Total Information Awareness, for Lawyers AND Clients

Pronet Advertising has a great list of 10 Things You Should Be Monitoring online.  Other bloggers have jumped in with numbers 11–17 and 18–23.  The first ten:

1. Company name
2. Company URL
3. Public facing figures
4. Product names
5. Product URLs
6. The industry “hang outs”
7. Employee activity/blogs
8. Conversations
9. Brand image
10. Competitors

Good advice, but I’d take it a bit further.  You should absolutely be monitoring these things for all your clients, too.

OK Trial Lawyers, Keep Those Palms Up (not just out).

(Via Buzz)  Bodytalk:

"If you talk with an audience with your palms in an upward position, they not only remember up to 40 percent more of what you've said, but they like you."

Time to shoot new pictures for those yellow pages ads. 

Surprise Your Clients With Lunch

Via Hugh:

One of the crazier PR stunts I've seen for a while: Cambrian House, an open-source software company, turn up at Google unannounced and feed them 1000 complimentary pizzas .

I love this idea, but if I were a law firm serving any medium to large business, I’d take it in a different direction:  I’d surprise my biggest/best clients with enough free pizza to feed all their employees. 

If I wanted to create even more buzz, I’d buy pizza for all my business clients’ employees ON THE SAME DAY.  You could surely work a pretty good deal with the local pizza places, and think about how much everyone would talk about you. 

If I had a few thousand dollars I was thinking about spending on that secondary yellow pages book in my town, I spend my money doing this instead.  I’m sure I’d get a much better bang for my buck.

Drive Divorce Clients to Your Practice

Are you a divorce lawyer?  Here’s a great vehicle for marketing your practice:

Thanks to Klaas Oost for permission to use this photo (flickr link), taken in Cape Town, South Africa.

It is never too early to do your client holiday shopping.

Don’t know where you’d find these online, but if you practice criminal law and want a nice gift for your clients, may I suggest this lovely door mat:

(found on a front porch in the Soulard area of St. Louis)

You Can Call Me "Mr. Homann"

I was out for a walk the other day and saw this real estate agent’s magnetic sign on his SUV: 

Despite the incredible amount of information on the sign, notice that the one thing it doesn’t have is his first name.  If you wanted to contact him, but didn’t remember the phone number, or even the agency, how would you find him?  Would you search for “Mr. Johnson” in the Yellow Pages or on Google?

Think about your business or firm name.  If someone hears it and wants to contact you later, will they be able to find you? 

Another Way to Impress Potential Clients

Ever think of adding a multi-media presentation to your professional firm’s web site? For a very cool (and different) idea, check out Ganas Consulting’s Declaration of Independence.

Via Presentation Zen

Meet Tomorrow's Clients

According to this study:

Gen Yers spend 12.2 hours online every week -- 28 percent longer than 27- to 40-year-old Gen Xers and almost twice as long as 51- to 61-year-old Older Boomers. Gen Yers are also much more likely to engage in Social Computing activities while online. For example, they are 50 percent more likely than Gen Xers to send instant messages, twice as likely to read blogs, and three times as likely to use social networking sites like MySpace.

"All generations adopt devices and Internet technologies, but younger consumers are Net natives who spend more time online than watching television," said Forrester Research Vice President and co-author of the report Ted Schadler. "Younger generations live online, reading blogs, downloading podcasts, checking prices before buying, and trading recommendations."

Movie Marketing Madness

I love to find interesting marketing ideas, even (or especially) if the ideas are not directed to professional service providers.  Mark Cuban has hundreds of cool marketing ideas submitted by readers on his blog in response to this:

So if you want a job, and have a great idea on how to market movies in a completely different way. If your idea works for any and all kinds of movies. If it changes the dynamics and the economics of promoting movies, email it or post it. If its new and unique, i want to hear about it. If its a different way of doing the same thing you have seen before, it probably wont get you a job, but feel free to try.

So go for it. Come up with a great idea that i want to use and I will come up with a job for you to make that idea happen.

There are now over one thousand ideas submitted by Mark’s readers.  Take some time to read them.  You are sure to find a nugget you can use in your practice. 

What Start-Ups Want in a Lawyer

OK, so Andy Lark is talking about hiring a PR agency, but I think he could just as easily be talking about hiring a lawyer:

But I don't want $15,000 dollars worth of service. I don't even know what that is!

I want results. I don't care what it costs or whether an agency has to under or over service to deliver it. I just want results against the agreed budget. You commit, I commit, we all commit together.

What is more troubling to me as a Valley CMO is:

1) finding a great agency is bloody hard work. They are few and far between. At any billing rate. Few CMOs I know get the value of PR or AR, let alone the value of a good agency... I accept we are part of the problem, but...

2) finding an agency that gets your business and has a real enthusiasm for contributing to the growth of the business - harder still

3) finding an agency that understands that great ideas get funded - near impossible. They are caught in the conundrum or belief that ideas require budget prior to being generated. Bullshit. (and I am talking about real ideas, not those regurgitated from the last pitch)

4) finding a team that can explain why they should get paid more and then associate some kind of outcome with the result - well, if you find them, let me know. The most common justification - "we've been over servicing your business for six months now, you need to pay us more" - is nuts. Nuts!

5) finding an agency - the word is a bit of an oxymoron. It implies some kind of powerhouse of ideas and execution - the strength of a team. What you generally end-up funding is one very dedicated individual surrounded by some other folks - generally you aren't quite sure what they are doing but they all arrive for meetings and scribble madly into notebooks.

What is needed is a new kind of agency. One not built on billable hours and 10k budgets. Maybe one built on the power of ideas to drive a startup's growth curve? One with the courage and conviction to articulate a value proposition that resonates with the CMO of a start-up and ability to explain what the budget should be.

You see, we live less in the conceptual world of brand and reputation and more in the real world of qualified opportunities, pipeline growth and time to sale.

Until then, 10k sounds like a nice round number to start with. Agencies shouldn't let it end there. We will pay more. And I am willing to put my money where my mouth is.

If you want to serve this market, listen closely to Andy’s complaints.  Make it your number-one priority to contribute to the growth of your clients’ businesses, not to extract the maximum amount of money from their coffers.  Build client-centered teams — and make sure your client meets everyone on the team BEFORE their time shows up on a bill.  Finally, start your representation by focusing on the goals of the client and the results they desire.  Then agree upon a budget (or, gasp, a fixed price) to meet those goals and achieve those results.

Marketing to Small Businesses

If you want to understand the mindset of entrepreneurs, you should read this post from Scott Berkun (thanks, LifeHacker) on two kinds of people …

… people that make things complex and people that simplify.

Complexifiers are averse to reduction. Their instincts are to turn simple assignments into quagmires, and to reject simple ideas until they’re buried (or asphyxiated) in layers of abstraction. These are the people who write 25 page specifications when a picture will do and send long e-mails to the entire team when one phone call would suffice. When they see x=y, they want to play with it and show their talents, taking pleasure in creating the unneccesary (23x*z = 23y*z). They take pride in consuming more bandwith, time, and paitence than needed, and expect rewards for it.

Simplifiers thrive on concision. They look for the 6x=6y in the world, and happily turn it into x=y. They never let their ego get in the way of the short path. When you give them seemingly complicated tasks they simplify, consolidate and re-interpret on instinct, naturally seeking the simplest way to achieve what needs to be done. They find ways to communicate complex ideas in simple terms without losing the idea’s essense or power.

Entrepreneurs and business people want their lawyers to be Simplifiers.  What do you do to simplify things for your clients?  Do they know it?

UPDATE:  I posted this without reading all the comments.  There are some great nuggets in there.  One is Scott’s response to a comment asking for a way to figure out which camp a prospective hire/consultant/etc. is in.  Here is one of  Scott’s ideas:

2) I’d give them a complex, but solvable problem. After they’ve solved it (even with help) I’d ask them to find a simpler solution to the same problem. If they’re a simplifier they’ll be into this - even if they don’t suceed they’ll be self motivated about seeking out a simpler way. If they’re complexifiers, they’ll balk at the suggestion that a simpler way exists and that it’s even worth their time to find it.

Increase Your Social Surface Area

Want a fun tool to measure your networking efforts:  David Seah’s Network Catch-O-Matic.  In David’s post explaining the tool, he talks about “increasing your social surface area,” which is one of the best benefits of networking — and blogging.

Stressless Press

Need an intro on getting good press?  Here it is.  One great suggestion to get in print publications (and blogs) is to:

Get to know your publication: 

Buy three issues of the magazine and read it cover to cover.

1. Observe which sections change month on month and which don’t.
2. Make a note of what the cover theme is each month and which words or themes are repeated. Anything that is repeated time and time again on a cover means it’s a core topic for that magazine.
3. From your own research form a picture of who the reader is.
4. Create a profile of a typical advertiser and who they are trying to reach - this will help you understand where most of the magazine’s ad revenue comes from - and also who is currently successful in this market.
5. Imagine your product or service appearing in the mag. Does it fit? Will the readers be interested in it? Can they afford it?

Once you have chosen the publication that is perfect for you and your idea then you are ready to begin your marketing onslaught. First things first: find out who is responsible for which areas of editorial. This may not be clear from the editorial panel so ring the magazine to find out. Speak to the secretary if you can’t speak to the team. The same goes for a newspaper or indeed any other media.

Armed with this information, there are four main ways that you can get the attention of a publication: as an Expert in your field, as an Ideas Machine, by sending a Press Release, or by requesting a Review.

Get Down With NLP -- Yeah You Know Me

Want an introduction to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)?  Check out this 12 part series on the Life Coaches Blog:  NLP 101.  What is NLP?

A powerful bag of tricks that allows you to help people change themselves through its mental models, patterns of influence and techniques of change.

Instead of giving you generals, NLP has many step-by-step specifics, which is great when practitioners recognize the principles so they know how not to go step-by-step, and terrible when practitioners don’t know the principles and follow the steps to the letter or bend it all out of shape.

A lot of trial lawyers have been studying NLP to help them connect with juries.  If you are curious, check out the whole series.

One Way to Sell Wisdom

Having a difficult time “selling” your value as an advisor instead of a tecnician?  Here’s an easy-to-understand way to communicate the differences between Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom, from the Across the Sound podcast (via Howard Kaplan):

Data is "the sun rises at 5:12 AM"

Information is "the sun rises from the East, at 5:12 AM"

Knowledge is "If you're lost in the woods without a compass, follow the direction of the sun to find your direction"

Finally, wisdom is "Don't get lost in the woods"

If You Can Find a Better Lawyer, Hire Them ...

If Chrysler can do it, so can you:  Offer a Guarantee.

I Know Something You Don't

Here’s one of the best taglines (from the presentation design company Missing Link) I’ve ever seen:

Don’t hire us because we’re fun and interesting.  Hire us because you’re not.

In a blatant rip-off, I’m claiming this line to sell to my next law firm client:

Don’t hire us because we know the law.  Hire us because you don’t. (TM)

technorati tags: marketing, law

Blogs are Child's Play

According to this study, 78% of young people have a personal website or blog.  These are tomorrow’s clients and customers.  They will judge you based upon your online presence, or lack thereof. 

What are you going to do about it?

Mom, Dad, I've Got Something to Tell You ...

A Great Tip from Paul Bennett:

So try this. Buy a train ticket home for the weekend. Not your current house, but home-home, to your parents. Now sit them down at the kitchen table and, in 50 words or less, tell them what you do for a living, what product you make or sell (or if you're a consultant, what process or deliverable you sell), and what's good about it. Don't use weird words or anything with lots of syllables. Don't quit until they understand you. I told my mother once that I worked in Conceptual Marketing and I swear she thought I had joined a cult.  Remember what you said. Now go back to work, and apply this principle to your job. Simple stories, truths well told, no made-up nomenclature and gilded lilies. It's more clever to be simple, don't forget that.

Make Money by Specializing? Bank on it.

In an interview in the New York Times, the Chairman of ING Direct shares explains why his company specializes and avoids cross-selling:

Q. Does the question simply become one of pricing, of being able to offer the highest return?

A. In every country where we are, we have competitors offering higher rates than we offer. But you've got to be very careful, because, you know, consumers are smart. We have a product offering that has no commissions, no minimum, no tricks. Does the competition offer any tricks, like ties to something else that you have to do to be there, or a minimum balance, or a minimum usage? We have to be better than the next most comparable alternative.

For us, cross-sell is not what we want to do, because we want to keep it simple. We know that out there, the largest pool of earnings in the retail banking world comes from savings and mortgage — those are the only two things that we want to do. If you try to cross-sell too many products, you confuse the clients about what you are and your costs escalate exponentially.

Here are three questions every small business person should be able to answer: 

1.  What is your most pofitable service or product?

2.  If you focused exclusively on selling that service or product, could you sell more?

3.  What’s stopping you?

I’m not suggesting that small business owners abandon their passions to concentrate on making the most money possible, but I do believe that most business owners — and this goes double for lawyers — don’t even know what their most profitable service or product is.  Answer the first question, then the second, and finally the third, and you may be on your way to a more profitable business.  And if not, at least you’ll understand the trade-offs you are making in your business and your life.