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I just returned from a one-day trip to Chicago. In the bumper-to-bumper traffic, it actually took over 7 minutes to drive 1 mile. Under normal circumstances, I might have found this a bit frustrating, but since Chicago is a mecca for advertising, I actually enjoyed sitting in the car studying the myriad of billboards dotting the landscape.

One billboard in particular caught my attention. It was a cut-away shot of a new minivan, the one with the pop-up table in the back. The billboard showed the interior of the van with four captain’s chairs encircling the pop-up table with a headline that said “Your Table Is Served”.

I actually think it’s a neat minivan (although the exterior is a bit boxy) and I have to wonder why no one thought to put a table in a minivan before now. But I think the billboard missed the mark.

The billboard showed an empty minivan - no people, no smiling faces, no family activities. Just the minivan and the table. Unfortunately, no one buys a minivan for the table. They buy it for the lifestyle the minivan promises: the kids happily playing with each other, getting along just like best friends, smiling and enjoying each other’s company, as the family comfortably floats down the road on their family vacation.

It’s hard to convey that impression without including the family in the photo. Without the picture of the smiling kids all getting along, it’s just as easy to look at the empty minivan and mentally hear, “Mom, he’s touching me!”

I know you’ve probably heard it all before, but even a high-priced Chicago advertising agency has forgotten the lesson. So I thought it was worth repeating… people buy products or services for the benefits, not the features.

Unfortunately, as small business owners, we sometimes have a hard time distinguishing the two. We know our product or service backwards and forwards, inside and out; we might have even created it from scratch. For us, the features are the benefits because we know so well what the features will bring.

But it’s important to remember that we are not our customers. Our customers don’t know our products inside and out. They do not make the mental leap from features to benefits. We need to show them, to spell out exactly what our product or service will do for them.

Here’s an easy exercise to help you highlight the benefits of your product. Grab a sheet of paper and draw a line down the center. On the left hand side, list all the features of your product: its color, its size, its durability, etc. Then, for each of those features, ask yourself “So what?” What does this do for the customer? How will this help the customer? What will the customer get from this? How will this solve the customer’s problem?

Use your answers to develop benefit statements for each of your features.

Make your benefit statements emotional. Link them to universal motivators whenever possible. If you’re having a hard time uncovering the benefits, close your eyes and imagine your customer using your product or service. What is she doing? What is her life like? How are things different for her now that she has your product?

Replace your features with these benefit statements in all your marketing materials. Bullet point your benefit statements in your sales letters. Use your benefit statements on your website. Include your benefit statements in your headlines.

Find pictures representing your benefits to use in your brochures and sell sheets. If your product offers fun-filled family rides, show pictures of the children smiling and getting along. If your product saves your customers tons of time, show pictures of people relaxing and enjoying their new-found freedom.

Remember, your customers do not live and breath your product like you do. You must tell them, in no uncertain terms, exactly what your product will do for them and exactly why they should buy your product.

Action Item
1. List at least three features of your product or service.
2. Ask yourself “So what?” in order to create a benefit statement for each feature.
3. Find a picture representing at least one benefit statement that you can use in your future marketing.

Karen Scharf is an Indianapolis marketing consultant who works with small business owners and entrepreneurs. She offers several whitepapers, free reports and checklists, including her FREE Can-Spam checklist and FREE email pre-flight checklist to ensure your emails get delivered, get opened and get read. Download your copies at http://www.ModernImage.com.

These days the mantra for modern business is marketing. Marketing plays an integral role in your end results of sales for your organiation. While you may understand the benefits, for many the process of article submission may be better left to experts, allowing you to busy yourself with other important tasks that are in the pipeline. For this reason many freelance companies are taking on the role of article submission. By outsourcing this work you can save precious time and energy for your actual business and specialist expertise. The challenge then is selecting a group to outsource to, and feeling sure that they will submit your articles resourcefully and aptly.

There are certain things you should really consider prior to making your selection of an article submission service. Firstly, take a look at the list of sites that they have recommended for your article submission. Check them initially to be sure they actually exist, and are not some site created by the outsourcing company for the purpose of false submissions. Secondly, look at the sites quality and number of visitors (tools such as Alexa and Google Toolbar can help with this). It is pointless if you have articles submitted only to discover that the site they are placed on is never even visited. Unscrupulous organizations have been known to develop sites to show the client that the article has been submitted; but the reality is that the article will never be read. Check all the sites on the list and see if they are indexed on Google. Part of the ultimate purpose of the submission is that your site will be indexed, so if your articles are on a site that is not indexed by popular search engines then not only will your article not be read, it will not lead anyone to your website and blog and so on.

As with any marketing program, the target audience needs to be recognized before making a list of sites. You need to be sure that your efforts are concentrated on submission to those sites most frequently visited by the target segment for your business. Quite simply, when you focus your submission on relevant sites then you will get more quality traffic, submit your articles to the wrong site and there will be few or no readers, hence no generation of traffic. This is where using a tool such as Alexa becomes useful. Alexa checks the traffic on each given site and likewise the sites on your list can be checked using Alexa. If the sites are indexed you will also be able to analyze the traffic of the selected sites using the Alexa tools. It is important to always keep that target segment in mind when making any posting on any website. If your posting is only likely to be viewed by people who do not have any interest in the topic, then chances are they are not going to read the posted material, hence you are unlikely to benefit with any traffic for your efforts.

Be aware that certain sites will not take articles if they are submitted to them by software. With so many spamming problems, this is more a precautionary step taken by many good quality sites these days. As the individual submission step ensures that there can be a limited or lesser number of submissions made, sites are therefore only taking copy submitted in this manner. An additional tip is to check if the article submission company proof reads your articles. It is very important to have error free articles, as mistakes do reflect upon you. When you are checking your own work it is always much easier to miss mistakes because you anticipate what should be there. No matter how many re readings a writer gives to the article, it is always better to have the articles edited by another party.

Any good company will always prioritize the search engine optimization of your articles. Making the articles search engine friendly ensures that the moment any related keywords are entered your article will show up in the first few. Always avoid spamming, focusing on maintaining an optimum level of submission as an ongoing project. Flooding the internet with loads of articles may in fact be counter productive and risk your site being blacklisted by Google. Choose your article submission service carefully and with a view to a long term effort on both sides. Consistency and ongoing initiative is the best way to go, so select a quality provider that will work on the bigger picture for you, not simply take the money and run!

Deep Arora is an Internet marketer with over 7 years of online experience and he teaches internet marketing from his blog at HowIDid.com. Check out his blog for some amazing techniques today..

Voice broadcasting (making a huge number of automated phone calls and playing a pre-recorded message) is a remarkably powerful and affordable way to get your message to large numbers of customers or prospects.

Despite its power, before you spend one thin dime on a phone broadcast, you must learn this secret. Because without it, you might just waste your money. So what could this terrible secret be? It’s really simple - Most folks hate getting telemarketing calls…

OK, OK, I know that’s really not a secret. If you’re thinking about using an automatic broadcasting system and you fail to consider this “secret” carefully, it can really hurt your campaign. Here’s why…

The vast majority (90% or more) of people who get a broadcast call simply hang up. The next biggest group (a few percent) of folks press “2″ (to be removed from the call list). The smallest group, around 1-2%, press “1″ (to speak to a live person, or listen to more, or leave a voicemail).

You’re probably thinking”OK, but I’m only paying for the “press 1’s, so what’s the problem?” Here’s the problem.

Just because someone presses “1″, it does’t mean they’re interested in your message. Some of them only want to tell you to not call them again. Those responses are worthless to you. But you still pay for them. So you should carefully consider how to maximize the positively interested, qualified responses.

Now, whether you’re selling merchant accounts to business prospects, or even selling raffle tickets for your charity event, you’ll hear some folks say “remove me from your list and don’t call again” (or worse)… No surprise there right? And I promise, even if you’re soliciting donations for sick children, even if you’re calling your own list of past donors, you will STILL receive some negative calls!

The inescapable fact is this - out of 1000 people, there are probably 2 or 3 who get so irritated when they receive a telemarketing call, they will “press 1″ to complain. To illustrate the effect of response rate on the number of negative calls received, consider two hypothetical broadcast campaigns.

Campaign #1 - selling merchant accounts to businesses - response rate is below average, at 0.6%. Campaign #2 - asking for donations for sick children - using a donor list - response rate is above average, at 1.5%.

Now, assume that 3 out of 1000 (0.3%) of the folks called are the type who will “press 1 for no good reason”… If you work through the numbers, the merchant processing campaign gets 50% negative calls, but even the sick children campaign gets 20%!

The fact is, if you are delivering your calls to live answered phones, and taking live transfers, you simply cannot escape negative calls, no matter what your message is about. And the main way to reduce them is to create a message with a higher response rate.

We’ve described how getting negative calls is a fact of life in this business, and how increasing the response rate will decrease the number of negative calls. Join me in future installments as we discuss how to handle or avoid negative calls, along with other voice broadcasting tips.

David Seldon operates LivePhoneLeads.com providing voice broadcasting services for businesses. Find more informative articles about voice broadcasting at Live Phone Leads.

Site maps were traditionally utilized as a user interface to help visitors find particular website content. Generally, standard HTML site maps have a page which consists of links and descriptions to all pages within the website. Sometimes the pages are even organized with headings.

The site map process has matured considerably in the past few years, beginning when Google introduced Sitemaps 0.84 in June 2005 to accommodate the publishing of lists of links for an entire business website. That was when this idea progressed to pushing your website URLs out to the general digital community using server based files. The server based files come in a variety of formats including HTML, XML, ROR, Text and zipped files as .gz format.

Soon, support for sitemaps began to gain acceptance by the larger search engines. In November 2006, Google, MSN and Yahoo announced joint support for Sitemap protocol. At that time, the version was called Sitemap 0.90 and the website Sitemaps-dot-org was created. In April 2007, Ask and IBM announced support for Sitemaps. At the same time Google, Yahoo, MSN announced their search robots would auto-discover sitemaps through a command in the robots-dot-txt.

With these sitemaps search engines can more intelligently index the website. Sitemaps are an easy way for a business website to inform search engines about pages on their websites. The sitemap is now generally accepted as an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL. The metadata includes when the sitemap was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is relative to other URLs in the website.

Although search engine spiders discover pages from links within the website, sitemaps supplement this data to allow the search engine spiders that support sitemaps to pick up all URLs. A website can learn about those URLs using the associated metadata. Using the sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for search engine spiders to do a better job of indexing your website. The process is more efficient and as a business website, you can push your content out to the search engines.

How To Create Your Sitemap

The simplest way of creating and maintaining your website is to use a sitemap generator. This is a program that you upload to your website’s hosting server, which will create the sitemap in the appropriate formats that include XML, ROR, Text, HTML and .GZ zipped file. The value in using a sitemap generator of this nature is that you can setup a scheduler to automatically run the sitemap at any frequency you desire (e.g. once a week on Saturday’s at 3 a.m.). Upon completion of the process, it will then ‘ping’ Google and Yahoo to inform them the sitemap has changed. They will also provide you a web based interface for any maintenance such as checking on broken links.

Sitemap generators can be found, as a manual process, for free that you have to remember to run - or, you can spend a nominal fee of $15 and buy the version that will automate the process for you. If you consider that you are helping to facilitate proper and efficient indexation of your website’s pages by the search engines to generate revenue, the $15 investment is money well spent.

What is ROR XML Sitemap?

ROR (Resources of a Resource) is a rapidly growing independent XML format for describing any object of your website’s content in a generic fashion. This generic description allows search engines to better understand the content. ROR promotes the concept of structured feeds, which is similar to the concept of structured blogging. It enables search engines to complement text search with structured information to better understand meaning of a website. In order to inform search engine spiders of this format, you will need to include the following tag in the headers of your home page:

…link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”ROR” href=”ror.xml”…

Changes to Your Robots-dot-txt File

The robots-dot-txt file is placed in the main folder of your website. It is not something that is linked to. Instead, it is a file that search engine spiders look for upon arriving to your website. This file will guide them to what they can or cannot index about your website. The robots.txt file is something that should be on every website and is certainly required when using sitemaps. Assuming that you want the search engine spiders to index all pages of your website, then the contents of your robots.txt file with the sitemap instruction would contain the following lines:

Sitemap: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml
User-agent: *
Disallow:

Submitting Your Website to Google

The simplest thing to do is log into your Google account. If you do not have one, create one and go to “My Account”. You can then go to Webmaster tools and follow the instructions to submit your sitemap to Google. If you do not see the webmaster tools link in your “My Account” area, you can go to “About Google” from their home page, then go to “Webmaster Central”. At some point Google includes this in your “My Account” area.

Google takes the “Webmaster Tools” quite a number of steps further beyond what Yahoo and certainly, what MSN provides. There are several statistics about the interaction with your sitemap, which types of searches are being done about your site, how Google perceives the visible content, and much, much more. A few days (or weeks) after you submit your sitemap, this information will start to show up.

Submitting Your Sitemap to Yahoo

The process is similar with Yahoo. Log into your Yahoo account, click on Suggest a Site (all the way at the bottom of the home page), then click on “Submit your site for free”, then enter the web address for your sitemap into the “Submit Site Feed”.

If you use a paid sitemap generator, you will also need a Yahoo API code so the sitemap generator can ‘ping’ Yahoo after it runs on its scheduled time. You can obtain a Yahoo API code by going to Yahoo’s Developer website and clicking on “Get Application ID”. You can then place the Yahoo API code in the appropriate place in the sitemap generator program.

Submitting Your Sitemap to Other Locations

Through the robots.txt file, the ROR tag in the headers, and submitting your site to Google and Yahoo, you will have tackled the majority of the marketing. There are other locations such as submitting the sitemap to MoreOver and Ask. You can search on sitemap submission to identify further locations if you wish to expand your reach further.

As of this writing, submitting your sitemap to MSN is not working even though MSN agreed to the protocol with Google and Yahoo. We were not able to readily locate any updates on this matter at MSN. Perhaps this is similar to MSN’s problem using the “link:” command in their research results.

At SmartFinds Internet Marketing we develop strategies for corporations with a sophisticated approach to digital marketing. From website development, creative, branding, to research and strategy development to digital marketing to digital advertising to measurement, reporting and data analysis.

Your marketing plan can make or break your Internet business. When your message is matching your conscience, you are eager to get it out there, and your motivation for the promotion won’t be restrained.

When you believe in your product, you’ll do it because you are genuinely concerned with helping people, more than with your own gratification. The service or product you provide becomes a duty. Not spreading the word is irresponsible and unethical to you.

Can you see by the paragraphs above how very important it is to be convinced of the benefits of your services, and why you must feel like doing everything possible in your power to get the word out to everyone you can when you believe in it?

By recognizing and acknowledging the superior benefits you have to offer of your services you believe in, this certainty will move you into action. You’ll then be driven to use the correct marketing techniques to make money with the Internet.

Now let’s stop and take a look at the opposite side. When you find your conscience is holding you back from effective marketing, don’t try to squash that inner voice. Hear what it has to tell you. Are your products just wasting people’s time?

If you have a product or service with no real benefit to market, it would be irresponsible to do so. If deep down you have doubts as to whether you’re providing a real value, you’ll probably sabotage yourself in your marketing efforts.

Don’t try to fool yourself into believing in your product/service when you don’t. If you feel a desire to procrastinate in marketing, you should know something is wrong. Ask yourself if you feel unethical in marketing this product, and if so, stop!

There is one other area we need to look at and that is you. How well do you market yourself? Do you believe enough in the benefits that others would experience from your relationship with you? Are you the Real Article?

What kind of product/service do you feel you should be marketing? What skills do you need to develop that would make you a preferred employee? Do you need to make changes in yourself to be genuinely beneficial to be working on the Internet?

Acknowledge the true benefits you provide and work on the others. Now make sure you are in the correct line of work that you enjoy and truly believe in. If you are establishing these procedures, you are on your way to using the correct marketing techniques.

Court provides information about how to make money on the internet through his website on Internet Marketing.

Earning an income from the online world can be accomplished by utilizing special methods that several company owners have never heard of before and have not yet published it into their own strategies. Most definitely, there exist several methods that people do not know about but that will make your Internet page very reputable and also increase the amount of traffic flow that it encounters. One of the best ways to make money on the Internet and also accomplish all of these other things is by understanding the concept of affiliate marketing and also forming a group of people that will handle all of the marketing plans and strategies.

Effective marketing takes place as you perform advertising techniques for other Internet businesses on your own page so that people who visit your site will go to these other bigger sites. This technique may seem sacrificial to the success of your own site, but in reality it can be very beneficial. By advertising products for other web sites on your own site, people will come to your site first to learn about what kinds of products that other people are offering.

A few Internet page creators believe that you need to use a lot of their finances on marketing strategies so that the site is effective and can bring success to your site. They also believe that sharing content and links with other sites will only hurt your site and decrease the number of visitors that come to use your site. These beliefs are not entirely true and can be overcome with the careful application of affiliate marketing by a group of creative thinkers.

Surely, there exists some type of factual information in the belief that more money has no impact on the success of the market research group of the online business. Money does indeed help, but the real ideas and strategies come from the creative techniques and knowledge of the group. In order to be successful, the company must hire people who are extremely intelligent and creative, who will help increase the effectiveness of the market research group.

The workers who belong to the marketing committee need to be fearless about performing new tasks and need to come up with new ways of regulating the company. Often times, these revolutionary ideas change the entire course of the company and make it extremely successful. With the help of social media marketing, blog site owners can display information about their site on media services that other web sites offer.

An additional method that you can use to perform effective marketing techniques without spending all of your finances is by the effective use of link baiting. Link baiting is a very effective part of social media marketing and can help increase a blogs reputation in a very quick way. You should try to place link baits in key locations on the Internet so that they are easily accessible and viewable to many online users.

Several of the most reputable marketing Internet pages in the online world are Facebook and Myspace, which can help display links to your site in a categorical manner. As a blog owner, you can sign up for both social media web sites and label your blog under a specific topic. This process will help you to target a specific Internet audience and increase the probability of a greater traffic flow.

Court is a make money internet expert and also provides internet marketing services.

When an author shares feelings and insights we tend to believe them because they are making the sacrifice of opening up. There’s an understood and comforting unspoken contract between writer and reader that the truth is going to be shared.

Yet, what is the truth? Suffice it to say that your truth is whatever you learn or come away from the reading with and point of growth. Perhaps it could be the insight you have found through the experience. To learn and grow, you never know unless it is shared.

Honor your unspoken contract with your readers, open up about your own experiences, if growing does demand some first-person truth. Each one of us will use our own filters to see, hear, smell touch, taste and experience the same preceding marketing guide.

Business ethics are very important. Think of it as a two-way mirror and never compromise, lower your standards or sell out and always take a firm stand in everything you do. By doing this you will never have to worry about looking over your shoulder.

When problems come your way think positive, disregard negative thinking. If you encounter problems (and you will, there is no way to flee from them), try to look at them as opportunities or a solution. They will turn into personal growth ladders.

You must be able to believe and commit and once you have set your goals, do everything possible to achieve them without stumbling on others. Focus and diversions should not sway you from your goals or accomplishments.

Don’t be afraid to take risks and it’s normal to experience fears. As you press forward and take chances with your marketing secrets to make money with the Internet you will feel the validation of others sharing behind the scene your understanding.

The business owner should learn what exactly he really wants and have a plan how to get there. If that plan fails, ‘try and try until you succeed’ can do miracles and it’s definitely true. The only way you will fail is if you give up, for that road map goes nowhere.

Yourself, that’s the price you pay for winning an audience, should first test offering advice, helpful tips, and meaty information at your site. Marketing secrets needs to be provided in sincerity and given genuinely as honest helpful information.

Of course you can memorize all of the above, however, it would be best to read the information and instill it into your daily life. This way it’s not only role-playing it has become you and you have become a better person personally and in your business life.

Court is a make money internet expert and also provides internet marketing services.

Your marketing plan can make or break your Internet business. When your message is matching your conscience, you are eager to get it out there, and your motivation for the promotion won’t be restrained.

When you believe in your product, you’ll do it because you are genuinely concerned with helping people, more than with your own gratification. The service or product you provide becomes a duty. Not spreading the word is irresponsible and unethical to you.

Can you see by the paragraphs above how very important it is to be convinced of the benefits of your services, and why you should feel like doing everything necessary in your power go get the word out? Your clients will feel the pitch from your soul!

By recognizing and acknowledging the superior benefits of your services you believe in certainty will move you into action. You’ll be driven to use the correct marketing techniques to make money with the Internet.

Now let’s take a look at the opposite side. When you find your conscience is holding you back from effective marketing, don’t try to squash that inner voice. Hear what it has to say. Are your products just wasting people’s time?

If you have a product or service with no real benefit to market, it would be irresponsible to do so. If deep down you have doubts as to whether what you’re providing is of real value, you’ll probably sabotage yourself in your marketing effort.

And don’t try to fool yourself into believing in your product/service when you don’t. If you feel a desire to procrastinate in marketing, you know something is wrong. And last, ask yourself if you have an ethical duty to market this product? These answers will help.

There is one other area we need to look at and that is you. How well do you market yourself? Do you believe enough in the benefits that others would experience from your companionship? Are you the Real Article?

What kind of product/service do you feel you should be marketing? What skills do you need to develop that would make you a preferred employee? Do you need to make changes in yourself to be genuinely beneficial to be working on the Internet?

Acknowledge the real benefits you provide and work on the others. Now make sure you are in the correct line of work that you enjoy and truly believe in. If you are establishing these procedures, you are on your way to using the correct marketing techniques.

Court provides information about how to make money with the internet through his website: Court’s Internet Marketing School.

You arrive at your office to start your work week and realize that you have no appointments scheduled. You find yourself thinking you have an easy day ahead of you. Think again. If you are sitting idle, then you are not doing your law practice the justice it deserves. The absence of appointments means you aren’t making any money at that moment. Money needed to pay bills or get more advertising in progress. It’s a vicious cycle that must be broken.

There is no such thing as “free time,” at a law firm. If attorneys are not in court, preparing a case or in an interview with a client, they must be involved in some other activity that will generate income for the law firm. Working on your law firm marketing plan would be a capital use of this time as opposed to marking it off as an opportunity cost. Now would be an excellent time to get your marketing priorities lined and out and planned for the long term. One of the first priorities for a law firm marketing plan is to organize into a step-by-step plan of action over a specified time.

Get to work and make sure your calendar has something scheduled each and every day that you are open for business. Organizing your 12-month law firm marketing calendar involves detailed notes of what you need to accomplish on a daily basis. An organized plan of attack will help you establish a routine for your marketing efforts.

1. Create and Print Postcards

For the first month, as part of your direct mail campaign, have 1,000 postcards created and printed. The next step is to put labels on them. Then mail them out to prospective clients. This process needs to happen consistently each month in order for you to maintain a steady flow of clients through your office door.

2. Create a Monthly E-zine

Your next step is to create a monthly e-zine (electronic newsletter) and e-mail it to your subscribers. Mention your e-zine in all of your mailings whether they are direct mail or e-mail. Be sure to give potential clients an opportunity and information for signing up to receive your e-zine. Your e-zine should be distributed regularly, at the same time every month.

3. Follow Up on Postcards

Begin making follow-up calls to everyone you have sent postcards to. Try to make 100 calls each day for the next two. Every time you have a gap in your schedule between specified tasks, make more follow-up calls until you have contacted everyone who has received a postcard.

4. Start Networking

As part of your law firm marketing strategy, schedule a networking event that you will attend and take part in. Be sure you are present throughout the event. Hand out information and business cards to everyone you come in contact with. The following day, make follow-up calls to everyone you met at the event.

5. Promote Your Services

One by one, begin promoting your services to attract new clients. Send out press releases detailing information about each service. Introduce a new service each month until you have gotten information about all of them out there. Once you have accomplished this, begin re-introducing each of them from the beginning. Keeping your name and services in people’s minds is a practice that will help to make your law firm a familiar name in people’s minds.

6. Advertise a Trade Show

Send out another press release, advertising an upcoming trade show that you will participate in. If you begin doing this ahead of time, interested prospects will be sure to attend the show and check out what you have to offer. Be sure to follow up with e-mails and phone calls to people you met during the trade show.

By this time you should be prepared to perform all of these tasks every month at around the same time. You should also be developing new marketing ideas on a continual basis. Taking these steps and developing a visual and organized law firm marketing calendar will help you realize your goals and see the positive results of your efforts.

Stephen Fairley is CEO of The Rainmaker Institute is the nation’s largest law firm marketing company that specializes in helping small law firms generate more and better referrals and create a 7 figure law practice. Over 6,000 attorneys have benefited from our proven Rainmaker Marketing System. Attorneys: claim your FREE legal marketing CD ‘7 Keys to a 7 Figure Law Practice’ at www.toplawfirmmarketingtips.com

If your law firm marketing plan follows typical law firm marketing strategies employed by many other practices, you are failing miserably and you know it. Yet other firms out there have a steady stream of clients in and out of their offices. You see them every day: consistently busy and constantly entertaining new clients that afford them wardrobes of expensive suits and prestigious new sports cars.

You see them making it work; making their firm all it can be. You’ve got to do something to make your practice successful, too.

The accounting firm featured on the cover of the business journal in your waiting room is well-known nationwide. The CEO of that firm emerges from the elevator. Your heart leaps as he heads your way. Forget about it! He’s heading for the law firm down the hall, just they way they all do. You won’t even get a second glance.

Once again, you feel like shoving everything off of the coffee table with a frustrated swipe of your fists. You grit your teeth and glare at the neighboring law firm. What are they doing that you aren’t? You’re sick and tired of being out done, but don’t know how to fix it. Here are several law firm marketing mistakes you may be making and what you can do to fix them.

* You have failed to convince them of the value your service gives to them specifically. Solution: Go back and do more research on your target market’s “points of pain.” Use more of these in all of your conversations with prospects.

* They don’t trust you. Solution: Develop a list of specific things you can do to build your credibility. Examine your personal image: your clothes, your mannerisms, your listening skills. Analyze your business image: your office location, your office furniture, the quality of your stationary, your business cards, etc.

* They perceive your cost out weighs your value. Solution: Either temporarily
reduce your price or immediately find ways to significantly increase your
perceived value.

* They don’t believe your benefits or values because you haven’t demonstrated
them. Solution: Find a way to give them a FREE sample of your services.

* Their risk seems too great. Solution: Find creative ways to reduce or eliminate
the risk of working with you.

* They don’t feel like you listen to them. Solution: Stop talking so much during your presentation (lawyers often talk too much when they are either nervous or feeding their ego). Ask more questions. Develop a list of questions to ask prospects. Work on reading their body language. Use active listening skills and reflective feedback. Use the 25/75 Rule. A good attorney talks less than 25% of the time during the initial interview. They ask good questions and then listen 75% of the time. The interesting thing is that prospects will feel you are more competent the less you talk, the more you listen and the better your questions are.

* Prospects will not hire you when they don’t want you, don’t believe they need you or can’t afford you. Solution: Cut your losses and move on. They are
currently NOT in your target market.

If you are tired of buying the cheap suits off the bargain racks and driving the foreign economy car that gets great mileage and matches the car the old retired woman down the street drives, then do something about it! To be a winner you must act like a winner and that includes successful marketing techniques.

There are professional, skilled services out there that are in business to help you successfully employ law firm marketing strategies to make your practice a success. It is time you contact one to get the help you need.

Stephen Fairley is CEO of The Rainmaker Institute is the nation’s largest law firm marketing company that specializes in helping small law firms generate more and better referrals and create a 7 figure law practice. Over 6,000 attorneys have benefited from our proven Rainmaker Marketing System. Attorneys: claim your FREE legal marketing CD ‘7 Keys to a 7 Figure Law Practice’ at www.toplawfirmmarketingtips.com