to estate planning law firms. You won’t need the services of James Bond, nor will you need a massive allocation of new resources. That’s because much of what your colleagues/competitors are doing is in plain sight.
Follow your competitor’s social media posts, including their blogs. Are they noticing trends that you are also seeing, but they are being more pro-active about promoting their knowledge? Do not copy their content; instead, consider how they are identifying trends or news items.
Every three months or so, visit the websites of the top estate planning attorneys in your area. Also, bookmark websites from estate planning attorneys who you know to be marketing leaders. Chances are their websites are being updated or are adding new features, like professional attorney videos. You don’t want your website to fall too far behind. If you see things that you like, talk with IMS (click here for a support ticket) to see if what they are doing has some application to your practice.
If your colleagues/competitors are appearing in local or national news media, consider why they are appearing in print/online and you are not. Are they writing articles for legal journals, feeding information to personal finance reporters or posting more frequently than you on estate planning topics? What are they doing that is raising their visibility that you are not doing?
Remember that CI includes more than just marketing. Other CI factors for an estate planning law firm include: identifying partnership opportunities with relevant not-for-profits, talent acquisition, legal technology, and development strategy.
Join your team at IMS on May 11, 2016 at Noon central (CDT) for a webinar designed exclusively for the Essential Attorney™ and staff*!
Are you reviewing your Essential Marketing Reports and website analytics each month? Do you find yourself scratching your head wondering what it all means … or if it's normal?
This month's webinar will help the Essential Attorney and staff understand what those reports mean. From Google Analytics, goal tracking, search engine ranking and email newsletter statistics, this is a chance to gain a better understanding of your monthly marketing report and find out how you can take advantage of social media reporting tools available through your Essential Solution services.
Join us for this free 20-minute webinar to learn more about the numbers and statistics applicable to your website and outbound digital marketing campaigns.
Meet Us in Kansas City for Legal Marketing Boot Camp!
Want Even More Insight About Growing Your Practice? Don’t miss our Spring Legal Marketing Boot Camp! You will come away with actionable information, learn how to convert 71% more leads from your website, and give your practice a big Kansas City-style boost! Register today – space is limited for this popular program!!
Do you remember the paperless office? First coined in the 1970s, the paperless office was the future, when all of our information would be in personal desktop computers. There would be no need for filing cabinets and every office would be neat and tidy.
We all know that offices in general - and law offices in particular - are never going completely paperless.
Many other parts of the “office of the future” are here, now, and available. Want to know the biggest difference between the automated office and a non-automated office?
The automated office has more time available to do the tasks that cannot be automated.
Consider the task of gathering the leads that come to your office through your website.
If you have a high performance website, your dedicated email in-box is loaded with information: email addresses, names, etc.
If you have an automated CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system in place, your CRM is loaded with actionable information. Lead information is automatically brought into the CRM, where staff can send out emails, make phone calls or send personalized letters that bring in appointments.
When someone calls the office to schedule an appointment, you already have information about them, accessible at a few keystrokes.
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Here’s why we encourage you to consider automating this process:
Maybe your office does run like clockwork. But when a key staff person leaves, does that system keep ticking away? Or does it need to be rewound?
Let’s face it - data entry is not exactly every staffer’s favorite task. If there are mistakes made when they are manually entering data into a computer, those errors have a bad habit of staying put. Documents with misspelling or basic errors make your office look unprofessional.
Or worse, no one in your office has TIME for data entry, and leads are not only not being entered, they aren’t being tracked.
Sound familiar? Give our office a call – we can make this happen for you!
In Part Three, we finally got Kyle’s approval on a beautiful, contemporary website design with perfect strategic fit for Kyle’s practice. The website is responsive, which means it will automatically re-size for the best viewing experience on any device, whether desktop, tablet or any size cell phone. Visitors have a clear path to conversion, as well as ample educational material for those who want to browse and read.
You might think we’re done and ready for the “And they lived happily ever after” part. A lot of agencies would be done right there. But Integrity Marketing is not like a lot of agencies. For us, the real work is just beginning. So far, we have only built a solid structure. Imagine the steel framework of a skyscraper: essential to the building, but you really cannot get much business done until the offices, staircases, ceilings and walls are built out, electricity turned on, plumbing installed, etc. As important as that framework is, it’s not enough. No one is going to start making money in that building until it’s finished and people start using it! Your website is exactly the same.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is what ensures your website can be found when consumers go looking for your services on Google or Bing. We optimize your website for what’s called “local search,” which simply means we want the search engines to deliver your website to people who are searching for your services in your locality. In other words, we don’t care if your site shows up for searches in New York if you practice in Kansas.
IMS owns a subsidiary company called Local Search Authority which focuses exclusively on market research in the booming local search industry. This research division gives us an SEO advantage: organic search optimization is not as easy as you might think. Google is constantly changing their algorithms, keeping us on our toes.
Additionally, it can be difficult to determine what is “local” for your firm. For example, Kyle’s law firm is located in Overland Park, a large suburb of Kansas City. Overland Park is pretty huge, and we definitely want his website to show up whenever someone searches for estate planning in Overland Park … but there are other important local markets within driving distance of his office, too. Leawood is an upscale area contiguous to Overland Park. Olathe is another nearby suburb, but not as wealthy as Leawood. And what do we do about Kansas City – a huge metropolitan area that spans across the state line between Kansas and Missouri? These are all questions to be researched, considered and finally tested with careful tracking and tweaked for performance.
Call Tracking and Google Analytics
Getting top performance from a digital marketing program requires sophisticated tracking and analytics. We want to know more than just the volume of traffic to your site and how often a new client says they found you on the internet. While these measures are important, they are rudimentary and often lead to faulty analysis and poor decision-making. Relying solely on traffic measures and self-reporting to manage your digital marketing would be like a commercial airline pilot trying to fly by dead-reckoning. Oh sure, lots of people did it “back in the day,” and some people are pretty good at it. But there’s a reason it’s called “dead” reckoning. Seriously, all of those gauges, dials and gadgets in the commercial cockpit are not just window dressing. They give essential, precise feedback that greatly reduces the chance of disaster and makes commercial flight one of the safest modes of transportation today.
Our Certified Google Analysts installed sophisticated coding on Kyle’s website that lets us track, not only how many people visit his website, but where they came from, which pages were most popular, at what point they left the site, and the most common path visitors follow through the site.
We also installed a call-tracking number, which is a line of script that displays a trackable phone number to website visitors. This number is not published anywhere else, can only be found on the website, forwards directly to Kyle’s office, and is recorded as a “conversion” in his analytics.
The Customer Journey
Further, and this is key, we map the Customer Journey: the path Kyle’s new clients take from online search, through his website, blog, and/or social media, and eventually to his office. We want to know how they are interacting with his entire program, define the key touch points, and enhance their experience and his marketing performance.
All of this information helps us continuously improve performance – not just of the website, but of the entire marketing program. This type of analysis is what creates the Rock Star performance Kyle gets from his online marketing.
Did I mention that Kyle’s digital marketing generates approximately 70 percent of his new business? And have I mentioned lately that research shows those professional firms who generate more of their new business online are more profitable and growing at a faster pace than those whose business comes from more traditional sources?
Now you really might think we’re done: we’ve got a beautiful, strategic website design that is optimized for local search and we’re all set to track our key performance indicators (KPIs).
But wait! There’s more to Kyle’s Secret Sauce. Stay tuned tomorrow.
As a digital marketing firm, we’ve seen our fair share of websites. Each client coming on board brings their own set of marketing goals, so each website we create is different. But, there are a few areas that we feel each attorney needs to have as a website staple. One of these is the Bio Page.
What Is a Bio Page?
The bio page of your website is all about YOU. Your bio needs to let your potential clients know your story: your education, how you became an attorney, your work experience, awards … you get the idea. If you are part of a larger firm, they’ll want to know more about the practice as a whole.
Why Do I Need a Bio?
Research shows that website bio pages are one of the top searched pages overall – sometimes only second to the homepage. In fact, The Legal Intelligencer says that “Various surveys and other research over the past three to five years indicate that more than 90 percent of general counsel believe that law firm websites play a key role in influencing purchasing decisions for legal services, and that lawyer bios are the single most important section of a firm's site. In fact, lawyer bio pages generate between half and three-quarters of all the traffic on firm websites.” Wow!
And it’s not only potential clients or firms that are looking to use your attorney services. Other colleagues looking to make a referral, associations, trade groups and even judges will often go to your bio page to review your credentials and experience.
What Should My Bio Say?
With a bio being one of the most important pages of a website, you sure do want a good one! Often, attorneys may not spend a lot of time crafting the perfect bio – so here are some ideas to spruce it up:
Show what type of law you focus on. Get to the key areas quickly and be specific!
Answer “what can you do for me?” Sure, awards and accolades are important to list … but your bio should be client-focused overall. Share how you can help solve your clients' issues.
Share your brand story. Your marketing should have a consistent brand message, and that also applies to your bio page. Everything from the writing tone down to the font and format of staff titles – make sure your brand message is clear.
Be aware of state rules. Each state has different ideas of what is or is not ok for legal advertising, and this goes for websites too. Make sure you are aware of what is allowed and what needs to be left off of the bio page.
Make updates. As your practice changes and your experience grows, you need to reflect these updates in your bio. If you haven’t changed your bio in a few years, it’s probably time to review and edit.
Show some personality. When people think of a “professional bio” they may assume it should sound like a resume. But you don’t want to come off as stuffy or boring – you work with people, and they want to feel comfortable with you. Let them in on some of your personal interests and community involvement. Attorney bios should not be “cookie cutter”, they should be unique for each attorney.
Haven’t updated your bio page recently? If it’s time for a review, send your edits directly to the IMS Team via our Online Support Ticket.
Usually when I think about “sticky”, my heart rate goes up a little bit and I start to panic, thinking about gooey messes, fingers stuck together, and other unpleasant images. But for your estate planning or elder law website, sticky can actually be a good thing! “Sticky” menus or navigation bars “stick” to the top of the browser window as you scroll down the page. This way, the navigation is always easily in sight and accessible instead of having to scroll back to the top of the page to navigate to a different section of the website.
One blogger did a study to research users’ opinions on the usability of websites with and without sticky menu bars. His results were pretty conclusive.
He found that websites with sticky menus are 22% quicker to navigate. While that may not be a huge percentage, it still makes a big difference in the user experience of a website. It might seem detrimental to be shaving seconds off of a web page view, but, in fact, if users can’t find what they are looking for quickly they will leave even faster. An easy-to-use navigation will lengthen the time spent on the site and improve the user experience overall.
The second thing the study found was that 100% of users preferred sticky menus because the websites that used them were easier or faster to use, even when they didn’t know that it was the sticky navigation that made it so. Users want to be able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily with only a few clicks.
With results so strongly in favor of sticky menus, it’s a good idea to consider whether or not making your navigation sticky would be a good solution for your marketing. Want to chat about it? Give Integrity Marketing Solutions a call today!
When The Wall Street Journal quotes Rocket Lawyer on an issue concerning wills, every estate planning attorney in the country should take notice … and then immediately check their marketing plan, social media presence and appointment schedule.
Make no mistake about it – Rocket Lawyer, Legal Zoom, Nolo and other online legal sources are having an impact on how your clients think about purchasing legal services. If you think that your skill set alone will be enough to protect your practice from the inroads being made by these online legal behemoths, think again.
913,000 people used Rocket Lawyer in 2012 to draft a will. If you are not concerned, you’re not getting it.
We know that a will created with an online legal platform is not the same as one created by an attorney who has met personally with a client and who understands the nuances of families, the complexity of tax laws and the reality of what happens when wills are executed.
But 913,000 people – and that’s not even including those who use Legal Zoom or Nolo – don’t seem to mind.
You cannot afford to dismiss these competitors. Instead, examine them carefully and learn from their successes. In other words, what do these online services have that you don’t?
They remove several key obstacles that prevent many people from getting their wills done.
They are convenient. You don’t have to leave your home to draft a first will, and you can access documents on a computer, tablet or phone.
They are private. They completely eliminate the need to disclose to a stranger very personal information, from the value of your estate to how you really feel about your children or their spouses.
They are cheap. In fact, the home page of Legal Rocket says “Your first document is free.” And they will put you in touch with a local attorney if you have questions.
So first Rocket Lawyer is going to grab your potential clients – and then it’s going to send them back to you - probably for a discounted rate.
Get the picture now?
I’m not saying “All is lost,” or crying doom and gloom. On the contrary, the robust popularity of these online services proves the strength and resiliency of your market. It also proves that a huge portion of your market searches for legal services online.
Maybe I should write that again: A huge portion of your market searches for legal services online.
Your future clients will either find you online … or they will go somewhere else.
If you do not have a well-orchestrated digital marketing strategy in place, you are losing business. Now. Right now. This very second.
Bonus points for those of you who are paying attention to the critical data, too. Measuring and tracking marketing campaigns is more critical than ever before. If you don’t know which blog posts are driving traffic to your site and phone calls to your receptionist, you are losing opportunities to competing law firms. Marketing data used to be available only to massive corporations with equally massive marketing intelligence software. Today, we have access to the same level of data – and so do you.
Questions? Concerns? Just call us – 877-352-2021 and ask for James. We are digital marketing experts focused exclusively on estate planning and elder lawyers. We can help you get in the game – and win it!
With the rapid progression and advancement of technology, it can sometimes seem like our marketing efforts are becoming less personal. But even though we have come to expect more out of our hand-held devices, we still want to feel like we are communicating with real humans. How do we bridge the gap between technology and the comfort of human interaction?
One great way to make your marketing messages more personal is to sign it! While you can’t actually grab your favorite pen and sign each email you send out, there are a few ways that you can emulate the same idea: use a font or use an image.
Use a Font
There are lots of handwriting-like fonts available these days. If you are typing a document and then printing it or sending it as a PDF, using a handwriting-type font is a good solution. Just type your name at the end of the document (like you would if you were actually signing it), and change the font to one of the many handwriting fonts available. If those available on your operating system aren’t appealing to you, try searching through the free fonts available through Font Squirrel and installing one of those.
Use an Image
For applications where you can’t pick the font, like email, using an image is a better solution. To get an image of your signature:
Grab white paper (not lined or colored at all – stick with plain computer paper to be safe) and a pen. A thicker pen like a permanent marker or ball-point pen will work best.
Write your name on the paper, leaving a border of blank paper around it. The bigger you write it, the better. You can always make an image smaller, but you can’t make it bigger, so it’s best to start out larger than you think you’ll need.
Use either your smartphone or a scanner to digitize your signature. If taking a photo with your smartphone, hold the camera as perpendicular to the paper with your signature as possible. And try to keep the lighting bright so that the paper shows up as white (not yellowed by dim lighting). Email the photo to yourself so you have a copy on your computer.
Open up the image in your favorite photo editor. No need for fancy software, just the program that comes pre-installed on your machine is fine. Crop the photo so that your signature is centered.
Save the image and insert it where needed!
A Word of Caution
While adding your signature is a great personal touch, identity theft is a real and ever-present threat. Especially as an attorney, you want to exercise caution. Instead of using your full, “official” signature, use just your first name or use a hand-printed version of your name, instead of the loopy, cursive signature you use to sign checks or official documents. Besides, if your signature is anything like mine, your “real” signature is illegible! No point in signing your message if your readers can’t read the name of the sender!