There are a million book and sites out there, either dedicated to attorneys or not, that will offer you 5, 7, or 10 tips on how to improve your marketing. Some of these books and sites offer decent tips and suggestions, while some of them are complete rubbish. You've probably read some of both, correct?
If you're like most attorneys, then you've even tried following much of the advice that you've read or been told, with varying levels of success. I know because I've been in your position as an attorney (or with a law firm) trying desperately to get more clients. It's not easy.
The problem, though, is not that you are listening to the wrong advice. The problem is that you likely don't have a well-thought-out and coordinated system of marketing in place. It's the system that is the key.
Attorneys and law firms can get clients in many, many different ways. Traditionally, referrals from past clients or colleagues have been a huge source of clients, and that continues to be true even today. However, no attorney needs to get clients in any one particular way. What you do need is a plan.
When I talk about systems for my clients, it's really nothing more than a cohesive plan that has been broken down into small, concrete steps that my client can follow on a day-by-day or even hour-by-hour basis. The last thing you want to be doing in your marketing is floating around from one idea to another. "Perhaps today I'll try advertising in magazines, even though my focus yesterday was on search engine optimization."
It's not that you can't attack multiple marketing routes, even at the same time; on the contrary, I have many successful clients who do just that. But what they don't do is wake up each morning trying to decide what to do that day. They already know, because they have a system in place.
Before you run off and build your own system for attorney marketing, let me give you one important tip. Your system can change, but it should change at most once per week. You should sit down every Sunday night and try to figure out what you might need to tweak about your marketing plan, and if you think a lot of change is necessary, then by all means, change it. However, when Friday morning rolls around, you should be sticking to whatever plan you landed on Sunday night, and you should have been doing so all week.
I hope this helps, and future posts will talk a bit more about specific systems, but in the mean time, GET GOING!!
