Advertising can be expensive and seemingly unrewarding. As
an attorney, I can tell you that personal injury attorneys
all over the country are frustrated. Jurors are more
conservative. Competition is up. State bar ethics rules are
increasing, not decreasing, restrictions on lawyer
advertising. To top it off, lawyers have never been taught
how to market their services.
Here are eleven major mistakes that personal injury lawyers
make with their advertising.
1. Failing to make a decision as to what the perfect
business and perfect customer look like. You can't develop
a marketing plan (or purchase advertising media such as
Yellow Page ads, TV commercials or websites) without
understanding where you are going. What does your perfect
client look like? What do you want your law practice to
look like? The correct answer to the question "why do you
want to spend any money on marketing?" should not
necessarily be, "more cases." Not drawing at least a mental
picture of what it is you are after with your practice is
like getting on an airplane and saying "take me anywhere."
2. Failing to accept that marketing and practice building
is the most important thing you can do in your law firm -
look around. Is it only the best lawyers, real estate
agents, doctors in your town who get the best business?
Just being good at what you do doesn't cut it anymore.
Isn't it frustrating to see a lawyer whose has never tried
a case get better clients than you do and then brag about
it later? By understanding how to market effectively you
put yourself into a position to see more cases from which
you can choose the ones that match your "perfect customer"
profile.
3. Thinking That Copying What Other Lawyers Are Doing With
Their Marketing Will Get You A Better Result. Earl
Nightingale, one of the world's foremost experts on what
makes people successful, had some good advice for lawyers
and other business owners who want to market their
practices. He said, (and yes, I am paraphrasing) that if
you wanted to learn a new skill in business, and you had no
mentor or guide you could trust, that the best thing you
could do was figure out what everyone else was doing and
then do the opposite. The majority is, at best, average. So
it is with marketing.
4. Ignoring the Gold In Your Files Right Now. It costs at
least ten times a much to obtain new customers as to keep
in contact with old clients and indeed, everyone who
contacts you. Your files are filled with names of folks who
know you. Those folks generally have at least 50 other
friends in their "circle of influence." (Read How to Close
Every Sale, by Joe Girard.) Personal injury lawyers are
happy to spend thousands on Yellow Page and TV marketing
while ignoring completely those who they already have some
relationship with.
5. Failing to capture the name of every new person who
indicates that he/she is interested in what you have to
say. Lawyers spend thousands on generating new leads
(potential client inquiries) yet never market back to the
cases they don't accept. In most offices that's MOST of the
new inquiries. Yet this is a goldmine of people that you
can directly market to in the future. You can't rely on the
fact that if they or someone they know needs your services
or products that they will remember you tomorrow because
they called you once in the past.
6. Failing to get ahead of the marketing curve. How many
lawyers spend any time trying to start a relationship with
a potential client BEFORE that person has a problem? Most
personal injury lawyers view marketing as reactionary. That
is, the relationship starts once a person is injured and
they start trying to find a lawyer. How about if you
offered a good reason for people to call you BEFORE they
get hurt (good quality information on how to buy car
insurance comes to immediate mind), BEFORE they need you.
Once they raise their hand they are inviting a relationship
and giving you permission to directly market to them as
frequently as you can afford to. If you can develop a
"herd" of people that listen to you before they have need
you, they won't be looking in the Yellow Pages after they
have an accident or need your product.
7. Being an advertising "victim"-most business owners think
about their advertising and marketing plan the 30 minutes
or so before the Yellow Page rep comes walking through the
door. They don't do any independent research or study. They
follow the crowd because "it must be working or else
everyone else wouldn't be doing it." If it doesn't work
they then take the Yellow Page rep's advice to "buy more,
and use color." A real sign that you are an "advertising
victim" is that you allow the Yellow Page rep to design
your ad. This is usually a huge mistake. Think about
it--the goal of the Yellow Page rep is not to make your ad
beat all the other ads in the book.
8. Failure to accurately measure results—do this
test. Ask anyone who spends a lot money on advertising
exactly how much revenue is returned (ROI-return on
investment) they get from a particular TV spot. Better yet,
ask the folks running double truck (huge, 2 page) ads
inside the Yellow Pages how much revenue those pages
generate vs. the outside back cover they are also buying.
They won't be able to answer that question. Would you buy
mutual fund without demanding a specific accounting of
actual results? 9. Failure to develop a referral
system--the best clients come to you with good cases and
they are pre-sold on you. Strange as it may seem, clients
don't always know how to refer. The lawyers who really
understand marketing have figured out ways to have current
friends and customers refer new consumers to them BEFORE
they need an attorney. Developing good consumer information
products and backing it up with an interesting firm
newsletter that it consistently mailed is a terrific way
to greatly expand your referral base without using high
priced TV marketing.
10. Failure to Diversify Your Marketing-"one" is a very
dangerous number. Don't forget to see what other industries
are doing. There are lots of media out there, for example,
media not traditionally used by lawyers. While most lawyers
think in terms of Yellow Pages, TV and websites,
sophisticated lawyer marketers understand and also use low
cost coupon media, postcards and free standing inserts. The
key is to choose media that is relatively easy to test and
then to measure results.
11. Trying to Win the Advertising Game by "Shouting
Louder"—Most injury lawyers try to differentiate
themselves in print and TV media by simply spending more
money to "shout louder." This is accomplished by buying
more color, more space, or more TV as spots. The two fold
problem of this approach is that (1) it's an expensive way
to run a business and (2) there will always be someone who
can spend more than you can.
Personal injury lawyers need to learn to "make a different
kind of noise" with their marketing.
----------------------------------------------------
Ben Glass is a personal injury attorney in Fairfax,
Virginia. He is the creator of the Ultimate Personal Injury
Practice Building Toolkit. He runs mastermind and coaching
groups, and conducts marketing seminars for attorneys,
teaching "Effective, Ethical and Outside the Box Marketing."
No comments:
Post a Comment