When Katie (my wife) started her law firm a few years ago, we were excited. It was going to be an adventure! As she walked out of her big firm job that last day, it seemed like the possibilities were endless.
And then the calls started. And the emails. And the tricks. It was like someone had put an ad on Craigslist saying “Easy mark! Hock your wares with abandon!”
I’m sure you’ve experienced the routine (and if you’re thinking about starting your firm, just wait.)
Phone calls at all hours. Because hey, we wouldn’t want to cold call a potential prospect during their working hours like everyone else, we need to stand out! 7am it is! Putting your kids to bed? Nuh-uh, it’s time to talk document management!
A constant barrage of cold emails with generic pie in the sky offers about this and that. None of any substance, just begging you to get on a phone call so they can see how much budget they can extract from an unsuspecting new business owner.
And the junk mail! Oh the junk mail! Not just “hey you should know about this service” junkmail, but downright fraudulent junkmail. Junkmail saying you’re in violation of some law if you don’t talk to them, or that someone’s going to steal your domain name or your trademark in China. Each looking more official than the last.
It’s exhausting. And we’d had enough. There HAD to be some good actors around. But the more I searched, the more shadiness I came across.
I’d had enough. And it was time to do something about it. So when I started AmazeLaw, I vowed to be honest with my clients, to treat them fairly, to empathize with the fact that they’re not an entity to extract money from, they’re small business owners, just like me, struggling and working their tails off for a better life.
I’ll leave it to my customers and to you to determine if I’ve succeeded, but in an effort to combat the shadiness, here are * tactics vendors are using right now to try and screw over small firms under the guise of being helpful.
Red flags in abusive vendor relationships
These are the tactics that should immediately set off red flags. Now not all vendors who use these tactics are bad by default, but they should act as leading indicators for abusive relationships so proceed with caution.
Being secretive about pricing
What they’re thinking: Their goal with this tactic is to get you to call to figure out whether it’s even in your budget. They don’t trust that you’ll be able to see the value of the product on their own, so they want you to contact a script-reading junior sales rep to convince you that it’s worth shelling out your precious cash, and then pass you off to a closer (account executive.)
Also, it means they don’t have any pricing structure to adhere to. They’re free to tell you any price (often after learning how large your budget is.) So they’ll start high, and work down so you feel like you’re getting a deal, often with steep discounts that magically appear when you tell them you’re all set.
How you can take advantage: This is the first step in some aggressive sales BS. But, if you really think the product works well (maybe you’ve had a colleague recommend it), you have a bit of an advantage if you’re willing to play hardball.
Make frequent price objections, threaten to walk away. Then actually walk away. Hang up the phone and tell them you’re just not sure about the price. I promise you they’ll call back. And there’ll probably be a discount in it for you.
Requiring annual or multi-year contracts
What they’re thinking: We don’t trust that you’ll stick around long-term, so rather than giving you 12 chances per year to consider whether that line in your bank account is worth it, they’ll only give you one option, and they’ll put a customer retention specialist in touch with you to promise big things for the next year.
And of course they’ll probably have a notice clause in the contract requiring more than 30 or 60 days notice of cancellation before it automatically rolls over. So when you contact them to cancel a few weeks before it rolls over, you’re told you’re already locked up for another year and if you want to cancel, you’ll have to pay an exorbitant cancellation fee (if they even let you).
There also appears to be a trend in the marketing services space (SEO, PPC Ads, Content Generation, Lead Generators, Directories) to require a 3 or 6 month commitment (often at $1k+/mo.)
While not as costly as annual contracts, they’re inherently higher risk. As an excuse, the sales rep will tell you that it takes time to see results from a new marketing channel. And that’s true, to a point.
But any person worth working with, any person you trust, will be able to give you an honest assessment along the way and let you know whether it makes sense to keep moving forward. They’re just trying to force the decision rather than letting their service speak for itself.
If they don’t trust that you won’t leave after a month or two, it says something (everything?) about how much they trust their product.
Note – These scenarios are different from annual prepay/billing. Annual prepay (often with a discount) can make a lot of sense for you and for the vendor. It helps them with cashflow and it provides you with a) a discount and b) the ability to play with your tax burden a little bit. If you have a strong year and you’re not sure the next year will be so fruitful, paying for the next-year’s services in December will reduce your tax burden this year (assuming you’re using cash accounting.)
Obviously, I’m not an accountant, so that’s not financial advice. But I would advise setting up a standing meeting with your accountant every fall to go over your accounting and help make decisions like this while you still have time before the end of the year.
Now before you sign up for annual prepay, you should ensure that you’re not locked in. For example, we offer 2 months free for our clients that sign up for annual billing, but if they get six months in, we’ll send them a pro-rated refund. They’re not locked in.
So be sure to ask what happens if you cancel half-way through your annual contract so you can correctly weigh your options.
How you should handle this: Except in circumstances where the value is clear and you’ll clearly need it long term, I would run, not walk, away from these terms. Cash is king for a small business so don’t lock yourself up unless you’re absolutely sure it’s worth it. And make sure you ask if they have…
Early cancellation fees
What they’re thinking: This is usually paired with those big annual contracts. It’s nothing more than a way to make you question your decision to cancel and extract a little more cash on your way out the door. It’s extortion, pure and simple.
AmazeLaw is actually a rare business where a customer leaving actually costs us time and money. It takes a lot of time and effort to move a website. And even we don’t have cancellation fees. We’ll lose money. That’s our punishment for not meeting our clients’ needs, and our incentive to do better. Thankfully it doesn’t happen very often.
What you can do: Honestly, not much. You can try to negotiate your contract at the beginning, but that’s about all you can ask for. But before you do that, you should probably question why they need that clause in the first place and if that’s someone you want to work with or trust a part of your business to.
Owning your domain
This is specific to website providers but it’s egregious enough that I need to call it out. Some providers insist that they control the domain name for your website. Claiming that it’s easier if they register it. That they’ll make sure it’s always renewed.
What you should do: DO NOT DO IT. Register your domain under an account you (and only you) control. Make sure you sign up for auto-renewal. I usually recommend Namecheap or Dynadot (GoDaddy is ok too because they’re ubiquitous, but they have some questionable tactics of their own I recommend my clients avoid.) If they insist, run away.
Controlling your phone number
This is just like controlling your domain name. And with the rise in importance of local search and its reliance on consistent Name-Address-Phone Number (NAP) for rankings, it’s gotten even worse. Having a different phone number on your website than the one you have on your business cards, or in the phone book is a big no no.
What you should do: There should only be one phone number for your business, and it should reside with your telephone service provider.
Acting as the middleman between you and your clients
That phone number control is often used as part of a feature called call-tracking, an attempt to funnel all website leads through a proprietary system. Of course that assumes that your leads want to call you. Some vendors even go so far as to not put an email address on your website, forcing the visitor to either pick up the phone or fill out a generic form that connects to their system and their system only.
What you should demand: You need to own your communication with your clients. Any barrier that’s put between you and your clients is not worth whatever low-volume metrics you might be able to pull out of your marketing vendor.
Promising the moon
This is pretty straightforward. An over-eager salesperson making empty promises to hit their monthly quota. Sometimes it’s subtle, but when you start to think maybe they’re being a little too generous with their predictions here’s a tip…
How can you use this? If you’re wondering if they’re pulling the wool over your eyes, then a surefire way to tell is by using a trap question.
Take the vendor’s pitch to the extreme, ask them if that’s a typical result. For example, for a company building a website or an SEO firm, ask them if this product will get you on the first page of Google. For a lead gen product, ask if you’ll get at least 5 qualified, high-quality leads every month.
Of course, if they say yes, ask for the names of two or three clients that have had those outcomes so that you can speak to them about their experience. And then watch the excuses fly. They’ll say that they don’t disclose client information.
You can even ask for a guarantee. That you can request a refund if those results aren’t met. That’s almost always a no-go on their part, but at this point the deal’s probably over so have some fun and watch them try to justify why they can’t 🙂
If they say no, that those results might be possible but that they aren’t typical, that’s actually a positive sign. Ask them under what circumstances you could expect to see those results. Ask them what the typical results actually are. If they’re honest about the conditions where the solution works and where it doesn’t, they believe in what they’re selling and it might be worth trying as well.
But again, ask for two or three references that would be willing to back that experience up.
In those scenarios, it’s really hard to find a long-term customer that’s willing to speak with prospects. And if there’s only a handful of them and they’re selling at scale, they just can’t afford to send hundreds of reference requests to each attorney that offers.
Here’s the cold hard truth. If a vendor doesn’t have at least a few attorneys literally raving about their experience, then it’s probably a no-go. After all, by the law of large numbers alone, there should be outliers that are having success. Even if they can’t give you a phone number, they should be able to send you case studies of successful clients. And often from there, you can do some basic Googling to find the subject’s contact information if you need to verify their story.
What about you?
Have you seen these tricks in the wild? How have you dealt with them? Did I miss any? Let me know in the comments!
Tired of being played?
If you need help with your marketing, but were really hoping to avoid all of those tactics, let’s chat and we’ll help you get off to a great start!
I am not a lawyer. There. I said it. But I am married to a wonderful employment attorney who’s just recently hung her shingle. Like most solo attorneys out there, she’s found that building a client base is a constant exercise in hard work, ingenuity, consistency, and persistence.
I happen to be a really nerdy guy that has a background in building digital marketing platforms, so we sat down one night to figure out what ONE THING we could focus on that could get her the most bang for her buck in terms of getting in front of her ideal clients right now, and staying top of mind for when they actually had a need for her help.
We tossed SEO, as you’re not going to get to the first page in Google for anything but your name in the first few months of starting a firm. Anyone that tells you otherwise is peddling snake-oil. So what’s one to do when faced with the long-game that is internet marketing? Well, you have to get a little scrappy, and go places that most of your competitors won’t.
I’ll share what we came up with, and walk you through every step of putting this in place for you. And as long as you’re not an employment attorney in Southern NH, I’ve been given the green-light from the Mrs to let you in on the goods.
The Case For A Weekly Newsletter Over Say, Twitter or Facebook
The one constant over the last 20 years of the internet (besides cat photos of course) is email. Everyone has an email address. Everyone checks their email multiple times a day. Everyone gets a nice little dopamine kick every time an email comes in and their phone beeps or vibrates in their pocket. In short, it’s the most ubiquitous way to insert yourself into a person’s weekly routine.
But you know all that. The real beauty of an email newsletter is twofold.
One, email is easily shareable. We’re used to forwarding an email, and we don’t have to leave our browsers to do it. No fancy “Share This” buttons, no URL shorteners, just a simple forward to a friend is all it needs to spread, and spreading is what you really want right now.
Two, email generates a feeling of reciprocity. Our species has a hyper-developed urge to return favors given to us. If you’re able to provide enough value to your readers on a regular basis in the form of insights, aggregated interests, etc, when it comes time to seek legal advice in your area of expertise, you’re the one they’ll have that urge to go back to.
I promised two, but I’ll give you a bonus reason. Email is not controlled by another company’s desire for you to pay them money in order to reach your audience. It’s been shown that Facebook posts are seen by less than 6% of a brand’s followers, and internally, Facebook wants to see that number drop to 1%-2%. Why you ask? Because they need money in order to satisfy their share-holders, and the only way to do that is to be the gate-keeper (read: toll-keeper) between you and the audience you’ve painstakingly built on their platform.
So if you want to actually build that audience, you’re now going to have to use their Facebook ads platform to do so.
Own your audience! An engaged newsletter subscriber is orders of magnitude more valuable than a Twitter follower or Facebook fan.
Now that begs the question, who should your audience be?
Choosing an audience
Deciding who your newsletter is for is largely dependent on how you define your ideal client. In the example of my wife’s employment law firm, her ideal clients are small business owners and HR managers in larger companies. For her, it makes sense to market directly to those folks with updates about the changing HR landscape.
But, when coming up with your newsletter audience archetype, clients aren’t the only option. In fact, in many cases, you may want to skip writing for clients at all, and instead focus on the natural referral providers that make sense for your practice area. For example, if you focus on trusts and estates, you might consider writing a weekly update for financial advisors in your state, that would keep them in the know, and ready to hand out your business card if their clients have more complicated estate matters that the financial planner can’t handle on their own.
Choosing your content
Now that you have your audience decided, it’s time to figure out what content we can provide on a regular basis that will ensure that your email is always valuable to that audience.
It’s tough starting from a blank canvas, so I’ll outline a few items that should work for most audiences. But don’t be afraid to get creative and get inside the mind of your ideal client. Remember, this is about them, not you. If you have other ideas, please share in the comments!
An Editorial Forward
I wouldn’t spend more than one paragraph on this. Give the readers an overview of what they’ll find in the update, and perhaps a light call to action. Suck them in.
Interesting Reads
You no doubt spend a lot of time reading the latest news related to your practice area. When you come across an article that you want to share on twitter, place it in your email template as well. Be sure to add a one or two sentence takeaway from each that informs your reader why it matters to them.
If you want to link to one of your own blog posts, that’s fine, but limit it to one per newsletter. You don’t want to come across as spammy. This newsletter isn’t meant to drive traffic to your blog, it’s about keeping your readers informed.
Events
Curate a list of networking events in your geographic area. Make sure to ask readers to let you know about any events they’re sponsoring or attending as well. Highlight the events going on that week, and then list out a calendar of events spanning the next month.
Reader Questions
Solicit questions from your readers. If they have a particular problem that others in the group might be interested in, ask if you can publish your response to the group. Obviously, you should be careful to disclaim that the email doesn’t constitute legal advice.
Blog Posts
If you do want to have a place for all of your posts from the week, place them in their own section, and toward the end. Follow a similar format to the “Interesting Reads” section above.
Footer
This is essentially your business card. Make sure your readers have a way to contact you, and how to find you on your various social media accounts. Also, this is a good spot for a disclaimer if you have anything in the newsletter that might be construed as legal advice. Also, a good place to let folks know that replying to you doesn’t constitute an attorney-client relationship.
For this one time, and this time only, I’m going to advise ignoring that rule, mostly because we’re going to be following the intent of law, if not the letter.
We are going to be creating a weekly newsletter that your readers will WANT to look through every week. If we don’t reach that level of awesomeness, then this whole endeavor won’t be worth it anyways.
So, for your initial list, we’re going to build a list of people you know in person that would genuinely be interested in your content. This is not a “dump my address book” into a list type of exercise. This is a painstaking process of going through your address book, your Linkedin contacts, your Facebook friends, etc and asking the following questions:
Does this person know who I am personally?
Does this person fit my audience archetype?
Would this person likely look forward to this email every week? (Be brutally honest)
If the answer is “yes” to all three (and a real “yes” not “maybe” or “possibly”, a hard and fast “yes”), then you want to add them to your list in the following way:
Create a spreadsheet in google docs. You can do this in excel as well, but we’re going to do this using Google Docs because everyone has access to that tool, and particularly for marketing activities like this, Google Docs can be a lifesaver.
In Column A, put the email address. In Column B, put the person’s first name.
Rinse and repeat step 2 for every person that fits.
When you’re done, we need to download your list so we can import it into your email provider of choice. To download the file in the correct format in Google Docs, click File> Download as…> Comma-separated values (.csv, current-sheet). Remember where you place that file, we’ll need it later.
Now that we have a list, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.
Tools
There are a TON of email providers out there. There’s MailChimp, Constant Contact, Emma, Campaign Monitor, and I could go on and on and on. They’ll all work and if you have one of them in place already, stick with it. Better to work with the one you know. If not though, I always recommend MailChimp for two reasons. One, it’s free for up to 2000 subscribers, which is more than enough for every firm I’ve ever worked with. Two, it has all of the features you’ll need, is easy to use, and it works on every device so if you have a few minutes of downtime, you can work on your next week’s digest without having to bust out a laptop.
We’ll be walking through how to implement this using Mailchimp.
Setup
Head on over to mailchimp.com and sign up for their free plan.
Once you create the account, you’ll receive a confirmation email. Just follow the link in that email to continue with the setup. Fill out the form related to your business size and whether you have a list (feel free to select “No” for now, we’ll build one later) and hit submit. You should now be staring at your Mailchimp dashboard.
We’ll start by creating an empty list. Click on the “Create List” button on the dashboard to get started.
Creating Your First Email List with MailChimp
Just click “Save” and congratulations, you now have your first email list.
Importing Your List
Now that we have a list, we want to make sure all of our readers receive it. We need to import them from the list we created before. So go ahead and click on the import subscribers link, and then select “Import From a CSV or TXT File.”
How to import subscribers from a CSV file in MailChimp.
Now, find the file that you downloaded in the “Constructing your list” section above. Once you import that file, you should see a screen where Mailchimp is going to match up the columns in your list with the custom fields that Mailchimp uses to customize your emails to each reader.
Selecting which file to import your subscribers from.
If it works, it should look like this:
Making sure your data lines up with MailChimp’s dynamic fields.
Once you click then ‘Next’ button, you should see a confirmation screen. The defaults are fine, just click ‘Next’ to complete the import.
Alright, now that you have a list, we need to build a campaign. Campaign is just another word for sending out an email to your list. To start the process, click on “Campaigns” in the sidebar then in the dropdown on the next page, click “Regular campaign”.
Starting your first campaign with MailChimp.
When you do that you’ll be placed into MailChimp’s campaign creation workflow. In the first step, just select “Send to entire list” and click “Next.” The next step is where you start to define what this particular campaign (or mailing) is.
You’ll need to create a name for the campaign. I would chose something that can be easily modified in future campaigns since this is going to be a regular thing. In this example, I chose to name it after the newsletter, and then give it an issue number. That way, in the next campaign, all I have to do is change the issue number and they’ll be easily identifiable. You could use the date you plan to send it instead of an issue number too. I’ve seen that work nicely as well.
Once you have the name, it’s time for the subject line. Now I’ve always found the subject line to be a little hard to write before you’ve written anything about the content. So for right now, put in something generic about your newsletter and move on. We can change the headline later (before we send) to make it more specific to the actual content you put in the newsletter.
And the final change I’d suggest is putting *|FNAME|* *|LNAME|* as your “To:” field. Whenever you see *|SOME_CODE|* it means Mailchimp will replace that SOME_CODE with the data in your list that matches “SOME_CODE”. In the case of FNAME and LNAME, that’s the first name and last name of each recipient that was matched up when you imported your list.
As for the tracking section, you can leave that at the default values. If you use Google Analytics, you can go ahead and check the box there so that the campaign name will appear in your Google Analytics account as well.
Here’s what your screen should look like:
How to choose your campaign options.
Choosing a Template
Once you’ve set up your campaign, it’s time to decide how it will look. MailChimp provides a number of Basic Templates which allow you to build out your email, and they also provide pre-designed themes that have a bit of design to them.
I would stick to single column layouts to minimize complexity, but find one that works for you. It’s hard to go wrong here, so have fun! If you’re concerned about which one to pick, click “Themes” and search for “Minimal”. It’s organized into nice sections that you can customize to match the content you decided to include earlier.
While a template is one of the fun parts of setting up your marketing campaigns, be careful not to fall into analysis paralysis. There are a number to choose from, and you can always change it later. But for now, just pick one that’s simple and clear. After all, you want your readers to focus on what you’re writing, not the template that wraps it.
Writing your first email
And here we are, staring at a blank canvas. Intimidating right? I felt the same way. It gets easier, particularly once you find a format that really starts to resonate with your list, but for now, we wrote up an epic newsletter template that you can use to get yourself going on the right track.
Don’t get stuck on what to write.
We took care of the ideas for you, so you can focus on getting started. Click that green button there and you’ll have that template to use for whenever you’re ready to write your first newsletter.
You’ve now created your first email and you’re ready to hit send. That’s awesome! Now, when it comes to sending email marketing campaigns, you don’t want to just hit send when you’re done with it. You’re going to want to schedule the campaign to optimize for actually getting read.
Let’s face it, while our goal is to create an email marketing newsletter that readers actually look forward to, folks are busy. Think about the day-to-day business of your clients and try to schedule the campaign to go out when your readers will be able to sit down and read it.
For example, if your clients are HR managers, mid-afternoon on a Friday might be great, as they might be killing a bit of time waiting to punch the clock for the weekend. Every list is different, so feel free to experiment.
Sending your first campaign is only the first step…
Sending your first campaign is a really really big deal. You should be proud. You put yourself out there, and that’s the first step to allowing you and your firm to be found online.
Now, let’s take advantage of that momentum and talk about how to grow your list and how to keep pumping out great content.
Getting new subscribers
That first group of readers is going to be the easiest. You already know them. Getting folks you don’t know to sign up will be a lot harder. But alas, we’ll talk about a few ways to get started. The first two require little to no technical ability. You can start doing it today and to be quite honest, you’ll likely have your best results there.
Ditch the business cards, sign them up for your list in person.
We all know the value of meeting industry folks face to face. Attorneys are some of the best networkers I’ve ever met.
All of those events, the hours of chit-chat, the passing of business cards, all with the hope that one day someone will remember your firm when they have the need.
What if they didn’t have to think back to that charity dinner 18 months ago, and instead only had to remember the person that emailed them two weeks ago?
That’s the real power of email marketing. So now that you have a newsletter, you can use it to stay in front of all of those people you’re investing time to meet with.
So rather than saying “Here’s my business card, call me if you ever need help.” you can say, “I have a newsletter that goes out every other week or so that will help you with <problem they might have>. Would you like to sign up? It’ll only take a few seconds.” And then whip out your phone, go to Lists, choose your main email list, and then in the upper-right corner click on the button to add a subscriber and just enter their name and email address. You could even hand them the phone to have them enter it themselves. Done!
Or, if you don’t want to have to pull out your phone, just keep a pen handy. When you ask about the list, if they say yes, make a quick note on their business card, then manually invite them to the list later that evening when you get home.
Your loyal readers are also a great source of new subscribers. After all, they’ve already gotten to know you and the value you’re providing them. And, like most networked professionals, they probably know others just like them that might also benefit from your newsletter.
So, once a month, or once every other month, depending on how often you email your list, let everyone know that you’re on the lookout for new subscribers. Let them know the effort that you put into the list. Maybe even pull on their heart-strings a little bit by reminding your readers of all of the value they’re getting FOR FREE. And then ask if they’d take 30 seconds and consider forwarding your email to friends or colleagues that might also benefit from the information you send out.
MailChimp has a handy little merge tag for a forwarding link that will allow your readers to forward your email and have the recipients be prompted to sign up for your list as well. Just highlight your call to action (the sentence that’s asking folks to sign up) and click the link button. Select “Web Address” and set it to *|FORWARD|*.
Creating a link that will help your readers forward your campaign to a colleague.
Mini Contests
Another way to entice folks to forward your email is to run a little contest. For example, you could raffle off say, three $20 amazon gift cards, or maybe a copy of a book that’s pertinent to your audience. Then ask them to email you with the names of folks they forwarded your email to. For each one that signs up, enter them in a chance to win.
Worst case, you have 3 folks sign up and you spent $60. Might seem expensive, but the beautiful thing about email marketing is that you have time to make that money back. If even one of those clients calls you for a 30 minute consult in the next 18 months, you’ve likely made your money back.
Get your website to drive new subscribers…
It’s fairly easy to get a signup form onto your website. If you use WordPress, just add the Mailchimp plugin. Follow the instructions to add the form as a widget in WordPress.
If you use AmazeLaw, just go to Email Marketing, and click “Connect Mailchimp” button and you’re done.
But, like sending out that first campaign, adding a form to your site is not enough. You also need to actively promote your list in order to entice new signups.
Obviously, “promote your email list” is the type of pithy advice run away from here at AmazeLaw, so here are some easy, concrete ways to promote your new list on your own website.
Landing Page
A landing page is just a dedicated page whose sole purpose is to get a visitor to perform an action. In this case, the action is to get someone to sign up for your email list.
Create a page in WordPress or AmazeLaw, and give it the same name as your list. The content is pretty simple, you don’t even need a picture:
[Headline: Big benefit they’ll see from signing up]
This is a paragraph about what your life will be like after you’ve signed up and are reaping said benefit. Imagine how easy life will be. No more worrying about missing the latest news and getting caught unaware.
Here’s what you can expect:
Easy to digest updates about [your practice area]. No legalese! We promise!
Curated industry news so you don’t miss the best content out there.
…
No spam. Ever.
[Signup Form]
Pretty easy, huh?
Protip: Add a link to your landing page in your email signature with a simple call to action. Something like “Sign up for our free bi-weekly employment law update.” or “Free estate planning tips in your Inbox every week.”
Post/Page Footers
Having a signup form on your contact page, or home page is a great first step, but often times, visitors to your site won’t be coming through the front door. A good percentage of your traffic, particularly search traffic, will likely go directly to your blog posts where visitors are looking for a very specific answer to the problem they’re searching for.
They’ll likely never see your homepage, and unless you do a bunch of cross-linking (linking to other posts or pages on your site), they may not see another page before they move on with their day, armed with the answer to their query.
But what a perfect time to start a relationship. By answering their question you’ve provided value and built trust. It’s the perfect time to remind them that, hey, if you want more quality advice or analysis just like this, sign up for my newsletter!
Alright, time to recap. We’ve gone from nothing to:
Signed up for a free MailChimp account.
Created our first email list
Built and sent our first email campaign
Set up our website to attract new subscribers by using landing pages and blog post footers
Learned to leverage our existing contacts for new referrals
Staying consistent
Now that you’ve setup your email marketing essentials, we need to create a system for consistently delivering little knowledge bombs to your subscribers.
And consistency isn’t just how often you email your subscribers, but your ability to consistently deliver something that your readers value.
Steve Martin quipped in his autobiography that it wasn’t the ability to kill it on a given night that set the great comics apart. After all, most comics could kill it every once in a while with the right audience. It was the comics that could produce a great show night in and night out that were truly successful.
And just like Steve Martin, you need a system to deliver consistent value.
How do we do that?
Creating a schedule you can stick to…
We talked a bit about scheduling your campaigns so your customers are most likely to read your posts. Now let’s talk about how to schedule your campaigns so that they fit within the constraints of a busy attorney’s calendar.
You know it, I know it, so let’s not pretend that your email list is going to top your list of priorities for the week. So let’s just acknowledge it up front and figure out how to move forward anyways.
If you’re like me, you might tend to overestimate what you can accomplish, and that’s doubly true for todo items that aren’t sitting atop your priority list. So, if at this very moment, in your excitement over setting up email marketing for your firm (you’re totally psyched right? Right?!) you think that you could handle a weekly email campaign, let’s adjust that right now. Take your totally logical and reasonable estimate and cut it in half. Make it every two weeks, or make it monthly if your estimate was bi-weekly.
This will help you avoid the trap of committing to an unrealistic goal, missing it, and then bagging on the whole thing when a month has gone by and you missed your deadline.
And now that you’ve given yourself that break. Commit to it. You have no more excuses.
Set a recurring calendar reminder for 5 days prior to your campaign. Spend 30 minutes compiling your content. Don’t worry about being perfect. Just get a bunch of content in there.
Three days prior to the campaign spend another 30 minutes refining that campaign to make sure that the content is actually worth interrupting your audience for.
Forget for a moment that you’re an attorney and that you’re actually interested in the law. Forget that you want more clients. Forget every inclination you have to talk about yourself.
Just imagine your ideal client reading your email and constantly asking the question “What’s in it for me?” and “Why do I care?” If a sentence or bullet point isn’t written to answer those two questions, cut the sentence or rewrite it so that it is.
And finally, one day before your campaign is to go out, spend 30 minutes and perform the following exercise:
Read the following articles that summarize some simple techniques for coming up with headlines that inspire action
Now, set a timer on your phone for ten minutes. Turn off your wifi, and just start listing out subject lines for your campaign. Don’t worry about how good it is, just get it out and move on to the next one. The goal here is quantity.
When the timer goes off, look over your list. From the perspective of your ideal client, which one do you think would inspire them to skip the ‘delete’ button and actually read that email?
There’s your subject line.
For example, here are 10 subject lines I came up to use in an email that would describe this exercise using those formulas. Which one resonates with you?
5 subject line secrets that will get your email read… 7-Minute brainstorms that WILL get you new clients… Write subject lines like Don Draper, even if you’ve never written a word of copy… Send emails that get read 50% more than ‘real marketers’ with 10 minutes of work Write emails your clients WANT to read… Don Draper couldn’t beat your copy if you follow this one simple exercise… 5 minutes could mean the difference between being spammy and being awesome How to avoid writing subject lines that make your email invisible… Are your subject lines wasting the effort you put into your newsletters? What professional copywriters do when they can’t think of headlines
That was 10 minutes of work. Some of those headlines are clearly better than others. Some are repetitive, and that’s ok. But you’ll notice, the odds that the first subject line (the one you would’ve used had you not done the exercise) is the best one is slim.
This simple exercise will routinely get you two or three times as many opens on your campaign.
And that means two or three times as many opportunities to get in front of your clients, which means two to three times the ROI for all of this effort you’re putting in.
How to come up with (great) content
It can be hard to come up with something to say week in and week out. And it’s even harder when you only have 30 minutes between client meetings to do it.
So rather than setting yourself up for 30 minutes of staring at a blank page, let’s create a simple system for building up that hopper of great content throughout the week, so when it comes time to write, you just need to pull items off your stack.
First, we’ll need a central place to accumulate all of these notes.
Everyone’s style is different, so I’m sure you can come up with a tool that works best for you. But the whichever method you choose, the key is to optimize for being able to take a note as quickly as possible whenever the thought strikes.
I prefer to use Evernote. I just keep one note and add newsletter ideas to the top of it as I come across them. My wife uses Trello, creating a new card for every idea. I’ve seen folks use Google docs. I’ve also tried using a Word document or even writing in a notebook, but those two options make it hard to access from my phone on the go, or lack the ability to quickly copy and paste a URL for a link I want to remember to share.
So, over the course of the day, any time I think of something that might be worth sharing with the email list, I write it quickly at the top of the note. And at the end of the week, I have all sorts of items I can pull from to write the actual campaign.
What sort of things should you be on the lookout for? Here are just a few:
Common questions from clients that you could answer in a paragraph or two
Events that your clients might find valuable (even if they’re not valuable to you)
If you happen to be attending them, mention that and invite readers to come say hello.
Legislative changes (but only those that, upon learning about would cause your ideal client to say “Oh man, I’m really glad I know that, I’m going to change X…”)
Articles that your potential clients would want to read
Anecdotes that can bring a little levity to the newsletter
Interactions with readers that could benefit others
Positive news about those in your readership. Did someone just win an award? Did they get some positive press?
Take note and share it. And then invite others to share their good news when hey have any.
If you get into the habit of taking note of these tidbits, you should find that when you sit down to write your newsletter, you’ll spend more time figuring out what should be left out, than figuring out what to add.
That’s it!
This isn’t rocket-surgery. It just takes patience and practice. If you have any questions, please let me know. And if you take this advice and create your own newsletter, be sure to add bryan@amazelaw.com to your subscriber list. See! You already have an audience!
Now quick, go write your first campaign. I’ll be here, looking forward to reading it.
Psst! Don’t forget to grab the starter template to get your email marketing started without a hitch!
41 Classic Copywriting Headline Templates When you’re stuck and need to come up with headlines or subject lines in your emails, these articles will get you unstuck right quick. It’s like mad-libs, except instead of laughs, you get tons of clicks 🙂
I recently had the opportunity to talk with Chris Small of The Art of Lawyering Podcast about legal websites, and thought I’d share a few points from the podcast. If you’d like to check out the podcast (and the deal we’re offering its listeners), you can find it at theartoflawyering.com/021.
Let me start with a few words about why I started AmazeLaw, and why I understand what lawyers are dealing with when it comes to online marketing. When my wife left her big law job to start her own practice, we were bombarded by all sorts of scummy sales-guys cold-calling her about all of these digital marketing solutions that were overpriced at best and downright harmful at worst. She doesn’t have a marketing background, so everything was so new and foreign to her, and I know she found the whole learning process very stressful. Luckily, I have a background in building marketing tools from my time building the Content Management System for Hubspot. I knew I could help her. Then I realized that I could help a lot of people who were just like her.
So I set out to build AmazeLaw to offer a do-it-yourself marketing solution for attorneys that focused on simple, sustainable marketing tactics that busy solos can manage themselves.
While doing research for the business and in helping our clients build or re-build their sites, I’ve come across a lot of common errors that solos make in their digital marketing, so I thought it would be fun to share some of those mistakes and how to fix them. So I present…
The 5 Most Common Attorney Website Mistakes…and How to Fix Them
Not updating frequently enough.
If you haven’t made added/updated content on your site in the last month at an absolute minimum, your site will get stale. Your audience will not understand how busy you are. They will think you don’t care. So how do you keep a blog updated? First, your blog should be on your website. Don’t buy into the malarkey that it should be separate. Second, here are few easy ways to come up with content for your blog. Write down the ten questions you get most often. Write down 10 common assumptions your clients have that are wrong. Now, write one or two posts per week explaining those in their language.
Writing for attorneys, not people.
I think I can say this, because my wife has admitted it to me. Solos often have this insecurity about competing with the big guys, a subconscious need to show the big law attorneys that they’re serious attorneys. Resist that urge. You’re not writing for lawyers, you’re writing for clients.
Repeat after me. Clients don’t care about case law. Clients don’t care about case law. Clients don’t care about case law. Don’t write about case law.
Sure it’s the stuff you can geek out on, but clients care about a solution to their problem. They don’t care about the particulars. They pay you to know the case law and to recommend a solution in the context of their business or their situation, not in the context of a courtroom argument.
One key exception: a new case or new legislation somehow changes or contradicts a common assumption your clients have that impacts their day-to-day decisions. You can mention it, but when editing, err on the side of “they don’t care, just tell me what I need to do differently with this new information.”
Not having a clear “next-step.”
Once you’ve explained something in their language, how do you get them to take action? Each piece of content should end with a call to action. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just a simple request written in italics at the end of your post is just fine. As long as it’s clear what the next step is.
After all, they’re interested enough to read your entire post. They’re feel ingratiated because you gave away your expertise. Capitalize on that using reciprocity as a motivation to (1) ask for a consult request; (2) ask them to join an email list; or (3) ask them to comment.
Finally, your homepage needs an email address and a phone number. Place it in the footer for sure, but consider placing it in prominent places in your copy. Finally, make sure to hyperlink your phone number for mobile devices and never embed your contact information in an image (because Google will never find it).
Speaking of mobile…
Not having a responsive website, or not having a mobile site configured properly.
This is 2015, you need to have a website that not only “works” on a mobile device, but is optimized for it. Why? Anywhere from 40%-55% of search traffic is on a mobile device. Google started cracking down on April 21st, meaning that if your site isn’t mobile optimized, it will be virtually impossible to find it from a mobile device. If you want to see if your site is mobile-friendly, you can check out at https://amazelaw.wpengine.com/googletest. If you find out that your website isn’t mobile friendly, it’s time to upgrade to a mobile responsive site. For more information about Google’s changes, why they’re happening and what you can do, check out our Mobilegeddon overview for attorneys.
Not having up-to-date and consistent local search listings.
Your #2 priority is making sure you have a consistent web listing (with no duplicates) for your firm across the various local search aggregators. Rather than managing this yourself each time something changes in your business, use Moz Local. You enter your information once and they publish it and sync it across all of the major local search aggregators. A steal at $84/yr.
Are you making any of these mistakes?
You’re not alone. These are super common and we can help you avoid each and every one. Want to see how we can take your website from blah to blazing?
Hi, I’m Katie. I’m an employment attorney. I like what I do, and I’m good at it. Oh, you want to hire me? Great!
If only it was that easy. I’ve been a solo attorney for a little more than a year and a half. I’ve learned so much about attorney marketing, especially marketing online. I know I’ve probably only scratched the surface of everything that I should know, but I’ve made huge strides. I get calls from other attorneys telling me how much they like my blog. Clients find me online. Am I always on the first page of for the search terms I want? No. But I’m getting there.
I was lucky that I have a husband who understands all this stuff, but I still had to learn a lot of it myself, and I had to make a ton of mistakes along the way. If you’re reading this, you might be where I was when I first started. Let me help you by sharing a few of the lessons I’ve learned.
It’s hard and it takes a lot of time. Sorry. I know you were looking for lessons that are going to make your life easier, but let’s start with the principle that’s going to carry you through all of your marketing endeavors. No one teaches you how to do this in law school. If you started your career at a firm, the firm paid someone else how to do this. So now not only are you starting a completely new business and lifestyle, but you have to learn another skill. But that’s okay, because you can do it and there are ways to make it easier, but let’s just all accept that as lawyers, marketing is a skill that does not come easily to most of us.
Take time to figure out who you need to reach. When I first started out on my own, I felt like I needed to get in front of anyone and everyone. What if I missed out on an opportunity? I need blogs that reach every audience. I want to send my email updates out to everyone and their brother (and somehow find a way to be interesting to everyone on that list). Then I realized that I only have so many hours in the day, and that I need to be efficient, effective, and focused. Who are your best referral sources? For me, it’s HR professionals and other attorneys who don’t do employment law, so my marketing efforts need to be specific to those groups.
Figure out the best way to reach them. The people you want to reach may not always keep you top of mind, but your online presence can help with that. I try to write blog posts and email newsletters that attract HR professionals (day-to-day information that helps them do their job) and other attorneys (legal changes/important cases). I also only send my email newsletters to people who have expressed interest. And it works. I’ve actually gotten emails back from readers thanking me for putting the email together. How often do you get a mass email and decide that want to thank the author?
Find the right tools to help you. Everytime I write a blog post (shameless plug – it is so easy to do this through AmazeLaw), I make sure to put it out on social media. I use Hootsuite and autoschedule. I don’t have to think about the best times to post, and I only have to post once for it to go to Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Facebook. I also use Mailchimp to manage my email lists (more shameless plugging – AmazeLaw integrates with Mailchimp). Yes, it took a little for me to learn how to use these early on, but now I cannot imagine marketing without them.
If you’re looking for more information on marketing, AmazeLaw has a great email marketing bootcamp that you can sign up for at amazelaw.wpengine.com/#newsletter. And if you have any questions about your firm’s marketing efforts, you are always free to email me with questions at info@amazelaw.com. Good luck!
You may have heard whisperings that Google is going to be cracking down on non-mobile-friendly websites starting April 21st.
That’s absolutely correct.
For a while now they’ve been keeping track of whether sites are optimized for small screens and slow data connections. Up until now they haven’t changed any of the rankings based on that information and instead, just show a little “Mobile-friendly” label on search results when searching from your mobile device.
Go check your site and see if Google thinks it’s mobile-friendly. I’ll wait.
…
…
…
How’d you do? Did your site pass?
It passed!
That’s awesome. Gold star for you! You may want to read ahead though to see if one of the other options here might be a better option for you.
It didn’t pass?
Don’t worry all is not lost. Consider this a bit of a wake-up call. After all, you still have a little time to right the ship, so to speak.
First of all, these changes won’t affect your rankings when someone searches for your firm on their desktop. Which, is still somewhere around 75% of search traffic in the US depending on whose stats you use.
But, that still means you’ll start to lose out on 1/4 of your traffic.
A better way to think about this might be to consider the following scenario. Let’s say a potential client just got into a cab when they received an email from a friend referring your firm to fix their problem. The first thing they’ll do is google you or your firm.
If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, your firm website might not be right there in the first spot in their search results. Instead, they might see your Avvo profile (which you may or may not have done anything with). Or maybe they’ll see a complaint a bitter client left on a review site.
All that effort crafting your brand and your message, and it’s all for naught because your site wasn’t the first one listed.
Obviously, that’s not a great place to be in. So it begs the question…
“How do I make my site mobile-friendly?”
Well, you have two options. You can redesign your site, or you can create a separate mobile site that lives at mobile.myfirm.com.
Each has their benefits and drawbacks, but I’m going to strongly recommend a site redesign over creating a separate mobile version of your website.
The main reason is maintenance. With two different web properties to maintain, you’ll need to have a way of keeping them in sync. And what’s more, you’ll need to be diligent about telling Google which version of a page is ‘canonical’. Meaning, which version is the “one true version?” Fail to stay on top of that and Google will dock you for having duplicate content.
The second reason is just common sense. For the same cost it would take to build a mobile-specific site, you could redesign your site to be mobile-friendly and avoid the mess of maintaining two properties altogether.
No need to worry about whether the mobile site matches your desktop branding. No worrying about duplicate content. And hey, you get a fancy new desktop and mobile website for the same investment.
How large is that investment? Well, it depends on what you’re starting with.
I use wordpress or another CMS.
If you already use a content management system like WordPress, it could be as simple as finding a theme you like. A decent responsive theme can be had for peanuts on sites like themeforest.net. You might get lucky and be able to just swap in the new theme and call it a day and you’re done in ~$50.
More likely, you’ll want to find a developer to customize the theme in a few places to fit your brand. That could cost you ~$50-$100/hr for a few hours of work. A far cry from building a new site from scratch.
I had a custom site coded for me.
But if your site was a custom job, as we typically see with agencies or with one-off website designs, your options get a (little) bit more expensive.
You’ll likely need to go through that process again. Which is a pain, I know. This time through though, keep an eye on an ability to upgrade in the future. If you’re working with a developer or agency, make sure they’re using a commonly-used CMS that will be around for a while. WordPress would be my recommendation (outside of using AmazeLaw of course.)
But regardless of your starting point. This update is a good thing for your firm. Sure it requires some investment. But that’s exactly what it is. An investment that you’ll most definitely see returns on.
Again. This is a GOOD thing. Think of it this way.
Imagine you had a 20 year old car. It’s worked well for you in the past. Sure, it’s not shiny, but it’s gotten you where you’ve needed to go.
But, a lot has changed in 20 years. Technology has gotten exponentially better. While you might say “I don’t need my car to talk to me,” it’d be hard to argue against the safety, fuel-efficiency, and reliability improvements that have come along with it.
On the road, states incentivize adoption of new technology through car inspections. On the internet, Google is taking on that role by rewarding sites that stay current with better search placement.
So rather than lamenting the fact that it’s become necessary to upgrade your website, you should also feel excited. You can now take advantage of advances in technology that make marketing your firm much easier.
Does your site need a mobile upgrade?
Our sites are all fully-mobile-optimized. If you want to see what mobile magic AmazeLaw can do for your firm…
Just about every law firm blog post needs an image. At the very least, it’s a nice visual introduction to your post. But finding high-quality photos that are free and not likely to get you busted for copyright infringement is tough.
After all, when you pull out Google Image search, besides the dubious quality, it’s hard to tell if you have the right to use the image. And it’s likely that you don’t.
Here’s how to find a high-quality, free-to-use image for your blog post.
The long story short is that we use Flickr’s Creative Commons image search to find photos that are licensed to be used for commercial use, providing you attribute the author. Then we show you how to correctly add that attribution to your blog post.
Here’s a quick video to see how to add a great looking image to a WordPress blog post in just a few minutes, and how to add the same image to an AmazeLaw blog post in just a few seconds 🙂
Not too shabby huh? It’s fairly easy and yields great results that aren’t likely to get you sued.
See how easy AmazeLaw makes it?
That’s our whole purpose, to make marketing your firm as dead-simple as possible.
If you want to spend more time being a lawyer, and less time tinkering in HTML…
Let’s face it, the internet is filled with schemes that promise to net you huge incomes. Do those offers bombarding you that promise to make you rich overnight really work? No. Some may bring in a small amount of income, but for the most part you’re much better off with a regular 9-5 job both in terms of how much you’ll make and how much time it requires. But that’s not true for everything on the internet. There are some true opportunities that if you invest a bit of time and skill could actually see you making a solid full-time income. Here’s a rundown of 20 ways that you can really make money on the internet.
This has been a popular method for making money on the internet for many years. One of the best things about it, is that you can do affiliate marketing for absolutely any company, from Amazon to Lyft. With affiliate market you earn money by promoting different brands. The best way to do this is by earning a commission from the sale of the product, software or app. While the commissions are small, they do add up.
The best way to go about affiliate marketing is to concentrate on content marketing. A blog will allow you the space to most successfully engage with affiliate marketing, and the blog will serve as its own asset, that way if the company you’re working with shuts down you can just switch brands without having to build a new site from scratch.
Become an Influencer
At the top of the game is Kylie Jenner who made $1 million per sponsored post. But the truth is you don’t have to be a reality star, world class athlete, famous actor or other celebrity to become an influencer. Many find a great deal of success with sponsored posts on a much smaller scale.
The key here is to find the right niche. To become an influencer it is critical to have a huge following, but by only needing to achieve a large following within a niche is a much more manageable goal.
Blogging
Blogging is pretty much the OG way of making money online. Once again, the most important way to find success in getting started is to find the right niche, one that is both specific enough and that you will be passionate about.
There are a variety of platforms on which you can build you blog, including the popular WordPress. Shopify also offers a free option if you remove the checkout feature. It’s important to focus on keywords to help build your blog.
There are several ways you can make money blogging:
Using affiliate links in the post. The FTC requires a disclaimer of this.
AdSense lets you place ads directly on your website.
Sponsored posts allows you to work with specific brands.
Direct sales of digital or physical products.
Also blogging can position you as an expert in your niche, an influencer, and open up all sorts of opportunities.
Design
Graphic designers have a high demand skill. They can use print on demand along with their design skills to create and sell custom products or you can actually sell design services by pitching on crowdsourcing site.
Domain Names
Are you always buying domain names but then never using them? It’s definitely worth looking into to see if you can sell what you have for a profit, but remember this is a highly competitive field. Domain names with one word names sell best, as do those that are upwarding trending.
Driving
By using the internet, those with a car can use the Uber and Lyft apps to provide ride sharing services. This can provide a steady income with a lot of work. Uber drivers can increase their earnings by signing up to wrap their car up in a removable vinyl decal that acts as a mobile advertisement.
Those without cars can use bikes or mopeds to find delivery work through similar app-based services.
Dropshipping
This has become one of the most popular ways of making money on the internet. Dropshipping is when you sell a product direct to customers, but the product is shipped directly from the supplier to the customer. This means that you have no need to stock, store or send merchandise. You’re whole job is done online.
A lot of this online work focuses on Facebook ads. Direct Messages (DMs) and influencer sponsorship is also used a great deal.
Freelancing
Whatever you’re current job is, chances are it could translate well into offering online services, and using the internet is one way to free you from the 9 to 5 life in exchange for that of a freelancer. Depending on what sector you currently work in, there are a whole host of industry specific websites designed to match freelancers with those in need of their services.
Making Apps
Did you know that you don’t have to be a developer to create an app? In fact, you don’t even have to know any programming skills at all. If you have a great idea for an app you can affordably hire a developer to build it for you by using one of the freelance platforms.
When trying to make money from an app, it’s often better to offer it for free. This might seem not to make sense, but can lead to more money in the advertising or premium features.
Print On Demand
This is a similar business model to dropshipping, but what is being sold is an image or design that is printed and shipped directly from the printer to the customer. The best way to make money with this method is by using free promotions via social media such as Pinterest and Instagram.
Publish an Ebook
Amazon KDP has made it easier than ever before to publish an ebook. Once completed and listed, this can provide an excellent passive source of income. You can hire freelancers to create all the various parts of the ebook, and then use a giveaway to help promote it and get it started by raising its numbers.
Reviews
Many websites that are for reviewing apps and products will provide $10 per review and some pay up to $30.
Side Gigs
This is a great option for those not quite ready to leave their nine-to-five job. This allows you to make some extra money in spare time without having to devote too much extra time or thought to it. A great place to get started with this is Fiverr. You will likely have to start out charging very low rates in order to get your first reviews.
Selling Stuff
When you need money fast, this is sometimes the best route. Remember that it’s mostly a waste of time to sell outdated technology. Sell what people want to buy in 2020. It’s also so important to take great pictures of what you’re selling.
Facebook Marketplace, eBay and Craigslist are two places where you can list items. If you’re selling clothes or accessories, there are other specific options for where to sell those items, and depending on what you have to sell this can be quite lucrative.
Stocks
While this is a viable option for making money fast, it’s a lot less viable for those who aren’t already expert in picking stocks. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.
Translation
There is a large need for this service online, so if you’re bilingual, you could start making money right away with your skills. You do have to be fluent in a minimum of two languages.
Tutoring
Tutoring is a great way to make a good income while setting your own hours. Science and math always have the highest demand, but expertise in any topic could potentially qualify you as a tutor. For tutoring your degree and any achievements are paramount in getting good jobs.
Twitch Streaming
The popularity of this social media platform has been soaring recently, especially with the younger generation. It takes some work to make money on Twitch, but here are the 5 forms of revenue on the platform:
Selling products
Brand sponsorships
Fan donations
Subscriptions
Twitch ads.
Writing
With more content marketing, the need for writers is increasing more than ever. If you’ve ever daydreamed of living life by the pen (or keyboard rather) now is a better time than any. Platforms such as UpWork and Freelancer are great places o start, as is Fiverr.
YouTube Channel
The YouTube star who made the most money in 2019? Ryan Kaji, who at 9-years old mostly reviews toys. It takes some hard work and perseverance, not to mention a bit of luck, and while results like Ryan’s are rare, it is definitely possible to make good money with YouTube.
These are only some of the ways that it’s possible to make money on the internet. While it won’t happen overnight, but putting in some work, you can definitely make a living on the internet.
There are a couple of new top level domains that are opening up for registration in the next few weeks, and the announcement has attorneys wondering what, if anything, should they do?
What’s the deal?
Well first, let’s talk about what the change is. Around 2006, ICANN, the governing body for domain names on the internet started taking bids for new generic top level domains (gTLDs). Since most lucrative and/or useful domains have been taken up by domain squatters and the occasional legit business, folks welcomed the opportunity to get a branded domain name that was relevant to their business.
So, they offered companies and investors the chance to own and manage new top level domains. Some of them are innocuous (.ceo, .bike, .directory, .beer), some are scandalous (.sexy, .xxx), and some are just industry specific (.plumbing, .attorney, .lawyer).
What makes the .attorney and .lawyer gTLDs interesting, is that they are intended to act like the .gov, .edu, and .mil “sponsored” top level domains. Sponsored TLDs act as a signal of trust since not just anyone can get one of those domains. You need to meet a managing body’s criteria. In the former, you need to prove you’re an attorney (or attending an accredited law school), and in the latter, you need to be a government, educational institution or branch of military service.
I’ve always considered sites with the newer TLDs as somewhat suspect. It’s not a perfect system, but the fact that you need to pay a decent amount of money for a great .com domain is such a good filter that it tends to cloud my judgement when it comes to trusting other domains.
At least, that’s my bias. But I’m not one to assume that everyone is like me. I’m a computer nerd by trade, and as such have a fairly biased opinion when it comes to technology in general.
Enter real data…
Instead, I ran an experiment to find out for real, whether the regulated TLDs accomplish the task of inspiring trust in normal, everyday folk.
Here’s how it worked. Using Google’s awesome Consumer Surveys tool, I asked a simple question of 100 people. If you were looking to hire an attorney, based only on the domain name, who would you choose?
www.john-smith-law.com
www.johnsmith.lawyer
www.johnsmith.attorney
The idea for those three is based on the following scenario. Let’s assume you’re trying to find a domain for your solo firm. And let’s say you have a fairly common name where you can’t get the exact johnsmith.com or johnsmithlaw.com (because if you can, you should do that right now and stop reading.)
You might then consider, do I get my exact match domain with .attorney or .lawyer instead? Will that get more clients to trust me?
Well, survey says…
Overall, I was surprised by the results. I thought the .com would absolutely trounce the gTLDs and that appears to be absolutely wrong.
.attorney and .com lead the way.
Turns out, while almost noone prefered the .lawyer domain, .attorney actually appears to hold roughly equal to slightly more trust than .com when you take into account the error margins in the survey.
Here’s the preliminary result:
Younger folks prefer .com, older folks, .attorney
While that’s the general population, it’s interesting that there are fairly heavy splits when it comes to the age of the recipient. Something that might be useful to know for all your elder law folks out there.
Upper income clients still prefer .com
If your clients tend to be wealthier, or you hope to get more wealthier clients, it’s interesting to note that upper income individuals still prefer the .com.
Upper income folks seem to prefer .com dmoains ober .attorney and .lawyer
Want to analyze the data for your target clients?
If you want to comb through the data to see what your target clients might prefer, head on over to the Google survey results page and tinker to your heart’s content.
And if you think this data is bunk, or if you want more info for your own purposes, this survey is set for 100 responses and only cost $10. You can set one up yourself and target the results by geographic region and income, and you’ll have the results in a few days.
I see the data, so what should I do?
Well first, don’t panic. It might seem like there’s a great gold rush out there for these domain names, but the population that uses them is tiny (relative to other TLDs) and an even smaller fraction will actually purchase the domains. And since switching and/or deciding on a domain is a BIG deal, don’t make the decision rashly.
Should I switch to a .attorney domain?
Probably not, definitely not right away, and MOST DEFINITELY, not without some professional help.
There are a number of things to consider when considering a domain switch. You’ll need to consider the cost of replacing any marketing collateral you own like business cards, pamphlets etc.
You’ll need to perform an audit of your existing site to make sure any and all pages on your site are redirected to the new domain properly (for any site with more than 5 pages, seek professional help with this).
Should I register my existing domain with the .attorney and .lawyer TLDs?
If you have $35-$100 burning a hole in your pocket and it would make you feel better to have them just in case, go ahead and buy them. But remember, if you buy both at $35, that’s $70 every single year you own them.
But what if I want to prevent someone else from registering them?
Unless you’re a giant brand with money to spare, this is generally a false worry. First of all, as a small law firm, you’re not big enough for most squatters to care about.
Second, unless the squatter commits to building content in your niche, search engines will never find the squatter’s site anyways.
However… one case where I’d consider squatting is if your firm is hyper personalized and your name is reasonably common. For example, if you own “marystevens.com” or “marystevenslaw.com”, consider picking up “marystevens.attorney” and “marystevens.lawyer” as building a little moat around your personal brand is important when you have a common name.
I am just starting out, should I go .com or .attorney?
Based on the data, it looks like we can rule out .lawyer. And if you can get a decent .com with no dashes, go that route for sure.
But, if you found a really nice .attorney domain in a competitive niche, like say “nydefense.attorney” or “thepersonalinjury.attorney” go for it! Given that it appears that the trust is there, it can’t hurt.
But, one thing to consider is whether having the singular “attorney” or “lawyer” as a domain name will be limiting if you want to grow your firm. The domain seems to imply a single individual, and that might become an issue down the road if you suddenly have a couple of associates or additional partners.
I already registered the domains, if I don’t switch, what should I use them for?
First, redirect them to your existing site by using a CNAME or URL record with your DNS provider. I know that’s really techy, so if you need help, just email me.
Second, if you’re not changing your primary domain, do not use your new domains for things like email or other branding materials. Besides confusing your clients, it also confuses google into thinking there really are two sites and that hurts your SEO.
Should I buy up domains for multiple practice areas?
Not unless you’re creating separate sites for each and have the time to maintain them.
Just owning the domains and pointing them all at your existing site won’t really make a difference for your site traffic. Google will only recognize those domains if you actually have content on them and have links coming in using the new domains. And since it’s highly unlikely that any consumer is going to type “newyorkpersonalinjury.attorney” into their browser bar without some sort of marketing material to prompt them, you won’t get any additional direct traffic either.
But what if I’m squatting, hoping to sell the domains to other attorneys?
Well, sorry to be the one to say it, but you’re the reason we can’t have nice things (like reasonable .com domains.)
That’s it! Any more questions?
If you like this kind of no-nonsense marketing advice for solo and small firm attorneys, sign up for our marketing bootcamp where you’ll get one email every week with easy to digest marketing plans that let you get back to being a lawyer.
It can be pretty daunting trying to figure out how much to spend on a law firm website these days. There are companies charging tens of thousands of dollars and promising the moon, and there’s always your cousin’s friend from college who would do it for a case of beer and a bucket of chicken.
Sometimes it helps to just set some expectations. Your mileage may vary according to your goals, your geographic region etc, but here are some ballpark figures that will give you a good sense for what you should get for your dollar, and help you figure out just how much you can afford to spend.
So let’s kick this off at the bottom.
Less than $500
The old adage goes, you get what you pay for. This bucket usually contains either family friend discounts, students doing the work, or your run of the mill website builder like GoDaddy or Wix.
If your goal is just to have a site that you can point people to, and don’t intend to do online marketing, blogging, lead collection etc, this might be the way to go. Be careful here though. A lot of times the website builders are loss-leaders for the business. For example, GoDaddy makes the website builder cheap to get you to do your web, email and domain hosting with them, which often ends up being a more expensive and lower quality offering than going out and getting decent options separately.
For example, I use DNSimple for domain and DNS hosting. I can’t recommend them enough. And for email hosting, $50/year for Google Apps is an absolute steal.
$500 – $1500
This is a tough range. It’s tough because it’s likely that you could find someone to do the work for the price, but it’s going to be very difficult to judge the quality beforehand. A developer that’s worth their salt will be able to charge A LOT more than this, so here, you’re typically dealing with local developers that might not be around very long. You want someone that will be around 2 or 3 years from now and who can answer an email at the drop of a hat if there’s a problem. Now, if you’re willing to take a bit of the management tasks on, you could probably find a very talented international developer on oDesk that could do a great job for this price.
$1500 – $5000
This is what I would consider the sweet spot for most solos. In this range you can get a good developer to do a basic site that’ll cover the bases for most of you.
When I say “cover the bases” I mean:
Uses a nice responsive theme (looks great on mobile devices)
Uses a Content Management System like WordPress or Drupal. Avoid hard-coded sites as you’ll need to contact your developer any time you need a change.
Has a BUILT-IN blog (I saw a recent post that suggested attorneys should have a separately branded blog. That is such terrible advice that I would consider it dangerous.)
Uses best-practices like semantic markup to make your site more easily parseable by search engines.
Can offer limited tech support for the foreseeable future.
A classic looking, basic typographic logo if you don’t have one yet.
Redirects from your existing site if you have one. Basically, make sure that anyone linking to your existing site ends up on a relevant page on your new site. Without this, any SEO clout you’ve built up will disappear.
And the ability to walk you through how to do basic edits (like writing blog posts) yourself.
What you likely won’t get at this price point:
Custom photography
Custom graphic design (the theme you use will be the “web designer”)
Custom copy
Comprehensive branding
$5000+
Once you go over $5k, the sky really is the limit. You could get a custom graphic designer to do a completely custom design just for you. You could get a marketing consultant to do your bidding. Really, at this price range, it’ll be really confusing because it’ll likely be a much larger to-do. There might be an law firm SEO consultant or an AdWords consultant. All of these things can be positives, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed and there’s a lot of sharks at that price point that’ll promise you the world and never deliver. If you’re spending that kind of money, make sure you get references and demand quantifiable proof that the investment was worth it. If they’re good, it’ll be more than evident.
Whatever you decide make sure the following:
Make sure that your domain name is registered under an account you can access yourself and that it’s registered TO YOU. As I mentioned, I really like DNSimple for this. They’re great people and they make managing domains really simple without some of the spammier upsell practices of companies like GoDaddy. Also, don’t let your developer own this account. If he’s out of business in 2 years, you’ll have a really hard time getting control of your domain (if you can at all).
Be wary of SEO sharks that mention link-building or keyword density when pitching SEO services. SEO is almost entirely based on writing good content that answers questions that people want answered. There is very little left that can “game” the system. Anyone that tells you they can get to the first page of Google for something like “DUI attorney Nashville, TN” and doesn’t immediately follow it up with a year-long content strategy is selling you a bag of goods.
Make sure you understand the ins and outs of your Content Management System before you sign off on the project. If you’re not completely comfortable with the process of updating your practice area pages or writing a blog post, you never will, and that’s the quickest way to make your investment depreciate like an abandoned house.
When in doubt, feel free to ask for help. I see all of the shady stuff targeting my wife’s practice and I want to scream, so I’m happy to share unbiased advice.
I hope that clears up some of the confusion in the space. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them…
Everyone knows Google is the ruler of the roost when it comes to search. In this guide, we’ll take you through the steps to make sure your firm’s Google setup is a firm foundation for the rest of your marketing efforts.
What a lot of small law firms miss out on is the fact that Google provides a number of free tools to help site owners (that’s you) adhere to best practices that can help Google better understand what your content is about. And when you make Google’s job easier, it can only help your prospects of ranking for important search keywords.
We’re going to walk through the setup of each of these tools to make sure you’re taking advantage of all the free stuff.
Your Google Account
First thing’s first. You need to have a Google account. If you use gmail, you’re probably familiar with all of this, but I would highly recommend setting up a separate Google account specifically for your firm. It’ll make things much easier down the road.
If you use Google Apps for your firm’s email, awesome, you already have a Google account, and you can use that email and password to sign in.
If you don’t use Google Apps, you can still create a Google account using your business email address, just use this form.
Google Analytics
Google analytics is a tool that keeps track of who’s visiting your site and when. It’s a very powerful tool that we’ll get into in more detail at a later time, but for now, let’s just get your site set up and verified.
First, log into google analytics by going to http://www.google.com/analytics. Once there, you’re going to create an account by clicking on the “create an account” link in the top right corner.
Google analytics is structured by accounts and then by property. Accounts act as a grouping of websites (properties). For most firms, you’ll only have one property, but if you have a law blog on a separate domain, like blog.myfirm.com, or myfirmblog.blogger.com, you may want to manage multiple sites.
Let’s start by following Google’s instructions for setting up your firm’s account.
Click on the ‘Admin’ link at the top of the page. From here you should be able to create a new account. Fill it out as follows (let’s assume your firm is called AmazeLaw Firm and your website is amazelawfirm.com):
Account Name: AmazeLaw Firm Website Name: Main Website Website URL: http://amazelawfirm.com Industry Category: “Law and Government” Reporting Timezone: Select your timezone Data Sharing Settings: It’s ok to leave the defaults here, but for the paranoid, you can uncheck “Anonymously with Google and others” and “Account specialists”.
When you’re ready, click ‘Get Tracking ID’ and accept Google’s Terms & Conditions.
Congratulations, you’re now staring at a rather techy looking page that contains the code you need to add to your website in order to get tracking up and running.
If you use a content management system like WordPress, Drupal, or AmazeLaw, all you need to do is authenticate with Google Analytics and it will suck the code in for you. For example, on WordPress, if you go to Plugins > Add New and search for “Yoast Google Analytics” you can install a plugin that will allow you do suck in your code. There’s even a nifty video over here that will show you exactly how to set it up.
If you use AmazeLaw, just log in and go to your dashboard, there should be a giant button asking you to authenticate. Clicking that will automatically suck in your tracking code.
Now if you don’t use WordPress or AmazeLaw or if you need a developer to add the code for you, here’s a sample email you can send your developer that will instruct them on how to add it to your site. By the way, this should be an amazingly simple task for any competent developer so don’t let them charge you for more than an hour’s time to do it (it’ll likely take less than 10 minutes depending on how they’ve set up your site.)
Hi <Developer’s Name>, I would like to add google analytics to my site. The following code needs to be added to the <head> tag on every page on my site. <Copy and Paste the tracking code here> Thanks! <Your Name>
That’s it! You can verify whether the tracking is installed by going to Admin > Choosing your account and property, and then .js Tracking Info > Tracking Code. Next to your Tracking ID, you should see “Waiting for Data” or “Tracking Installed”.
Google Webmaster Tools
Google doesn’t provide much direct control when it comes to how your site appears in search, but what little control it does give you is controlled from webmaster tools.
When you log in, if you don’t have any sites set up, you’ll see a welcome video and a simple text field where you can put your domain to add your site. Simply enter your domain, and click ‘Add Site’.
If you followed the steps in the Google Analytics section above your site should already be verified. If not, follow one of the procedures Google outlines in order to verify your ownership of the site. Unfortunately, it may require help from your developer.
Google+ Authorship
Google+ may not be poised to take over Facebook any time soon, but it’s generally accepted that having a Google+ profile set up (if not actively updated) is a best practice for SEO. Google has indicated that going through the process of verifying the authors of content on your site will act as a quality signal in search algorithms. In other words, set up a Google+ account for yourself, and link it to your website.
If your email uses the same domain as your website (it does right!?) then the process is simple. Just log into Google+ using your firm email address and then go to this link and submit your website.
If you don’t have an email address for your domain, something like myfirm@gmail.com or awesomelegalsolutions@hotmail.com, then it requires a bit of effort to get authorship set up, and honestly, your time would be better spent signing up for Google Apps for business and moving your email over there. After all, bill@awesomelegalsolutions.com is a lot more professional than awesomelegalsolutions@hotmail.com.
Google Places
And finally, it’s time to get you on the map. This is absolutely key to making sure your firm is available for Google to list at the top of localized searches. You know, the ones that show a map and a list of 5-10 businesses.
Signing up for Google Places is quick and easy as well. Go to the Google Places signup page and click “Get on Google”.
In the map that appears, search for your business, either using the name or your office address if you have one. If it appears in the search box, click on the business to claim it. If not, just select the “None of these match. Add your business” link at the bottom of the search results to create yours in the system. Now, if you don’t have a Google+ page for your firm, this will go ahead and create the page for you as well.
There are a few fields worth noting when you get to the point that you need to enter your address information. The first is, well, the actual address. Many solo’s don’t actually have a physical office, and even if you do, it’s likely that you want to serve an area larger than the city in which you live. If you don’t have an actual office, enter your home address (you’ll be able to hide the address later). But whether you have an office or not, make sure you check the box that says “I deliver goods and services to my customers at their location.”
And finally for the “Category” field, you could put the general “Legal Services” or if you have a specialty try that. Search along the lines of “Family Law Attorney” or “Employment Attorney” to select your specialty.
Once you have filled out that information, it’s time to let Google know where you operate. If you checked the box above, you’ll be given the option to list out cities, or choose a radius around your office. I would suggest a radius, but that’s entirely up to you. If you want your office to also appear on the map, just check the box “I also serve customers at my business address”.
When that’s done, you’ll be prompted to create a Google+ page for the business and sign Google Terms of Service.
You’ll be asked to verify your business by mail, and you can then go ahead and edit your Google+ business page.
Whew!
That’s it! Take a break. Now you can edit your site knowing that you’re all set with Google.
Was that too much? Want help?
This stuff can get super hard to keep track of. That’s one thing we pride ourselves on here, is our ability to stay on top of best practices on the web, and then building it into our system so that you don’t have to worry about it.
If you want to spend more time being a lawyer, and less time tinkering in HTML…
