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

See this press release from Friday, June 21, 2013.  Click here for original source.

BTI Consulting Group’s research sees projected 2013 growth of only 1.8% in outside counsel spending.

For those not currently engaged with clients in redefining value outside of rates, we recommend a serious discussion with your clients about their goals in bringing work in house.

Corporate legal departments shifted $5.8 billion from their outside counsel budget to internal spending. BTI Consulting Group's newest release of BTI Benchmarking Corporate Counsel Management Strategies reveals corporate counsel at the world’s largest companies continue to move dollars in house—and away from outside counsel. The shift drives a paltry projected 2013 growth of 1.8% in outside counsel spending instead of a 5.1% compound growth rate had corporate counsel spent the money on outside law firms.

Corporate counsel are bringing the following practice areas in house: 

•     IP prosecution
•     Licensing
•     Complex commercial contracts
•     Litigation
•     Regulatory and compliance

Corporate counsel’s top goal is to wring more value from their scarce legal dollars. “Shifting money in house and away from law firms is one value generating opportunity,” comments Michael B. Rynowecer, President of BTI. “For those not currently engaged with clients in redefining value outside of rates, we recommend a serious discussion with your clients about their goals in bringing work in house.” Continues Rynowecer, “devise your strategy to help your client exceed their goals faster than they might on their own.”

BTI conducted more than 300 independent, individual interviews with CLOs and General Counsel at Fortune 1000 companies and large organizations. Now in its 13th year, BTI conducts the only continuous benchmarking market study of corporate counsel worldwide.

Find more information about this and other compelling research at http://www.bticonsulting.com or contact BTI at 617.439.0333. BTI is the undisputed leader in providing high-impact strategic research to professional service firms and their clients.

Cindy Greenway, Editor in Chief of LawMarketing.com reached out to Carlton Dyce, Vice President of Peer Review Ratings and Client Review Services at LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell to get his thoughts on the importance of attorney rankings.

The topic of attorney rankings has been a hot one for several weeks.  We've heard some say that attorney rankings, ratings and reviews don't help attorneys connect with consumers  - we've also heard others say they matter a great deal.

I reached out to Carlton Dyce, Vice President of Peer Review Ratings and Client Review Services at LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell to get his thoughts on this topic. Carlton has over 25 years of broad publishing and production experience covering data collection and database management.

Bottom line is this - whether they're buying a washing machine or buying a car, consumers appreciate the importance of ratings and rankings when it comes to making a formal decision.

The same is true in the legal space.

Today consumers are leveraging ratings and rankings to make an informed decision, and lawyers need to look at that as a way of differentiating themselves, a way to stand out. Ratings increase the likelihood of being hired by buyers of legal services, and what they do is they also provide consumers, corporate counsels and small business owners with that sort of extra reassurance.

Ratings also provide a sort of third-party validation.  Consumers like to hear reviews and feedback in verbatim from people like themselves, and what they're looking for is to see whether or not that person like them, what kind of experience they had. Was the experience someone had with that divorce lawyer the kind of experience where he or she was responsive to the specific matter or did he or she not ever call back in this difficult time.

Consider this information the next time you hear someone say that rankings, ratings and reviews don't matter.

According to David Wodnicki, a LexisNexis Law Firm Marketing Specialist, when potential clients view videos of attorneys, it can create a powerful connection like nothing else on a law firm website. But even an Oscar-worthy video won't help, if viewers don't bother to actually launch it. So, how can you get them to watch? Here are a few ideas.

1. Make them worth watching
You don't need to hire Martin Scorsese to direct your attorney-profile video, but you don't want a video that looks and sounds cheap. Fortunately, digital equipment has become so inexpensive that you don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to hire someone to create simple, effective videos.

The videos also don't need to be long. Potential clients aren't looking for a law-school lecture or a bragging session. They just want to get a sense of who you are as an attorney and why they may want to talk to you about their case.

2. Make the videos easy to find
Feedback from the LexisNexis® Martindale-Hubbell® 2013 Law Firm Website Conversion Study points to the success of putting videos on the home page. You want to be careful about how you use this valuable real estate, but creating links here can pay off in a big way by encouraging people to watch them.

3. Optimize videos for desktop and smartphone viewing
Consumers who go online to look at law firm websites are most likely to use laptops and desktops, according to theAttorney Selection Research Study by The Research Intelligence Group (TRiG). However, more than one-fifth of potential clients accessed online resources with their smartphones. You want to make sure computer and smartphone users alike can easily view your videos.

4. Be sure to comply with all your jurisdiction's ethics laws
But you knew that, of course.

When you open a file, it's the end of a successful customer journey for the client — a trip that was influenced on the way by email, online searches, social media and referrals. Search engine giant Google recently unveiled data about which law firm marketing tactics are most influential in guiding that journey to a "customer purchase decision."

Which technique is the most effective? Savvy marketers understand that you don't always seal the deal with a single tactic. A client may see a display ad, click on a link from a friend, or do a search before deciding to select you for their legal matter.Google's online tool reveals online buying behavior and shows how different marketing interactions affect business success.

Every lawyer wants to "close" a new client, but that won't happen without marketing to consumers at the start of their journey, when they (a) become aware of a lawyer, (b) begin to consider the attorney, and (c) form an intent to call you.

Email and social media are effective early in the client journey, according to Google. These initiatives assist a consumer in becoming aware of a lawyer's services. (Note: I filtered the Google tool to display results for the finance industry, the closest analogue to the legal profession.)

This means that publishing an email newsletter, and having an active presence on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are important elements of a law firm marketing plan. These techniques will influence the journey a consumer takes, but it will require multiple interactions or "marketing touches" to direct them to hiring you. Lawyers.com has expertise in helping lawyers with social media marketing.

Pay-per-click advertising and paid search results are effective in tipping consumers from considering hiring a lawyer — to deciding to hire a lawyer. In fact, paid search turns out to be just as effective as being found in the results of "organic" or consumer-initiated searches.

A referral is marketing gold: according to Google, it leads directly to a purchase decision. Consumers who have received a referral to you are no longer shopping — they are ready to retain you. Among the ways to get more referrals is to ask clients to recommend you, and to establish referral arrangements with other lawyers.

To impress clients and lawyers, it is key to have an up-to-date lawyer profile. Lawyers.com receives 34 million unique visitors each year who are seeking legal assistance.1 Seventy percent of those visitors come to Lawyers.com to find an attorney.2

The Google tool proves the necessity of having a multi-faceted marketing campaign to generate new business. Email, social media, paid search and referrals are guideposts on the customer journey to retaining your firm.

1Self-reported LexisNexis Web Statistics, 2012
2Data derived from a custom analysis of sub-domain URL information from comScore Mar. 2012. This data is not reflected in the basic comScore interface.

Brian Farrell, a Law Firm marketing Specialist for LexisNexis, posted an interesting article about how using color on your firm's website can influence your clients for good or bad.  Here is what he had to say:

When it comes to your website, you probably spent significant amounts of time thinking about the text, layout and other details. But how much time did you spend thinking about the color scheme?

When viewers visit your firm's website, their first impression is a visual one. Colors create moods and impressions, and our brains process their meaning before we've read the first word of text.

"Everybody is fluent in the language of colors but they usually do not realize it because they do not have to think about it in order to understand it," says Robert Bossinger, project management team lead for LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell. "Designers use colors to communicate a singular message or a complex, multifaceted message without ever writing a word. The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words is true."

So what does your color selection "say"? Here are some common website colors and the emotions they exude to clients and potential clients:

Red
Power and aggression, used most often by criminal law and personal injury firms. Be careful though — red also means love, especially if you have a pink accent. What's more, red, as a primary color, has for generations represented blood and is often used as a sign of danger (ever wonder why stop signs were red?).

Pink
A very feminine color, not often seen on law firm websites. However, as an accent, it's a very quiet and calming hue, and could be useful for both family law and women's rights firms.

Orange
The color of summer. Orange is very warm, and mixes well with browns. In business, it represents ambition, success and goals. It can also represent justice, happiness or new beginnings.

Brown
Earthy and rich, browns are often mixed with oranges and yellows to symbolize fall. It also stands for strength, productivity and hard work (as used in the UPS slogan "What can brown do for you?").

Gold
Wealth and riches. A masculine power color. When mixed with other bright colors, it represents playful humor.

Blue
Cool and calming, blue often represents both sky and water. A very strong color, used often by B2B firms, corporate attorneys and others who want to convey trust and devotion.

Green
Lighter shades represent nature, spring, growth. Be careful with greens though, since darker shades have a completely different meaning — that of power, money and success.

Your website designer should know the appropriate color combinations that complement each other and will most effectively convey the message you are trying to send. That is why you should schedule a consultation before designing or updating your website.