Law Firm Marketing | Goals for 2011

Before I even get started I want to thank everyone for their questions, comments, and emails. They are all greatly appreciated. In a lot of ways my talks with you help me learn more about the business of law and starting a successful law firm and where I want to go in the future. Your participation is key to this blog's success, and it does not go unnoticed.

As you can see, this post is going to be about my goals for 2011 - my business goals for 2011, at least. And just so you aren't waiting on baited breath for Friday, Friday's post will be about two topics people have asked about - my yearly financials and starting a firm right out of law school. I thought I'd spoken about starting a law firm right out of law school but it doesn't look like I have. Sorry.

So, here we go, the annual "goals" post (every site has one it seems).

1. Gross $250,000

Looking at it on the computer screen, it seems like such a big number. Though I'll talk about it more on Friday, I'm going to gross just under $100,000 this year. That means I want to increase my revenues by about 150% (I'm not a math whiz so cut me some slack if I'm wrong). That's a lot. But it's not that hard, if you tackle the problem in the right way.

Broken down, I need to make about $20,800 a month. Broken down further, I need to make about $4,150 a week. I think that's entirely possible. But it's going to mean ramping up my marketing efforts even more, honing in on my ideal clients, and then showing them why I am worth what I'm asking for.

It's an ambitious goal, to be sure. But it's reachable. And it will drive many of the goals you see below.

2. Roll Out One New Location Based Website a Month

I'm a DUI lawyer and I'm number one in many Google searches for my major city's keywords. But there are a lot of other large cities nearby that are just waiting for me to take over their search queries. Creating a new site for each location allows me to focus my marketing efforts on those keywords and jump to the head of the pack quickly. It will also significantly increase the potential pool of clients, the number of calls, and, at the end, the number of clients I have.

And the great thing is, this is pretty easy to do. I've already got most of the content for each site at my old site. I just have to tweak it for the geography and it's ready to go.

To give you an idea, right now I probably have access to about 300,000 potential eyeballs (the major metropolitan area I'm in). If I reach my goal of expanding my websites, I'll have access to $3,000,000. That's a pretty big jump.

3. Have My Assistant Working For Me Full Time by March 1

Getting from part time to full time isn't that big of a jump, really. All I have to do is bring in enough money with the time she saves me to pay for her. Was that as confusing as it sounded when I wrote it?

Think of it this way, if I can bring her on full time she can manage the phones and calendar for me all day, every day. She can take care of the minor questions from clients that don't really need me. And that frees up a lot of time for me to do other things, like work on launching the website for that month, promoting a seminar I'm doing, or dreaming up new ways to churn up business. That isn't very hard to do.

I'm just hoping the year starts out fast enough for me to hire her full time without having to lose a lot of sleep over it.

4. Locate Long Term Office Space

Right now my office is serviceable, at best. My lease is up in May, and I'd like to find some space that we can settle into for a while. If it had an extra office for potential expansion that would be great too. But I'm really looking for a place we can settle into and start to make the firms. Right now, at only leasing for a year at a time, it feels like once we get settled in it's time to start looking for a new space.

5. Revamp the Website

It's that time of year to tweak the website. Or, maybe more than just a tweak. My website works well - people call. But I think it could work so much better. Remember my buddy RJon that I've talked about in the past? I spoke with him on the phone yesterday and he had a couple of good ideas. Here they are:

1. Figure out the rules of professional conduct in my state with regard to testimonials, and possible, get at least one video testimonial and put it on the first page of the site right at the top.

2. Create more tools to educate potential clients about what they can expect when they come into my office and what their charges mean for their lives. This includes written and audio materials, in particular a kind of interview to answer the most common questions people have about their DUI case.

As a side note, RJon pointed out a great side effect of providing all of this information. Not only does it make potential clients ready to hire you before they come into the office, but it screens out people that are only shopping for information.

3. Finally, create a button(s) on the site to provide access to these materials for only the small price of providing your name and email address. This will help identify potential clients and help them understand the benefits of using my services over another firms.

In addition to those things I also want to tweak the site in a couple of other ways, namely putting my picture back up, tweaking the language on the site, and updating my profile to reflect what's been going on the last year and a half and let people know that I'm not the only one working here any more.

6. Join Toastmasters

If you didn't know, toastmasters is an organization that is dedicated to the spoken word. There are toastmasters groups all over the country that meet bi-weekly or monthly to work on their speaking skills. I plan on joining one of those groups.

I think most people initially join these groups because they want to conquer a fear of speaking in public. That's not really my motivation. If you ever played sports, you know that practice makes perfect. Same with public speaking. In a courtroom in front of a jury isn't really the proper place to work consciously on getting rid of that "um" you put into every sentence. Toastmasters is.

7. Create a Sustained Social Media Presence

I don't think social media like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can generate you a lot of business by themselves. But I think they can do a great job of keeping your business and what you do at the top of the mind of your clients and potential clients. I've got it set up right now where a post on facebook automatically generates a post on twitter and post on LinkedIn. All I have to do is come up with something interesting to say every day and I'm good. My goal is to do just that.

8. Explore Alternative Marketing Methods

This may or may not come as a surprise to you, but I don't have a lot of alternative marketing channels working right now. I rely on the internet and referrals almost exclusively. And, while it's been treating me well up to this point, I know deep down that the more pots in the fire you have the better (or something like that - fill in your own analogy that works).

There are a couple of things I've been thinking about that I'm neither ready to implement or tell you, so they will have to wait. But there are some other things that are probably worth exploring. One of those things, which I've just learned can be quite effective, is bathroom advertising (if done right). For me, that's a pretty low cost, high gain type of activity. Another is really pushing free seminars for how to deal with cops. There are a whole bunch of groups out there that would love to hear about that (particularly since my presentation is both informative and funny).

9. Create Checklists and Implement Systems for Everything

In my mind, this might just be the most important goal of all. And, it violates one my goal writing rules - drilling down into specific things that need to be done to either define the goal clearly or actually reach the goal. So I'll try to do a little bit of that here.

First, the checklists in general. I can already tell my legal assistant is good. And while I hope I can get her to stick around for a long time in the role she is in, at some point I'm going to have to find something else for her to do (my preference) or she is going to leave (not my preference). Either way, that means at some point someone new is going to come in here and have to figure out how to do everything, from answer the phones to file a notice of appearance to handle a call from a current client. Checklists can help make any necessary transition seamless and (sorta) easy.

Checklists can also help streamline the entire process of running and managing a law firm. For each DUI case, for example, there are a set of things that need to be done. A checklist not only helps to confirm that everything has been done but helps to remind everyone what needs to be done. It also provides an easy way for me to show potential clients all of the things I am going to do for them that other lawyers wouldn't. That's invaluable.

Now, systems. This is a little bit different, but still equally important. In my mind systems relate more to the business management side of things than checklists (which I would describe as the business practice side). Systems to me include tracking finances, tracking marketing measurables, tracking lead generation, tracking potential client conversion, and anything else that provides information related to how the business is running (including client management). I don't have too many systems in place right now, and I need some.

That's it. Those are my goals for this year. Piece of cake, right? Of course not. But that's the point of goals. And, to make things easier on me - to help me remember my goals, I'm going to write them up on a big dry erase board where I can see them every day.

If you've made it this far I know you've got questions or comments. Hit me! Oh, I do have one request, if you've got a comment or question that relates to a specific post, please post a comment instead of sending me an email. I'd love to get a little dialogue going with all the readers, and that's so much easier when we have a place for conversation - the comments!

Starting a Law Firm | Randomness

I've been sitting here for about fifteen minutes trying to figure out what I was going to write about starting a law firm, and I can't really think of anything. None of you out there in the "blogosphere" are writing me with any questions, so I don't have anything to write about. Because of that, I'm just going to write. If you don't like it, ask me a question so I have something to write about. Here we go.

I Watch Entirely Too Much TV

I think we all have vices, little things that pull us away from being productive. For me, it's TV. I can get sucked into any number of shows at any time of the day. Movie, reality television, documentary, sports event, it doesn't matter. If I can see the least bit of potential for it to be interesting, I'm watching. And I need to stop.

One of my goals for the upcoming year is going to be to watch TV differently. No more plopping down to see what is on and getting sucked in for hours. I'm going to have several shows that I TiVO and I'll watch them whenever I sit down. If there aren't any of those, I'm going to go do something else.

My Website Hasn't Been Working Properly

One thing that gets lost in the shuffle pretty quickly when you start a law firm are all of the things that need to be maintained once they are up and running. For me, my website is integral to my business success. I've been in the top position for some important search terms in my area for a while now, which is great. The only problem, though is that my web hosting service sucks, and my site isn't loading much of the time. That is potentially costing me thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

So, to remedy that, we're switching hosting providers as soon as we can. Hopefully the site will be fully functional soon, and I'll be fielding a bunch of potential client calls because of it.

My Phone System Hasn't Been Running Smoothly Either

Some of this has to do with the new assistant I've got (who is crushing it, by the way - oh, and she's stumbled onto this site, I think to spy on me, so I'll turn the tables on her here - now go watch Christmas Vacation!). When she came on I wanted to have a set up where she was on the phones while she was here and the virtual assistant was on the phones when she wasn't. It's taken a little tweaking, but I think we've finally got the right set up. What are we doing? Glad you asked.

I have two Google Voice numbers, one for the east side and one for the west side. Until recently, I just had both numbers routing to my cell phone. I'd answer them when they rang, and I had it set up so I knew it was coming from the Google Voice numbers. When I got the virtual receptionist I forwarded the main number to them and kept the little used one forwarding to my cell phone.

When I hired Kelsey, I set us up on Skype. I wanted to have a phone system that would allow us to transfer calls between us, to forward to a cell phone if necessary, and one that could grow and shrink with our needs. And Skype seemed to work perfectly for that (plus it's really cheap). I'd never used Skype before so it took a little getting used to. And it took a little tweaking to get the phones to ring long enough before going to voice mail and to set up the system so that going from real life assistant to virtual assistant was seamless. We've finally got that done, and here' what we do.

I've got the Google voice numbers now set up to forward to the Skype numbers at all times. When Kelsey is here, the phone just rings in the office. But when she's gone, she clicks one button and all calls that come into our Skype account are forwarded if they aren't answered within 5 seconds. This ensures enough time for the call to reach the virtual receptionist, and makes switching between people seamless and easy.

By the way, you have no idea how much tweaking that actually took to execute.

Accountant

I'm in the market for an accountant. For more reasons than just this firm.

Here's the thing, I think that once you start one business, you can't help but constantly have your eyes open for other opportunities to get into new ventures. And that's exactly what's happened to me. In addition to the law firm, I've got a budding search engine optimization business going (and, technically, one I could start if I wanted to that would help law firms actually get the search engine results they were looking for), and I've got another business in the works related to helping lawyers get paid by their clients (wouldn't we all like to make this process easier?).

Two of the ventures I'm doing on my own, but the third is with a partner. And with all of that activity means there is going to be a lot of money coming and going to and from a lot of different places. And I'm not smart enough to keep track of it all. So I need an accountant. Know one?

Okay, that's all for now. If you have questions, ask. Have a Merry Christmas!

How to Start a Law Firm | Getting Clients to Your Website

Up to this point you should have a law firm website or legal blog started, you should have a couple of posts on there (probably no less than five), and they should be relevant to your legal area of practice, with links in them to both your main site and your other posts (by creating post pages in blogger, each post becomes its own separate "website").

For example, if you put your mouse over the links above you can see that they all go to this website, but to a specific post. This interlinking only helps you build up for Google juice and get your site more recognized. Also, you should always link back to your main page. This assures that as you get links to your specific pages, they will then link back to your main page.

Okay, enough of that tangent. Now back to starting a law firm and marketing that law firm so you can get clients. And there is no easier way to do it than on the web. My last post talked about backlinks - those links that come from out there on the web to your site, which Google sees as evidence that you know what you are talking about and other people think you know what you are talking about.

But how do you get these backlinks? The answer is not simple, and there are both easy and hard ways, each of which should probably be used. I'll start with the hard ways (the ways that require more work).

Hard ways to get links to your legal blog or website

"Hard" here is a relative term. Creating backlinks is actually easy in almost every avenue. But these links are going to require a little more elbow grease than some other methods might because you are actually going to be creating your own backlinks. But nobody said opening a successful law firm was easy.

Every time you write a post, you have created some content for the web. One of the easiest ways to get links is to rearrange that content and go write an article out on the web pointing back to your site. There are a lot of good sites out there, but the ones I have primarily used are ezine articles, goarticles, hubpages, and squidoo. Each of these sites allows you to create articles, lists, and other things, and build links in them to wherever you want.

These are hard because they can take a little time to put together. When you write the article, it doesn't necessarily have to make perfect sense, but you want to make it different enough that Google doesn't recognize it as being the same post that is on your blog (Google, as would be expected, doesn't give you any credit for a link like that). Once you get a couple of links coming in, Google will index your site, and the world will be able to find you (and hire you).

Another important point. When you create links to your site, DO NOT MAKE IT THE NAME OF YOUR LAW FIRM! If you do that, you will quickly rank number one in Google, and everyone will be able to find you, if they search for the name of your firm. Instead, make the keywords relevant to your practice area.

For example, if you are a Seattle DUI attorney, make sure you have DUI, DUI lawyer, DUI attorney and words like that both in your posts and in your links. I am a criminal defense attorney, so I make sure my links have criminal law terms like DUI, theft, malicious mischief, possession of marijuan, possession of cocaine, how to beat a DUI, and other relevant terms. That way Google will see that your site is about that and push you up in the Google ranks. And, one more thing, vary your keywords. If you have a very specific word you want to rank well for, and all of your links are that word, Google is going to get suspicious. So mix it up every once in a while.

Easy ways to get Backlinks to Your Legal Website or Blog

The thing about the easy ways is that some are a little bit "gray hat." What I mean by that is they are toeing the line as far as what Google thinks people should be doing. But, as attorneys, don't we kind of try to push the boundaries from time to time? In any event, these won't get you thrown in jail or anything like that. Google will just take some Google love away from you.

The first easy way to get links is to go leave comments on do-follow blogs. Most blogs, this one included, allow comments. I love hearing how everyone is doing trying to start their own law firms. Business plans, law firm marketing, legal malpractice insurance, and all the other fun things that go with starting a business. But I don't give link love that easily, so when you leave a comment, Google doesn't count the link to your site as a good link. If you click on it you will go there, but Google doesn't see that link as this site giving you credibility. Well, some sites allow do-follow links. Just go to them and post some comments with some links - they don't get a lot of weight, but every link helps.

The second easy way to get links to your law firm website is to ask for them. There are all kinds of blogs out there that would love to give you a link. It helps if you are interested in what they are saying and leave nice comments, but people will give you links if you ask.

The third easy way to get links to your law firm blog is through shared link exchanges. For example, there is a link exchange I know of called ConnectContent. You will notice there is a button off to the side to go to that site. If you sign up (it's only $12/month - chump change for getting a ton of great links) you get access to a lot of people that are looking to get links, and are willing to give some out in exchange. All you have to do is link to other people's sites and they will link to yours (not necessarily the same people - dual links aren't the greatest). And, you get to list your preferred keywords, ensuring you get great link love from Google! I use this site, and it is really great. There are safeguards in place that force you to link as much as you get links, so you actually get great links. Check it out and give it a shot if you are interested. It will help you get to the top of Google very quickly.

The final easy way to get links is a bit of a spin off the third. There are programs out there that you can buy that will create a bunch of articles for you, submit them to article sites, and theoretically get a bunch of links. The problem is, most of the time the articles are illegible and Google sees this and doesn't give much credit for them. I'd stick with the other methods if I were you, but wanted to let you know this option was out there in case you were interested.

In the end, getting clients to your law firm website is not going to be too difficult. All it takes is keyword rich backlinks (and probably not that many - you'd be surprised how few attorneys know this information and take the time to use it) and you will have heavy traffic to your website in no time. Give it a shot. This is just another one of the exciting aspects of starting your own law firm (and it is really exciting to see your site jump up in Google!).

Got ideas or suggestions? Please comment. It might even actually turn into a discussion!