It seems like a silly question really – are you an attorney or a lawyer?  Both terms accurately describe your profession so it really doesn’t matter WHICH term you use when you or your agency creates your online marketing strategy for your law practice - does it?  Let’s find out.

When it comes to local search – the search engines – like Google – know that both of these terms are interchangeable and deliver identical Local Search 7 Packs:

For example, a search for an attorney in Miami (first image thumbnail – click to open)

yields an identical result as a search for a lawyer in Miami (second image thumbnail – click to open):
Notice however, the results returned in organic search results below the local search box. While the super directory site Lawyers.com holds the number 1 organic “natural” search position for the term “miami attorneys” – the Superpages directory holds it for the term “miami lawyers”

So it’s obvious that when it comes to NATURAL or “unpaid” search – the two terms are not identically interchangeable.

What happens with paid search?  Well a recent keyword analysis reveals that bidding for the term “miami attorneys”  reveals you can expect to pay about $13 per click – with 18,100 local searches for the term.  Meanwhile, the term “miami lawyers” showed 27,100 local searches – with an expected CPC of less than $11 per click.

Of course, the REAL question at hand is not whether you think you’re  an attorney or a lawyer – but rather what terms do your best prospective legal clients use when they’re searching for you and your practice.

There are almost 10,000 attorneys listed in the yellow pages who practice in Miami Florida alone.  However, the internet doesn’t WORK like the soon to be obsolete  yellow pages.    Those were the good old days – when an attorney could count on a Miami resident in need of a lawyer to simply pick up the yellow pages and “let their fingers do the walking.”  Even if you couldn’t secure the back cover – or any other prime spot in any of the multiple local yellow page directories – you could still count on a fair shot once your prospective client opened up the yellow pages and turned to “attorneys”.

Now – the paths to finding your practice are as varied as the number of pages on the internet (currently estimated to be in the TRILLIONS.)  For example, if you’re a personal injury lawyer – your prospective clients may not begin their official “search” for a lawyer by typing in the terms “best auto accident lawyer“.  Instead, they may find an auto accident victim forum where they begin to converse with other car accident victims.   Before you know it – they’re at a new auto accident lawyer directory making a decision about which attorney to choose to represent them.

In my work with clients – I use the term “bread crumb trails” to describe these hidden – yet profitable – paths for attracting clients.  While this tiny directory may not rank in the top ten for any search term today – the leads a listing there could send may well be the most profitable for your practice to pursue.

In the end, what’s more important than trying to decide whether you define yourself as an “attorney” or a “lawyer” – but rather how do your best prospective CLIENTS define you and what you do.

What do prospective clients need to know before they hire you?  If you haven’t asked yourself this question lately – or ever – it is essential to ask and answer that question before you begin crafting a marketing strategy for your legal practice.

When you’re getting ready to draft a marketing message – it  is not the time to go deep and reflect on your credentials or your personal strengths/weaknesses.    Instead, this is the time to step outside of yourself and try to see the process of hiring legal representation through the eyes of your prospective clients.

Stepping outside yourself and into your prospective client’s shoes is exceedingly hard – especially when you’ve spent YEARS in law school – training yourself to THINK differently than the average person.  However, the ability to step outside yourself and into your clients shoes is an essential step in creating successful attorney marketing strategies especially now as the average person shifts from using the yellow pages to find legal representation to the internet.

When people use the internet to find information, they often don’t use the same “rules” which ruled the printed yellow page directories.  When people do search the internet in the same manner they used the yellow pages – the search engines have responded by creating what is known as “local search” directories.  These local search directories operate in a VERY similar manner to the yellow pages – meaning when someone enters “accident attorney” followed by their location – the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask and Bing will return a nifty little map with markers showing all the prospective attorneys available in the area.

If you’ve maintained a business listing in the yellow pages, chances are you already have just such a  listing – all you need to do is claim your free local search listing.

However, what if a prospective client doesn’t search for terms which trigger a local search listing?  What if prospective clients are still trying to decide IF they need a lawyer?

This is why it is critical to get inside the heads of these prospective clients and try to see the world through their eyes.  What information are they seeking?  What words are they using to find this information?

Getting your name and information in front of prospective clients as they determine WHETHER they need a lawyer is one of the best practice building marketing strategies you can implement.  When you know what  prospective clients need to know before they hire you, it gives you a  SIGNIFICANT advantage when it comes to using the internet to get find new clients online.

When you know what prospective clients need to know in order to hire you – you can answer those questions on your blog.  You can use those questions as blog post titles – which helps blog visitors know immediately that they’re in the right place for the answers they seek.

When you do a search about marketing on the internet,  you’ll see the vast majority of the listings are marketing gurus trying to sell you a “system”.

What you won’t see is that often, their  “marketing system” was designed to market  information products and other low cost good sold and delivered exclusively on the Internet.

As a legal professional, you may wonder if the tools the info gurus are promoting will help you to build and promote your legal practice.

Unfortunately, the answer is “probably not”.

Marketing your own professional expertise is simply not the same  as marketing an “information product” (which is what most internet  marketing sites are offering).

Inf fact, the same marketing tools and tactics that work incredibly well at promoting an info product -  are often not only ineffective at promoting your legal practice but may actually hurt your reputation.

An information product is an example of a Minor Sale.  The tools and techniques used to sell those products are RADICALLY different  than the tools and techniques used to make Major Sales  – like the what happens when a client hires you.

According to Neil Rackham in his book “Spin Selling”, you are making   minor sales if

• There is a single decision maker
• The financial/emotional investment on part of buyer is insignificant
• The purchase does not warrant time and research into alternatives
• There is not a lot of interaction between you and the consumer
• The consequences of making a purchasing mistake are inconsequential.

In general, minor sales have a buying curve that is short.

As you read that descriptions I’m sure you realized that you are NOT making minor sale when you sign an agreement to represent a client.

When you’re selling your  legal expertise, you are making a major sale,  which tend to involve more time and research on the part of the consumer.  The characteristics of the Major Sale are:

• There is more than one decision maker
• There is significant financial/emotional investment on the part of buyer
• The purchase warrants significant time and research into alternatives
• There is the potential of a long-term relationship between you and/or your business and the customer
• The consequences of making a purchasing mistake are high

Purchasing shampoo is a minor sale.

Choosing an expert such as a lawyer is a major sale.

If you try to market your business (which is making major sales)  by following  advice designed for marketing Internet products and services (which are by nature, minor sales), you’re likely to make  some serious mistakes.

The most serious mistake of all is to underestimate the role information plays in the decision making process of the Major Sale.

The more information you can provide to a prospective legal client – the better your chances are of successfully landing that client.   That’s why blogs are a crucial marketing tool for attorneys who want to build and promote their practice.

Blogs allow you to demonstrate your legal expertise – without repeating the same spiel time and time again.

Not only do blogs allow you to demonstrate your expertise, they also are quickly becoming the “uniform” of the web.  Just as a policeman’s uniform instantly conveys “authority” – attorney blogs are quickly gaining that kind of effect – not only with prospective clients but with the media as well.

Until recently, there were only two options for attorney blogging.  Attorneys could invest a lot of time/money into launching a self hosted blog.  These self hosted blogs are great at attracting quality traffic but require considerable expertise and upkeep.  The other option – a cheesy “free” blog .  That’s why Attorney Marketing & Advertising has introduced the easy way to blog… simply pick the domain name which targets the audience you want to reach (eg. birth injury) and you’ll be blogging in as little as 24 hours!

Sign up for your Attorney Marketing & Advertising blog today.

If you’ve done a search for your law practice online – you might be surprised to find your practice listed in what is called Local Search.

Why might you be surprised?  Well because it’s possible that your practice is listed here without you having done ANYTHING other than maintain a listing in your local yellow page directory.

The good news -  your practice is probably showing up here without you having done anything.

Now for the bad news – until you claim this free listing – it’s fair game.  It’s possible for someone other than you to hijack this listing.  The typical business owner has to worry about his/her competitors claiming his/ her listing.  However this is pretty mild compared to the “dangers” faced by attorneys.  With PPC rates for attorney related keywords going through the roof, unclaimed listings for attorneys are fair game for spammers and other internet thieves.

There are several different sites where you must go and individually claim your local listing.  As of this moment, you must claim each listing independently – so claiming your local search listing with Google is just one of the many sites where you MUST claim your listing.

Claiming your listing is easy – and once you’ve claimed your various listings – you can put them to work bringing new clients into your practice.

We’ve created an easy step by step guide to claiming your local search listing.  If you can use email- you can claim your local search listing.   The process can be done as quickly as a matter of hours if you know exactly where to go and what to do.

If your practice is listed – you need to claim your listing – NOW!

If your practice isn’t listed here – it needs to be – NOW!

The clock is ticking and the race to the top of the local search listings is literally won by those who start the race early.

Get this critical information written in an easy to understand manner with the Business Owner’s Guide to Local Search.

The best attorney marketing strategies sell your legal expertise without taking on the traditional “image of selling”.

Selling your expertise is a HUGE obstacle for any attorney.  The biggest problem with “selling” your legal expertise is that mere mention of the word “selling”  conjures up images of a sleazy guy with slicked back hair in a cheap suit.  This sales chariacture laughs too hard at your jokes and has only one goal in mind: poking and prodding his unsuspecting victim until he has extracted the cash he desires.

If that’s what you think of when you hear the word “selling” – then it’s little wonder why you would respond as you do to the word “selling” when it comes to your legal practice.

Fortunately, traditional confrontational old school “selling” strategies have never worked well for attorneys in marketing their practice, so relatively few have made the mistake of trying these strategies to promote their legal practice.

However, what if selling your legal services looked like something else?

What if -  in the process of “selling” your legal expertise – you were also building your online authority?

Dean Rieck is a copywriter who tells the story of “Cedar Plank Selling” and offers a glimpse into the secrets to selling your legal expertise without engaging in old school hard sell strategies.  Rieck tells of how entrepreneurs Harry Aldrich and David Maddocks wanted to sell a simple 6″ X 12″ piece of wood to thousands of consumers via the Pacific Northwest Grocery Chain Fred Myers.  Aldrich and Maddocks could have chosen to put together a presentation to “sell” the buyer on the concept of bringing a fine dining experience of eating cedar plank salmon to the home kitchen – but they didn’t.  Instead they simply took one of their cedar planks and grilled a piece of salmon purchased at a Fred Myers store and brought it with them to the meeting with the buyer.  They opened with, “Taste this.  We think these will help you sell more salmon.”

Within this anecdote lies the key to learning to sell without selling: Focus on the buyer’s problem.

In this case, the buyers at Fred Myers were only mildly interested in adding a new product to their shelves – but Aldrich and Maddocks positioned their product as a way to sell more highly perishable salmon. By focusing on their prospective customer’s problem -  Aldrich and Maddocks were able to quickly and easily make a major sale – all without the traditional trappings of a traditional “sales presentation”.  They didn’t have to “push” – they didn’t have to “sell”… they let the taste of the salmon do all of the “selling” for them.

Attorneys who want to effectively market and build their practice can benefit from the cedar plank selling story.

Begin your “sell without selling” campaign by identifying the problems your prospective legal clients are facing.  When people call you – they have a problem.  Getting them to call you is as easy as demonstrating how you’ve helped others who had similar problems.

To sell your legal expertise without selling, simply begin writing about how you’ve helped others who were facing similar problems solve those problems.

Yes – it’s just that easy.  However, there’s a catch: writing those stories in your private journal won’t do much in the way of “selling” your legal expertise.  When you begin writing those problem solving tales on your Attorney Marketing & Advertising blog, then those problem solving stories can become powerful authority building practice marketing tools.

By blogging about how you’ve helped others solve their problems, you’re creating  one of the most powerful marketing messages and sharing it with millions of internet users.   Then you’re well on your way to selling your legal expertise without the traditional pushing and prodding one traditionally thinks of when one hears the word “selling” used.

It is official -  the old fashioned phone book is officially obsolete.  The internet is truly becoming the “new directory” of choice by consumers.  However, don’t expect your local yellow page directory rep to break the news – according to their industry’s research, Overall Yellow Pages Usage Growing.  “Yellow Pages — in Print and Online — Remains a Go-To Resource for Ready-to-Buy Consumers, Says Yellow Pages Association”

Ever see the movie “Thank You for Smoking”?   In that movie, the main character – Nick Naylor- is the chief spokesperson and lobbyist for Big Tobacco.  His official title is the Vice-President of the Academy of Tobacco Studies.  The plot summary at IMDb.com for the movie reveals the core of the movie’s plot:

Tobacco industry lobbyist Nick Naylor has a seemingly impossible task: promoting cigarette smoking in a time when the health hazards of the activity have become too plain to ignore. Nick, however, revels in his job, using argument and twisted logic to place, as often as not, his clients in the positions of either altruistic do-gooders or victims.

In the movie, Robert Duvall plays the Captain – who remembers the day that Reader’s Digest finally “outed” tobacco as causing cancer.  Prior to that time – tobacco companies were actually advertising their product as “healthy”.    After that seminal moment, the job of the tobacco executive was to find a way to keep the money train rolling.   Nick’s boss – BR – delivers this line in the movie:

People, what is going on out there? I look down this table, all I see are white flags. Our numbers are down all across the board. Teen smoking, our bread and butter, is falling like a shit from heaven! We don’t sell Tic Tacs for Christ’s sake. We sell cigarettes. And they’re cool and available and *addictive*. The job is almost done for us!

Your yellow page rep is facing a similar future – and a similar lecture from his/her superiors.    The seminal moment for the Yellow Page directory was when  Bill Gates made the predictiction about Yellow Page usage way back in 1997:

The Yellow Pages are going to be used less and less. When you go to this service that’s going to take our technology and Tellme technology that we acquired, when you say something like “plumber,” the presentation you get will be far better than something you get in the Yellow Pages. After all, we know your location, and so we can cluster around that. We can take the information and show you the names, and you can expand the information easily. These things always take time, but Yellow Page usage among people, say, below 50, will drop to zero — near zero — over the next five years.”

More than a decade later, Slate reporter Paul Collins asked “Why won’t phone books die?“   Within the article, he reveals the answer:

But, above all, phone books were the sine qua non of small-business advertising and such an unstoppable gusher of profit that by the time industry pioneer Reuben Donnelly died in 1929, he’d already built up a $10 million personal estate.

Just because cigarettes were no longer “healthy” didn’t mean Big Tobacco was going to quit selling them to consumers.  The same is true of yellow page advertising.

Why are attorneys still relying upon the obsolete phone book for the lion’s share of their advertising?

The reason is simple: because like cigarettes – advertising in the yellow page is so easy it’s positively addictive.

Pick up any of your local yellow page directories and you’ll find them jam packed with thousands of businesses who still rely upon these relics from the past as their primary method of advertising.

Advertising is the phone book is literally “set it and forget it” marketing and advertising for attorneys.  If you – as an attorney – would ever question whether your yellow page advertising was effective – you would be instructed to ask every caller HOW they found your practice.  The twist here is – if the yellow pages are the ONLY place you’re advertising – then what other answer would you expect to get from prospective clients?

While  traditional printed phone directories are obsolete – they will remain viable as long as long as the “pushers” of yellow page advertising are no longer able to get small business owners to support their yellow page advertising habit.

The problem- if you’re relying on your yellow page directory advertising to build your legal practice – you’re booking a room on the Titanic.    The Yellow Pages are obsolete – and if you’ve noticed a drop in the number of prospective client calls your firm receives that’s probably the reason.

In the recent article The “New” Yellow Page Directory – the Internet, I shared:

In some ways – the internet is EXACTLY like the Yellow Pages.  However, in other ways – the way people use the internet is radically different than the way they use yellow pages.  This knowledge can change the way you view – and use – the internet to build your legal  practice.

In some ways, the internet functions exactly like the old fashioned phone book .

Ten years ago, when someone  knew you – knew your legal expertise and knew they wanted to hire you as their legal representative, they  would turn to the phone book to find your practice and your contact information.  Usually, when someone knew exactly who they wanted to call – they would turn to the White Pages portion of the phone book – because let’s face it – the Yellow Pages could be kind of confusing.  The publisher knew it – that’s why if you look under “doctors” in the Yellow Pages – they have a “see physicians” to try to help you navigate the twisty and confusing paths through the directory.

When it comes to the internet, your “traditional” web site is working just like your listing in the white pages of the phone book.  When someone wants to find your law practice – they can type in your practice name and – assuming your web site is properly coded – the odds are good that  one of the major search engines will happily display your law firm’s web site on the first page of the results.

When someone knows they want to find YOU – the internet is far SUPERIOR to the white pages of the phone book.  When they search for your name or your practice name – they won’t get a complete local alphabetical listing of residential and business phone numbers.  In addition, when these prospective clients  come to your web site, they can choose multiple ways to contact you.  If they’ve found you in the middle of the night, they can shoot off an email to you instead of waiting for the morning when your receptionist will be answering the phone.

Your web site can also provide essential information for that prospective client.  Your web site can contain a lot more information than even the largest ad could contain.

Fortunately, most attorney web sites can be found on the internet by simply searching for the practice name.

The game changes significantly though when the user does NOT know the name of the law firm they want to contact.   That’s when you need a web presence that can be “found” like a yellow page listing – not a white page listing.

In the old days – when people didn’t know exactly WHICH attorney they wanted to hire – they would first turn to friends and family for a recommendation.  If no one they knew could recommend a “good lawyer” – they would then turn to the yellow pages where they would find a variety of listings and display ads competing for their attention.

That was then – and this is now.

People are still turning to family and friends for recommendations – but they’re having those conversations online – in social media sites like MySpace and Facebook.  When they can’t access their social network for a recommendation -they begin researching using the internet.

This is probably the most important difference between the old fashioned yellow pages and the new fangled internet – the way people use these resources.

In the days before the internet – the only way a prospective client could “research” a legal issue was to pick up the phone book and call a lawyer.    While there are still way too many “tire kicker” researchers who are more than willing to burn up your valuable time picking your brain without any intention of hiring you – many people are instead turning to the internet to do research before they pick up the phone.

This is the where the internet is RADICALLY different than the yellow pages.  When someone would pick up the yellow pages – they were often done with the research phase of the decision making process.    They were what yellow page advertising representatives liked to call “Now Buyers” – people ready to make a buying decision.

When advertising in the Yellow Pages – you could rest assured that most of the people who saw your ad were “Now Buyers”.  However, the internet is different.  The internet has it’s share of  “Now Buyers” as well – but it also has a multitude of other people who haven’t decided to hire a layer – YET.

There was no way to “reach” those researchers in days before the internet – but there is now.  You can catch people who are researching as they do their research.  You can get your name and your firm in front of  people who do NOT know the name of the law firm they want to contact as they do their research.

That’s when you need a web presence that can be “found” like a yellow page listing – not a white page listing. If your firm’s web site doesn’t appear on the first few pages for a specific search query – then you can count your web site as one that is buried and obscure.

If your current web site is buried and obscure – you may have written off using the internet to build your practice. You may not realize how powerful – and profitable – the internet can be.

No where else is the phrase “knowledge is power” more true than on the internet.

The internet is changing everything.  It’s changing the way we communicate with each other via social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook.  It’s also changing the way we get news – with many turning to Twitter instead of the newspaper or television for breaking news.   Now, the new smart phones are putting the internet in the palm of our hands – and as a result – the attorney’s favorite “go to” advertising vehicle – the Yellow Page Directory – is on it’s way to becoming extinct.

If you stop and think about it, many attorneys should be cheering this shift.  For the first time in history – small law firms and attorneys in private practice can fairly and effectively compete with large law practices with (what seem to be) bottomless bank accounts when it comes to the new directory – the internet.

While it’s possible for  a single law firm is able to dominate the local phone book by simply purchasing a “prime” position – at a hefty premium with a long term contract – this is not the case when it comes to the internet.  Which means this  is GOOD news for anyone who doesn’t have deep enough pockets to win a coveted position with the traditional printed phone book directories.

If you’re an attorney and  you’ve been relying on the yellow pages as your main source of client referrals, you may be surprised at how rapidly the once undisputed king of lawyer advertising is losing ground to the up and coming challenger – the internet. This up and coming directory has grown to include tens of billions (yes, that’s billions with a “b”) of “listings” for virtually every category covered by the yellow pages.

While the internet has been around for almost two decades – universal adoption amongst users is growing rapidly.  One major contributing factor in  the decline of the traditional yellow pages is the rapid adoption of the new “smart phones” – cell phones which can also access the internet.  Why lug a phone book with you when the internet is just a few clicks away via your phone?

In a recent online survey, Gawker Media asked the question, “Do you still use a phone book?” While the survey results can not help but be skewed – after all, internet access is required to participate – after approximately 10,000 responses – 76% reported they “Never” use the phone book. Meanwhile 20% reported they “rarely” use the phone book – leaving 4% to claim their undying allegiance to the good old fashioned phone book.

The decline in the number of people using the phone book Yellow pages is a serious problem for those who make their living publishing yellow page directories.  It’s also a serious problem for businesses – like law firms – that rely heavily on the Yellow pages for new client referrals.

While there’s a lot to love about the internet as a replacement for the Yellow Pages -the internet -  there’s a lot more to “not love” as well.

The Internet is where people turn for answers.

What’s to love about the “new” directory known as the internet?   Well  for starters  it’s relatively easy to get your listing online.  Even though you might spend thousands of dollars on your “listing”  a.k.a. your web site- to be included in this directory requires little more than simply registering a domain name and paying a hosting fee.

Your internet “listing” can be updated any time and doesn’t require extensive “lead time” to make the changes.  If you’re fluent in HTML (or if you have a blog) you can literally update your web site in just a few keystrokes.

Your internet “listing” is also accessible to anyone with access to the internet.  With the rise of “smart phones” – that means that when a prospective client’s fingers do the walking – it’s over a tiny keyboard on a cell phone which is accessing the internet.

What’s not to love – well, there’s where it gets interesting.  Unlike the yellow pages,  this “other” directory – the Internet- doesn’t employ an organized sales force of commissioned advertising representatives.  Those commissioned advertising yellow page representatives made sure not only that your practice was listed – but also that your listing worked hard at making your phone ring.  After all – if your phone didn’t ring as a result of your yellow page ad – you surely weren’t going to spend more on it next year.

What’s even worse is that you can spend a small fortune on your web presence and  mistakenly believe that you are included in this massive directory – only to discover that your listing is buried – or worse yet – obscured.  With over a trillion web pages in its index, getting your internet listing “found” by prospective clients is getting harder not easier.

In some ways – the internet is EXACTLY like the yellow pages.  However, in other ways – the way people use the internet is radically different than the way they use yellow pages.  Knowing these facts can change the way you view – and use – the internet to build your legal  practice.