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

Robert Hodge, a Law Firm Marketing Specialist with LexisNexis, offers 4 advantages of using Pay-Per-Click over search engine

Immediate launch — We quickly develop a targeted keyword campaign for Google, and ads can go live within minutes.

Flexible budgets — We can set daily and monthly budget caps to ensure you never spend more than you're comfortable with.  We will change keyword bids and budgets on the fly to respond to the dynamic auction environment.

Highly targeted — Geo-targeting and geo-modified keywords means you can more easily reach the consumers near you or in targeted markets.

Control — Have a high level of control over your marketing message. Paid search advertising lets advertisers control what your listings say and how they look on the Google results page.  We also specify targeted landing pages, so you're able to drive users to the page that has the exact information they're looking for.

Phillip Livingston, CEO of Marketing and Business Solutions at LexisNexis, posted about Facebook's new "Graph Search" feature that they will begin to allow people to test.

What Graph Search will mean for lawyers looking to leverage social media remains to be seen. According to Whitson Gordon, editor in chief at lifehacker.com: "This is an awesome new feature for Facebook, not an awesome new feature for the internet. For anything not related to Facebook or your Facebook friends, you'll still be better off going to Google, or Yelp, or Amazon...." Others are predicting Graph Search will prove useful to people seeking lawyer referrals, lawyers looking for job opportunities, journalists needing legal SMEs, and more. We'll be watching the Graph Search launch with keen interest!

So what is it?

"It's going to cause people to do all kinds of searches they have never done before because you couldn't do these searches before," says Danny Sullivan, founding editor of SearchEngineLand.com in a story by the Los Angeles Times. In short, it adds another layer of possibilities for what you'll be able to search for and find on the site. As opposed to searching the Web, Graph Search takes place within Facebook. If it proves popular, it could mean users begin to spend even more time on the site.

According to Facebook, Graph Search will enable you to search using simple, specific phrases like "photos my friends took in New York City" or "restaurants my friends like in London." You can look up anything shared with you on Facebook, and others can find stuff you've shared with them. Each person sees unique results. If there isn't a match, it will show results from Bing.

"Web search is designed to take a set of keywords (for example: 'hip hop') and provide the best possible results that match those keywords," Facebook further explains in a press release. "With Graph Search you combine phrases (for example: 'my friends in New York who like Jay-Z') to get that set of people, places, photos or other content that's been shared on Facebook."

Graph Search is available now in a very limited beta. It is expected to launch publicly within the next few months. Stay tuned!

Read original post here.

In this guest article,  Jason Winmill of Argopoint offers suggestions for outside counsel when firm selection processes and negotiations involve the procurement function.

Many corporations are starting to involve internal procurement groups in the process to select outside counsel. Unfortunately, some outside attorneys haven’t adapted to this development. Lost opportunities and frustrated outside counsel can result.

Suggestions for Outside Counsel to Work More Effectively with Corporate Procurement:

• Understand and Follow Procurement’s Process: The procurement function, at its best, strives to run a fair process. In some situations, outside counsel will accidently or deliberately try to thwart the procurement process (e.g., performing “end runs” to senior management). In my experience, this proves detrimental, and can disadvantage firms. Learn the “rules” and follow them in detail and in spirit; this is generally the best policy.
• Educate Procurement Where Possible: Procurement professionals are not all-knowing experts on all legal services, or your firm. There is often an opportunity to educate procurement. When possible, be generous with your time to help procurement achieve greater understanding of your firm and value.
• Ask Questions: Outside counsel often direct all their inquires during the selection process to in-house counsel.  However procurement objectives can differ. Therefore, I recommend asking procurement questions regarding their specific priorities (e.g., transparency) and respond accordingly. 
  
• Procurement Professionals are People too: To be sure, there are heavy-handed procurement professionals that give the function a bad name. Remember, just like lawyers, procurement professionals are often stereotyped. A focus on the personal dimension, when appropriate, can be an advantage.

Law firms that understand how to work with procurement can gain a competitive advantage.

To learn how procurement is working with legal departments at Fortune 500 companies, here is the full article on legal procurement.

In an article titled, "Mark it on Your Calendar: January Blog Topic Ideas for Attorneys", LexisNexis Senior Director of Product Management for Web Visibility Solutions, Samantha Miller, gives ideas on blogging for attorneys.

Insightful, timely blogging that uses current events as a hook is an effective way attorneys can market themselves.

For January, in the wake of the tragic Newtown, Conn. school shooting, President Barack Obama has appointed a government task force — spearheaded by Vice President Joe Biden — and charged it to propose solutions to gun violence. The task force is expected to make recommendations sometime in January and the president has said he'll take quick action on their suggestions.

As part of your law firm marketing efforts, engage clients by discussing how existing and proposed gun legislation may affect them. Here are some topic points for your blogging:

• Retail clients that sell guns, ammunition and other weapons must have detailed policies and procedures for handling these sales. Will processes need to be changed if new legislation is passed? Do store employees need new training? Some retail stores may have some employees — such as managers or security guards — who are armed in the event of a robbery. How will changing gun laws affect those individuals?
• Business clients as well as government agencies need to have emergency response plans in place in the event of a workplace shooting or other violence that leaves employees and guests injured or killed. Counsel your clients on how to create and implement these plans.
• Winter and spring are active hunting seasons. Remind hunters of the process for obtaining a hunting license and gun permit, as well as the local laws related to hunting various types of game.
• All gun owners should be well educated on the guidelines for safe gun handling and storage. Homeowners will also want to ensure that their property insurance company knows they have guns in the home. Make sure firearms owners know that they could be personally responsible if someone is injured or killed by their unsecured guns.
• Firearms owners and gun opponents may want to contact their elected officials and provide feedback on proposed legislation. Guide clients through the process of identifying their city, state and federal representatives. Also offer tips to help people express their opinions in a persuasive manner.
• What do gun owners in your area need to know if they want to sell or otherwise dispose of a firearm? The rules related to private sales vary depending on whether the buyer and seller live in the same state or different states.
• People convicted of certain types of crimes cannot legally own, possess, transport, ship or receive firearms. Criminal defense attorneys should talk to those clients about the ramifications of firearms ownership and how a convicted criminal can legally relinquish a gun in his or her possession.

Read more of Samantha Miller's tips here.

Manish Bhargava's article, "How Live Chat Turns Law Firm Website Visitors into Potential Clients," teaches us how to transform those visitors into clients.

To generate more clients for your law firm from your website, that site needs to attract visitors AND convince those visitors to contact you and request a consultation.

Let's say you're succeeding in driving visitors to your website with referral networks, a Google paid search (pay-per-click, or PPC) campaign, your search engine optimization program, a blog and other marketing techniques.

Congratulations!

But that is just half the battle.

What happens when after investing all that time and money to draw traffic to your website not enough visitors are calling or emailing to ask for a consultation? You have a "conversion" problem.

The solution: live chat.

Here's why:

1. Round-the-clock engagement.

Live chat operators can proactively engage your website visitors before they abandon by addressing their questions immediately, in real time, 24/7, 365 days a year.

Think about it: A potential client under stress, possibly upset and impatient, is searching your website but can't seem to find what they're looking for. Up pops a live chat window with an operator — not a software program, a professionally trained live operator — who answers questions about your firm.

Rather than abandoning and moving to another site, the visitor sticks around and is now engaged with your firm. Chat operators ask specific questions that are carefully placed in the transcript by you. The operator, after the chat session ends, forwards the information collected "as is" to you immediately, even after hours and on weekends.

Read the remainder of Manish Bhargava's article here.

Steven Long provides some advice for swimming with sharks when you are a big attorney in a small pond.

Some clients like to look for attorneys with prestigious addresses or those who are part of a bigger firm. But here in the Dallas area, a lot of clients prefer an attorney who is a big fish in a small pond. Many clients and would-be clients are more interested in working with a local attorney in a small office nearby, rather than one in a large office where they have to travel miles and miles to visit. However, small firms and solo practitioners often lack the marketing dollars and muscle of their big-firm counterparts. Without those, attorneys who may be off the beaten track need to be smart and savvy to stand out and get noticed by people needing legal advice.

Social media can be the equalizer that allows you to get noticed by clients in your neighborhood when you don't work for a big firm — as long as you take the right approaches to maximize marketing time and money.

Read the remainder of his article here.