Network Affiliates

Improving your relationships with your clients means better retention rates and more referrals. No matter how happy you believe your clients are, there is almost always some area in which you can improve and make them happier.

Create realistic expectations
You may be tempted to wow a new client by promising them the moon, but if you can’t deliver your client will see it as either incompetence or dishonesty on your part. And, they will spread the news.

More difficult to deal with is the client who comes to you with unrealistic expectations already established. Some clients often have a strong sense of entitlement and feel that they have been grossly wronged.

Your job is to create realistic expectations while remaining sympathetic and being on their side. Acknowledge that they deserve better, but be clear about the limitations of the law. Make sure they understand that these limitations were not your idea.

Know your client
No one can be expected to remember all of the details about each client they see or speak to, but forgetting any detail will plant a seed of doubt in your client’s mind. Always take good notes, writing down the personal details that do not necessarily apply to the case as well. Before meeting with or calling your client, review your notes.

Ask timely questions. You don’t have to get too personal, but if they are returning from a vacation or their kid just had a birthday party, mention it. And, by all means, have the details of their case straight and fresh on your mind.

Communicate promptly
One of the easiest ways to put people off is to be slow about returning calls or emails. You may be too busy to give a thorough response right now, but just letting them know you got the message and you are going to get back with them on the matter as soon as possible means you are paying attention and have the respect to show them common courtesy.

No one wants to feel like their case is on the back burner.

Keep in touch, even if nothing has changed
Keep your clients updated on the progress of their case. Even if nothing has changed, give them a call or send a quick email just to check in and let them know everything is still on course. And, if something does change, let them know right away even if it requires no action on their part.

Finding the weaknesses in how you and your firm deal with clients can be tough, but necessary. Bringing them in is only the beginning. To learn more about how your firm can improve client relationships, please contact Network Affiliates today.

Hello, and welcome back to the second part of my ongoing blog about topics related to social media and the Internet.

I was planning on posting a blog about how one sets up a blog and gets going with blogging for my second blog. However, I think a better place to start would be this great post I read from leading social marketer, Chris Brogan. He published a nice little piece on how to start using social media if you are a small business. It has some great pointers and further reinforces the fact that if you are standing still when it comes to using the Internet, you are falling behind.

Advertising on TV is not enough anymore. Competition during these tough economic times has only increased and more small businesses are looking for inexpensive alternatives to marketing on TV. One of these avenues is the Internet, and if your firm has not at least considered marketing on the Internet, you are doing yourselves a disservice.

Now that we got that out of the way, where do you set up a blog? Good question. Here are some options.

Blogger:

Google’s very own blog platform. We at Network Affiliates use Blogger and we think it works out quite well. It can be set up to match the look of your existing website and can even be posted on your existing website. Best of all, it’s free.

WordPress:

WordPress is a free, open source blogging platform. What does open source mean? It means anyone is free to make modifications or improvements to the program. This means that if you have a handy IT person who knows your business, they could potentially add functionality to your blog. Pretty cool, huh? You can also buy themes for WordPress if you want more sophisticated tracking, looks, and other things.

TypePad:

TypePad is the only non-free blogging platform I will mention in this post. It costs a $15 a month for a pro membership, which will give you all of the functionality you could possibly need. TypePad also provides a great mechanism for publishing your content on Facebook and Twitter.

All of these platforms, again, integrate seamlessly with your current website. And while these are just three examples of widely used and respected blogging platforms, there are hundreds of others out there. These three mentioned in this blog post are great benchmarks for comparison, though.

After you get your blog registered with a blog service, the tricky part begins: developing content. How do you develop content? That is the topic for another post. Until next time, take some time to visit the other posts on this blog or some from your colleagues. Visit them to see how you might use a blog. Thanks for reading. Be on the look out for another post in the near future.

- Clay Frickey

In any business, effective marketing is a full time job. If you choose to handle your own marketing it can quickly eat into the time you need to spend doing what you do best. It is easy to fall into the rut of ineffective or mediocre advertising.

If you got off to a powerful start, you may not be keeping up to date because you simply don’t have time to stay on top of it. Or maybe you had some brilliant ideas, but something is off in the execution and your advertising is not reaching the right audience. The wrong placement that does not effectively hit your target demo can cause the very best message to fizzle because your potential clients never see it.

Do you know if your law firm’s advertising is working? Do you know how it compares to what the competition is doing? Is it as effective as it can be, or could it use some improvement? Do you need an entirely new approach? Do you just pay the bills and hope for the best?

An advertising strategy evaluation is a basic component of effective marketing. It lets you know what is working, what you need to keep doing, and what needs to be changed. Without it you are shooting in the dark.

It may sound simple on the surface. You run your ad and you either get more business or you don’t. In reality, you have to know how long it should take for your advertising to produce results. Get impatient and you may give it up before it has had time to be effective. Maybe your advertising has your phone ringing, but you are not converting potential clients into actual clients. You need to know why and how you can change those results.

The legal marketing experts at Network Affiliates can give you the answers you need. Let us evaluate your current marketing strategy today.

The Network Affiliates Client Meeting in South Beach last week was a tremendous success. Many of our clients were in attendance. The meeting was preceded by two days of custom production where a number of attorneys shot custom TV Ads. We covered a lot of material at the meeting including Howard Hyden as the featured speaker explaining how “customer focus” can improve your “Positive Word Of Mouth” referrals. The new syndicated legal advertising campaigns were well received as were some of our custom ads and marketing materials. The Silberstein Awad & Miklos medical malpractice brochure handed out by Jeff Buenz also generated very favorable reviews.

The meeting covered a lot of ground, and one highlight for me was the first speaker - Gibson Vance of Beasley Allen. Mr. Vance, who is the President Elect of the AAJ, explained that many firms are ignoring valuable product liability claims. He spoke about the potential product liability claims involving single vehicle accidents – including single vehicle tractor-trailer accidents. Many of these cases are turned down because the driver was at fault, but Mr. Vance pointed out that if there is a death or serious injury, single vehicle accidents should be evaluated for product liability.

He listed several examples of product liability claims arising out of single vehicle accident cases that ranged from the obvious to those that can be discovered with in-depth investigation. Among other things, they include:

• Roof crush.
• Faulty seat belts.
• Ejection through the back or side windows.
• Fifteen passenger vans.
• Tire blow outs.
• Reclining seat backs.
• Defective door latch.

He encouraged each of the lawyers to forward any such claims involving serious injury or death to Beasley Allen. His firm will not pursue the personal injury claims – the referring attorney could handle those. Beasley Allen would just investigate and pursue the potential product liability claims and share legal fees with the referring attorney.

Mr. Vance also mentioned that many product liability lawsuits arise out of workers’ comp claims. If the claim involves a serious injury (amputation, death, paralysis, etc.), Beasley Allen will evaluate the potential product liability claim for no charge.

He mentioned some other claims with good potential as well including FLSA claims that are very easy to evaluate simply by adding three questions to your intake form. He said that he would forward those questions to Network Affiliates for distribution to the attorneys.

Overall, the talk gave our clients some simple ways to generate some additional revenue from clients that are already calling.