How Do You Educate Attorneys About Marketing?

Interviewer: You say marketing is feeble and misunderstood by attorneys? What do you say to attorneys to make them understand the larger process?

Richard: The first thing is getting their ear and having them listen to you. That’s where their being burned kind of comes in handy, actually. I’m not preying upon that but someone burned will do one of two things. They’ll get burned and retreat like a turtle into their shell. They will do no more marketing and say it doesn’t work. Others will get burned and hurt but still look for something that does work.

At least, they’ll listen when someone tries to educate them. One of the best things I’ve done is start a weekly email newsletter that goes out to several thousand attorneys. I just talk about one issue in each email. I talk about issues that are important to them; that are bugging them; that I know they are having a hard time with.

Over time, these emails provide an education in marketing. In addition, it is free. I get calls saying, “Hey, I read your newsletter last week. That issue you talked about really spoke to me. Tell me what you can do.” Now, the conversation is open, and the door is open. They know I am not there just to take their money.

I am there to teach them. Then, they feel, “All right, this guy seems to know what he’s doing. It’s worth calling him and talking to him.” Now the conversation is open and we start a relationship. I have also realized my job is to have the keys to educate them throughout the entire relationship; the six months or the year or two we work together.

It never stops because they’re experts at their stuff and I am an expert at my stuff. I have to keep teaching them to make it better and better.

Interviewer: Who do you send your newsletter to?

Richard: It started with all DUI lawyers. Now, it has expanded to criminal defense lawyers and some new clients that do bankruptcy, family law and things like that. About 80% of them are criminal defense lawyers. I understand them best.

I am now able to branch out a bit further. Some of them are my clients. I have 21 clients right now. There are well over 2,000 on the list. So 99% are not.

What Effective Marketing Strategies Are Implemented By Richard Jacobs And Speakeasy Authority Marketing?

Interviewer: What effective marketing strategies do you utilize?

Richard: One thing I’ve learned, which is disheartening, is no one thing works. You have to do several different things, which is even more annoying. However, there is no panacea. If you do SEO, which is search engine optimization, try to get into Google.

SEO is never going to get you to the point where you are getting enough clients to just live off that alone. You have to also do other things. Here are some of the top things that I found work really well. One is doing a newsletter to your past clients. It sounds weird but it works.

Interviewer: Considering almost everyone is online, are people still looking at the hard copy of a newsletter?

Richard: Yes, it works very well because it cuts through clutter. We found with email you have to get the emails cleared. For a lot of people, the email goes to spam. A lot of attorneys will get 200 emails a day. They have no time to look at them.

If 10% of the people you send to read your email, that is pretty good. The physical letter, postcard or whatever in the mail is a one-on-one experience between you and that recipient.