As someone who helps lawyers grow their business, I understand that you are busy, but I also know what works. If you make a habit of doing these three things every week, you’d increase your lead flow and grow your business.
This one seems rather obvious and probably offers the most immediate return of the three habits. For reference, cold leads are anyone that has contacted you and inquired about your services, but for one reason or another has chosen not to hire you. In the legal industry, many people reach out to attorneys when they are not ready or able to make the financial investment in an attorney. Those people might sound like a waste of time today, but after a night to think about it, they could be your client tomorrow. It’s important to remain on their radar and to let them know that you’re available to help in their time of need. Reaching out can be done in many different ways. For the sake of time and efficiency, this is best done as a phone call or email. In the case of an email, this can be a stock message along the lines of:
“Hi (Lead Name),
This is Adam at the Blank and Blank Law Firm, I just wanted to follow up and see if there was anything I can do for you. Give me a call, I’m available anytime at (123) 456-7890.
Best,
Adam”
What’s even better, is that there is email automation software out there that you can set up to automatically deliver this stock message once a lead is considered “cold.”
This has many benefits in today’s digital world. Perhaps most importantly, it increases your authority and presence in the given subject both in the eyes of the general public and to the search engines. Let me explain. It’s no secret that people today are turning to the internet more and more to find solutions for their legal issues, just look at LegalZoom. The trick is having your website show up at the top of the search term rankings that people are using to find these legal solutions (ie “auto accident lawyer”, “sue my doctor”, “how to incorporate my company”). The strategic and sustainable process of moving up these rankings is what is called search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is comprised of many ever-changing components like backlinks, local citations, and content, but by far the most important of those is the latter. Content is written or visual information that is relevant to your target audience. This content is key not only because it provides great information to the people seeking it out, but also because Google is naturally incentivised to provide the best information in the most effective way possible, so it will assign greater “value” to your website because of its relevance to readers. It’s a win-win for you as the attorney. By writing and posting unique content to your website, you not only show your authority on the subject, but you also draw people to your website, increasing your chances of acquisition significantly.
I’m not asking you to write a novel every week, but write a post similar to this one and you’ll start seeing the return. If you find that you don’t have time every week to write this content regularly, you can always hire experts like us to do it for you!
Why does most of your business come from referrals? Simple. Because people trust other people’s opinions. Social media and the internet have made sharing opinions very easy. Just imagine, what if every single one of your clients told all 1,000 of their facebook friends about how great you were? That is what I propose you take advantage of here in #3.
Don’t passively sit there hoping that your clients are talking about you at the dinner table. Take active steps to ensure they are talking about you. At the close of a matter, take two minutes to ask clients for feedback. If they seemed satisfied with your service, ask them to write a review on Yelp, Facebook, or any other social platform. Their positive endorsement online is the equivalent of them screaming from the mountain top how much they enjoyed your service. Take a few minutes every week and start building a collection of these promoters.
If you have any questions about any of the above, please feel free to give me a call at (626) 578-5040.