With the end of year fast approaching, when the whole world, or at least half of it, will be away, when should you restart your marketing in 2017?
Someone asked me this. Needless to say, it wasn’t a Marketing4Solicitors’ member. But it made me think that as is always the case with questions, if one person is asking it, another 100 or so are definitely thinking about it.
So when is the time to start marketing after a Winter, Autumn, Spring or Summer break?
Answer: Never.
You don’t need to restart your marketing because of course you never stop it. You have three or four marketing arteries that feed your New Client Flowcast, and they keep going each and every single month, don’t they?
That’s the key to good marketing.
Automated marketing.
Marketing that works each and every month even if you don’t, so you get the steady and consistent flow of new client instructions that keep you busy and profitable.
You come back from holiday, whilst the incoming enquiries have dropped a little because half the world has been away, the half remaining have kept contacting your firm because your marketing has kept on working for you; with or without you.
Did that happen for you?
If not, which automated marketing arteries do you currently have in place and which are missing?
If you haven’t seen it for a while, or haven’t seen it at all, I am referring to my New Client Flowcast model. The model that shows you exactly what you need to do to ensure that you always have new clients beating a path to your door.
The New Client Flowcast For Solicitors
Let’s take a look at the model and remind you of the message behind it.
The river in the middle is your business/your profits.
If you have a fast flowing river, you are doing well. If you only have a trickle, you need some help!
Both the trickle and the river are caused by the same thing. The fast flowing river is caused because a law firm has in place several automated marketing arteries feeding it to make it flow fast and strong.
The trickle has none. In the trickle’s case, probably the only marketing that is taking place is the marketing that has always taken place – being there.
Being there isn’t even an artery. It isn’t even a tributary. It’s just plain lazy.
For many years, being lazy worked as a marketing strategy. Open office on High Street, open office door, do mediocre work, people come back.
Thankfully, as a strategy it is less and less effective. This is good because it weeds out those law firms that have given clients dreadful service and got away with it for years. It is also good because it rewards those people like you who actually take time to market your service well and to ensure that you deliver a good service too.
If you have had a quieter period of instructions, and you realise that you do need to add a new marketing artery to your mix, which one should you add?
Well, it depends where you are starting from.
Let’s look at each of the main arteries, then you can decide which one you need to add to your mix.
Artery 1 – Monthly Email To Your Legal Clients And Prospects
Are you sending an email to all of your clients and prospects each and every month?
If not, start now and do it every single month.
How? Outsource it so that it happens with or without you.
This is one of the easiest things to outsource to ensure that it takes place with or without you. You can find someone to set up and run the email marketing software for you, and someone to write the content for each newsletter (see Artery 2).
Ask me if you would like recommendations, but don’t let the idea that it might be difficult to do stop you. It really isn’t.
This is such a simple thing to get going and keep going. Even if you are a niche firm offering one service it works. You will receive recommendations from family and friends, and you can join up with other niche law firms to refer work you cannot handle between each other.
Artery 2 – A Website That Grows Each And Every Month
Arteries 1 and 2 work hand in hand.
Both Google and your clients like a website that grows each and every month. A client/ new prospect visiting your website and seeing that it is current and added to regularly with articles/blog posts will be encouraged that you are not a dinosaur firm (like the one above who waits for clients to come to them).
Google loves websites that consistently grow and rewards them with more traffic.
One to four new pieces of content each month will ensure your website remains current. Perhaps, more importantly, it feeds Artery 1 with the content that it needs for your emails.
Perfect.
Again, the content creation can be outsourced so that it happens with or without you!
Artery 3 – Do You Send More Prospective Clients To Your Website Each Month With Google Adwords?
Now that you have a decent website, let more people who are at that precise moment in time searching for a solicitor find it.
Google Adwords is the medium.
It is still one of the best marketing methods for all of my consultancy clients. Once again, it can be completely outsourced so that it happens WOWY.
I have just made myself smile – I am so easily pleased sometimes it is ridiculous. WOWY stands for With Or Without You, and if you have lots of WOWY marketing, you will definitely have a practice that makes people say WOWY, I wish I had a law firm like that…
You might be hearing a bit more of WOWY Marketing in the future.
If you are running a Google Adwords campaign, you must ask me for a free Adwords Optimisation Review because I guarantee I will be able to show you ways to get more traffic for less spend. Sign up for my free guide below and I will show you how to request your free review.
Artery 4 – Regular Referrals
Finally, do you receive regular and consistent referrals from other solicitors or other businesses?
I am not talking one referral every few months, but five or more every month from three or four different sources.
Do you regularly interact with these referral sources to ensure that the relationship stays strong and lines of communication stay open to ensure that you continue to receive these regular referrals?
If not, this is another method you should be using. It is perhaps the least WOWY method of marketing, because it is likely to need you or another member of staff to keep on top of the relationship, but for the volume of referrals that you can receive, it can be a very powerful marketing artery.
Which Arteries Are Missing?
Which of these arteries are missing in your practice? Working your way down from Artery 1 to 4 in priority, if all are not in place, start from the top and work your way down, adding the Arteries that you do not currently have in place and watch your practice grow.
If you have all four in place, can you do more of them? If one email a month is working, could you send two? If Google Adwords is working, can you spend more? If you are adding one article a month and your website traffic is growing each and every month, could you add two, three or four pieces of new content. If you have referrals from three sources, can you get a fourth or fifth in place?
Your job is to consistently look at your figures, your key performance indicators and to improve them each and every month.
Above is a formula that will allow you to do this.
Which Artery Will Get You The Fastest Results?
How should you know? The truth is, you probably can’t answer this question. That’s why you need to speak to me and I will tell you instantly where to focus your time.
Sign up for my free guide by clicking the button below and I will tell you how to book a More Clients Now strategy call with me.
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