Uneducated Attorneys Are Advertising Reps Best Customers
Do yourself a favor. Take the time to click through ten pages of google listings in regard to any subject related to lawyer advertising, marketing, etc. If you have the time, review ten pages more. What will you find that is helpful to you as a lawyer in regard to tangible information that will make you money? Nothing. How can that be? Isn’t the internet the new avenue of free information that has been so beneficial that is has crippled businesses nationwide by empowering the consumer. Yes and no.
Think about it. Lawyer dot this, attorney dot that, find me a lawyer.net, etc. These companies manipulate through one word. FEAR. The notion that they as advertising or marketing sales “experts” (many times comprised of lawyers who who could not succeed within private legal practice) know better than a successful practicing lawyer as to how to acquire legal clients. These sales companies “success” is not the bi product of making lawyers money. Rather, their continued existence is the result of far too many lawyers inability to understand fundamental business principals.
Each year lawyers find themselves leaving the practice of law after having given these marketing companies more money than they have generated. Despite this reality there is always a new flock of disillusioned attorneys to replace the attorneys who have already failed to generate any meaningful success within these worthless directory schemes or consultation services.
Advertising and marketing services of all kinds love attorneys. Why? Because they will both spend unreasonable amounts of money on worthless marketing schemes and are too afraid to admit they have no clue as to how to make money. Too many lawyers measure their self worth in their academic prowess and not the necessary business acumen that will allow their practice to thrive. Most lawyers are paralyzed of the unknown, if I don’t spend money on these websites or other worthless attorney directories, how will I ever get clients? If all other lawyers in my community are advertising on these webpages, it must be working. Right?
Marketing firms, advertising agencies and other consultation services prey on this ambiguity. All such industries I myself have formerly consulted with invariably offer the same shell game script in different forms. Basically the standard line relays, “You’re practice is still not making the money you desire, but can you imagine how much less revenue you’d be generating without our help?”
Not unlike the tactics of yellow page advertising sales people who at their peak would threaten advertisers with losing “placement” within their respective phone books if they did not continue to join the droves of other failing lawyers within their pages, there are few resources available with which to measure true credibility of a “lawyer marketing firm” or actual lawyer in practice who claims to offer real marketing assistance to lawyers in need.
Marketing reps have no relative objective means by which to assess their credibility as to whether their services are truly the most cost effective means by which to market a given attorney.
I submit that there is a distinct difference between shopping for goods versus services. When shopping for goods we are generally dealing with tangible objects of quantifiable value that can now be shopped in an objective manner. In years gone by prior to free online information available via the internet, the american consumer was not able to access undisclosed information that could otherwise allow for them to understand whether their available retailer was offering a tangible product at a price worthy of its relative value.
Significantly, whether in years past or to the present day, where the rubber meets the road in a business sales transaction is the interaction between the seller of a given product and the consumer wishing to purchase the product. Whether the price negotiated for a given sales item is determined to be worthy of a sale or not, at the very least it is the salesman of the product who possesses the best and most complete knowledge of the good offered. Further, the consumer most often knows prior to the sales transaction that he or she already wants the product available in the marketplace. For such a consumer, the only question is whether the product desired can be purchased for a reasonable price without having to much difficulty in obtaining the product.
Within objective sales transactions for goods, the consumer already knows that he or she desires a product that has already proven its worthiness. In cases where the consumer is interested in the product but is reliant upon the sales representative for needed information about the product, how much the individual representative of the good offered for sale is willing to share with the consumer by way of price comparison, reliability of the product, etc. is most often determined by the persistence of the customer, and the assessment of the sales provider that failure to disclose such information could risk a sale in question.
Most significantly, in most, if not all sales transactions of a good offered, the sales representative knows the relative value of the product they are offering for sale.
Wake up lawyers. You who are paying monthly payments sometimes approaching a mortgage payment are paying these online companies for what? The “privilege” of competing with the other hordes of lawyers all on the same page and all equally unsuccessful. In discussions with these marketing company executives I can convey that they are equally amazed at the good run of revenue they continue to accumulate from lemming lawyers without the courage to differentiate their marketing efforts from the pack.
Still not getting it? Let me come at it from a different perspective. Google is an online search portal. Google organic listings are cost free. Whether anything less than organic online top placement listings are valuable is another question. (I know the answer because I am the first listing for my desired terms). Lawyers are supposed to be among the most intelligent among us. Yet, where is the common sense? Why are lawyers paying outrageous and wasteful dollars to these online portals each month that do no more than actually have the nerve to take your money to compete with your legal competitors?
My target market are lawyers who have seen the light. Lawyers who don’t need a sales job to see what I am saying. Rather, they can simply look online and see for themselves.
When I say direct mail has value, most rational lawyers tend to believe it. Why? Because you’ll be able to see my top top rankings online. You’ll be able to verify my years of practice and multiple office locations. You’ll be able to confirm that I am who I say I am.
Most importantly, my direct mail piece has been made, created, written and developed over many years of trial and error by me. Yes, an actual practicing lawyer. Yes, an actual lawyer who makes money. Yes, an actual lawyer who through trial and error has developed a direct mail piece he himself actually uses to dare I say… make actual money!
Here’s the kicker. An actual lawyer with nearly 25 years of success who can actually provide you with the direct mail piece he himself actually uses! Unlike advertising or other marketing schemes with no credibility, my words have objective value.
My direct mail piece sells itself because my credibility as one of the most successful marketing lawyers in my state cannot be questioned.