Amy Campbell’s Web Log

I received an e-mail from Patrick McKenna, a long-time professional services consultant with Edge International, kindly informing me of his most recent blog post (dated December 30, 2007) titled, The ABA, Shamefully Does Not Practice Diversity. In it he criticizes the December issue of the ABA Journal for its cover story, “The Blawg 100: The Best Web Sites By Lawyers.”

States McKenna,

“I cannot believe the shameful audacity of the ABA Journal to rate web sites for lawyers . . . by including only those written by lawyers. For those who long suspected that the legal profession, unique amongst professions for categorizing people as either being lawyers or non-lawyers, really doesn’t understand or support diversity, you now have the proof.”

He provides several examples of excellent blogs for lawyers written by non-lawyers including those by:

• David Maister
• Suzanne Lowe
• Amy Campbell (that’s me!)
• Mark Beese
• Michelle Golden

Then just yesterday, I read a very interesting article in the New York Times that offers an explanation as to how this type of isolated thinking happens. In Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike, Janet Rae-Dupree, describes this phenomenon as a “curse of knowledge.”

“…once you’ve become an expert in a particular subject, it’s hard to imagine not knowing what you do. Your conversations with others in the field are peppered with catch phrases and jargon that are foreign to the uninitiated. When it’s time to accomplish a task — open a store, build a house, buy new cash registers, sell insurance — those in the know get it done the way it has always been done, stifling innovation as they barrel along the well-worn path.”

The article offers anecdotal and scientific support for bringing people with different skill sets — even (gasp) outsiders — to the table. It also introduces a groovy, new bit of jargon you can toss around — “zero-gravity thinkers.” Click here to read the full article on nytimes.com — it’s worth the 5 minutes.

The U.S. Postal Service dedicated an entire issue of its Deliver magazine to environmentally friendly practices. The issue offers a green marketing audit and asks the question, “Have we reached the Green Tipping Point” where eco-friendly practices have crossed over from luxury item to business staple?

Get more green articles to go…

In this age of electronic media, it’s easy to get caught up in leveraging your web site and e-communications, that you spend so much time and energy on them, you neglect the old tried-and-true pieces of your marketing/sales/customer relationship mix. Here are a few real life scenarios that recently reminded me that e-communication is only one piece of the puzzle.

Don’t forget traditional PR.
A client of mine was interviewed at length recently in a national consumer magazine. How effective is PR? I’d say pretty darn effective! As a result of the publicity, the number of visitors to her web site tripled and the number of pages viewed increased three fold. (See “Pages Viewed” chart below.)

Power of the press: Pages viewed coinciding with consumer magazine article

Now, does this negate the point of my earlier post that Web Sites Rule in Lead Generation? No, not at all. While the article was what captured people’s attention, the fact that my client (a plastic surgeon) had a web site with exclusive photos and video animations (content) of a specific procedure mentioned in the article was the magic bullet. Soon after the article hit the newsstands, queries to the web site under the doctor’s name and this procedure skyrocketed. If there had not been a web site for more information and follow up, the power of the article would have fallen short. Together, they pack a powerful one-two punch.

Don’t forget to ask for the business.
I have a friend who is a professional photographer who has had great success farming leads and getting new clients from his efforts of building an online presence with several web sites that are carefully and strategically search engine optimized. When things slowed down at the start of the summer, I asked him, “have you picked up the phone and called some of your favorite clients?” Oh yeah. It’s easy to get caught up in the electronic side of things. It’s important to remember to shake the tree, talk to folks, ask for the business. Apres summer is a great time to reconnect!

Do pick up the phone.
One more story. My brother, who works in television in Hollywood, was following up on a pitch he had made to an old colleague. When he e-mailed some information and then didn’t hear back, he began to worry. A day or two later, he got a phone call from the colleague who chastised him saying, “Don’t you know that I’ll take your calls!” In other words, as an old friend, he had already earned her trust and she preferred to do business in real time by phone. Are you hiding behind e-mail when communicating with folks who’d love to hear from you? Call them up and see. What’s the old saying? Reach out and touch someone? Better yet, pay them a visit.

I’ve been meaning to post on another item of interest from RainToday.com’s “What’s Working in Lead Generation” (for professional services firms) that I originally referenced in this previous post. It is the question asking participants, Where would you spend an extra $100,000 in your sales and marketing budget? As you can imagine the answers were across the map, but the respondents most wanted to spend their $100k on a new web site. According to the report:

“Websites carry a special triple whammy regarding their addition to lead generation.

A) They generate leads in and of themselves through search engine placement.

B) They are the conduit for many other lead generation tactics. Regardless of how a prospect finds out about a firm, they almost always check out, and often make their inquiry through, the website.

C) Because websites are always “on” and everyone can look at them, leaders at service businesses are acutely aware of how they look, what they say and (often more importantly) what everyone else says about their website.”

I was happy to read this (as I help law firms develop their web presence) — and my experience confirms it. I’ve noticed a definite increase in firms (especially on the smaller end) realizing that they need to take the web more seriously. Traditionally, many lawyers have believed that they don’t really need more than a billboard web site as their business is “a relationship business,” and “we get most of our business through referrals.” But even in a relationship business, the web has become what I like to call, “the resource of first resort.” When a potential client does receive that all important referral, what’s the first thing she does? Turns to her computer and types your name into Google’s search engine.

Firms are waking up to the fact that their web presence plays an increasingly important role in how they are perceived and that it can be used to effectively to help build and strengthen existing relationships.

Other popular answers to the $100,000 question (which is nice to dream about, huh?): hiring additional staff, contracting with outside providers for branding/awareness and lead generation services, and more.

Where would you spend the dough?

I recently conducted a quick-and-dirty e-mail survey* of a select group of law firm marketers and consultants to get a read on what they read. More specifically, I asked these thought leaders to name their favorite marketing/sales/strategy books that I could recommend to readers of this blog. What I got back was a long list as many different favorites emerged. Two author names, however, came up again and again.

Leading the list: Malcolm Gladwell for his popular business books The Tipping Point and Blink; and David Maister for The Trusted Advisor (co-authored with Charles Green and Robert Galford) and Managing The Professional Service Firm. (Both author’s also have their own blogs — check out what they’re up to next at Gladwell.com and at Maister’s Passion, People and Principals.)

At first I was surprised that Gladwell was appearing on the favorites list of so many legal marketers, but his books, after all, are best-selling business books and written in an entertaining story telling style. That legal marketers, who are often out in front at their firms in terms of business thinking, would enjoy and look to apply Gladwell’s observations to their own situations then is not so surprising after all. In fact, I found Blink, subtitled “The Power of Thinking without Thinking,” to have a huge impact on my own approach to marketing, when learning how quickly and subconsciously we all make split-second decisions based on the tiniest of cues.

Maister may be less known in the pop business press, but has attained guru status as author, speaker, blogger, consultant on the topic of professional services management. The Trusted Advisor is viewed as the bible for any professional services provider. A good habit for law firms would be to give every new hire a copy to be used as a handbook for his/her client service career. That law firm marketers are reading both these authors is good news for their firms and the clients they serve.

Below is the summary of the survey results.

The Top Ten (multiple nominations)

1. The Tipping Point and Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
2. The Trusted Advisor and Managing The Professional Service Firm - David H. Maister
3. The Woman Lawyer’s Rainmaking Game: How to Build a Successful Law Practice - Silvia L. Coulter
4. Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing - Harry Beckwith
5. How to Win Friends & Influence People - Dale Carnegie
6. Legal Business Development: A Step by Step Guide - Jim Hassett
7. SPIN Selling - Neil Rackham
8. Client at the Core: Marketing and Managing Today’s Professional Services Firm - August Aquila and Bruce W. Marcus
9. Move the Sale Forward: Increase Your Sales Through Human Connections - John Klymshyn
10. Law Firm Associate Guide to Personal Marketing and Selling Skills - Beth Cuzzone and Catherine MacDonagh**

Also Recommended (single nominations)

Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 7 Powerful Tools for Life and Work - Marilee G. Adams
In Search of Excellence - Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr.
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
The rainmaking machine: Marketing, planning, strategies, and management for law firms - Phyllis Weiss Haserot
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! - Al Ries and Jack Trout
Influence Without Authority - Allan R. Cohen and David L. Bradford
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In - Roger Fisher, Bruce M. Patton, and William L. Ury
Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution - Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble
The End of Advertising as We Know It - Sergio Zyman
Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands - Marty Neumeier
Rainmaking Made Simple: What Every Professional Must Know - Mark M. Maraia
The Brand You 50 : Or : Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an ‘Employee’ into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion! - Tom Peters
Marketing the Law Firm: Business Development Techniques - Sally J. Schmidt
Influence: Science and Practice (4th Edition) - Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D.
Even Eagles Need a Push: Learning to Soar in a Changing World - David Mcnally
Hope Is Not a Strategy: The 6 Keys to Winning the Complex Sale - Rick Page
Trust-Based Selling: Using Customer Focus and Collaboration to Build Long-Term Relationships - Charles H. Green

Do you have a favorite book to add to this list? Click on “comments” and let me know.

*Twenty out of 40 persons responded to this survey

** Available in June from ABA Books.

Valuable footprints from this month’s National Writers Workshop in Hartford, Connecticut have been left on this Poynteronline blog, 48 Tips in 48 Hours, a collection of practical reporting and writing ideas. Even if you’re not a reporter with a beat, many of these tips are applicable to many kinds of writing and general business situations. A few of my favorites:

• #7: Keep it simple… (click through to read more)
• #23: Write a killer lead…
• #21: Rewrite the lead… and the whole damn thing…
• #26: Be the expert…
• #40: Ask yourself why do my readers care about this topic now?

I was given a press copy of a recent benchmark study by the Wellesley Hills Group, “What’s Working in Lead Generation,” which provides plenty of insight into professional services firms attitudes and activities in getting new business. What caught my eye right away, was what participants identified as their top 5 most effective lead generation tactics:

1. Making warm phone calls (to existing clients)
2. Speaking at conferences
3. Running our own in-person events
4. Becoming members of professional industry organizations
5. Connecting with press contacts

In a competitive market (84% of respondents expect a “significant” or “moderate” increase in their lead generation efforts within the next 2 years) whether you are a boutique firm or a large firm, you should expect that your competitors will be contacting your clients and prospects — by phone and at events. Also, if you’re workday is anything like mine, the default forms of communication have become asynchronous (e-mail, texting, etc.). There is now added value in a phone call — seems like it really is the next best thing to being there.

For more information, you can download an executive summary of the report, which asked 700 professional service firm leaders about their lead generation activities. I will post some more revelations once I get further into the study.

Here’s my annual internet stocking stuffed with what’s trendy, newsworthy and just plain fun in web content. Get ready for hours of viewing, listening and reading/linking pleasure! Bookmark this page for future reference. Happy Holidaze!

1. Top Web Video Spot
The web story of the year is YouTube, hands down. Its limitless potential and example of viral, user-contributed content garned $1.65 billion (gulp) when it was gobbled up by Google. For the uninitiated, here’s a brief sampler of its deep wells of self-broadcasts and bootlegs.

• The popular: Diet Coke and Mentos, 2356 days, and two chinese students.
• A couple favorites: the mysterious bedroom guitar virtuoso (whose identity was tracked down by the NYTimes) and Free Hugs.
• Mashups of old and new: Original Uprock and 8 1/2 mile.
• Great moments in television: George Harrison and Paul Simon on SNL and Lennon on Mike Douglas.

2. Top Example of How Big Media Works (or Doesn’t)
Here’s how the major networks covered the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner, and here’s the scathing (and one would think newsworthy) 20-minute Stephen Colbert roast that was not reported or mentioned anywhere by big media. Just another reason why you should support “Net Neutrality”, Free Press, Media Matters or your local NPR station.

3. Top Viral Marketing Campaign - US
Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty featured this Evolution film, which exposes the fashion industry secret that beauty really is skin deep. (More on the campaign here). If immitation is the highest form of flattery, then this campaign was well received… see parody here.

4. Top Viral Marketing Campaign - UK
This Sony Bravia commercial, which ran only in the UK, spread across the pond due to its visual vivacity and viral components, spawning spin-offs and parodies as well. (More viewing options here.)

5. Top How-Not-To-Brand Lesson
Speaking of parody, here’s a funny homemade video that answers the burning question: What if Microsoft designed the iPod?

6. Top Web Quiz Tool
At GoToQuiz.com you can design your own web quiz, or browse through existing quizzes such as these two that measure: How Massachusetts Are You? and Are You A True Red Sox Fan?

7. Top Web Mashups
“Hey, you got peanut butter in my chocolate!” Reeces may have invented the mashup in the real world, but here’s what happens when you move that concept to the web and combine publicly available data with open-architecture web apps (Web 2.0):

• Housing Maps = Craig’s List + Google Maps
• Earthquakes in the Last Week = Earthquake data + Google Maps
• Floodmaps = Topographic and sea-level data + Google Maps
• The Hockneyizer = combines my Flickr photo + jd’s Flickr toys = this automatic collage.
• More Flickr Toys
• Many more mashups at Programmable Web.

8. Top Web Radio Streams
Streaming radio is all around. Here are two at the top of my iTunes list. For the holidays: listen in on Xmas in Frisko, a slightly alternative Christmas playlist. For the rest of the year: dial up David Byrne Radio, it’s like having a really hip friend spinning records on your command. Or if you’re just looking for a quick work break, bookmark NPR’s Song of the Day to stay tuned in.

9. Top Full-Album Streams
iTunes (and others) reshaped the music industry, and now you can shop, sample and stream all over the web. Some favorite newcomers in 2006: Lupe Fiasco (plus video) and Cat Power. And some old favorites with streaming projects: Neil Young’s annotated Living With War is a full-album stream with ongoing news and related links, Paul Simon’s Surprise offers full streams of about half the album.

10. Top Hollywood Blogger Toppling the Tabloids
The 4-million-hits-a-day, sleazy celebrity blog, PerezHilton.com, is beating the tabloids at their own game and creating a controversy and lawsuit in the process by posting tabloid photos and adding crude comments and rough pencil sketches in the name of satire, similar to other wildly popular blogs in the genre Pink is the New Blog and the tamer by comparison Go Fug Yourself. (Hey, I don’t write ‘em I just report on ‘em.)

Count Your Blessings Bonus: The Global Rich List.

Bunny Bonus: Not to worry, here is the latest Bunny parody, Christmas Vacation in 30 Seconds Re-enacted by Bunnies! For past bunny classics, explore the archives below.

Don’t stop now, there’s still plenty of goodies in previous TTWDs:
Amy’s 2005 Top Ten Web Diversions
Amy’s 2004 Top Ten Web Diversions
Amy’s 2003 Top Ten Web Diversions

The ultimate List of Lists

Here’s a collection of marketing examples with double value. Besides being worthwhile in their own right for their content, they are excellent examples of information-based marketing that may inspire spin-off ideas. To paraphrase Pablo Picasso — “Good law firm marketers copy; great ones steal!”

1. Publish something useful AND cute
This little book titled The Essential Little Book of Great Lawyering, by Jim Durham, is a great gimmick. Beyond the worthwhile content — a distillation of Durham’s 20 years on all sides of attorney marketing — the fact that it’s published as a little red book (and not just another Microsoft Word article) makes it harder to ignore, easier to pick up, harder to throw away, and more likely to be read, remembered and passed along. I got my copy from Law Practice Consultants.

2. Publish a free PDF magazine full of useful info
InnovAction magazine, a free PDF downloadable, high quality magazine from the College of Law Practice Management, is a great idea in itself to engage potential members. But what really caught my attention was one bit of advice in one of the articles. Matt Homan of LexThink, Inc. offered in a panel discussion on marketing this “radical proposal: designate this year the ‘Year of the Client.’ For one year, take your firm’s marketing budget and spend it all on client satisfaction instead.” A bit of extreme advice, but right on target. See page 46 of the download for more details on this idea, and read the entire piece for more nuggets.

3. Create and offer proprietary industry information
The Wellesley Hills Group, provider of business development and sales training for professional services, has mastered the art of informational marketing through its web site RainToday.com with its collection of expert content. Recently it offered a report and survey results titled, Deadly Selling Mistakes You Make When Selling Your Services —- And What You Can Do About It. The 20-page PDF report offers original useful information on 10 pages (I recommend it!), and takes advantage of the opportunity of having attracted your attention to promote its related seminars and training tools on the other 10 pages. Whether or not you sign up for the seminars, you’ll remember them and their expertise. Nicely done!

4. Provide a free service as a loss leader
Another great idea to steal (also found in the InnovAction magazine previously mentioned, page 58) is DLA Piper’s Venture Pipeline service. The unit reviews more than 1,000 business plans a year and offers feedback and advice and refers the best of them to venture capitals. The kicker? There is no fee for the service. According to the article, “the paypack comes in the form of business development for the parent firm.”

5. Think viral
This really has nothing to do with law firms, but it really has nothing to do with anything. A band called okgo has risen out of relative obscurity by creating an extremely unique synchronized treadmill video. The highly contagious viral is making the rounds on the internet via YouTube and now okgo is a top selling album on iTunes and elsewhere. How might virals work for you?

I found these two recent manifestos from Change This to be entertaining and valuable refreshers on selling and networking. You may also.

The Care and Feeding of Your Network, by Bob Allard

111 Ridiculously Obvious Thoughts on Selling, by Tom Peters

Interesting show on The Future of Advertising on WBUR’s (Boston NPR station) OnPoint program. Listen to audio of show.

A news item in the recent issue of the AMA’s Marketing Management magazine reveals that corporations plan to increase use of outsourced professional services such as IT, marketing and legal services. The survey by RainToday.com reveals where corporate executives expect to find professional service providers — in a nutshell:

69% - presentation at conference/event
62% - industry web site articles
61% - trade show exhibits
45% - direct mail
40% - webinar
37% - e-mail
32% - online ads

What’s this mean? Speak. Write. Exhibit.

Interesting comments at Online News Association Conference from Tom Curley, CEO of Associated Press, on how Internet is more than just another distribution medium, “it has become our entire business environment…”

Key outtakes:

“Content will be more important than its container “as technologies such as search, RSS and Tivo will “unlock content from any vessel we try to put it in.”

“The franchise is not the newspaper; it’s not the broadcast; it’s not even the Web site. The franchise is the content itself.”

“…get ready for everything to be “Googled,” “deep-linked” or “Tivo-ed.”

Seems the NFL and IBM already know that.

Found via Be Spacific, here’s a good article on Marketing Profs — Is Your Company CAN-SPAM Compliant?
by Neil J. Squillante.

I recently signed up for Harvard B School’s free companion e-newsletter to its Working Knowledge web site. This week’s issue had a couple interesting items for marketing communications buffs.

1. Speechwriting Under the Gun -
It doesnt matter to your audience if you have ten days or ten minutes to write a speech. You still must deliver. Here are tips for speeding your speech prep.

2. Ad*Access and The Emergence of Advertising in America -
A database of advertisements from 1911 to 1955. (This link brings you to a page of recommended web sites in addition to the Ad*Access Site.)

Visit the site, sign up for the e-newsletter. Both are excellent examples of giving away “information of value” to gain exposure, showcase expertise, build awareness and strengthen brand. Beyond that, the editorial is set up to trigger sales of products and encourage additional viral marketing.

I’ve read lots of opinions on which is better. A lot of e-mail marketers pushing HTML newsletter solutions will swear that HTML is best. However, here’s an interesting test survey on MarketingSherpa.com that shows there’s not a big difference… both work about equally.

Personally this has been my experience. I run a monthly e-newsletter for a client and we send out a plain text e-mail newsletter with lots of hyperlinks to full articles on the web site (including a link right at the top to an HTML version of the entire e-newsletter). Some people click to the web version of the newsletter (identical in content), others scroll through the plain-text email and click through to articles of interest.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (scratched CD? corrupt MP3 file?), what’s more important than the platform is the presentation of the content. I get lots of cluttered, poorly focused, salesly HTML web marketing that fail to communicate quickly and effectively. In such a case a well written, logically organized, easy to navigate, plain text e-newsletter that offers me information I need is going to make me click.

How about you? Got an opinion or a study on this topic?
Please comment.

During Consumer WebWatch’s First National Summit on Web Credibility, Dave Kurns admits to having an “obsession with how advertisers are becoming content creators and syndicators…. advertisers are creating content and then shoving it to people, saying, ‘Put it on your Web site. It’s free of charge. Now, either don’t charge me for it or charge a different price.’”
See the transcript of the panel discussion, Web Publishers Grapple With Guidelines on Consumer Web Watch.

Interesting post on marketing in near real time — or how to get rich selling “I survived the [disaster d’jour]” T- shirts — on how news-based ads appeared immediately following the blackout on Design Media blog.

While a study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau claims online ads are up 7% for each of the first two quarters marking a sea change, see Online Advertising Showing Signs of Recovery… and the Motley fool cites a WSJ article claiming similar good news for web advertising in Web Ads Cycle Up… Some attribute context sensitive search engine ads for at least part of the upswing. But don’t get too excited. A Reuters article, Web Search Content Ads Seen Falling Short shows the search engine ads to be serving up ads that people treat like banners.

This all seems to correlate with eye-tracking studies of people’s viewing habits that show that they stare at the “content well” waiting for the content of a page to appear, and don’t pay attention to banners, images, and navigation, unless they don’t find what they are looking for. Which only portends a future where content and advertising are likely to become (more) blurred.

A couple of the very interesting findings from the Pew Internet & American Life Internet Use by Region in the United States (August 27, 2003)…

“New England is one of the most wired regions in the United States, with 66% of adults online…”

“…And 89% of New England’s Internet users have gone online to try to find the answer to a question — a higher proportion than in any other region of the country.”

Supporting the content-based, online informational marketing approach that I’m often heard spouting about.