February 7, 2012
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Posted on January 27, 2012 by in Uncategorized

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If you’re like most legal professionals, the chances are that you are far too busy to stay on top of all of the latest developments in the world of law practice marketing. At the Power Practice Network, we scour the internet for the best law firm marketing tips, tools and resources so that we can provide them to professionals like yourself in our complimentary Success Tools newsletter.

Thanks to the dozens of news feeds that we follow at our sister site SuccessTools.org, we’re able to keep our finger on the pulse of the practice marketing industry. From the latest online marketing tips and tricks to top notch advice on generating more referrals and building your practice, you can rely on our Success Tools newsletter to provide you with the just-in-time information that you need in an easy-to-read format.

To sign up now, simply enter your email address in the field provided to the right. Stay informed about the latest developments in law practice marketing by subscribing to our free Success Tools newsletter today!

Join Soloville! Trust Tips and Tools for Small Biz and Solo Entrepreneurs

Posted on January 27, 2012 by in Uncategorized

consulting

If you’re a solo lawyer marketing your legal practice, sometimes it can feel as if you’re all alone in a sea of larger firms. But being small can be a big advantage. Large practices often find changing direction as cumbersome as turning around an ocean liner, but small practices have the agility to quickly respond to shifts in their niche market. All you need is some help with marketing your practice and the support of other small medical practitioners.

The Law Marketing Association has partnered together with Soloville to help small entrepreneurs like you. Whether you’ve been in private practice for years or are just venturing out on your own, Soloville can give you the marketing tools and resources you need to power up your campaign.Soloville also gives its members the support of a community, a welcome break for providers used to marketing a medical practice on their own. Although Soloville is presently in its beta stage, the Healthcare Marketing Association has designed the service with these key qualities:

 

Visit Soloville to see how we can rev up your law practice marketing campaign. If you like what we have to offer, subscribe to our Soloville RSS Feed. Soloville is also on Facebook and Twitter, so join us.

Power Practice Network: Power Practice Marketing Supercharged!

Posted on January 27, 2012 by in Uncategorized

law marketing association

law marketing associationThe Law Marketing Association is a key member of the Power Practice Network, a family of websites and professional organizations created to serve today’s solo and small business community. We believe that small business owners and “solopreneurs” across nearly every professional service industry face the same basic hurdles in business whether we are trying to:

  • generate more referrals,
  • establish ourselves as leaders for our professional niche, or
  • leverage the power of online marketing and social media.

To address these issues, the Power Practice Network has been designed to provide professional service providers, small business owners, solo entrepreneurs and practice marketing professionals with effective solutions for our most common challenges. At present, members of our network receive support through three online programs:

  • Our Success Tools newsletter: Featuring the most relevant developments in practice marketing for solo and small business professionals culled from the over 50 leading RSS feeds we provide to readers at SuccessTools.com.
  • Our Marketing Jump Start program: Give your solo or small practice the jump start it needs with just-in-time tips, primers and refreshers pertaining to generating referrals, local search marketing, social media marketing and education-based marketing.
  • Our Web Jump Start system: When you’re ready to put your online marketing campaign into overdrive, the Power Practice Network will complete a comprehensive audit of your practice’s website. We will then provide you with a detailed report featuring actionable analytical intelligence and advice on how to start creating a more effective online presence immediately.

Make It Easier for Your Network to Find New Referral Opportunities

Posted on March 19, 2011 by in Web Marketing

After you have a steady stream of qualified referrals coming in, you can start fine tuning your referral engine by making it even easier for your associates to identify referral opportunities. If you have a particularly close relationship with some influential players in your industry, you might consider sitting down with them with a list of the top potential clients that you could use a referral for. Although your contacts will probably only have access to a couple of the targets on your list, getting your foot in the door at just one or two of these agencies could be all that you need in order to take your network to a whole new level.

In many cases, you can also provide your referral network with useful materials that will make it easy to recommend their colleagues to your professional services. Instead of handing out business cards or relying on a verbal referral, you might consider giving your top referrers some tips on giving written referrals in the form of a letter or email.

This article is a brief abstract from a core learning module included in a Marketing Jump Start program provided to our association and Power Practice Network members. As a member, you will gain access to our four key courses and Success Tools Pro, which provides a constant update of tools and resources for building your practice.

Managing the Referral Expectation

Posted on March 19, 2011 by in Web Marketing

The top reason that many professionals are uncomfortable with giving out referrals for some services is that they had encountered problems in the past by referring a colleague to someone who either failed to deliver or endlessly hounded him in order to close a sale. By providing the top members of your network with a clear explanation of exactly how you will follow up with their referrals, you will find that they will be much more likely to give a referral to their most important and influential colleagues.

At the same time, it is also important to manage the referral expectation amongst your professional network by following up with your contacts to let them know how their referrals have worked out. Not only does this help encourage your friends and associates to continue recommending your professional services to their contacts, it also lets them know that you take their referrals seriously and will give their contacts the care and attention that they deserve.

If a colleague provides you with a referral that turns into a new client, be sure to show your appreciation with a personalized gift or discount on their next purchase. When your contacts give out referrals to contacts that are not appropriate for the services that you have to offer, simply follow up with them to let them know how the referral turned out so that they will have a better idea of what to look for in the future.

This article is a brief abstract from a core learning module included in a Marketing Jump Start program provided to our association and Power Practice Network members. As a member, you will gain access to our four key courses and Success Tools Pro, which provides a constant update of tools and resources for building your practice.

Why Local Search Marketing is Essential to Lawyers

Posted on March 19, 2011 by in Web Marketing

map of berlin

Map of Berlin circa 1895

Unless you are marketing your professional service to a global or nationwide audience, the chances are that your online presence has always been focused on attracting clients within a particular geographic region. The purpose of local search marketing is simply to refine your existing campaign so that potential clients see your business at the top of the list when they are searching for professionals in their area. In order to stay ahead of the competition and earn top placement in local search results for your profession, there are two local search marketing techniques that you need to put into place:

  • Optimize your online presence for relevant local search queries
  • Promote your site effectively on the local listing centers of the three major search engines

Despite the fact that most professional service firms are well aware of the fact that they are relying on local clients for the majority of their business, all too many firms do not know how to properly incorporate local SEO strategies into their marketing campaign. No matter what type of service you happen to offer, the truth of the matter is that most people prefer to do business with professionals that they can meet with face to face. As a result, most potential clients will begin searching for practices in their area that offer the services that they need once they have done the necessary research to know what it is that they want. The key to effective local search marketing is knowing how to make yourself visible at the moment that your neighbors are ready to act.

When it comes to your actual website, there are a few simple techniques that we will discuss in further detail in the second module of today’s lesson. The first step is isolating the perfect keyword phrases that will let you stand out from your local competitors in the eyes of the major search engines. While it takes a little bit of experience in researching keywords to know how to spot the right opportunities, incorporating the right long tail keywords into your site’s content and meta data will always pay off in the long run. At the same time, building a solid network of links from local sources is a time proven method of increasing your site’s authority and improving your placement in local search results.

The other side of local search marketing is learning how to create, manage and promote your practice’s listing with the major search engines. Google, Bing and Yahoo each have their own approach to listing businesses and services in their local search results, and there are a few ways to make your listing stand out by understanding what each search engine is looking for. Each of the big three search engines offer opportunities for businesses to list themselves for free, and even spending an hour or two ensuring that your listing is accurate and up to date can increase local traffic to your site. At the same time, there also opportunities for promoting your site through taking advantage of pay-per-click or flat fee advertisements that can be very effective if you know how to use them properly.

As search engines continue to make the transition towards more personalized search results, knowing how to put the right local search strategies into place for your professional service practice are becoming more important than ever. Traditional SEO practices and high quality content may continue to be at the forefront of your online marketing efforts, but local content marketing is now an essential component of ensuring that your practice’s message is reaching the right potential clients at the right time.

This article is a brief abstract from a core learning module included in a Marketing Jump Start program provided to our association and Power Practice Network members. As a member, you will gain access to our four key courses and Success Tools Pro, which provides a constant update of tools and resources for building your practice.

Why Article Marketing = More Clients

Posted on March 19, 2011 by in Web Marketing

newsboys

1940s Newsboy (Photo by Arthur Rothstein)

Article marketing is a method of increasing your website’s traffic and page ranking in search engine results by distributing short, well-written articles to directories and other off-site locations that contain links back to your own site. These articles are fairly short in length and usually pertain to a specific niche that is directly related to one of the the main products or services that a website has been designed to promote.

Most article marketing is performed by posting these links on a handful of article directories that receive a high volume of traffic. By posting free articles on these major directories, business owners and web masters are benefited by:

  • Higher Page Rank – Search engine algorithms associate a major article directory’s authority with your own website
  • Valuable Organic Traffic – Readers visiting your site after reading an article will already be interested in what you have to say
  • Brand Name Exposure – The more exposure you get, the better. This holds true regardless of whether you are promoting a brand name product or yourself as a thought leader.

All that you need in order to start putting the power of article marketing to work for you is to gather some content worth sharing and simply start getting it out there. If you have been working in your industry for some time, the chances are that you already have plenty of material in newsletters, emails and unpublished reports that you can repurpose as posts for article directories.

Otherwise, generating new articles from scratch is a breeze once you sit down are start cranking them out, or you can hire a low cost freelancer to put together some basic content. Remember, the material that you use for article directories does not have to be your best work, but it does have to be original. Search engines know how to filter out duplicate content, so using articles that you have already posted elsewhere will not count as meaningful backlinks or attract new traffic.

Unlike many online marketing techniques, article marketing lends itself particularly well to new marketers and entrepreneurs who are operating on a limited budget. Since all of the major article directories allow users to post content on their site free of charge, the only investment necessary in order to get an article marketing campaign off the ground is the amount of time that it takes to generate content and upload it to the right directory.

This article is a brief abstract from a core learning module included in a Marketing Jump Start program provided to our association and Power Practice Network members. As a member, you will gain access to our four key courses and Success Tools Pro, which provides a constant update of tools and resources for building your practice.

Education-Based Marketing is Marketing Supercharged

Posted on March 19, 2011 by in Web Marketing

umbrellas

Content marketing involves the use of top-notch educational content that is developed to engage potential and existing clients. Traditional marketing techniques place a heavy emphasis on promoting a business’s brand, products or services. The purpose of content marketing, on the other hand, is based on the assumption that educating the public with original and timely information and resources will inspire more profitable customer action. In the long run, content marketing has been proven to have a dramatic impact on increasing customer loyalty, capturing the public’s imagination and converting first time visitors into leads, subscribers or sales.

The increasing impact and popularity of content marketing poses a challenge to many marketing professionals who find it difficult to adjust to promoting a business’s products or services without actively discussing their brand. The fact of the matter remains, however, that today’s clients no longer have the patience for standard advertising pitches or listening to a company drone on about what they have to offer. Instead of waiting for businesses to come to them, customers now actively seek out what they want through content that they find on their own through website, social media, video and other materials.

A growing number of businesses are recognizing the need for an immersive content marketing plan in addition to their current promotional efforts. As a result, many organizations are repurposing reports and other materials that they once kept private as free resources for new and potential clients. Other businesses are starting content marketing campaigns from scratch by building a public resource library based on their years of industry experience. In either the case, the purpose is to have pitch-perfect content and resources when these new consumers make it to their business.

The primary purpose of the most effective content marketing campaigns is to establish thought leadership. New leads, referrals and direct sales are generated as a matter of course once your key demographics have come to regard you as a leader in your specific niche. Given the effectiveness of this approach to marketing, a type of marketing professional has begun to emerge within the last year in the form of the content engineer.

Content engineers use a combination of two crucial skills in order to fine tune a content management campaign. First, they focus on cold, hard analytical data about how people are searching for information and services on various sorts of media. Next, they use their taste for design and content to perfectly position materials to catch potential clients when they are most likely to act. In the coming years, the next generation marketing professionals will be relying on a similar combination of scientific and creative skills in order to thrive.

This article is a brief abstract from a core learning module included in a Marketing Jump Start program provided to our association and Power Practice Network members. Our As a member you will  have access to our four key courses, as well as Success Tools Pro, which provides a constant update of tools and resources for building your practice.

Generate Business for your Law Practice through Google Adwords

Posted on March 13, 2010 by in Web Marketing

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Practice marketing has become more wide-reaching and affordable with the increasing popularity of the web. More and more people are turning to the web to locate services they need. A campaign on the web is an always-on campaign, 24/7. People use the internet to find service providers quickly and to compare costs and quality. An effective campaign on the internet is an essential strategy to build your brand and to generate more business for your law practice.

Practice marketing can be carried out online using pay per click programs. The pay per click advertising program from Google, Google Adwords, is very popular as Google search is among the most popular web searches. In Google Adwords, you pay only for the clicks generated by your advertisement. Using this service, you bid for and buy a place in the first page of Google search results.

Your ads are shown at the top and at the right side of the results page, separate from the natural search results. It is expected that only visitors who are interested in the service you are providing use the links and reach your site. Qualified visitors mean more conversions from visitor to client. Thus Google Adwords is thought to be a cost effective way of online marketing.

To have a successful advertising program for your law practice using Google Adwords, there are some steps you need to take. You need to manage your campaign properly to make it worth the money you spend. Here are some ways in which you can boost your business using Google Adwords.

Identify your niche area in the business

The first thing you need to do when you are planning an Adwords campaign is to define your service and geographical areas of interest clearly. Identify what makes you stand out as a service provider. Identify where or to whom the service is available, based on geographical location. If you are providing a service relevant for a specific location, the terms you use for your ad campaign should include the location.

Have a relevant landing page

Create landing pages specific to the search phrase you use. Place your call-to-action in a place visible to the visitor without scrolling. Have a well designed page without clutter. If you are presenting a form to be filled in by the user, ask for only relevant information. It is seen that if you ask for a lot of information, conversion rates are low.

Manage your cost per click-through when you use pay per click

The popularity of Google Adwords has made it expensive to successfully bid for top key words. You need to have a campaign which gets you maximum results for your investment. It is not necessary that getting the top key words always bring the maximum number of visitors. You can structure your campaign around less costly but productive search terms.

Practice marketing using Google Adwords needs good planning. You need to continuously monitor the effectiveness of the search terms you use. By analyzing the results and successively refining search terms, you can build a cost effective marketing campaign for your law practice using Google Adwords.