This is the third in our series on how you can more effectively use your CFL Designation for Divorce Practitioners to set yourself apart from other attorneys and attract the high-asset clients you seek. The effectiveness of your marketing can make or break your firm’s profitability.
Not surprisingly, these articles focus on your website. Why? Because while you cannot be everywhere at all times, your website can and is. Thus it is your firm’s door to the world through which up to 96 percent of your new clients come.
Reviews and testimonials
It may surprise you to learn that over 80 percent of a new study’s participants said a law firm must have at least a 4-star review rating before they would consider hiring it. Positive reviews by your current clients, therefore, are incredibly important to your practice.
Do not hesitate to ask your high-asset clients to review you and your firm so you can add their comments to your site’s testimonial page. Your requests are one more example of the personalized client services you provide. People usually love to talk about themselves and may welcome the opportunity to share their opinions about you and your firm. Since maintaining client confidentiality is crucial, assure them that they can use only their first names in their reviews. Also steer them toward mentioning the value of your CFL credential in their cases. Consider it similar to witness preparation. You cannot tell someone what to say, but you can point him or her in the right direction.
Bear in mind that Google local maps listings heavily rely on reviews. Having your law firm rank highly in this listing is an invaluable marketing tool, especially given that the local map shows not only your office location but also provides a link to directions to it and another to your website.
Blog
If your firm’s website does not yet include a blog, you should seriously consider adding one. It can become one of your most effective marketing tools, and often ranks as the most visited page on a firm’s site.
Your blog is the vehicle by which your site provides short articles containing specific information about legal issues relating to your various practice areas and/or areas of your particular expertise. For example, an article entitled “Is your spouse hiding assets?” immediately attracts potential high-asset clients who fear this is exactly what their respective spouses are doing.
Naturally, your blog posts should contain educational information that potential clients can use. They likewise must be interesting and easy for a layman to understand. Staying with our asset-hiding example, this blog post might include a section devoted to red flag spousal behaviors the reader should watch for and another section describing the various ways the spouse can accomplish his or her goals – unless you and your CFL Designation for Divorce Practitioners come to the rescue.
Each blog post can and probably should contain a call to action at the end. A CTA is a prompt, often a link on a particular word or phrase, that tells the reader to take some specified action and gives him or her the method by which to do it. For instance, your asset-hiding blog post could end with a sentence such as “For more information about asset hiding and how you can discover it, please click here.” The word “here” is a link to your practice area page describing why you have the expertise to handle complex property settlement issues thanks to your CFL credential.
As we continue our attorney marketing discussion in future weeks, remember that you can always access information on how gaining your CFL Designation for Divorce Practitioners gives you the financial knowledge and skills you need to attract additional high-asset clients plus other benefits of AACFL membership by visiting this page of our website.