In this episode, Jim and Tyson continue the interview with attorney David Ward, owner and president of the David Ward Group and the Attorney Marketing Center. David will share his expertise with and and together they will go over marketing strategies that you should and shouldn’t do. Great takeaways as always!
https://www.attorneymarketing.com
This is the second part of a double episode! If you haven’t heard the first part, make sure you go back and listen to that one first: http://www.maximumlawyer.com/podcast/episode-70-ft-david-ward-attorney-marketing-part-1/
Hacking’s Hack: A LinkedIn Hack! When you get a request in LinkedIn (and people seem normal) accept them and ask them how can you help. See why did they connect with you through linkedin and see in there is anything of value that you can do for them.
David’s Ward Tip: Simple. The result of years of practice. Commit to 15 minutes a day for building your practice. Put it on your calendar on advance. Schedule it and be consistent.
Tyson’s Tip: Find areas in your practice where you can educate your clients.
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Transcripts: David Ward: Attorney Marketing PART 2
David Ward
When you’re the hub of their world, you’re directing traffic to all these professionals and businesses who love you to that, because you’re sending them all this business. And they’ll open their client list to you. They’ll send you referrals. They’ll do joint ventures marketing ventures with you. They’ll let you do guest blogs, they’ll volunteer to give you content for your various platforms.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. You’re back on the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m tasting the Atrix agent.
Jim Hacking
While I’m at the airport, we’re recording this intro for a very special two part episode that we did with Attorney David Ward. David is an old school marketer who has been around for a long time, and we were happy to get him on the show. And the show was so good that we decided to cut it up into two episodes. Yeah, so
Tyson Mutrux
if you have not heard last week’s episode, make sure you go back and listen to that one first. And then come back and listen to this one. There’s another 30 minutes or so of content on each episode, make sure you listen to both. Alright, sounds good. I do have a question, David. So have you identified anything over the years that used to work that people should stop doing marketing wise?
David Ward
Well, I mentioned something that I think people get overly caught up in. And I know you had my friend Mitch Sean, recently, and he’s very big on social media. And I’m not, I don’t know, if you got that from me, I think it has its place. And there are things that you can use it for effectively. But if you don’t like it, if you’re not good at it, you don’t want to do it. You don’t have to do any of it. And I think we get distracted by our handheld devices much too easily. And I’ll tell you what I what I do, I use social media as an first of all, as an accommodation to the people who read the posts I have on my website. Otherwise, I have the icons and the account set up so that they can easily share that content. I post, when I do when I write something, I post links to it on the social media channels, whenever I do that, and all of that, you know, it takes me about 30 seconds a day, when I’ve written something. Social media is a great way to find potential referral sources, bloggers, and other people that you can partner with in some way, shape or form. But anything you do with them should, in my opinion, is best done in person or over the phone. So I don’t have a lot of use for social media. And yet, I know many people like Mitch, have had tremendous success with it. And he gets a lot of it and it’s doing it. And maybe he’s just good. And I wasn’t or I’m not. But I think it starts with the like it. He loves it. And he’s good at it. And he has explored every aspect of it. He’s had me on various podcasts and things that he’s done over the over the years. And he’s he’s just amazing at it. And that’s just not something that I wanted to do. And to your listeners, you don’t have to do it if it’s not your thing. So don’t get caught up with the technique of the day. If you focus on just the things that I’ve touched on talking to talking to people doing an email newsletter, getting good at getting referrals, making sure your website is you want your website to do most of the selling for you. And there’s a whole, we don’t have time for me to go into all of that. But it’s just a handful of basic things that you want to focus on. So that you don’t have to be involved and put in long hours, you can enjoy the leverage of having set things up once it’s not set it and forget it, you’d have to pay attention to what’s going on. You know, what takes the most time is serving your clients. And I don’t mean, I don’t mean just doing the work for them. I don’t mean general customer service, or client relations, it’s called I mean, building relationships with them and providing services and information that go beyond your core services. In other words, most lawyers do a good job of delivering their core services. And most of them do a pretty good job of customer service. They take care of people they nice to him. They are terrible at staying in touch with them in between engagements. But they got they got the important part, right the most important part right, but what they don’t do Who is they don’t do anything beyond that you want your client. So when I say clients, I include everybody on your list, you want them to look at you not just as the guy or the gal who can create this document or recover some money for you or protect you or defend you. That’s your core services, you want them to look at you, as I’m not going to use, I’m not gonna say friend, because in most cases, you’re not going to be their friend, but you’re gonna have a relationship with them that goes beyond the services that you perform. You want them to look at you as somebody they can count on for information, advice, referrals, help, that’s outside of the work that you do. You want to train them to call you first, hey, you need a new car, I got a I got a dealer, that will give you a good deal. I trust him, I buy my cars from him. You need a car, call me, I’ll introduce you, I’ll hook you up. You need to buy insurance you need you’re buying real estate, you’re refurnishing your house, you’re remodeling, whatever it is, you want your clients and contacts to see you as the person that they should contact first. Yeah, but that takes time. Yeah, it takes time. But what do you get out of it? Aside from lifelong clients, and all of the repeat business and referrals that go with that, you get free clients you can give to all of these businesses and professionals. When you’re the hub of their world. You’re directing traffic to all of these professionals and businesses who love you to death because you’re sending them all this business. And they’ll open their client list to you, they’ll send you referrals, they’ll do joint ventures marketing ventures with you, they’ll let you do guest blogs, they’ll volunteer to give you content for your various platforms. And you don’t need a ton of people, you need a few good ones. By that I mean referral sources mean a few good ones, because a few good ones will allow you to service your clients. And a few good ones will lead to other good ones, because in each one of their rolodexes, I don’t know if people know what that word means anymore. But in each one of their phones, they have vetted another list of dozens or some cases, hundreds of other professionals, business owners service people that they know and recommend. And it just becomes a spurt of growth that you can tap into when you do that teach your clients to call you first, whatever it is that they need. Now, what happens if you don’t know anyone who handles that? Or does that? You know, and you don’t know where to go? That’s even better? Because it means you can pick up the phone and call somebody at random and say, Look, you don’t know me, I don’t know you, but I’ve heard good things about about you, because you will look at their website first. And their their reviews and so forth. And you say I’ve got a client who needs and then whatever it is. And I understand that you do that? Can I introduce him to you? And you know, you’re gonna be welcome all over the city all over the state all over the country if you do it, right. Because you’re going to be sending people business, and what a great way to start a relationship with a new prospective referral source by sending them business. So you have the client, you help the referral source and you help yourself. And you can’t ask for more.
Jim Hacking
David, your website has five or six free reports for lawyers on different marketing aspects. I think it’s a really good website, you can find David at attorney marketing.com, which is obviously a great domain name. David, I wanted to ask you about an email that you sent out earlier this week that I really liked. And I forwarded it on to my wife who I practice with. And it’s about putting together a new client welcome kit. And you noted that as a urine marketing project, and I think that a lot of people don’t necessarily think about marketing to their new clients. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that as an approach and then about the the project itself?
David Ward
Well, most attorneys least the ones that I know they send every new client a welcome letter. Thank you for hiring us. Here’s some basic information that you need. And that’s great. Don’t give up on that. But use that and go beyond it. I call it a new client welcome kit. And it’s basically whatever you have that you can send them and I think it’s best to actually mail it or overnight it but send them stuff. Information, forms checklists, answers to frequently asked questions, something I call referral devices which are things that they can hand out to friends and family business contacts, whatever you have, put it together in a package and send it to them. Obviously, you want to tell them about, you know, the bread and butter stuff like office hours and how to make an appointment and parking sets and parking things, questions about fees and billing and all the management questions that typically come up. What you’ll do is, first of all, you’ll cut down on clients calling to ask, do you validate parking, right, all of the stuff that they call or worse, they don’t call because they don’t want to bother you, or they don’t have the time where they’re intimidated. So they don’t call so they don’t come back. And they go to some other lawyer who, with that kind of stuff on their website. So you put all of this stuff up on your website as well. But put together a package that you can send new clients, you’ll keep them happy, you’ll demonstrate to them that you’re that you know what you’re doing, you’re professional, you’re organized, you’re ready to help them, you can tell them about your other practice areas, you can even send them information about who would make a good referral for you. And I kind of alluded to that issue earlier, when I said you don’t have to talk to him, put something in writing and send it to them explain whom would be a good referral for you. And very important, how to make that referral. What should they do? What should they not do make it as easy as possible for them to do it, give them options, and you’ll find that you’ll start getting more referrals. So it’s all it all starts with building a relationship. This is a new client, you want to build a relationship with them, you want them coming back again, and again. You want them so convinced that they made the right decision in hiring you that they don’t have buyer’s remorse, they don’t question your bills, they love you. And they’re glad that you’re going to take care of their problems or help them achieve their objectives. And they’re going to want other people to know about you. And you will, in your kit, equip them with the tools that make that easier. So that’s the genesis of the of the concepts. At the end of the post, I said, you should also do something similar for prospective clients. And you can reuse a lot of that material for prospective clients. But how simple is it to send the information to folks, even if they don’t read it, even if they don’t look at it, they’ll page through it, they’ll see well, there’s a lot of stuff here. And they’ll be impressed. And they’ll know that if they do have questions, they’ll know where to go, and they’ll hang on to this. So they’ll hold on to it. Somebody’s visiting, they’re telling their friend about the problem that they have with their landlord. And here’s what I did about it, I hired an attorney. Look at this guy, here’s his card, here’s his brochure, here’s something he wrote, if you know anybody that needs what this guy or these people do, you know, give him a call and call my call my lawyer. And it will stimulate referrals in so many different ways. The nice thing is, once you’ve done it, you’ve done it, you’ll update it from time to time, but it’s done. It’s a marketing tool that you create, in a relatively short period of time. Start with whatever it is that you have, do you have any articles you’ve written articles about you, if you don’t have anything, take your website and take some screenshots of it. Stick some stuff in an envelope and give it to new clients. And I’m telling you once you’ve done that, you’ll start thinking your subconscious will start working on getting ideas of other things you can put together in your kit. And before you know it, you’ll you’ll have a very comprehensive kit. It doesn’t have to be printed on fancy paper it doesn’t you don’t need a fancy folder. You can use that if you want but you don’t have to. People are tired of slick. You don’t want to be slick. You want to be real you want to be you know somebody that they know personally and feel comfortable around and want to work with them. You don’t get that when you have marketing materials that put distance between you and the client. You don’t want distance you don’t want to be their best friend and have them hanging out all the time or calling you for no reason. But you want to open up a relationship with them. That encourages them to contact you when they need you or they know somebody who needs you and not be intimidated by it not hesitate to do it. And your kid can do a lot of the marketing for you. That’s kind of the year end project. It’s a good time if you’ve got some quiet time to put that together or if you already have something to update it. Oh another thing make sure you put something in there about reviews and or testimonials. Maybe you have a page you know whatever website has some some favorable reviews about your practice and you want them to go there rather than trying to fix some site that He has a terrible review, have you put that aside focus on the one that has even one good review, and have the rest of your clients come and, and leave reviews there and to tell them where it is tell them look, if you when the case is done, I hope you’ll feel comfortable with the work that we’ve done for you. And that you’ll say, so by posting a review, here’s the website that where you can do that, give them the link, and also tell them what to do. I’ve gone this far, I did a post recently, where I said, send them some suggested language, here’s a review that somebody left for me, you know, a few months ago, why I like it is why people who read it, get value out of it is. And man, I hope you’re as happy as this guy was. And if so, I would really appreciate leaving a review, you can use this as a model. And I would even go as far as making up the review in the beginning, if you don’t have one to point to the whole, don’t pretend like it’s a real review, tell them, you know this, you wrote this. So to give them an example, because they appreciate that you took the time to make that easier for them just like referrals, reviews, testimonials, endorsements. They want to help you, they but they don’t know how they don’t know how to write it. They don’t think they have the time they’re embarrassed about whatever, make it easy for them, and you’ll get more of it. And that certainly shouldn’t be a function of your new client. And welcome to
Tyson Mutrux
Dave, that’s all really great information. It’s John Fisher does something very similar. He calls it a shock and all package which we’ve adopted, it’s a, it’s a fantastic idea, you have a lot more information than what we have in our so I think that’s a great idea. We are up against the times, I do want to start wrapping things up. Before I get to our tips in our hack of the week, I do want to remind everyone to go to the Facebook group requested join there, a lot of great discussions going on there. And then also, if you liked the podcast, which you do listen to at this point, you probably do. So go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts to give us a five star review. We would greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, do you want to get to your hack of the week? Yeah, so
Jim Hacking
we are definitely covering a lot of great topics today. And it’s been great having David on the show, I did want to touch on something that I’ve been doing lately, that I think has been really helpful. So we all get those LinkedIn requests from like marketers and people that want to connect with us. And I started not responding to them. Because instantly, they spam me and tried to sell me something that I don’t want and have no interest in. So that’s really annoying. But what I’ve been doing lately is when people who who are appear normal on LinkedIn, reach out and try to connect with me, I send them a message, I accept the connection. And then I send them a message and I just say, you know, is there anything I can do to help you is there anybody that you’d like me to introduce you to, you know, sort of trying to get to why they connected with me on LinkedIn and see if there’s anything of value that I could do for them. And I’ve been getting some really good sort of thoughtful responses from that. And so I think, I’m not sure how it’s all going to play out. And it might ultimately be a waste of time. But for now, it’s increasing engagement from people who took the time to reach out to me, and it sort of gets a little bit warmer connection than might have been if I just accepted it and moved on. So that’s what I’ve been trying.
Tyson Mutrux
I like it. Jimmy, you’ve preempted the spammers. I like it, it’s a good piece of advice. So David, we always ask our guests to give a tip of the week, do you have a tip for our listeners?
David Ward
Well, I do. And this may sound simplistic, but it is the result of years of talking Well, first of all, practicing law and having to teach myself to do this. But through years of consulting with attorneys, and writing for attorneys who don’t do it, even though it is simple. And that is to commit to 15 minutes a day for building your practice. Now, that’s easy on the surface, but what happens is, they say okay, well 15 minutes a day, Monday through Friday, and they wait until they have time to do it. And that doesn’t work. The day is gone. I’ll start again tomorrow. And they’re either inconsistent or, you know, it just never becomes a habit. And that’s a shame because in 15 minutes a day, you can do amazing things to build your practice. The key is, you need to put it on your calendar in advance. Decide what time on what days and calendar it’s in. Now it’s an appointment, you make sure you keep that appointment. If something else comes up. You tell them it’ll have to wait. Somebody wants to see you at three o’clock. And three o’clock is the time when you have scheduled to do your 15 minutes. You tell him I can’t see you till 315 You tell your staff the same thing. Make it an appointment, even though you’re not billing for that. 15 minutes. It’s the most valuable time of your day and your week 15 minutes you can do it. If you can’t do it, if you have trouble doing it, start with 10. If 10 is too much, start with five. If you’re a pain in the ass, and five is too much, start with one minute, one minute a day, they start to commit to marketing, even if all you’re doing is sitting there and thinking, maybe making a note or two about some ideas or something you saw online that you want to think about or try, eventually, you’ll get bored with that, and you’ll start doing something, you’ll pick up the phone, you’ll call somebody or write an email. And before you know it, you actually are marketing and getting some and getting some success. So that’s my tip, 15 minutes a day.
Tyson Mutrux
Fantastic. I love it. Before I get to my tip, I do want to thank you for coming on. This has been a really, really informational episodes, we really appreciate it a lot of great takeaways, a lot of great information, a lot of ways for people to get started on their own marketing. But my tip of the week is actually about educating your clients. So something that I noticed I was in Dunn brothers the other day, and there was a sign above a little roaster where they roast their own beans. And it says why they do what they do. And I always kind of wondered why they did that because they’re always over there in that corner, working on Roasting the beans and it says you know why they’re doing in essence, it’s because it makes the coffee better. So my tip is find areas in your practice, that you can actually educate your clients and do it, whether it be with the shock and awe package or the informational packet that you mail as beginning or end emails, find ways to educate your clients. So that is my tip of the week. Jimmy anything else?
