The video discusses how we derive meaning from the work that we do.  More specifically, it points out that without a sense of growth, purpose, and progress work is unmeaningful and people become disenfranchised.

It's always been my belief that motivation fades quickly when you are performing work just for the sake of it.  I have experienced this in my own career and it contributed to my desire to start my own business.  Feeling like you are making progress each day, whether it's personal growth or literal progress with a task, is important to a sense of professional well-being.

Do you feel that much of your time is spent on work that is unmeaningful or unnecessary?  If so, do you think it effects your ability to stay motivated or do you find other outlets to stay focused?

It doesn't have to be this way though.  By learning how to break projects into smaller and smaller pieces you will be able to bite off small chunks at a time.  Your productivity and motivation will increase and you'll find work loads that used to seem insurmountable can be handled with less anxiety. 

Take the story of Joe Simpson, a mountain climber with a severely broken leg that made it back down from a mountain top by setting small goals along the way:

Touching the Void is a movie about the survival of two young mountain climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates.  IMDB offers us the following synopsis:

In the mid-80's two young climbers attempted to reach the summit of Siula Grande in Peru; a feat that had previously been attempted but never achieved. With an extra man looking after base camp, Simon and Joe set off to scale the mount in one long push over several days. The peak is reached, however on the descent Joe falls and breaks his leg. Despite what it means, the two continue with Simon letting Joe out on a rope for 300 meters, then descending to join him and so on. However when Joe goes out over an overhang with no way of climbing back up, Simon makes the decision to cut the rope. Joe falls into a crevice and Simon, assuming him dead, continues back down. Joe however survives the fall and was lucky to hit a ledge in the crevice.

The following clip from the movie picks up as Joe makes his way back down the mountain.

Break It Down Into Small Achievable Goals

Joe was able to survive this ordeal because he set small achievable goals along the way rather than focusing on the massive effort that was in front of him.  By setting smaller goals, such as reaching a rock in the distance in a set time period, he was able to stay motivated and moving.  Had he only focused on reaching camp as the end goal, the task would have become overwhelming and he would eventually have lost all motivation and quit.  For him this would have meant death on the mountain.

Tactics To Stay Productive

So how should we approach the daily to-do lists we all face?  How can we remain productive and motivated?

The book Rework discusses the following tactic:

Long lists are guilt trips.  The longer the list of unfinished items, the worse you feel about it.

There's a better way.  Break that long list down into a bunch of smaller lists.  For example, break a single list of a hundred items into ten lists of ten items.  that means when you finish an item on a list, you've completed 10 percent of that list, instead of 1 percent.

Even though the work load is the same, your perception of overall progress changes.  When you feel you are making headway you will remain motivated and encouraged.  That's a lot better than feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and demoralized.

Like other small businesses, law firms can benefit greatly from both client, as well as, professional reviews online. In fact, as you can see from this short youtube search story, review sites are gaining much greater visibility in search engine results pages:

However, there are several considerations regarding online client reviews that are unique to legal professionals. Here are some things to think about your online client reviews.

Before we get into the specific how's and what's of online client reviews, it's worth saying a quick word about getting client reviews in a more general sense. And that discussion must begin with providing excellent client service and developing a strong professional relationship. If you can't provide great service to your clients, you may not want them reviewing you at all.

So, let's assume that you have provided excellent service and you believe that you have a satisfied client that might be willing to provide you with a positive testimonial. The next question is what do your state bar's ethics rules say about client testimonials?

Client Reviews & Ethics

The ABA's Model Rules of Professional Conduct - Information About Legal Services Rule 7.1 Communications Concerning A Lawyer's Services states:

A lawyer shall not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer's services. A communication is false or misleading if it contains a material misrepresentation of fact or law, or omits a fact necessary to make the statement considered as a whole not materially misleading.

It goes without saying that testimonials that make false or misleading communications about a lawyer's services should not be used nor encouraged. In fact, some may make the argument that a lawyer has an obligation to use reasonable means remove false or misleading testimonials or reviews of which they become aware (while a noble principle, it seems unfair to require lawyers to scour the web for false testimonials).

Additionally, client testimonials may, in some instances, fall under the purview of Rule 7.2 Advertising, which states:

(a) Subject to the requirements of Rules 7.1 and 7.3, a lawyer may advertise services through written, recorded or electronic communication, including public media.

(b) A lawyer shall not give anything of value to a person for recommending the lawyer's services except that a lawyer may

(1) pay the reasonable costs of advertisements or communications permitted by this Rule;

(2) pay the usual charges of a legal service plan or a not-for-profit or qualified lawyer referral service. A qualified lawyer referral service is a lawyer referral service that has been approved by an appropriate regulatory authority;

(3) pay for a law practice in accordance with Rule 1.17; and

(4) refer clients to another lawyer or a nonlawyer professional pursuant to an agreement not otherwise prohibited under these Rules that provides for the other person to refer clients or customers to the lawyer, if

(i) the reciprocal referral agreement is not exclusive, and

(ii) the client is informed of the existence and nature of the agreement.

(c) Any communication made pursuant to this rule shall include the name and office address of at least one lawyer or law firm responsible for its content.

While there are many client testimonial instances in which Rule 7.2 is not triggered, it's important for legal professionals to be aware of how the rules of their state may regulate their use.

Collecting Client Reviews

Once the ethics issues have been addressed, the next step is to develop a system by which to collect the review. I have seen many different methods of client review collection, some good, others largely ineffective.

I was once told that, "you don't get anything in this world unless you ask". While I'm not sure that this is always true, it certainly seems applicable to obtaining client reviews.

Sure, there are those clients that are extremely eager to sing your praises. However, more times than not, you will probably need to initiate the discussion of whether or not the client is willing to provide a positive testimonial.

Now that you have a client that is ready and willing to provide a testimonial, you have to decide how best to collect it. In my opinion, one of the best ways to collect a client testimonial is through an exit interview.

Effective exit interviews or surveys should feel less like testimonial collection and more like an experience survey. You may want to consider scanning various online review sites for questions and rating systems that you can incorporate into your exit interview process.

If you have a client who is willing to provide a testimonial and is fairly savvy with computers and the Internet, in addition to documenting the review for the file, you may also consider providing access to online review sites right at your office. You may be surprised how many clients will leave reviews right there on the spot. Then again, you may not.

Many clients won't feel comfortable with you standing over your shoulder while they write something about you online. That is why assigning exit interviews to a secretary or paralegal might make the most sense. Alternatively, you could have the client simply fill-out an exit interview form, take a form with them, or provide a testimonial over the phone.

Getting Your Client Reviews Online

Now that you have collected the interview, it's time to decide how and where to use it. If it complies with your state's ethics rules, you might want to consider syndicating the review online. Obviously, you will want to make sure you have permission first. Next, the question becomes, where do you want your clients to provide online reviews?

The first place you will want to consider are local search data providers. These sites are beneficial due to their own online visibility, as well as, their impact on local search visibility. In addition to the more general local search data providers, you should also consider legal specific review websites and data providers.

Here are just a couple to consider:

Martindale-Hubbell Client Review:

Avvo:

While there are several other lawyer review sites to consider, these two are especially important in terms of increasing your firm's Google Places visibility:

As you can see, Google is currently pulling data into Google Places listings from Avvo and Lawyers.com. This data plays a role in your firm's local prominence.

When it comes to increasing your reputation and visibility online, there is no question that the importance of online client reviews will greatly increase in 2011. As social signals continue to merge with seo factors, don't be surprised to see tweets, likes, and status updates playing a larger role in your visibility too.

How do you gather client testimonials? Ideally, you can simply accept a testimonial offered by one of your firm’s satisfied clients. What could be more convincing than a testimonial from a client who felt so good about their experience that they volunteered to endorse your firm?

 

However, bear in mind that many people do not feel they are good writers. Additionally, they may be very busy. This could lead to delays in preparing the testimonial. Take the initiative by writing their comments and asking them to edit what you have written. Most will tell you that your comments are accurate and will give you permission to use the testimonial.

You can also make collecting testimonials a routine part of your client relations. For instance, at the end of the representation, you can ask the client to complete a survey that asks questions such as, “Was our firm responsive to your questions and concerns? Were our attorneys and staff friendly and courteous?” You can also directly ask the client in the survey if he or she would be interested in providing a testimonial and if they approve of your firm’s use of the comments in a testimonial.

You will find that most clients will be fine with your use of it. Another method is to visit the client and write the testimonial with them or, even better, take a pocket video camera or videographer with you and get a video testimonial on the spot.

Making testimonials a part of your routine client relations process is essential. I also recommend getting a written version of the testimonial that includes a short testimonial statement, as well as, a star-rating. Many online rating sites will ask users to include a star-rating. Getting these star ratings from clients makes those testimonials effective online. The next step is to actually use the testimonial on one of the higher visibility rating sites.

It's important to keep in mind that posting of client and peer testimonials may be subject to regulation by your state bar. It's essential that you check with your state bar to make sure you are in compliance with your state's rules of professional conduct.

Be sure to avoid posting testimonials that are false, misleading, or artificial. Many seo companies may try to implement artificial ratings, reviews, or testimonials on your behalf. These spam reviews are not only a negative reflection of your professional reputation online, they may subject you to a disciplinary proceeding with your state bar.

The talk brought up some really fascinating points about the way we market our services and the changes that are happening as we speak.

The basis of the talk is that we are living through the biggest shift in media and business/client interaction in our history.  This has a significant impact on our businesses, an impact than many of us may be underestimating.

What is happening is the humanization of your law firm.  Potential clients can have relationships and interact with your firm in ways that never existed before.  It's important to ask yourself, do you actually care and try to interact with your clients or are you trying to sell them something?  The winners that emerge will be the firms that care and take the time to interact.  People want to interact with other people, not anonymous, faceless firms.

So what does this mean exactly?

For starters, it means that the old rules of marketing (generic messages meant for the masses) aren't going to be as effective as they once were.  Effective marketing is becoming more of a one on one proposition.  It's taking the time to listen, offer advice, show your expertise through blogging and participation on services such as LinkedIn and Twitter.  Answer questions, be generally helpful.  

Don't just throw self promotional garbage out there.  People's radar for filtering out the "noise" has gotten more sophisticated.  These tactics aren't going to work and could wind up hurting you in the long run.

As Stephen Martin says in this thoughtful piece:

Today, a person’s professional identity is more important than ever. Individual skills, expertise, reputation and authority have become the personal currencies of our economy. And they are the currencies that will lead us into the future.

While doing my annual review of the year in law office management and technology, my focus kept returning to the numerous predictions of challenging change ahead for lawyers. Some of these trends are already apparent and others are coming into focus. For my column in the December 2010 Oklahoma Bar Journal, I decided to discuss some of these trends and provide some resources to lawyers as they contemplate the future. I hope you appreciate my column titled Reviewing 2010 Should Make Lawyers Think About the Future. Download Calloway Reviewing 2010 and the Future

Here are a couple highlights:

• There are a host of negative pressures on the legal market.
• Fred Ury predicts that within a decade, there will likely be 10 percent to 40 percent fewer lawyers than there are today.
• Lawyers and law students must take charge of their careers and become entrepreneurs.

While I do believe that legal professionals will have to evolve to survive this new future, I don't believe that the outlook for legal services professionals is as bleak as some have contended.

As it always is with any business, the key to lawyers' success in the future comes down to their ability to adapt, change, and evolve. Those that are unable to adapt to their new environment, will perish. It's simple natural selection. On the other hand, legal professionals that are adapting to the future, including adoption of law practice management, networking, and marketing technologies will survive. In fact, due to the nature of many of these technologies, it is likely that costs associated with accessing these tools is likely to be much lower than it has historically.

While there are several unique aspects to practicing law and running a legal practice, too many legal professionals still fail to accept that law firms are businesses. This is not to diminish the important function that lawyers serve our society. However, this is a capitalist society (or at least quasi-capitalist) and in order to be a viable profession, legal professionals must look at themselves as business people.

It really struck a chord with me that very few of us work in environments where we truly have large blocks of time to "get real work done". 

Jason discusses the most common answers people give when asked "Where do you go when you really need to get something done?"  He says the answers fall in 3 categories, a place or room, a moving object, or a time.  For example, people will say a porch, a deck, a room in the house, or a coffee shop when addressing a location.  They will also answer that work gets done on their commute, in a train, a car, or a plane for example.  Finally, they will answer that the place doesn't matter as long as it's early in the morning, late at night, or on a weekend.  Interestingly, people do not say the office during work hours. 

The reason for our lack of productivity at work, Jason says, is because of involuntary distractions.  He argues that in order to "get stuff done" people need blocks of uninterrupted time.  The problem with most offices is that the day is filled with involuntary interruptions and most of the blame lies with managers and meetings.  Managers and meeting create interruptions and distractions that take away from valuable work time.

What Can We Do About It?

I think most of us can identify with his observations.  But the million dollar question is how can we make our work environments more productive places?  Jason offers a few suggestions:

1. Schedule No Talk Thursdays - Take an afternoon one day each week where nobody in the office can talk to each other.  Watch how much work gets done.
2. Utilize Passive Communication vs Active Communication - Passive communication include instant messaging, email, online collaboration tools, and texting. Active communication involves face to face meetings and phone conferences.  The big difference is that active communication requires that you stop what you are doing to participate whereas passive communication can be addressed when you are ready.  Using more passive communication tools allows you to work for longer periods, uninterrupted and then communicate on your time table.
3. Cancel Meetings - Meetings are a time suck.  You aren't just losing one hour of productivity for a meeting with 5 people, you are losing 5 hours.  The truth is that most meeting topics can be handled through a brief discussion with the necessary parties.  Most of the time, everyone doesn't need to stop what they are doing at the exact same time to talk about the issue.

I was recently contacted by a fellow law firm web visibility consultant who had a client with a problem. She, an attorney, had represented a woman in a divorce proceeding. For whatever reason (presumably sour grapes), her client's husband decided to launch an online attack. He set up a free google site and opened an adwords account. He targeted her name and ran an ad saying something to the effect of before you hire so and so, read my story. On his site he explained why this attorney was so terrible.

Now you might be thinking, hey this is great publicity for her. If her client's adversary despises her so much, she must be doing something right. In any case, the site said some less than flattering things about this attorney and so she went to her web strategist to talk about some ways that she could diminish the impact of the ad. Here were a couple ideas:

• Run a counter ad pushing his ad down.
• Complain to Google to remove the ad.

Needless to say, each of these methods isn't without limitation. In fact, in my experience, getting Google to remove an ad is a painstaking process that takes a long time, if you they are willing to do it at all.

But Adwords ads aren't the only reputation defense problem that legal professionals may face online. As attorney Lee Rosen points out in Can You Get a Bad Review Removed from Google?, review sites, including Google Places, can present reputational issues for attorneys as well:

Let’s say a former client trashes you on your Google Places page. The client rips you a new one and tears you from limb to limb. Can you get Google to remove the review? What if it isn’t your client, but instead it’s your client’s spouse? Can you get Google to remove that review? Google says it “reserves the right to remove reviews that include any of the following:

 

Inappropriate content

We want to provide a clean and positive user experience for all users. We may remove reviews that contain or link to unlawful content, or content that violates our Google Places content policy. We may also remove reviews that include plagiarism or are copied from other sites.

Advertising and spam

Nobody likes spam and it can only make its author look bad. Don’t use reviews for advertising or post the same or similar reviews across multiple places. Obviously, don’t post fake reviews intended to boost or lower ratings.

Off-topic Reviews

Reviews should describe your personal, first hand experience with a specific place. Please do not post reviews based on someone else’s experience, or that are not about the specific place you are reviewing. Reviews are not a forum for personal attacks, rants or crusades. Please also do not use reviews to report incorrect information about a place — use the Report a problem link for that place instead.

Conflict of interest

Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. Even if well-intentioned, a conflict of interest can undermine the trust in a review. In addition, we do not accept reviews written for money or other incentives. Please also do not post reviews on behalf of others or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with the place you are reviewing.

From these guidelines, I would agree with Mr. Rosen that it seems that you may be able to get adversarial reviews removed. On the other hand, guidelines don't always equate to action.

For example, we recently had a client who had received spam reviews that had been posted on several other attorney place pages as well. We submitted our request to have the spam removed. After several weeks, the review was finally taken down.

As these issues become more an more prevalent, I have no doubt that review sites will become more active in addressing them.

photo © 2008 smlp.co.uk | more info (via: Wylio)

I was speaking with an attorney last week that had called to inquire about SEO services for his firm.  His firm concentrated mostly on bankruptcy and debt issues.  He was tired of the bankruptcy work and wanted to move into a much more specialized, "new" niche that "no other lawyers were doing".  He explained that he had done extensive research online and found no competition for it.  Seeing as he would "own the market" once he launched this new practice online, he was interested in having us help with his search marketing strategy to make sure he received maximum exposure.

After an extensive discussion, I presented a few reasons why I thought his strategy was flawed.

If others aren't in the market, it's probably a bad sign - People flock to where the money and opportunity is.  Very few of us are Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.  Creating new markets requires a true visionary with timing on his or her side.  You're better off not trying to reinvent the wheel.  As my colleague, Gyi Tsakalakis, wrote in a recent post:  

Your practice idea isn’t new. Pick a niche practice; at least 50 other lawyers have thought of it. Get over your creative pride and realize that client service and effective representation matter more.

Focus on points of differentiation and being the best at something - I suggest a better route to go is to find valuable points of differentiation between your firm and the competition as opposed to creating new markets.  In a recent post on SEObook they discuss how Zappos became who they are today:

Zappos was a small company, that eventually became a big company, not by competing on price, but by competing on service. They aimed to be the best at service. Had they competed on price, they wouldn't have got anywhere. The big shoe and clothing chains would have crushed them.

Your firm is better off specializing in a niche that currently has demand and finding a better way to service that niche than trying to invent something new.

Perhaps you were in court.  Maybe you were consulting with another client.  The call might have come in after hours.  Any way you slice it, expecting a potential client to leave a voicemail in the age of your competitor being one click away is not the best strategy.

I was recently reviewing call reports with one of our law firm clients.  We utilize a phone tracking system so that we can measure the results of the firm's web marketing campaigns.  They have a receptionist that is able to handle calls during working hours.  However, we noticed a trend where the duration of the calls after hours were all a minute or less and the firm told us that they were not receiving any voice mails with potential client inquiries.  Right away, I recognized that many of the calls coming in after hours were simply falling on the floor.  We needed to rectify the problem considering that if just one of these leads converted into a client, this could mean a substantial increase in revenue for the firm.

The firm signed up with a voice reception service to handle after hour calls.  The firm now enjoys being able to handle potential client inquiries 24 hours a day with a live receptionist answering the phone.  We anticipate that those after hour callers will now convert at a much better rate than before.

Voice Reception Services

There are some very good voice reception services out there that work specifically with law firms and understand how to address legal inquiries.  Hiring a good answering service should be a part of your budget. They are affordable and most importantly, can bring revenue back into the firm by making the most of the people contacting you.

Photo by diP

"We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous.

The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode. Not that the closed mode cannot be helpful.

If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies. When you charge the enemy machine-gun post, don't waste energy trying to see the funny side of it. Do it in the "closed" mode.

But the moment the action is over, try to return to the "open" mode—to open your mind again to all the feedback from our action that enables us to tell whether the action has been successful, or whether further action is need to improve on what we have done. In other words, we must return to the open mode, because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent." 

-John Cleese

I think the quote struck a chord with me because far too many lawyers develop and assess their marketing in a closed mode.  

While the execution of your marketing strategy can take place in a closed mode, the development of that strategy, and subsequent analysis, should be performed in an open, more creative mode.  You need to be able to connect the dots with your marketing.  You need to be able to understand how the various components of your strategy are fitting together, how they are all interlinked.  

If this is done in a closed mode, you are more likely to focus on a single aspect of the marketing without understanding how that component is effecting everything else.  For instance, if you are focused only on your rankings for a few keywords you might overlook the relevancy of those keywords to your practice.  Or perhaps you'll fail to see that the keywords are fine but once people get to your site they are not converting into phone calls.  Or maybe you are getting phone calls, but there is no one to actually answer the phone so the leads are falling on the floor.  

The point is that in order to get a big picture view of your marketing you have to be in an open mode.  You need to look at the feedback you get from your marketing (assuming you are measuring and tracking your results as you should) and make an honest assessment at what is going on.  As Cleese says, in an open mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.

There's a mind-set in most entrepreneurs that growth is good, money is the only measure of success, and the goal is to go public or sell the company. The reluctant entrepreneur usually has the mind-set that sustainability is good, money is one of several measures (happy work life, balanced home life, good for employees, good for the community are the others) of success, and there may not be an exit strategy or way to sell the business at the end. It's really a difference between areas of focus: one focus is on a business as the engine of money, and the other is on business as the engine of satisfaction and a balanced life. Neither is good or bad, just each group brings really different motivations to the game of business.

I thought this was an interesting distinction that has relevancy for lawyers establishing a law firm.  Defining what you are and what you want your firm to be has important implications on your firm's marketing plan.

Your marketing approach, and subsequent marketing investment, should be predicated around what you want your firm to be.  We all want more clients and to make more money, but your marketing strategy needs to be inline with the vision you have for the firm.  

If you want your firm to be "an engine of money" as Lynn describes, there is going to be a very different allocation of money and resources into your marketing strategy than if you prefer to have your firm serve as "an engine of satisfaction".  Unfortunately, many marketing strategies are born out of desperation, dry spells of no clients, or the latest fad.  Not enough emphasis is put on where you actually want to get to and then working backwards from there.

Another mistake is thinking you are going to be able to build "an engine of money" with a budget and strategy built for "an engine of satisfaction".  If you want to create a scalable, growing business you are going to have to make proper investments to get there.  This doesn't mean you spend money haphazardly, but it does mean that the marketing strategy you put together needs to be more aggressive accounting for growth rather than just sustainability.

I recently watched a documentary on Warren Buffett.  In one of the segments, his children tell a story about their household growing up.  It's a great example of teaching through experience.  The story resonated for me because in order to effectively market a law firm, you're going to have to get comfortable "touching the stove".

When Warren's kids were younger, he setup a brand-new, slot machine in one of the upstairs bedrooms.  He said nothing about it and didn't make its presence any sort of big deal.  Each week, the Buffett kids would get an allowance.  Inevitably, the kids would play the slot machine through the week and lose their money (which would find it's way back to the slot machine owner, Mr. Buffett).

Overtime, they came to realize the value of their allowance and the pitfalls of gambling.  It is a fascinating way to teach a lesson, through experience, while the children were still too young to go to an actual casino.

How This Relates To Your Law Firm Marketing

Finding the right marketing plan requires trial and error.  Since the strategy that works for one firm is not necessarily the right strategy for another, it takes some experience to find out the programs and outlets that will best fit for you.  In order to successfully achieve this, you're going to have to touch the stove to see what works.  It isn't fun to try a marketing avenue and find that it isn't successful.  However, doing nothing or simply following the pack for fear of failure won't allow you to learn from your marketing experiences.

Others will be able to offer advice, guidance, and share past experiences but nothing comes close to learning by getting your hands dirty.

To further elaborate on why the riches are not equivalent to happiness, I adopt the approach used by Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, of looking at happiness as moment-to-moment experience instead of general well-being or flourishing. When we break down happiness into moment-to-moment experience, riches do not necessarily make people happier.

Ed Diener and others argue that happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have. Psychologist Jeff Larsen and Amie McKibban ran experiments to test this concept. People who had more of what they wanted tended to be happier than those who had less, but this effect was mediated by appreciation and gratitude. Simply possessing something is not the key. Happiness comes from appreciating what you have.

Seems to me that happiness is an appreciation of the journey we take as opposed to simply the end result.  I believe that finding happiness in your marketing is a key to having success with it.

The Myth Of The Magic Bullet

Too many lawyers are looking for the marketing magic bullet.  The one marketing campaign or strategy that will solve all the problems of finding a new client.  In essence, they want to win the equivalent of the marketing lottery.  The myth is that a) this even exists and b) this will actually bring long-term success to the firm.  

Enjoyable Marketing Equals Long-Term Success

True, long-term, successful marketing comes from years of hard work building a reputation, developing relationships, trying new marketing avenues, successfully networking, generating referrals, successfully handing cases and clients, etc.  A firm that has had success in marketing over time has done so because they found happiness and satisfaction in the journey they took discovering what worked for them.  In fact, they might have actually enjoyed aspects of their marketing and relationship building!  If they hated every minute of it they never would have broken through to find what works.  Stop searching for the magic marketing bullet and get involved in marketing activities you can find satisfaction in.

Photo by emdot

Changingminds.org offers us the following description of the perceptual contrast effect:

When we make decisions, we tend to do it by contrasting between the decision item and reference items. When two things appear close to one another, we will tend to evaluate them against one another more than against a fixed standard.

A simple physical way of illustrating perceptual contrast is to put one hand into hot water and other into cold water, then move them both to lukewarm water. The cold hand will feel hot and the hot hand will feel cold.

I know this may sound interesting, but seems irrelevant to your firm.   Let me explain a bit more so you can get a better understanding of how to use the perceptual contrast effect to your firm's advantage.

Remember that we have a tendency, when two things appear similar, to evaluate these things against one another.  Because of this effect, the amount of information someone thinks they have about something can be influenced by the amount of information they learn about something else.  Allow me to present a study as illustrated in YES!.

The Study

Researchers asked for people to read a persuasive marketing message for a fictitious department store they named Brown's.  However, this message was read after reading a persuasive message for a different fictitious department store the researchers called Smith's.

The message for Brown's department store was the same for all participants, it described three departments of Brown's.  However, the prior message given for Smith's department store varied with either less information (only 1 department) or more information (6 departments) given.

When the first message, about Smith's, contained more information the marketing messages for Brown's were seen as less persuasive and produced less favorable attitudes.  In contrast, when less information was provided about Smith's, the marketing messages for Brown's were seen as more persuasive and produced more favorable attitudes.  It seems that people felt they knew more about Brown's after learning less about Smith's and vice versa.

How You Can Harness This Effect To Influence Potential Clients

Perhaps you have a prospect that can't decide the type of legal service they need.  Maybe the individual is considering handling their issue without an attorney.  They might be opting to use a different company or service besides a law firm (ie: Legalzoom, debt consolidation company).  In any case, by providing a relatively small amount of information about the contrasting decision first (remember it doesn't need to be negative info, just sparse) and than following it up by providing abundant information about your services, you can shape the perception of your services.  This should lead to a more persuasive and favorable view of what you can do for the client.

Photo by Tama Leaver

So what exactly is price conditioning?

Dan Ariely at the Irrationally Yours Blog shares with us an interesting psychology experiment:

To get some insight into this process, consider the following experiment:  We asked a large number of people to write the last two digits of their Social Security number at the top of a page, and then asked them to translate their number into dollars (79 became $79), and to indicate if in general they’d buy various bottles of wine and computer accessories for that much money. Then we moved to the main part of the experiment and we let them actually bid on the products in an auction.  After we found the highest bidders, took their money and gave them the products we calculated the relationship between their two digits and how much they were willing to pay for these products.

Lo and behold, what we found is that people who had lower ending Social Security numbers (for example 32), ended up paying much less than people who had higher ending Social Security numbers (for example 79).  This is basically the power of our first decisions: if people first consider a low price decision (would I pay $32 for this bottle of 1998 Cote du Rhone?) they end up only willing to pay a low amount for it, but if they first consider a high price decision (would I pay $79 for this bottle of 1998 Cote du Rhone?) they end up willing to pay a lot more.

Price conditioning is the art of changing the perception of your service pricing.  When you first talk to many of your prospective clients, they have a certain price expectation in mind.  What  price conditioning can do is to raise the expectations of your service pricing to the point where, when you reveal your price, it’s not as much as they expected or at the very least, it’s less of a shock.

How You Might Implement Price Conditioning

Price conditioning involves forshadowing what the potential client might expect a legal service like yours to cost without addressing your pricing specifically.  For instance, in a conversation with a prospective client you might mention

"Experienced firms can charge upwards of (fill in the blank with a top end price that is more than you charge) for what you need."

You should also discuss the advantages of hiring your firm while making sure to mention you aren't the cheapest out there nor are you trying to be.  Use your service pricing to your advantage to build value.  Quality work and expertise takes time and effort.  If you sacrifice price, you do so at the cost of the quality of the service you receive.  Of course these points need to be addressed in the conversation prior to a discussion of your fees.

The point is to lay the groundwork that legal services aren't cheap and your legal services certainly aren't on the low end.  Elegantly working this into conversation, while building the value of your service at the same time, helps to reset the expectations of what your legal services will cost.  More importantly, it will help to avoid sticker shock, and might even provide relief, when you do discuss pricing.

Photo by Surat Lozowick

Marketers fall into one of two categories:

A few benefit when they make their customers smarter. The more the people they sell to know, the more informed, inquisitive, free-thinking and alert they are, the better they do.

And most benefit when they work to make their customers dumber. The less they know about options, the easier they are to manipulate, the more helpless they are, the better they do.

Seth's post really struck a chord with me.  It allowed me to reflect on the philosophy and methods I use to market my business as well as the law firms I work for.  I can actually point to the specific experience I had that changed my marketing philosophy; the process of purchasing an engagement ring.  Let me explain.

The Biggest Purchase Of My Life

The stars had aligned and I finally made the decision to pop the question.  The last hurdle was purchasing the engagement ring.  I had a general idea of what I wanted to spend and that was the extent of my jewelry/engagement ring knowledge.

I asked friends in the area for a couple of references and set off to meet with a few jewelers.  The first two jewelers basically took me through the same process.  They asked me what I was looking for, asked what my budget was, showed me a couple of diamonds, flipped through a book of settings, and both asked for a deposit.  I declined to put anything down until meeting with the third guy.

The final jeweler (Jim Harris, highly recommended if you are living outside the Detroit area) handled the process a little bit differently.  He requested that I meet him at his office for a 45 minute consultation.  When we sat down, rather than asking how much I wanted to spend and what I was looking for, he explained that the goal of this meeting was to educate me on diamonds and engagement rings.  He took the time to explain the 4 C's (cut, clarity, color, carat).  He showed me how certain diamond grading companies inflated their grades.  He talked to me about not obsessing over the carats as this was only one element of a diamond's quality.  I walked away from the consultation an educated, appreciative consumer.  The process shed light on problems with the diamonds the previous jewelers had shown me.  In addition, the level of trust and respect I had afterwards made the decision to purchase from Jim a no-brainer.

Jim Harris practices education based marketing.  I believe in this powerful marketing philosophy and have seen the positive results with both AttorneySync as well as the law firms we market online.

The Benefits of Education Based Marketing

Education based marketing is the art of educating your prospective client so that they are able to make an informed decision.   There are a number of benefits:

• It helps to build value in your service
• You no longer have to sell on price
• It positions you as an expert in your field
• It builds trust in the beginning of the relationship
• It provides transparency into your thoughts, process, and business
• It makes the competition that is hard-selling, using manipulative tactics, and telling half-truths less relevant

How Your Firm Can Accomplish This Online

• Blogging: Blogging is a perfect example of relationship building and education based marketing.  You are giving of your time and expertise, sharing your knowledge to educate your potential client.
• Guides or Whitepapers:  We offer free guides to people that want to learn more about internet marketing for lawyers.  An educated client will appreciate the services we perform on a whole different level than someone who doesn't understand the basics of online marketing.
• Webinars: Offering an online seminar or course is a powerful tool to educate clients and generate leads for your firm.  
• Video Marketing: Use an online video as an opportunity to help educate someone as opposed to just advertising your firm.  Anyone can talk into the camera telling everyone "how hard they will fight for you".  Take the opportunity to teach them something about the law that actually helps inform the consumer.

Law firms need to take advantage of this type of marketing.  The law is a very foreign, difficult to understand subject for most people.  The firms that have the ability to explain it in plain English and educate their potential clients will reap the benefits.

Photo by GeekMom Heather