Posts Tagged ‘lawyers’

It is now easier than ever to engage in meaningful conversations in Facebook.  The newly updated Facebook Search Feature allows you to search for topics being discussed in status updates. You can use this feature to find people who are looking for estate planning services.  See example below:

By searching for the words “estate plan” I instantly found someone looking for a “good estate attorney”  (Oh, and I was sure to recommend one to her!).
You can search through posts of your friends, or choose the more global “Posts by Everyone” feature to find people outside of your current network.
It’s quick, easy, and a really great way to increase your social networking contacts.

Sounds good, right?

This should bring in LOADS of eager estate planning clients who are beating a path to your door.

After spending thousands of dollars for targeted mailing lists, design services for a wonderful postcard and postage you find that the results are less than stellar. But, why?

Because offer-driven marketing doesn’t work for estate planning services.

Well, let me clarify, offer-driven marketing doesn’t work for people with whom you have no existing relationship. I will be the first to admit that I have not done extensive research to find the root cause of the failure of offer-driven marketing. But I have spent years talking to estate planning prospects and clients and I think there are two key reasons.

1. Because people don’t necessarily love the idea of developing a plan that will prepare their family for their death. This is not fun for most people and they are not motivated to do this by money.

2. Because people know that when they do estate planning they will be sharing every detail of their lives with their lawyer. They will have to disclose all of their financial information and sometimes not-so-pretty details of their family life. Most people want to share this information only with people they know and trust.

What does this mean to you in terms of marketing your estate planning practice? It means that you need to find ways to showcase your expertise and allow potential clients to get to know you. Reach out to them and teach them that estate planning is not about death and dying. Show them the joy in creating a legacy for their family.

Social media is ideal for this. You can do this by regularly posting to your blog, updating you Facebook fan page, communicating using Twitter, and many, many other channels where you can connect with potential clients.
Once people get to know you, trust you, see you as an expert, and not fear estate planning, then you can them make them an offer they can’t refuse.

One of the things that we often hear is that social media marketing is free.  While it is true that most social media networking sites have no cost to participate, there is the cost of executing.

One of the key components of a good social media strategy is to develop a plan that will keep you or your firm participating regularly.  In order to do this, you must decide if you will be the person to manage this or if you plan on outsourcing this task, or if you want a combination of both.

Here are some examples of different roles that are often outsourced:

• Research Specialist: This person offers ongoing research services to help you identify where your target market is online, which is constantly evolving.  He or she suggests new networks to target, finds new networks in which to participate, lists of friends to invite, etc.

• Company Representative: If you don’t feel you have the time to carry out all aspects of your strategy on your own, you can hire someone to act as a representative of your practice on your behalf.  This person would participate in discussions on behalf of your company online, post relevant and informative articles out to your audience, etc.

• Online Reputation Manager: This person is responsible for tracking and monitoring your online reputation, which is a handful in and of itself!  He or she would use tracking tools to find every post and site where your name or firm is mentioned, and would respond to any negative comments, trying to minimize negative exposure online.

• Blog Manager: The blog is the heart of your social media strategy. It is important to make sure that your blog is continually maintained and upgraded when appropriate.  There’s quite a bit more to running a successful blog than simply writing a post.  A Blog Manager will make sure that your blog stays current by adding the most up-to-date plug-ins and keeping the posting schedule consistent.

There is a cost to outsourcing, but this must be compared with the cost of your time.  If you have a team in place effectively taking care of parts of your social media strategy, you are free to concentrate on the aspects of the strategy where your personal voice really needs to get through and connect with your audience – writing articles and blog posts, for example.

If you decide that you would like to spend your valuable time on the parts of social media marketing that will allow you to put a voice to your message and delegate the rest we’d love to help you discover how easily this can be done.

Fans are more likely to keep checking your Facebook page if you give them a motivation to do so. 

How about holding a contest?

One quick and easy idea is to put everyone who ‘fans’ your Facebook fan page during the month is entered into a raffle.  The prize could be an Amazon gift card or a great book?  Or how about a discount on estate planning?

Contests get attention.  Please love to win things.

Be sure to use all of the media outlets to announce your contest using all of the social media outlets that you use…Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, and others. Also, don’t forget to email your house list and put it on your blog.  This idea can be implemented quickly.  It’s easy.  Most importantly, it works!

While it is most certainly true that you would like to build your law practice using social media, it is important to focus in more closely to identify your social media objectives.  Now it is time to teach you what social media marketing is NOT.

Social networks are NOT a place to sell.  Social networks are for building relationships.

Social media marketing is about getting into the mind of the consumer. Today’s consumer no longer responds to ‘push’ marketing.  They don’t want to be told what to buy.  They want to make their own decisions about the products they buy and the services they use.  The ‘selling’ aspect on social media is much more subtle than in traditional channels.  Smart Estate Planning attorneys realize that prospects want to be educated, inspired, or entertained.  Therefore, it is critical that your objectives be something like:

• Position yourself as a subject matter expert
• Be a conduit for your community’s questions about Estate Planning
• Build your brand and manage your reputation

These types of objectives go a long way towards giving you a strong ROI – Return on Influence, that is.  Return on Influence is measured using different benchmarks than the quantitative Return on Investment.  Returns on Investment benchmarks are specific, measurable, and quantitative.  Return on Influence has more to do with brand authority and your growing levels of engagement and influence in the social media channels.  Some examples of Return on Influence measures are:

• 200  new Twitter Followers over the past 3 months
• 50 participants in Facebook Group
• Growth in conversations about business on Twitter and Facebook
• 100 new subscribers to your blog

So while the Return on Influence measures can be quantitative, the direct impact on your Return on Investment is more subtle.  But, it definitely has an impact.  Having new Twitter followers doesn’t guarantee that all 200 will be calling your office, but maybe 20 will, having a positive effect on your bottom line!  The more you put your name out there, the higher that number can become.  And there are several good tools on the web that you can use to track your Return on Influence.

Bottom line: if you have a clear social media objective, mapping out your strategy becomes clear, tracking your results is clear, and the impact on both your Return on Influence AND Return on Investment becomes clear, as a result of the time and effort you’ve put into your social media strategy.