Generate More Business From Current Clients Simply By Keeping Them Happy
In addition to using tools such as newsletters and surveys to help solidify your relationships with current clients, you can do some simple things in terms of streamlining your practice to make your clients’ experience of working with your firm stand out positively as compared to your competition.
Be Responsive
Clients may not consider that you are busy servicing not only their legal needs, but those of many other clients as well – and they shouldn’t have to. Making sure that you are highly responsive when your clients make inquiries is one of the top things you can do to differentiate yourself from other law firms, while making each client feel that his business is your priority.
Set up an email auto responder to give your clients instant feedback during those times when you can’t personally respond to inquiries within a reasonable period of time. State the expectation as to when they will hear back from you: within 24 hours, 48 hours, etc. If a client’s issue is critical or urgent, have your auto responder give her the opportunity to speak immediately with another member of your practice, one of your paralegals, or a secretary, via a direct line number.
Responsiveness is key for client and customer satisfaction. It’s one of the most common criteria for rating and referring firms, both large and small.
Be Flexible
Another way to deliver better client service is to be very clear about your billing policies and ensure that your clients fully understand up front what is (and perhaps is not) included in your fee.
A current strategy for keeping clients happy is to avoid the “billable hour”. If you know what an engagement is going to entail from a time perspective – if it’s a type of matter you handle regularly – set up a flat project fee and offer that to your clients as an alternative to hourly billing. Look at several past cases to arrive at a “standard” engagement and set your fee accordingly.
In some cases you may spend more time on an engagement, but in many cases you should spend less time than the standard, making such matters more profitable than had you billed by the hour. Success lies in finding the right balance between those that take a little more time and those that take a little less time. In addition to the great work you’ve already done for your client, having no surprises when it comes to the bill is key to concluding the engagement on a positive note and earning repeat business.
Be Proactive
As when maintaining any type of client relationship, you want to check in on your clients from time to time, even if they don’t have an active legal issue with you.
Keep a log to ensure you contact clients monthly, quarterly, or whatever makes sense for your practice and the volume of work you do with a particular client. Note each client’s preference when deciding whether to touch base via phone or email.
Oftentimes clients have something that they need to hire you for, but it’s not at the top of their priority list – or they may not have decided whether the business should go to you or a competitor. If you’re proactive, it will help bring that issue to the top of their list and give you the edge in the selection process.
It should go without saying: clients with whom you have current business should have your most frequent, regular attention. They’ve already got a reason to take your call, and they may have additional matters waiting in the wings.
Be Personal
Don’t underestimate the importance of the holiday card or the birthday greeting. It’s an effective strategy that realtors use quite often. Not everyone is selling his house every day or every year, but like realtors, lawyers rely heavily on word of mouth marketing and referral business to generate new clients, so treating your current customers with a very personalized approach can help generate future business with them and referrals to their contacts.
Keep a database of clients; make note of their birthdays and which holidays are important to them. When the time comes, send birthday cards and holiday greetings, and remind them that you’re here to help if they need you.
You might find that they may not need your help, but your name will get passed along to someone they know who does. Plus, everyone likes to feel like they are valued and remembered.
Using Social Media to Market Your Meeting
Conference marketing has often heavily relied on brochures, advertising, and other forms of direct mail and email to communicate important event happenings such as upcoming conference dates, venue information, keynote speakers, agenda changes, accomodation information, exhibitor details…and the list goes on. These marketing activities usually went hand in hand with a large marketing budget designed to support all these communication programs. But as the conference business faces increasing competition with other more cost-effective channels for meetings, training seminars, and networking events (such as webinars, online social networking sites, and teleconferences), marketing budgets have been slashed, pressure to remain (or get) profitable is high, and registrations may still seem to decline. The instability of the this economy hasn’t helped much either…What’s a marketer to do?
Harness the power of social media. Assuming you already have a conference website, and all of your key communications are online, you still face the challenge of getting your prospects to the website and then getting them to register for your event. Forget adwords, forget costly brochures. Instead, find the communities where your targets are, and start a conversation. Here’s what I mean:
If you’re a law firm hosting a CLE event, you need to get the word out among your target market. Start by visiting any number of legal professional networking sites like Martindale-Hubbell Connected or Legal OnRamp and follow the conversations that may relate to topics you’ll be covering at your event. Pull together a target list and get your key speakers to engage and join the conversations.
Rule of thumb. While you cannot blatently promote your event (self promotion is an online community/networking no-no), if you start delivering valuable content, if users ask you for more, you can take the opportunity to direct them to your upcoming event. Additionally, most of these sites enable you to post your events to their community calendars.
If you use Facebook, post your event on their site and invite people to attend it. While the site doesn’t offer full “registration” functionality, it can still be used as a tool to generate awareness for your program and can help you drive traffic to your conference website. If this seems like it might not work with your current registration, at a minimum, you should create a page for your conference on Facebook, and send a message to your past attendees and contacts who might find this event valuable.
As your planning progresses and as registrations start coming in, you should next form a group for your meeting on your network of choice. You can form groups on LinkedIn, Facebook, Legal OnRamp, and (coming soon) on Martindale-Hubbell Connected. Invite speakers, sponsors, and conference registrants to join the group so they can stay updated as event details change and evolve in the months and weeks leading up to your event. Additionally, you can leverage tools like Twitter to “tweet” about new developments in the program or agenda changes.
Post-event, your online group remains a great avenue for contacts and connections that were formed in person at your meeting to stay connected. Speakers can post conference materials to their groups, and discussions that ended due to time constraints in the meeting can continue in an online forum.
I’ve only scratched the surface in this post on the many ways you can use social media to market your practice…more on this to follow.
About Monica
Monica Rinkevich, Principal and co-founder of Captivate Legal has extensive hands-on senior level experience in operations, marketing, finance, strategic leadership, capital development and M&A management. She is recognized as a change agent with strengths in both strategic planning and tactical implementation for law firms, and is adept at streamlining processes, improving efficiency and using technology to serve law firm needs. Monica holds a BA from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina and a Masters of Business Administration from The Georgia Institute of Technology. She was an exchange student at Kansai Gaidai University in Japan and a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in South Korea.
About Nicole
Nicole Carrubba, Principal and co-founder of Captivate Legal, has an extensive background in legal marketing, communications, project management and product development for law firms. She possesses a deep knowledge base in how to position and sell lawyers and law firms expertise to both consumers and in-house counsel, and has held senior positions at one of the most prestigious legal technology companies, prior to forming Captivate Legal. Nicole is a member of the Legal Marketing Association and serves on the board for the Northern NJ Chapter of the Association for Women in Communications. Nicole has her MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University and an undergraduate degree in communications.
Finding Your Online Voice
With so many legal professionals now diving into the blogsphere and social media space(s) to share their opinion on topics of interest to their industry or practice area, it can seem overwhelming to initiate one’s own blog, or to engage in the dialogue on popular community sites. As many great ideas, thoughts and opinions as you may have to share, it’s sometimes hard to know what to say, when to say it, or to get over that fear factor (that once you push the post or publish button there’s no turning back and you’re officially out in cyberspace!) I’ve struggled with the same feelings myself, and have adopted these strategies to help overcome my fears and find my “online voice.” Hopefully, they will help you in your efforts to create voices of your own.
Observe. This is one of the rare occasions where its completely okay and totally socially acceptable to stare, lurk, and be a voyer. I use my iGoogle homepage to monitor many of my favorite blogs on a regular basis. Blogs inlcuding MyShingle, Legal Water Cooler, Real Lawyers Have Blogs, Legal Marketing Blawg and many others. Reading different blogs can help you get a flavor for what blogging is all about and inspire you to get out there and start blogging.
Comment. If in your observation you find a blog post that really resonates with you, or its a topic in which you are knowledgable or “an expert,” take the opportunity to comment and share your thoughts. Commenting or responding to someone’s post is a good first step in combating the fear factor and can help get you comfortable “talking” online in a public forum.
Commit. To blog or not to blog? When you’re ready to take the plunge and start your own blog, remember that blogging is a commitment to have a public conversation. If you’re going to put your voice and opinion out there, set aside time each week to do so. If you’re anything like me (a little bit of a type A personality) adding a blogging task to your to do list and setting aside time on your calendar each week will force you to to do so with some degree of regularity and accountability. As news tidbits or discussion threads or other hot topics peak your interest, make a note of them in your weekly calendar to blog about them. Having an idea of what you plan to talk about before sitting in front of your blank screen can help you get started.
Benefit. I think it goes without saying that the reason to blog (other than general interest) is to help build and grow your brand (both your personal brand and your law firm’s). Search engines love it when you blog and the increase in traffic to your website is sure to follow. Additionally, blogging can help you position yourself as a thought-leader in your area (geographically or by subject matter). The benefits far out weigh the risks, but speaking of risks…
Disclaim. As any good lawyer should, be sure to include a general disclaimer statement on your blog. For example: The information provided on Captivate Legal Blog is not legal advice, and no attorney-client or confidential relationship is or should be formed by use of the blog…you get the idea.
Hope these quick ideas help you get started on your quest to find your online voice. Please share your own tips and tricks to get out there and start communicating!
Practice What You Preach…
In an increasingly Web 2.0 world, I am constantly telling my clients to get out there and start embracing social media, blogs, communities and other technologies, because many of them – whether we like it are not – are here to stay. Yet, as I am certain to include blogging, Facebook pages and online networking into many of my marketing plans for clients, I sheepishly admitt that I have not heeded my own advice. So, in the spirit of New Year’s resolutions (or crossing things off my year-end “to do” list), I find myself attempting to practice what I preach. Hence the launch of the Captivate Legal Marketing Blog. My hope for this blog is that it provides valuable legal marketing tips, advice and insights, and encourages discussion among both legal marketing personnel and lawyers engaging in marketing activites for their firms or solo practices. Additionally, I hope to share best practices and learnings from my work with my clients, and from my discussions with my consulting peers, to the benefit of all those who subscribe to this blog. Without further ado…I launch my first blog.
