Historically I’ve been BAD at marketing my law practice. But I’ve gotten better. RJon Robbins always used to say, “Marketing is the highest and best use of your time.” He’s right. These are the 3 marketing channels that I’m investing in on a regular basis:
- Traditional Professional Referral Sources. This remains an important source of clients not so much for volume produced but rather for quality produced. The average client referral is more affluent and more easily engaged than any old cold caller. My associate attorney and I have created a spreadsheet with some 30-40 other professionals broken-down into some 10 categories with 3 persons per category in areas that we as family law attorneys need on a regular basis. Our minimum expectation is that each of us are “touching” (referral, e-mail, article forward, in-person meeting) at least one person on the referral spreadsheet on a monthly basis. Typically we touch several persons on the chart each month. Then through our general networking we’re constantly generating “leads” on persons who may potentially be added to our referral chart as we get to know persons better and are assured of their competence and referral sources for our clients.
- Internet & Social Media. I’m no SEO expert but I’d simply say that it’s worth the investment, particularly if you practice in a consumer-centric subject area. Beyond that we try to use our blog as the center of a social media hub. Meaning we post our substantive media or articles on the blog and and then distribute through Twitter/Facebook/Constant Contact/LinkedIn.
- Marketing to Your Base. With each passing year in the practice of law your customer list grows and its value as a business development does too. This group is very similar to category #1 but generally these persons aren’t in the same positions of influence to produce the quality of referrals as category #1. But these are people who know you, these are people who potentially need repeat business, and these are surely potential referral sources. Do something and do it consistently. We send a monthly, Constant Contact newsletter to our customer list on the first Tuesday of each month.
