Article 9:

Wasted Money - The 3 Biggest Mistakes Lawyers Make in Marketing

Is your firm throwing away good money on bad marketing? Don't make these common mistakes:

Mistake #1 - You don't ask your clients the "Golden Question"

What's the Golden Question? The one that strikes gold!
Many attorneys are embarrassed to ask their clients marketing questions, as if it were a sign of weakness. However these questions are an absolute must and standard practice for any business. If you are not asking your clients how they found you, why they chose your firm, and what they read or heard that compelled them to call you, you're missing your golden opportunity. The feedback and wisdom your clients can provide you is invaluable.

But one answer doesn't tell the story. You need stats. If you put the answers from enough clients into your practice management software, you can run a report that will accurately tell you what you're doing right that has the greatest impact, and what you're wasting your money on.

Besides capturing basic contact information in your intake forms, make sure you have the following fields:

• A source field that identifies the advertisement or referral source that got the client to call
• A status field: inquired, interviewed, rejected, retainer, satisfied, dissatisfied
• An issue field that identifies the reason for coming to see you (divorce, bankruptcy, etc.)
• An inquiry date field that establishes when the original inquiry is made
• Key demographic fields for data such as age, gender and profession

With enough data you will be able to indentify your firm's unique value and how you've differentiated yourself in the market.

Here's a typical Golden Question: "What did you read or hear about us that compelled you to call?"

Mistake #2 - You're not tracking your costs and profits per client

Who are your best clients? What are your most lucrative practice areas?

If every $1,000 you spend on marketing brings you one prospect, and you collect an average of $3,000 in fees per client, you might think you have $2,000 gross profit per client. But you'd be wrong. Why? Because if you only take one out of three prospects as clients, then you're really spending $3,000 in marketing per client and your gross profit is zero!

Running marketing performance reports from your practice management software will keep you from making the mistake of feeling like your marketing is working, when in fact, you're losing money!

By tracking the number of prospects and clients you get from each marketing source you can compute your marketing cost per prospect and per client. Then you can make sure you're collecting enough fees per client to afford your marketing.

Mistake #3 - You, you, you. Who cares?

Have you ever noticed how most lawyers waste their marketing dollars on listing the type of law they do, their education, background and bar affiliation instead of emotionally connecting with prospects and saying the one thing your prospects really want to hear, which is, "What can you do for me?"

What scares your prospects? How will you fix their problems better than anyone else?

Marketing is like war. That's why professionals talk about marketing in terms of campaigns. If your marketing fails to rub salt into your prospect's wounds, you're going to lose the battle to the attorney that does. To be effective, you need to magnify your prospects fears and pains, which clearly communicates to them that you really understand what they are experiencing. Then explain to them how you are uniquely qualified to make the pain go away. Good marketing compels them to contact you.

Consider how your potential clients are motivated by fear. Fear of losing money or employment, not being able to provide, being embarrassed, losing status, and being unhappy are all powerful motivators. Consider the pain they've already experienced: having their liberties violated, suffering from a life changing accident, being taken advantage of and treated unfairly.

How do you know what to say in your marketing that will be most effective?

• Ask the Golden Question.
• Track your profits.
• Modify your marketing.

Repeat.