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3 Steps To More Clients For Solicitors Now!

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

I am writing to let you know that I have just written a new report entitled 3 Steps To More Clients Now!

It is definitely a Ronseal type report – designed to do exactly what its title suggests for you.

So if you would like some more clients, and would like to know the three things that I can almost guarantee that you are not yet doing but should be, hop over to the page below and request your free copy.

The good news is that the three steps are very easy to take and will cost you little, if anything, to implement.

Ready?

All you need to do is click here and I will send your copy to you.

Author: Nick Jervis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Law Firm Marketing (General) | No Comments »

Guest Post: What is Content Marketing?

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013

Content Marketing is very much a buzz phrase at the moment and is in fact an essential aspect of legal marketing. It’s all about creating and sharing interesting content. Your goal is not to sell your product directly but to provide valuable information to your target audience.

By delivering reliable, relevant and interesting content, you will find that you attract more online traffic and that your business will grow over time. Content marketing is not an instant fix, but part of a long-term legal marketing strategy that will lead to more cases coming your way. It is therefore well worth investing in.

As with all things online, it is an art as well as a science so here are a few basic tips to get you started with content marketing:

Legal marketing

What content?

Blogs

Blogging gets a bad press. On hearing the word, you may well be imagining legions of nerds revealing their innermost thoughts in the dank corners of the world wide web but this is not the case. Blogs are so much more and are the beating heart of content marketing. Blogs are the best way of updating your site with quality content. By posting regularly you will drive traffic to your site which in turn leads to more enquiries and more business. Blogs can be targeted to your desired audience and make full use of your legal expertise. And blogs don’t just have to be articles. In fact, the best blogs will feature the following:

  • Infographics – These are eye-catching representations of information that make facts and figures easier to process. Users are able to absorb information quickly and easily. As a visually attractive package these are also highly shareable, especially through Pinterest.
  • Images – photographs and graphic representations of data are great ways of breaking up text and making your content more enjoyable and informative
  • Videos – not everything on YouTube is animal-related or a bizarre dance craze. Videos are a great way of getting information across or illustrating a point.

Know Your Audience

Before creating any content, you must ‘become’ your audience or at the very least put yourself firmly in their shoes – what do they like? what do they find interesting? how do they like to interact with information?

Once you know your audience, you can start creating the kind of content that they will love.

Making It Relevant

By now you know the types of content that you can produce and who you are targeting, it’s time to get creating. Spend some time producing your content. If you don’t have the time, then get someone else to make the effort because the rewards are great.

If you can bash out ‘content’ in an hour then there is every chance that it is not going to be the kind of material that people will spend time reading and then sharing. It becomes pointless. The end goal of legal marketing and in turn content marketing on your site is to build more traffic and to convert that traffic into business. This will only happen with quality content and the old adage remains true, if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. Here are a few pointers:

  • Ensure that your content is unique, informative and relevant
  • Make the most of your knowledge and expertise
  • Post regularly – it is essential to update your site regularly
  • Find topics that are relevant by searching Google News for current stories or examining trending topics on Twitter
  • SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) – if you don’t know what SEO is, then find someone that does. It underpins all of content marketing.
  • Create interesting relevant headlines for skim-readers and to make people read on
  • In the legal sector ‘How to guides’ are really useful and popular
  • Copywriting is key to legal marketing but nowadays any copy in your content has to be focussed on the user experience.
  • If your content looks like an advertisement, then it will most likely be ignored. Make sure you focus on having great readable content.

Social Media

So you’ve followed the tips and produced some fantastic content. Now time to share it and watch it get shared. The better the content the more it will be shared naturally. It will make its way across the web with people sharing because you have provided useful, attractively presented, well-written content. This helps build your brand as a respected voice.

There seems to be a new addition to the social media world every day but that doesn’t mean that social networking and bookmarking is any less important. Ultimately you want your content to be seen by as many people as possible. Make full use of the following to help spread the word:

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • StumbleUpon

Content Marketing and Legal Marketing Image

It’s easy to add a whole host of easy-to-use sharing buttons to your blog posts to make it easy for people to share what they have enjoyed.

These steps may be simple but they do take time. They also represent the tip of the iceberg when it comes to legal marketing. With your time both precious and expensive, why not get in contact with us at Samson to find out exactly how we can help with legal marketing.

Author: Guest Blogger

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Posted in Law Firm Internet Marketing, Marketing Ideas | No Comments »

Have Some Fun With Your Law Firm Marketing

Monday, April 29th, 2013

I remember the Tax man’s advertisements with the theme of “Tax doesn’t have to be taxing”.

The same should apply to law firm marketing. I know that a lot of solicitors are not massive marketing fans, but they are all people, and they all have personalities, and this above everything else should help to make your marketing fun.

An often repeated but so true statement is that ‘people by people’. Now whether I have an injury and need a personal injury solicitor, I have a business and need a commercial solicitor or I am simply moving house and looking for a conveyancing solicitor, I am much more likely to choose a solicitor who I actually like as a person.

Yet so few solicitors allow their personality to come out in their marketing, instead hiding behind a fascade of ‘bland and boring’ just like every other solicitor (except the beautiful people who make up my Marketing4Solicitors group and consultancy clients of course – they completely understand the personality in law firm marketing requirements).

So if you really want to start having some success with the marketing of your law firm, allow your personality to come out and people just might like you and choose you to be their solicitor more so than they currently are doing. It has to be worth a try doesn’t it?

Author: Nick Jervis

Posted in Law Firm Marketing (General) | No Comments »

Marketing For Solicitors Is Just A Gimmick!

Monday, April 22nd, 2013

Marketing is just a fad. You pay a bit of money, do a bit of advertising, nothing really happens, nothing really changes, but you feel that you have done your bit. After all, in ever more competitive times you know that you need to do some marketing, so doing some random or ad hoc advertising ticks this box doesn’t it?

So when you receive that phone call on a Friday afternoon, offering you an amazing ‘advertising opportunity’ which has a 5pm deadline, and which if you do not seize will be grabbed by your neighbouring law firm, you have to take it don’t you? And when you discover that it costs less than £1,000, the seemingly magical cut off point when serious decision making is required, you would be mad to say no wouldn’t you?

This falls into the “We have to do something” territory that so many law firms find themselves being trapped by at the moment. They all know that they have to do something, that it really is now or never, but they often sadly do completely the wrong thing.

If you go back to my headline, that marketing is a ‘gimmick’ which I know so many solicitors believe to be the case, you can easily buy into these last minute advertising packages. I mean, you can’t treat marketing seriously like you do the law, can you?

Well of course you really must if you want to be running a successful practice for now and many years to come. And I would start doing this right now. You owe it to any staff you employ, your suppliers, your family and above all else to yourself.

You see marketing is much more similar to the law than you might at first glance imagine. It has rules and systems, for example just like a litigation case does. If you took on a dispute for a client with no prior knowledge and immediately tried to apply for a judgment, you would fail. If you just accept any offer to advertise without giving the matter some serious consideration, you are again much more likely to fail.

When you are approached my these advertising charlatans with their last minute offers, take just a few moments to run through the short check list below and you can save yourself many wasted thousands of pounds.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • How did the person selling this amazing opportunity find me (did they cold call or spam email or were they recommended)? If it was really good would they really be cold calling for new clients?
  • Have I ever heard of the publication or website before?
  • Does it target my ideal client (that assumes you know who your ideal client is too)
  • Can I measure the success of this advertisement down to the last penny and pound (if not don’t do it)
  • Can I automate the marketing so that it happens with or without my input and keeps on producing new leads?
  • Will it make me more in fees than it costs several times over

Unless and until you can answer all of these questions, you should say no to any more of those random calls selling gimmicky marketing or advertising. They resort to underhand selling tactics for a very good reason, largely because what they are selling doesn’t work (worse still is that I am sure that in some cases the publication is never actually printed).

I hate the people selling these systems, because I know that most solicitors are easy prey for the reasons that I have mentioned above. You know that you should be doing something, so they take advantage of this knowledge and sell you what anyone in the know would call ‘utter rubbish’.

This is why I have set up a section within Marketing4Solicitors called Saints And Sinners. This is where my members approach me before they spend money to see if I or others within our group have tried the company that has approached them, so that they can save themselves the time and money of investing in an advertising scheme that simply will not work.

Just think about that, you could buy one of these last minute schemes for £1,000 that produces absolutely nothing, or for just over half of that cost you can have access to Marketing4Solicitors for a year and save yourself the stress and pain of investing in these sham schemes (there is no minimum contract – just making the point that it is very reasonably priced).

Not only that, but you will be provided with a wealth of resources explaining exactly how you should be spending your hard earned marketing money to generate a steady flow of new client instructions, and then the system you can use to automate the marketing processes so that they work with or without you, month after month.

Whatever you do, please don’t waste your money on the advertising methods outlined above. Use the simple test of ‘Will I be able to track to the penny how much money I make in costs by advertising in this publication’ and if met with a negative answer, get back to doing what you do best, looking after your clients. Let the snake oil salesman snare a different solicitor that day.

To join Marketing4Solicitors for 30 days risk free, and receive over £400 worth of benefits instantly, sign up for the free guide on the form below and I will send you some more details.

Author: Nick Jervis

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Posted in Law Firm Marketing (General), Legal Marketing | No Comments »

Infographic: How to Gain New Clients Monthly On Autopilot

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013


How to Gain New Clients Monthly on Autopilot – An infographic by the team at Legal Marketing – Samson Consulting

Embed ‘How to Gain New Clients Monthly on Autopilot’ on Your Site: Copy and Paste the Code Below

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Posted in Automate Your Law Firm Marketing | No Comments »

The Recession Claims Another Business – Or Does It?

Friday, April 12th, 2013

We frequently hear of businesses closing down and all sorts of people are asked to comment on the reasons for this. I never like to hear of a business failing, but sometimes the coverage by the media and those who are supposedly in the know is just plain wrong.

Take my local restaurant, Europa in Nailsea which very disappointingly has just closed. It was an Italian Pizza/Pasta restaurant which took over the site from a well established chain called Bottelinos.

No one quite understood why Bottelinos left. A town like Nailsea needs a reasonably priced family restaurant for birthdays etc, and aside from a Wetherspoon’s pub, there really is nothing else around, so Bottelinos was always packed. It was strange that they decided to sell their lease to another similar type of establishment.

So Europa came to Nailsea, spent £50,000 renovating the site and opened to much local fanfare. But that is where it stopped. Once they opened, there were no leaflet drops, no advertising that I saw, no special promotions or offers, and no more press coverage. In this day and age no one can expect to run any business just by ‘being there’. You have to do more to convince people to spend their money with you, this applies whether you are a restaurant, an estate agent or a firm of solicitors.

Sitting there and waiting for the work to come through the door is simply not enough.

There was one other lesson to be learned from the closure of Europa Nailsea. Sadly, the food wasn’t as good as it used to be with Bottelinos. I ate their twice in three months and was disappointed both times. My family ate their once and did not want to go back when it was the next family birthday. If the quality of your service or product is not there, then it doesn’t matter if you have the best marketing in the world, you will struggle to stay in business.

I was really disappointed to see Europa close. I wanted it to succeed, because as I say Nailsea needs a good family restaurant. I feel for the owners, because of course the last thing that they wanted was for the restaurant not to be a success. Perhaps another reason that it failed was that it was following in the path of what seemed to be a really successful restaurant and perhaps it was just not given enough time.

Interestingly, I went out for a meal last night with one of my good friends Rob Ward who runs a business advising Garden Centres and farm shops how to grow their businesses – a very bright chap (Food Marketing Network). Obviously we could not go to Europa, so we went to a gastro pub in the neighbouring village of Backwell called The George (just over a mile from Europa). It was full to the brim (and on a Thursday night).

Back to the two big lessons for you. Do more to make sure people know exactly what it is that you do, and when all of the many different methods you use to promote your message start to work, make sure that you provide a great service for your clients.

If you do both of these things, you will stay in business for as long as you choose to, and you won’t have the blame the media, the recession or anyone else. You will have taken responsibility for your business and reaped the rewards.

Author: Nick Jervis

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Posted in High Street Solicitors, Law Firm Marketing (General) | No Comments »

Your Legal Expertise And Marketing A Solicitors Practice

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

If you receive a call from a client with an urgent and worrying legal problem, I expect that 9 times out of 10 you can instantly answer their question, put their mind at rest and leave them to get on with the rest of their day safe in the knowledge that you are taking care of things for them. In essence, sometimes your job is as a ‘peace of mind’ provider. I think that this is a great part of the service that you provide.

You are able to provide such ‘peace of mind’ because you are an expert in your area of law, and you enjoy helping your clients.

I experience the same sense of satisfaction (and sometimes euphoria) when a solicitor calls me because they have hit a marketing wall, around which they have no idea how to navigate. Often they must circumnavigate the wall before they can achieve the Holy Grail of a steady and consistent flow of new client instructions, so they are very keen to find a quick solution to allow them to move forwards.

So they call me, I answer their question (based on my experience of having already navigated around the wall with hundreds of other solicitors) and they can move on to creating their perfect system for attracting new clients to their practice.

They need to do this because every firm needs a system in place which works with or without them, month after month.

I am frequently told by my Marketing4Solicitors members that the ability to call me and ask for help is a huge benefit of the service. They can get from A to B so much more quickly, and without making the expensive mistakes that other solicitors who do not have access to me as a resource are making.
In this ever more competitive legal world in which we operate, moving quickly is a real advantage.

Massive!

Huge!

It is what will allow smaller firms to compete with and beat the new larger entrants to the legal services market.

Why don’t you come and join me on the inside of Marketing4Solicitors on a no risk 30 day trial and start working on your system to deliver a steady and consistent flow of new clients to you?

Add your details to the form below and I will immediately tell you how to discover more information about Marketing4Solicitors, and send you a great free report too!

Author: Nick Jervis

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Posted in Law Firm Marketing (General) | No Comments »

Why didn’t anyone tell me the easy way to market my business or your law firm?

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

Why didn’t anyone tell me?

I don’t know about you, but having been in business on my own for 10 years now, I sometimes feel frustrated that it took me quite so long to figure some things out, and this annoys me.

I am surrounded by some good friends and good business contacts, so it was not that I did not know the right people to ask, I really did. And the questions they could have helped me with would have allowed my business to grow and become more secure more quickly, which I can tell you that for someone who had left a steady and well paid job as a solicitor with two young children to support, would have been a very helpful thing.

I don’t mind mentioning that the first few years of establishing my business were tough; enjoyable and rewarding, but tough. So to have been handed a few shortcuts along the way could have been very useful, very useful indeed.

For example, if only someone had told me that all of the answers to all of my questions were already known by someone who was only a phone call away, I wouldn’t have spent three years working out the answers myself.

If someone had mentioned that I could buy a book or a download which would show me how to use email marketing from day one of my business, even with only a handful of people on my database, to generate regular client instructions from it almost immediately, that would have been very useful information to know too.

Although a part of me realises from working with so many solicitors over this 10 year period of my business, that often I cannot help a business owner until they are at the exact point that they are ready to get serious about growing their business.

Over the years I have worked with many solicitors who ‘think’ they ought to do a bit more marketing, or any marketing at all in a lot of cases, but often they are not fully committed to the cause so their interest wanes at the first hurdle as it suddenly seems a bit too much like hard work.

However, the solicitor who is committed to growing their practice and is at a point in their business ownership life that they are ready to take advice; well they overcome those small hurdles and they motor on through and they see transformational growth over time.

Which stage are you at with your practice now? Are you mildly curious about marketing or are you ready and committed to seeing real growth? If it is the latter, now would be a great time to take advantage of my Easter offer, whereby you will receive all the tools that you need to market your practice, along with a one on one telephone consultation with me to plan your marketing attack!

So you can spend Easter reading the materials and then straight after we can talk and ensure you do not have to endure the slow growth I made when I started my business. You can take my advice and use all of the short cuts available, saving you a lot of pain and wasted months in the process!

Author: Nick Jervis

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Posted in Law Firm Marketing (General) | No Comments »

What My Sons Parents Evening This Week Can Teach You About Legal Marketing!

Friday, March 15th, 2013

I am not a big fan of the education system. I don’t know whether it is the fact that my children spend more time with strangers than they do with me, or that some teachers just seem to have been born to be teachers and I could not see them functioning in the real world on the outside of a school (this from a man married to a teacher by the way), but it doesn’t usually excite me or tick any of my boxes.

However, on my youngest son’s parents evening this week, I was very impressed with one aspect of the process.

For each teacher, once we found them dotted around a big school (in my day they all used to sit in the school hall) they would sit us down and give us some general feedback, and then the process became very interesting. They move on to talking about the targets that they had set for Sam when he completes his GCSE’s in four years’ time, where he was now in relation to that target now and how they expected him to get there between now and then.

The school sets targets! The children know about the targets and are coached by the teachers to achieve them. The parents are involved with those targets and encouraged by the school to monitor progress.

The school is acting as any sensible business owner should act in relation to the growth of their business. I am genuinely, amazingly and surprisingly impressed.

One of my sayings is that there is ‘No Treasure Without Measure’. The school know what treasure they want my son to achieve and they are measuring his progress towards that goal, with support all of the way. This is absolutely brilliant.

How about you? Have you set targets for one years’ time, two years’ time and five years’ time? Are you working alongside a coach or a consultant to show you how to reach those targets, to set short term and long term goals on the way to those targets? If you are, you are probably a million times better placed to achieve them than those who write a ‘wishy washy’ five year plan, then put it back in their top drawer and never review it until five years’ later, if they are still in business at that point that is.

All of my consultancy clients have financial and other targets which are at the top of the Marketing Action Plan I review with them each and every month. They can’t hide from the targets that they have set as they know I will be measuring and monitoring progress towards them. They understand that there is a possibility that they might not hit them, but they also know that there is a real possibility that they might exceed them and have to set new, bigger targets.

I have a lot more respect for the education system taking care of my son now, and I hope that it shows you that if an educationary establishment can set and monitor goals, you should be able to do the same for your own practice. Doing so is a very smart thing to do.

Author: Nick Jervis

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Posted in Key Performance Indicators KPIs, Law Firm Marketing (General), Legal Marketing, Legal Marketing Consultant, Marketing Plans, No Treasure Without Measure | No Comments »

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