Mastering Client Attraction: Fill
Your Pipeline, Then Stay Top of Mind
with Consistent Communication
and Smart Marketing

Ali Katz:
They don't want your newsletter. It can't be traditional, boring lawyer newsletter. Now, what is it that makes it not a traditional, boring lawyer newsletter? It has a picture of something interesting that you did over the weekend. Ideally, that includes your face in some sort of a fun situation. It could even be like, for example, if it's like negative nine in your town, go outside, put on your clothes that make you look like a puffalump and take a picture. Like, it could be just literally that.

Ali Katz:
People like to see you, especially see you in like weird situations. Yes, that requires you to do stuff over the weekend. That's right. And actually enjoy life and stuff. Isn't that the best when your work forces you to enjoy life so you could get a picture?

Ali Katz:
Welcome to the NewLaw podcast for entrepreneurial lawyers. Here at Personal Family Lawyer, we want to help more families and business owners make eyes wide open legal and financial decisions. But we cannot do this without you. Which is why we started this podcast to find those of you ready to offer a better way to serve your clients. So, if you are a legal professional who wants to help improve the legal and financial wellbeing of your clients and offer a service model that differentiates you while meeting the needs of your community, and rest easy knowing that you are running your law practice like a real business, then join us on this journey by subscribing to the show and find out how you can use a new law business model to love your life as a lawyer. In this episode, you are going to hear the beginning of one of our mastering client attraction coaching calls. And you're going to hear me lay out exactly what I recommend our members do to stay at the top of mind of their community, how you fill your pipeline and then communicate consistently. And you'll hear me talk about the resources that we provide to our members. Plus, you'll hear me coach one of our members on whether to hire a marketing company that has made a big proposal to her, what to ask for specifically and how to find a photographer. Very important that you have great photos for your website, for your social media. And so you'll hear the exact words to search to find a great photographer. And to know what kind of marketing do you really need and how to make the decision about hiring a marketing company. So listen in and I'll see you on the other side.

Ali Katz:
I want to start with what is the foundation? What is the fundamentals for you to build with? So the fundamentals for you to build with are building your client pipeline. In December, we spent a whole month with the fill your client pipeline challenge. My hope is you didn't stop anything that you started then, you began to make it into a habit. Every month I'm filling my client pipeline, I'm filling my client pipeline. What does that mean? I'm adding to my email list. So what does that mean? That means you need to have an email list. So step one, do you have an email list? Okay, so everybody should have an email list.

Ali Katz:
Your email list is the most valuable asset that you're building. If you're not already building your email list, now is the time you could start building it with networking. Then you could start building it with posting on social media and offering something free in exchange for people's contact info like the "Wear clean underwear" book. Then you could start inviting people to presentations, educational presentations. Then, depending on how many clients you have the capacity to serve, you could start doing one or two presentations a month. Then you could start making a monthly offer. That's how straightforward it can be. So I want to just pause there for a minute.

Ali Katz:
Oh, I missed the most important part. Sending out your email newsletter every week. Every week. Not once a month, not twice a month. Every single week. The consistency of sending it out every single week is what makes the impact. We make it as literally, easily as possible for you to send that out every week. If you get set up with accelerator, and we are going to be rolling out a version of accelerator where it's really inexpensive for us to send out your email newsletter for you, that's coming soon.

Ali Katz:
Literally all you have to do is fill out a wrike form and we'll send it for you every week because it's the foundation. Yes, Anthony, your referral partner, mentioned that she loves your weekly newsletter. Yes, exactly. People will love your weekly newsletter when you're doing it the way that we teach. Now, when you're doing it, traditional boring lawyer newsletter, they don't want your newsletter. It can't be traditional, boring lawyer newsletter. Now what is it that makes it not a traditional, boring lawyer newsletter? It has a picture of something interesting that you did over the weekend. Ideally that includes your face in some sort of a fun situation. It could even be like, for example, if it's like negative nine in your town, go outside, put on your clothes that make you look like a puffalump and take a picture. Like it could be just literally that. People like to see you, especially see you in like weird situations. Haha. Yes. That requires you to do stuff over the weekend. That's right. And actually enjoy life and stuff. Isn't that the best when your work forces you to enjoy life so you could get a picture?

Ali Katz:
:It really doesn't matter so much when you send out the newsletter. My online business manager lady told me Tuesdays and Fridays are the best. Glenn, do you have a viewpoint?

Glenn:
Yeah, I like Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays can be tough because some people, you know, might take off on certain holidays and things like that, but Fridays can also be very good because it's a roundup day for people and they're going to check their email.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. I just created a new platform where I'm sending out content through substack, which is like this writer's platform. And I paid to do a little, like three sessions with somebody who's awesome on substack. And the very first thing she told me is you have to post consistently every week. You have to put it in your calendar. You have to choose when it's going to go out. And you just, even if you write it some other day, it has to go out at the same time every week. Super annoying to me. I hate being consistent.

Ali Katz:
I hate having to work within a structure like that. And she's right. She's right. So what does that mean for you? Is that if you put time on your calendar on Monday to prepare your newsletter, then it can go out on Tuesdays. That gives you the entire day of Monday to get it ready. Now, if you do it like Kelly, she's an accelerator member. She on Monday has a calendar item for her newsletter. It's about a 45 minute calendar item.

Ali Katz:
She takes ten minutes and she records a video on YouTube. Less than ten minutes. The topic, if you need to have a topic, could be the same topic that is the weekly article. Because every week we've given you an article and we give it to you on Fridays. If you don't like the topic of the week that we gave you, we have, I don't know how many hundreds from the past. We don't even know, do we, Glenn?

Glenn:
It's hundreds easily.

Ali Katz:
Yeah. So you can always go pick a topic you like better than the one we've picked. You don't have to use the one of the week. You could choose what you want, but you could pull up the article and we've made it really easy for you now. Yay. Anthony, you never thought about making a social media video with a weekly article as a topic? Yes. And you literally want it to be less than ten minutes. So let's use this as an example.

Ali Katz:
So, protecting your family's safety net. How to set up your life insurance policy the right way? This is last week's article, came out on Friday, so now it's Monday. I look at it, I'm like, all right, something about beneficiaries setting up beneficiaries. So the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to read the article and I am going to pull out the three things I want to say about it in a video. Then I'm going to go on my firm YouTube because I will have set up a firm YouTube and I'm going to make an article about how to name beneficiaries the right way in your life insurance policy. And when I name the YouTube title, I'm going to try and name it something that I think people in my community are searching for when it comes to naming beneficiaries for life insurance. Then I'm going to spend ten minutes making the video.

Ali Katz:
The more you can put in a story to your video, not just the here's how you name beneficiaries or why you should never name grandchildren as a beneficiary. But like in my family, my grandfather named my child and then this is what happened. That is better. That's the best. Or I saw a client. I had a client come in and the grandmother named the grandchild, or the grandmother named the aunt as the beneficiary of the life insurance to use for the grandchild. But then the grandmother and the aunt were in a car accident at the same time. So any stories that you have from your client base, from your personal family, that could just add a little flavor here.

Ali Katz:
Your personal flavor, less than ten minutes. Then if you're working with a VA, you could send the link to the article, the link to your video, plus three sentences for your personal note and a picture of you from the weekend and a description of any events you have coming up. If you have live events coming up, we'll talk about that in a moment. As well as a list of any referral partners you want to thank for the week, who made you referrals, and anything else you want to put in the newsletter, send that to your VA to set it up for you in that hour block you have on Monday. Then you are going to make sure that the article gets posted on your website. If we're maintaining your website for you, that will already happen. And then you want to have your VA make you social media posts with your branding to drive back to your website. Okay?

Ali Katz:
Would you love direct support to help you grow your law project into a business you love? Go to newlawbusinessmodel.com/show and sign up for a call with one of our trusted law business advisors. Each of our advisors has been trained directly by me over the past five years plus to help you chart your path from wherever you are now to where you want to go as efficiently and effectively as possible. You're ready to grow. We are here to help.

Ali Katz:
So now we've got all of these different ways that you can use this content. And then does email list imply include use of a platform like constant contact or something? Yes, Mailchimp, constant contact, our accelerator program. All of these can do your email newsletter. If you are going to use MailChimp or constant contact, then I would recommend that you work with a virtual assistant so you're not having to do it yourself. So Dana, you had a question about hiring this company that wants you to pay them $5,500 to do a lot of things, and they're using a lot of words and targeted PR plan, corporate brand, personal key metrics through the campaign. One flat fee cost of $5,500.

Dana:
And then there was another thing, like an ongoing thing. So I was using for a long time for my social media marketing, for my events, and I wasn't loving the outcome. They weren't capturing the demographic I wanted. It was too widespread. I like in person follow up wealth planning sessions, and I was, I'm in Austin. I was capturing Houston and Dallas 3 hours away. And so it was just going, reaching too far for me. And so on an ongoing discussion with my coach, we decided to maybe interview other marketing companies.

Dana:
And so in the process of doing that, this company happens to be a client of mine, an existing client. So I figured I would reach out to them first, not fully knowing what their marketing was, but they're local. And so my reach out was, hey, you know, attorney marketing is kind of a niche thing. You do have to understand, like the bar association rules. And I wanted to make sure that they knew all that. And so when I told them what I wanted, fill my pipeline, cater to different things, um, this is what they got back. And they explained to me, they don't do social media marketing, they don't do Facebook and Instagram marketing. They are more LinkedIn and brand associated and getting you on podcasts and getting you here and that kind.

Ali Katz:
You are not ready for them.

Dana:
That's what I thought. That's what I thought. That's why I was like, I got to throw this out there because you know me, I will just spend the money before I think twice. So this was very for anyone who hasn't been to c4, this was very c4, not a neat gut. I'm not going to write the check and do this and then be sorry for it later. I sat back, I thought it, I sat in it, I wrote it out, I put it out to the world. And that's why I'm here. Because all the things.

Ali Katz:
What I would like to see you get is a brand, not a brand strategy. I would like to see you get a unique Dana reader when I see this. I know this is Dana's firm, logo, design, brand. I'd rather see you spend 5,500 on that, maybe plus a photoshoot. Then you could build all of that into what we've already given you. And you can hire a virtual assistant to run the system. And I think you're in accelerator, or you were?

Dana:
I'm in accelerator, yeah. So I have the monthly promotions go out automatically. So that's a no brainer. Right.

Ali Katz:
And the weekly email newsletter could start going out automatically.

Dana:
That I need to do. And, you know, I was never consistent on my events. So I'm hosting a Whiskey and Wills the first Sunday of February. Um, I've paid for 40. The whiskey is actually being donated and I've, I'm at 41 registrants right now, so I can go over that. So we'll just see how that goes. Didn't pay anyone for the marketing. Ran it myself in local places.

Dana:
Put it out as an event on Facebook and just copied and pasted. Did my own thing and just shared it with friends and people who have said they wanted to like, do a plan and never got back in touch with me, sent it to them and just did those reaches and it's, it's, for me, it's full.

Ali Katz:
Fantastic.

Dana:
Just everything, you know, if they all show up, that's fine, but yeah, and then I'll do a virtual one after the 14th of the month, like, so I'm doing twice a week, twice a month, kind of one in person and one.

Ali Katz:
That's all you need right now. So you could, if you like the design elements that this company, this brand strategy company does, you could say, I don't need anything that you've put, that you've created so far. Like, I don't need what you offered, but I do need a brand design and a personal brand photoshoot. I need that.

Dana:
Okay. Okay.

Ali Katz:
And see, okay?

Dana:
Yes. Because I would've just written the check. And not.

Ali Katz:
I know, I'd rather have you write the check for the right thing.

Dana:
I know, that's why I'm here.

Glenn:
Can I quickly double click on branding photographer and why that's important? So a photographer, they're not all made equally. A branding photographer, specifically not a brand photographer, they take pictures of products. A branding photographer understands that you need images that make you look like a warm, welcoming, friendly human. And they're going to have different types of shoots that they put you in that are, number one, going to be set up in the frame so that you can have text next to you sometimes because they know that you're going to use this on ads or on websites, things like that. And number two, they're going to put you in different situations where you look inviting or engaging, doing different things, like maybe writing something down or maybe you're looking at a book or maybe you're meeting with some clients. These are the kinds of shots you need to have. Sort of like a B roll of so you can repurpose them on things like your social media and on your website.

Glenn:
So if you're looking for a good branding photographer, simply put in that phrase and look in your area locally and then just take a look at their gallery and see if you like the kind of work they're doing.

Dana:
Okay, perfect.

Ali Katz:
Right.

Dana:
That makes more sense. All right, thank you.

Ali Katz:
Yes, you are so welcome. And price range for branding photos can be anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000. It really depends on how famous the branding photographer is. But I've spent in that range. The first person that ever took photos of me for my headshots, he was a photographer of like tires and cars. He wasn't the right person. It's really great if you get a brand, you know, a personal brand type photographer. Okay, everyone, thank you.

Ali Katz:
I am going to sign off and go. I have a book launch with this book that I'm in "Survive and thrive" with the founder of Reebok, Joe Foster. And then we have business foundations for new business owners. So I will see you all back here then. Glenn, this was great. I'm so happy we're doing this together. All right, thank you everyone. Y'all have a beautiful day. Bye for now.

Ali Katz:
If you loved hearing me coach Dana and you would love to get access to the kind of marketing support that we provide to our Personal Family Lawyer Firm leaders who don't have to reinvent the wheel, don't have to create it all on their own, but are able to leverage our resources for staying top of mind, sending out their email newsletter every week, posting consistently on social media, using our article content, making it their own so that you really have a jumping off point while you want to go to newlaw.co/show and apply for a call with a law business advisor so that you can get on the path to PFL and become a Personal Family Lawyer Firm leader. We would love to support you to serve your community with education based marketing and consistent follow up and a truly differentiated service model. And I will look forward to seeing you on the inside.