Amy Campbell’s Web Log

The ever-thoughtful and social-media-savvy Doug Cornelius has a great blog post, Free and Law Firms, commenting on the book Free: The Future of a Radical Price and how it applies to the marketing of legal services. The book is written by Chris Anderson, the same guy who brought us Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, a book that neatly describes new markets as shaped by the internet. Read Doug’s post, then order the book, and then start thinking about how it might impact the business of law firms.

Also, take a look at these links offered by Cornelius, and see how they might impact or shape how you approach, offer and sell your legal services.

• Orrick’s free start-up forms library
• Wilson Sonsini’s term sheet generator

Thanks for a great post Doug. Anderson’s last book did much to shape my thinking about marketing on the web, so I’ve ordered ‘Free’ for express delivery so I can read on my summer vacation.

UPDATE: Since posting the above I found another post by Jordan Furlong on the same subject: Free and the GP.

Thanks to the Wired GC for finding this one.

That pretty much says it all. My own experience with Twitter is that I’ve been on it for a few months and haven’t really figured out a good way to use it. The only benefit I have found so far is to drive some “uninterested traffic” to some of my web projects. So, then, what’s the benefit? Exactly. However, I do believe that sometimes you just have to jump into/onto these platforms and figure them out as you go. After being on for a while now, this week I feel I am reaching a threshold of sorts, a critical mass thing, or a tipping point… Each time I tweet this week, I’m getting more and more followers. Or maybe it’s just the hysteria.

All this being said… follow me on Twitter!

Updated March 7: Carolyn Elefant does a much more thoughtful job describing Twitter in her post: To Twitter or Not To Twitter? That Is the Question for Lawyers…

See also: An older funny Jon Stewart bit about Blogs on TV.

Below, I’ve indexed 5 day’s worth of excellent blog tracks left by the seminar last week on Trust-based Business Development in a Recession from Trusted Advisor Associates a.k.a. Charles H. Green et al. I found it a little difficult to access the full 5 days in order, so I am linking to each day’s post here to ensure that more people get to read this great stuff — make yourself one of them! : )

Day 1 – Trust-based Business Development in a Recession

Day 2 – Principle 1, Client Focus

Day 3 – Principle 2, Collaboration

Day 4 – Principle 3, Long-Term and Relationship Focus

Day 5 – Principle 4, Transparency

Wrap-up: 62 Sales Tips for a Recession – Based on Trust

I enjoyed finding these 12 tips from “contrarian consultant” Alan Weiss. Just another list of how to be the kind of advisor that clients gladly pay to work with, but with an off-beat resonance that’s memorable. Some of his contrarian concepts”

• “never focus on a sale”
• “there’s no such thing as an elevator pitch”
• “ignore unsolicited feedback”

Link here to view these ideas in context.

From Tom Fishburne’s This One Time, At Brand Camp – TomFishburne.com
Published with permission.

See also, previous post: Marketing Budgets in 2009: What Other Firms Are Doing

If you know of a good nonprofit organization in Boston with a bad web site, then please tell them about Extreme Markover, an effort to give away one free web site redesign to a Boston-area nonprofit.

Extreme Markover is a partnership of the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW), a not-for-profit professional association that provides education and support for web professionals; Web Design World, a web-design conference that takes place at the Westin Copley on December 8-10; and Bizland, a website-hosting company.

I attend Web Design World each year and can vouch for the quality of their presenters and experts and the leadership they provide in the web design world (hey, no pun intended!).

Here’s more information on the free redesign from the official press release.

“We’re calling it the Extreme Markover,” said Bill Cullifer, executive director of WOW, “and our goal is to provide a deserving non-profit organization with a website that showcases today’s best design practices, which is exactly what WOW and the Web Design World conference strive to teach.”

Boston-area nonprofit organizations are invited to submit their existing site for consideration by going to the Extreme Markover site (www.extrememarkover.org). A panel including some of the world’s top web designers will review the sites and choose one for the makeover. Selected WOW members will then implement the design, and designers everywhere can follow along through frequent podcast interviews, tutorial articles, and more.

The deadline for submissions is Monday, November 24.

On a somewhat similar theme to my previous post (Was It Good for You?) — Charles H. Green (the guru of trust and co-author of the The Trusted Advisor) published this article on RainToday.com, You Had Me at Hello: 9 Ways to Quickly Gain Trust During the Sales Process, that provides some shortcuts to trust. While Green admits that trust takes time, he also offers some advice for using the sales process itself to establish trust from the get go in 3 of the 4 important foundations that add up to long-term trust.

He offers this formula for creating trust:

• “Trustworthiness = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation”

For three of these variables, says Green, you can start creating trust from the first meeting. Only reliability is totally reliant on time. While time enhances all variables, Green offers specific advice on how to get off to a good start in creating credibility, initmacy and self-orientation. Highly recommended reading! Check it out here.

In addition to reading the original article, also be sure to check out Green’s comment to this post.

In his article, Building a Winner, available at www.legalsales.org, John O. Cunningham provides a rundown of what law firms can learn from the marketing and sales efforts of the Boston Celtics.

Rich Gotham, president of the Celtics, was a featured speaker recently at the LSSO Raindance Conference, where he detailed many of the ways the Celtics “turned it around” — from having the worst record in the NBA to having the best record, sell-out crowds and the number one selling NBA logo — using a focused sales approach.

In the article, Cunningham relays a story by Gotham (who is a former president of a Boston high-tech company) about his having an epiphany regarding how to revamp the ailing franchise. “You don’t win to sell tickets; you sell tickets to win.”

Gotham led a cultural shift in thinking for the franchise, focusing on the mantra that “you need a great marketing effort most when you are losing and the team is down.” He also preached that “success is not the result of one thing, but comes from paying attention to a thousand little things”…

Some of the 10 lessons for law firms described at length in the article are:

1. Selling – moving from a 4-person sales team to a 35-person sales organization
2. Pricing and Metrics – adopting sophisticated regression analysis
3. Alternative Fee Arrangements – 240 different price points
4. Doing Customer Surveys – who buys, who doesn’t and why
5. Public Relations – a conscious effort to be visible during their
darkest hours

For more, download the full article at: http://www.legalsales.org/features/

I just read this post over on Charles Green’s Trust Matters (a blog I keep up with via Legal Marketing Reader):

Hey! Your Company Just Turned Into a Supply Chain!

Green describes how to rethink the way we do business, which is changing from happening within the big firm (top down management), to happening between companies (outsourced partners). It’s no longer a world of competition, but one of collaboration.

I enjoy little gems like this that can present a complex concept in such simple terms. Read this post, then consider how you might apply supply chain sourcing to legal services or whatever business you’re in. Thanks Charles!

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.