I am a member of a business mastermind group. Once every couple of months I get together with this group of smart minds and we spend a day together with specific time allotted to each other’s business to take apart a current challenge, disect it and then put it back together. The power of five brains instead of one makes this a very useful and powerful process and it has had a massive impact on my business.
Our last meeting was in Edinburgh and one of my fellow group members had created a new website and he wanted our feedback on why it was not working as he had hoped and anticipated.
I should first say that this is an incredibly bright man. He has spent tens of thousands of pounds advertising his products online and made a fantastic return on his investment. In his sector he is a renowned expert.
He uses all of the methods I use to market his existing products, i.e. Google Adwords, website marketing, article marketing etc. He focuses heavily on lead generation instead of trying to dive straight in for the sale. This is very important and a very clever thing to do as with most websites for every 100 people that visit no more than two of them will actually contact you and ask for your help. In other words, 98 people will leave your website having gained no value from their visit. Therefore, if you offer them a highly relevant and attractive free report in exchange for their email address, you can then follow up the sending of that report with several more relevant and helpful emails, thereby giving yourself not just one bite of the cherry on the first visit to your website, but many more chances of success with each subsequent email that you send.
So it is fair to say my fellow masterminder knew all of this as that is he how he built his very successful business. However, his new venture was in a completely different business sector, and he made the mistake that so many business owners make. He researched the sector and in doing so he noticed that all of his competitors went straight in for the big sell, i.e. trying to sell the whole service from the first visit. Amazingly, considering his depth of knowledge, he did exactly the same as everyone else and also decided to go straight for the big sell…
Therefore, when he asked us why it was not working there was just a moment’s silence before we all ferociously berated him for making the mistake of copying his competitors. Instantly he realised what a daft mistake he had made and he is now busy correcting it.
However, I know he is not alone. So many solicitors make exactly the same mistakes. They look at where their competition advertises or how they market their services and they do exactly the same. Yet it is in looking outside of the industry and trying techniques from different sectors that you can achieve outstanding results. Doing the same as everyone else will not get you great success; trying something new might do.
In the jewellery trade prices never used to be displayed on the jewellery and they did not use posters to market their products. Gerald Ratner was the first to do so and it meant he quickly became the UK’s biggest jeweller (before the comments which cost him his position).
Try a new marketing tactic that you take from another sector, test it and see if it produces amazing results for you. If it does not, try another one, and another and another. It might take 10 attempts, but one of them will work really well. When it does, you have a good few months before your competition try and copy you.
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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".
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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
Tags: law firm marketing mistakes, legal marketing mistakes, solicitors marketing mistakes