Boosting referrals has always been a significant part of attorney marketing strategies. It remains so today. In fact, last year professional services organizations cited this initiative among their top marketing priorities.

Humans have a primal need to earn the praise and respect of others—and so do companies. But how we’ve gone about securing those good words, we’re learning, may have been too limiting. Referral marketing is bigger than combing the database and asking for recommendations. Referrals now play into a wholly integrated media strategy, including the ever-changing role of attorney television advertising.

Referrals three ways

First let’s clarify what constitutes a referral in today’s digitally centered environment. The answer may be surprising. New research from Hinge Marketing, dissected in a recent report called Referral Marketing for Professional Services Firms, shows that over 81% of 532 firms interviewed, including legal services, have received a referral from someone who wasn’t even a client.

This telling statistic immediately counters the idea that attorneys can only garner positive feedback, reviews and references from clients they’ve represented, won a significant case for or even know personally, for example. In fact, there are now three commonly accepted referral categories based on very different parameters:

Experience: The most traditional form, experience-based referrals are the ones that you are mostly likely already chasing—clients who can adequately recommend your firm based on an experience of working directly with your lawyers in the past.

Expertise: This is a recommendation based on a firm’s implied ability to handle a specific case type or area of expertise. So a person that might know of you as the “car crash attorneys,” even without direct or extensive knowledge of your results or reputation, may still refer your lawyers based on this general brand knowledge.

Reputation: This referral form is more common in law than many realize. An organization that has never worked directly with your law firm can still speak highly of your attorneys’ capabilities, based on your reputation in the marketplace alone.

What this insight tells us is that many professional service organizations may be selling themselves short by not taking a wider view of referrals—both seeking them out and advertising around them. In fact, focusing too tightly on tracking down clients for comment could be limiting the potential of your referral marketing campaign.

Instead, consider extended associations and “non-clients” as untapped resources, and start to uncover and leverage what all kinds of people and other organizations have to say about the important work you do as lawyers.

Ramping up your online reputation

Before you can run with your new referral-marketing program, however, it’s important to make sure you’ve put in place all the tools possible to ensure potential referrers don’t rule you out before they even have the chance to refer your law firm. The golden ticket? Making sure people get to and “past” your website.

The Referral Marketing for Professional Services Firms research found that 51.9% of respondents “ruled out referrals before speaking with the firm in question.” And the issues most mentioned were directly related to a company’s lackluster online presence. Almost 30% cited an unimpressive website for turning the other cheek. About 23% were turned off by poor-quality content, and another nearly 16% stopped cold when they couldn’t even find the firm in an initial search.

None of this information is surprising since previous research has shown that some 80% of buyers head directly to a corporate website to evaluate an organization first. If your law firm’s web presence is apathetic at best, earning those extra-credit reputation-based referrals is out of the question. Ramp up your referral marketing efforts by getting your website—everything from design upgrades to intuitive usability to compelling content—in order first.

A dynamic duo: Referrals and TV advertising

Attorney television advertising remains a crucial part of the marketing mix for professional practices around the country. This far-reaching visual advertising combined with a strong web presence and database or referral marketing plan will keep your firm squarely in front of past contacts—and potential cases.

Once you start to look with a wider perspective at what may be deemed a referral in the first place, as well as how to ensure you continue to get acclaim going forward, what you need to do from a media and marketing standpoint may start to crystalize before your eyes.

Look the part: If you’re indeed getting referrals without a referrer even talking to a lawyer at your firm, let alone trusting you with a legal case, where are these people coming from and what’s making them believe in you? The Hinge Marketing report showed the top type—expertise-based referrals—came from channels that might not even be on your radar:

• Speaking engagements (30%)
• Articles or blog posts (20%)
• Social media interactions (17%)

What do these results convey? While TV remains a prime resource for spreading the brand gossip far and wide, interpersonal communications, social-media engagement and thought-leadership-style content must support the bigger message you’re putting out there.

Lawyers have to look the part—on both first and second screens—not to mention in-person at reputation-building sessions such as keynotes, round tables and conventions. Referral marketing has become a sophisticated engine: all the parts must look the part to create a cohesive, believable, trustworthy brand.

Leverage your luck: Now comes the fun part. What do you do with all these new referrals from new referral avenues? Smart attorneys are leveraging recommendations in cutting-edge TV advertising. You’ve probably heard of the customer journey and the customer experience. Now pair that with first-hand client feedback, or a person’s overall impression of your firm based on a specific area of expertise or reputation in the industry. Why not leverage these realizations in your advertising campaign?

Just as you are now thinking out of the box about referrals, your attorney television advertising campaign should project the same perspective. Instead of recycling conventional “talking-head” client commercials, delivering canned-sounding recommendations, be creative. (Or at least let your legal marketing and advertising agency have some fun.) You’ve been given new tools—three types of referrals. Now let the legal marketing experts develop a campaign that conveys that client experience (or potential experience) in a fresh and memorable way.

Want to take advantage of more referral opportunities and leverage the people who already support you? We can help. Call us today! (888) 461-1016

How to get the modern client’s attention and hold your team accountable

We know that the journey of today’s client—your prospective legal client—is anything but a straight path. Technology allows consumers to engage with legal brands at many touchpoints across diverse devices and platforms. In this increasingly variable environment you never know when your law firm could get a new lead or sign a new case. Occasionally the traditional case-acquisition model works: A viewer sees your TV commercial, for example, checks out the reputation of your firm and attorneys on the Web and calls your phone number to learn more or seek legal advice.

However that previously linear path is increasingly unpredictable, and consumers are in charge of when, where and how they interact with brands and make decisions. Today’s legal client might see a Facebook comment about your law firm, call a friend for a referral and start the engagement process through your intake center—with very little prior knowledge of what type of law your firm focuses on or what cases your attorneys actually handle. Modern legal advertising strategies require that lawyers are prepared to address consumers’ needs at every possible touchpoint.

One of the biggest mistakes in law firm marketing is focusing a majority of spend too far upfront in the process while neglecting the backend of the sales stream. Firms get very motivated around a new creative advertising campaign, for example, but lose focus around what happens when calls or Internet leads actually begin to come in from their advertising efforts. If you’ve done your job properly by setting up a multifaceted advertising strategy to hit customers at each touchpoint along their self-directed journey, the most significant oversight may be forgetting to have an effective intake program in place to seal the deal.

You’ve spent the time and money to build a legal advertising campaign, and you’ve made every effort to “touch” prospective clients on every screen and platform they typically engage with during a day. Do not overlook the critical importance of intake to convert a lead into a paying case. In fact, there’s a great opportunity in intake, because most firms are not currently focusing energy here. If your office prioritizes strengthening intake strategy you will quickly surpass the competition, without spending more money on more advertising!

For example, if an average net attorney fee is $10,000, converting just 10 new cases a year equals $100,000; 100 new cases could bring in a million dollars. Yes, one million net dollars – without spending more on your advertising. Treat intake like other aspects of your advertising campaign: By simply fine-tuning a methodology that most firms don’t you could be winning more cases. The ROI on tweaking your intake process to convert cases is extraordinary when compared to investing those dollars in additional upfront advertising avenues.

So where do you begin?

Creating an intake agenda for 2016

Law firms cannot begin to build an effective action plan without having some numbers to act on. It’s helpful to conduct an internal audit of your current intake process to develop a baseline for change. Start by asking your attorneys and intake specialists a few directive questions:

• What is your firm’s conversion percentage? You MUST know and understand this. Go back three years, month by month. How have things shifted? Are there times of year that are more productive than others?

• Record ALL intake calls. What are you communicating? Have your attorneys listened to the intake professionals representing their firm? Are your intake specialists listening to their own calls to see what they can do better? Perhaps you have the wrong person on the phone who conveys the wrong message simply by the tone of his or her voice. Maybe the talking points you’ve created for your intake professionals are not truly representative of your brand. When was the last time you reviewed your script?

• What software are you currently using? Do you have tracking tools in place? Do you have adequate technology and practices to track things like cost per lead and average time to signing?

• What is your intake culture? Do you empower your professionals with an open-door policy, standards and call protocol, and regular meetings and monitoring? It’s possible that your attorneys are not involved enough in the process—or are perhaps intervening in ways that actually devalue your intake people.

Often the reasons law firms are not signing more cases is actually buried in some of their intake processes rather than in mistakes in their global advertising strategy. Remember, increasing your bottom line could be a matter of tweaking these procedures or better tracking and acting on data you’ve collected through the intake process.

Here are a few ways to begin to take action to elevate intake:

Record all of your intake calls and listen to them. Also make sure you listen to your afterhours message. Walk through the entire intake process, starting with the first phone call through follow-up communication. Try calling several different times over a month to gauge the consistency. Then, ask yourself these questions:

• What tone are your intake representatives communicating?
• How fast does an intake representative get back to you?
• Were you put on gold? If so, for how long?
• How would you rate your customer service?

Consider your experience objectively and then start fixing what you deem to be biggest issues.

Monitor your performance.

You cannot improve your intake performance unless you have tools in place to track calls, web leads and statistics around how you’re responding to prospective clients. What tools do you need to properly monitor your customer-service performance and improve response time (for both claimants and referrers)? Are your intake specialists spending time on long calls with claimants that your firm ultimately does not want to sign? Are you assigning too many cases to your intake specialists? Once you have tracking tools in place you can work on making your people and processes more effective, with the intent to covert more calls to cases.

Create a culture.

If people answering your phones and Internet inquires could be the link that converts a lead to a case, shouldn’t you treat them like a personal investment? It’s important to begin to think of intake more like a culture of customer service. Empowering your intake professionals will give them confidence, something you can hear in the tone of their delivery, as well as make them feel part of a bigger team dedicated to case acquisition. Show your intake staff that your attorneys appreciate them by creating a thoughtful and rewarding environment. Include intake staff members in frequent review meetings and maintain an open-door policy so people feel they can make suggestions for improvement. You can also support a healthy intake culture by developing consistent intake procedures and encouraging all communication specialists to follow that protocol.

Take it further.

Make sure the intake process isn’t the part of case acquisition that “drops the ball” along the sales channel. Intake is not just one phone call. It’s part of a larger communication process. In fact, several statistics that demonstrate exactly this: Only 10% of sales people make more than three contacts; 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact. Likewise, web leads followed up on within five minutes are nine times more likely to convert. To ensure that your law firm is beating the competition to the case, you must be faster, more thorough and more persistent. Elevate the entire intake system by setting in place rules for follow-up, along with leveraging leads for future cases.

If your law firm’s multipronged advertising is working, chances are your phone is already ringing. But, remember, that’s not where case acquisition ends—that’s where it starts. Begin to hone your intake strategy to make sure that your legal advertising pays off in more signed cases in 2016. Customers are on an increasingly complex decision-making path. It’s critical that when you have they’re attention, you keep it. Law firms can make or break a case by how they deliver on intake.

Want to convert more cases in 2016? Need more insight on how to improve your law firm’s intake procedures? Network Affiliates has been helping lawyers evolve their advertising, marketing and advertising strategies since 1981. Call (888) 461-1016 today!