“how do you create the perfect legal website?”

Here are the essentials that we came up with – we’d be interested to hear your thoughts…

1. Branding - For us this means the messaging, the essence of what your firm stands for, and a clear view of the audiences you are targeting. For niche firms or microsite-based offers this is comparatively straightforward. For multi-disciplinary solicitors this offers a much greater challenge. It requires clear brand messages to well-defined audiences which translate into clear pathways through the website to discreet calls to action that drive enquiries.
2. Corporate Identity - Representing your legal brand online means stretching and developing your corporate identity. This means refining your logo, taglines, fonts and colours – along with strong imagery that reflects your firm of solicitors. This will then feed into your website design.
3. Full Function Legal Website for a Firm of Solicitors - We’ll start with a website for a multi-disciplinary or generalist firm of solicitors. In this case, perfection is all about clear navigation, great functionality and ease of use – for visitors and for you.

   This means an easy to use legal content management system that enables you to update text, images and video. A system that enables you to add and remove pages, jobs, news and blogs. A simple to update fee earner system that enables you to assign fee earners to different pages or create virtual teams. A microsite system that enables you to create sub-sites within your web platform.

   For visitors, it’s all about instinctive navigation and being able to find your services in a way that reflects their experience. So a business client may use a cluster of services – commercial, employment, franchising, commercial property; make sure the website enables them to visit these areas easily. And that business client should also be a personal client – so instinctive access to wills, conveyancing and tax planning will then be important.

4. Going Mobile - So we’ve managed to create the navigation you need on the desktop – now we need to consider a mobile accessible legal website. With more people accessing the internet by mobile than PCs by 2013, it is vital to have a site that works on mobile devices – including a range of instant response options.
5. Integration with Social Media - LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, YouTube (and for some legal services Facebook) offer instant access to an audience that any law firm should engage with. A contemporary legal website needs to be the hub of this activity giving visitors instant access to profiles and connections as well as feeding content to the various social media platforms.
6. Integration with Search Engines - Every legal website should feed information direct to Google (and the other search systems) and use the numerous tools available to ensure high search ranking.
7. Reliable Hosting and Support - This is fundamental, your website deserves good high availability hosting – the site should be online all the time. Plus you should expect rapid support for when changes are needed.
8. And then… Your site needs something that makes it unique. This could be design, interactive functionality, content or all of these – the extra element that makes your firms website unique.So we think those are the basics. What do you think? What have we missed? What would you want from a legal website? Use the form to contact us and let us know. And we’ll publish the results.

1. Keep it short and sweet

Less is definitely more. You only have seconds to grab someone’s attention – whether they are meeting your fee earner online or your PR agency is trying to pitch them to a journalist or editor. If you try and bundle the kitchen sink into your firm’s bios, for example… “so & so is a coach, consultant, speaker, author…”, it will damage their credibility and also switch people off. For example, if your fee earner is qualified to do many things, try and crystallise that down to the headline. What value do they deliver to your clients?

2. Keep the basic bio to a simple structure

The basic bio, which will be used on author credits, and in pitches to editors, and on proposals needs to have the following structure:

One sentence which states up to three things about who you are. E.g.

Heather Townsend is a performance improvement specialist for professional services, widely published writer and social media expert.

A paragraph qualifying your credibility:

Heather, in the last decade has worked with over one hundred partners, coached and trained over 1000 lawyers, accountants and other professionals at every level, in the UK’s top and most ambitious professional practices. She is the UK’s foremost expert on how business people can build meaningful and profitable relationships via social media. She has been commissioned to write on key business topics by the Financial Times.

3. Qualify, qualify, qualify

By the way, writing the qualifying paragraph is tough. It’s actually easier to write this for someone else. Perhaps you could get your team together to brainstorm what everyone could write here. You need to strip out any marketing messages and ‘prove’ why you are what you say you are – and why you are credible. I wanted to say in my paragraph something like this:

“Heather is one of the very few people who understands both the commercial, leadership and people issues facing a professional practice”.

But, that’s not qualified and is marketing spin.

4. Use keywords & links

The online bio goes every where… at the bottom of articles make sure that you have links to the firm’s websites. Hyperlink the keywords back to the firm’s website.

5. Use a colour professional photos

People want to see the real persona – and even better if you can get a  short video clip shot of each of your team members. Whilst your black and white picture may look very arty, your audience wants to see you.

6. Have multiple versions

Twitter restricts you to 160 characters, LinkedIn let’s you write an essay. By the very nature of the multiple uses of a bio, you need to have multiple versions of online bios for each of your fee earners, depending on the medium, and the different types of clients you regularly target. For example, if your team regularly does both private and public sector work, have the team write two different bios – one emphasising their credibility in the private sector, the other emphasising their credibility in the public sector.

The key element of the Panda upgrade is a shift in emphasis from Google that increases the importance of fresh content (e.g. blogs) and interesting 3rd party content (e.g. guest blogs) in gaining search positions. Google seems to be pushing popular sites to behave like publishers – which increases the importance of having regularly updated blogs and news integrated into your website.

Blogging for Search

So how should you write your blogs to be search friendly?

The first point to make is that you should always write content for blogs or websites for your human audience. Adding numerous key words into your text (or spamming as it’s known) will be spotted by Google and ignored.

But that doesn’t mean you should ignore your keywords. Keep them in mind. Use them in your headings and sub-headings and, for example, if your key search term is “web development” then make sure that word is a link to a page on your website that describes web development.

If your blog enables you to tag your content (e.g. WordPress or Blogger) then make those tags relevant to your key search terms. And use social media (particularly Twitter) to create links to your blogs. Tweet the links yourself and encourage contacts to retweet the links to a wider audience.

The Importance of Google+

Google has repeatedly tried to break the Social Media market and with Google+ it seems to have hit the mark. The key benefit of Google+ is that it is tightly integrated into search results so that if a Google+ friend has recommended a site it will appear higher on your search results.

That alone makes adding Google+ to your social media armoury a good idea – but its use of social circles makes it a very intuitive platform – we’ll publish a full Google+ review very soon.

Next Steps for Search and Social Media

With Google+ and the Panda upgrade, Google has clearly signalled that social media and search are now intrinsically linked. With a little planning, your blogging and creation of a corporate Google+ account, you can take advantage of this change and improve your search results.

On my LinkedIn group – The Financial Times Guide To Business Networking – we have been discussing the best ways to get your blog noticed.

Good question. Your practice has gone to all that trouble of writing and maintaining a blog, surely the world deserves to know about it AND read it? After all, why else write a blog?

Writing your blog is the easy bit, getting it noticed by sufficient numbers of your target audience is the hard bit.

So, how do you get your practice’s blog noticed?

1. Place it where your target audience will see it

Yes, it’s common sense, but this is perhaps the best way to get it seen. I have a large twitter following, so if I want my blog to get seen I tweet about it – and ask others to tweet about it. In fact about 50% of my blog traffic comes from my use of twitter. Posting your blog in a couple of LinkedIn groups may work for your practice as well.

2. Give it a ‘must-read’ title

As the saying goes you can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. The same goes for your blog. If it doesn’t have a title which incentivises them to read it, or pique’s their curiousity, they are not going to read it.

3. Put links to it in your e-mail signature

Enough said really…

4. Comment on others blogs

Very simple, if you make intelligent useful comments on other people’s blogs, they will often pop over to your blog to have a look around and return the favour.

5. Put links to your blog on forums and other people’s blogs

As well as commenting on someone else’s blog or discussion post, do share a link to a relevant blog post on your blog. This is a great way to get interested and qualified readers to your blog.

6. Put links to other people’s blogs in your own blog post (and blog roll)

Like many people I have a set of search alerts for certain keywords. I will also look at my back link report to see who has backlinked to my blog. If I see someone’s blog post I will normally have a look, at the post it’s linked to.

What would you add as number 7?

It brings you closer to clients
The first major benefit of social media is that it will bring you closer to your existing clients. Connect with your contacts on LinkedIn (and perhaps Twitter) and you immediately gain more information about them. To start with LinkedIn will give you a mini profile of each contact; it will highlight their current interests, past triumphs and provide the kind of data that you would have spent years collecting to add to your CRM system.

Once connected, you are ready to keep your contacts up to speed with activities, events and offers. By updating your LinkedIn status or tweeting, you’re free to exchange ideas quickly and easily online. Rather than making hundreds of phone calls, one quick note can reach potentially hundreds of LinkedIn contacts and Twitter followers… as well as the wider online world of billions of people, but more of that later.

It generates referrals
First let’s look at how you can use your existing (online) network. Connect with a contact and you’ll see their contacts; usually this will mean their suppliers, often your competitors (check out who’s chasing their business!) and professional contacts who often hold similar roles in similar businesses. This is an ideal starting point for gaining referrals; for example if you’re connected to the Marketing Director in XYZ Ltd and they’re connected to the Marketing Director of ABC Ltd, it is very likely that you’ll be able to persuade them to arrange an introduction.

Just as important is the reputation you build online by posting ideas and information that is interesting to the wider world and that positions you as an expert in your particular niche or area. When the question arises, do you know an expert in Care Home Fees recovery, I can happily say – yes; I met her on Twitter and so the referrals start.

It builds rapport with prospects
So now you’re connecting and conversing with clients and building a referral network. But what about your existing warm prospects; the people you know, who like you but who have not quite taken that final step to become clients. Using social media to connect with this very important group of people can be very rewarding. First, you are likely to glean more pertinent information; from their views on a business topic to their love of Arsenal. Understanding more about a person makes those ongoing phone calls easier – and if you can get hold of complimentary Arsenal tickets, they may not do any harm. But more importantly, you can exchange comments and thoughts with your prospects; this keeps you in their mind’s eye and enables you to build an even stronger rapport so that when they’re ready to purchase, you are the name that springs to mind.

It’s your broadcast platform for the World
And now to the most notorious element of social media. Twitter and to some extent LinkedIn are both public platforms; publish your ideas and you’re not simply talking to your contacts, you are potentially broadcasting to the world. The key word here is potentially. If what you are saying is inspiring, controversial or just plain daft it is much more likely to be picked up beyond your existing contacts. Being honest, in most cases it won’t – and this isn’t really the point.
For example, Tweet about Lady Gaga and it is likely that your message will be seen by millions (albeit very briefly). However, Tweet about the finer points of property law and the audience maybe narrower and smaller but is also more likely to an audience that’s interested in what you have to say and who are more likely to get in contact.

But surely this isn’t for us?
Here are some of the objections that I’ve heard recently from senior managers about social media…

It’s what my kids do. None of my clients use social media. I’ve looked at Twitter, it’s juvenile nonsense. I don’t want to know what Stephen Fry had for breakfast. It’s risky. We’ve tried it, it takes loads of time and we got nothing from it.

Here at realityhouse, we’re successfully using social media to win new business. And we’re showing a huge range of businesses how to do the same. 18 months ago, we would give you the theory; now we can show you concrete examples of how social media will deliver. The challenge is how to make social media work for your specific requirements and, without wishing to sell too hard, that’s where we come in. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Business plan? What business plan?

Strategy for growth? What strategy? (or even strategy for survival!)

Very often, I am finding that many firms don’t have a three or five year plan. Let’s be honest, having a business plan or vision would be a start. In case you are thinking.. “but our practice has revenue targets for every partner“. This is not a business plan or strategy.

At this point in time, the professions are changing. Clients are becoming less loyal and wanting more discernable value from their advisor. Both the accountancy and legal world are facing significant change. Legal services act anyone? Online accounting software anyone?

Far too often a practice is a collection of partners doing their own thing tied together by common overheads and letterheads. When this is the case, often leadership – the very thing needed for the firm’s survival – is lacking. It’s this leadership, it doesn’t matter from which partner it comes from, which will gel the partners together to decide on the firm strategy, business and marketing plan for the next 3 to 5 years. And more importantly, it will be this leadership which means that the firm actually works toward the business plan rather than paying lip service to it and letting it get dusty in a drawer somewhere. Without this common vision for the practice, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the daily challenge of client demands and lose sight of the bigger picture.

It’s this bigger picture which will ultimately be the difference between your practice surviving and thriving during the next five years… or not.

Does your practice have a 3 or 5 year business plan?

To start with there are no games, no embarrassing pictures (well okay, a few of those profile pics – you know who you are) and your company and personal profile are very much business focused.

Recruiters have been successfully mining the 135m members (8m in the UK) for candidates for several years. And with 2 new members signing up every second there is unlikely to be a shortage of talent any time soon. But what does LinkedIn do next?

The universal CV and beyond…

LinkedIn wants to be the place that your career develops. It is your CV (and you can now use your profile to apply for jobs – see the realityhouse mobile recruitment sites) and if someone searches for you by name on Google, your LinkedIn profile is likely to top the results.

According to LinkedIn the next step is to further enhance the individual skills sections on profiles as LinkedIn wants to be the place that you search for a “commercial lawyer with franchising expertise” or “a recruiter with accountancy knowledge” widening its scope to be a business resource.

Plus LinkedIn will be further refining ‘Insights’ – its news services; the goal is to deliver key news and information to your profile and your inbox based on your key interests and expertise.

LinkedIn Company Profiles

One weakness in LinkedIn in until recently was company profiles. But these are changing – particularly with the introduction of product and services tabs and the inclusion of company testimonials. And of course the vacancy tab enables jobs to be posted.

It is the move into corporate recruitment that potentially offers the biggest shake up as the cost/hire of direct recruitment using LinkedIn can really produce savings as evidenced by Invensys, Boots and ITV at the recent Enhance Media conference. And this despite the frankly eye-wateringly expensive LinkedIn corporate packages.

So is LinkedIn the future of recruitment?

LinkedIn is clearly going to play a key part in recruitment over the next 5 years. It’s ability to help attract passive candidates (rather than the active jobseekers reach by job boards) offers huge potential. The best people have so many options and LinkedIn can help to build a relationship ahead of the need for the employee.

In other words LinkedIn is moving into the arena of talent management and relationship building. You engage with prospects and when they’re ready for a move they will come to you. Top recruitment consultants are already heavily using this technique and in our view this is where the future of recruitment lies.

LinkedIn – tips to start using it effectively
Millions of professionals use LinkedIn, most get no business from it. Others use it as a rich source of leads and develop powerful business relationships with it.

What can LinkedIn do for you?
LinkedIn can help you, in your target market, find new prospects and discover more about them before you even have to “sell to them”.

How can increase my sales by using LinkedIn?

1. Getting more people to connect with you is a key part of the process, but first you have to have a good profile. Get your profile right, before attracting people to it!
2. Once you have a great profile, start to build connections, search for the contacts that you want to develop, demonstrate your expertise, and get to know people in your target market and participate in group discussions.
3. Have a contact strategy so you take the development of key relationship offline at a relevant point.

The profile headline and the most common LinkedIn mistake
Your profile headline is the key statement to get people to read your profile; it shows underneath your name, every time people see you. Write something to get the reader to keep reading. What do you do (not job title–what do you do)? Job title and company do not make good headlines.

Imagine somebody asking “what do you do”. An unhelpful reply would be “I am partner in xyz”, more likely you would tell them what you do and for whom. Ideally in such as way as to get them to say “that’s interesting, tell me more”

What should I put into my summary?
Using the language of your target audience, talk about your useful skills, how you help people. Don’t forget to make it keyword rich, readers will find that easier to read (so will Google). It is normally a good idea to write about you and your practice within the summary – but in separate paragraphs for clarity.

I hate my photo; do I really need one on LinkedIn?
Yes, I’m sorry but you do. We are human and make quick decisions looking at faces. This is a business forum; the photo is one you should happily share with prospects. A professional head shot, not a distant portrait or logo.

LinkedIn allows me to show 3 websites, I have only one?
Do you really only have one website? How about a blog? Are there any specific pages on your website which may be directly interesting to readers, (e.g. commercial and family law)?

Change the words “My website” for something meaningful (e.g. your company name or what the page is about).

What are applications?
A well written profile will attract people in your niche; adding applications can make your profile stand out more and make more detailed information available to those that want it.

Things to consider adding are:

• One of the blog applications – so your latest blog posts show and can be read
• Boxnet and/ or slideshare. Slideshare can allow you to start showing video on your profile. Boxnet can allow you to share documents that you already have.
• Amazon reading list. Show that you are knowledgeable and continuing to develop your knowledge.

Look in the mirror.

1. Re-read your profile, aloud, slowly.
2. Does it explain, succinctly, why someone should ask you for business? Reading it aloud will help you tell if it sounds right.
3. Then get somebody else to do the same exercise and check your grammer and spilling. Tipos look reall bad.

With a great profile you are well placed to develop your professional life.

Co-op Legal and the Brand
There are several major UK brands who have stated that they are interested in offering legal services including The AA, Saga, Which?, Halifax and The Co-operative Group, although Tesco themselves have stated that they have no immediate plans to move into this area. Organisations like these will really shake the industry up and traditional legal firms had better be ready.

Jonathan Gulliford is the Sales & Marketing Director of the Co-operative Legal Services company and at a fairly recent conference called firms in the legal profession “dinosaurs”. He feels that they have not yet come to terms with the new competition they will be facing and will become extinct unless they react positively to the challenge which is coming.

His exact words were “It’s all about the brand.” The Co-op are convinced that the vast majority of people will choose their legal services provider based on a brand which they trust and the Co-op is trusted by millions of people.

They are already the largest funeral directors in the UK and account for a large percentage of the insurance market. So if they add Wills at one end and Probate at the other, with a price structure that pulls all of these services together into a one stop shop and an immensely strong brand, the vast majority of their clients, who use them already for insurance and funeral services, will quite likely make the leap to buying the whole package.

They are therefore ideally positioned to challenge virtually every Probate department in the land. They view their main competition, not as traditional legal firms, but other major brands such as Saga and The AA. Their customers already trust them for their holidays, insurance and car recovery and Wills and Probate, again, would be simple add on services.

New brands coming into the market such as Quality Solicitors will also have an impact, irrespective of the ‘quality of service’, due to extensive advertising, a high street presence and low prices.

How to compete
So how will traditional legal firms compete and thrive. My view is that firms need to be smarter and more service orientated than they have been in the past and adopt practices which were not in the minds of many solicitors when they first joined the profession. This means that marketing and networking skills will become as important as technical knowledge and firms will have to provide the very best service possible.

And make no mistake about it, there are firms who are already doing this by for example going to see their clients at home in the evening when it suits them and are there with flowers and a box of chocolates to celebrate when they move into their new house. This is all about placing clients at the heart of your business, because that is the most effective way of keeping and attracting new clients into your practice.

This will probably entail a change of culture, which may well be very difficult but will have to happen in order to survive. Many firms are considering moving to an LLP structure and this can help to kick start a change of culture, but there are pros and cons to this and it is not the complete answer in itself. Of course the impact of these changes is not going to happen over night, but it will come and it could come so gradually and stealthily that in a few years time you will look back and wonder what on earth has happened to your industry.

Therefore now is the time to focus on where you will be in five years time, how you are going to meet the challenges represented by these brands and how are you going to differentiate yourself from other firms of solicitors who are all competing for the same clients.

Contact Harry on 01225 785520 or email harry.hilliard@monahans.co.uk for help in preparing your business for the future.

The waiting may be painful but by feeding the results into our annual brand audit, we’re able to assess whether the values and expertise that we’re aiming to promote are being received by our clients – which is what branding should all be about.

Measure, measure and measure again
Also feeding into the audit are the results of our various marketing campaigns. The great advantage of living in a digital world is that you can measure and track marketing performance in so much more detail. From assessing the success of each search, email or direct marketing campaign to gaining feedback on customer service and reading comments online, you have information at your fingertips that will drive the evolution of your brand and focus your marketing planning.

Increasingly, we’re helping firms to use online marketing Dashboards to track campaign performance in real-time. What the brand audit adds is the ability to step back, review day-to-day results in the context of feedback from clients and to ensure that you are achieving your brand vision.

Every Comment is an Opportunity
The other area that is now feeding into our brand audit is public statements about realityhouse. In the real word, not every comment made about your business will be 100% positive. The ever increasing obsession with social media and review websites means it is vital to listen, to respond, to apologise when necessary and to treat every comment as an opportunity to win back an existing client as well as showing prospects that you take criticism seriously.

You can’t please everyone. The website “solicitors from hell” (apparently soon to reappear in a new guise) is a classic example of where no amount of reasonable comment can help. But, in our experience, most clients are reasonable and will respond positively if you respond to their expressions – no matter how extreme they may initially appear to be.

Making a Brand Audit Count
The real joy of a brand audit is that to enables you to see your successes as well as revealing where you need to try harder. In addition it raises questions that feed not only into your marketing plan but back into the core business plan itself – and that is surely where marketing should add value.

But what happened next?

The short answer is a massive improvement. After the initial problems making contact, my case was managed by a named individual who scheduled a call to take details from myself and my partner on our wills.This time we received the scheduled call at exactly the right time; the brief for my other half’s very simple will was taken in less than five minutes; my will was more complex and we were on the phone for almost an hour but the questions were relevant and showed a real understanding  of what I was aiming to achieve.

As promised, the draft wills arrived within 5 days. We both checked them – and I had some additional questions. This time I was put directly through to my named contact who discussed some small points. I emailed the changes and we received final wills for signature again within 5 days.

The witnessing procedure was well explained and the wills have now been returned for storage – two wills created for less than £140.

So after a dreadful start – the co-operative legal services have delivered very well. But they are not infallible and for those law firms working to compete in this market the main lesson would seem to be to focus on front end customer service (who is answering your phones out of hours etc) as well as the legal process.

Once being called easy would been an insult; nowadays it costs you money not to be easy!What have your bad experiences as a customer, being a member of a gym, the “dumbing down” of society and my recent building works got to do with helping you sell more of your products/ services?

They have certainly made me think about how I can make it easier for my prospects, and more importantly my customers to interact with me.

Have you ever bought something, and not been happy with the product, service or both? In fact, you were really annoyed with them and on reflection said “I am going to write/ email/ phone and complain”? Did you complain on every occasion?

I had a holiday last year where the accommodation was appalling and the attitude of the owner even worse; I never got round to posting the photos onto a website and complaining though (even though that is what I said to my friends I would do). Even with strong emotions and the best intent, life gets in the way.

Imagine three piles of things you are going to do the “B pile” is full of things you really want to do, but are not quite as important as the “A pile”. My complaint sat in the “B pile”. There is a “C pile” for things that are a nice idea but even I accept I won’t get round to. If your proposal is sitting in somebody’s B pile (let alone the C pile) you won’t get the sale.

Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter (good job you’re not thinking of stopping reading this though). We live in an age where interaction can by simply by clicking on “Like”, not even having to write a comment (do click on “like”). We may hark back to when people still thought things through properly and took time over things, but we are all too busy. The easier you make it to get interaction, the more likely you are to get it. Interaction is good; it helps you to progress sales or judge how well you are doing. Inertia kills sales.

Have you ever belonged to a gym, or dance class? I love going to ceroc (a dance class), but got out of the habit. It is so hard to get back to going each week, despite wanting to. It has moved into my “B pile”, if you have ever stopped going to the gym, despite your best intentions, you have experienced this too.

So imagine what it is like for somebody that you are asking to change the way they do things (i.e. buy something from you), you want to hold their attention for long enough to get them to commit to something. Consider what you are asking them to do – from their perspective not yours! Unless you get their attention, in their language, their intention of buying from you get stopped by inertia and sits in the “B pile”.

Honesty time (and apologies to the three suppliers concerned)
Over the last few weeks I have been involved with three purchases; all of which are for things that I genuinely want to buy (in fact am desperate to have the results of). I am embarrassed when I speak to or see the providers of these services, as I do want to spend my money – but I haven’t. Now it heads towards Christmas and money may be (temporarily) diverted elsewhere (inertia and life get in the way); meaning these suppliers/ friends don’t get their sales for another couple of months.

Let me explore “easy” a little more:

The proposal
One job is for some building works to my house; all I want is a hole knocked in a wall and a door fitted. I have had somebody that I trust and want to give the work quote for it. The quote came back in a format that made me think a bit harder about it than I want to (note, think about not spend more). I will need to arrange a surveyor, tell him that he missed a bit of the work off and that he didn’t quote for the larger piece of work I mentioned. Result: it’s sitting in my “B pile”, not my “A pile”. What would have made the difference? A document worded the way I expected would help, but then something as simple as “you need a surveyor to look at this; we will arrange it and have included this in the price”. I see “simply knock hole in wall”, he sees “potential problem with joists”; that is all that has prevented me buying something I am desperate to buy.

The job I’ve already paid for

Another is from a business supplier, who I am already paying. But the document didn’t immediately make it clear to me what I need to do next; I can work it out if I sit down and read through it carefully. I really want to progress this issue, but the result? I haven’t done anything with it yet – it’s in my “B pile”, not my “A pile”. A very simple and clear line in the document, stating what I need to do and I would have just said “Yes”.

The “this will make me feel really good purchase”

The third involves me spending about £10,000 and I really want to proceed. It’s on the “B pile”, not the “A pile”. There is one or two simple things that could help me move it. Again some simple wording in the documents, or the way the follow up calls have been phrased.

This has made me look at my services, how can I make it easier for existing customers? How can I make it easier for prospects to say “yes”?

What advances in technology, simple language changes, or other little offers could make a difference? Think about your offer, from their life.

Easier to complain – Good, you get feedback.
Easier to understand – Cool, they think for less time.
Easier to act on – You are more likely to sell.
Easier to pay – Fantastic, you get your money.
Easier to buy – Brilliant, you get the work

What little differences would make it easier for you to buy things from other people? How can you learn from those and adapt your offer?

In our experience there are three main reasons.

1. Tactical Marketing. If you have suffered a personal injury, or your dentist has maltreated you or perhaps your will has been challenged, the very corporate language of a legal website can be both intimidating and off-putting. Hence the success of Claims Direct with its very consumer focused image, message and language. The good news is that a large number of law firms are fighting back with sites such as www.clinicalnegligenceteam.co.uk that we have developed for Withy King and www.itsyourinheritance.co.uk for Gregg Latchams.
2. Brand Development. As firms take advantage of the new ownership regulations the benefits of developing brands created as separate companies focused on key audiences becomes very attractive. In essence these sites are playing the Claims Direct game – but with some work handed to the owning firm and other work passed out to a panel.
3. A Niche Service. The other area where we are currently developing websites is where one niche service within the firm is very specialist and sits outside the usual marketing parameters of the business. The microsite is set up to promote this service in its own right. This means that we can use very focused search and email marketing as well as social media to drive a very specific audience to the site.

The success of microsites is continuing to grow with more and more firms finding a steady flow of enquiries can be generated online – particularly from search engine and increasingly from social media – be that Facebook for private client or Linkedin and Twitter for business.

What’s more we’ve also found that mobile websites work particularly well in driving enquiries – particularly for private client sites.

There’s more on Legal Microsites here.

Some professional practices have cottoned onto the need to send out different communications to different audiences, as one size really doesn’t fit all. For example, Bristol-based recruitment firm RSG Sanderson, has ten different blogs. This approach allows them to segment their messages, and establish their expert status, out to their very different target audiences.

In our opinion, true efficiency is realised in a firm’s marketing communications when it clarifies and focuses it’s message to just one target market, rather than trying to give one message to three or four different sectors. The generic one-size fits all newsletter just doesn’t work any more.

For example, Silverman Sherliker LLP’s content marketing strategy of setting up micro websites, which are SEO optimised, probably makes them unique in the legal services sector. I am sure many professional practices may be dubious about the time and effort which has gone into these websites. The proof is really in the pudding as  Silverman Sherliker LLP, generates a significant proportion, of all their new clients via their websites. Worth a rethink? Take a look at a few of their microsites: Contesting a will, prenuptial agreements, Trademark applications. As you can see, Silverman Sherliker LLP, have taken the bold step to niche each site, and provide significant amounts of free content for a niche market. If you look at a typical professional practice’s website, it wouldn’t be much more than a brochure site, with potentially a underused blog attached.

In fact, simple does work for communications… one audience, one message, one website… Or does it?

So, what’s the difference between 3G and 4G? There are two main differences which will enhance the mobile experience for the user:

1. The speed on the 4G network will be approaching land broadband speeds – i.e. up to 50 Mbytes per second

2. Base stations are becoming smaller, to the extent where they can be placed in private residences – which will allow greater reliability of the 4G mobile signal.

In effect, the mobile broadband network will soon be as reliable and quick as land broadband.

This is going to impact the way people like to receive their information – and more importantly, how marketing professionals reach and engage with potential clients. In my opinion, the practices who will benefit from the introduction of 4G already:

• Use video to engage with potential clients
• Have video embedded on their website
• Engage in social media marketing
• Planning to use a mobile phone app to enhance their client experience
• Have a mobile ready website

What have you already heard about 4G?

How do you think it will change our marketing practices?

But why focus on specialist mobile websites and apps – can’t you simply use your main desktop website? The short answer is no… and here’s why: According to the latest research from Google…

• By 2013 more people will use their mobiles phone than PCs to get online
• 60% of users expect a mobile site to load in 3 seconds or less
• 71% of users expect a mobile site to load as fast as a desktop site (but mobile uses 3G not broadband)
• 40% of users have turned to a competitor when a site doesn’t load quickly on a mobile
• 61% of mobile users call a business after a search; 59% visit the location
• Mobile searches have grown 4x since 2012

The opportunity is clear – you can reach busy clients and prospects and offer information that will position you as an expert and a partner. This might be by refining your website so that it is focused on the needs of the mobile user – visit www.pizzaexpress.co.uk or www.barclaycard.co.uk on a desktop and then a mobile to see some really effective (albeit graphically disappointing) mobile websites. Or it might be by developing a relevant app – the success of our own Tax Rates app for Haines Watts on Android and iPhone is a great example of useful information made available in a very simple and low cost app.

Up until now, mobile has been a ‘nice to have’ option. In 2012 mobile will increasingly be at the heart of your marketing mix. We’re looking forward to it.

Happy New Year.

• The Dark Knight Rises – The final instalment of British director Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy. View trailer »
• The Artist – French romance silent film, already released in the US to qualify for the Oscars – might win best picture. View trailer »
• Django Unchained – next Quentin Tarantino film with a well talked about plot that’s bound to cause a stir.
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Part 1 of a 2-part Lord of the Rings prequel installment.  View trailer »
• Les Miserable – British musical film Directed by Tom Hooper who directed The King’s speech and with Anne Hathaway cast as Fantine. »
• Skyfall - next Bond film likened to the classic Goldfinger.
• Brave - Pixar’s first fairytale but with a Brothers Grimm edge. View trailer »
• Prometheus - A Ridley Scott sci-fi film, which is  sort of an alien prequel! View trailer »
• The Great Gatsby – An adaptation of F.Scott Fitzgerald’s best-selling novel, directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
• The Flowers of War - with British Oscar winner and Batman star Christian Bale. Chinese Director Zhang Yimou (Hero and House of Flying Daggers). View trailer »

What do you think about our predictions? Or perhaps you have some more you would like to add to our list? Comment below.

It’s that time of the year again when the realityhouse team start to think about our top 10s. A couple of years ago it was our top Christmas songs (‘I believe in Father Christmas’ by Greg Lake is still my personal favourite). This year it’s our top Christmas movies…

• Trading Places—Laura
  Why? Dan Aykroyd as a drunk Santa going loco at his office Xmas party—brilliant!
• Die Hard—Justin
  “Now I have a machine gun. Ho Ho Ho.” Why is it my favourite? It has enough explosive action, one-liners and wry humour to balance out the day’s festivities once the children have gone to bed. And it has sleigh bells.
• A Christmas Carol—Tonya
  An old classic and it reminds me of Christmas eve excitement watching it in the mountains of Mallorca wondering how Santa made it all that way—lol!
• The Grinch—Sophie
  Because I hate christmas almost as much as he does! But I won’t steal anything, honest!
• Rare Exports—Cliff
  It revolves around an evil Santa, what could be better? I expected a dark, tense pseudo-horror and whilst it starts off brooding & suspenseful it builds into a fun & oddly charming film.
• Miracle on 34th Street—Mike W
  Because its one of the all term classics and embodies the true spirit of Christmas.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas—Mike F
  Tim Burton animation at it’s brilliant best.
• The Christmas Tree (1969)—Paul
  The story is really quite beautiful. Comment on the progress of science during the cold war era combined with sickly sweet sentimentality and a father/son relationship…all wrapped up in a not-so-festive bow.
• Love Actually—Heather
  Just because I’m a massive Colin Firth fan.
• National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation—Chrissie
  I can watch it every year and it never fails to make me laugh and it gets me in the Christmas spirit.

If we’ve missed your favourite, please let us know. If you agree with us—tell us why—we look forward to hearing from you.

Here comes the honest answer – yes. Yes it does. And for professional firms that means it takes fee earning time.

So why on earth would you, a busy professional, waste time tweeting, blogging and using LinkedIn? Honest answer again – because if you do it well you will win large chunks of new business. The challenge comes in keeping that time to a minimum and gaining the greatest returns – here are the realityhouse top tips for achieving this:

1. Be strategic – what do you want to achieve with social media; be clear about this and set goals/targets
2. Integrate social media – Tie social media effort tightly into your marketing plan – this will help you maximise returns
3. Develop a content plan – your social media work will be driven by content; if you know what content is needed and when; it’s much easier to deliver
4. Cover the basics – particularly with regard to social media policy and getting everyone’s LinkedIn profiles up to speed.
5. Train key fee earners – help you social media champions to succeed by training them to network online
6. Use the right tools – there are plenty of time-saving social media tools out there
7. Don’t expect results tomorrow – social media is a tool that builds connections; they need time to become potential conversions
8. Build the internal connections – Gradually extend the number of fee earners using social media – and train them. This will increase your reach.
9. Assess the impact – this is the tricky one – how do you measure success in social media; treat it as a cross between PR, social networking and events
10. Enjoy social media – it can be great fun

Is that all there is to it? Okay the planning it slightly more complex than portrayed above but with the right strategy and training your people will be winning business – which is what social media should be all about.