Professional Service Firm Marketing Tips & Strategies

What is the most effective way to market my practice?

I hear this question and see it posted on web sites all the time. The ensuing discussion typically revolves around various tools and tactics that can be used in a marketing campaign – everything from jingle generators, to online advertising, to good old word of mouth.

Any one of these tactics may end up being successful, but it depends – and that’s the problem. Too often we look at a tool as the answer without first developing a marketing strategy. Simply put, your marketing strategy is the combination of your Ideal Customer profile and your Core Message.

I find that this idea of starting from a strategy makes sense to people on an intellectual level, but often gets short shrift at implementation time. It’s easier to skip over the hard, somewhat abstract, work of fully developing a strategy and jump right into “doing something”.

But in order to successfully implement a particular tactic, we must answer several questions – here are a few:

1. Who should I talk to?
2. What should I say?
3. What should I offer?
4. Where should I say it?

If you have a well developed strategy, these questions are easy to answer. When you don’t, something like this happens:

1. You make a draft
2. You ask a couple people if they like it (without thought to whether or not they fit your ideal customer profile)
3. You try it once
4. You wait
5. You get frustrated because you spent a lot of money and “marketing doesn’t work”.

Spend some time working on marketing strategy and you will create more successful marketing campaigns.

Search For Social Media

As the amount of available information on the internet continues to expand, we are constantly searching for new and improved ways to search for that information.

Sometimes when we search, we want to find entries about that subject. However, once we find someone that we trust, we may want to find all of the things that person has written or shared. This information could be on web sites, blogs, social media sites, etc. Searching across all of these platforms can be a time consuming task.

That’s where Lijit comes in. Lijit helps your readers search you and everything you have written, including from your social media sites, all from one place.

Lijit is free to use, they make their money from advertising. They also share the wealth by allowing you to make money from advertising as well, if you choose to include ads on your blog. Their wizard makes creating a widget and adding it to your blog easy-peasy.

Give it a try by entering a search in the Lijit search box on the top right hand column of my blog.

Start, Run, & Grow Your Business

Our friends at Palo Alto Software continue to deliver small business software goodness, this time with their Start, Run & Grow Your Business package. This package is a collection tools and services you need to start and grow your business. Here is a sampling of what is included:

For Starting Your Business

• Company logo
• Business cards and letterhead
• Website domain ($35 value!)
• Legal forms and guides
• Sample business plans
• Car window decal or magnet
• Incorporation tools

Running Your Business

• Subscription to Inc. magazine
• Bookkeeping software
• Business calculators
• Credit assessment
• Legal guide
• Complete office software suite
• Time-tracking software

Growing Your Business

• Email marketing solutions
• Marketing fundamentals guide
• Press release software
• Sales contact database
• Email management software
• Online surveys
• Project management software

Thisj package is available at your local Target Store. You learn more and purchase a copy online at the  Start, Run & Grow Your Business web site.

Prospecting Bootcamp

Kansas City Sandler Sales Trainer Dan Stalp will be hosting a Prospecting Bootcamp on Thursday, October 29th.

If you struggle with prospecting or would just like to improve your skills and consistency, I recommend checking out this half day workshop.

For more information, you can download the invitation here.

Social Media Policies and Trust

Michelle Golden has a nice little quiz to help firms determine their social media risk tolerance. Simply answer three questions, add up your scores, and you will have a good indication of your risk tolerance. Michelle then gives you some guidelines on how to use your score to determine how detailed your policies need to be.

If your score falls in the lowest group, "Social Media doesn’t fit well with your current culture." Michelle is much nicer than I am. I would have phrased this as "conversations don't fit well with your current culture". I hope that stings a little more, because the problem is bigger than just "how do we control social media".

I completely agree with Michelle's assessment of the relationship between policies and the level of trust in an organization. If you are honest with yourself and you scored in the 1-5 range, put the social media policy aside and start talking about trust.

Of course, if you scored in the lowest group, you have the most potential for improvement.

3 Tips To Help Your Associates Be Better Marketers

Many professional service firm employees struggle when their responsibilities are expanded to include marketing and sales activities. Here are three common mistakes that may be holding your associates back:

1. Share your marketing plan early and often. – I believe you should share your marketing strategy, your Ideal Client Profile and your Core Message, before hiring a new associate. Your marketing strategy outlines who you serve and how you do it differently than everyone else who claims to do what you do. Hiring the right people plays a big part in fulfilling the expectations you set via marketing.

One of the benefits of having a written marketing plan is the ability to share it with others. We can’t get everyone singing from the same hymnal if the hymnal only exists in the partners’ heads.

2. If you still use timesheets, teach (and reward) the importance of non-billable hours. The focus on billable hours, particularly for new and young associates, can be detrimental to a firm’s long term success. We can talk until we are blue in the face about “marketing is everyone’s job” or “it’s all about the relationship”, but, if at the end of the day the measuring stick is billable hours, then why wouldn’t an associate stay behind a desk, nose to the grindstone?

3. Stop trying to teach associates how to sell benefits to clients. Trying to teach selling benefits puts the focus on the firm when it should be on the needs of the client. Teach active listening. Practice asking open ended questions. Teach the importance of asking follow up questions in order to get to the root of the issue. Learning to listen, probe, diagnose, and share third party stories are the keys to selling professional services.

Law Firm Marketing – What Makes You Special?

Angel Reyes has a nice article about finding a niche for your firm in the Small Firm Business section of Law.com. Angel talks about the importance of finding a way to stand out from the crowd and shares his experience of deciding to focus on an underserved population – the Spanish speaking market.

I couldn’t agree more with Angel’s assertion about the need to find a way to stand out from the crowd. If you have existing clients, one of the best ways to develop your message is to interview your ideal clients and find out why the do business with you. You may be surprised to find that what was important to them in making a decision is often very different from the reasons you think you are special.

There are many ways find a niche. Angel did a great job of finding an under served market. Many firms will focus on a practice area. Others will choose to serve business clients. Some may focus on a particular industry.

When we think of niches we typically define them by demographic characteristics – age, size, income, location, etc. Don’t forget to consider psychographics or how people make decisions and what they value.

Once you have determined your niche, make sure the way you package your services is consistent with your marketing message and the needs of your niche. If you decide to work with start up businesses, can you package and sell your services in such a manner that meets their legal needs and also address their need to manage cash flow?

Follow Angel’s advice. Chose a niche, stand out from the crowd, and build a successful law practice.

Professional Services Marketing Calendar Example

Earlier this week, John Jantsch had a nice post on his blog about using a marketing calendar to build good marketing habits. Recently, I put together a sample of what a marketing calendar might look like for one of my marketing presentations, so I thought I would share it here.

Here is a sample monthly theme list with room for you to fill in your own theme:

Sample Marketing Calendar – Monthly Themes

Month	Sample Theme	Your Theme
September	Survey Clients \ Core Message
October	Marketing Materials
November	Website
December	Strategic Referral Partners
January	Speaking Engagements
February	Public Relations Plan
March	Collect Testimonials

 

Next, translate your theme into weekly (or daily) activities.

Sample Marketing Calendar – Weekly Activities (Sept)

Week	Activity
Week 1	Identify clients to survey Send introductory e-mail or set appointments
Week 2	Conduct Surveys Send thank you notes
Week 3	Conduct Surveys Send thank you notes Begin Summarizing Results
Week 4	Finish Summarizing Results Evaluate Core Message Refine Core Message

Everyone likes to manage their time differently but I recommend that you map your activities at least down to the week level, if not down to a particular day.

Marketing Speaker

Warning - You are approaching a shameless, self promoting post

A few folk have noticed my updates on various social media sites regarding some speaking events I have done recently and have asked what the heck I speak about ; )  So I have updated my website to include a page describing what I do as a marketing speaker.

If you are looking for a speaker for your company, association, or networking group, give me a holler and we can figure how I may be able to help you out.

Success = Behavior + Attitude + Technique

John Jantsch has a nice post today about changing your behaviors (or creating new habits) to become successful at marketing.

His post reminded me of a concept that I learned from my friends at Sandler Sales Training called the Success Triangle. I believe is so important to this idea of developing habits for success that I have started including it in all of my presentations.

The Success Triangle tells us that to achieve success we have to focus on all three areas of the triangle – Behaviors, Attitudes, and Techniques.

We often talk about marketing or lead generation techniques. Techniques are important, but techniques alone are rarely the key to success – whether we are talking about marketing or anything else.

The most important part of this triangle is probably behaviors. This is where having a coach and tools to track your progress are very helpful. If you don’t do the day to day activities, it doesn’t matter how many techniques I give you or how wonderful the Duct Tape Marketing System is, you won’t get results if you don’t do the behaviors.

Attitude is important because is tends to drive the other two components. If you have the attitude that “marketing doesn’t work”, you won’t try the techniques and you won’t do the behaviors. Rather than focusing on what won’t work, focus on what you are willing to try, do, or say.

If you are not happy with the results of any part of your marketing system, review the success triangle to help you figure out which area(s) you need to address, Behaviours, Techniques, or Attitude, in order to improve your results.

By the way, I am a big fan of the Sandler Sales System and highly recommend them.