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

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.

Samantha Miller, Vice President of Product, Web Visibility Solutions at LexisNexis, wrote an important piece back in November about the importance of optimizing your firm's website for mobile users.  Here is an excerpt. Read it at the source, here.

Have you ever tried to navigate a website with your mobile phone or pad, when that site was NOT optimized for mobile devices?

The text is too small and the images are too large. There is way too much content and that material is basically unreadable. Pictures are not sized or placed properly. If you can even find the scroll bar or tabs, you have to keep swiping. And forget about trying to find any contact info.    

In short, the website looks and feels terrible.

If you are a consumer in urgent need of legal information or actually need to find an attorney, you're moving on to another firm's site.

This is a guest blog post by The Law Firm Mobile (LFM) blog. In December, LFM released its second annual research on which firms from the AmLaw 200 and Global 100 have entered the world of the mobile web (the first report can be found here).

Below are following sections: an overview of the report, statistics describing the extent of mobile web site penetration for large law firms, statistics regarding the type of content used in firm web sites, and a final section on mobile web best practices. The final section of this report provides a detailed list of the names of law firms with hyper links to a screen shot of each respective firm’s mobile site along with the URL for that site.

Overview

• Of the firms on the 2012 AmLaw 200 list, 54 firms (27%) have mobile sites. This is an increase of 46% (17 additional firms) from 2011. Of the firms on the 2012 Global 100 list, 29 firms (29%) have mobile sites. This is an increase of 32% (7 additional firms) from 2011.
• Of the firms on the 2012 AmLaw 200 or Global 100 list with a mobile websites, most firms (67%) have from 7-9 total content types for the mobile site.
• Of the firms on the 2012 AmLaw 200 or Global 100 list with a mobile website, the most popular type of content offered to users is Professionals/Attorney Biographies (59), Offices (53), and Practice Areas (52). The next set of content includes News (45), About the Firm (42), Careers (40), Events (38), and Publications (34). Some of the least used content types included Contact Us (13) and Industries (9).
• Even with the increase in firms with mobile sites, the majority of large law firms in the AmLaw 200/Global 100 do not yet have a mobile web despite the significant growth in smartphone use.

See the remainder of LFM's findings on the LFM blog 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.

Here is an excerpt from a recent  paper from LexisNexis demonstrating social media’s viability for law firm marketing purposes.

When a consumer faces a crisis—a failing business, an unfaithful spouse, a family member in trouble—that person is more likely than ever to turn to the Internet looking for answers to his or her legal issues.Three out of four consumers who sought an attorney in the past year used online resources, including search engines, websites, YouTube™, Facebook® and other tools at some point in the process, according to a recent survey.

You are invited to tune into LexisNexis' new, free webinar, "Keywords to Success: How to Generate More Business for Your Law Firm with Search Engine Optimization" to be broadcast on Tuesday, December 6, 2011.  LexisNexis is applying for CLE credit* for the program.

You can register for free at www.lexisnexis.com/webinar.

I'll host the webinar and will describe how your law firm can focus its online search marketing strategy to drive more business.  The program will show you how to optimize your website to promote the areas that matter most to your clients and prospects.

At a time when more and more consumers are searching online before meeting with a lawyer, this seminar will show you how to make your website more visible to prospects searching for the areas of law you practice.

You will learn:
      •     How keywords and search engine marketing works     
      •     The difference between organic links and paid links, off-site and on-site optimization     
      •     How to promote specific business initiatives at your firm such as entering a new market and targeting new types of clients.

There's no charge and no obligation. You can register at for free at www.lexisnexis.com/webinar.

*CLE is in the process of approval. LexisNexis is approved for telephonic/Webinar training on this topic in the following states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New York†, North Dakota, and Utah (self-study only).

†Only experienced (having completed their first 32 hours of CLE) NY attorneys may take telephonic training for CLE. New York regulation requires that all CLE sessions must be conducted by a JD or an attorney in good standing.

A California appeals court has reinstated a jury's $17.35 million damage award to more than 100,000 businesses and individuals who took out ads in Pacific Bell phone books that were delivered either late or not at all.

The Yellow Pages advertisers' money was wasted. 

Jurors awarded damages to advertisers in 66 of Pacific Bell's 163 directory service areas in the state, including the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, finding that the company had failed to use its "best efforts" to deliver the books as promised. In most cases, those were districts in which fewer than 94.5 percent of the directories arrived on time.

A Superior Court judge had overturned the verdict in June 2009 and dismissed the suit. But the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco overruled the judge on Tuesday and restored the verdict. The court said the advertisers had relied on a delivery verification survey by Pacific Bell's contractor, the nonprofit Certified Audit of Circulations, which offered the only data available.

The jury found that the plaintiffs "paid for advertising distribution services they did not receive," the court said, and they are entitled to compensation even if "precise proof of the amount of damage is not available."

The evidence, including admissions by phone company distribution managers, showed "ongoing, severe problems in delivering directories," said Presiding Justice Ignazio Ruvolo in the 3-0 ruling.

The suit was a class action on behalf of 380,000 advertisers in the yellow pages in California between 2002 and 2004. Plaintiffs' lawyer Michael Schrag said somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 would be eligible for damages in districts where the jury found inadequate deliveries.

If you haven't canceled your yellow pages ads yet, now is the time to do so.

As law firm marketers contemplate their advertising buys, we should be aware that the audience for newspapers and magazines has moved online. For example, before buying a $12,000 full-page ad in a print publication, it makes sense to see if there is a cheaper online option -- which will reach more people.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations recently conducted a survey of print publications—newspapers, magazines and b-to-b titles—to learn how their mobile initiatives are progressing. Publishers’ growing mobile know-how, increasing confidence in mobile strategies, maturing product offerings and anticipation for future revenue streams is evident in the results.

• Eighty-five percent of survey respondents said they currently have mobile content for smartphones, e-readers or tablet computers, up from 76 percent last year. Newspapers (88%) were most likely to have mobile initiatives in place, followed closely by consumer magazines (83%) and business publications (79%). Publishers cite development and maintenance costs as the primary reason they did not have a mobile presence.
• Publishers are gaining confidence in their mobile strategies. Fifty-nine percent of publishers now say their company has a strategy for capitalizing on mobile platforms.
• Many publishers believe that e-readers and tablets will be the biggest boon to their business. Seventy-three percent said readers are most likely to read  their content on e-readers or tablets compared to 60 percent who said the same thing about smartphones. In Canada, the gap was even wider. Fifty-seven percent said e-readers and tablets had the brightest future compared to just 34 percent for smartphones.
• Publishers in the U.S. and Canada are investing in optimized mobile websites. Eighty-one percent of U.S. publishers and 65 percent of Canadian publishers said this was an important part of their strategic plan. Respondents said mobile websites often account for up to 15 percent of their overall website impressions.

Marketing takeaway: when you have a case outcome, completed deal or hot legal news story, conduct at Google search to find the newspapers and magazines to offer the story to.

Learn how to expertly handle business development opportunities with prospects, contacts and new referral sources in our upcoming webinar, What Do I Say To A Prospective Client To Win Their Business? On November 18, 2011, veteran business development expert David Ackert and I will  describe:

• How to test to see if a prospective client needs an attorney.
• What you should say about your firm and its capabilities.
• How to transition from a social conversation to a business dialogue.
• How to avoid looking like a salesperson. 

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Click here to register. Save 20% if you register on or before Nov. 11: fee $240

Save 10% if you register on or before Nov. 15: fee $270

Fee beginning Nov. 16: $300

You can pay online with a credit card. Display the program in a conference room and invite as many attendees as you wish.

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Topics Include:

• Common business development mistakes that attorneys make
• What clients care about when meeting you
• How to ask the right questions and listen effectively
• How to excel in a networking situation
• Diagnosing a clients' need for service
• How to overcome client objections to engaging your services
• How to sell ideas for next steps
• How to use a proven, step-by-step business development process

Who Should Attend:

• All Attorneys who want to understand and apply the best professional practices of business/referral discussions for successful business development.
• Associates looking to develop the right skills for business development and to begin now to develop their networks.
• Marketing Directors looking for ways to support their attorneys with sound, practical methods.

Click here to signup for this event.