5 Proven Ways to Renew, Restore and Revive Your Practice in Today's Economy-3 of 5

Probably one of the biggest reasons why legal marketing efforts fall flat is the lack of a powerful follow-up system. 

Every success depends on following through.  The Indy 500 is this weekend, and I can tell you right now who is going to win.  It’s the driver who not only starts, but who also finishes.  You can’t win if you don’t cross the white line (or the brick line, in this analogy).

I realize that following up with prospects is probably the most difficult part of the entire marketing process for attorneys. Because let’s face it, you’re busy.

If you’re like most people, you go to a networking event and probably meet anywhere from 10, 20, maybe even 30 people.  You take their business cards, you have some interesting conversation, and then you don’t do a darn thing.

But to cross the finish line, this is where you’ve got to be different. You’ve got to think differently in terms of your marketing and, significantly, you have to act differently.  And one of the best ways that you can set yourself apart is to commit to having a follow-up system.

It’s simple.  You or your assistant can create an Excel spreadsheet. In the first column put the event name. Add the individual’s name who you meet, their email address, their telephone number, why you should follow up, and when you should follow up. Have a different column for each one. Every single time you go to a networking, the following morning -- before you even read your email -- go to that spreadsheet and fill it out.

Here’s a quick tip I use:  after I get someone’s business card, I scribble a quick note on the back – something like “hot prospect” or “referral source” so I remember and do the appropriate follow-up.  My assistant then takes those cards, enters them into a spreadsheet, and I review it for follow-up.

Who do I need to call? Who do I need to email? And if they’re actually a prospect, if they’re a qualified prospect, I send them a card or a personal note and make sure I keep in touch.

Whatever kind of follow-up system that will help you cross that finish line, you need to implement it.   It’s got to be easy to create, easy to follow, easy to implement or you just won’t do it.

But once you do, I promise you’ll see how following up makes a huge difference and a huge impact.

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Get in the Driver's Seat at a Rainmaker Retreat

If you are interested in building a lifestyle law practice through effective law firm marketing, then come to one of our upcoming Rainmaker Retreats:

  • June 18-19, 2010      San Francisco, CA
  • July 30-31, 2010       Los Angeles, CA
  • August 6-7, 2010      Las Vegas, NV
  • October 8-9, 2010    New Brunswick, NJ

Want to learn more about what you’ll learn at a Rainmaker Retreat?  Then sign up now for a one-hour complimentary teleseminar for a preview of the valuable material that is taught at our 2-day Rainmaker Retreat.
 

5 Proven Ways to Renew, Restore and Revive Your Practice in Today's Economy-2 of 5

Using the power of the media to gain visibility in your local marketplace is huge to your success.

Now, I’ve had some clients say, “You know, Stephen, I talked to those journalists and you know what? They took up my time, they wasted it, and I didn’t get anything out of the results.” Well, I would say a couple of things. Number one, you win some, you lose some. It doesn’t always happen. And secondly, it’s not getting in the media that gets you the clients. It’s how you use the media that you get, that lands you the clients.

Using the media helps you differentiate yourself, particularly if you’re, say, a litigation firm and you do general business litigation.  It’s pretty hard to target and solicit new clients, so in order to get your firm to be at the top of their minds, you’ve got to be visible.

It adds a huge amount of credibility when you are in the media because it’s one thing for you to say “I’m a great attorney. I can handle your case. I know what I’m doing.” It’s another thing entirely to have that third party endorsement.  And depending on where you practice, if your State Bar says you can’t use any testimonials for marketing, then you are able to have that third party endorsement.  Take that article and post a link on your site, get permission to reprint and send to your clients or hand out at speaking engagements, and put it in your press kit.

There are two different resources I want to point you to:  PR Leads and Help a Reporter Out (HARO). PR Leads, www.PRleads.com, is a paid newsfeed service where you pay ($99/month) to get listed as a source for journalists.  Realize that journalists are usually working on multiple stories at a time, and they work on very short time frames. So what they do is put out a query to a newsfeed to get experts to comment for their stories.

PR Leads allows you to have certain categories like legal expert or legal industry. And any time a journalist puts out a query to this newsfeed, you will get an email in your inbox from PR Leads that says here’s what they’re looking for. If you fit that description, you can email the journalist directly to see if they want to interview you. I have used this source to get in dozens of major magazines and trade associations and newspapers. It works.

The other one is www.helpareporter.com.  It’s free and you receive leads every day via email.  It has a few categories like Business and Finance and High Tech, but no legal category yet.  However, there are usually good leads where you can find an angle for yourself – a couple from my Inbox this week: “Looking for an expert on family-owned business” for a major financial magazine that I know a savvy estate planning attorney could grab, or one from a reporter at a major metropolitan daily newspaper looking for an expert to quote on “Forming an LLC to sell shares of a vacation home.” 

HARO also lets you pitch stories to journalists, so if you have something newsworthy – a big case you won or got a major settlement, or a unique viewpoint on a major issue – you can go to the website, submit your pitch and see if anyone bites. 

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Looking for more proven tactics from The Rainmaker Institute?

Then subscribe to our FREE monthly e-newsletter. One click of your mouse will take you to our site where you can see the current issue and subscribe to our complimentary monthly e-newsletter that will be delivered to your inbox. 

Each issue is chock-full of legal marketing information you can put to use right away. I think you will find the information in every newsletter something you will want to share with your staff to maximize the effectiveness of your legal marketing plan.

5 Proven Ways to Renew, Restore and Revive Your Practice in Today's Economy-1 of 5

Many of you have probably tried the traditional ways that attorneys use to get more clients. You belong to the Chamber of Commerce. You advertise in the Yellow Pages. You tried radio and it probably flopped pretty seriously.  And you hope for the random referral.

We’ve studied over 2,500 rainmakers to find out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to building a financially successful law practice.  What we’ve discovered is that successful rainmakers do not rely on random referrals to build their practice. Instead, they use a systematic approach. They find what works for them and they do it over and over again.

There are specific steps you can take to reduce the amount of randomness to practice development.

#1 – The Ezine

One way you can renew, restore, and revive your practice is actually very simple. You can do it in less than an hour a month, but in order for it to be effective you have to do it consistently.  It’s what we call an Ezine, or electronic newsletter.

Electronic newsletters have been around the Internet industry for several years now but they’re still relatively new in the legal industry. There are probably less than 5% of all attorneys who send out any kind of an electronic newsletter. And one of the really powerful things about this is how quickly and easily you can set up and maintain an Ezine program.

The key to winning online is to connect with your prospective target market or best prospects over and over and over again. We call it the frequency and the consistency model. Statistics show that it takes a minimum of seven touches before most of your best prospects are going to look up long enough to say, “Who are you and what can you do for me?” because we’re all being bombarded with so much information now.

Ezines are great for law firm marketing because they:

  • Are inexpensive and easy to produce
  • Support targeted messaging to different target audiences
  • Have tracking capability so you can see how many people opened your email and clicked through to your website
  • Are easy to forward or print, so the recipient can actually widen your prospect base for you
  • Allow your clients and prospects to communicate directly with you by replying to your Ezine

Ezines are designed to be short, informational and actionable.  The fact that they are also inexpensive to produce and distribute makes them one of the cornerstones of an effective and systematic law firm marketing program.

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Are you looking for specific marketing strategies you can use in your law firm?

Then order the Rainmaker in a Box 5-DVD set!

Some of the information and strategies you will learn include:

  • The 5 Immutable Secrets to Building a 7 Figure Law Practice
  • Secrets of Building a Referral-based Law Practice for Busy Practitioners
  • The Top 6 Most Powerful Online Marketing Strategies for Attorneys
  • Action, Accountability and Next Steps

To order this information-packed set click here.


 

How to Get Publicity for Your Law Firm

At The Rainmaker Institute, we mainly serve solo practitioners and small law firms that don’t have a lot of money to invest in marketing, so we are always mindful of using law firm marketing strategies that help get the word out about your firm without breaking the bank.

You’ll notice that I did not title this post, “How to Get FREE Publicity for Your Law Firm,” because publicity is really not free – it does take an investment in time for you and your staff.  But it is free in terms of no cash outlay. 

So if you can commit the time, generating publicity for your firm is one of the best things you can do to create awareness and attract new clients.  Here’s how:

Be an expert.  Not in the legal sense, but in the marketing sense.  The media flock to experts. They put them on the covers of magazines; you see the experts quoted day and night on network news programs. Experts have columns in the newspaper. They are sought after for their commentary and background and the media wants to go to experts as soon as there’s a breaking news story.

Create a targeted media list. Target specific media outlets very narrowly. Don’t go after all of them out there because if you’re pitching your message to 5 or 700 media outlets, you’re going to have to go out there with a one-size-fits-all message and that’s not the way to do it.  Media people don’t want the same story that everyone else has. Start by narrowly creating a list of targeted media outlets --your top 25 media hit list.  For those of you who only do business in your own community or in a particular region, you might only have a media hit list with 10 media outlets on it.  That just makes your job easier, because it’s all about creating relationships, and if you only have 10 media outlets on your list, that’s very doable. You can form relationships with 10 or 15 people. You can’t form them with 300. So target very narrowly.

Target trade publications. If most of your clients are in a particular industry – or you want to build a client base in a particular industry -- you want to get into the trade publications in that particular industry.  Many of you have business journals or business magazines in your own community and they frequently quote attorneys and do stories on legal issues, so add those to the list as well.

Find the reporters.  Sign up for a Google Alert to get emailed articles, websites, columns and blogs who are writing on your area of expertise or focus.  This is a great way to find out who is out there writing about your topics. If you do a Google Alert, Google will do all the heavy lifting for you. If you’re trying to get into magazines, pay particular attention to the column in front of the magazine. It’s usually written by the editor. That will tip you off to all kinds of issues that they think are important.

Let’s say you’re trying to get on a National Public Radio program. Go to the NPR website and use the search box at the top to plug in your topic and it will bring up a list of programs that NPR has featured on that topic. Many of those programs are archived right at the website.

The smarter you are about the publication you’re pitching, the better you’re going to pitch and the more publicity you’re going to get. Your job is to help make a journalist’s job easy. Once you’re familiar with their publication or program, you can offer story ideas that are a perfect fit.

Identify emerging trends.  A great way to make a journalist’s job easy is to tip them off to emerging trends. The media relies on really good sources to tip them off to emerging trends that they can write about. So if you’re starting to see emerging trends in a certain industry and you think it would make a great story and we haven’t seen a lot written about it, tip off a reporter on your media hit list to that trend.

Offer background information.  Newspapers don’t want only one person quoted in the whole story, so if you can hand contact information and names to a reporter who’s interested in your story idea, you’ve just positioned yourself as a golden source.

Write letters to the editor. There are two types of letters that editors love to print. The first one is a letter that comments directly on a story they just ran in their publication. The second kind of letter they love to publish are letters that come down very hard on one side of a controversial topic. The media loves controversy, and if you have a strong opinion on a controversial law that they might be passing in your community or a controversial topic in your industry, write a letter to the editor about it.

Conduct a survey.  The media loves surveys and the great thing about surveys is that they don’t have to be scientific. Now if you’re trying to get into the Harvard Business Review, they will ask if your survey is scientific.  But if you’re trying to get into your local daily paper, they probably don’t care if it’s scientific. For those of you who speak to audiences, slip a simple five or six question survey into the handout and have the audience fill out the survey before or as they’re leaving.  Or post a poll on Facebook or your website on a current topic of interest and publish those results.

Build reciprocal links. If you find an influential blogger who you want to get in front of, and Google Alert has told you that they’ve written about your topic of expertise, you can jump over to their blog and post a comment.  That comment will give you a link back to your own website and it will position you as an expert.

Publicity isn’t free.  It takes an investment of time to build those relationships.  But the payoff for your firm can be invaluable.

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Upcoming Law Firm Marketing Boot Camps: Get In On the Action This Summer!

If you are interested in building a lifestyle law practice through effective law firm marketing, then come to one of our Rainmaker Retreats:

  • June 18-19, 2010       San Francisco, CA
  • July 30-31, 2010         Los Angeles, CA
  • August 6-7, 2010        Las Vegas, NV
  • October 8-9, 2010      New Brunswick, NJ

Want to learn more about what you’ll learn at a Rainmaker Retreat?  Then sign up now for a one-hour complimentary teleseminar for a preview of the valuable material that is taught at our 2-day Rainmaker Retreat.


 

Law Firm Marketing: Do You YouTube?

Last week, YouTube celebrated its fifth anniversary and announced that it is now serving more than 2 billion videos per day.  Yes, that’s billion, with a “b”.  Every day.  Is there a place for YouTube in your law firm marketing program?  2 billion times, yes.

When we build a client’s website, we always add video features.  We know, lawyers love words.  But your potential clients love video, and hosting your video clips on YouTube is an excellent way to state your case to those potential clients as well as improve your search engine ranking.

Plus, it’s easy and economical to do. So whether or not you have video features on your website, you can create a YouTube channel for your practice that will do double duty for you, persuading potential clients why they should hire you, and boosting your Google ranking.  Here’s how:

Pick your specialty.  You’ve heard me say it before, but it bears repeating:  one of the biggest legal marketing mistakes attorneys make is generalization.  You need to promote yourself as a specialist (in the marketing sense) – you’re a divorce lawyer, or a car accident attorney, or an estate planning lawyer.  Choose 3-4 topics within your area of specialization and develop informational talking points (no more than 3-4 minutes each) that potential clients will find useful.  And remember, you are not shooting a commercial – make it short and informational.

Shoot your videos.  Your clips do not need to be Hollywood-quality productions.  You can get a Flip HD Video camcorder for around $200 and have one of your staff shoot the videos of you in your office or conference room.  The Flip has a built-in USB connection so you can upload each clip to your computer, edit it, and create a file for YouTube.

Set up your channel.  Isn’t the 21st century great?   With YouTube, you can create your own TV channel.  The website will walk you through the process, including uploading and tagging your video.  Be SURE you title and tag your video with your keywords (i.e., “Atlanta divorce lawyer”) so you feed those search engines.  You will also need to add a description – be as specific as possible and load up on those keywords.

Promote your channel.  Add your YouTube channel URL to all your social media pages – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. – as well as to your email signature.  Have everyone in your practice add it to their social media and electronic signatures as well.  You can also search for relevant videos on YouTube and post a video reply linking your channel to those relevant videos.  And, of course, embed the clips into your website and link to your YouTube channel from there.

After five years, YouTube is no longer just for skateboarding dogs and sleepy babies...it’s a great social media tool for your law firm marketing arsenal that can help you with SEO and attracting new clients.

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Stop Wasting Precious Time and Money

Feel like you don’t have time for marketing?  Let us show you how to make a plan that runs on “autopilot” – one that attracts new and lucrative clients while you focus on your practice.

Learn how easy it can be to create an effective law firm marketing plan that performs by getting our Free Guide: 5 Easy Steps to Create Your Law Firm Marketing Plan

After working with many ultra-successful lawyers we found five common threads in their marketing plans. This guide outlines these shared elements to provide insight into strategies that work and how to make them work for you.

There are two versions: one for Attorneys in Solo Practice and one for Attorneys in a Small Firm.  You can download them now free!  Go here to download, and start using these proven strategies today!


 

Law Firm Marketing In Action: BISNAR | CHASE Illustrates The Sixth Key to Becoming a Recognized Expert

Sometimes the planets align perfectly to illustrate a point. 

My 6th and final strategy for Becoming a Recognized Expert is Position Yourself as a Specialist, Not a Generalist.  And last night as I was preparing this, the perfect example fell into my lap.

BISNAR | CHASE is one of the nation’s top ranked personal injury law firms based in Newport Beach, California.  We’ve been proud to call them a Rainmaker client for over three years.  John Bisnar has attended our Rainmaker Retreats and has been kind enough to provide his testimonial as to what his firm has gained from practicing our law firm marketing principles.

Last night, Brian Chase was featured on a Los Angeles Fox News special report on defective car seats.  The segment highlighted the ever growing problem of automobiles equipped with defective seats as well as two lawsuits handled by BISNAR | CHASE.  They’ve posted a clip on their website – you can see it here.

BISNAR | CHASE has done a masterful job of positioning themselves as specialists in complex and economically significant personal injury and car accident cases.  And again, I’m talking about specialists in a marketing sense here.  Landing a feature as a legal expert regarding automobile defects on a major market news telecast is a huge win, and I am sure they are going to be promoting it like crazy to take full advantage of the big spotlight that just got shown on their firm.

Being a generalist is one of the most deadly mistakes that attorneys make for a number of reasons. First, it’s much more difficult to get referrals. If you say you do anything from IP to PI, they’re not going to send you any referrals because they figure there’s no way someone can be that good in every single area. You want to specialize because it gives you more credibility. You generate more referrals and you get more money for your services because you can charge higher fees when you’re perceived as a specialist versus a generalist.

There are several different ways that you can specialize:

  • By client industry
  • By client revenue size
  • By geography
  • By specific services

The most powerful way to specialize is when you do a combination of all four, when you’re specialized by industry, size of revenue, geography, and by the specific services that you offer.

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Check Out Your Peers As They Share Their Rainmaker Retreat Experiences

We would like to send you a DVD of your colleagues (and even your competitors) describing their experiences at our 2-day law firm marketing boot camp, the Rainmaker Retreat. Yes, we know you are skeptical -- so instead of us telling you how these 2 days will transform your business, we will let our clients do the telling.
 
Click here to order your complimentary DVD right now.

 

Addressing the NJSBA Annual Meeting on Law Firm Marketing

I am at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City today to address the Annual Meeting of the New Jersey State Bar Association.  I am speaking to this annual gathering of over 1,700 attorneys and judges about law firm marketing.

I am looking forward to seeing some of the attorneys who attended our New Jersey Rainmaker Retreat in late March.  The group I met with then was energetic and eager to learn ways that they could grow their business to the level they dreamed of when they first started their firm.

As I travel around the country speaking to attorney groups, I find that the vast majority of lawyers are hungry to learn more about social media and creating systems that will lead to business success.  Social media has been a hot topic for the past couple of years.  The growth of sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook has fueled a revolution in how legal marketers ply their trade.

I will be talking to the NJSBA Annual Meeting today about how lawyers can leverage these new technologies to multiply their existing marketing programs and gain greater access to their target markets.  One of the most exciting aspects of social media is the ability to receive real-time feedback and have two-way conversations with prospective clients.

But I can’t be everywhere.  So if you are interested in building a lifestyle law practice through effective law firm marketing, then I suggest you come to one of our Rainmaker Retreats.  We have four of them coming up:

  • June 18-19, 2010       San Francisco, CA
  • July 30-31, 2010         Los Angeles, CA
  • August 6-7, 2010        Las Vegas, NV
  • October 8-9, 2010      New Brunswick, NJ

You can take advantage of Early Bird pricing by registering here

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Becoming a Rainmaker:  Business Building Strategies for Lawyers CD

Don't miss out on the 50% savings this week on our 3-audio CD program that covers dozens of practical recommendations and step-by-step sales and marketing techniques for solo practitioners and small law firms.

Click here to order yours now – if you order by tomorrow, May 21, you save 50%!

 

Law Firm Marketing Boot Camp: Scottsdale Rainmaker Retreat This Weekend

If you’re a small law firm with big growth plans, then you need to attend this weekend's Rainmaker Retreat in Scottsdale, a two-day law firm marketing boot camp where you will learn:

  • More than 22 proven legal marketing strategies to attract more and better clients
  • How to create powerful relationships with over 30 new Referral Sources in the next 90 days
  • 5 Ways to automate your legal marketing using technology and the Internet
  • 7 ways to find more clients fast and how to select the best ones for you
  • 2 ways to promote your firm to 100,000 people for only $100
  • 6 secrets top Rainmakers use to dominate their competition

More than 6,500 attorneys nationwide have discovered the secrets to building a lifestyle law practice through effective law firm marketing that is providing them with significantly greater income and the time to enjoy it all.

But don’t take our word for it:




 

Each day is filled with sessions (with built-in Action Steps and Action Groups) to guide you in putting these law firm marketing strategies into practice immediately. You will leave Scottsdale with a specific plan – uniquely suited to you and your firm – that will help you to create a successful and highly satisfying legal practice!

Register today to reserve your place at the next Rainmaker Retreat in Scottsdale this weekend!


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Exclusive Rainmaker Retreat Preview Call – Learn Before You Go!

If you want to learn more about the Rainmaker Retreat and why it is a proven legal marketing system that has helped over 6,000 attorneys find more and better clients, then register now for our one-hour complimentary teleseminar.

Hosted by Rainmaker Institute CEO Stephen Fairley, this teleseminar will give you a preview of the valuable material that is taught at our 2-day Rainmaker Retreat.

Sign up now for one of these upcoming one-hour teleseminars:

Wednesday, May 26, 2010
11am-12pm Pacific | 12-1pm Mountain | 1-2pm Central | 2-3pm Eastern

Thursday, June 3, 2010
2 -3pm Pacific | 3-4pm Mountain | 4-5pm Central | 5-6pm Eastern

Join us and learn why the Rainmaker Retreat is the one law firm marketing boot camp you cannot afford to miss!

Legal Marketing: Six Keys to Becoming a Recognized Expert-Fifth in a Series

Disclaimer: When I use the word “expert” or “specialist” in this series, I’m not talking in the legal or ethical sense, but in the marketing sense where the goal is to get media and/or prospects to perceive you as an expert or specialist.

The fifth legal marketing strategy for building credibility and becoming a recognized expert is Building Relationships with Strategic Referral Sources

Strategic referral sources are people who already have a relationship with the people you want as clients.  For example, if you target small business owners, you would look for those who already have a relationship with small business owners. These could be accountants, financial planners, chamber of commerce, community leaders, local bankers, CPA’s, commercial real estate agents, payroll processing companies, the list goes on and on with people who have relationships with small business owners. So how do you build a referral network with them?

One of our clients sends out a letter to 75-80 targeted professionals that basically says:

“Hello, I’m Attorney Jack Smith with XYZ Law Firm.  We know that competition for professional service advisors is getting more and more intense with more people entering the field.  We are building a cross referral network with other trusted advisors who are experts in their field. Over the last 15 years we’ve been practicing law, we have really focused our practice on working with small business owners and high net worth individuals on estate planning, wills and trusts and asset protection. Through a series of breakfast meetings and private meetings at our office, we’re going to build a cross referral network with a limited number of other professionals who are committed to growing their practice and sending cross referrals. We’re not looking for any kind of a fee for facilitating this network, but we would like to officially invite you to check it out and see if this is something you’d like to support. For more information, give us a call at this number or visit our website to learn more about our practice.”

From this mailing, our client got a group of about 25 going.  They get together about once a month and send cross referrals to each other.

Existing clients are also a good source for you and your referral partners.  If you partner with a CPA or financial planner, each of you would send a letter out to your respective client databases offering a free consultation on behalf of the other as an added benefit of being a valued client.

Co-sponsoring an event or a seminar series is another excellent way to build relationships with strategic referral partners.  Technology makes it easy and inexpensive for an attorney and another professional to host a webinar or teleseminar on topics of interest to small business owners. 

Your local bank branch is another source waiting to be tapped.  Banks generally have a generous local marketing budget, and frequently don’t know what to do with it.  Offer your services as an expert speaker for a small business seminar that the bank could host – they do all the work in setting it up and getting an audience.  You now have a room full of prospective clients and all you had to spend was some time preparing your remarks.

Professionals are always looking for good strategic referral partners.  You can ensure that you’re a good partner by educating them about who you are, what you do, the kind of clients you target and the great service you provide.  Reciprocity is the key:  to get referrals, you have to give them, too.
 

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Becoming a Rainmaker:  Business Building Strategies for Lawyers CD

Don't miss out on the 50% savings this week on our 3-audio CD program that covers dozens of practical recommendations and step-by-step sales and marketing techniques for solo practitioners and small law firms.

Click here to order yours now – if you order by Friday, May 21, you save 50%!

Legal Marketing: Six Keys to Becoming a Recognized Expert-Fourth in a Series

Disclaimer: When I use the word “expert” or “specialist” in this series, I’m not talking in the legal or ethical sense, but in the marketing sense where the goal is to get media and/or prospects to perceive you as an expert or specialist.

The fourth legal marketing strategy for building credibility and becoming a recognized expert is Starting a Blog.

A blog is an online journal that is kept up to date with fresh content on a regular basis, and is a great low-cost alternative for solo practitioners or small firms that don’t have websites.  If you do have a website, blogs are a great addition because Google likes blogs as much as it likes press releases.  And blogs are updated much more frequently than websites, which means that when you add new content on your blog, Google is going to find that and it’s going to index it.  And that means you’re going to come up on search engines more frequently than if you just had a website.

Blogs are easy to start and easy to update.  Two of the most popular blogging platforms are Wordpress.com and Blogger.com.  Both of these sites do a good job of walking you through the blogging process and a basic blog is free.

For blog content, consider these sources:

  • Your articles
  • Your press releases
  • Commentary on legal issues
  • Commentary on local news items

Repurposing your existing content like press releases and articles is one of the easiest ways to add content to your blog.  An article is typically 500 to 700 words, a press release is usually 300 to 400 words, and a blog is usually 100 to 300 words.  Take the content from your article, cut it in half, and writes two press releases about it. Then take the content from each one of those two press releases, cut those in half and you have four blog posts.

We recommend posting a new blog at least four times a month. Some people post a lot more than that, but you should do at least a minimum of four times a month.  Any time an interesting topic comes up, you can write a blog post about it. You can even train your staff to do it for you.

There are many different ways to use a blog to drive highly qualified traffic to your website.   Start out simple.  But the important thing is to start!

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Looking for more proven tactics from The Rainmaker Institute?

Then subscribe to our FREE monthly e-newsletter. One click of your mouse will take you to our site where you can see the current issue and subscribe to our complimentary monthly e-newsletter that will be delivered to your inbox.  Each issue is chock-full of legal marketing information you can put to use right away. I think you will find the information in every newsletter something you will want to share with your staff to maximize the effectiveness of your legal marketing plan.

 

Phoenix Legal Marketing Network Group

Last week over 20 attorneys from small and solo practices around Phoenix met for the launching of our first ever Phoenix Legal Marketing Network Group.

This group will be meeting on a monthly basis and is co-sponsored by The Rainmaker Institute, Alex Morris of FindLaw, and Ken Minniti of Target Market Media and the Publisher of Attorney At Law Magazine—Phoenix Edition.

We met for 2 hours in Scottsdale near the airport. The first hour was all about networking with your fellow professionals. Reconnecting with colleagues and making new acquaintances.

During the second hour, yours truly gave a seminar on “7 Keys to Recession Proof Your Law Firm,” designed to help attorneys look at their law firm as a business, not just a practice.

One of the core concepts to having a successful law firm is understanding that “the People run your systems and the Systems run your law firm.” The problem with most law firms is that they are being run by people and do not have any real systems in place. We identified 7 critical systems every law firm needs, including:

  • A Cash Flow System
  • A Marketing System
  • A Lead Generation System
  • A Client Conversion and Retention System
  • A Work Flow System
  • A Management System and
  • A Key Performance Indicators System

Another main topic was the importance of hiring and retaining “Superstars” on your team. As a Partner in your law firm, you simply cannot afford to have anything less than a Superstar in every position at your firm. This is especially true during these difficult economic times.

What's different about this networking group from others?

First and foremost, it's for attorneys
. While attorneys from all size law firms are welcome, it is specifically designed to help lawyers in small and solo practices to connect with one another and share referrals.

Second, there is an educational component at each event. Not MCLE or about substantive matters of law, but about how to build your business, make more money, generate more referrals, and run your practice like a business.

We invite all local Arizona attorneys to join us each month. Upcoming topics will include:

  • How to double your referral network in 6 months
  • Using social media marketing to generate leads
  • Practical ways to run your law firm like a business
  • Generate more and better referrals
  • Lessons from 7 figure attorneys
  • Automating your online marketing efforts
  • Increase your revenues and improve your receivables
  • Take consistent action to build your business
  • How to fix your follow-up with every prospect, client and referral source
  • Tools to increase referrals from CPAs, CFPs and other attorneys
  • Learn cutting edge Internet marketing strategies
  • Apply practical tips and techniques to create a lifestyle law firm

The next session is on Wednesday, June 23 -- if you would like to be notified of specifics for this meeting as well as future dates, please go to http://www.therainmakerretreat.com/network and sign up by clicking the box “Can't Make It, Send Me Future Dates.”

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Becoming a Rainmaker:  Business Building Strategies for Lawyers Audio CD 50% Off!

One week only! Don't miss the 50% savings on this month's featured Law Firm Marketing Product!

Based on Stephen's highly successful seminar series by the same name, this 3-audio CD program covers dozens of practical recommendations and step-by-step sales and marketing techniques for solo practitioners and small law firms.

More than 6,500 attorneys from law firms all over the country have experienced powerful results from attending the Becoming A Rainmaker seminar, which been sponsored by more than 22 of the largest state and local bar associations.

Click here to order yours now – if you order by May 21, you save 50%!
 

Has Your Client Pool Dried Up? Dive into the Scottsdale Rainmaker Retreat May 21-22

Today is May 13...which means that 2010 is almost half over.

Let me ask you something:  Have you had time this year to enjoy the lifestyle you deserve?

Or has it been nose-to-the-grindstone since January 1?

Are you searching for a way to build your practice and still have time for what you want to do?

Isn't it about time you started growing your practice, instead of struggling just to get by?

Then you owe it to yourself to check out the upcoming Rainmaker Retreat in Scottsdale, Arizona on May 21-22, 2010.

Over 6,500 attorneys have benefited from implementing the proven Rainmaker Legal Marketing System, because each Rainmaker Retreat has 5 unique distinctions:

It is specifically designed for Attorneys at Small Law Firms and Solo Practitioners. While associates and partners at large firms (50+ attorneys) will receive benefit, the Rainmaker Retreat is designed to meet the needs, challenges, and financial budgets of solo practitioners and small law firms.

This is a Working Retreat. You not only come to listen, learn and discover, but also to practice and apply.

This is NOT an introductory course. The Rainmaker Retreat focuses on in-depth discussions of cutting-edge strategies and revealing secrets of highly successful attorneys used by only an elite group of lawyers.

Focus on Return on Investment (ROI). Everything about this workshop is focused on one goal—helping you achieve the best results by finding more and better clients in the least amount of time using the least amount of money possible.

100% Satisfaction Guarantee. If you are not completely satisfied at the end of the first day, just let us know, turn your materials in and we will refund your money.

Don’t let time – and your competitors – pass you by. 

You can register right now, right here

Take the plunge and get the lifestyle law practice you always wanted by attending the Scottsdale Rainmaker Retreat on May 21-22, 2010 at Chaparral Suites in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Can’t make it to Scottsdale?  Then register for one of these upcoming Rainmaker Retreats:


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Check Out Your Peers As They Share Their Rainmaker Retreat Experiences

We would like to send you a DVD of your colleagues (and even your competitors) describing their experiences at our 2-day law firm marketing boot camp, the Rainmaker Retreat. Yes, we know you are skeptical (we wouldn't have it any other way).   So instead of us telling you how these 2 days will transform your business, we will let our clients do the telling.
 
Click here to order your complimentary DVD right now.


 

Using Avvo to Market Your Law Firm on the Internet

Unless you have had your head under the proverbial rock the last two years, you have probably heard of Avvo.com. Plain and simple, they are a ranking system for lawyers.

Now before you get all upset and pester me with nasty emails telling me about “it's not right for Avvo to post my profile on their site without my permission,” let me state clearly for the record: I don’t want to hear about your complaints. I AM NOT Avvo. I'm not here to defend Avvo. They have not in any way asked me to write this post. Avvo has plenty of sharp people on their team and can mount a more than adequate defense without my help.

As a legal marketer, I am “platform agnostic.” I only look at tools from an effectiveness standpoint—Does this work? How much does it cost? What's the Return On Investment (ROI)? I am constantly on the lookout for ways my law firm clients can leverage both online and offline tools to build their online platform and attract more clients.

Recently, the ABA Journal wrote an article about the fact that Avvo is now ranking lawyers from all 50 states. There was a lot of vitriolic commentary about the article, so I know feelings run hot and cold about them. As I said, it's not my place to defend them, their “ethics,” or whether you like the fact that your personal “profile” is on their site. By the way, I believe the majority of the information they put on your “profile” comes directly from your state bar so if they have something wrong on your profile, it's a good guess that maybe your state bar also has that information wrong.

I get it—one of the major reasons why a lot of attorneys don’t like social media sites like Avvo, is that they CANNOT CONTROL IT.

Just like someone can go to Yelp.com or Ripoffreport.com and write a positive or negative review of your business, so they can go to Avvo and do the same. At least Avvo has a clear mechanism whereby you can dispute a false or misleading review and they will even remove it if proven false (which most other sites don’t do). These types of consumer review sites are becoming more and more popular and influential with the search engines.

If you're thinking about ignoring your profile on Avvo, here's something to consider: Avvo is very good at search engine optimization. So in all likelihood, when you type your name into Google, your Avvo profile will often come up on the first page of results. I believe they are quickly becoming a major force in Internet marketing for attorneys.
 
Here's my advice: You don’t have to like Avvo to benefit from Avvo. They are here to stay and are becoming a force to be reckoned with so...learn how to use them to build and influence your law firm’s Internet presence and generate more business!

How to Use Avvo.com for Law Firm Marketing

Avvo is one of the 6 major social media sites that attorneys should pay attention to. In future posts, I'll talk about the other 5. When you are ready to get started with Avvo, here's the steps you should take:

  1. Claim your profile. This process is free and allows you to update your contact information and add information about you and your law firm.
  2. Put your ENTIRE resume into Avvo. This can go a long way to improving your rating.
  3. Add all the seminars you have given, awards you have received, and articles you have written. These items can also improve your rating. 
  4. Add your photo! I have heard reports that profiles with a photo are clicked on up to 10 times more than profiles without photos.
  5. Add videos. If you have videos put them into your Avvo profile. While they won't improve your rating, it will give potential clients who are checking you out online an opportunity to see who you are, how you articulate your answers, and will position you as more of an “expert.” The production quality of your videos does not matter nearly as much as the information you include in them. It's all about education-based marketing—educating your prospects.
  6. Answer user’s questions. Over 5,000 consumers every week ask legally related questions on Avvo. Please be sure to put a standard disclaimer on each response, i.e., that your reply does not constitute legal advice or the establishment of an attorney-client relationship, etc.
  7. Create Avvo “Legal Guides” for your top 10 questions. If you're like most attorneys, you constantly get asked a common set of questions. Write down these FAQs and write a short (1-3 pages) response to each one. Make each question a legal guide. Keep the questions and answers highly focused on a specific topic. Be sure to add a disclaimer on each guide.
  8. Ask all your attorney friends to endorse you. This can make a big difference in your rating. Just like a referral from another attorney in the real world makes a big impression on a prospect, so having a reference from another attorney or a judge on your Avvo profile can improve your rating.
  9. Ask your clients to write a testimonial for you on Avvo. Client testimonials do NOT have a positive or negative impact on your rating. However, I assure you, potential clients read them! I can't remember the last time I bought a book or other product off Amazon.com without reading a few of the user reviews. Yes, I know several states, like Florida, do not allow the usage of testimonials by lawyers. However, the Florida bar association has “agreed to exempt online directories like Avvo from most of its ad rules” because attorneys cannot control endorsements posted on 3rd party websites like Avvo.
  10. Put your Avvo badge on your website or blog. Avvo allows you to create a “badge” with your profile score on it that links directly to your Avvo profile.
  11. Consider signing up for Avvo Pro. There is a small monthly fee for this, but it provides you with all sorts of statistics like, how many people clicked on your profile, etc. Avvo has also recently launched an ad campaign (I wondered how they were going to start making money). If you read my blog frequently or have attended our law firm marketing boot camp, you know I'm not a big fan of advertising. However, I've heard anecdotally from two attorneys now who are finding some success with an Avvo ad campaign in their local area. In fact, one of my criminal defense clients signed up his first client within 6 hours of his Avvo ad going live. Please note, I'm not saying those results are typical because I'm sure they aren't. However, if you have the budget, I think it's worth testing it out.

So there you have it. You can either ignore Avvo and hope they will just go away or you can learn how to leverage them to your benefit.

Now, before you think about sending me one your nasty emails, please reread my second paragraph.


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Stop Wasting Precious Time and Money

Feel like you don’t have time for marketing?  Let us show you how to make a plan that runs on “autopilot” – one that attracts new and lucrative clients while you focus on your practice.

Learn how easy it can be to create an effective law firm marketing plan that performs by getting our Free Guide: 5 Easy Steps to Create Your Law Firm Marketing Plan

After working with many ultra-successful lawyers we found five common threads in their marketing plans. This guide outlines these shared elements to provide insight into strategies that work and how to make them work for you.

There are two versions: one for Attorneys in Solo Practice and one for Attorneys in a Small Firm.  You can download your guide now for free!  Click here to download, and start using these proven strategies today!
 

Proven Legal Marketing Techniques To Be Featured At NJSBA Solo and Small Firm Conference

Next week is one of best opportunities you will have this year to boost your law firm marketing at a very affordable cost and earn up to 6 CLE credits while doing it! 

Legal marketing strategies and information will be the focus of the New Jersey State Bar Association Solo and Small Firm Conference on May 19, 2010 at The Water Club in Atlantic City. 

The agenda for the one-day conference is jam-packed with information you cannot afford to miss!  Topics include:

  • Becoming a Rainmaker
  • Social Networking for Business
  • Business Planning for Success
  • Legal Malpractice and the Ethics IED
  • The Power of the Press
  • Transforming Your Business Plan Into Dollars
  • Ethical Considerations of Today’s Law Office Technology
  • Websites, SEO and the Global Audience
  • Top 10 Ethics Mistakes Solos Make and How to Fix Them
  • 7 Strategies to Recession-Proof Your Practice

I will be making two presentations at the conference: Becoming a Rainmaker and the 7 Strategies to Recession Proof Your Law Firm, which will explain why some attorneys are having their best year ever when others are struggling to even survive.  You will learn the secrets top Rainmakers are using in this economy.

There is still time to register.  Click here to reserve your seat for this important law firm marketing conference.  Or call Lynn or Paula at 732-249-5000.  The cost is only $99 for NJSBA members and $199 for non-members.

Internet marketing for lawyers is a lower-cost method of reaching the audience you are targeting, and I guarantee this conference will provide you with a wealth of information on how to incorporate it into your law firm marketing plan.


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Looking for more Rainmaker Institute Wisdom?

Then sign up for a complimentary Law Firm Marketing Strategy CD.  It contains information that will enable you to Generate More and Better Referrals, Find New Clients Fast, and Fill Your Law Practice.  The CD is free, so sign up now!
 

Avvo Legal Marketing Webinar Coming Up on May 13

On Thursday, May 13, I will be conducting a legal marketing webinar for Avvo on the 7 Strategies to Recession Proof Your Law Firm.  The webinar is scheduled for one hour, from 10-11 a.m. PDT.

Want to find out why some attorneys are having their best year ever when others are struggling to survive?  Then register for this complimentary information-packed session now.

Attorneys who attend the Avvo webinar will learn about:

  • Attracting top performers and “Superstars” to your team
  • Implementing systems in your business
  • 7 key systems every successful law firm has
  • 3 ways to track your marketing efforts and ROI
  • Simple tips for fixing your follow-up
  • The 3 major reasons why people buy from you
  • How to follow up with every prospect automatically

Participants will also learn practical law firm marketing tips to:

  • Reduce overhead
  • Improve productivity and morale among office staff
  • Rapidly increase referrals in 90 days
  • How to stay connected with current and former clients
  • Ways to market your law firm on a shoe string budget.

Register now to receive a legal marketing education that will allow you to take advantage of the current economic climate and position yourself for even more growth in referrals and revenue as the economy rebounds.

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Summer Dates Set for 2-Day Marketing Boot Camps
 
If you're struggling to build your legal practice or want to learn a proven law firm marketing system that has helped more than 6,500 attorneys discover how to generate more referrals and find new clients fast, then you owe it to yourself to check out a Rainmaker Retreat this summer:

May 21-22, 2010    Scottsdale, AZ
June 18-19, 2010    San Francisco, CA
July 16-17, 2010    Las Vegas, NV
July 30-31, 2010    Los Angeles, CA

Want to hear more?  Then click here to order a complimentary DVD and hear directly from those attorneys who have attended and benefitted from our Rainmaker Retreat 2-Day Law Firm Marketing Boot Camp.

 

Legal Marketing: Six Keys to Becoming a Recognized Expert - Third in a Series

Disclaimer: When I use the word “expert” or “specialist” in this series, I’m not talking in the legal or ethical sense, but in the marketing sense where the goal is to get media and/or prospects to perceive you as an expert or specialist.

The third legal marketing strategy for building credibility and becoming a recognized expert is Submitting Articles Online.

Many of you have written articles for your state or local bar association or some other newsletter that’s heavy on the technical jargon. However, for these online legal marketing articles, you want to craft brief, information education-based pieces that are typically 400-700 words in length.

There are literally hundreds of websites that will publish your articles online for free.  All you have to do is submit them.  The top sites include EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, ArticleDashboard.com, ArticlesBase.com, Buzzle.com and more.  If you do a Google search for “article directories”, you’ll get many more. 

You can also sign up for a service to do it for you for a small monthly fee – DistributeYourArticles.com and ContentCrooner.com (formerly ArticleMarketer.com) are two sites that distribute your content to their network.

When writing your articles you want to be sure you:

  • Ensure the article is a good fit for the site you’re submitting it to;
  • Write for a specific audience – don’t make it generic;
  • Keep it short and concise but with some good information;
  • Add a short bio and call to action at the end of the article – the call to action can be something like, “For a free consultation or to receive our free special report, email us or give us a call.”

Once you start submitting your articles, you’ll soon see them published all over the place. One website will publish your article, and then 10 other websites will come along and take that same content and publish it on their website.  These sites all have reciprocal agreements that say they can’t change the content of the article, so your bio and contact information will remain intact.

Combined with press releases, article submissions can be a powerful legal marketing tool. If you type my name into Google, you’ll see that I come up with about 800,000 mentions. A great majority of that is because of the articles and press releases that we’ve submitted over time that have accumulated and produced a snowball effect. This is not a happy accident – it’s a solid marketing strategy that has been well executed.

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Go to Camp This Summer!  Get in on the 2-Day Marketing Boot Camp for Small Law Firms
 
If you're struggling to build your legal practice or want to learn a proven law firm marketing system that has helped attorneys discover how to generate more referrals and find new clients fast, then you owe it to yourself to check out a Rainmaker Retreat this summer:

May 21-22, 2010    Scottsdale, AZ
June 18-19, 2010    San Francisco, CA
July 16-17, 2010    Las Vegas, NV
July 30-31, 2010    Los Angeles, CA

We would like to send you a DVD of your colleagues (and even your competitors) describing their experiences at our 2-day law firm marketing boot camp, the Rainmaker Retreat. Yes, we know you are skeptical (we wouldn't have it any other way).   So instead of us telling you how these 2 days will transform your business, we will let our clients do the telling.
 
Click here to order your complimentary DVD right now.
 

Legal Marketing: Six Keys to Becoming a Recognized Expert - Part 2 of 6

Disclaimer: When I use the word “expert” or “specialist” in this series, I’m not talking in the legal or ethical sense, but in the marketing sense where the goal is to get media and/or prospects to perceive you as an expert or specialist.

The second legal marketing strategy for building credibility and becoming a recognized expert is Speaking At Local or Regional Events Every Quarter.   There are four tactics for ensuring that every time you speak, you are generating business and building credibility:

Choose the Right Audience. You have to make sure that you get in front of the right people. You have to ask what is their average size of attendance? How many people show up? What are the demographics? Are these decision makers or gatekeepers? What kinds of interests do they have? What topics have they talked about?

Choose the Right Venue.  There are many different ways that you can speak in front of a group and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a public seminar. It could be a small private client-only seminar or it could be as part of a panel where it’s a moderated format.  It could also be a teleseminar or a webinar, which can do double duty for you because you can save an audio or video file and email it.

Deliver Value. People want practical, useful information. Don’t worry that you’re “giving away the store” – because if you’ve chosen the right audience, you will be speaking to people who have the money to hire an attorney, not a group of tire kickers. 

Follow Up. The number one reason why people who use seminars don’t get the results that they want is because of their follow-up, so it is important to develop a follow-up strategy before the talk as part of your overall law firm marketing program. 

Get the contact information for everyone who attends.  Then follow up with a series of emails – for the first one, thank them for attending and extend a free offer – a consultation or audio CD.  For the second, 3-5 days later, invite them to sign up for your newsletter.  Someone from your staff should also be following up by phone with the same messaging as your first email.

If you use these legal marketing strategies, you’ll find that you receive better results from your speaking engagements and you’re going to quickly build credibility and expert status in your community.

P.S. Miss the first post in this series?  Go here.


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Looking for more proven tactics from The Rainmaker Institute?

Then subscribe to our FREE monthly e-newsletter. One click of your mouse will take you to our site where you can see the current issue and subscribe to our complimentary monthly e-newsletter that will be delivered to your inbox.  Each issue is chock-full of legal marketing information you can put to use right away. I think you will find the information in every newsletter something you will want to share with your staff to maximize the effectiveness of your legal marketing plan.
 

Law Firm Marketing Boot Camp: Scottsdale Rainmaker Retreat is May 21-22

If you’re a small law firm with big growth plans, then you need to attend The Rainmaker Retreat, a two-day law firm marketing boot camp where you will learn:

  • More than 22 proven legal marketing strategies to attract more and better clients
  • How to create powerful relationships with over 30 new Referral Sources in the next 90 days
  • 5 Ways to automate your legal marketing using technology and the Internet
  • 7 ways to find more clients fast and how to select the best ones for you
  • 2 ways to promote your firm to 100,000 people for only $100
  • 6 secrets top Rainmakers use to dominate their competition

More than 6,000 attorneys nationwide have discovered the secrets to building a lifestyle law practice through effective law firm marketing that is providing them with significantly greater income and the time to enjoy it all:

"I am extremely thankful I met Stephen Fairley and that I attended his Rainmaker Retreat.  I more than doubled my firm's annual revenue in the year since attending the Rainmaker Retreat and implementing Stephen's marketing program.  If you are willing to do the work, Stephen definitely has a proven method of driving new business into your firm.”-- Gordon R. Levinson, Esq. (Levinson Law Group, Carlsbad, CA).

“I stayed for the entire two days and came home with 19 action items, specific tips, tools and techniques I could immediately put into practice. Most of those action items are up, running and contributing to my bottom line. My partner and I are looking to net double our best year ever, by July 1.  The strategies and techniques taught at the Rainmaker Retreat are some of the tools that assist me to move to the next level of financial success.” – John Bisnar, Founder, Bisnar Chase (California Catastrophic Injury and National Auto Defect Attorneys)

Each day is filled with sessions (with built-in Action Steps and Action Groups) to guide you in putting these law firm marketing strategies into practice immediately. You will leave Scottsdale with a specific plan – uniquely suited to you and your firm – that will help you to create a successful and highly satisfying legal practice!

Register today to reserve your place at the next Rainmaker Retreat in Scottsdale on May 21-22.

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Exclusive Rainmaker Retreat Preview Call – Learn Before You Go!

If you want to learn more about the Rainmaker Retreat and why it is a proven legal marketing system that has helped over 6,000 attorneys find more and better clients, then register now for our one-hour complimentary teleseminar.

Hosted by Rainmaker Institute CEO Stephen Fairley, this teleseminar will give you a preview of the valuable material that is taught at our 2-day Rainmaker Retreat as well as teach you:

  • How to Avoid the Most Deadly Marketing Mistakes Attorneys make
  • 3 powerful strategies you must put into action in your practice immediately
  • How to set yourself apart from your major competitors
  • Secrets top attorneys are using to generate more referrals right now…
  • How attorneys are winning even in this economy by implementing this proven 8-step system

Sign up now for one of these upcoming one-hour teleseminars:

Wednesday, May 5, 2010
11am-12pm Pacific | 12-1pm Mountain | 1-2pm Central | 2-3pm Eastern

Thursday, May 13, 2010
4-5pm Pacific | 5-6pm Mountain | 6-7pm Central | 7-8pm Eastern

Tuesday, May 18, 2010
3-4pm Pacific | 4-5pm Mountain | 5-6pm Central | 6-7pm Eastern

Join us and learn why the Rainmaker Retreat is the one law firm marketing boot camp you cannot afford to miss!
 

Legal Marketing: Six Keys to Becoming a Recognized Expert

Part 1 of 6   

Disclaimer: When I use the word “expert” or “specialist” in this series, I’m not talking in the legal or ethical sense, but in the marketing sense where the goal is to get media and/or prospects to perceive you as an expert or specialist.

How many times have you read a news item quoting a competitor and thought, “I know more than that guy!  Why are they interviewing him?”

I’m going to tell you why by sharing with you some of the strategies that top Rainmakers use all across the country to position themselves as leading experts in their market area.

The first key to becoming a recognized expert is the strategic use of Press Releases.

There are a number of fallacies or myths about press releases. One is that press releases just don’t work for small law firms.  We beg to differ.

We recently had a small law firm that sent out their very first press release on the hot topic of identity theft.  A major newspaper picked it up and they got interviewed for the article. 

Because of that article, they landed dozens of new clients over a 30-day period and the newspaper even called them one of the leading Southern California lawyers on identity theft. Those are things you just can’t buy – and it happened from a press release.

There is another reason to use press releases and this is one that is incredibly powerful:  to boost your online presence.

Google loves press releases and we’ve been able to use that to get fantastic results. I’ve literally issued a press release at 9 a.m., and by 5 p.m. the press release has already been indexed by Google and shown up within the top 10-20 positions.

Now you may be thinking, what do I write it about? It could be about a number of different things:

  • Commentary on current news events
  • Legal decisions that potentially affect your community
  • Results of a poll or a survey you conduct among clients
  • Firm news such as new associates, awards, community involvement, etc.

You want to make sure that there is an angle to it and that there’s something that’s different. In fact, some of the best coverage we’ve gotten from press releases has been when we’ve taken a contrarian view.

For attorneys we coach in our Practice Made Perfect program, we recommend at least one press release per month. If you’re a growing practice, then we recommend that you distribute two, three, even four a month to really jumpstart your online marketing efforts.

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Attend Phoenix Legal Networking Group Meeting on May 6 to Learn 7 Strategies to Recession Proof Your Law Firm!

On Thursday, May 6, Stephen Fairley will address the inaugural meeting of the Phoenix Legal Networking Group, a group of solo and small firm attorneys looking to effectively market their law firm and grow their business.

Stephen will be presenting the 7 Strategies to Recession Proof Your Law Firm.  This presentation will explain why some attorneys are having their best year ever when others are struggling to even survive.  He will tell you:

  • The secrets top Rainmakers are using in this economy
  • What’s working now and what's not
  • The #1 thing you need to do right now that will fix your cash flow problems
  • Why you need to market differently
  • How to easily track all your marketing efforts

The event will be held from 4-6 p.m. this Thursday at the Country Inn and Suites on Scottsdale Road, approximately 15 minutes from downtown and the airport.  Cost is only $15 per person.

To register for this seminar, co-hosted by FindLaw, Attorney at Law Magazine and The Rainmaker Institute, click here.