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By: Harlan Schillinger

Where will you be on January 2nd 2019?

As a new year is dawning your marketing plan is yawning. It’s old. It’s tired. What you did in terms of marketing just last year may no longer be relevant—or aggressive enough.

Spin that to the positive, however, and the start of 2019 can be a time of strategic reflection and renewal. Take the pause you will have over the holidays and put that energy toward something great—a masterful marketing plan that will carry you through the whole year.

Keep in mind that your competitors may not even have a strategic plan. Over 90% of law firms don’t. Make that your competitive edge—and get busy. Your 2019 marketing plan should be a comprehensive document or blueprint that outlines all business advertising and marketing efforts for the coming year. It should describe tactics for accomplishing each specific marketing objective within a set time frame.

The world is changing rapidly, and the best-laid marketing plans for 2019 will be those that quickly measure the fails and successes of 2018 while seeing farther into the future. Your plan should include historical data, future predictions, current marketing position, a discussion of the target market, and a description of the methods or strategies to achieve your marketing objectives. While a marketing plan should have a formal structure to keep you accountable, it should also be held as an informal, flexible document with room for tweaking as needed.

You know what they say about the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. So, stop the insanity by looking at your marketing tactics with a whole new perspective. You must ask yourself, where you want to be next year and in five years.

To build a solid plan that’s relevant by today’s standards, you also have to dig into the really hard questions, especially in the categories of competition, intake, digital analytics, and advertising.

Competition

Start by doing a competitive analysis—a deep dive into your market for 2019. If you haven’t looked at what the competition is really executing on in a long time or even since last year, seize the moment.

Your advertising agency can help you assess your toughest competition by evaluating the effectiveness of their chosen marketing and advertising avenues. What are other lawyers in your market doing with traditional advertising, social media, content marketing and more? Just as important, though, is finding out what they’re not doing. Then use your resources to capitalize on that weakness.

If your legal advertising agency hasn’t sat down with you to work on a strategic plan that includes competitive analysis, fire them. Building a vision on knowing who’s doing what in the marketplace should be at the forefront of your marketing efforts for 2019.

Intake

When was the last time you took a hard look at your office’s intake department? If you are honest with yourself and really investigate with curiosity what you can be doing better, you will do better. We can always achieve more when we’re willing to look at the hardest parts of our businesses (usually the ones we’re in denial about, like intake).

Start with some simple yet direct inquires:

Do I even have a formal intake procedure or protocol?

Start to put the tools in place to make your intake process more consistent, streamlined and accountable.

Do I really know what I’m missing out on when it comes to intake?

If you don’t have a way to track when, where and how your calls come in, you are most certainly missing out on intake. What you don’t know, you don’t know.

Have I considered software to help me manage intake?

Intake software is a must. Pulling reports from a case management system is simply not accurate and difficult to get. It does not help you manage the Client experience. It is nor a CRM process.

Research the best system on the market to make the intake process simpler for your office to manage, track and realize ROI. Ask around. Who’s using what? How is it working? What’s new to the market?

Do I know what my true ROI is from all my marketing efforts?

If you’re not accounting for intake costs in your marketing budget, you’re guessing about ROI. You have to understand what each lead costs before you can study your firm’s true ROI.

Digital Analytics

What’s your marketing plan to reach 75 million millennials? With younger audiences living on their screens, it has better include digital marketing. Do you know how millennials act and what you have to do digitally to reach them? That’s where you should start.

Make 2019 your year to get up to speed on all the rich data and analytics you can be tracking through your digital marketing efforts. Your advertising agency can take the lead and be your guide, but don’t forget to advocate for your own marketing plan this year.

Start diving into these questions to steer your digital efforts in the right direction:

  • How often have you even looked at analytics about who’s using your website or social channels or reading your emails and eBooks?
  • How can I start to read and understand my own free reports, such as Google Analytics?
  • What are the most important diagnostic reports really telling me?
  • Can I be leveraging technology like Google Play Books to get my message out there?
  • Have I embraced social media? How can I jump in yet be strategic?

 

Advertising

While legal advertising bucks many trends, it doesn’t change the fact that in general, the state of advertising has changed in 2018. You can no longer rely solely on the sway of broadcast advertising. Your strategy must be integrated with other forms of marketing to reach more people and new audiences everywhere they are.

To get more informed, you can start to ask the hard questions of your own advertising buyers and vendors.

  • Do you really understand what your advertising agency is doing for you?
  • Have you studied what your agency did in 2018 in order to build an effective plan for 2019?
  • Have you set clear objectives and expectations for this year’s marketing plan?

If this feels like a lot of questions, there’s a reason for that. The only way forward in marketing your law firm in 2019 is to understand where you’ve been—and where you should be headed to remain relevant. Building a gutsy marketing plan starts with asking real, hard questions.

I will say it again; “What you don’t know, You don’t know.”
About the Author:

Harlan Schillinger has four decades of experience in legal advertising with a passion for legal marketing, intake and conversion.

Currently Harlan is working with and in charge of business development at Glen Lerner Injury Attorneys. With offices nationally, Glen has one of the largest and most successful plaintiff’s practices in America. The firm already takes on well over 1,600 cases a month, and Harlan is positioning the firm for even more growth.

Attorneys – Check it Out!!
If You’re Looking To Increase Your P.I. Referrals, READ THIS!!
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But wait, what if I could show you an ethical, effective way to attract injury cases from a medical practice area that service a disproportionately large group of injury victims?
Hint: According to the Insurance Research Council, approximately one-third of all motor vehicle accident victims seek treatment from these types of doctors.
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Quick Tip!!
By: David M. Ward, Esq.

Where are most of your clients coming from right now? Look at your current client list, tally up the score, and make some notes.

How many were referred by other clients? Which clients referred them? What legal issues? What did the referred client ask? What did the referring client tell them or do?

Describe what happened if you have it in your notes (and start taking notes if you don’t).

How many new clients were referred by other professionals? Write down the names of any and all referral-givers and the types of clients they’re sending your way.

How many clients found you online? What keywords did they search? What articles did they read? Which sites did they visit before finding yours?

How many came in from advertising? Which publications or sites? Which ads? Which keywords? Which headlines? Offers? What was the cost per click/per lead?

How many came from networking, speaking, writing, or other sources? Where? When? What did you say or do that led to them contacting you?

Look at last year’s new clients and cull out the same information.

Look for patterns. Figure out where most of your clients or cases are coming from. Figure out where your biggest or best clients are coming from. Calculate your highest ROI’s on marketing.

You need to know these things so you can manage and improve your marketing. Tracking numbers will tell you what to repeat and expand, and what to reduce or give up. Keeping notes will help you improve your process and your results.

If you’re getting clients now, you’re doing something right. But you can always do better.

About the Author

David Ward is an attorney and marketing consultant to attorneys. His website is The Attorney Marketing Canter where he offers a free newsletter about marketing, productivity, and personal development.

You can learn more at http://attorneymarketing.com

That’s it for this week. I’ll have a brand new issue for you this time next week. Also, if you have any questions or comments about the content in this newsletter please email me at sheisler@injurylawyermd.com 
                                                                                                       ~SHH