Integrity Marketing

Winter Repose: The Quiet Where Dreams Grow

The quiet of winter blanketed the Ranch this morning. I love this time of year, it may be my favorite. The holiday hustle is almost over, there's a new year on the horizon -- full of promise and possibility. 

But for the moment, in this moment, there is a quiet. 

This is the winter repose, the quiet where dreams grow, silently undisturbed, to fruition in the spring.

So it's perfectly fitting to focus this week on what's coming up here at IMS in 2018, because our biggest dreams are to help make yours come true!

On the Homefront: Completing the Relocation

As many of you know, we started our Colorado relocation in August this year, with the purchase of Legacy Ranch. Right now, we are still headquartered in Olathe, KS and managing a major transition. The Olathe office lease expires in June 2018, when we will open our new Colorado Springs office! The move opens up new avenues for growth and opportunities that simply were not available in Kansas. Of course, Legacy Ranch is the first, but there is so much more.

Colorado Christian University

We have started a formal relationship with the marketing department at Colorado Christian University (CCU). Our first project starts January 15th with an independent-study for-credit internship. We will be working with one of CCU's brightest young stars, Amy Edison. Her studies with us will focus on digital marketing research and service delivery. We also are collaborating on an upcoming book release on personal branding. 

Legacy Ranch 

Of course, we continue to offer Strategic Planning Firm Retreats at Legacy Ranch (our first one of the new year kicks off January 3rd!) But there's more to the Ranch that strategy! We're teaming up with leadership experts from across the country to offer law firm leadership and coaching programs. One of my favorite new programs focuses on Women Leading in Law. Our guest trainer for this program shares a true passion for helping women navigate the challenges of leadership positions in business and law firms. 

We also will be hosting a series of immersive training retreats on hot topics like work flow automation, client intake, and CRM for marketing.

Digital Presence Management 

Digital marketing is in a constant state of change. There definitely is never a dull moment when it comes to helping our clients succeed online! Each year, Google changes its search algorithm 500 to 600 times! Staying on top of all these changes, and implementing across client accounts, is an incredible challenge.

One thing to know about SEO in 2018:

Google announced last year that it makes decisions about which businesses to show up on page one of the search engine results based on what other people are saying about them.

Google said the 3 most important factors to local rank are:

1. Relevance of the website to the search query, 
2. Distance of the business address from the searcher, and
3. Prominence, in this case defined as a business's reputation -- which includes review count and rating.

So what Google is saying is that it’s literally ranking your business in local search based on how many reviews you have, and how good those reviews are. If you don’t manage your reviews, you’re risking whether your business will even show up in search.

In 2018, you will see IMS offer world-class tools to manage every aspect of your digital presence -- including client reviews and directory listings (like Avvo), brought together on one easy-to-use platform, fully integrated with your Essential Solution marketing -- with all of your essential marketing tools and none of the confusing bells-and-whistles you never use and don't want to pay for! 

Hot Topic Marketing Drip Campaigns

We have collaborated with another industry leader to develop hot topic content-based drip marketing campaigns, fully integrated with your Essential Solution marketing platform and easily managed through your E2 CRM. Pick-and-choose both your content campaigns and your level of management or support for implementation, from a do-it-yourself guided setup to a completely "done for you" solution.

The Summit 2018!

Save the date! Plan now to join us for The Summit 2018, Sept. 19-20 here in beautiful Colorado Springs!

We have a few other surprises, but I really don't want to spoil the quiet. Stay tuned to learn more. But now, I'm off to feed horses and celebrate my birthday! All the best to you and yours this holiday season and in the New Year!

 

Beyond Google Rank: Is Your Website Working?

Google Rank is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to evaluating website performance.

One of the most challenging aspects of my job is helping clients make good decisions about their websites. The typical challenging conversation starts something like this:

I had a friend who knows a lot about SEO take a look at my site and they said you guys have got it all messed up! I want you to give them access to the back end so they can fix it for me!

If our conversation starts like this, just know that I have put my phone on temporary mute, banged my head against the desk, rolled my eyes and heaved an exasperated sigh. I want to hang up, but I won’t. I’ll un-mute my phone and ask, in the most pleasant voice I can muster:

What makes you think your SEO is “messed up?”

The story usually starts at a cocktail party where some self-proclaimed expert who once built a website on WordPress was trying to show off. Unfortunately, the details of the criticism have been lost in translation. And no, I am not going to give this total stranger, who lacks any sort of credentials or qualifications, access to destroy all of the hard work we have put in to get your website ranking well on Google search.

Let’s Not Jump the Shark Here

If you’re having questions about how well your website is performing, or whether it needs a facelift, a refresh, or an SEO upgrade, please just give us a call. After all, we are the experts you are actually paying every month to do this work for you.

Before you call, or even during your call, take a look at the FACTS about your website. In this digital age, we no longer have to rely on gut feelings, intuition or even the personal opinion of our friends at cocktail parties. We have these wonderful things called ANALYTICS that tell us a very truthful, accurate and informative story about how well your website is performing.

You Don’t Have to Be Certified in Google Analytics

Your personal account manager here at Integrity Marketing is already certified, so you don’t have to be. But honestly, it does not take a certified analyst to understand the most important metrics about your website. In fact, you can learn a lot from a single, monthly email.

Your E2 CRM and The One Minute Manager

Every month your E2 CRM automatically delivers a performance report directly to your inbox. You don’t even have to log in (or remember passwords, etc.) to read it. And you sure don’t have to get certified in Google Analytics!The email gives you an at-a-glance summary of your website, blog, email marketing and automation activity for the current day, the past week and the past month.

Here are the sections you’ll want to quickly review:

Number of Contacts in Your Marketing Database

Does this number look “right” to you? It should include all of your clients as well as your leads, prospects, and referral sources to whom you market, including everyone who subscribes to your e-newsletter and blog digest.

This number should steadily increase month-over-month. Keep track of it. If it’s not growing, this means you are not adding any new clients or subscribers to your database. It should grow.

Warning Flags. Call Your Account Manager Immediately if:  

• This is a very small number, say only 10 or 15. There may be something seriously wrong with your database.
• This is an extraordinarily large number, something you don’t recognize as legitimate. You may be the victim of a hacker or a SPAM attack.

Website Page Views

While this number is not the same as website visits, it’s an important number to know. Not only would you like to know how many website pages were viewed, but this report will tell you which pages get the most views. This shows you which sections of your website and blog are most popular and the typical customer path through your site.

You’ll also know if your website is averaging 50, 100 or more page views per day. This is a good gauge of how well your website is performing in terms of traffic and engagement.

Conversions and Website Signup Forms Submitted

Here is where the rubber meets the road. How many people submitted website forms (requesting a consultation, a personal contact, a download offer, etc.) or completed one of the other conversion goals established for your website? If you’re getting a steady number of website conversions, then you should be seeing the results in your appointment book. (Remember that this particular summary does not include phone calls generated directly from your website, these conversions are tracked separately.)

If You Have Workflow Automation Set Up

This email also summarizes your automation activity – showing how many times each of your workflows were activated. This gives you an idea of how well your marketing activities are integrated into your practice, how well you follow up on web leads, and the true impact of your online marketing.

Email Marketing Performance

These are your at-a-glance performance statistics for all your email marketing efforts. You’ll see how many emails were sent, how many were read, the click-through rate, exactly what links were clicked on, and how many times.

Who’s Working for You?

The email is also a very nice management tool. It shows which of your staff members logged into your CRM, when, and how often. You can see if all scheduled workflows were successfully completed … or not. Sometimes the primary reason a CRM is not working is … well … no one is using it! You’ll want to know if your staff are making an honest effort to make this work, or just hoping you will forget about it.

But What About Google Rank?

I knew you were going to go there. Google Rank – or how Google ranks your website on the results pages for various searches – is a moving target. Search results are increasingly personalized and influenced by your own online activity. In other words, if you search for yourself on Google, your results will be very different than mine, or your cocktail-party friend’s.

And here’s another hint: Results depend on the search.

That’s right. If your friend searches for estate attorney in upper New York State, and you search for estate attorney in Buffalo NY … you are likely to get somewhat different search results.

And finally: Results depend on location.

If you search for estate attorney from your office in Buffalo, and I search for estate attorney from my office in Colorado Springs we will get very different results, even though we’re both using the same search terms.

So … we send you a monthly average web ranking report, generated by a third-party (not us) that specializes in aggregating your search results on Google and giving you a general idea of how the search engines display your website. We pay for this service on your behalf to ensure you get the most accurate, objective reporting available.

There’s More to That Iceberg than You Can See on Google

Above all, remember this: Your goal is to grow your practice.

Our goal is build a digital marketing engine to do that.

Getting SEO right is one of our specialties – we have a staff full of folks who are certified specialists working hard every day to get your website front-and-center for the searches that matter most to your practice.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We also work hard to make sure people click-through on your listings and actually visit your website … and to keep them engaged when they arrive. We build the path to conversion with nurturing points all along the way – from your social media to your blog and content marketing to email marketing and even automation to ensure your firm has the best possible chance of converting website visitors into delighted new clients.

So the next time one of your friends gives advice about your website, please – thank them nicely, refresh their drink, and give us a call the next day. We actually would love to hear what they had to say. Sometimes friends give great advice and you never know who will have the next great idea! (And if they are really good, let them know we're always open to hiring great minds!)

Sales Funnels and Website Silos: Are They Working for Your Law Firm?

Having a family member or friend who is not known to your firm make a phone call or contact the firm through the website is one way to figure out how well—or poorly—your firm’s sales funnel works. But unless your family member or friend is an experienced law firm marketing professional, it may be hard for them to identify what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s really not working.

A more productive, albeit challenging, method, is to do this yourself. It takes some imagination, but the potential is worth it. Put yourself into your target client’s mind-set. If you can, either call into the office or listen in on a call when someone else calls in. How difficult is it to get an appointment, and how helpful and welcoming is your receptionist?

Next, put yourself in your target client’s mind when you visit your own website.

Is it easy to navigate? Does it contain information that is relevant to your target market’s needs? Does it look up to date? Your blog posts should be current, and if you have news about speaking or hosting events, that’s even better. Does the website feature the ability to be seen with larger typeface for vision-challenged individuals? And does it work just as well on a smart phone as on a desk top?

 Does your website use silos? A silo is an image, usually a photo, with a phrase or a question that directs the user to a specific page. For instance, a website home page may have three or four silos featuring topics like “Why Everyone Needs a Will,” “Can a Trust Help” or “Who is the best executor for my estate plan?"

The use of silos serves several purposes.

• They are good for search engine optimization (SEO), as algorithms seek common language questions.
• Silos give your users information they need, reassurance that the problem they face is not so unique, and the sense that you already understand their problem.
• Finally, silos feed right into your E2-CRM. If a visitor contacts you from that page, you'll know that it is a significant issue for them that you can move to address early in the process, rather than finding out about it in the middle or at the very end of the estate planning process.

Another great thing about silos is that you are helping your clients even before they become clients. And the early identification of the client issue overcomes the obstacle of the unknown—they may not know you personally, but somehow, you already knew exactly what they needed.

Law Firm Digital Marketing Do-It-Yourself: Not Always a Great Notion

So you’ve mastered LinkedIn and you’re on Facebook every morning, checking in before you start your work day. You’re thinking, hey I can do my own digital marketing. Yes, you can, but should you? There are pros and cons to DIY digital marketing for the estate planning and Elder Law attorney, and before you travel down this path, let’s consider how wise it is for you and your practice.

No one understands my practice like me. That’s true—to some extent. No one sits at your side of the desk and sees the work flow, cash flow and employee performance, for better or worse, than you do. But your practice is not unlike many other estate planning law firms. IMS account executives work with estate planning law firms across the country, and have done so for many years. We know the challenges that this practice area faces, whether your office is three people or thirty or sixty. We may even have insights about problems that you haven’t even faced yet, based on the stage of your practice.

No one understands my clients and prospects like me. We beg to differ there. This is what IMS does, every day, all day long: help estate planning attorneys like you reach clients and prospects to bring them past the obstacles of time, money and fear and into your office to tackle their estate planning. We have spent decades on this, and we bring a mastery of digital marketing to your practice. So, that’s not a reason to do digital yourself.

I kind of understand the whole SEO thing. Here’s where non-digital marketing professionals get themselves into trouble, sometimes serious trouble. We’ve seen programmers who understand what to put in source code and decide they are ready to become SEO experts—before getting black-hatted out of the game completely, along with their short term clients. We say short term because once you’ve been banned by Google for black hat SEO, you don’t go back for more! SEO has become an extremely technical and complex area of digital marketing. It’s not for do-it-yourselfers. Not if you want to stay on the right path and achieve real results.

Practicing law and profitability. This one is so obvious but we’ve seen enough instances of it being ignored so we have to mention it. Your time is better spent practicing law and taking outstanding care of your clients than dabbling in digital marketing. IMS clients are a smart group of entrepreneurial attorneys. They understand the value and importance of marketing, which is why they work with us. However, they are also really good attorneys who understand that practicing law is their bread and butter.

We’re always up for a conversation. If you’ve got questions or suggestions about digital marketing, we’d love to hear from you. Call James at 877-352-2021 ext. 80 or submit a support ticket. We’re all ears!

How Does Spam Hurt Your Law Firm Website? Let us Count the Ways

Spam can wreak havoc with your law firm, in more ways than you might think. The junk cluttering your email inbox, the time wasted when your IT department has to fix a damage done by spam, the investment in technology necessary to continue to combat spam; that’s just for starters. Think about this: spam poses a real threat to your website’s Google analytics.

And what if spam is not seen as spam by Google, but as black hat SEO?

Fake traffic skews analytics. It can happen pretty quickly, and you may not realize it at first. Your website traffic is growing steady and then, traffic takes off like a rocket. You think, wow, that article I published in the bar journal must have really gotten a lot of interest. But the calls to your office don’t align with the jump in analytics. A closer look reveals that all of the traffic is coming from one website, and it’s not a website you know. It’s spam.

Referral spam is profitable for hackers. Spammers target large numbers of websites to find vulnerable sites. They spam your site to show that their URL is sending many referrals, with the goal of building their own website’s traffic. Often they are paid based on the number of links or referrals they generate.

Spam can overload your computer system and compromise security. It’s hard to imagine that hackers would want to launch a DoS (Denial of Service) attack on a lone law firm, but that’s why so many security systems are in place. A DoS attack makes your website unusable and crushes your firewalls. The goal is to exhaust technical resources. The result is legitimate users can’t get to your site.

Smart hackers lead to smarter systems professionals. At IMS, we are always on the lookout for improved solutions, and that includes website protection. Today there is a new class of captchas—those small boxes at the bottom of forms that require you to type in randomly generated codes are no longer state of the art. We’re not sharing what it is we are using, but with systems that automatically detect spam bots on forms, we prevent spammers from getting near our client’s forms.

At IMS, we build websites to shield our clients from the impact of spam. With the help of trained end users—you and your team—your data and your systems are in good hands! If you have any concerns about spam and your estate planning and Elder Law website, submit a support ticket.

Why IMS Law Firm Websites Use Proprietary Software

You’ve seen the ads for do-it-yourself websites everywhere, from online to broadcast television commercials. Promoted as a great solution for small scale enterprises, including law firms, there’s just one piece of information missing: some of these sites, especially the more popular ones, are frequent targets for hackers. That’s why IMS law firm websites are built using proprietary software programs with a level of security you don’t get with mainstream do-it-yourself websites.

Need a visual? Compare the estate planning documents created by an online website to the estate plan that you create for clients. You know which one you would rather have.

Who wants to hack a system no one uses? Way back when, when Apple computers were not as popular as they are today, word was that Apple computers never got viruses. There simply weren’t enough of them to be of interest to hackers. The same goes for websites that are built using highly popular systems. The more popular the system, the more attractive the websites are to hackers.

Software vulnerabilities Certain website platforms require maintenance on a regular basis to prevent hackers from gaining access. Left unprotected, they are easy targets. Some of these sites use plugins, a piece of software used to add certain functions to the website. These are created by third-party programmers, and not all are created equally. You may chose one that looks great and two weeks later, find your site has been hacked.

Why does someone want to infiltrate your website? To gain access to databases of information stored within your server. Worst case—your website is used to download viruses, malware and ransomware onto your client’s and colleague’s computer systems.

Mega-breaches happen. We don’t want them to happen to our clients. When hackers gain access to massive numbers of websites, like the infamous data breach reported in October 2016 (43 million accounts from one do-it-yourself website company hacked), the entire tech world shudders.

We’re strict about adding content but it’s for client protection. There are a lot of moving parts in IMS websites, including website optimization and SEO. To keep our website performance on track and stay as safe as possible, we do require that you contact us to upload new content or making edits to your website. It protects the website from any malicious code that might be lurking on your system or hitching a ride on files.

Unexpected Elements in Law Firm Website Designs

Your team at IMS hopes that the first time you see your new estate planning and Elder Law firm website, you’ll be delighted. You may notice the absence of some features that you see on other websites—sliders, popups and autoplay—and wonder why they’re not on your IMS website. We don’t use them, for a number of reasons.

Popups: the little boxes that open up while visitors are on a website. We find them a bit annoying when we are on websites, and the last thing you want to do is annoy your visitors. Popups are used to gather email addresses, in exchange for a coupon or discount or a white paper. Your website is designed to serve as a means of engaging visitors with useful information, not merely gather email addresses. We pass on popups!

Sliders eat page loading time, which can harm performance and SEO rankings. Sliders do look cool, and on some websites they are a necessary feature, but for our purposes, the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. They take a while to load, and those few additional seconds may send your visitors off to another estate planning law firm website. Some sliders move in ways that are challenging for older eyes, and others, where the sliders move one way and the backgrounds move another, can create a real visual hardship. Our goal is to create a positive experience for your visitors and keep the Google bots happy. 

Autoplay is exactly that: a video that begins playing when the user opens your website. Is this not the most annoying thing in the web world? We think so. For users who keep their monitor volume on all the time, a video that opens automatically and starts playing loudly is a massive distraction. If you are looking at your phone in the office, do you want your colleagues to hear a message about estate planning?

Just because a website can do something does not mean it works. Every year brings more features and functionality to websites, all of which are carefully evaluated for our clients. Remember that we base our decisions on what to use and what not to use on hard data, not what’s cool or trending. That supports our ultimate goal: building websites that grows estate planning and Elder Law practices.

Law Firm Digital Marketing 101: Law Firm Directories

The first thing you need to know about law firm directories is to be careful. There are many law firm directories, some legitimate, others not so much. You don’t want to find your firm bounced off of Google because of a law firm directory. Next, you probably want to know what a law firm directory is, and why do you need to be listed?

A law firm directory is an aggregator of law firm listings that in some cases occurs almost naturally, like Avvo, Super Lawyers or Martindale, by the simple virtue of being a list of attorneys and law firms. Others are curated lists of lawyers, where attorneys are selected, and still others are automatically populated from other directories.

High quality law firm directories are far more than simply lists of attorneys. They are information-driven websites, rich with content, loaded with articles and high quality links to bar associations and legal publications.

In some markets, an online search for an attorney will result in a large number of paid ads from directories, followed by a number of organic results, also from directories, with individual law firms and attorneys coming in behind the directories.

Law firm directories have become a big business.

What should your estate planning and Elder Law firm do about law firm directories?

You and your firm are likely already present on some of them. Just make sure that all of your NAPS—name, address, phone number—are consistent on each site. How to find out where you are? Google yourself.

Paid listings are not a bad thing. Yes, free is always easier, but certain directories are paid only. That does not guarantee that you’ll get an amazing flurry of traffic, but should keep you away from the link farms and low quality directories that can harm your quality scores and could put your site at risk for black hat SEO. Remember, cheaper is not always better.

Not sure about a directory? Submit a support ticket and we’ll be happy to help. Remember that IMS does far more for our clients than build lawyer websites. We serve as strategic advisors to our clients, helping them navigate digital marketing, firm development and profitability.

What Does a Healthy Law Firm Social Media Campaign Look Like?

A strong social media campaign for an estate planning and Elder Law practice looks very different than one for an online bookseller. But some elements should be the same. Social media, including blogs, Facebook pages, LinkedIn conversations, Tweets (on Twitter) and videos need to be current. They also need to be geared to your visitors, who should represent your ideal client. Still not dipping your toes into the social media pool? Maybe these tips will help:

Use what you’ve already got. If your firm has published articles in consumer media or been quoted by media, use that for social media content. A quote in a newspaper becomes a springboard to a blog post.

Have you published a few articles? Congratulations, you’ve got a library! One firm went through their archives, digital and otherwise, and came up with more than twenty bylined articles on various topics. All of those articles equals one great big content bonus. Social posts on each of the articles can be used to link to the articles. Your email newsletter can introduce the topics and link to the articles also.

Original thinkers add original content. Google will penalize a website for duplicate content, but users will penalize social media sites for showing the same-old story. Most of the estate planning attorneys that we know are also skilled writers and, probably because of the type of law they practice, keen observers of the human condition. They are able to take a news story or a deadline or a seasonal holiday and tweak it so that the story becomes personal for their targeted client and/or their target market.

Be responsive—that’s what social means! If someone posts about a problem they are having, do respond on the page, but not with a direct answer to their problem. You’re not practicing law online. Instead, acknowledge their issue, and ask them to send you a private message (if you are on Facebook) or invite them to call the office to speak with you. If you get a compliment, don’t forget to say thank you.

Have a strategic plan. You would never “wing it” in court. Don’t wing it and expect to win big in social media. Create a plan, six months or a year in advance. It’s easier to write a blog post when the topics are set in a calendar, and if news events demand a pivot, you can always push the calendar back.

Danger Ahead: Black Hat SEO a BIG No-Go for Law Firm Marketing

Clients often ask about competitors who rank higher than them on Google, and then suddenly disappear from search results completely. Why does that happen? Often it is the direct result of law firms that work with companies using black hat SEO. These strategies don’t follow the best practices guidelines of search engines and don’t focus at all on the user experience. They exist solely to ratchet the law firm’s presence up in the rankings. The risk is being knocked off of search indexes completely. That’s why many firms using black hat SEO appear and then—woosh!—they disappear.

Using black hat techniques can get your firm banned from search engines, which undoes all of the good work that you have done in building credibility, authority and a strong user experience for your estate planning and Elder Law firm. It’s a big risk, and not one worth taking. At IMS, we focus our website development, search and social marketing on best practices. We are in it for the long-haul, helping your law firm build and maintain strong rankings because by doing all the right things.

Black hat methods are also used in paid search (AdWords) campaigns, known as black hat ppc.

Remember that Google changes its algorithms almost daily, and the algorithms measure the human experience of your website. How relevant and useful is your content, how are videos used on the website to educate and inform visitors? These are just two of the elements that make a strong website.

But if you add a single page that is stuffed with keywords that have nothing to do with your law practice and everything to do with getting people to find your site, that’s black hat SEO.

If you engage with a company that conducts a link farm operation, where multiple websites connect with each other for the sole purpose of building the number inbound links, that’s also black hat SEO.

A legitimate relationship, like having an article that you wrote appear on a consumer finance website that links back to your law firm site, is not a link farm. Google will know the difference.

Black hat doesn’t just include tactics you or a vendor might use for your website. It also refers to techniques used by others against your website. Those include someone hacking your website, building a negative SEO campaign with spammy links, or creating pages or even entire domains using your content.

If you are concerned about the health and well being of your website, submit a support ticket and let’s talk. If you receive an email or a phone call promising top rankings, fast, be careful not to put your website or your firm at risk.