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In his last blog, Robert Armstrong talked a little bit about the haphazard way most legal practices approach their marketing activities. This is a shame, since marketing truly is the lifeblood of any business, and law firms are no exception.
What if your marketing system needs an overhaul? The following five-step system can make an immediate difference in your firm’s marketing efforts:
- Write down specific, measurable, time-bound goals. These are the only kinds of goals that are truly valuable because they are the only kinds of goals that are actionable.
- Start with the end in mind.
- Find out where your firm’s revenues are now.
- Identify your revenue goal for 2012.
- Break down the categories of work you did this year, identify how much revenue you generated for each category, and determine the number of clients each category represented for your firm.
- List your 2012 revenue goal for each category.
- Divide that number by 12 to get a monthly revenue goal.
- Identify how many clients you’ll need per month to meet the revenue goal for each specific category.
- Play the body count game – how many people do you have to be in front of to reach the numbers you wrote down for Rule 2? The more people who attend one of your seminars, read your marketing materials, or otherwise come into contact with you as part of your marketing strategy, the more clients you’ll ultimately have by the end of the year. It all boils down to numbers.
- Maximize your marketing channels. You need multiple channels – forget buying a Yellow Pages ad and waiting for the clients to pour through your door. The key is to come up with a system that implements multiple marketing activities that suit your personality, your staff, and your marketing budget. A few ideas:
- Arrange seminars for prospective clients.
- Appear as a CLE speaker.
- Endorse private seminars for a local insurance agent or financial planner.
- Publish radio or television ads.
- Send out monthly e-Alerts to your centers of influence.
- Send a three-year amendment letter to your existing estate planning clients.
- Have a family seminar to educate the children of your existing clients about estate planning.
- Schedule next year’s marketing activities now. The schedule should be on a huge plastic wall calendar where everyone in the firm can see the plan and be part of it. Then, set deadlines, delegate responsibilities to your staff, and hold everyone accountable by having weekly marketing meetings.
It sounds like a lot of work, and if you have not implemented a focused marketing strategy before now, it will take some getting used to. However, before long, you’ll begin to reap the rewards of planning your marketing and taking steps to stay on track. Trust me, the rewards are extraordinary!
Sanford M. Fisch
CEO & Co-Founder
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
How do you build lasting relationships with your clients and make sure they don’t see you as just the provider of an ink-on-paper commodity?
One way to do this is to keep in regular communication, with routine “touches” throughout the year. At the Academy, we find that it’s ideal to make contact with clients twelve times per year. It would be a little odd for your estate planning attorney to call you every month or to send you an email, like clockwork, every few weeks. However, there are a variety of ways to provide value to your clients and remain in regular contact with them. Things like:
- Newsletters, both paper and electronic
- Estate Plan Review Invitations
- Client Appreciation Events
A number of our Member firms also have a Client Advisory Board. They invite 6 to 10 loyal clients into the office every quarter to get feedback and to find out what additional services those clients would like the firm to provide.
Using strategies like these to stay in touch with your clients sets the stage for you to have lifetime and even multigenerational clients. Eventually, you’ll meet the children of your existing clients and have the opportunity to win their trust and loyalty. Before long, they will be clients as well.
You want to be viewed as the trusted advisor for the entire family. By remaining in contact through valuable information that is of interest to them, you continue to nurture the relationship as well as be visible and relevant. Make sure you do everything possible to be the sounding board and problem solver most are looking to rely upon.
In your experience, what are the most effective ways to keep in touch with your clients?
Sanford M. Fisch
CEO & Co-Founder
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
A funny thing happens when you really start marketing your law firm. Suddenly, there are a lot more people coming in for initial consultations, and they don’t automatically hire you. They’re sizing you up and interviewing you.
Two Ears, One Mouth
It’s at this point that we as estate planning attorneys might want to heed the words of Greek philosopher Epictetus, who said, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
Perhaps more than other people, lawyers like to hear themselves talk and it’s a problem when the lawyer talks more than the client in an initial consult. Yet that’s what usually happens. We’re so used to being the “answer man or woman” that it requires a whole new skill to stifle ourselves long enough to really hear about the client’s needs.
The Secret
The secret to converting a prospect into a client is to use the initial consult to show off your skills as a great counselor. You cannot – I repeat cannot– effectively counsel someone until you understand what their problems, concerns, and issues are.
We’ve found that attorneys tend to have trouble converting prospects to clients because of how they handle client meetings. Doing things like talking too much, talking about things that are really of no interest to the clients, and not asking great questions are ways to guarantee your first meeting will also be your last.
Know What to Listen For
Just as important as asking great questions is listening carefully to the answers. That’s how you find out where the problems and issues are and delve into them. Learn what the impact is if those issues aren’t handled in a timely manner. What are your clients’ fears and concerns? How important is it for them to handle their issues right now? Where do these issues rank on their priority list?
Your job is to help families make decisions that are in their best interests. Discussing things in this manner gets results because it leaves clients feeling like you really heard them and like you really understand what matters to them.
Try this approach and you’ll become a trusted advisor, and you’ll have a client for life.
Robert Armstrong
President & Co-Founder
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
Did you know that there are only three ways to expand your business? Here they are, in a nutshell:
- Have your existing clients buy new services
- Increase the fees your clients pay
If you want your firm to grow, you need to be doing all three. And you should have a system in place for each of them, rather than engaging in a few random marketing activities here and there.
What kinds of systems am I talking about? Systems for:
- Acquiring referrals from centers of influence
- Acquiring referrals from existing clients
- Going directly to the marketplace to seek new clients
- Making efficient, intelligent use of the internet to find new clients
- Attracting new clients through image building public awareness and PR efforts
- Positioning clients for additional services they may need
- Positioning the value of your services for increased fees
The tool that will enable you to organize and implement these systems is what we call a Marketing Calendar. This is your law firm marketing blueprint for the year.
Consistent growth is not automatic, and marketing is not an innate skill for most attorneys. It’s something we need to learn about and keep learning about. As the heads of our firms, we need to be the ones leading the charge when it comes to marketing. A good place to start is by deciding which of the three areas you want to focus on, which systems you want to use, and getting started on that detailed Marketing Calendar.
Sanford M. Fisch
CEO & Co-Founder
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
Sanford Fisch recently blogged about finding your primary aim: creating a detailed picture of the lifestyle you want, encompassing your work and personal life as well as your involvement in the community. Once you’ve painted this vivid portrait of your ideal life, how do you bring it into being?
The next step is finding your firm’s strategic objective; in other words, creating a picture of the business you want to have that will generate the net revenue to support your ideal life. Not a daydream or a pipe dream – a detailed picture complete with milestones for accomplishing clearly defined goals. Where to begin?
Decide on your practice area. Will you focus on estate planning? What types of estate planning – basic, intermediate, or advanced? Will you include elder law, asset protection planning, pet planning, or lgbt planning? What about the myriad other areas of focus now in demand by estate planning clients?
Assign a number to the amount of revenue you want to generate. Think about what geographic area you’ll cover. Will you have one office? Will you have a satellite office? What will your offices look like, inside and out? How many employees will you have?
How will clients find out about your practice? How will they feel when they walk into your office? When they interact with you and your employees? What will your law firm’s relationship be with the people and other businesses in your community?
Take time to think in detailed terms about what your firm will look and feel like. By the time you’re finished, you should have a rich and detailed portrait of the law firm you want to bring to life. Then, you’ll be ready for the next step – mapping out an organizational strategy for your business. We’ll cover that in a future blog!
Robert Armstrong
President and Co-Founder
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
Here Are Critical Questions to Ask and the Tell-Tale Signs (Part III)
- Are all of their services done in-house? This is a big one and a critical question. If they sub-out all, most, or any of your mailing there is automatically a higher risk to you because there is no quality control. They may not have the expertise, or no infrastructure to support. You are now paying a middle-man, and you are asking for trouble with so many hands in the pot.
- Will my mailings have a local feel to them and will they include personalization to be more effective? Many small printers and letter shops do not have the latest equipment to produce good quality personalized mailings. To be more effective and stand out from your competitors, you mail has to have your local address and it needs to have your prospect’s name personalized throughout your letter, not just on the address block. Laser Personalization equipment (made by Xerox and Kodak) is expensive but well worth it to the professional marketing companies that understand the importance of better response rates and your image.
- What other clients or industries do you work with? You will get some insight from who else they work with by their answers because they may be merely printers and not marketers; advertisers and not ‘sales’ promotion oriented or they are a list company not a true direct marketing organization.
- Are the samples of your mailing sent to me from the beginning of the run? Many companies, to save money and cut corners, change the stock of your mailer once they get past the initial part of the production run. This saves them money by using inferior materials (paper and envelopes) for the rest of your mailing. You mailing now arrives in pretty bad shape in the mailbox after that cheap material goes through the rigorous postal delivery machinery, processing and handling. Do you care about your image? You need to. It is the first impression you make to your prospective clients.
- Do you offer personalized letters vs. postcards? If you ask any professional direct marketers or attend any of the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) tradeshows, you will learn that letter packages are the most effective and the most widely used direct mail format in the marketplace. Do you ever see single postcards at Hallmark stores? No, you see greeting cards that get mailed in an envelope. It’s more personal that way. Statistically, invitation or letter packages yield better results; historically about twice as many reservations. Your marketing material is the first contact with your target audience. This is where the consumer population begins to form an image of you and your company. Postcards are just not perceived to be as professional with consumers. Everything important, personal or confidential arrives in your mailbox concealed in an envelope. Our goal is for your seminar invitation to be received as personal mail and not perceived as ‘junk mail’ or an advertisement.
Jorge Villar is President of Response Mail Express (RME), with more than 26 years of direct marketing experience, he is known in several industries for his ability to create mail packages that garner the highest response rates. He is responsible for the Seminar Success program that, for the last 17 years has accounted for more than 65% of the events being held in the nation with over 14 million individuals making reservations. Mr. Villar has also been very successful marketing to physicians and business owners regarding Success Planning and Asset Protection. Response Mail Express, and parent company DME, is a $100+ million marketing powerhouse, housing over 600 employees in their 2 state-of-the-art facilities in Florida. Their marketing ideas are presently being utilized by over 10,000 clients, including: top producing advisors, estate planning attorneys, large financial organizations, health care organizations, universities and many other industries. Mr. Villar is a frequent key note speaker at national financial symposium and training conferences.
Academy Guest Blogger
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
Email marketing can be a valuable, low-cost tool to help you keep in touch with your clients as well as potential clients. But it has to be managed in accordance with the email industry’s established rules and “best practices.” Perhaps the most important thing to pay attention to is your list itself.
If you haven’t been keeping your list clean via monthly updates or if you have a list but you haven’t used it in, say, nine months or so, your emails could get labeled as spam. This can result in your ISP (internet service provider) blocking your emails from being delivered. This can also damage your “reputation” in the minds of the ISPs, since they assign a score to you which is akin to a consumer credit score.
Here are some tips to help you with building, then managing, your email list.
- If your email list is old, meaning you haven’t used it in the last nine months or so, it’s time to clean things up. Assuming that all of your email contacts have “opted in” (given permission for you to email them), consider using an email delivery service that boasts a high delivery percentage and reports on the open rates as well as bounced rate. Disable the email address in contact records that opt out or bounce back.
- If you’ve been sending emails regularly (every month or two) and you haven’t had any spam complaints, your list is probably OK. Presumably, these people have opted in to receive your emails, which of course is a best practice. Best rule of thumb is, as mentioned above, remove all the opt outs and bounce backs to keep your list as clean as possible.
- The old adage, “it’s better to ask forgiveness than it is permission” does NOT ring true with email! Get creative when it comes to getting permission to communicate with the email herd you build. Generally, getting permission from clients or prospective clients at speaking engagements (by offering a newsletter or the delivery of some other valuable information) or offering something of value on your website that requires permission in order to deliver what you offered—is the easiest way to obtain permission.
Remember, your list is a valuable asset. Manage it accordingly, keep it clean, set systems in place to add to the list whenever you can, and deliver your emails as promised in terms of frequency and value-added content.
Jennifer Price
Director, Member Services
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
I spent an hour or so a couple weeks ago talking to an attorney who focuses on Pet Planning. She is quite successful in her efforts and I wanted to know more about how she attracted such a great flow of business. There were no huge secrets in what she had to say:
- Be passionate about the pet niche or any other niche you are making an effort to serve. Be clear about what the estate planning challenges, needs and solutions are for the niche. It’s also very important to identify exactly what it is about the niche that causes you to connect to the needs people in that niche are worried about.
- Connect with referral sources. In the case of the Pet Niche, are you making the professionals who work at the Humane Society, training or grooming providers or Rescue Shelters easier in some way. Find something that you do, that could take a little of their load off and provide it. Help them understand what you do. Ultimately, in addition to referrals, they can feature you as a guest speaker on the estate planning topic that they need to hear more about.
- Go back through your existing clients and educate them on this new or renewed focus you have for the niche you’re passionate about.
- Make the topic part of your consultation. Look at your Client Intake Forms and customize a corner or add a few questions about whether this prospective client has a pet, how many, what kind, how old are they, what’s the plan for them down the road… you’re guaranteed to find the person lights up and talks more about their pets that they often do their children!
Let your prospective clients, clients and centers of influence catch a glimpse of what you find important. Be human and take an extra moment to share a SMALL bit about why it is you have such a soft spot for the same thing they do.
Jennifer Price
Director, Member Services
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
Social media sites make it easy to brand your business. Unlike traditional forms of marketing, social media marketing allows you to instantly communicate your message to your prospects. It is with this ease of use that can also get you into a PR nightmare. Would you know what to do if someone in your office makes an offensive or inappropriate social post? More importantly, how do you react if someone in your social network sees that post and reports you? It’s time you learn the Social Media Playbook for how to handle Social Media PR blunders.
Step 1: The best offense is a good defense. If you make a mistake, and people see it, own up to it. The best thing about social media is that it provides for a quick communication turnaround time. Get right into the conversation and apologize if anyone was offended.
Step 2: Offense sells tickets, but defense wins games. Your social media offense comes in the form of the updates you make to your social media profiles, and it’s gotten you a certain number of fans. But make a bad defensive move, and you can lose a fan, follower or connection. Even when you stand by your post, insulting or arguing with your social media prospect or customer is the fastest way of losing a point in the social media marketing game.
Step 3: Pain is only temporary but victory is forever. Addressing this social media blunder internally will help avoid future social media disasters. Talk to your staff about what you consider appropriate material for your social media marketing updates. Also, it is important that the staff you designate this responsibility to is well versed in the laws and policies of each social media accounts you are utilizing.
Step 4: Stick to the game plan, but audible when necessary. Having an internal game plan for social media marketing and sticking to it is the key to victory. But sometimes, calling an audible is a necessary part of the game (most of us know in football terms, this means calling a play on the fly). Social media allows people to publish instantly and with ease. It’s important not to let the approval process slow you down from responding to an URGENT social media matter. A simple apology or acknowledgement can go a long way.
Step 5: Practice makes perfect. Don’t be afraid to get in the game. The more your post, the more familiar you’ll get with the social media landscape, and the less likely you’ll find yourself in a social media PR nightmare.
Vera Galace
SEO & Social Media Manager
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com
Survey Shows 43% of Past Seminar Producers Quit Seminar Marketing Due to Poor Conversion Skills
I recently reviewed results from outbound survey calls to financial professionals who conducted seminars in the past 4 years – but who have since stopped using seminars – and identified “Conversion” (converting seminar attendees to appointments) to be the biggest single reason for discontinuing the use of Seminars for Prospecting.
From the very first seminar campaign in 1992, I told financial professionals that seminar attendees were a different kind of prospect than those who replied to a typical direct mail letter or yellow page ad. Back then, the social seminar concept – what we now call the SeminarSuccess Program – was so new to both the financial world and consumers that conversion wasn’t a big challenge.
Over the past 10-plus years, consumers by the millions have filled private dining rooms and hotel conference rooms across the country to meet and listen to financial professionals talk about every facet of financial, estate and tax planning. But, as with any industry, competition turned the “social event” concept from an opportunity for an advisor to talk with and meet and set appointments their ideal prospects to the consumer seizing the opportunity to ‘shop’ for a new financial professional – or at least look for a second opinion.
This change in the perception and behavior of the seminar-attending public, coupled with the results of the producer survey, was the primary motivation we created SeminarSuccess University (SSU). This 2 ½ day program in Tampa, FL, is taught by long-time seminar producer, author and instructor, Frank Maselli. SSU has already made a big difference in the lives of past graduates.
In preparation for this month’s blog, I called Frank to get his thoughts on why SSU has been so successful. He said, “In my follow-up calls with SSU students, I’m hearing one success story after another. It’s not saturation or competition or even compliance that was the big obstacle to being a successful seminar marketer – it was conversion.”
The key to conversion is understanding your audience – and that’s what Frank teaches at SSU – how to leverage the emotional dynamic that occurs in every seminar to make an attendee WANT to sit down with you for a consultation.
No one converts one-hundred percent of their attendees, but at SSU, Frank (with over 5,000 public seminars under his belt himself) teaches financial professionals how to increase the percentage of those who will set appointments and how to convert their post-seminar prospects to clients.
Think about the top athletes in almost every sport. They ALL still search out help from trainers and coaches to help improve their game and skill set. To be honest, I don’t care where you go to get the extra training necessary to help improve your conversion skills – just do it!
For more information about SeminarSuccess University and Frank Maselli, go to: www.seminarsuccessuniversity.com
Jorge Villar is President of Response Mail Express (RME), with more than 26 years of direct marketing experience, he is known in several industries for his ability to create mail packages that garner the highest response rates. He is responsible for the Seminar Success program that, for the last 17 years has accounted for more than 65% of the events being held in the nation with over 14 million individuals making reservations. Mr. Villar has also been very successful marketing to physicians and business owners regarding Success Planning and Asset Protection. Response Mail Express, and parent company DME, is a $100+ million marketing powerhouse, housing over 600 employees in their 2 state-of-the-art facilities in Florida. Their marketing ideas are presently being utilized by over 10,000 clients, including: top producing advisors, estate planning attorneys, large financial organizations, health care organizations, universities and many other industries. Mr. Villar is a frequent key note speaker at national financial symposium and training conferences.
Academy Guest Blogger
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Ave Ste 300
San Diego, CA 92123
858-453-2128
www.aaepa.com
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