Copyright (c) 2015 Christopher Small and The Art of Lawyering. All rights reserved.

Transcription

2 In this special report, I ll be sharing with you the ten biggest mistakes that lawyers make when marketing their law firms that costs them, time and money. Contrary to popular belief, I didn t just become a profitable law firm owner over night. When I first started I was like most people, and maybe even worse: I had no clients, no contacts, and no foundation. I opened my law firm in 2009 after moving to Seattle 6 months earlier. Before that I d lived in Lawrence, Kansas for the previous 10 years. My wife took a new job in Seattle and I agreed to go, so long as I was able to open my own law firm. Although I had no clients, no contacts, and no foundation, I did have experience with internet marketing, making thousands of dollars using SEO to sell random products and advertising, and I also had an insatiable thirst for information about marketing and building profitable businesses. As I learned the foundational principles of marketing a law firm and applied those foundations to technologies like Facebook, I experienced a great amount of success. But, that success didn t come without some hiccups along the way. In fact, I wasted hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars trying out ideas that never panned out with my law firm. And I made mistakes marketing my law firm because I simply didn t know they were mistakes. I m going to teach you about the ten biggest mistakes lawyers make when marketing their law firms AND what to do instead so that you get clients knocking down your door to work with you. Copyright (c) 2015 Christopher Small and The Art of Lawyering. All rights reserved. 2

3 MISTAKE #1: Expecting immediate results. The first mistake law firm owners make is expecting immediate results. And by immediate I mean some people expect to turn the machine on and for it to start cranking out clients 10 minutes later. The fact is, with Facebook marketing, you can get results very fast. In fact, if done the right way you could have new clients from those marketing efforts within a matter of days. But to expect that with every marketing tactic deployed is going to hurt you in the long run. Most marketing efforts have a compound interest effect. At first, the gains are minimal. New business trickles in. But soon you ve got a flood of new clients and are crushing it, all because you gave your marketing plan a chance to work. So, what is a reasonable time to determine whether or not your marketing effort is going to work for you? The answer, like many legal questions posed to us by client, is it depends. But, that doesn t mean there isn t a formula we can use. First, you must know your budget. And when I say budget you must have a specific amount of money that you are willing to spend without getting any return. Second, when you have your budget, then you know how much runway you have to see if the plan is going to work. Based on your budget and runway, you make a commitment to pursue the plan for at least that long. For example, let s say you want to do a Facebook campaign. You could say I want a budget of $1,000. For Facebook that s going to get you at least 5 months of runway (I told you Facebook advertising was cheap!). Based on that, you commit to 5 months before you pull the plug. If you don t see immediate results that s okay, because this experiment isn t lasting a week, it s lasting 5 months. Copyright (c) 2015 Christopher Small and The Art of Lawyering. All rights reserved. 3

4 MISTAKE #2: They do what they think will work with no research. The second mistake law firm owners make when marketing their law firm is they jump in and do what they think will work without doing any research. For example, when it comes to Facebook advertising, likes don t really matter that much. There are other ways to market your law firm on Facebook that will give you a much higher return on your investment. Yet you see campaigns out there time and time again where people are trying to get more likes to their page. It s a dangerous game to play because if you just jump in without knowing what you are doing there s a good chance you could look up when that 5 month runway we just discussed is gone and you ve got nothing to show for it. Make sure you know what you re doing before you dive into the deep end. MISTAKE #3: They aren t willing to feel uncomfortable. Do you remember what the first day of law school felt like? Do you remember the torture of going through that first lecture using the socratic method and having no idea what you were going to say when you were called on? That feeling wasn t caused by stupidity. It was simply a lack of experience. For many of us, when it comes to practicing law we understand that every day we may be confronted with issues and problems we ve never experienced before. And that s okay because we are trained how to deal with that. But when it comes to marketing our law firms and technology so many people cop out by saying they aren t good at technology. In reality those people aren t yet experienced with technology. That s why it feels so uncomfortable. To succeed as a profitable law firm owner you ve got to give yourself time to become proficient with the concepts and the technology you use to market and build your law firm. Just like our lawyer skills, technology and business skills are built over a period of time with intentional practice and study. Copyright (c) 2015 Christopher Small and The Art of Lawyering. All rights reserved. 4

5 MISTAKE #4: Bad Headlines. The fourth big mistake lawyers make when marketing their law firms is writing bad, boring headlines. People don't care about statutes. People don t care about case law. People care about their lives. People care about how their problem is going to affect them. And people care about minimizing the opportunity to lose even more in the process. The headline is the most important piece of your giveaway. The right headline will make you thousands of dollars. The wrong headline actually won t empty your pocket (no one will click on it), it will just leave you with a lot of time on your hands at work. Take the time to craft a great headline for your giveaway. Make it provocative and hit the potential client where it will have the biggest effect. MISTAKE #5: You have a broken funnel. The most important part of the Facebook marketing system is your free giveaway, and more specifically, the title of your free giveaway (see mistake #4 for more on that). The second most important part of the Facebook marketing system is the funnel. And it is an area where a lot of law firm owners make mistakes. When I talk about funnel what I m talking about is the system you have set up to take people from random person with a problem to your client. It s called a funnel because the idea is that they go from being some amorphous person to your client by taking progressive steps deeper and deeper into your work flow. Each step they take gets them one step closer to signing up with you (and takes them deeper into the funnel). Copyright (c) 2015 Christopher Small and The Art of Lawyering. All rights reserved. 5

6 But, just like a bucket with holes, if your funnel has holes, it s going to leak. And when this funnel leaks, you lose cash. There are two huge problems I see when it comes to funnels. The first problem I see is an incomplete funnel. The s and follow up simply isn t structured correctly to maximize the return on your investment. The second problem I see is an improperly functioning funnel. This includes broken links, failure to actually follow the processes that have been created, and poor execution. Solving these problems is easy. Simply take the time to put your funnel together and then regularly test its performance. MISTAKE #6: Failure to focus. If you are anything like me you probably have one hundred different marketing ideas in your head right now. And if you are anything like me you are probably trying to execute on 15 of them, and the 15 that you are working on is in constant flux, with ideas coming into and out of the mix as your interest in then waxes and wanes. When you operate your law firm in this way, what ends up happening is that nothing actually gets done. No marketing idea ever gets fully executed, which means no marketing idea ever has a chance to really take off. Profitable law firm owners understand and can execute the concept of completing one project at a time. They know the benefit of seeing something all the way through. For example, when it comes to my Facebook marketing system, there will be some people here that try it, get about half way through, and then move on to something else. They will get mediocre results at best. There will also be people who try it, execute the entire system, and are completely shocked when they look up and their firm is killing it. Copyright (c) 2015 Christopher Small and The Art of Lawyering. All rights reserved. 6

7 The difference? One law firm owner failed to focus, one was able to maintain focus. MISTAKE #7: They fail to split test. The seventh mistake law firm owners make when marketing their law firm is failing to split test. Split testing is the concept of pitting two ideas against each other to see which one performs better, and then pitting the winner against a new idea, always trying to beat the winner with the new idea. For example, when it comes to headlines you always want to split test to try to find that perfect hook. So you might try: 5 Ways a Bad DUI Attorney Can Ruin Your Life and 5 Ways to Get Your DUI Charge Dismissed (without hiring a lawyer) Each headline is shown to 50% of the people who see your ad. Over time you see which one wins, and then you try another headline against the winner. Split testing is critical because it s impossible to know what is going to resonate with your potential client until you actually put the offer in front of them. Great law firm owners are always split testing. MISTAKE #8: They don t niche down. Imagine you are considering opening a business and you were just looking for information on LLC formation on the web. After your web search you hop onto Facebook to see what s going on and two ads pop up in your newsfeed. Copyright (c) 2015 Christopher Small and The Art of Lawyering. All rights reserved. 7

8 The first ad says: Need a business attorney? We can help. Click here to learn more. The second ad says: Free Ebook Training: How to Create and Structure Your LLC without Using a Lawyer. Which one are you going to pick? The answer is pretty obvious right? That s the power of niching down. When you are crystal clear about who your ideal client is and the problems they are trying to solve, creating a giveaway that is irresistible is a piece of cake. And the chances that they are going to jump at the opportunity to get your information go way up. Now, you may be wondering if I give away all of the information in the ebook on how to start an LLC, what are they going to hire me for? See Mistake #10 for more help on that MISTAKE #9: They copy what someone else is doing without understanding the whole system. The ninth common mistake law firm owners make when marketing their law firms is they try to copy what someone else is doing without understanding the whole system. I have fallen victim to this many many times. I would see a program pop up for marketing a business and instead of buying the program I d try to deconstruct what they were doing and then back into it with my own business. Sometimes I would have success, but I soon came to realize no matter how successful I was I was likely only experiencing a fraction of what was possible because I was not able to have access to the entire system. For example, with my Facebook advertising system, yes, you could set it up and do what I do just from watching these three videos and using the system I gave you in my ebook. But the nuance isn t there. Copyright (c) 2015 Christopher Small and The Art of Lawyering. All rights reserved. 8

9 And it isn t there because I intentionally left it out, I simply do not have the time to incorporate everything involved with the system into this free training. Whether or not you ever purchase any of my programs, it s important to understand that purchasing marketing systems for your law firm is an investment in your success, not an expense. The return you should get from investing in any system should be 10 times the investment. MISTAKE #10: Not having a step-by-step script and system. The tenth and final mistake is probably the biggest. It is not having a step-by-step script and system for your Facebook marketing campaign: not knowing how to set up the structure correctly; not knowing how to build audiences correctly; not knowing exactly how to make killer ads; and not knowing how to follow up to get people to beg to sign up with you. You could try to make up your own scripts and your own system, or you could use my Facebook Marketing for Lawyers system. I ve perfected this system by using it with my own law firm, testing and tweaking it until it was just right. I ve been using it myself to sign up clients. Facebook Marketing for Lawyers works for getting new clients from Facebook, in any industry, and at any fee level. I ve taught this system to many other lawyers and it s worked across a broad range of practice areas, including: criminal defense; traffic defense; personal injury; family law; business law; estate planning; bankruptcy; immigration law; and even worker s comp. I hope you ve found this helpful and work hard to eliminate as many of these mistakes as you can. With each mistake eliminated you should experience exponential growth with your law firm. Remember, people need your help. They just have to be able to find you. Copyright (c) 2015 Christopher Small and The Art of Lawyering. All rights reserved. 9