Smart Blog

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

    Pity poor Mark Britton. He thought he had a pretty good idea and would help the public out as well. His idea was a public website where users could find information about attorneys, express their opinions about the attorneys, and even rate the attorneys. The ratings would include information that was publicly available, input from consumers, from the lawyers themselves, and from their peers.
    "I thought there should be someplace for people to go and get consumer-friendly advice about choosing a lawyer," said Britton, when I interviewed him recently. "I thought there had to be a better resource than the Yellow Pages."
    So Britton created something called Avvo, to meet the need he saw in the market.
    Many lawyers however, rather than greeting Avvo as a great marketing opportunity, immediately screamed in outrage. Their main complaint seemed to be a lack of objectivity in the standards of why an attorney was rated highly, or not. In fact, two Washington lawyers filed a class action suit against Avvo in June of last year. The class action complaint was dismissed in December. The key passage in the Court's decision, upheld Avvo's contention that the opinions expressed on the website were protected by the First Amendment:

"Defendants assert that the opinions expressed through the rating system, (i.e., that attorney X is a 3.5 and/or that an attorney with a higher rating is better able to handle a particular case than an attorney with a lower rating), are absolutely protected by the First Amendment and cannot serve as the basis for liability under state law. The Court agrees."

If You Want To Pay Smart Marketing In Cash, It's Okay

Some of you may remember my previous rant about Comcast, the company that charges you two dollars to stop sending you junk mail (a "change of service fee"). I didn't think I'd be able to top that anytime soon, but here comes AT&T, my wireless cell phone service provider, to tell me that if I want to walk into their store and pay my bill in cash, it will cost extra. Probably you don't believe me. Read all about it.

Pomp and Circumstance

It's that time of year again. Time for proms and pranks, caps and gowns, and boring speeches at graduation ceremonies. I thought many of you, particularly Boomers, might enjoy P.J. O'Rourke's version of a commencement address, in which he says "I'm not going to 'pass the wisdom of one generation down to the next.' I'm a member of the 1960s generation. We didn't have any wisdom." You can read it here.

Knowing The Score

The Washington Post sent Joshua Bell, one of the two or three best violinists in the world, down into the subway with a $3.5 million violin, to play some pieces by Bach in front of his open violin case.

Some 1,097 people passed by.

“In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.”

There are a bunch of marketing lessons in this little stunt, but one of them is: without a location like the Kennedy Center (the packaging) and the price (tickets to see Joshua Bell typically start at $100) hardly anyone can tell the difference between Joshua Bell and any old fiddler in the subway playing for spare change.

Very few people have a sophisticated knowledge of classical music, and only the package and the price tell them if a performer is any good. They cannot tell with their own ears.

For most folks, the law is a mystery and anyone with a law degree is a genius. They can’t tell the difference between you and any other attorney. The only thing they understand is the package and the price — and, once they have met you, whether or not they like you.

Here is the article and accompanying video.

Lessons From Retail: It's The Service That Makes The Difference

My business is a service business. I could argue that most businesses, whether or not they offer "products" for sale, are service businesses. As the proprietor of a service business, I can tell you it's not easy. It is human beings who provide the service, and human beings are, well, human. They make mistakes sometimes. And it can be hard to keep your morale up. You do things 98 percent perfect, and all you hear about is that two percent. But that's the nature of a service industry. And it is imperative that you keep trying for that 100 percent.

Trying to differentiate yourself on the basis of the quality of your work product is hopeless. Differentiating yourself with outstanding customer service is a great opportunity.

Studies show that success in retailing depends largely on the training and comportment of the sales staff, and much less to do with product, price, location and other factors commonly believed to be most important.

The Yellow Plague?

For many of my clients the decision about whether or not to advertise in the Yellow Pages is an important one. For some, that Yellow Pages expenditure is the largest single line item in their marketing budget. And for some, particularly those in fields like personal injury or bankruptcy, those ads are still a good investment that pays off for them. But increasingly, the needs once filled by the Yellow Pages directories are being served by Internet search engines, and advertisers who formerly considered a Yellow Pages ad a necessity now see it as an option. They are cutting down or eliminating their Yellow Pages budget and spending it instead on pay-per-click advertising on search engines and other "new media."

As noted in an article in today's Boston Globe, the problem with Yellow Pages is not just a question of their effectiveness as an advertising vehicle. Many see the piles of directories littering apartment building lobbies and filling dumpsters and resent the litter and the waste. They see the mountain of directories printed and distributed to an increasingly uncaring public as an environmental faux pas, at the very least.

It's hard to predict how the Internet will affect different industries and products. Newspapers seem to have been hit hard. On the other hand, people who predicted the demise of the printed book have been astonished to see book sales go up, not down, in the Internet era. But it's hard not to think the Yellow Pages may be destined to go the way of the dodo.

Marketing Lesson From A Hook— I Mean, Escort

I spend a lot of time with my clients on the subject of pricing. Most of them underprice their services. The reasons for this are many, but are mostly psychological. They have less to do with geography or experience or competition than with the attorney's own inner belief about what he or she is worth. However, when a product is invisible (like legal services) then value is conveyed only by packaging and price. From reading an article in yesterday's New York Times, it seems that the legal profession could learn something from the world's oldest profession. Here is the key quote:

And when it comes to price, Ms. Xi’an [a high-priced call girl] shared a secret. When someone pays her $1,250 an hour, he gets exactly what he would for $200, her rate when she started out. The difference is psychological, she explained: “The more somebody pays for you, the more they’ll respect you.”

“Tell a guy you’re $100 and they’ll treat you one way — tell them you’re $1,500 and they’ll treat you better,” Ms. Xi’an said in a telephone interview from her home on Long Island. “I’ve heard a lot of girls saying, ‘Is this girl getting $5,500 an hour because she’s more beautiful? Is she doing something I don’t?’ The answer is no. But that girl is able to look a guy in the eye and say, ‘This is what I’m worth, and this is what you have to pay if you want me.’ And you have to be able to do that, and believe it.”

(Tip of the cap to Lisa Solomon for alerting me to the article.)

In A Nutshell

Recently, members of a marketing listserv to which I belong were posed the following question by a "newbie" attorney: "Now I know plenty about the law and am ready to open my office. How do I get a client?"

That's an extremely broad question but various listserv participants took a whack at it. Here was my advice:

I think the shortest answer may be Woody Allen’s: Eighty percent of success is showing up. You need to show up in meatspace at networking events, seminars (even if you do your own), speaking engagements, association meetings, etc. etc. And you need to show up in cyberspace: blogging, participating on listservs, commenting on others’ blogs, writing articles and press releases, posting video, using social media, and so on.

If I had to give you client-getting advice standing on one leg, I’d say:

Get a great image.
Get in front of the public.
Build a referral network.
Get all over this Internet thing.

Oh, and do not price yourself low, hoping to obtain work by undercutting the competition.

But I also loved this extremely concise and valuable advice from estate planning attorney Laurie Kadair of Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

In a nutshell:
1) Fake it till you make it
2) Suit up and show up
3) Believe it'll be greater later

If You Want Me To Stop Sending You These Blog Posts, It'll Cost You Two Bucks

Well, that's how it works at Comcast anyway. If you want them to stop sending you junk mail, you'll be hit with a $2 "change of service" fee. These wonderful folks (and they are my cable provider, so don't get me started) are working hard to earn their designation as Worst Company In America. Early voting results: Comcast 21%, Best Buy 8%, Bank of America 5%, Fox News 5%, Walmart 5%, Countrywide 4%, Verizon 3%, AT&T 3%.

Letter To The Guy Who Stole My Car

I'm sure I could stretch and find a marketing lesson in here somewhere, but I'm laughing too hard. It reminds me a bit of a letter written by a friend of mine to the guy who stole his girlfriend — including the part about the CDs.