The Top 10 Ways That Firms Squander Precious Marketing Resources

John Remsen, Jr in the Managing Partner Forum

So here we go – the “Top Ten Ways To Waste Money Marketing Your Practice,” in David Lettermanesque ascending order of wastefulness.

#10 – Random Acts of Golf and Lunch

Golf and lunch are fine marketing activities, very conducive to relationship building. But playing golf with an endless array of acquaintances who don’t have the ability to hire or refer you is hardly an effective use of your marketing time. Nor is that monthly “skins” match with your brother-in-law and his drinking buddies. The profession’s top rainmakers have a plan — even if only in their heads — when they go on their boondoggles… er, I mean, marketing ventures. They have determined who they want to get to know better and, from there, they develop a systematic plan to go about building and enhancing relationships with them. The key word is plan.

#9 – The “Really Big Show”

Reminiscent of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland deciding to “put on a show,” your firm decides to present the mother of all seminars. Over 300 people spend a half-day listening to you and your partners talk about the latest changes in state law. It was great. Problem is, there was very little follow up. When it comes to seminars and similar events, we suggest that you consider smaller, less formal and more interactive sessions. Think about a seminar series, focused on a particular industry, where participants get together repeatedly. This way, the follow-up is builtin. Wasted Time and Money.

#8 – Other One-Shot Wonders

Come to think of it, forget about any marketing activity that does not include follow-up. All the marketing events that your firm sponsors — seminars, open houses, holiday parties, and the like — should be looked upon as relationship building platforms. And personal follow is the key to making them work. All participating attorneys should follow up with at least two or three people at each event, focusing on folks who can help them achieve their objectives.

#7 – Brochures and Newsletters That Cure Insomnia

Good brochures and newsletters have their place among effective marketing tools. But who wants to read mindnumbing tomes about the history of your firm and its 14 practice areas? Not me, and not your prospective clients either. Keep the copy concise and easy-to-read. Use bullet points whenever possible. Hire a talented graphic designer who will produce sharp, attention-grabbing marketing material.

#6 – Invisible Advertising

No doubt, print and broadcast advertising works for attorneys with consumer-oriented practices (like family and personal injury law) and I’d recommend an ad in the Yellow Pages in a heartbeat. But things like traditional “tombstone” ads and “one-time” ads in a newspaper or magazine are practically worthless. Studies show that it takes 7-11 impressions before somebody will recall seeing your ad. Consistency and frequency are essential. Here again, hire a good graphic designer and stay light on copy to make sure your ads are noticed. If you want to advertise, do it right.

#5 – Holiday Chochkes

Ahhh, the holidays. Talk about getting lost in the shuffle! Effective marketing strategies get noticed and stand apart from the crowd. The holidays are far too busy a time for your cards, parties, and gifts to be fully appreciated. However, if you must send holiday cards, by all means, sign them personally!

#4 – Directories, Directories and More Directories!

Over the past ten years, law firm directories have sprouted like cattails in the Everglades. Unfortunately, most have little marketing value. Decision-makers simply don’t use them very much. In fact, our friends on the listserv think that only a few directories, such as LawOffice.com, Martindale-Hubbell and Best’s (for insurance defense counsel), are worth the money. Bottom line….hold on to your cash.

#3 – Vanity Letterhead

We’re talking about the kind that features every lawyer’s name on the masthead. Every letter becomes two-pages long, and each time a lawyer joins or leaves the firm the old supply gets chucked and a new supply is ordered. Often, the new letterhead is out of date even before it comes back from the printer! Most firms have abandoned this practice and yours should, too. Consider adding a snappy firm logo and/or a splash of color. Don’t worry, it’s OK.

#2 – PPPPs (Powerful Partner’s Pet Projects)

Our #2 money waster was sent in by Bev Davis, chief operating officer for a well-known Oregon law firm….and you know exactly what she’s talking about! The firm’s $5,000 contribution for a table at the “Belles of the Confederacy” Dinner Dance, for example. Powerful Partner Jim thinks it’s a great idea. (So happens his wife is on the Board of Directors.) PPPPs are rarely budgeted and are hardly ever consistent with firm-wide marketing objectives. They tend to consume vast quantities of money and staff time. A firm-wide marketing plan goes a long way toward reducing the number of PPPPs. Show Jim the plan and just say no!

#1 – Consultants Who Don’t Know **** About Law Firms

Law firms are a different kind of beast — big egos, lots of democracy, convoluted compensation systems and, in many cases, a disdain toward marketing. Yet, I see it happen time and time again. “We hired Sally because we liked the work she did for our big banking client. But she never could manage to implement much of anything around here.” When it comes to building consensus for a new idea or getting people to focus on non-billable activities, there is nothing quite like a law firm. It takes someone who’s been there to make it happen. If you decide to hire a consultant, hire somebody who has a successful track record working with law firms like yours.

So the natural conclusion is to look for as many linking opportunities as possible.  In a recent announcement regarding links, Google’s anti-spam engineer Matt Cutts, reminds us to proceed with caution especially when it comes to paid links.  The official Google policy on paid links is as follows:

“Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.”

It now appears that Google has been working on new algorithms and tools to be able to detect paid links.  So although these types of instant rankings boosters may be temporarily beneficial, ultimately they could result in devastating consequences for your website. Once paid links are found going to your website, Google will completely remove your website from search results as soon as they are discovered.  Google also allows for the reporting of link violations, something that your competitors may also be on the watch for.  So between the algorithm itself and vengeful competitors, it’s not about if but more like when you will be discovered.

The better alternative is to build credible in-bound links from websites that do not engage in any link selling.  Although this takes more time, you avoid the risk of having your website disappear all together.  This type of consistent, gradual increasing of the value of your website will show the search engines that your website’s position is warranted and not stolen.

As the old adage says “you get what you pay for” and this definitely applies when building a website.  There are many factors to building a good website and building an effective Internet marketing presence.  When you consider the shear volume of people who are using the Internet to hire an attorney, these “cheap” websites can be a very expensive mistake.

Here are a few questions that you should keep in mind:

Does the website developer understand Search Engine Optimization?

A website that is properly built with basic search engines optimization best practices can make the difference between an effective site and a site that might as well be a billboard in the desert.  Unfortunately I regularly analyze beautiful websites, some even with award winning designs, that have no presence on keyword based search results.  An innovative, cutting-edge website design is great, but it must be coupled with an effective optimization strategy that is in place both during and after the website build is complete. In some cases, it is better to have a basic website design if it means more time and money can be spent after the build is complete on optimization.

Does the website developer understand what your customer is looking for?

The potential customers that are on your website have very specific questions that they need answered before they decide to contact you for more information.  If you don’t address those questions, they will leave your website and search for another that does.  From the content that written to the image it conveys, speaking to the right customer with the right message is essential in making sure your website is contributing to your bottom line.

Will your website developer be around next week?

In basements all across America you will find home-based website builders.  Nothing against these noble entrepreneurs, but a reputable company that has website development as a focus of their business is far more likely to be around when you need to change or update your website.  These ongoing changes to your website are critical for helping your website gain and maintain rankings on the search engines.  Far too many businesses are held captive to a website that can’t be updated because the developer is M.I.A.

Factors in Search Engine Optimization from Matt Cutts

In an interview published on March 14th, Google’s Matt Cutts outlined some of the factors that play a part in determining a website’s search rankings.  For many of you reading this article, the vast majority of those factors are completely controlled by your website developer.  So your best action plan as it relates to those elements is to hire a website builder that will build your site with both design and optimization best practices in mind.

However, one area that you can help control is the number of websites that link to yours.  And not just your website, but also all of the pages within your website.  When asked about how many pages Google will index within a website (which plays a big part in determining rankings), Matt Cutts made it very clear that links are a big part of that equation…  “There is also not a hard limit on our crawl.  The best way to think about it is that the number of pages that we crawl is roughly proportional to your PageRank.  So if you have a lot of incoming links on your root page, we’ll definitely crawl that.  Then your root page may link to other pages, and those will get PageRank and we’ll crawl those as well.  As you get deeper and deeper in your site, however, PageRank tends to decline.”

So I know what you are thinking… let’s develop as many links as possible from as many websites as we can.  Your on the right track, but proceed with caution.  The value of the website that is linking to your website is as important as the link itself.  Relevance and credibility of the site play a part in how much value will be given for that link.  Especially if the link is coming from a website known for selling links, or as Google likes to call them “spammy” websites.

This is a common tactic used by companies that solicit their optimization services with offers that are too good to be true… “guaranteed page one ranking on Google for only $500!”.  As my mother always says, you get what you pay for!  These types of optimization companies will sell links from websites in which their only purpose is to create link juice.  So when implemented, the website experiences a temporary boost in rankings – “Hello first page of Google”.  But once these tricky links are discovered, the value of the link is lowered and the rankings are lost – “Easy come, easy go”.

The best bet in creating these valuable links is to contribute to the on-line community in relevant and legitimate ways.  Blogging, Twittering, FaceBook, YouTube, LinkedIn – all are great ways to establish relevant inbound links to your website.  Or, you could always hire a legitimate search engine optimization company to do it for you

In a recent video that is posted on my You-Tube page, I talk about why an effective internet marketing strategy is essential to the success of law firms.  Until recently, lawyers relied on yellow pages advertising to generate new client leads.  Far too many of them spent tens of thousands of dollars every month to ensure that their ad was seen.  However, across the county, attorneys are starting to notice that these ads are not generating the same return on their investment that they have come to expect.

So what’s next?  Enter the dapper attorney wearing the cape of an effective website and internet marketing strategy.

I won’t give away all the secrets… you will just have to watch the video

When looking at organic search rankings, which is where about 75-80% of searchers go first, you must focus your attention on the short tail searches.  The job of search engine optimization is to increase the value of your website. These short tail keyword groups are highly searched and also highly competitive.  Therefore requiring the website to be highly valued in order to obtain rankings.  But in doing so, we tend to see ranking for many other keyword groups beyond the ones targeted.  So for example, you would focus your optimization efforts on getting rankings for michigan bankruptcy which is very competitive and highly searched.  Once the value and rankings are obtained, typically rankings for terms like home foreclosure prevention in michigan which is much less searched and far less competitive as long as there is good content regarding that also on the website.

Now pay per click advertising is a completely different strategy.  Because of the nature of the searchers who click on a PPC ad (and because your money is on the line), conversion is everything.  Several studies found out that long tail keywords have a much higher conversion rate on paid ads than single word or double word keyword groups.  The more detailed search is evidence of a sophisticated searcher who knows exactly what they are looking for… and ultimately more likely to take the next step of either picking up the phone or contacting the advertiser.

So the “long and short” of it is (wink)… they are both important keyword groups that must be incorporated into your internet marketing strategy.

This firm was split in their areas of practice. Half of the attorneys at the firm handled family law matters, which relied for years on direct referrals. The other half of the attorneys handled collection matters for some local companies. And this is where their problem began…

When a potential client went on-line and searched for the terms “south bend lawyer” or the name of the firm (referrals), the number one listing on the first page of search results was a local website and message board called “SouthBendSucks.com”. Apparently the firm pursued a collections matter with a local resident. Surprisingly this individual was not to happy with the firm for trying to collect this outstanding debt. So they decided to write a not so nice review of the firm on this website. As a result, when looking at those search results, the description summary under the website link was that review of the firm with the recommendation to “never hire the law firm of…”. Great for the collections attorneys, not so good for the family law attorneys.

Now, there is not much this firm could do to remove this post. This “not so happy” South Bend resident was stating their opinion and they had a right to do so. But the bad thing was the firm had no other source to tell their side of the story. Their website was built several years ago and they had not touched it since. Therefore the website was not showing up for many of the basic terms that it should be, like the firms name.

So the moral of the story is to make sure you often search the name of your firm, the name of your attorney(s), and some of the common keywords that you want to be found for. You have to be aware of where your website shows up on those searches and what other sources are saying about you. The best defense against a poor on-line reputation, is a good offense – a well built website!