How Your DIY Web Site Can Harm Your Marketing!
When it comes to marketing my website, I’ve always been a do it yourselfer. I started out as a true solo and, when it comes to running and marketing my practice, I have been for 24 years. I’ve been able to do this because I’ve spent long hours reading the books, going to the seminars, and attending the conferences and mastermind meetings to learn what I needed to do to be successful. But let’s face, not all of us have that kind of time (and I’m coming to the point where I don’t have as much of it either).
Most attorneys don’t have the time to do all of this themselves, and quite frankly, they shouldn’t. Over the years, I’ve learned the hard way that there are some drawbacks to going DIY, and I wanted to share three of them with you here.
You Have No Clear Strategy With Your Marketing
You hear people tell you that you need to have a website these days. That is certainly true, and I’m constantly amazed at the number of attorneys that still don’t have them. If you don’t have one and have decided to put one together, you need to give it a lot of thought.
The web design company that you hire may be great at doing websites, and they may even know something about marketing law firms, but they aren’t going to get you to where you need to be to be successful.
In telling them what you want for your site, you may look at what your competitors are doing and decide to do the same thing. That is what a colleague of mine and Virginia attorney Bob Battle calls “monkey see, monkey do marketing.” By doing whatever everybody else is doing, you are by definition average, and not standing out from the crowd to prospective clients.
In addition, you are not marketing your firm with any kind of strategy in mind. Do you have a particular goal? Do you know what kind of content your prospective clients are looking for when they search on Google? Is there any kind of organization of the content on your website that pushes visitors to take action?
If not, what you engaging in is referred to as “random acts of marketing.” You are just dropping things into your website without any kind of strategy or intentionality. You are essentially throwing things up against the wall and hoping that they stick. If your marketing is unfocused, unpolished, or limited to a single channel, you just can’t compete!
Lack of Oversight Keeps You Stuck Taking Action That Doesn’t Benefit You
You can’t “set it and forget it” with your marketing. Instead, you have to follow everything you do to promote your firm and make sure that you’re getting a reasonable return on your investment over time. Never engage in any kind of marketing or advertising without the ability to track its performance. If you don’t do this, you can end up spending a lot of money on something that generates no revenue, or not enough revenue to justify continuing to do it.
Monitoring your marketing campaigns and measuring performance over time allows you to spend less money on what doesn’t work and more money on what does. Even if your web design company tells you you should be doing X, if you don’t measure X’s performance, you can end up wasting a lot of money.
You Aren’t Using Data to Strengthen Your Strategy and Optimize Your Spend
Even if you are gathering data and monitoring performance, you need to analyze that data and make smart decisions based on it. You should always know where you’re getting the most traction and the best ROI.
As you probably already figured out by now, doing this on your own, while at the same time running your practice, is exceptionally difficult. But it’s not just the fact that you don’t have the time. If you don’t already have a robust education and modern, digital marketing, you won’t be clear on what you need to do or be doing even if you do have the time.
So What Do You Do?
The easy answer is to hire someone to do it for you. But now you have another employee and another person on the payroll that will, hopefully, get your marketing right. This can be a big cash outlay for a small or solo firm.
Fortunately, there is something growing in popularity in the marketing world these days called a Fractional CMO (Chief Marketing Officer). This is someone who can help you get a comprehensive, do-it-yourself marketing strategy on a limited budget. You get all the benefits of having a certified expert working closely with you to develop and execute a marketing strategy that fits your firm and respects your budget.
One of my strategic partners, Foster Web Marketing, provides Fractional CMOs for small law firms. Just click on this link to learn more.
Need More?
Looking to get a web site or supercharge the one you have now? Do you want to create a well thought out digital marketing strategy that will bring you more clients? I can help! Just click on this link to schedule an initial, no obligation call with me to discuss your situation and what value I can bring to the table.
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