Practice Management

Of course I am referring to drip marketing.

It is another thing they do not teach you in law school. Of course, law school really does not teach you how to practice law, or run a law firm, or find clients, or choose a practice area that excites you, or make money, or find a job, or draft pleadings, marketing, or . . .

I digress.

When one graduates from law school or leaves to start a new practice the question is how do you effectively, but cheaply, solicit clients, qualify prospects, and follow them until they decide to try the services offered. And, do it in a way that does not take every waking hour of your time. (You know, so some time is left over to represent the people who retain services and pay money). Outside of the practice of law it is called "lead generation".

One effective way is drip marketing.

The term is derived from the phrase "drip irrigation", which is a technique in which small amounts of water are fed to plants over long period of time. In a marketing sense, it concerns "drips" or a consistent set of pre-written messages to prospects over time. These are often in the form of email, but direct mail and social media is often employed as well.

Email autoreponders are used to send a drip of emails at crucial intervals to those who have shown an interest in the legal services offered. Typically these prospects will complete a form for some reason, such as to obtain an ebook from your blog or website on a practice area, and then the autoresponders will do the rest to follow up with crucial information these prospects likely need to make a decision to contact the attorney -- and hopefully retain legal services.

Drip marketing can also employ direct mail, although this is more expensive. However, in this age digital printing can allow for cost effective low-volume print runs to help justify the expense.  Also, variable data can be merged to personalize each drip message.

Then there is social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and the like. Some tools such as HootSuite allow attorneys to time messages and disseminate messages at regular intervals over social media.

Just like with referral based marketing in which the attorney courts a group of referrals sources, drip marketing relies on repeated contact or 'touches" with your prospects or referral sources. The key is to carefully plan and target a series of communications or touches that will keep the law firm's name top of the mind while these prospects move through the stages of a sell cycle.

Best of all, drip marketing does not have to be bold, naked advertising. It is best used as an education tool to bring the prospects up to date with what they need to know in order to follow through and retain in small rememberable bits. These touches both inform and remind.

The problem with many legal services is that they are high-value services (meaning they are not low dollar), and often they have a long sell cycle as a result. Especially if rates are not published the fear of costs can cause anxiety in following through. Therefore, prospects are out there probably longer than you think trying to decide what to do. These prods can remind prospects of the need to seek advice, the ease of obtaining advice, and the low cost to get some initial direction.

Drip marketing relies on a good deal of automation, but that automation is generally cheap to maintain. More importantly, that automation allows you to kiss fewer frogs than might have to be kissed normally if you do not have such a system. What is meant by this is that you generally have to spend a lot time talking to people who do not qualify for your service, do not have the funds, or just do not understand what you do. A good drip marketing program will weed these out and leave you with more qualified leads -- leads that better understand and probably want the legal service offered.

So, make sure you start adding drip marketing to what you do in a meaningful way.