By: Shaun Buck
Have you ever stopped to think about what perfect marketing would look like for a law firm and what new-client goal just about every law firm should be striving for? When I pose this question to a live audience of lawyers, they typically answer with a number of new clients they want each month or year. But even if I could wave a magic wand and make all the marketing magically work to get all of those new clients, their answer would still be wrong. Your goal should be for every new client to bring a friend. That is the utopia of marketing.
Think about it for a second. How much easier will it be if you decide you want 80 new clients a month, figure out how to get them, and simply stop nearly all marketing. Why? Those 80 clients each refer a friend, who in turn refers their friends, and the cycle just continues, month in and month out. All you have to worry about is giving great customer service and being a great lawyer. In 1980, there was one lawyer in the U.S. for every 394 Americans. In 2013 (the last year the numbers were readily available), there was one lawyer in the U.S. for every 250 Americans. The speed with which we are adding lawyers to the marketplace is 58 percent greater than the speed with which the population of the country is growing, which is why you’ve seen a shift in how lawyers have to market.
The vast majority of law firms look at marketing incorrectly, and it’s highly likely you look at marketing for your firm incorrectly as well. Many firms feel the goal is to figure out how get the maximum number of new clients in the front door each month, and when the month is over, start the process over. To be blunt, that sucks.
I learned long ago that when the vast majority of any group is going one way, I’d be well-served to go the opposite direction. This case is no different.
The goal for any law firm should be the utopia we talked about earlier, where each new client brings a friend, who also becomes a client. Think about this idea for a second. If that happens, you’ll only have to figure out how to get the monthly goal number of new clients once. Say you want 100 new clients, and set up a system that brings in 10 new clients a month. If each of those clients refers a friend, in 10 months, you’ll have 100 new clients coming in the door, month in and month out, for a fraction of the cost most firms spend to acquire that many new clients.
Your competition will be dumbfounded by how you are managing to pull in so many new cases and grow so fast, which only makes this type of marketing more fun.
So how do you get each new client to bring a friend?
It starts with relationship marketing.
Let’s walk through a normal attorney-client relationship. For the sake of this article, we will assume you’re a PI attorney. The client engages your firm, your firm does an amazing job, and you settle the case for double what the client had walked in asking for. You shake the client’s hand, tell them how happy you are for them, and now you’re off to the help your next client.
So why don’t they ever refer? When they have other cases, why don’t they come back?
The answer is simple, really. It is impossible for someone to refer you or become a repeat customer if they don’t know who you are, what you do, and that you’re still in business.
The killer of any relationship is time. Think about it in your personal life. Can you name all the people in your fourth-grade class? Of course not. Too much time has passed. Now let’s imagine for a minute that you chatted with each of your fourth-grade classmates once a month. How strong would those relationships be then?
So, the reason people don’t refer is a lack of relationship marketing. Of course, I’m not suggesting that you chat with every past client every month, but step one is staying in contact with past clients.
What is the single best way to keep in touch and build relationships with past clients? Most people guess email marketing, but that also is incorrect. Email marketing is a good piece of media and shouldn’t be ignored, but the average email from a business never even gets read. The average open rate, as of July 1, 2015, for professional services stands at 21.21 percent. To put that in prospective, the open rate is slightly below the average open rate for political emails — 22.8 percent, also as of July 1, 2015.
The single best media to use for the foundation of relationship marketing is direct mail. According to the USPS, 81 percent of households read their direct mail daily.
If direct mail is better at building relationships, that begs the question, what type of direct mail? The single best relationship and referral piece out there is a monthly print newsletter. Done properly, nothing builds better relationships, keeps you more top of mind, gets opened and read more, and drives referrals better.
The challenge with a newsletter is the same as with any other type of media; there is a right way to do it and a wrong way. Most people use newsletters incorrectly. The three biggest mistakes I see businesses make with their newsletters are …
- Making it all about the firm. Most of you don’t need to prove to past clients or referral sources that you’re a good lawyer; they already know that. So, boring them with case law isn’t going to win you any points. It’s going to put them to sleep.
- They don’t get personal. We are talking about building relationships with people, and you can’t do that if you never get personal with them. You need to peel back the curtain on your life a little, open up, and help them connect with you.
- They don’t realize that the money is in the list. Who you send the newsletter to is very important. You don’t want to go back to the very first case in your 20-year history as a firm and send to that guy. It’s unlikely he knows who you are anymore. Getting the list right can be worth its weight in gold.
If you are looking for the utopia of legal marketing or if you want each client to bring a friend and come back when they need a lawyer again, you must start with relationship marketing. And a good relationship marketing campaign starts with a print newsletter.
About the Author:
Shaun Buck has been a successful serial entrepreneur for almost two decades. He currently owns and operates Newsletter Pro, based out of Boise, Idaho. The Newsletter Pro has only been operating since 2011, but it has rapidly grown into the nation’s largest newsletter company, mailing millions of newsletters annually. For more information, or to inquire about getting your own custom newsletter, please visitwww.thenewsletterpro.com
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The Yellow Pages is still alive and kicking.
Yes, believe it or not, businesses are still advertising in the book that we all thought became obsolete after the advent of the internet.
It is still popular in less populated, rural areas and among older individuals. Not everyone is on the internet.
You can also get in the book at bargain prices I hear.
Just something to think about.
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