attorney marketing

I know a guy who sells products online and had one product that he sold for $300. Somebody challenged him recently to change the price of his offer from $300 to $30,000. To meet this challenge, he made some adjustments. What he did was make it a bit more personalized and made the offer more hands-on. He ended up selling $900,000 worth of this new offer in just a few days.

The reason that he was able to do this is that he had a following and a distribution channel. He had built up so much goodwill with his distribution channel that he was able to not only offer a product at this price point and sell it, but people had been waiting for this level of service from him.

What I mean by distribution channel in goodwill is that he had a group of followers that were following him and not only followers but fans similar to Justin Bieber type fans. What I mean is that he had gathered a group of his target audience and put them in his distribution channel via his email list and Facebook group. Because he delivers so much content, provides value and has so much goodwill, people were waiting for him to make an offer that they could get this level of service from him and his company. And you know, as soon as he put this offer out there, people just went crazy over it, and a decent number of people ended up buying it.

How To Build Goodwill

The way that you build goodwill at a distribution channel and put yourself in the type of position where people are excited to hire you and can’t wait for you to offer more services is by providing value. That’s the simplest way to put yourself in that position is to provide value every single day and help people solve small problems.

If you want to look at the strategy, what you can do is create a document in Microsoft Word that helps your client solve a small problem. To solve the big problem, they still need an attorney. For example, if you’re a bankruptcy lawyer, you could prepare a document: “Five Steps to Preparing for Bankruptcy” or “How to Prepare for Bankruptcy” or “Five Signs That Bankruptcy Might Be A Good Option For You.”

If you’re a family law attorney, an example of a document we created for a family attorney that worked well was called, “14 Reasons Children Benefit from Divorce.” This particular document got a great response because that’s something that’s outside of the norm. The 14 reasons include the following: children thrive in an environment where the adults aren’t always fighting, you get more quality time with both mom and dad, and it’s a better household when everybody’s happy.

If you’re an estate planning attorney, you could say, “Here Is A List Of All The Documents That You Need To Put Together To Start Building An Estate Plan” or “Here’s A Free Living Will.” Then, you use this piece of content as bait and run Facebook Ads directly to that piece of content. You don’t just give it away, you require them to download it. Once they download it, they get on your email list. Once they’re on your email list, then you can start sending them emails every single day.

If you email someone every single day, you might be pissing them off. The trick to not making people angry is to provide 100% value, no pitches, nothing. All you do is send them another piece of content every single day. It can be a 2-minute video supporting the cheat sheets, addressing FAQs, telling stories, etc.

What’s going to happen is that over time, as you continue to provide value and content to them, they’re going to start to see you as the authority. You provide it so much goodwill that by the time you do make them an offer, they’ll be ready to bite.

How To Provide Value Upfront?

Here’s the other thing that I found is that I use this exact strategy and I provide a ton of value and goodwill. I do it on my email list. I do it on my Facebook group. I post on LinkedIn. I post on YouTube. I post everywhere. And I automate these entire things. I don’t have time to sit here and spend 3-4 hours a day doing this. I record a video, I hit send, and then my team takes care of the rest of it. When you implement a strategy like this where all you do is create goodwill and value, you prove that you’re an authority in your area of the law. It works a lot better than running an ad that says, “Hey, I’m a Lawyer. Hire me” and expecting people to hire you.

It’s like if you open a restaurant and expect people to walk in just because you open your doors. It doesn’t necessarily work that way. You’ve got to advertise. The other nice part about this is by offering this free solution to a small problem, it’s giving them a little bit of value upfront. It’s allowing them a sample of your work.

Think about places in the food court that are always giving out free samples. Have you ever noticed that they’re giving out free samples and always have a longer line than all of the other restaurants? All the other restaurants that you have never heard of, the ones that give out the free samples and provide value upfront, those are the ones that people buy from.

Same thing with Sam’s Club, every time we go to Sam’s Club, my kids love Sam’s Club because they know they’re going to get free samples. And I know that something that they’re going to get is going to end up in our cart. It’s just how it is. I can only resist my kids so much. So, if there’s something they try, that they’re going to love, they’re going to say, “Please, please, please, please.” And then I’m going to say, “Fine, put them in the cart. We’ll get it.” That would never have happened if the manufacturer or distributor gave out these samples. These companies gave value upfront. They show their value, and now they’re a customer.

You can use this same strategy to provide value upfront. Have somebody solve a small problem and continue to build that goodwill because as an attorney, you have a job that has a huge impact on people’s lives. If you’re a family law attorney, divorce is a major step in people’s lives, and child custody is a major issue in people’s lives.

The nice part is you can create value, create goodwill, and give them a sample of what you can do for them upfront by helping them solve a minor problem. In the end, they will still need a lawyer to solve the big problem.

For example, I have a client that does traumatic brain injury cases. One of the things that we were talking about is that you need to talk to the families and figure out how to get to the families of loved ones with traumatic head injuries, get them into their email list and Facebook group, and then start providing all that content to him. One of the things that we’re thinking is why not teach them a step by step guide about how to set up a goal funding campaign to help cover some of the medical bills. That’s something that you probably never thought about doing, but it’s a service that you could easily put together and do.

What If There’s Too Much Money Involved?

I know that there are also some concerns where you make too much money, then it can be a problem. Obviously, you’ve got to deal with all those issues. But if you think about what problems that potential clients are facing right now? What minor problems can you help them with? How do you put together a document? As I said, all you have to do is create a sheet on Microsoft Word, hit save as, and then save as a pdf. That’s all you have to do. Just create a pdf.

Then, all you have to do, instead of running ads, say “Hey, I’m a Bankruptcy Attorney. Here I am.” Run a Facebook Campaign that advertises your solution to the minor problem. For example, if you’re a bankruptcy attorney, maybe you can say, “Four Tricks To Make Bill Collector Stop Calling.” This can work because the one thing that they want is to not deal with bill collectors. I remember when I was in college, I was not the most financially responsible. I had bill collectors calling left and right. It was stressful. I would have loved to know how to make them stop. Another idea is a sheet about how to stop bill collectors from calling you even if you don’t have the money for them.

Once you put together some free cheat sheets and guides, create a word document. It doesn’t have to be crazy or have fancy graphics, just give them the answers. Get them on your email list and then continue to provide value over and over again. You’re going to start building up so much goodwill that eventually bankruptcy may be a good fit for them. Since you’re creating so much value, you’re now the authority and the only person in their eyes that can help them with this problem because you’re the one that they’ve been listening to this entire time.

If you’d like to learn an in-depth step by step on how to do this exact strategy, I have a webinar that you can register for at lawyermasterclass.com, and it’s completely free.

I have a client who’s a criminal defense attorney and is losing clients to some of these lower priced firms that will do a DUI for $500 and different things like that.  I was explaining to him is that the problem that he’s facing right now is he’s commoditized himself and the way that you get out of that struggle where price is maybe a stopping point for clients is you’ve got to figure out a way to de-commoditize yourself because there is no strategic advantage to being the second lowest price.

You either have to be the absolute cheapest if you’re going to compete on price or you have to be the most expensive. But the reality is that price is not a good thing to compete over. You want to make sure that you’re not a commodity. You want to learn how to make an offer, and you want to learn how to make it so that when someone comes to you, they’re hiring you because you are the authority that offers the best service.

One of the things that lawyers don’t understand, and it’s not taught anywhere in marketing, is how to create a great offer for your law firm. To do this, I want to demonstrate how to create an offer and basically, the difference between an offer and a commodity.

Let me give you an example, there’s a guy named Russell Brunson. He teaches this great strategy where he talks about how he can sell an iPhone for $10,000. In short, it’s a product. Typically, the problem with products is that you can get it anywhere, so if you want to buy an iPhone, you can get it from Verizon, Apple, Sprint, etc. At that point, you’re pretty much just going to go for the cheapest one.

How To Sell An iPhone For $10,000

So, how would you take an iPhone and sell it for $10,000? Here’s how you would do it. You have to create an outstanding offer. For example, if I was going to sell lawyers an iPhone for $10,000, the way that I would do it is I would create an excellent offer. So, here’s my offer. If I’m going to sell you an iPhone, the first thing is you’re getting an iPhone with a retail value of $997.

What else can I offer that would make this awesome? Well, what if I took every training video that I’ve ever created and I pre-loaded it in the video section. You have to remember, I do lots of trainings, courses, etc. If I take every training that I’ve ever created, and I put it on this iPhone, that’s going to be a value of about $20,000. So, let’s pre-load all the training videos on the iPhone.

Now, we’ve got the iPhone with all of the training videos for $20,000. But, what else? What if I could install an app called Voxer? It’s like a walkie-talkie and what the app does is anytime you have any question, all you have to do is you pull out your phone and talk into it like a walkie-talkie, and it connects directly to my iPhone. So, any question that you have on anything to do with your marketing, all you have to do is pull out this app, hit the button, and that connects directly to my iPhone. I can answer any question that you have, and I’ll be able to get back to you right away, any question.

I charge clients for that same thing, so I’m also going to preload Voxer on there, and I’m going to give you unlimited access to me. It’s a direct link to me, and you get to ask me any marketing question you want. Now, I charge clients $30,000 for that.

I’m also going to go into Safari and bookmark the top 25 marketing vendors to get everything done. If you need a graphic designer, a chat box, a web developer, all the research is done for you. That’s a value of about $2,000.

The last thing is, I’m going to open up the calendar app and put 12 appointments that are going to sync to your calendar and mine, and we’re going to have 12 appointments where I’m going to be your chief marketing officer for the entire year. I charge $60,000 a year per client for that, and I walk you and your team through the entire marketing strategy completely custom to your phone or your law firm, and that’s going to be included on there also.

So, what’s that total value? We have a total of $95,000 for all of these services that you’re going to get, and I’m going to sell you this entire package for one payment of $10,000. Now, if this was a real offer, I guarantee you I would get people that would pay for all of this access.

That’s the difference here. What I’ve done is I’ve taken a product like an iPhone, and I’ve created an offer that makes it so that there’s value there. It’s not just an iPhone, you can’t go to AT&T and get all this stuff on an iPhone for any amount of money. The difference is the way that I’ve been able to position myself so that people care about my training videos, they want to talk to me, they’re interested in the services that I provide, and they want to have me as their chief marketing officer.

The reason that I’ve been able to do that is because I’ve used social media effectively and created so much goodwill with a lot of different attorneys out there. I’ve got hundreds of attorneys in my Facebook group and thousands on my email list. This is because I’ve created this goodwill and all of this content, so attorneys trust me.

I’m at the point where I’m able to sell an iPhone for $10,000, where there’s all this value that not only can they not get anywhere else, but no one else can create an offer like this because I’m the authority. A lot of attorneys know if they want to market their law firm, they have to go with a package like this, and they have to go with me.

How Can A Personal Injury Attorney Use This Strategy?

You might be asking yourself, “Okay, but I’m not a marketer, I’m not selling an iPhone, how to apply this to me?” Let’s put this in terms of a personal injury attorney.  Personal injury is going to be the hardest because personal injury is contingency, and I know all law firms are going to be a little different because you’re not going to be giving away access, different products, etc. Also, a lot of what you do is probably similar to what other law firms do, but other law firms don’t present it in a way that I’m going to show you how to present it.

As a personal injury attorney, the only thing you can compete over is experience, because you’re not going to lower your contingency fee. You can’t give coupons, you can’t offer discounts, can’t have anything like that. So, what you can do is you can start taking some of the services that you’re going to provide anyways and start turning them into offers.

Let’s say, “the first thing you’re going to get if you hire me as your personal injury attorney is 100% personal attention from me and my entire staff.” Now again, I’m not going to assign a value, but you could say something like, “On average, I work on personal injury cases for 300 hours, and I charge $250 an hour.”

Now in addition to the entire staff, you’re probably going to have a lot of medical concerns. You need to see doctors and have everything organized. A lot of times, personal injury attorneys will help you find chiropractors, doctors, etc. These are services that a lot of personal injury attorneys provide anyway, so why not give it a name. Why not say, if you hire our firm, we’re going to provide you with a medical concierge. You can even mention that no other firm is going to be saying, “we’re going to give you a medical concierge, put you in touch with all the doctors that we work with, make sure that you have your appointments on time, and make sure that the payment arrangements are taken care of.”

The other thing you can offer is a team of legal experts, which is something that I think a lot of attorneys don’t necessarily use at full advantage. You could say, “look I’ve been a trial lawyer for 25 years now. A big part of these cases should they go to trial is knowing not only which legal experts to use, which experts do great in jury trials, which experts juries love, but which experts to avoid as well. I’ve put together the dream team of legal experts after 25 years of experience, that’s what you’re also going to get from us. You’re also going to get all these resources…” and what you can do is create different resource lists.

It’s effortless to do, all you have to do is go on Google. I have a brain injury client where all I did was google “brain injury resource list,” and we put together this entire pamphlet of all these different resources that can help them with their injury.

You can also say, “we’re also going to give you our complete resource guide that you’re going to get for free.” The other thing you can say that I think will really differentiate you from a lot of attorneys is you can use the Voxer app that I mentioned previously, and say, “Listen, if you hire our firm, we’re also going to put an app on your phone that’s going to link directly to an app on my phone. That way if you have questions, it doesn’t matter if it’s two o’clock in the morning, all you have to do is pull out your phone, press a button, talk on it like it’s a walkie-talkie, and it’s going to show up right on my phone.”

Now don’t worry, you can turn the app off and make it so that you can be selective when you’re listening, but that’s something that can help you stand out. You can say, “listen you’re going get this app called Voxer, and that’s going to give you direct access to my cell phone.” Side note, but this is also a way that you can avoid giving clients your cell phone.

This is just an example that I came up with right before starting this video, but if you are in a consultation with a client, you can say, “when you hire us, you’re going to personal attention from our entire staff, a medical concierge, handling of your medical appointments and bills, our team of experts, an entire list of resources, and 24 hour access to my direct cell line via the Voxer app.”

If it’s a really good case, you could offer rides to and from their medical doctors’ appointments. You can even offer to help them put together a guide to set up a GoFundMe campaign if they need help paying for their bills. You have to be a little bit creative, but this can apply to any practice area.

Again, personal injury is probably the most difficult one to apply this tactic to, but that’s why I always go with personal injury, because if I can make this work with personal injury, then it can apply to all legal practice areas.

Hopefully, this lets you understand the difference between a really solid offer that is put together and how to de-commoditize yourself so that you do not have to compete on price. If you can work it out where you put together an excellent offer, then you’ll have a lot of success, and you’ll differentiate yourself from your competition. This can work even if you’re listing out some of the things that you’re going to do anyway and give it a unique name like medical concierge. You have to look at things a little bit differently.

Establishing Yourself As An Authority On Social Media

One thing that will make this even more useful is if you take the time to establish yourself as an authority on social media. The way to establish yourself on social media as an authority is to create high-value content every single day just like I do.

I create at least one or two videos every single day, and it takes around 5-10 minutes a day. I pull out my phone and talk. If you can create yourself as an authority, then this becomes irresistible, especially the personal attention and Voxer access, which is invaluable and something they cannot get anywhere else.

If you are a criminal defense lawyer or a personal injury attorney, you’re pretty much an emergency service. I always tell my clients, it’s like calling 911 when you get arrested, get a DUI, or get into a car accident.

It’s not necessarily planned or something that you see coming. It may be criminal in some instances, but most of the time it’s not. Most of the time, it’s like an emergency service.

What Happens If My Business Hours Say I Am Closed?

My question to you is, why would you ever set your office hours to be closed at any given time? It’s currently 8:48 am Eastern, which means on the West coast it’s 5:48 am. So, if at five o’clock in the morning, I searched San Francisco personal injury lawyer.

Look at this – closed, closed. If somebody’s googling at this hour, and trust me, we’ve got a lot of clients, and a lot of them get calls after hours, so this isn’t a far-fetched scenario, but you know who are you going to call here? Are you going to call Sally Morin who’s closed, or are you going to call Harris Personal Injury Lawyers who are open?

It’s almost like these people are just saying “Don’t call me.” It just doesn’t make sense to me that lawyers do this.

Here’s another one – San Diego DUI lawyer. I know how hard it is to get clients in San Diego for DUI. I think there’s something like ten thousand lawyers in San Diego.

You’re automatically turning clients away. You don’t even have a chance because you’ve got this ‘closed’ sign right here.

Same thing with Pasadena. Now there’s only one that’s closed here, but still, this guy doesn’t have a chance right now.

Obviously, you’re not working 24 hours a day, and there’s not going to be someone in your office 24 hours a day to answer the phone, but that does not mean the phones cannot be answered 24 hours a day by a real person.

We have several clients that we’ve talked out of setting closed hours on their website and making them use an answering service to field calls overnight and during the lunch hour.

And by the way, on your lunch hour, don’t put a voicemail up that says “Hi, you’ve reached the law office of Smith & Smith. Our hours are from 8 am to 4 pm, and we take an hour and a half from 12 to 1:30 for lunch”.

Don’t do that! People don’t want to know that their lawyer is taking a break. I’m sorry. They don’t.

The Perks Of An Answering Service

What you need to do is you need to hire an answering service. It’s $150-$200 a month, easy. It’s not expensive, and what you do is whenever you are not in the office, you send your calls to the answering service. That way they answer your calls, your calls never go to voicemail, you never miss a call, and you don’t have to put “closed” on your listing and turn people away.

Let’s say I was on a business trip in San Francisco and I got injured. I’ve come home, and now my injuries are starting to show. Now, I need an attorney in San Francisco. I’m not calling either of these two because they’re closed. I’m going to call this one.

Just keep in mind that an answering service makes a huge difference. We’ve seen incredible results from our clients just by adding an answering service, I’m talking doubling intake rates. It’s crazy. So, take this as a PSA.

If you set your business hours as closed, then you’re going to miss calls, especially if you’re in the maps here.

Hire an answering service. Make sure that they field your calls 24 hours a day when you are not there, and you’ll thank me.

How often after a client comes into your office for a consultation, you go over their case and talk to them, and they leave without hiring your or retaining you? How often do you follow up again with that potential client, and ask them how everything is going, if they’ve thought about what they’re going to do with an attorney, if they’ve decided if they want to move forward with the case? How often do you follow up? I’m guessing that for the majority of you the answer is zero percent of the time.

The Importance Of The Follow Up

The reason I want to tell you about this is because follow up is such an important part of marketing. That’s why if you’re on Amazon and you’re looking at something, say you’re looking at a pair of shoes, and then you leave, and then all of a sudden you start seeing all over the internet, every website you go to, those exact same shoes start popping up. It’s because Amazon’s not stupid. They know that a lot of times people will make a decision later even if they don’t buy right away.

When I was in college, I used to have this business where I transferred people’s VHS tapes to DVD. What I would do is, I would put these signs down on the side of the road, and it was those 18 X 22-inch signs, and I would just handwrite on there, “Transfer your VHS tapes to DVD” and then I’d put my phone number.

What would happen is I would get so many phone calls because I would just put them at major intersections and people would see them, and they’d be like, “Oh I need to do that. That’s something I definitely need to do,” and they would call me.

I’d talk to them, and they’d say “Yeah I’m going to go home, I’m going to put all my tapes together, I’m going to call you back and we’re going to do this. ” What would happen is I would never hear from them again.

I don’t know why I did this, but I was smart enough actually to keep track of everyone that called me. I wrote down their phone number, their name, and some specifics about what they told me.

One day I sat down, and I called them, and every single person I talked to was like, “Oh my God I couldn’t — I’ve been looking for your number” or “You’re right I need to that, let’s do this today.”

You Don’t Know Until You Try

Remember I was a broke college kid when I was doing this and the first time I did the follow ups, I made multiple thousands of dollars. I don’t remember what it was, but I mean for me in college, that felt like a million dollars.

Ever since then, I’ve basically had a process where I knew that once I got their phone number, I had to write it down, and then three days later, I had to call them again, and so on. What happened was that most of the people that called me, hired me, but I think it was something like 85% of the people that actually gave me money to transfer their VHS tapes to DVD, it was 85% those sales came from me pestering people.

I’m not saying you have to pester people, but I didn’t even really pester them. I called them and said, “Hey you ready to get started? Alright, I’ll call you in a couple of days. Hey, you’re ready?”

My margins on this business were just ridiculous because it cost me ten cents per VHS tape to transfer to DVD, the only cost was the cost of the DVD, it was ten cents, and I charged $20 for each one, so I made an absolute killing on this.

The point of this is not that you should start transferring VHS tapes to DVD, although it is a pretty good business if you’re looking for a side gig. But, the most important takeaway is that you have to follow up with people, and you will get so many sales. There are so many sales that are in the follow up that don’t happen initially, and you’re leaving a lot of money on the table if you don’t follow up with every single person that you meet with.

How To Reach Out To Those Who Have Turned You Down

You can even just reach out with them and say, “Hey I just want to check in and see how everything is going. I wasn’t sure if you had any more questions.” And I promise you, you will probably get a couple of those people to hire you. So definitely try it.

It’s a good way to squeeze more money out of your advertising budget because the reality is you’re paying for these leads, you might as well get every dollar you can get out of your leads.

The moral of the story is go back today, look at all the people that you’ve met with over the last thirty days that did not hire you, and reach out to them. Ask them if they have any more questions, ask them if they’ve given any more thought to your case, and I bet you end up with a couple of cases just out of that.

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