Keeping Your Customers To Your Business

Keeping Your Customers Through Loyalty Marketing

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:22:32 +0000

What exactly is the best-kept secret behind incredibly successful businesses? Is it keeping up with the trends? Having an excellent workforce that will make sure your company is working in tip top shape? Or having a loyal client base who will not only keep on going back to you whenever they need your products or services? Loyal clients are also the ones who will help your company get more attention from other people through good word of mouth.

This is why a lot of success…

This is why a lot of successful companies nowadays just love using the loyalty marketing concept as a key strategy for them to be able to keep afloat in today’s highly competitive market. The loyalty marketing strategy is actually just based on a really simple premise which is to develop a stronger relationship with each and every one of the company’s best customers, make sure that they are always happy and satisfied with the company’s products and services because they are the ones who will most likely stick with you for the longest time. Once you have already built a solid relationship with your best clients you will now be ensured of more profitable years ahead for the company.

Highly dependent on whichever type of market place situation is the type of loyalty marketing objective that you should infuse.

For your company’s loyalty marketing objectives, here is a good start:

1. Frequency. You must know your customer’s purchases.

This is where you should make sure that your company is constantly making an effort to improve its loyalty marketing services as well as creating a loyalty marketing service that is incredibly hard for your loyal customers to ever resist, preventing the company from ever losing their valued customers.

2. Being able to build a strong two-way relationship with their valued customers.

It is important that it is deemed by the customers as a two-way relationship so that they will not think that your company is only after his or her money. Your customers need to feel that you really care for what they want and what they need thus your company should always look into further enhancing your loyalty marketing strategy by constantly researching on your customers wants and needs to be able to improve customer satisfaction with your company.

3. Being able to create and “advocate”

Loyal customers who will actually do some free loyalty marketing for you by referring your brand to new clients.

When it comes to loyalty marketing, whether your objective is to be able to keep the trust of your valued customers or to just coax them into increasing their purchasing activity from your company, it is highly important for you to be able to create a good loyalty marketing strategy that will help create a good relationship between the company and your valued customers. The basic principle behind loyalty marketing heavily relies on keeping up with these four loyalty marketing components:

* Dialogue Marketing – where you will inject loyalty marketing by making sure that the correct messages reach the people to whom they are meant for at the right timing.

* Customer Behavior Tracking – when it comes to loyalty marketing, this is a really systematic approach for your company to be able to keep track as well as store the customers’ spending as well as their response behaviors. This is actually an integration of the proper mix of loyalty marketing communications between the company and the customer.

* Measurement – this is the loyalty marketing component wherein you actually plan to keep track as well as measure the company’s key performance objectives as well as the customers’ retention analysis data that actually go against your company’s loyalty marketing objectives

* Customer Rewards and Benefits Programs – for loyalty marketing, this is a highly effective platform for your loyal customers to actually earn or reap rewards from your company that is actually specifically matched to every individual customer’s needs and preferences.

* Loyalty brochure – this is just an added loyalty marketing component wherein your company will hand out these loyalty brochures to your customers so that they will see the freebies that they might get if they continue on being your company’s loyal customer.

Keyword research – do not depend on your assumptions alone

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:21:48 +0000

Proper and extensive keyword research is the first and most crucial step towards building a successful website.Proper and extensive keyword research is the first and most crucial step towards building a search engine friendly website. However, a lot of new and tuned webmasters tend to depend on their own assumptions to determine related keywords. Perhaps they forget that they are not the intended buyers.

Where is the loophole?

The problem is there in the core keyword research process. And when you are using a free keyword research tool, it does not allow you enough options to fine tune your search. The results provided by these tools mostly depend on your own assumptions.

An example may demonstrate the process in a better way.

Say, you are searching keywords for a website that sells MP3 music players. Inevitably, your research will start from ‘MP3 music players’ which will provide you some keywords like:

100% free music downloads for mp3 players, concepts music express mp3 players, download music video for mp3 players, free downloadable music for mp3 players, free music download for mp3 players, free music downloads for mp3 players, free music for mp3 players, free music uploads to mp3 players, how to put music on mp3 players, mp3 music players, music downloads for mp3 players, music for mp3 players, music mp3 players, music sources for mp3 players, nextar mp3 players downloads music etc.

In the next step, you will exclude some keywords from this list and continue the same process.

If you take a closer look, you will see that the result (related keywords) they are providing you depended on three words (MP3, music and players) that you entered together in the query box.

But are people really using ‘MP3 music players’ to buy what you are offering?

Practically you can never be so sure about it.

Why?

If you take a look at Vertical Leap’s SEO Keyword game (http://www.vertical-leap.co.uk/seo-tools/seo-keyword-survey.asp ) your idea will definitely change. They have developed this to research and understand the complex part that individual intent plays while searching for something.

Here, they show a picture and ask the visitor to enter the terms they would use to find it on the web. The result is simply mind-blowing and shows that there are at least 21 different permutations that could be used to identify that image.

For example for a ‘MP3 Player’ people used the following terms – mp3 player, usb, mp3, flash drive, usb key, usb mp3, usb mp3 player, flash memory, generic mp3 player, budget mp3 player, movil, memory stick, memorypen, USB memory mp3, pixel, mp3 plater, mp3 playetr, pen drive, usb memory stick, usb memory stick mp3 player, usb stick.

Do you have these terms in your keyword list?

What is the solution?

If you need to work on these free tools, start with more generic keywords like ‘mp3’ or ‘player’ or ‘music player’ and than move forward while excluding irrelevant or less popular keywords. Perhaps this process will take you closer to the best set of keywords.

Keyword Selection For Website Marketing

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:20:59 +0000

Keyword selection is the first step for writing meta tags or the text of your website. If you don’t select your keywords wisely and carefully, you would not be able to attract the desired traffic to your website.Keyword selection is the first step for writing meta tags or the text of your website. If you don’t select your keywords wisely and carefully, you would not be able to attract the desired traffic to your website.

Simply having meta tags in your website does not guarantee more website visitors or high rankings in the search engines. You need to base these meta tags on carefully selected and targeted keywords. Here are a few guidelines to help you in selecting good and appropriate keywords.

1. Descriptive Keywords

The first rule is very simple. The keyword should describe the product or service you are offering. Don’t make the mistake of making your company name a keyword. It might be related to your service, but people would hardly search for it (unless you are a big and famous company). For example, I won’t put the words “BizTalk4U Consulting” in the meta tags of my website. Instead, I would use “web content writers”, which describes the services I offer.

Also, in the beginning I was using the words “website copy writing” in my meta tags and content, and was hardly getting any hits from search engines. When I did some research, I realized that people use the words “web content” for their website text, and not “web copy”. I had to change the entire text of my website, to optimize it for the keywords “web content”.

Therefore, please don’t assume that you know which keywords to target. Ask you customers and prospects about the phrases/ words they would use if they search for a product or service like yours. Make a list of all the answers and select your targeted keywords from them.

2. Popular Keywords

Once you have brainstormed and asked around about possible keywords you can target, it’s time to do some online research. Put in the keywords of your list in keyword suggestion tools to assess their popularity. A good tool to use is the:

- Overture suggestion tool
This is the search suggestion page of the pay per click search engine Overture, which was formerly known as Goto. Type in your chosen keyword and it would generate a list of similar keywords and how many hits each of them got. This would give you a fair idea of how popular a certain search term is.

3. Words or Phrases?

Research shows that people usually use phrases of 2 to 3 keywords instead of a single word, when searching. This is because they have come to realize, that typing phrases would give them more relevant and targeted results. Therefore, it is advisable for webmasters to use key phrases instead of keywords for their meta tags and web content, so that they generate more targeted traffic. For example, if you are selling clothes for little girls, only using the word “clothes” would not bring targeted visitors. People searching for “clothes for little girls” would be more interested in what you have to offer.

4. Competitive Keywords

After you have researched the popularity of keywords, you may also want to look at the keywords your close competitors are using. You can do this by running a search for one of your chosen keywords, and observing the other keywords being used by the sites that come up. Wordtracker also gives you an analysis of the competition, which your keywords face.

5. Trade off

Once you have list of the most popular and competitive keywords it is time to make your final selection. If you use keywords that are extremely popular, they would also have more competition, and your chances for high ranking would be slim. On the other hand, if you try to use keywords with no competition, they would not be popular and no one would search for them. Hence, your website would come in very few search results, even if the ranking is higher. You need to make a trade off between popularity and competition. You must choose words, which are reasonably popular, and low in competition.

6. Focus

You must try to focus on a few qualified keywords instead of trying to target every phrase that is even remotely related to your product. If you use too many keywords in your meta tags and content, you will end up having very low keyword density, which would again result in lower rankings.

If you feel that there are many keywords that you simply can’t do without, then you must create several web pages. Each web page should focus on one or two keywords you are targeting. This strategy takes a lot of work but is bound to give you higher rankings and more exposure in the search engines.

7. No Cheating / Spamming

This is well known rule but worth repeating again and again. Do not cheat by using keywords that have nothing to do with your web site. You would get traffic that has no interest in your offering.

Do not spam by repeating your keywords too much in your meta tags and content. You can be banned from search engines for this. Also it is advisable to stay away from using tricks like cloaking and hidden text. Search engines hate these tricks, and would ban you forever.

These are the seven secrets of smart keyword selection. Choose your keywords wisely and carefully, so that you get the desired amount and quality of traffic to your website.

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Law Firm Marketing – Increasing Your Revenue By Grading Clients

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:19:09 +0000

Law firm marketing is comprised of many different elements. The analysis of your firm in law practice management can be complex, however, lets begin with a key success variable – your current client base. Managing your client base is the most important aspect of your law firm marketing efforts. I suggest you begin with grading your clients.

The ABCD Solution

In looking at your client base for law firm marketing purposes, you can use a time-tested method of analysis. Thi…

The ABCD Solution

In looking at your client base for law firm marketing purposes, you can use a time-tested method of analysis. This is the key concept of “ABCD clients”. Service professionals of many types use this method to accurately rate and organize their client base. And for effective marketing for law firms, this method is priceless. By the way it is not just about marketing. It is also about serving your clients better than ever.

As you certainly know in schools we use the letter grading system to rank the students in order of how well they perform on papers, tests, quizzes, etc. Similarly we will “grade” our clients. So think of your client grading system for law firm marketing as summing up all the aspects of a good client.

A client who gets an “A” would be one who has reasonable expectations, follows your instructions, is grateful for the work you do as well as courteous and professional in their demeanor with both you and in particular your staff. In fact if you are ever wondering if someone is an “A” client or a “D” client just ask your staff. The “A” client sends you referrals that turn into “A” clients as well. The “A” client is never concerned with the fees you charge since they know your services are worth the cost. They pay their bills on time all the time. And finally, their cases are interesting and substantial matters. Now isn’t this the kind of client you are aiming for in your law firm marketing in the first place? Additionally, have you ever heard the old saying “birds of a feather flock together”? This means your “A” clients know a lot of other “A” clients who they can refer to you if you play your cards right.

Of course a client with a “B” grade would have many of the same qualities of the “A” client, but not all. A client with a “C” grade would be closer to a “D” client. A client with a “D” grade is the complete opposite of all the characteristics of an “A” client. They don’t have reasonable expectations, they pay their bills late (some not at all), try to negotiate lower fees or retainers, don’t follow your instructions (may even think they know better than you do), are rude or unprofessional, they do not send referrals (or if they do they are also “C or D” clients), their matters are not substantial and interesting, and they often complain about normal fees. Not a pretty picture these “D” clients. Let your competitors have them!

In targeting your law firm marketing, “C & D” clients are not the kind of client you want to attract. Most firms find that “C & D” clients take up between sixty to eighty percent of their time and efforts, while only bringing in twenty to forty percent of the firm’s revenue. Does it make sense to cultivate this type “C & D” business? Of course not. You need to stop taking “C & D” business and “fire” (ethically of course) any “C & D” business that you can. Even if you only begin with the “Ds” it is a beginning. Quite liberating as well my clients report to fire these folks.

Effective marketing for law firms includes a realistic look at what will bring the best benefit for the best clients. Ridding yourself of clients who are graded a “C or D” is one of the best things you can do for your “A & B” clients. Without spending all your time on the “C & D” problems and concerns, you can pour your attention into your “A & B” clients (moving their matters to conclusion faster thus you can do more of them). Thus the “A & B” clients will be even more satisfied, resulting in more referrals and more business from them. Clearly a “win/win” for all.

Another big, big advantage of spending less or no time on your “C & D” business is you can focus more time on developing your “A & B” referral network. Your increased marketing time and more focused law firm marketing will result in more quality “A & B” business.

What I have found working individually with over 500 attorneys is most of you will need to limit your practice areas to one, two or maybe (and I do mean maybe) three practice areas in order to drop your “C & D” cases. Too many attorneys are practicing “threshold law” that is defined as taking anything that comes across the threshold of your office. In selecting your practice areas try to incorporate cross-salable areas, such as wills and trusts, real estate, and/or estate planning for example. Select the most lucrative practice areas you have and then pour your law firm marketing efforts into those targeted practice areas while focusing on “A & B” clients and referral sources. This may be a bit frightening at first and in the long run you will be extremely glad you did.

Law Firm Marketing And The “I Hate Selling” Syndrome

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:18:23 +0000

Do you hate selling? Should you hate selling? What does “selling” mean anyway? How does hating selling impact your client service and revenue? If you decide to learn to love selling (or love it now) how would you go about developing that love anyway?.Law firm marketing and the “hating part” in the title depends on what you mean by selling don’t you think? After all many people think the word “sell” is a four-letter word. If you mean the kind of traditional selling we find prevalent in the selling of new or used cars or if you think of selling as getting someone to purchase what you have to sell regardless of the means used – then I would say I hate selling myself! In law firm marketing if you mean facilitating a person’s unique process in deciding what is in their highest and best interest (while suspending one’s own needs and supporting their decision making process) – then I love selling. I assert, in law firm marketing, selling is not something to “hate” given how I define selling. In fact selling, given my definition, is a required skill set in serving people well and is critical in lawyer marketing. Given my definition what do you do? Read on.

What does this law firm marketing coach recommend you do in building sales skills? First, I would suggest you think through your responsibility to your prospective clients to deliver “buyer facilitation” (more on this a bit later). Second, I would suggest you become familiar with some of the “consultative sales” models that have been developed that are applicable to lawyer marketing. Few attorneys have ever had any training in sales or even read a book on the subject (or so I have found in my work with over 500 attorneys). What are these sales models that can work with lawyer marketing? Read on.

One model that works with law firm marketing and has a 30-year track record is the Sandler Sales Institute’s 7-Step System For Successful Selling. The book I found that is best for understanding this approach is David H. Sandler’s You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar. There are around 175 Sandler franchisees around the country that have multiyear sales training programs you don’t need, however, you can find the book at http://Amazon.com. Even though I don’t agree with all that is said in this book it is one of the top three I recommend for law firm marketing. The next model is Integrity Selling For The 21st Century by Ron Willingham. One of it’s big strengths is talking about different “buyer types” so you don’t speak the same way to everyone, instead you speak to their “type” if you can.

Finally, my top recommendation for lawyer marketing is Selling with Integrity by Sharon Drew Morgan. She has a website at http://www.buyingfacilitation.com/advantage.html where you can get her latest e-book (which is an update of her hard copy book). Sharon’s model is the one I use in my work since it is “third generation” and a win/win situation. First came traditional selling, and then came the consultative sales model, and now the buyer facilitation model. One does not throw out consultative sales (represented in the first two books I mention) totally with buyer facilitation but consultative sales skills comes AFTER buyer facilitation. Also, it goes without saying traditional sales is out in law firm marketing.

Why would sales distinctions (more on that in my client development e-course) be important to learn in law firm marketing? First, you want everyone you talk with to have a good experience. Whether they hire you or not they have been profoundly served and will remember your unique connection with them as well as tell others. Second, you want your prospective client to be an educated consumer in making a decision since an educated consumer is more likely to say “yes” and say it sooner than later. Third, as a law firm marketing coach I am interested in your “conversion ratio” or how many of the people you talk with actually turn into clients. If I can help you improve your “conversion ratio” or please forgive me “closing ratio” then I will increase your income while you serve your clients better than ever. What is wrong with that?

Know Your Private Label Rights’ Rights

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:17:29 +0000

People who use Private Label Rights content are delighted to see more PLR sites appearing. The explosion of such sites has, however, given rise to a new problem – the overall quality of the articles users pay for. Good (and reliable) writers are snapped up fast and given ongoing work. Regrettably, some PLR site owners seem to be only concerned with getting a batch of articles uploaded no matter what the quality.

Competition, as we all know, is a good thing. Quite a number…

Competition, as we all know, is a good thing. Quite a number of PLR users are now making a practice of signing up to check out the quality of what’s on offer in a new site. If they like it, they stay. If they don’t – they vote with their feet, or more appropriately, with the ‘cancel this subscription’ option at PayPal.

As a subscriber to a PLR site, don’t feel that you have to accept the articles you get, no matter what the quality. You are entitled to get articles and/or ebooks that have been proofread and edited to correct grammar and spelling. It is the responsibility of the PLR site owner to check that the articles are of an acceptable standard (or to hire someone to do this for them).

PLR users expect to have to tweak and change an article to create unique website content. They should not, however, have to edit every article. We all expect an error to creep in here and there – but an entire batch of articles written by someone whose first language is quite obviously not English is not acceptable. Nobody wants to have to copy-edit every one of 20 articles before turning them into an e-book.

If you are not satisfied with the quality of the PLR content, the first and most obvious option is to cancel your subscription. However, you would be doing everyone a favor if you took the time to contact the site owner to explain why you are not happy. Copy and paste a few examples from the articles to demonstrate the errors.

In the past, PLR site owners have sent back batches of articles to be corrected and/or rewritten when they are not satisfied with the job. In extreme cases, they cut their losses and just hired a new writer. Any PLR site owner who wants to build a profitable and well-regarded business will be interested in working with you on this – they don’t want to lose customers.

If you can’t get any satisfaction, move on. Sample the content of several sites. Ask for recommendations from friends or other publishers before you sign up. (Look for more than one satisfied customer – never forget that some reviews are there solely to get you to sign up via the reviewer’s affiliate link.)

Different sites offer different things and finding a site to suit your needs may be difficult. Some sites offer articles and complete e-books, sales letters and well-produced graphics. Others provide only articles and a few bonus products.

If you are a competent graphic designer and know your way around programs like Photoshop, graphics may not be important to you. (Indeed, you may prefer to create your own graphics so your site looks different to everyone else’s.) Some sites offer ‘extras’ like web hosting and autoresponders, plus ready-made AdSense sites. If you are just starting out, you may like these all-in-one solutions.

Be sure to check the following when looking for a good PLR site to join:

- What you get for your monthly subscription – articles, e-books, e-courses, AdSense sites, graphics and sales letters.
- The quality of the articles that are available – general style, grammar and spelling.
- Is the content original (not copied from some other source)?
- The regularity with which content is posted. (Check out the forum, if there’s one available. Are there constant complaints or queries about when each month’s content will be available?)
- The range of topics covered. You will find that some sites specialize in one subject area, while others cover a broad range of topics. Are you using enough of the monthly content to make it worth your while? There’s not much point in being able to access 200 articles a month if you can use only five of them.

It’s common for PLR users to belong to more than one site. An example: $200 a month spread between four to six sites comes to only $2,400 a year – which is an excellent business investment compared to the cost of hiring your own writer. Well-written, carefully-edited PLR articles are usually well worth the monthly fee. Take the time to assess the content of any PLR site – and stay with the ones that believe in quality control.

Law Firm Marketing – By Grading Clients Increase Your Revenues

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:16:33 +0000

Law firm marketing implemented correctly can increase your income while you reduce your work hours. One key distinction discovered by successful attorneys and other successful service professionals is having a system for grading their client base and managing their focus. This article will give you that empowering system free right now.

The ABCD Solution

Landing Pages, And Why You Need Them!

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:15:52 +0000

If you get into an affiliate marketing program without actually having a landing page, you’ll end up paying too much without getting anything in return. So if you still don’t have a landing page for your ads, you should start creating one now..Landing pages are just web pages where visitors are directed to whenever they click a result in a web search or whenever they click a web ad. For affiliate marketing, landing pages would refer to the web page where you, as a merchant, would want your potential customer to be directed after clicking your ad on your affiliate’s website. Landing pages are, nothing really different from other web pages in a particular website, especially if the website is an e-commerce site

If you want to get something more from your online business, and if you want to bring in a lot of profits, you better create a special landing page for your web ads.

There are a variety of affiliate marketing programs today, but most of these programs let the merchant pay the affiliate in a pay per click basis. Basically, all you have to do is sign up with the program and submit your ad. The program owner would then distribute your ad to various affiliates who would then place your ad on their websites. Whenever your ad is clicked, a visitor would be directed to your landing page and you would have to pay the affiliate for his service.

As a seller, you earn in an affiliate program through conversions-that is whenever a visitor that is directed to your site actually buys a product on your site. Without these conversions, you actually earn nothing from the program.

Now, you sure won’t get any conversion if you have posted an ad on your affiliate’s site without an actual landing page for the potential customer to be redirected into. It’s just like advertising a product without actually having a store to sell your product. Your advertisement may be enticing enough to encourage people to purchase a product, but without the landing page, how will they know how to purchase the product

It is therefore important to have landing pages for your ads because it is the only way for you to earn something in an affiliate program.

Many people make the mistake of making their website’s homepage as the landing page for their ads. The same is true for those who make use of other pages like a “contact us” page or a product page. Homepages are often designed to serve multiple users and contains a lot of links to other pages or to other websites. If you want to be successful in an affiliate program, you don’t want your landing page to cater to the needs of various people, most of which may not be really interested with your product.

When choosing a landing page, you must always have the customer directed into that page in mind. Therefore, your landing page must be relevant to the keywords and the contents you placed on your ad. It is important that the landing page can encourage your visitor to take action to purchase your product or at least provide leads for possible customers.

Law Practice Management – How To Determine Your Fees

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:14:54 +0000

Want to get “top dollar” for your work? Are you under pricing yourself? Are you afraid to raise your fees? Don’t know what benchmarks to use in your pricing decisions? Do you know when you are in danger with your pricing decisions? This article will answer these questions and more.

Determining fees is a difficult law practice management task for most attorneys when thinking through their law firm marketing plans. In determining fees for certain services, attorneys often fall short of what they should charge. Too many attorneys are afraid of even charging the competitive price for their services when making their law firm marketing plans. Further, they make the pricing decisions often with no data or conceptual framework. Additionally, instead of focusing their efforts on how they can justify getting top dollar for what they offer, they charge a fee that is often way too low and often actually can scare off potential clients who think there is something missing from a service that is “cheap”. Additionally many attorneys don’t realize that most purchasers in the marketplace by far are “value purchasers” and not looking for “cheap”.

So before you sit down and begin thinking through your law practice management pricing strategy you need some distinctions around pricing commonly used in law firm marketing planning. Then add your pricing strategy to your law firm marketing plans. You need to be sure that you are charging a sufficient fee on everything to guarantee you a good profit not just a good living. Do know a law practice management law firm marketing plan is not effective if you only attract people who want to pay the lowest fee for a service. These are not loyal clients. Instead, you want to focus your law practice management and law firm marketing plans on attracting clients who will become long term assets to the firm. Low price clients are not building your base of long term clients I can promise you that.

There are basically four ways of determining how much you should be charging for your services. Lets move right into those now.

The Market Method In Law Practice Management Pricing

This is one good way of determining pricing. Get your assistant to support you in this law practice management task and spend some time discovering what the range of pricing is in the community. Have her do a “mystery shopper” study by calling around as if he/she were a potential client and find out what your competitors say on the phone to her around pricing. She may need to call from her home phone to avoid caller ID. As another option you could have him/her call other assistants or paralegals at your competitors and offer to exchange your fees for their fees or you could do that with other lawyers yourself in your market. If you really want to get into it and have maximum data you can write maybe a few dozen competitors in your marketplace and say you are doing a fee survey and if they would send you their fee list you will create a composite list that does not identify those responding and send them a copy of the results. To keep it simple for them include a stamped, self-addressed envelope with a list of the most common services offered in your practice area. Now you will see what people are charging for services similar to those you offer. You should be able to come up with a range of prices. Use this range to set prices for your own services. My recommendation in law firm marketing planning is to charge at the 75% level of the list. So you should be at or in the top 25% of the fees.

Remember that in general it is not a good law practice management strategy to compete on price. Most potential clients will see pricing that is too low as a signal that there is something missing either from the service, the provider, or the firm. And people who are looking for a low price will follow that low price wherever they can find it rather than becoming long-term clients. So be sure that your price covers your costs and a reasonable profit margin.

The Cost Method in Law Practice Management Pricing

This law practice management pricing method is very straightforward really. One simply determines what the costs are to deliver products or services and adds on a reasonable profit, somewhere between fifteen percent at the least and maybe thirty three percent at the most. The most common mistake in law practice management using this method is to neglect to include some form of your expense. Solo and small firm attorneys tend to not include their own salary!

OK, let me say it again. In law practice management often you count yourself out of the expenses and you should include yourself in the expenses. Why? Often you are doing at least some of the technical work. Yes? Often you are doing at least some of the management work. Yes? As the owner of the business you are due a reasonable profit. Yes? If you are all three of these in one, you should consider one salary as due you for your time and expertise as the technician and manager as well as a profit of fifteen to thirty percent due you as the owner. So be sure to include a reasonable cost for your technical and managerial work in the expenses part of this formula.

Fixed Rate Method in Law Practice Management Pricing

This is the method used by many auto mechanics (it is called “the flat rate book”) and other service providers. This method is where you determine a fixed rate for various jobs and charge that rate no matter what. If the mechanic spends less time than allotted for the job, he makes more. If he spends more time than allotted, he makes less. But in the end, it all evens out (well, usually to the mechanics’ favor if you ask me). Another example using this method is how managed health care has used this system with hospitals and doctors. Lawyers can use this system if they desire.

The “Rule of Three” in Law Practice Management Pricing

This “rule of thumb” called the “rule of three” used in law practice management is not what your CPA might tell you and it does not fail you either. Ask your CPA what they think about it and they will like it. To begin we are going to be thinking in thirds. For the first third we will take the total amount of salaries/bonuses (not benefits just salaries – benefits go into the second third coming next) for the revenue generators and/or timekeepers (this includes you if you are generating revenue) and call that our first third. So add up the salaries of the lawyers, paralegals, and legal secretaries who generate revenue or are timekeepers and call this your first third (lets just say that number was $100,000 to keep it simple). Whatever that number is take that number again and it is your second third which we will call your “overhead” (thus that second third is $100,000 and don’t forget you if you are doing some managing partner type duties since that part of your time goes here in overhead). Then take that same number and we will call that your last third, which we will call gross profits (another $100,000). What you need to do is take the total amount (in this example $300,000) and now figure out how much you must charge per billable hour, per fixed rate or how many contingency fee cases won to be sure you hit the target we must hit given our first third number times three (in this example $300,000).

This method shows you how much per hour you need to charge. Since you know how many billable hours each revenue generator can do per month, simply divide that into your total of all thirds ($300,000) to see what you need to charge per billable hour to make your numbers come out correctly. As long as you hit your targets you will be assured of a 15% to 30% net profit from your operations. After all if you are the owner of the practice you deserve a fair profit as well don’t you agree? This method is known as the Rule of Three. If this method is a bit too confusing do feel free to contact me and I will help you sort it out in a few minutes on the phone.

It is a good idea to think through all of these pricing methods in determining your law practice management pricing strategy before setting a price and moving ahead with a law firm marketing plan to ensure you are thoroughly exploring all options. Remember the tendency for most lawyers is to price too low. Don’t do that! In another article I will tell you how to speak to potential clients so you never have a problem getting the fee you deserve.

Learn the Top 2 Tips to Make Your New Financial Year The Most Profitable Yet!

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:14:07 +0000

Well we are already 1/2 way through 2006 and boy has it gone fast, I swear I am already seeing hints of Christmas in the stores! Was one of your 2006 New Year resolutions to get busy with your business online and really make an impact?.If you like many others have not quite gotten there yet, don’t despair because I am about to give you the hottest and easiest to implement strategies that will really make a difference to your bottom line!!

business growth, business, blog, strategy, online business, directory submission, business planning, sme, enterprise growth, small to medium business

Well we are already 1/2 way through 2006 and boy has it gone fast, I swear I am already seeing hints of Christmas in the stores!

Was one of your 2006 New Year resolutions to get busy with your business online and really make an impact?

If you like many others have not quite gotten there yet, don’t despair because we are about to give you the hottest and easiest to implement strategies that will really make a difference to your bottom line!!

It is time to make some more money and to get you started here are our Top 2 Tips for 2006!

TIP # 1

GET DIRECT WITH YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE

This is one strategy that you can perform so simply every week that it boggles my mind more people are not hopping on this band wagon.

By having your online business listed in as many quality “Search Engine Friendly” directories as you can, your page rank and web visibility will double almost monthly.

When I say quality what I mean is don’t list your “for Australia distribution only” site on the Uruguay local shopping network directory! You get my drift!

The main benefits of being submitted in as many quality directories as possible are;

1. Increase in your sites link popularity

2. Search Engines regularly crawl “search engine friendly” directories

3. Increased visibility for your business on the world wide web

All of these equal higher ranking on search engines, higher traffic to your site, more clients and the best of all increased profits for you!

Links back to your site must be valid and quality links, linking for the sake of linking will be picked up by the search engines and ultimately have you blacklisted for link spamming! Not an advisable avenue to go down!

This technique is something you can do yourself, or if you are short on time or don’t know where to start companies like www.infovilesilencer.com at a reasonable cost. Most reputable companies will provide you with a list for a small fee, a reciprocal link or at the very least acknowledgement for their effort in putting together a huge list!

Make sure that if you do decide to use a company to perform your directory submissions for you that they do it manually. If your site is submitted to too many directories in too short a time frame, you could, once again, be considered to be link spamming by the search engines. Pace yourself!!

To do it on your own merit simply create a standard page or word document that you can use over and over again, cutting and pasting straight into the directory forms.

In this document you should create;

1. Several compelling headings for your site (make sure they vary in character length)

2. Several varying lengths of informative, content rich and descriptive text that best depicts your site (all directories are different but most want either 50 characters, 250 characters or 1500 characters in length for your descriptions)

3. Your keyword lists, with and without punctuation (usually up to 250 characters will do the trick)

When I say characters, I mean each letter, each punctuation mark and each space is counted as a character. If you create your main document in Microsoft Word then there is a handy word count option inside the “Tools” toolbar that will do all of this for you.

Don’t leave putting this strategy to work too long though, as a lot of directories start requesting payment or reciprocal links once they reach a certain size and the “FREE” listings can become scarce.

Directory submissions usually only takes a few of hours of your time per week to really start seeing results, so take the time to really grow your business online and be seen and start TODAY!

TIP # 2

BLOGGING FOR BUSINESS DOLLARS

Blogging has to be one of the hottest explosions onto the internet scene that online business has witnessed in recent years. The number of blogs has nearly quadrupled since their acceptance as customary in 2005.

The word Blog is short for weblogs and they are an easy fun way for anyone to easily post new content in a simple to read format with the newest information always appearing at the top of the page.

Blogs are insanely simple to set up and maintain. The new innovations like email blogging are making it even easier, some people are sending posts to their blog multiple times in a day!

So how does a Blog benefit your online business? Simple! The four biggest benefits are

1. Helping to boost your rank within the search engines.
2. Increase your traffic to your main website
3. Improve your industry credibility
4. An extra resource to place your business information, press releases, articles and more

By having a well written, well thought out, and well designed Blog your customers will know straight away that you are up to the minute with your online presence, and you will have an avenue to demonstrate your credibility in your specific area of expertise.

All of this increases your website traffic, leading to more customers, extra sales and higher profits for you!

So what are you still reading this for? Get Busy!!

Go to Blogger website and start blogging for business dollars right now!

Start submitting your site to the Directories and get seen by the people who count!

And remember one step at a time, don’t think it all has to be done at once! All it takes is just one successful strategy to start seeing genuine growth and increased profits.

Plan your attack! Once you have implemented one strategy successfully and start seeing results, only then should you move forward with your next technique and so on and so forth!

Get Growing!!