Legal Marketing & PR

When people find you online, whether via your website, blog, or social media profile, can they easily place a call to you or email you?

I'm going to talk about two aspects of "ease" - 1) your contact info, and 2) giving too many choices.

Where's Your Contact Info?

When they find YOU via social media profiles, they usually have your name so they know who they want: you.

But it's astonishing how many professional (accountant or lawyer) blogs I find with no contact information for the author. Sometimes I cannot even find the NAME of the author or a link to his or her company's website. (Hint: there are even some sites on the Accounting Blog List where this is the case... hope yours isn't one!)

It's unfortunate that all that work being poured into marketing can't generate the phone calls these people probably would love to have.

There's another similar problem that stumps would be callers: listing multiple names.

Which Person Do I Ask For?

When you run an ad or have a web "service" or "contact us" page that tells about a service you offer and lists multiple names (this is generally done for politics, yes??) answer me this... how can the reader decide whom to ask for? 

A charming, witty friend of mine (let's call her "Jenny" since, well, that is her name) posted on Facebook this weekend about her foray into fantasy football and confessed that her approach to selection was to pick players based on whether their names sounded like those of a person she would have dated or would have named her children.

I was sufficiently amused. But if this was your business development at stake, you wouldn't be.

Well, when you list several names, it's literally a crap shoot as to which name the reader will select. Kinda like my friend's approach.

Only, what happens if some of the people whose names are listed are less equipped (personality-wise) to convert an inquiry to a sale? What if the person called is not very responsive? What if the best person for this role is not the most "senior" person, does the senior person get listed anyway? 

To make it easy as possible for someone to call you, and assure the best possible result, list ONE name: the name of the person most committed and most equipped to support the sales effort. 

I came across this firm, the Cadence Group, today.

THIS is a best practice! Emulate this in your calls to action.

If you have to list multiple people, say WHY.

Does each person handle a different region? Does one handle A-L while the other takes M-Z? One for English speaking inquiries and the other for Spanish?

When you tell people exactly whom to call, and why, they can do it more quickly and more confidently.

Don't make people guess. And don't make them hunt.

And don't ever, ever have just a "contact us" form with no alternate ways to reach you. Unless you don't actually want to be reached, that is...