Why many lawyers gamble with their marketing budget

Dan Kennedy has stated that one is the worst number to have in any business.

What does this mean?

If you are getting your clients from only one lead source you need to change this ASAP.

The biggest disasters and most stressful challenges in my law firm occurred when I relied only on one lead source. (as an aside this also applies to having only one staff member but this is the subject for another blog article)

Even if you are knocking it out of the park with one lead source do not count on that happening forever. Business markets change fast: pay per click changes the rules and the fees become astronomically high; your favorite lead source may decide to increase their fees by 50% or more. This happened to me with an online directory.

I experienced the above changes I described above first hand. I initially built my law practice off of Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click. When I first started my law firm, these were golden lead sources that brought in over 80% of my revenue. However, pay per click slowly became more saturated and Search Engine Optimization became much more complicated. This forced me to react to the changes in Google’s algorithm and the higher costs of pay per click. Even before SEO became complicated the Google algorithm was changing frequently leading to a lot of unnecessary anxiety.

One definition of insanity is to do the same action over and over again and expect different results. I was able to avoid insanity and learn from my earlier mistakes. Currently I have over 10 different types of lead sources.
Many lawyers want to try to find the “purple pill” the one lead source that will bring in all of their clients. Shaun Buck from Newsletter Pro stated it eloquently in the GKIC titanium lead generation CD: Rather than trying to find the home run find a lead source that is a single or double.

I found this simple yet profound statement to be liberating as it reaffirmed what I have put into practice. There is rarely the purple pill; the home run that is going to bring in a flood of clients. Furthermore, it is better to have 10 different lead sources than bring in one client each – than have two lead sources that bring in five clients.

Be patient with yourself as you try to find new lead sources. It takes time and money but it is worth the sanity. See my previous blog post on how to find the golden lead source.

To your success.
Kaushik