Here’s a Chapter from Marketing Guru Bill Glazer’s Latest Book:
Outrageous Multi-Step Marketing Campaigns, Vol.2, featuring their Interview with Ken on one of his successful marketing campaigns. We thought our PILMMA members might enjoy the read, and getting a step-by-step guide to a successful Marketing Campaign Ken used in his last law firm.
It’s easy to assume TV advertising is something that only big companies with sizable marketing budgets can afford to do, but it turns out that TV ads work just like everything else in media: if you pick your channel wisely, you can get a huge amount of impact for a very small in-vestment. Many businesses spend as much on pay-per-click ads as Ken Hardison spent on TV but achieve only a fraction of his results. So, if you’re interested in generating $300,000 every month, pay very close attention to this OUTRAGEOUS campaign. Ken used a number of strategies to generate leads for his last law firm—including writing a book, Disability Secrets, and creating a TV commercial advertising his services. For this newest campaign, he combined multiple strategies into something OUTRAGEOUSLY greater than the sum of its parts. The campaign started with an infomercial based on the book. Ken paid $7,500 for a professional film crew to interview him about the book and create a thirty-minute documentary infomercial plus three 30-second commercials to air in the ad breaks between segments of the infomercial.
OUTRAGEOUS MARKETING Tip:
By recording his own commercials to run in the ad breaks rather than letting the station sell the slots to other advertisers, Ken ensured that his entire time slot was dedicated to promoting his services.
Ken opted for broadcast TV time rather than cable because that offered the best reach for his money. He tested a range of time slots and settled on Saturday and Sunday mornings between 10 am and 12 noon.
The infomercial concluded with a call-to-action that invited viewers to call in and request a free copy of Ken’s book. Ken had learned from past experience that a dial-in CTA is much more attractive if you use a free recording rather than a live person—prospects don’t like the perceived pressure of a live phone call with someone—so, the CTA made it clear that they could simply call to listen to a free recording, leave their contact information, and have the book mailed to them.
This small difference more than doubled Ken’s yield from the commercial. Of course, some people do want to talk to a real person, so Ken’s recording also offered an option for the caller to speak to a live person.
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Thank you for calling the Carolina Disability Lawyers medical update hotline. Please state your name and address twice so we can get you your free “Disability Secrets” book. If you would like to talk to a live person, dial 1 and you will be connected to someone that can help you. At Carolina Disability Lawyers, we are “Always Putting You First.”
The Nurturing Campaign
At that point, armed with the prospect’s contact information, Ken started his nurturing campaign. He began by mailing them the free book and a copy of his monthly newsletter.
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The newsletter served as another tangible contact point and made Ken more “real” in the eyes of his prospects. It added extra value in the form of legal information and education, and Ken also included general interest content—things like safety advice for holidays, health tips, even recipes—as well as news about his firm and tidbits from his own life that helped develop personal rapport with his audience.
Three days after sending the book and newsletter, Ken made another call to check that the prospect had received the book and ask if they had any questions.
Hello, this is ______ from Carolina Disability Lawyers. I’m just calling to make sure you received the book on Social Security Disability.
Did you get it? (If no; tell them we’ll send out another copy.) Have you had a chance to read it?
Is there anything we can do for you at this time? Note: If they have questions, either:
• Transfer to Tiana or Sherry or
• Set up an appointment for us to call them
Do you mind if we send you other helpful information to help you with your claim?
Thanks, and have a blessed day!
This personal outreach broke the ice, persuading prospects to let their guard down a little and even ask questions. At that point, they might open up with a bit about their own situation.
As much work as he’d put into the book, it was ultimately just part of the campaign, and offering it to prospects was less about informing them and more about showing them that he cared about them.
OUTRAGEOUS MARKETING Tip:
Prospects don’t really care about you or your brand until they know you care about them.
Even at this point, Ken was soft on the sell. If the person seemed open to discussing legal help, he would say, “We’d be glad to help you, and we offer legal assistance on a contingency basis. If we don’t win, you don’t pay—what do you have to lose?” His goal was simply to let them know that they would be protected in working with his firm, and they wouldn’t owe a thing.
Continuing the Engagement
By this point in the campaign, some prospects would take his offer. For those who weren’t ready yet, Ken sent a series of smaller bonuses.
The first was a calendar magnet (Ken holds the distinction of being the first lawyer in the US to use calendar magnets as advertising.) Not only was it good for branding by displaying Ken’s number and tagline “Putting You First,” but it also had a good shelf life thanks to its usefulness.
The second bonus was a report titled “Security for Your Life” that outlined common mistakes people make in filing a claim. While this report offered tremendous value to someone determined to deal with the legal system on their own, it was even more likely to persuade a prospect that they could really use the help of a lawyer.
After another three to five days, Ken followed with the third bonus: an infographic that shows the various stages of how a case proceeds. Again, this showed clients that he cared but had the added advantage of dealing in advance with many of the most common questions someone has when they work with him.
Three days later, Ken sent a Shock and Awe package with another report on typical issues with filing a Social Security disability claim, a pill-box (another item that many people are likely to use and look at several times per day), and a letter.
OUTRAGEOUS MARKETING Tip:
When sending marketing collateral to your audience, take the time to consider what your prospect will get daily use from. Something they will see and use every day keeps you top of mind when they are ready to become a customer.
At this point, 21 days into the nurture campaign, most of his competitors would have long since given up. Ken’s team, however, makes another call to check whether the prospect received the pillbox and to ask if they’d like another—for themselves or for a friend or family member.
After another three days, Ken sent yet another report listing questions to ask a lawyer before you hire them, and another three to five days after that, he sent a letter inviting the prospect’s questions and listing 45 of the questions his firm receives most frequently.
OUTRAGEOUS MARKETING Tip:
Repurpose your prospects’ questions, doubts, and objections into marketing collateral. Not only does it help you squeeze value out of marketing efforts that don’t pan out, it’s also a highly effective way to enter the conversation that is happening in a prospect’s mind.
Finally, a full month and ten points of contact after the infomercial, Ken made one last call to prospects and went for the hard sell: “Would you like to set up an appointment?” By this time, even if the prospect was still hesitating, they saw Ken as a warm, trustworthy, relatable professional. And even if they didn’t buy immediately, at the point when they were ready to reach out for help, he would be top of mind for them.
OUTRAGEOUS MARKETING Tip:
Traditional wisdom says it takes between 7 and 22 (or more) points of contact with a prospect to make a sale. Don’t give up too quickly. The money is in the follow-up.
Ken had done TV advertising in the past, but never with a follow-up campaign like this. While he’d used an online system that offered the same reports and other collateral in digital form, everyone had told him that doing the same thing in the “real” world was too expensive and too low yield. But Ken decided to try it once, just to see if they were right.
After the upfront investment of $7,500 to get the TV slot made, Ken was spending $1,000-$2,000 per month to air it, along with the nominal costs of his follow-up materials. It wasn’t exactly a low-cost campaign, but the results were more than worth the investment. After running this thirty-day, ten-point campaign, Ken was signing up cases right and left, for a cost below $200 (where all his other lead generation campaigns were costing at least twice that).
It also branded his firm as generous and education-oriented—creating goodwill across the community and distancing him from other lawyers’ pushy sales tactics. The first time he ran the campaign, it netted him 167 requests for the book. This led to signing between 50 and 100 cases per month, at an average fee of $3,000. Not only was this a huge boost for building his business, but it also drove up the value of his firm—by the time he was ready to end his career as a lawyer, he was able to sell his business for a seven-figure sum thanks to this OUTRAGEOUS campaign.
Making This Work in Your Business
There are several key takeaways from this campaign beyond just the numbers. First, marketing success is about a lot more than simply making the most of your advertising spend. It’s about building the value of your business through systems. Ken’s systematic approach to this campaign was typical of his entire approach to running his firm—he had a system for everything, from how to get a case to how to talk with clients to how to work the case. Everything was laid out on a silver platter, eminently understandable, eminently scalable, and thus eminently sellable.
OUTRAGEOUS MARKETING TIP
To start a business, you’ve got to have a list. To scale that business, you’ve got to have a system. With those two elements, you could be stripped of all resources and dropped in the middle of nowhere, and you’d still make money.
These systems lead to the second takeaway: that a great marketing system allows you to pivot your career into an information product. As Ken will tell you, marketing isn’t the sort of thing attorneys learn in law school. They are trained to think, to argue, to study the law, but not how to build a business. That’s why today, Ken has pivoted into a career teaching other lawyers how to use this OUTRAGEOUS campaign to build their business.
OUTRAGEOUS MARKETING TIP
If your campaign is good, you can repurpose it over and over, and even license it to others in your industry to use in their regional market.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Ken’s campaign, though, is that there’s very little actual selling going on. Instead, it’s primarily focused on engaging with the prospect. Ken could easily have sent a series of sales calls and letters encouraging the prospect to buy. Instead, he bombarded them with help, and only at the very end did he propose that they hire him.
Ken’s campaign is proof that the more you tell, the more you sell. When you go out of your way to offer people value, they go from doubt to trust to a sense of obligation to return the favor. Everything you do for the sincere benefit and improvement of your prospects comes back to you. ◆
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FYI: This Is a chapter taken form Bill Glazer’s Most Recent Book: Outrageous Multi-Step Marketing Campaigns that are Outrageously Successful vol. 2.
Glazer Is donating the proceeds from the sale of this new volume to the Veterans Research Foundation of Pittsburgh’s PIRATE pro- gram that helps veteran stroke victims.
