Ep. 8 - How Being Wildly Profitable Actually Benefits Your Clients

On this episode of The Successful Barrister, Marc and Diana discuss how to create a marketing plan – and why being wildly profitable is good for your client. Learn Marc’s six strategies for marketing success and adopt them for your firm. Discover the best practices for paid marketing, how to measure your ROI, and why most firms have more problems converting leads than they do generating them. Generate public interest in your firm and get your intake department ready to respond to that interest. 

For detailed show notes, use the timestamps below to navigate the episode:

[1:20] This episode focuses on how your law firm can create a marketing plan. This subject is a passion for Marc, who developed the marketing plan for his firm. 

[2:18] Why is marketing so important? According to Marc, it is a law firm’s duty to be wildly profitable. From the perspective of a firm, your revenue is based on the success you generate for your clients. This means that your interests and your client’s interests are aligned. When a firm is wildly profitable, that benefits the clients – you can implement better technology and hire better experts, allowing you to produce better outcomes for your clients. 

[4:25] Lawyers who get disbarred do not go into law hoping to act unethically. Instead, they tend to face financial obstacles that lead them to take shortcuts. Being profitable limits this pressure. 

[5:30] You must maximize your revenue and cut expenses to become profitable. How do you improve your firm revenue? You can either bring in more cases or bring in better cases – both require you to improve your marketing. 

[7:13] Lawyers always need more cases. But when a lead walks into your firm, do you have a reliable way to convert that lead into a case? Marc’s strategy is to focus on your intake department before spending a cent on marketing because there is no point in generating leads if you cannot convert them. 

[11:58] Marc implemented six strategies to improve his marketing, the first being creating an effective intake team. 

[14:52] You always have to match your marketing budget with the strength of your intake team and the friction in your firm. Spending money on marketing when you cannot convert clients into cases is a waste of money.

[16:22] Marc’s second strategy involves generating interest. His main method is utilizing search engine optimization (SEO) to generate interest through Google searches. He also reaches people through paid search ads and social media.

[19:23] Marc’s third strategy can be inexpensive or even free, but it may take time. Marc recommends marketing to other experts in similar fields. For Marc, PI lawyers are a great referral source because they are not direct competitors, but they work with similar clients.  

[21:44] The referral strategy requires follow-ups. Lawyers often forget names and refer people to the last relevant firm they spoke to. Marc Whitehead & Associates does this through its newsletter, The Successful Barrister. 

[24:28] Marc’s fourth tip is to market to your client base. Marc Whitehead & Associates also follows up with its clients through newsletters, social media, and other check-ins. These follow-ups are different than those targeted at lawyers. Marc suggests providing a mix of personality and useful information.

[28:27] The fifth tip is to maintain community relations. This can be a bit difficult. In the case of Marc Whitehead & Associates, connecting with disease advocacy groups is important because clients are frequently disabled by diseases. The firm also offers scholarships, which can bring in positive community attention and awareness. 

[30:42] Lastly, Marc presents his specialty niche strategy. This came from an audit where the firm determined that disabled doctors and dentists tend to be the most lucrative clients. Because of this, March Whitehead & Associates develops materials that appeal specifically to this client group. 

[34:42] How do you measure the results of your marketing? Usually, you look at ROI, or return on investment. In Marc’s opinion, an ideal return on investment is between five and seven to one. Marc Whitehead & Associates uses call trackers, specialty URLs, and other tracking methods to accurately check where conversions came from. 

[39:50] The highest return on investment for Marc Whitehead & Associates is SEO. However, SEO is not scalable. The second best ROI has been the firm’s attorney marketing campaign, which has a return of about 10:1. The firm’s client marketing campaign falls just below that. These top three tend to be consistent across firms. 

[41:33] How long should you allow experiments to run? It depends on the progress you see. If a strategy is staying at a consistently low return, you might eliminate it after four months. However, some strategies take longer to build up over time. 

[45:11] Marc created a marketing template that is over 50 pages long. He offers it to people in Word format so that they can take the pieces that apply to them and edit it. 

If you would like access to the marketing plan, email Marc at marc@marcwhitehead.com.

Visit the Successful Barrister website: https://www.successfulbarrister.com/ 

Visit the Marc Whitehead & Associates website: https://disabilitydenials.com/