CEO of the Nation's Largest #LawFirmMarketing Company: The Rainmaker Institute @Law_Marketing. Coached & Trained over 18,000 #Lawyers. Best-Selling Author
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Articles by Stephen Fairley
How You Can Break the Stigma During Mental Health Awareness Month
It’s Mental Health Awareness Month, and you will see a lot of social media posts about breaking the stigma this month and raising awareness for mental health issues and that’s great, but this isn’t that post. 1 in 5 people will experience some sort of mental health issue (I don’t like calling it an “illness” per se) over the course of their lifetimes and 1 in 4 people are dealing with one right now.
New York Bar Issues Ethics Opinion on Protecting “Confidential” Client Identity Information on Smartphones
Legal Disclaimer You are responsible for reading, understanding and agreeing to the National Law Review's (NLR’s) and the National Law Forum LLC's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy before using the National Law Review website. The National Law Review is a free to use, no-log in database of legal and business articles. The content and links on www.NatLawReview.com are intended for general information purposes only.
9 Tips for Better Email Management for Lawyers
Wednesday, December 8, 2021 Email management for lawyers and professionals across most industries is a constant uphill battle. In fact, the average professional spends 28 percent of the workday reading and answering emails, according to McKinsey. A lawyer has to pay special attention to their inbox because they often receive lucrative client and business information. However, they’re also overloaded with industry updates, bar association newsletters, and civic engagement emails.
Attorney Summer Vacation Planning and Professionalism
Monday, July 26, 2021 Summer vacation as a lawyer? We get it, lawyers have a busy job – and that’s an understatement. It can often feel impossible for busy legal professionals to take some time for themselves to slow down when they’re constantly getting swamped with work. As difficult as it might seem to get away from the office, though, it’s still worth the effort. Taking a summer vacation as a lawyer is not only possible but, in many cases, even necessary.
8 Proven Techniques to Convert Prospects at the Initial Consultation
Most attorneys I know have a pretty healthy opinion of their ability to close the sale at the initial consultation. Yet they are always looking for ways to improve their conversion rate — which tells me that maybe they’re not as confident as they appear. If you’ve gone to the trouble and expense to get prospects in your door, you naturally want to close as many as possible at or immediately after the initial consultation.
4 Things Law Firms Need to Improve Their Intake Process
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Take These 3 Steps to Obtain 5-Star Reviews
When we’ve suffered an injustice at the hands of a company, we want everyone to know about it. Sharing our outrage online somehow makes us feel better, which is why so many consumers post online reviews about their experiences. But when we’re treated well by a company, we usually keep it to ourselves. And therein lies the reason why it is sometimes a chore to get clients to provide you with a positive review.
How to Drive Business to Your Law Firm During a Pandemic
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Webinar: Creative Legal Marketing in a COVID-Crazy World
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2 Critical Numbers Every Law Firm Must Know
This post was originally published on Dec. 18, 2018, and updated on Sept. 24, 2019: Do you know how much money each lead is really costing you? How much does it cost you to get a new client? Knowing the answers to these questions can mean the difference between a profitable firm and a struggling one. These numbers are known as “KPIs” — Key Performance Indicators. They are the critical numbers or metrics that run your law firm.
12 Email Marketing Tips to Help Lawyers Cut Through Inbox Clutter
Email marketing remains one of the best and least expensive ways for law firms to nurture relationships with clients and prospects on an ongoing basis. Yet the fact remains that everyone is inundated with too many emails, making a law firm marketer’s job that much harder to cut through the clutter. Here are 12 email marketing tips that will help law firm marketing messages get opened and read: Have a targeted list. This is especially important if you have more than one practice area.
How Google Defines High Quality Content
Getting Google to rank your website high is a much harder task than you might imagine. In fact, there is an entire industry that has been created based upon helping businesses get their websites ranked high on the search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a multi-billion dollar industry. There are so many tricks of the trade that it is rarely worth the time for any attorney to attempt to become an expert. Instead, hire one.
8 Tips to Boost Your ROI on Google PPC Ads
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) for law firms can really pay off for lead generation, but only if you know what you’re doing. Eighty percent of the most expensive Google PPC keywords are related to the legal profession, so you want to be sure you are putting your money into PPC efforts that can yield the best results.
How to Determine Which Social Media Networks Work Best for Your Firm
Originally published on Sept. 9, 2015, and updated on Oct. 3, 2019: One of the most common questions I get from attorneys is how to identify the right social media networks for their firms. Frankly, it’s not that hard. The most important thing in identifying the right social media platform is to know your target market. If you don’t know that, then any marketing you are doing anywhere is just a shot in the dark.
SEO Efforts a Bust? Here are 10 Reasons Why
Originally published on March 8, 2019, and updated on Oct. 1, 2019: You know the importance of digital marketing for law firm business development. You realize that much of your online success — if and when it comes — depends on doing the right things SEO-wise so your law firm website shows up on the first page of Google. You know that you certainly do not have the time (nor the inclination, probably) to become an SEO expert. You did not go to law school for this.
8 Simple Steps to Create a Referral Network of Other Attorneys
Originally published on Feb. 20, 2017; updated on Sept. 26, 2019. A strong referral base is only built over a period of time and is based on cultivating great relationships with referral sources. Developing those relationships is a two-way street, especially when it comes to building a referral network of other, noncompeting attorneys. Achieving this goal is impossible if you are only asking your legal peers for referrals when you see them.
5 Ways for Lawyers to Attract Your Ideal Client [Infographic]
Originally published on May 22, 2019; updated with new info on Oct. 10, 2019. Here’s a lesson that many attorneys learn the hard way: you will never have that lifestyle law firm you want if you keep taking on the wrong types of clients. These are the people that fall outside a pre-defined category of what constitutes your ideal client. You need to look at your most profitable clients and create an ideal client profile, then qualify your leads to fit that profile.
7 Steps to Polish Your Online Reputation
If you’ve been using professional SEO practices for a while, then you probably think everything about your online reputation is just fine. But there may be some surprises lurking beyond the first page or two of your search results. Perhaps some negative reviews from former clients that you’ve never seen before? Images of you that someone else posted and tagged with your name from that party you’d rather forget? An angry letter you let fly to the local newspaper and now regret?
5 Tools to Spark Content Ideas for Your Law Firm Blog
Having high-quality content on your law firm blog is one of the best ways to improve your Google search ranking and online authority. When people — your prospects — like what you have to say online, you are rewarded by Google as well as by those who are ready to hire an attorney to help them solve their legal problems. But creating good, consistent content is not easy. Too often, the task of continually pumping out posts falls by the wayside when you get busy doing other things.
LinkedIn Intros New Tool: How You're Connected
You are responsible for reading, understanding and agreeing to the National Law Review's (NLR’s) and the National Law Forum LLC's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy before using the National Law Review website. The National Law Review is a free to use, no-log in database of legal and business articles. The content and links on www.NatLawReview.com are intended for general information purposes only.
How Lawyers Can Control the Conversation About Price
How to overcome objections to price is probably one of the most common questions I field from lawyers so I know it is something every attorney has to deal with. Therefore, it stands to reason that, through trial and error, many lawyers have developed a standard reply to price resistance.
10 Rules for Attorneys Struggling to Get Paid
Every business struggles with unpaid invoices, but attorneys seem to struggle more than most and are typically hesitant to pursue clients for unpaid bills. However, if you remember these 10 rules for getting paid, you’ll be sleeping a lot better at night: #1: Vet clients carefully. Attorneys obviously need clients to build a successful law firm but let’s qualify that: you need clients that can and will pay.
The Rewards of Building a Niche Law Practice
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10 Ways for Attorneys to Build Trust with Prospects & Clients
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5 Email Marketing Tips That Will Double Your Open Rates
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5 Steps to Beat Your Competitors in Google Search
Even if you are consistently outranking your competitors for your main keywords on Google, if you don’t understand why you are performing better than they are, you likely won’t outrank them for long. There are five steps you need to take to develop a strategy that will consistently provide you with better search results over them and over time: Step 1: Examine your own site. Using the Link Explorer tool from Moz, type in the URL of your website in the search bar.
How to Build a Law Firm Website That Will Attract More & Better Clients
Most attorneys I know understand the need for a website for their law firm and they have one. The more progressive lawyers have more than one website. By now we all know that a vast majority of consumers start their search for an attorney on the Internet. Research by LexisNexis and The Research Intelligence Group found three out of four consumers look online to find a lawyer. It is an undeniable fact that if you do not have a robust online presence, you are risking becoming irrelevant.
10 Timeless Social Media Marketing Tips
You are responsible for reading, understanding and agreeing to the National Law Review's (NLR’s) and the National Law Forum LLC's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy before using the National Law Review website. The National Law Review is a free to use, no-log in database of legal and business articles. The content and links on www.NatLawReview.com are intended for general information purposes only.
How to Get More News Coverage for Your Law Firm
Social media has not only changed the advertising and marketing landscape, it has also changed the way the media does its job. The news cycle is now 24/7 and journalists must feed the beast constantly, which means they are always on the lookout for sources and content ideas. And more often than not, they turn to social media for both. In fact, the 2017 Cision Global Social Journalism Study showed that 74% of journalist said they source story ideas and sources on social media.
Twitter Tips for Attorneys to Increase Engagement
If you’d like to start using Twitter — or if you’ve already started but want to do better — here are some tips for attorneys on how to engage: Pick a trending topic and offer your own spin. Every time you sign in, your Twitter home page will give you a list of topics that are currently trending on the site. You can even customize this feed for your geographical area. Picking a trending topic and adding your own spin on it is a good way to get more attention for your posts. Perk up your profile.
10 Law Firm Marketing To-Dos You Need to Get Done
When it comes to legal marketing, the to-do list is really never done because marketing is a process, not an end-goal. As a busy attorney, your available time to market the firm is finite, but there are some things you can do when you have a spare hour or two that will pay big dividends for your law firm marketing program: Update your bio. Just about every visitor to your website will look at your attorney bios.
Study: Law Firms Need 90 Citations to Rank in Top 3 in Google Local
Unless you have a micro-niche practice, your law firm likely draws its clients from a relatively small geographic region. In other words, your clients are locals. Which means you want — you need — to rank high in Google Local search. A new study from BrightLocal examined how many citations (online references to your NAP — name, address, phone number) businesses need to rank in the top spots in local search results on Google.
Use Google Trends to Improve Your Content Marketing & SEO
Law firms without dedicated personnel — either in-house or an outside agency — to perform in-depth keyword research and search trends may find it increasingly difficult to stay on top of the online search behavior of prospects and ideas for generating content that will speak to these prospects. That’s where Google Trends comes in.
One Simple Solution to Get More Clients Than Your Competitors
Probably one of the earliest proverbs we remember from childhood is: “The early bird gets the worm.” When you’re a child, your parents may have said this to you to get you to go to bed because you have to rise early for school the next day. When you’re older, it’s said to you to convey the message that if you prepare, work hard, and have initiative, you will be successful. What it means in the context of law firm marketing is that if you do something before everyone else, you reap the rewards.
4 Tips for Attorneys Navigating the Social Media Ethics Minefield
Despite all lawyer jokes to the contrary, attorneys are bound by a set of ethics rules set forth by state bar associations. In general, concern about ethics and social media focus on advertising, confidentiality, discovery, and solicitation.
The 10 Essential Legal Directories Where You Need to Be Found
A proven yet sometimes overlooked tool that can help attorneys market their practices while improving their SEO has been around for years: the legal directory. Legal directories provide some key benefits like giving attorneys an online platform to build their authority in a practice area, get reviews, and earn links for their websites. Yet they are not well exploited by many law firm marketers.
How to Avoid Becoming a Ghost on LinkedIn
If you are active on LinkedIn, there’s a hidden danger that no one is talking about much. If you are too active, you might have your account restricted! Which means you basically become a ghost on LinkedIn. I know this firsthand because I am currently a LinkedIn ghost. Hopefully things will get cleared up in the next day or two. We’ve been told that accounts with high engagement are typically flagged for this kind of action in an effort to weed out fake profiles.
Tips for Improving Your Law Firm Website’s Conversion Rate
For years, law firms have focused on generating leads from their websites and given scant thought to conversion. To improve your website’s conversion rate — its ability to turn visitors into clients — you first need to know what your current conversion rate is and have a system in place for ongoing tracking. Your Google Analytics data will be able to tell you most of what you need to know.
Google Update News Law Firms Should Use
Google has been very busy this month making some changes that will definitely impact your online properties. Here’s what you need to pay attention to: Yesterday (July 24), Google rolled out a “Not Secure” warning for websites with non-HTTPS URLs. (The Firefox browser made this change already.) Now whenever a Chrome user hits an HTTP site, their address bar shows a “Not Secure” warning: This is no small thing since Chrome has the largest browser market share on both desktop (67%) and mobile (55%).
These 5 Lead Magnets Will Improve Your Website’s Conversion Rate
Content marketing for your law firm website should serve three clear goals: To meet these goals, you create high quality content that visitors looking for legal help in the area you practice will find extremely useful. You then post it on your blog and your social media pages to attract people to your site. Now, you do not yet know those visitors. You don’t know where they are in the buying process — just getting started? Refining their selection? Ready to buy?
6 Steps to Update Your Law Firm Website for Voice Search
We’re reposting this article from earlier this year because voice search is becoming so prevalent — making it important to your law firm marketing. Some of the article has been updated with new info you need to optimize your website for voice search: According to comScore, voice search will comprise 50% of all Internet searches within the next two years. Currently, 2 of 5 adults use voice search at least once per day.
4 Keys to Achieving a 7-Figure Income
It’s no surprise when laid-off lawyers or law school grads who can’t find a job hang out their own shingles, but there are even more attorneys heeding the siren call to start up their own firm in order to achieve a better work-life balance (if that even exists). You may feel at times that starting a law firm is counterintuitive when it comes to finding balance in your life.
What You Should Know About Small Business SEO at a Glance [Infographic]
SEO is complicated. First, because Google’s algorithm is ever-changing (as in every day ever-changing), so it is virtually impossible to practice law and stay on top of everything your online properties need to get or keep you on the first page of Google’s search results. So hopefully you have some help — either inside or outside, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re certain they know what they are doing and they are delivering results.
How to Ensure Your Law Firm Website Isn’t Flattened by Rollout of Google’s Mobile-First Index
Google’s mobile-first index — where the search engine giant prioritizes mobile-friendly websites in its search results — started rolling out last week to smaller, local business websites and there are some that are really feeling the pain. Google announced two years ago that it would be making the switch to mobile-first indexing and slowly began rolling it out. Until recently, only major websites were affected, but now the rollout is affecting smaller, local businesses.
8 Steps to Better Work-Life Balance
If there is one thing that all the attorneys I’ve trained have in common, it’s that they are all too busy. Busy generating leads. Busy meeting with prospects. Busy preparing for trial. Busy running their business. Busy going to court. Busy putting out fires. Busy going to networking events. Busy, busy, busy! It’s time to figure out how to achieve better work-life balance. Unfortunately, that rarely happens.
7 Ways to Optimize Your Law Firm’s Digital Marketing Strategy
Marketing is about connecting with your target market in the right place at the right time. Today, those connections are made online; hence the term, “digital marketing.” The modern law firm deploys a number of online strategies to meet their goals for lead generation, lead conversion, brand awareness, and building a deeper relationship with prospects and clients.
5 Non-SEO Ways to Drive Website Traffic
As you well know if you are already investing in SEO to drive traffic to your law firm website, it’s highly competitive in the legal category. Lots of attorneys investing thousands of dollars every month to compete for the same keywords are driving down the odds of your site ranking well for certain keywords.
5 Email Marketing Tips That Will Double Your Open Rates
The latest statistics show average email open rates for the legal industry are just over 21%. If your email campaigns are performing below this benchmark, you have some work to do to boost those open rates. Here are 5 tips to help you do that: You probably think that once you send an email to your list, there’s not much you can do to reach the non-openers with your message. Oh, but there is. You can resend the same email campaign to subscribers who didn’t open them.
5 Places to Find Content Ideas for Your Law Firm Blog
Even if you haven’t been blogging as long as I have — my first post was on 10/3/07 about the 4 biggest problems marketing your law firm using the Yellow Pages (!) — there will come a time when you run out of ideas. You sit staring at a blank page on your screen hoping for inspiration to strike. It usually doesn’t without some effort on your part to make ideas happen.
How to Understand Facebook Insights for Better Page Performance [Infographic]
Who is following your Facebook page? What content do they like? What day and time are most of them viewing your page? What device do they use to see your page? What actions are they taking on your page? How does your page stack up against your competitors? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, then you are not taking advantage of Facebook’s detailed (and free!) analytics tool, Facebook Insights.
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