Advertising advice for small business professional?

[Lucy]

My husband had been practicing as a lawyer for over 40 years and was going to retire last year. He stopped taking new clients so he would be able to close out cases and shut down his office. He was in sole practice and never advertised, other than his name/address/phone number in the phone book.

But after 1 year has now decided he wants to keep practicing, but due to him telling all of his past clients of his pending retirement, is stuck trying to "reboot" back in.

We are now looking into advertising and need to get some facts/figures of the costs. He never had a web page, but believe that would be the best course to follow.

I am looking for Information of what may have worked for you, or what failed to work. Being a lawyer makes it worst since there is so much advertising out there and maybe difficult to have him "stick" out vs the other competition.

Being self employed means we are on a limited budget.

Thanking all in advance for help.

[JollyScholar579]

signs

[Barrel Babe]

Think of common places that your clients will be where they will see your advertisement. Brochures, fliers, and signs work well. Also, if you were to advertise at, say, a court house, bring a plate of brownies with you to hand out with a business card attached. The employees will enjoy this and you gain "brownie points" towards business if someone asks them for a referral.

[Jake]

I suppose lawyers can't use flyers and sandwich boards like a fast food place...

If you can provide a business address, you could get a free Google Places page, these can be powerful, for attracting clients in your community, try Googling:

Attorney, your city, the red stick pin symbols are Places Pages, note how clicks on some of them go to the business web site, though it's the places page that attracted the click.

After you are verified by postcard or phone call you can add photos, youtube videos and custom text fields to the page.

Consider creating a free advice video series that's posted on Youtube, any video recorder with decent lighting will do, though a remote mike improves quality. This sort of soft sell can be good for one's reputation, ideally you would 'watermark' a phone number or web address in the video.

Paid ads like Google Adsense can be limited to a specific geographical area, though ads for your field would cost well north of $1 per click.

You could start with a free blog from Blogger (also a Google property) you can assign a custom domain name acquired at Godaddy or namecheap for about $10/yr. The name can be transferred to more professional sites as needed.

This search phrase will turn up example Blogger blogs using the totally free sort of domain names:

site:blogspot.com inurl:Attorney

[athomeceo]

I'll keep this answer short and sweet. SInce he never advertised, your husband's business has probably been running almost strictly on word of mouth, with maybe a few leads trickling in from the phone book listing. Word of mouth is the best type of lead, but word of mouth has moved online. Social Media is a necessary part of marketing any business. For a local business to compete with the larger companies, you have to use all the online tools: directories, search engines, opinion sites, facebook pages, profiles. That is the only way you can compete effectively and affordably. If you are not up to speed on modern business on the internet, you might frown at the thought of using facebook, etc for a legal practice. I have run into this when dealing with some of my attorney friends. The simple truth is that almost EVERY business can benefit from the proper use of online tools. If you are interested in getting help with this, visit http://www.local2net.com. For $75 to $100 a month (plus setup), we can evalualte your internet visibility, and proceed, month by month, to improve it. The fee includes setting up a facebook page for you, claiming your Google Places, Yelp, Foursquare, and other profiles, and making sure all the information about your business is accurate and consistent. Also included is regular training in the form of a monthly newsletter on how to maximize your internet presence. Or, you can call me at 800.834.8505 x81 and I can send you some info. By the way, it is not absolutely necessary to have a website to use our this service, but I would advise you get one. If you need one, I can set up a simple one for you for an additional fee. Take care!

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