If I was going to start a Solicitors Practice next year, I know that I could put in place systems in the first 12 months to make sure that I was kept busy with all of the clients that I needed year after year. This is what I would do.

Month 1

THE most important aspect of a well marketed solicitors practice (or any business) is lead capture and a client database. If you spend any money at all generating new client enquiries it is vital that from day one you have a system in place to capture the names and addresses of your prospects and clients.

If you think about your prospects, whilst many of them will have an instant need for your services, there are countless others who will be thinking about instructing a solicitor in the near future and researching which one to choose. Whether they are doing this online or offline, if you offer them some free information to help them find out more about their subject matter of interest, you can capture their name, address or email address and then keep communicating with them. This will increase your chances of turning your prospect into a paying client manifold than if you just have only one phone call with them.

My recommendation for a simple start is Email Marketing Software AWEBER.

Month 2

Now that you have a lead generation system in place I would start to drum up some new prospects for your practice. Now if I assume that you are starting from scratch you will not yet have a website in place. Therefore, I would rely on the proven, traditional method of newspaper advertising. It still works, in some cases incredibly effectively.

Once again, I would offer something free to your prospects in return for their contact details so that you can communicate with them more than once, giving you many opportunities to extoll the virtues of your services. ‘Download this free report on Home Information Packs’, ‘Wills – Your Comprehensive Free Guide’, ‘Small Business Start Up Guide’ etc. More and more information is given away free by many businesses. This allows you to prove your expertise before your clients invest in your services. One you have added them to your database you can use a system like The Email Marketing Software above to deliver several emails at regular intervals about their chosen subject matter.

Month 3

It is time to ensure your website is live now. Even if your clients hear about you by recommendation, the first thing the majority of them will do is to look at your website to find out more about you.

Your website must be client focused and explain how you are going to help your clients with their legal problems/matters better than the competition. It needs to talk about features and not benefits, i.e. explain how your expertise will benefit your clients. The content on your website has to be all about your clients. Most Solicitors’ Practices do not understand this and will explain how they have been “In Private Practice since 1853”. Who cares? If you review a page or statement on your website and can repeat those two words after you have done so, you need to go back to the drawing board and start again. Your copy has to be all about your clients, their needs, their concerns and their pain and how you are the right firm to help them.

The other point to remember is that you should only have OPPP – One Purpose Per Page. For each page try and achieve only one objective, this could be to obtain your clients name and email address, or to impart more information by clicking a link at the end of the page, or to complete your enquiry form. Too many websites try and achieve too many results.

Month 4

Now that you have a client focused website you need to generate some visitors to your website as quickly as possible. This is where our friends at Google can help your business.

Pay Per Click advertising sends targeted visitors looking for your services to your website at the exact time that they are ready to buy.

Read that again as it summarises why Pay Per Click (PPC) is incredibly effective and should be an important part of your marketing communications.

PPC advertisements appear either in the top three positions of Google’s search engine, or on the right hand side. You can tell they are PPC advertisements because they have “Sponsored Links” written beside them.

If you doubt whether they really work, please do not. They work very well, if you spend the time fine tuning them. They are the main reason why Google is now so profitable which tells you a lot.

So set up a PPC campaign promoting your services and send visitors to your website to download your free reports or request instant quotations.

Month 5

Once you have a website that is now attracting visitors you need to ensure that the content remains fresh. This works for your human visitors but it also works for Google. Both groups like to see that your website is a living, breathing and growing legal resource.

Make a plan to add at least one artice a month (preferably more but start with one). You will find that once you make this a habit it becomes easier and easier. The days when you could have a static website that never changes are well and truly gone. You need to confirm your expertise by writing articles about your subject, about you and about your practice.

Month 6

Now that you are adding these articles regularly, you need to make more use of them. Turn each of them into Press Releases for your local papers or for your ‘Niche’ publications. Entice the paper by giving them most of the story but leaving some questions unanswered. Your objective is to make the reporter pick up the telephone to speak with you about the Press Release.

Free press coverage is an excellent way of generating leads for your practice.

Month 7

Another use of these articles on your website is to rewrite them and submit them to other websites which will help you with free search engine traffic. Websites such as ezinearticles.com and submityourarticles.com will provide you with much broader coverage online and drive more traffic to your website.

Month 8

You should now have a large number of clients and prospects on your website. How often are you communicating with them? You have content from all of your articles above and they have a general interest in the law, particularly if you insert your personality and own styling into your communications.

You can provide an email only newsletter, or an email and printed format. Whichever one you choose (or even a combination of both) make sure you regularly contact your clients about non matter related legal topics.

Month 9

You need to have a full range of promotional materials to ensure that all of your clients know the many different ways that you can help them. One brochure is a bare minimum starting point. In addition to this you should also have postcards, client welcome packs, postcards and mini legal guides.

When your clients enter your premises, or receive written communications from you, they should be sent other information about your range of services. After all, you are paying for the postage already so you really should make the most of it.

Month 10

You should map out seasonal campaigns for the year for your clients and prospects and build direct mail campaigns around your targeted campaigns. For example, house purchases increase at certain times of the year, Easter and the end of year rush to move in before Christmas. More businesses start up in the New Year. What happens in your areas of law at certain times of the year that you can comment on and at the same time promote your services to your clients?

Month 11

Use video to communicate with new and existing clients. Solicitors are still often viewed as difficult to approach. Show that you are not by making short, simple, friendly videos about different areas of law. Post these on your website, on YouTube and email links out to your clients to welcome them to your practice.

Google purchased YouTube because it understands the huge power of video media. It is putting more and more video search results in its main search engine. Are you making the most of this opportunity before your competitors do?

Month 12

Use other forms of new media to reach out to more prospects and clients. Blogs are excellent for driving more targeted traffic to your website. They also make you seem much more approachable as they are more personal.

Twitter should be softly tested, remembering that your main approach or desire should be to ‘serve not sell’. Twitter is not for blatant promotion of your services but more for assisting, educating and forming partnerships.

Solicitors always used to promote their services and prove their expertise by seminars. Now that people have less time you should be using Teleseminars. These have a much broader reach and are cheaper to host.

Other things to consider include Facebook, banner advertising and Google Placement advertisements.

Is 2010 Going To Be The Year That You Create Your Perfectly Marketing Legal Practice?

Notice how a lot of what I say allows you to do one marketing activity once and use it several times. For instance, adding content to your website, turning that content into an article, placing that article on article websites and then using it for PR. Leverage should be applied to all of your marketing activities. Do it once, use it as many times as possible. In a small practice it is vital that you do this as you only have so much time to spend on marketing.

Why not make the next 12 months the year that you implement these strategies to make your Practice provide all of the new clients that you need to keep you busy every month of the year, whoever your competitors are and whatever the size of their budget.

Free Guide – 8 Ways To Win New Client Instructions

Are you using the methods ALL of my consultancy clients use successfully to generate new client instructions every month on auto-pilot? Download my free guide which will tell you:

• The fatal mistakes most solicitors make with their advertising along with a formula to use to correct them
• How to finally find out what is working for you so you can do more of what works and stop doing what is not working
• The best form of marketing for solicitors (and you will be pleased to hear it does not involve spending thousands of pounds)
• How to make more of your ‘free advertising space’ which most solicitors completely overlook
• Website marketing – what are you missing, how can you improve or even what is it?
• Creating your army of salesmen for your services
• The one tip that could instantly increase your profits with NO COST whatsoever

You have nothing to lose and much to gain, so download the guide now and start taking the action that will bring you huge rewards.

Simply enter your details below to instantly receive the free guide please remember your email address is safe with me as I will NEVER pass it on):

A Solicitor already receiving my free marketing guide and advice says:

"My main concerns before signing up for the newsletter were that all marketing companies are the same. They give financially impractical information and advice insensitive to the needs of Solicitors or in the alternative, they tell you only that which we already know – but charge a hefty fee for the pleasure.

Simply put, your newsletter is none of the above. It is obvious from reading your newsletter that the advice is sensible, practical and sensitive to the different market place of Solicitors marketing professional services. Sometimes, your newsletter is a simple kick up the rear to make us do what we know we should be doing, but don’t because "we never have the time".

The three biggest benefits of your newsletter are:

1. Practical sound advice
2. Easy to implement processes that can at worst have a small positive effect on generating new business and at best do substantially more than that for virtually zero outlay.
3. We learn something simple yet new everytime we see your newsletter and try to implement at least one idea each time we get the newsletter. That’s a dozen gently implemented marketing processes each year. All for free.

If you are considering signing up for the newsletter I would genuinely say to you that you would be mad if you dont sign up. The newsletter is free, its a no brainer.

Solicitors are our own worst enemy, we work long hours often illogically, and dont make time for important things like sensible marketing – and then we bleat on about how we are getting squeezed and challenged by Tesco’s etc.

The future of the law is for innovators, get with the programme or be left behind – and being left behind is a slow painful demise in the legal world.

People like you Nick, make us smell the coffee and get to work. "

Shak Inayat, Penn Legal

Author: Nick Jervis

There are many examples where businesses have changed or modified their product or service and suddenly hugely increased the success of their business.

I recently used a different brand of toothpaste. I had to unscrew the plastic lid. I have been using a flip up lid for as long as I can remember and suddenly having to turn a screw top lid seemed to take ages in comparison to flipping up a lid. I did not even notice when this changed, but I noticed it seemed a lot harder to go back to the old way.

Did you ask Sky TV to allow you to pause live TV and series link the recording of your favourite programmes? I didn’t, but now that I have this I cannot imagine going back to the old way. I am now locked into Sky for the foreseeable future.

My favourite example relates to Tomato Ketchup. Heinz is the leading seller of Tomato Ketchup. It is difficult for them to take market share from their competitors because they are already the most successful brand. However, one of the reasons for their ongoing success, and a major increase in the sales of their ketchup, came about by providing their customers with something that they had not even asked for.

This comes from another excellent book from Malcolm Gladwell called ‘What The Dog Saw’.

(I strongly recommend you buy the book if you want to be provoked or challenged to think differently about your business).

One of the leaders of Heinz decided to watch customers using their products to learn how they could improve their current offering. He sat with a young family at dinner time and saw the glass bottle of ketchup (they only had glass at that time) put onto the table. The children reached for the ketchup but before they could start shaking the bottle (remember how hard that used to be?) the mother whipped the bottle away from them and said she would dispense the ketchup (no doubt to save the glass bottle smashing their plates). Instantly the man from Heinz knew that he had to get the bottles into the hands of the children so that they could control the amount of ketchup they consumed.

Plastic bottles were created and Heinz profits increased overnight as the children used more ketchup now that it did not have to be dispensed by mum or dad! This is so simple, yet before I read this story I believed that the change in bottle was just to make it cheaper than glass. The real reason was to sell more ketchup. Customers had not requested the change, but when they were given it they loved it.

If you have not read it, you really should buy ‘What The Dog Saw’.

When it comes to marketing a solicitors practice, what can you learn from these examples? What can you do to change your service to make the whole experience for your clients so much better that they cannot imagine going anywhere else for legal assistance?

How much time do you spend watching your clients consume your services? How often do you sit in on client meetings and purely observe the experience from your client’s point of view? Your fee earners should know you are not monitoring their performance but looking for ways you can make your clients’ experience of your service that much better.

With de-regulation of legal services new competitors will enter the market and do things differently. You need to beat them to it. What is your eureka ‘plastic bottle’ moment?

Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Author: Nick Jervis