The third week of October is National Estate Planning Awareness Week. This year, it’s October 21-27. Bringing awareness and educating the public about estate planning is crucial to not only keeping families out of Probate Court, but also for helping manage, preserve and distribute their hard-earned assets to their loved ones, as they wish. To help spread the word about estate planning and National Estate Planning Awareness Week, feel free to download and use the image below in your public marketing (website, blogs, newsletters, social media, etc.).
You Need a Strong Review Strategy to Attract More Estate Planning Clients
By Foster Web Marketing A lot of the estate planning lawyers I talk to see reviews as a kind of nice “extra.” They don’t ask for them. They don’t look for them, and they don’t necessarily know what kind of impact their reviews are having on their incoming visitors and leads. In a profession that depends on your good name and reputation, doesn’t that seem like a huge oversight? Someone checking out your estate planning firm for the first time wants to know what kinds of experiences other people have had. They want to know if you can actually help…
The Top 6 Reasons You Should Be Giving Seminars
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law For estate planning attorneys, all of the technical and legal education in the world is great, but if you are not able to bring in prospective clients to plan for, there is no way for you to be able to successfully run your own estate planning practice. If you regularly receive referrals from other sources, such as financial advisors, CPAs, life insurance agents or other attorneys, that’s great. However, what happens if those referrals stop? How consistent and predictable…
How Estate Planners Can Make The Most of Their Contact List
By Foster Web Marketing Finding perfect new clients for your estate planning firm is difficult. You have to do all the work to figure out where they are, make meaningful connections, build trust, and convince them that you are the right fit for their needs. My team and I help estate planning attorneys do this every day, and I’ll be the first to admit it. It’s necessary, and it gets results—but this stuff is tough! However, you probably already have something that could be an incredible shortcut toward getting great clients. You probably already have something that takes so many…
Top 6 Mistakes Estate Planning Attorneys Make with Prospective New Clients
By Kristina Schneider, Practice Success Coach As an attorney, your time is important and there are a lot of people out there who want free legal advice. It is a common practice for many estate planning attorneys to offer a free consultation to prospective clients, so those who are insisting on charging a fee for initial consultations are creating a barrier to entry and eliminating potential new clients who otherwise seek attorneys not charging for their initial meeting. Over the years, I have heard a number of common mistakes made by estate planning attorneys with respect to how they handle…
Multiple Financial Advisor Referral Relationships May Be a Big MISTAKE!
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law Does that sound crazy to you? Probably! But, hear me out. (By the way, if you’re a financial advisor, what I’ll say applies equally to you having too many estate planning attorney relationships.) Over the years, I have consistently heard fellow estate planning attorneys tell me all of the reasons why the dedicated, single-financial advisor referral relationship (or a relationship with only one company or group of advisors) that I use in my practice doesn’t work or why it…
3 Reasons to Audit Your Estate Planning Website Content
By Foster Web Marketing As your website expands, older content can go stale. It might be inaccurate or outdated, or it might just be a little out of line with your current brand and messaging. You can’t just delete all that old content because you risk losing leads and getting in trouble with search engines. Unfortunately, the same goes if you just hang on to your old content without making any changes. That’s why we recommend digging a little deeper into your content with a comprehensive website content audit. A content audit is a systematic review and analysis of all…
The Top 20 Seminar Marketing Mistakes People Make (Part 2 of 2)
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law Marketing – – particularly seminar marketing – – has come up quite a bit in recent weeks. From our May Ultimate Level event, to list serve discussions, to people randomly contacting me. It prompted me that perhaps it was time to take a break from the usual practice-building topic and put together an article on seminar marketing. Over the years, seminar presentations sure have evolved, from overhead transparencies, to slide carousel projectors to laptops and LCD projectors. But despite…
5 Best Types of Video for Marketing Your Estate Planning Practice
By Foster Web Marketing Video is an incredible tool for connecting with potential clients and encouraging them to reach out to your estate planning firm. It’s a powerful motivator on its own, and it’s a powerful force multiplier when you incorporate it into a healthy marketing mix. And it makes sense—video demands attention, enhances understanding, and builds relationships faster than text alone. However, not just any kind of video content will do. You need to be intentional about the kinds of videos you create if you want to see results from your effort and investment. So, today, let’s take a…
The Top 20 Seminar Marketing Mistakes (Part 1 of 2)
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law Over the years, seminar presentations sure have evolved, from overhead transparencies, to slide carousel projectors to laptops and LCD projectors. But despite these technological changes, the fundamental rules of successful seminar marketing have remained the same. I learned these rules only after personally presenting thousands of seminars – – and making lots of mistakes – – so I thought I would assemble what I have found to be the “Top 20 Seminar Mistakes”, so you can avoid having to…