DSD Law Sites is please to announced that Alan Koenigsberg of Agile Search Marketing as joined us as a partner helping us with our lawyer and law firm clients get the results from intensive organic search optimization as well as for Google Adword and other paid marketing efforts.
Click here to read more about Alan’s background.
Like it or not, we’re often judged by first impressions. But what many don’t realize is that as important as that initial one is, the power of the second, third and all following exposures can be equally influential in reinforcing a positive image. This should be viewed as a key component to your marketing efforts, and any visual elements that help promote your business. A second point of contact may come in the form of a brochure, business card, letterhead, or website. When you get that second opportunity, can your audience draw a correlation that clearly brings your business to mind? They are more likely remember you in a positive light if you have in place a unified branding campaign, spelling stability, consistency, and building confidence in your audience.
Visuals are certainly one of the strongest components to consider, but they need to reflect the core elements upon which your business is built. Your service offerings, professionalism, reputation, and ability to deliver should have a way of surfacing in all marketing materials. But that’s not to say these elements are explicitly pushed to the forefront. Solid concepts in visual design and branding often rely on inferences that stimulate awareness of your business’ strengths and benefits in an indirect, but meaningful fashion.
Make a simple checklist of all the materials that go into promoting your business. Some come to mind as clear cut necessities: business card, letterhead, envelope, website, brochure. Depending on the size of your firm and the activities in which you engage, you’ll have additional needs that may include presentation folder, powerpoint template, tradeshow booth, announcement postcard, invitation, yellow page ad, online banner ad. What’s important is to build brand unity between all these elements so that they have a meaningful and consistent message that casts your business in the best possible light. That’s where you benefot from working with a skilled and appropriately experienced designer.
As designers, we work with clients that have varying degrees of branding in place. Some require starting with a clean slate, and with others there may be a need to adapt an existing program to cover a variety of needs. Our practice upon engaging with a new client is to listen closely to their ideas, probing with questions that examine how they view themselves, what sets them apart, or makes them similar to others in their field. One helpful exercise is to examine competitors, both local and remote, taking into consideration their audience and their offerings. How does your message, your strengths and value propositions stack up against others in your field? How do you differentiate your business from the pack? Initial conversations between designer and client should be wide open, and ideas should flow freely – even napkin sketches have proven valuable as brainstorming tools.
The tools are out there, and they are at nearly everyone’s fingertips. Just as the desktop publishing explosion democratized the public’s abilitiy to produce fancier and more colorful materials, there’s also been an increase in the number of poor and unprofessional brochures, business cards, and presentations. Some tools are built into popular software programs, some tools are available as “wizards”. But is doing it yourself really such a great idea? Be ready to adopt he same thinking behind hiring a professional to prepare your taxes, or to repair your auto, or to make building improvements. When working with a seasoned professional, their expertise can ensure that the job is done reliably and thoroughly.
Rocky Laber, principal at DSD Law Site Solutions, is a graphic designer and web developer with experience that dates back to the early 90’s. Contact him at rlaber@dsdlawsitesolutions.com or call 510 488-4470.
As a solo practitioner or small law firm, you have many potential competitors. It’s critical you figure out what makes you stand out from the crowd. There are many ways to differentiate yourself from the competition. In the marketing world, we call this branding. (Think Coke vs. Pepsi.) You can start your branding efforts by refining your elevator pitch. It’s not enough to say that you are a passionate advocate for your clients’ rights. Instead, be specific.
For example, if you have successfully represented a couple pharmacies in professional liability litigation and you want to do more work with pharmacies. This means that to engage those clients you need to say more than that you are a “passionate advocated.” Instead try on,
“I provide result-driven representation for the retail pharmacy industry.” Then you can use your website to re-enforce that message to differentiate your practice.
Here’s an example of branding a website using the “retail pharmacy” model from above:
Look for the entire article about creating a website in an upcoming, “Big News,” the CA Bar Solo and Small Firm Section publication.
We recently authored content that appeared in Contra Costa Lawyer, the online publication of the CCCBA. In the article, we outline a couple of simple strategies for the beginning blogger with a focis on making the experience manageable and beneficial to their online marketing efforts.
Read the full article here.
Harvey Kletz has been practicing law for 37 years with most that time spent in a beautiful convert Victorian on College Avenue in Oakland, assisting individuals with personal injury claims against insurance companies, corporations and public entities. This year he was recognized by the Oakland magazine as the most legendary legal eagle of the East Bay.
Many locals know of him because of his attractive office space and his enduring presence in the community. DSD Law Sites Solutions wanted to extend his strong and positive brand onto the internet. His website features Harvey standing in front of his office reminding people who drive by that location of who Harvey is. For those not familiar with Harvey’s office, it conveys a sense of an attorney who has been a respected member of his community for decades.
What we provide for Harvey Kletz:
Google has changed it’s search algorithm to focus on delivering fresher content to searchers. They estimates this will effect 35% of Google searches. The idea is to to promote the most recent content on a topical issue such as tax reform plans or the Greek debt issue and the like.
How Attorneys Can Take Advantage of This
DSD Law Sites Solutionshas several clients who blog about recent developments in the law. They make sure that they keep up a steady stream of content devoted to any and all new developments related to that law. If the law has a popular name like, “Frank-Dodd,” that should be included in the posting’s title.
We have seen several clients appear on the first page of Google results for a particular niche term like “Frank-Dodd,” based on their posting about the topic on their blog. This isn’t the same as appearing on the first page of a popular search term like “Divorce Attorney” which gets thousands of hits a day but this approach has several advantage:
Using Google Analytics to Identify Hot Topics
One of the services DSD Law Site Solutions provides is a review of keywords that visitors use to find your website. I typically look for keywords that are topical and then I inform my clients that they should continue to write about this topic. Often its not a topic they had any idea was of interest to visitors so this helps them identify hot topics and capitalize on this information before other attorneys have figured out that they too should blog about the topic.
Domain names are inexpensive and easy to purchase. In the early days of the internet, fees for domain names were commonly priced at $75-$100 per year, today they can be acquired for as low as a $10 annual fee. A domain name that mimics your business name or describes your business is obviously a good thing, but there are a few other factors to consider.
DSD Law Site Solutions can help you select and implement the domain name that makes the most sense for your business. Contact us for a no-obligation consultation.
Website visitors can be lumped into two basic groups: people and machines. Machines are the search engine robots that scour the web and report back to create an index of pages to be found in a search. Taking a highly analytical approach, they examine content, keywords, code, links, traffic and structure. Over time, these robots crawl back to a site to look for changes, enhancements, keywords, and opportunities to bring more meaningful results to people conducting searches.
But machines fall short in a couple of important areas, they can’t (yet) account for the personal, intellectual and emotional stimuli that influence a person’s response to a website. This is where visual design, usability and information architecture come into play. A color scheme can set the overall tone and influence all kinds of responses to page content. A site with plentiful content and navigation options may have a need to examine priorities, for example, where on the page would a call-to-action link be most effective? A site may rely on photography to draw in a visitor and entice them to explore pages.
Through our lengthy experience in web design and development, we recognize the importance of satisfying the needs of both types of visitors. This shows in the custom WordPress themes we develop – unique to the needs of each one of our clients.
Look for the “ethics” of LinkedIn in our next newsletter.
Randy Riddle and Tim Yeung are authors of Renne Sloan Holtzman & Sakai blogs. Randy Riddle authors the California Election Blog which covers the laws related to California Elections. Randy had a Typepad blog that looked very different from the Renne Sloan Holtzman & Sakai brand and it was also difficult to track blog traffic.
Tim Yeung with his California Perb blog used the Blogger platform and he faced similar issues. So DSD Law Site Solutions re-designed these blogs on the WordPress platform and made both blogs have a similar look and feel but kept them distinct from each other and the Renne Sloan Holtzman & Sakai website. Now these blogs are clearly identified as belonging to the law firm and the authors are able to track and monitor their blog traffic to better target content that their audience wants to read.