Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog : Law firm marketing, legal editor, legal marketing, attorney marketing, business development, marketing consultant, legal consultant, business development

Since the advent of smart phones, having a mobile-friendly website was a “nice to have.” This changes on April 21, 2015, when Google expands its use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. According to a recent Google blog post:

“This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”

In other words, if your website is not mobile-friendly, expect to lose a significant amount of traffic that comes from your mobile users, because your site will be punished in mobile search rankings. On the other hand, if you have a responsive website that resizes itself to fit cell phone, tablet and desktop devices, expect a nice boost in searches that are made on smart phones. This is extremely important because:

• 60 percent of online traffic now comes from mobile devices.
• 45% of law firm traffic comes from from mobile devices, according to a 2014 LawLytics study of 733,346 visits across randomly-selected law firm websites

Get ready for the change

Google is already labeling law firm websites as being “mobile friendly,” and it rewards them with a ranking boost. To get help with making a mobile-friendly site, check out Google’s guide to mobile-friendly sites. If you’re a webmaster, you can get ready for this change by using the following tools to see how Googlebot views your pages:

• If you want to test a few pages, you can use the Mobile-Friendly Test.
• If you have a site, you can use your Webmaster Tools account to get a full list of mobile usability issues across your site using the Mobile Usability Report.

Unfriendly and friendly

Needless to say, now is the time to check if your law firm website design is mobile-friendly, and if it is not, to make it so.

Highlights of a mobile Friendly site:

• Entire website shrunk onto a 3-inch screen
• No images
• Can’t read the text
• Can’t make out the logo
• Links are too small to click with a fingertip
• Long paragraphs of text
• No clear way to connect with anyone

Highlights of a mobile friendly site:

• Big buttons
• Click to call
• Click to email or text
• Single column layout
• Large links that are easy to click with a finger
• Interactive map button
• Easy drop-down navigation
• A “mobile moment” or branding experience.

For more information:

Read Why Your Law Firm Website Needs Responsive Web Design

By John Fisher on Law Practice Manager:

This was not your usual workday lunch.

One of the most successful personal injury lawyers in New York agreed to have lunch with me. We were complete strangers and I was totally up-front with him from the get-go: I told him that I was there to find out what has made him a success. I was going to pick his mind and hopefully leave with a couple of gold nuggets that I could use for my practice. I call this “Modeling the Masters”—and it’s surprising to some that top-caliber lawyers are willing to share their best tips and advice.

As we got to know each other over lunch, I asked very bluntly for the two or three things that made him successful. Rather than worn-out clichés of “work hard” or “never give up”, the lawyer gave it to me straight. The lawyer held nothing back by telling me that he had tried just about every marketing tactic and for the most part, they didn’t work.

An Epiphany

When the lawyer was struggling to launch his practice, he settled a big case and used the funds to focus on one marketing tactic: radio ads. The lawyer didn’t just dabble with radio ads, he went all in by spending $100,000 (even when money was tight).

The radio ads weren’t loud or obnoxious, but conveyed a clear message: “We care about you.” Each radio ad had a different story and one ad was more successful than the next. New personal injury leads came in and the lawyer began experimenting with new ads and investing more money in radio.

Over a two hour lunch, the lawyer confided in me: for every dollar he spent on radio ads, he made $10 in return. Wow! Where else can you find an investment where you can invest $1 and get $10 in return? Nowhere! But this never would have happened if the lawyer hadn’t experimented with different types of marketing and eventually find one tactic that worked in spades.

The Real Key to Success...

Read on at Building the Law Practice of Your Dreams

As more and more people search for lawyers online, having no law firm content marketing strategy will eventually put you at a disadvantage. Creating a website is a beginning, but unless you maintain it and add new content, it’s no more effective than hanging a shingle and hoping clients will wander in off the street.

A steady stream of content opens the door to social media marketing, builds inbound links to your website, and creates materials that provide value to prospective clients. Here’s a three-year plan for better content marketing that even a busy attorney in a small office can use.

Year One: Assemble What You Already Have

The first step to effective content marketing is to understand your prospective clients.

• Who are they demographically? Local law firm marketing is a big part of this.
• Why do they come to your firm?
• Who makes the final decision to retain you?

As you answer these questions, create three character descriptions or “persona” of the types of people who might hire you. You’ll update your character personas periodically, but these initial personas will provide a good starting point.

Map out the process that prospective clients go through when choosing an attorney like you. The search probably begins with a need: The client is being sued, charged with a crime, getting divorced or having another legal problem. How do prospective clients use the Web to search for attorneys like you? Do they call you or set up an in-person consultation? How do they make the decision to hire you?

Gather up articles that you’ve written, old blog posts, brochures, newsletters, recorded interviews, videos, and any other existing content. Ask a paralegal, assistant or intern to help you. Then, create a spreadsheet that tracks:

• Who wrote it and where the article is. Have a column for the title, where to find it (the URL, publication information, CD-ROM or file name) and its author.
• Who it’s for. On your spreadsheet, label each piece according to which client persona would benefit from the material and on what part of the hiring journey the client would need the material.
• How ready it is. Assign a freshness rating from one to 10, with 10 being “ready to share today” and one being “hopelessly out of date.” Make notes on what you’d need to do — update the legal information, reshoot the video without your 1970s hairstyle, rewrite the article in everyday language — to bring the freshness rating up to a 10.

Some attorneys make the mistake of focusing too heavily on law firm website design, which is important but should always be subordinate to, and done in service of your firm's content.

Every consumer you would like as a client has a mobile phone.

Here are the slides from a brand new webinar that describes what lawyers must to do reach this super-connected audience and to convert them into clients. If you don’t have a mobile presence for your law firm, these consumers will not find you or your law firm.  I narrated these slides in a webinar on February 12 in a practical and info-packed program. You will learn learn:

• 5 new ways consumers are using cell phones

• Creating “mobile moments” and “brand experiences” that generate files

• 5 essential elements of a mobile website

• The web technology that is driving traffic to mobile sites

• Getting positive online reviews with a mobile phone

• How personal injury and criminal defense firms especially benefit from the mobile web

• 2 trillion text messages are sent every year. Did your firm send one?

• A new warning from Google about mobile unfriendly sites.

Here's a practical article from Law Practice Advisor:

One of the reasons that it’s so hard to interest Hispanics in joining a class action lawsuit is their cultural sense of destiny — that suffering is a natural parts of life. If a person was harmed by a drug side effect or dangerous equipment, it was their fate.

This point was one of many Hispanic marketing insights offered by Leslie Inzunza, a bilingual and bicultural expert in New York.

“Culture is a shared system of beliefs and behaviors passed from one generation to the next,” she says. “Latinos don’t respond the same way as other consumers, because their culture adds another layer of complexity. What makes ethnic marketing so tough is they swim in different waters.”

For example, Latinos in general are risk-averse, and shy away from being the first to try something they view as uncertain. There is a perception that any lawsuit involves risk and this keeps them from filing a claim or joining a class action.

Best ways to get through to Hispanics

To overcome this culture bias, Inzunza, speaking on an HB Litigation webinar, said the solution is to demonstrate that there are people in their group who have gone before them. For example, a website or ad can feature quotes from Latinos who have filed a claim.

The Hispanic market with 54 million people in the US is too big to ignore. Only half of them are foreign-born and many are citizens — but they view the world from three cultural vantage points:

• Learners are recent arrivals, and includes elderly people who don’t care to learn English, and remain learners for years. Only ⅕ of Hispanics are new immigrants.
• Straddlers are bilingual and bicultural, and are often referred to as “New Latinos.” Learners and straddlers have little or no experience with the US legal system.
• Navigators are more sophisticated, speak English, and are further away from their roots but still have a Hispanic cultural practice. “By appealing to their Hispanicism, you get their attention,” she said. Latinos have a pejorative word for them: Americanizar, or Americanized.

For the rest of this article please visit Law Practice Advisor.

Check out this forthright new blog post by Trey Ryder on Law Practice Advisor:

You tell your prospect that you bill at $350 per hour. Your prospect responds by saying, "But another lawyer I interviewed charges only $175 per hour." Now, what should you say?

One powerful way to respond to your prospect's comment is to get out a piece of paper and divide the sheet into two vertical columns. Put your name at the top of one column and the other lawyer's name over the second.

So, the certainty of knowing exactly what you provide -- and the uncertainty of not knowing what your competitor provides -- allow your prospect to see clearly on paper "what he gets for his money" when he hires you. But -- what do you do if your prospect raises the issue at your seminar? Or at a luncheon meeting? Or during a phone consultation? In these examples, taking out a sheet of paper for your two-column demonstration isn't practical.

Speak with confidence

So here's what you do instead. Click Six Magic Words That Overcome a Competitor’s Low Price to see the rest of the article.

For high-growth firms, blogging is the single most important business development tactic – it is more effective than SEO, social media or email marketing.

“Blogging is the best way to establish thought-leadership online and get lawyers off the treadmill of defensive and costly advertising," said Dan Jaffe, Attorney and CEO of LawLytics.

It is essential for lawyers to have a blog that is updated frequently with unique content.

A vibrant blog will increase a law firm’s visibility, bolster the firm’s reputation and brand, and communicate the firm’s expertise.

What makes a blog successful is a consistent flow of content, educational posts relevant to the target audience, and a conversion offer -- meaning an offer of something free, like a download, in exchange for getting the visitor’s email address.

I recommend doing the following:

• Create an editorial calendar for the blog, so that you plan out blog posts in relation to conferences, dates and events that are important to your audience.
• Avoid writing about the law firm. Instead, tell stories about successes you achieve for clients.
• Promote two-way communication, by letting visitors comment on your blog posts.
• Consider adding video, which improves search engine results.

There are many sources of inspiration, including client questions, news stories, public statements by firm leadership, trade magazines, conferences, webinars, Twitter hashtags and LinkedIn answers.

Hire a professional

A blog post can take two to four hours to write, and for lawyers it often makes sense to outsource the writing, and to retain a professional legal blogging service to provide drafts of blog posts. “If you, as an attorney, love the write and have the time, then there is no person better qualified to write for your law firm's blog,” said Jaffe. "But if you don't have time, not blogging is not an option because your competition will lap you if you simply do nothing. For that reason, we recommend engaging a ghostwriting service that understands the intersection of journalism, SEO for attorneys, marketing and legal ethics. At LawLytics, we are very selective about the writers we hire .This is because a law firm's blog is often times the very first impression potential clients get of our customers."

There are several ways to double the volume of leads generated by a blog:

1.     In blog posts, include links to an eBook or free report that can be downloaded.

2.     Display offers about downloads into the sidebar of the blog.

3.     Add italicized offers at the bottom of a blog post.

4.     Measure which topics convert the best, and make a point of blogging on those topics.

5.     Repurpose past blog posts by editing them into best EBooks and special reports.

6.     Optimize posts as you write them by including keywords and links to previous blog posts. The LawLytics attorney website marketing software makes it easy to publish, optimize and link blog posts to other relevant pieces of information.

And if your blog just isn’t pulling in as many leads as it used to, redesign the blog completely to boost your traffic. This is why LawLytics includes free website redesigns every two years as part of a law firm's membership.

As virtual meetings become more commonplace, legacy web conferencing software is wasting an unacceptable amount of time, according to a new study from Ovum and join.me.

It is based on a survey of more than 3,900 full-time professionals worldwide, regarding their collaborative behaviors and activities. The key findings from this report:

• Late start times are costing executives 5 days and 19 hours per year in lost time and productivity.
• Technical difficulties with web conferencing software is the number one cause of delayed meetings.
• • More than 50 percent of employees report that the number of meetings they have is increasing.
• • 32% of all meetings are virtual, a trend that skews higher for younger workers. 

Frustration with traditional web conferencing tools has led 66% of corporate buyers to look for new collaboration solutions to accommodate an increasingly collaborative and connected workforce

You can download Death of the Web Conference (as we know it) for free.