Anxiety, pressure and fear are all feelings that you weren't told by your law professors' that you would experience after law school. You probably knew that you would experience some anxiety before passing the bar yet what happens when the feeling doesn't go away when your phone isn't ringing and new clients aren't coming through the door? You are not just an attorney, you are a business owner too.
Where is your next client going to come from?
What will you do when the phone isn't ringing?
How many more networking events can you attend?
I know this sounds like I really know you but I, too, am a small business owner. I am not a part-time attorney carrying a caseload supplementing my income by teaching marketing tactics. I'm not experimenting with your law firm and I am not a lawyer pretending to teach you branding and marketing because I couldn’t build my own book of business. I know what it feels like to build a business, go up against competition that is ahead of you and has a seemingly endless cash flow.
You're not just up against your competitor's inside the courtroom, you have to 'battle' them outside the courtroom for clients too.
Most attorneys aren’t familiar with how to properly market their law firm. This results in spending money unwisely and unreasonable timelines for results. For one thing, attorneys typically spend money placing ads in publications that don’t make the best of their budget. There is also the attorney that invests in marketing and expects to have a magic bean that is going to produce results in a few months.
There is no 'Jack in the Beanstalk' shortcut to marketing!
I have yet to meet a marketer or marketing company that is out to just steal money from their clients. In fact, marketers tend to have 'A' type personalities, are former athletes and tend to be competitive. Marketing professionals tend to be optimistic, determined, creative, lifelong learners, techno-savvy and individuals that seek out solutions to problems that need solved. We want our client's to win and we work hard to get them results.
Marketing takes time to work and it is a long term strategy that often does not produce results that you can see in a short amount of time. Just check the testimonials on some of the 'big' players in the industry and you will see that many times the attorney has been with the company 4+ years.
Next, there is the attorney that does all of the marketing for the firm. It isn’t difficult to see an amateur look being used by a law firm in their logo, marketing, website and videos. Lacking a professional look can create the perception of not being professional with your prospective client's.
Simply put you can choose to do all of your marketing and like many of the attorneys I see online you can make a living teaching other attorneys how to do it too. Just like you, I can choose to represent myself in court, invest in a DIY service online or simply hope that things will just get better on their own. The 'hope' strategy or even more dangerous the 'post and pray' strategy will no longer work.
Your competitor is investing in marketing and there are no longer any 'secrets' to search engine optimization (SEO). In fact, there never was. There is just good old fashion work on the right things that will bring your firm the right results long term. You must work on being the best answer to the solutions your prospective client's are looking for and you must have more answers available than your competitors' for them to find online.
One of the biggest problems with online marketing is that most business lawyers have waited so long to invest in marketing that they are desperate and need quick results to stay in business. Marketing is like marriage - you go into it with a forever mindset. There are going to be times when you are uncomfortable yet the pain of not taking action when your competitor's are taking action is much worse. We do not control search engines, Google or YouTube, and therefore can not promise results. With online marketing nothing happens overnight and it just might take a year before you start having great results.
If you don't start your marketing strategy today then you're going to be years behind your competition.
If your competitor is putting up one video a month for a year and they have 12 months of videos, 12 blog posts that were transcribed from the videos, a podcast in iTunes with 12 shows and have shared those videos on YouTube, Facebook and their website then they have established authority in the industry.
Marketing is like marriage - you go into it with a forever mindset.
With that amount of content online they are not just one year ahead of you - they are now several years ahead because videos that are online over time build authority, trust and 'expert' status. When your content lives online for a year and others are finding the solution to their questions they have now built up trust with the #1 search engine in the world.
Google will automatically begin to rank their content higher and their firm will increase their visibility and exposure over time. With a smart strategy you can put out enough content using video production and promotion to outrank, dominate and crush the competition but you will have to put in more effort and time.
So what makes videos so effective for lawyers to use in their content marketing strategy? Let's stop here and in my next post I will share a few tips that reveal what makes videos so effective in your content marketing.
About Creative Internet Authority:
Creative Internet Authority is a digital marketing company that specializes in producing and promoting videos for law firms. We use a 7 step process to create educational, informative and relevant videos that position law firms as thought leaders and authorities in the industry.
Helping Lawyers and Law Firms with the ABCs:
► Attracting the Right Prospective Clients
► Building Authority so that Prospective Clients Trust You
► Converting That Traffic Into Clients or Subscribers
To learn more about Creative Internet Authority and how you can use videos to increase visibility and exposure download our guide below.
