Berbay's Blog: Marketing for law firms, engineers, CPAs, architects and other professional services

For the seventh consecutive year, Berbay exhibited at the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators (GLA-ALA) 2012 Annual Employment Law Forum on January 28^th in downtown Los Angeles. We look forward to this each year to catch up with colleagues we may only see at GLA-ALA events, network with clients, and of course, learn the latest on employment law developments.

The structure of the Forum is one we have always appreciated as an exhibitor. The presentations are held in the same room as the exhibit booths and there are several breaks throughout the morning, providing attendees with the opportunity to stop by and learn about your services.  Because everything is in one room, attendees are more inclined to visit your booth rather than having to traipse off to a separate exhibit hall. Most importantly, GLA-ALA is great about giving their “business partners” (sponsors) recognition and encouraging members to engage our services.

We also enjoy taking the opportunity to gather marketing intelligence on what other firms are doing. Just when you think you’ve seen every type of pen or stress ball, something new is being handed out. We find it interesting to visit other tables and peruse their set-ups, and this is something every professional service provider should keep in mind – check out what others are doing.  Remember, exhibiting isn’t all about networking and business development; it’s a chance to see how others are implementing their marketing and gathering ideas to work into your own approach.

About a million years ago, I was awarded my MBA from USC’s Marshall School of Business (I won’t say how many years ago it actually was—let’s just call it a million). The other day, I received a brochure from USC Marshall Executive Education, the business school’s extension program. I was paging through it when I came across what I thought was a fabulous idea. It’s called MBA Recharge, and it’s a recurring event for Marshall MBA alums and guest.  The two-hour event focuses on “hot topics” relating to current events and offers knowledge that can be immediately be applied to your career.

File this under “Wish I’d Thought of That!” For alums, MBA Recharge offers what looks like a nice ongoing opportunity to at least somewhat keep their MBA degree up to date.  There’s so much to keep up on, and while many of the fundamentals remain the same, you know that 10 minutes after you’ve obtained your diploma, much of it is out-of-date. Meanwhile, for Marshall, MBA Recharge is a smart marketing idea: Putting on a relevant, snappy event like this helps keep alumni bonded to the school (and alumni gifts coming in). Whether or not I actually make it to the event, it’s a terrific idea.  Maybe the next step is a webcast.

It’s clear that technology is changing the business landscape, and will continue to revolutionize the way we do business.  This change has been significant for some companies such as Amazon and Groupon, and severely detrimental for others such as brick-and-mortar stores. For Berbay, it’s exciting to learn about new technologies that can help us market our clients’ businesses, from QR Codes (read our recent QR Codes blog) to capturing leads on the Internet.

Our latest “refreshing” experience with new technology came when we received a phone call from a prospective client who found us through the Internet. I answered the call, and initially it went as expected for a typical prospect conversation: The person asked me about who we are, what services we offer, what types of clients we work with, and so on. Five minutes into the call, the prospective client asked if I would be willing to Skype with him.

At first, I was a little taken aback by this request, because I had never been asked to Skype with anyone except my out-of-state cousin and brother. On the other hand, I was impressed by the prospective client’s  knowledge of this kind of technology, as we frequently have to educate our clients on these types of programs. Although Skype has been around for years and is widely used, I had never used it professionally.

The prospective client and I had a one hour Skype conversation, discussing his firm’s needs and our services. I realized that on a Skype call, you have to pay attention to your posture, eye contact, etc.—all the things you would consider in an in-person meeting, but not on a conference call.

In the end, it was a very successful call.  I was able to get to know the prospective client on a more personal level than I would have on a usual conference call. For Berbay, the experience opened a whole new door to face time: Now getting face time with a client doesn’t have to mean sitting across from one another—it can be as simple as a free Skype account.

What do you think about the effectiveness of Skype calls with prospective clients?

In making the rounds of my Saturday errands this morning, I used the products and services of two different business people who understood the importance of the quality of their marketing materials.  We’re still human beings and even in this digital age, can’t get around the fact that touch and feel convey a lot about your business. Not just whether it’s a quality business but whether you believe that it’s a quality business, and whether you believe it’s worth investing in.  These providers conveyed their message not just through their corporate identity – the look and feel of their logo, but also through the firm, solid stock they used for their business cards.

Israel Garcia is a hair stylist and make-up artist at Gavert Atelier salon in Beverly Hills (310-858-7898). Awhile back he developed his own corporate identity and when I took another of his cards this morning, I remarked on the solid stock.  It’s clear he understood the importance of aligning his marketing materials with his positioning in the marketplace.  We extolled the weight and solidity of the paper stock, the fact that the black didn’t show fingerprints, and the spot varnish on his logo. I was impressed that he recognized these points, because most professionals don’t understand the difference factors like this can make.

Then, I happened on the Dana Davis pop-up store in Beverly Hills.  I wasn’t familiar with her line of shoes (www.danadavis.com), which I’ll be a fan of going forward, but again, we ended up talking about marketing material because I commented on the quality and solid stock of her business card.  I also liked her marketing brochure, which to me seemed an adequate weight, but she whipped out one from the previous batch, the way she’d really wanted them done, which was on a heavier stock and very nice.

What does this have to do with marketing your professional service?  How often do I stifle a cringe when a lawyer, wealth manager, or real estate developer—all of whom are targeting high end markets — hand me their business card on paper-thin stock.   Sometimes, they’ve made the investment in developing a firm identify – a key step in branding themselves, but they’ve put it on cheap stock, which belies their positioning.

The business people this morning understood the fact that all of your marketing pieces fit together to reinforce your message to the marketplace.

Berbay often receives questions about using social-networking services such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. We recently got an email asking about Tweetdeck, a popular application that enables users to (among other things) update multiple social-media accounts simultaneously. We thought that our response might be of interest to readers of this blog.

Dear Berbay,

I use numerous social-networking services (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), so I recently downloaded Tweetdeck in order to be able to update them all at once and thus maintain them more easily.

Once I had the application up and running, though, I did a test update from Tweetdeck and it only posted to Twitter. What went wrong? How can I connect Tweetdeck to Facebook and LinkedIn as well as Twitter?

Janet

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Dear Janet,

Thanks for the question. Tweetdeck can be a useful tool—but it can be tricky. A couple things could be happening:

• You might not have added all your social-media accounts to Tweetdeck. When the application is open, in the upper left-hand corner, there are symbols for Twitter, etc. indicating which accounts you’ve added. The first thing to do is double-check that the symbols for Facebook and LinkedIn show up there.

• If you have added all your accounts, another possibility is you haven’t given Tweetdeck permission to update all of them. Where Tweetdeck lets you choose which social-media outlets you want it to sync with, make sure you’ve selected Facebook and LinkedIn.

Hope that helps. We’re more than happy to walk you through the process.

Best,

Erica Hess
Account Manager