Are You Top of Mind?

Imagine your perfect client.  Now, imagine that she learns that the Wall Street Journal is quoting you as an expert for the exact problem that she is facing right now.

Your status is confirmed by email within seconds, -not days, weeks or months, but seconds- and while she is actively pondering her problem.  Like magic an expert - you- appears.

She needs your expertise right now. And if you are get that call - it will be from a perfect client already sold.

Further, you made her special because she knew you were an expert all along.  Why? Because of the informative and valuable articles you have been sending her through the IAFD newsletter. You, my friend, are not just important - you are Top of Mind.   

How valuable is your reputation now?  How much would you pay to enhance your reputation?  How much you would pay for a system that consistently and reliably kept you Top of Mind? The IAFD has a solution for you, which costs $29.95/month.  Can I tell you how easy it is?

How I Failed Marketing 101, Skip if You Want to Jump to the Pitch.

But, first I have to confess.  I made a huge mistake  years ago, and I am still paying for it.

I enrolled in a full day negotiation workshop at a prestigious Law School.  The participants were professionals, many highly regarded in their industry.  The workshop was on interest-based negotiation training.

There were several small group negotiation training exercises - including the somewhat controversial "Get as Much as You Can" exercise, designed by the attorney/mediator Gerald Williams.  

In the "Get as Much as You Can" exercise, I implemented an elegant and graceful solution to this four person social dilemma game.  The solution worked and our group won, vastly outpacing all the other group's score.

Now, I am going to tell you how dumb I was.

The head of a large professional trade association was in my group.  She was in charge of many collective bargaining processes.  She was very impressed with how I handled the group dynamics and our resulting win.  

In short, she was my perfect client.  We exchanged business cards. She remarked with complete sincerity, "I will definitely keep you in mind for our next tough collective bargaining problem."

But this is a story about how I lost that sale or referral.  After we exchanged business cards, there were a few pleasant emails, but no work developed.  

I had been top of mind for a few important minutes, or even for a 1/2 day.  But when she was facing a novel problem that needed an elegant strategic solution, I was neither top of mind or even accessible.  I had lost an important chance.

I did not nuture that prospect by sending her information that was interesting and valuable to her, on a routine basis. I failed the first rule of marketing.

How You Would Succeed, Today

Today, you can have a simple solution or response. You would not fail like me.  

You would sign her up for your firm's newsletter.  And your newsletter would allow individuals to like, subscribe to, or  follow a particular story, author or news channel.

When you took her business card, you would ask to subscribe her to the article that you  written and published about the "Get as Much as You Can Game" and social dilemmas in general.  

You update and improve this article as your thinking about the problem matures.  She gets notifications of those updates.

And more importantly, she automatically gets an update by email when the article is quoted or linked to by the popular press.  

Automatic notification that she is special.

When she learns that the Wall Street Journal is calling you an expert, she becomes special because she knew you were an expert all along.  She is an insider, who can say "I knew it all along."

You would remain Top of Mind with her as long as she found your updates interesting.  You would not fail like I did.

More Benefits - The Reputation Rankings

The subscription solution neatly sidesteps the reputation problem for lawyers and the use of legal directories.  Either you are bundled with other lawyers whom you like and share interests, and so are in competition for clients.  

Or, you are bundled with lawyers you don't much care for and suffer by association.  

Worse, you are bundled with some of your competitors whom you actively dislike.

The professional solution to this problem has been the creation of honorific titles - Legal Eagles, Super Lawyers, Martindale Hubble  rated, and other rankings.  This passes for marketing in legal circles.

Gaining the recommendation of your peers is worthwhile. But it won't keep you top of mind.

Eagles which cannot soar aren't seen.  I believe grounded eagles are a different sort of bird: turkeys.  

Building Your Subscriptions, Skip if You Want to Jump to the Pitch.

But, building a subscription base will keep you top of mind to those people, for those problems they show consistent interest in.  You can nuture those leads until they are ready to contact you, and now they are an educated and impressed lead.

Technically, how does this work?  And is it really easy? Yes, and here is how it works on the IAFD site.

A. Technical Details - Write the Article

Richard Solomon wrote article about producing a system wide profit and loss statement for franchises.  Great article, by the way.

Let's go right to the bottom of the article.  Here is what we see.

B. Technical Details - Trackbacks

I am going to work from the bottom up.  Let's examine the trackback section. This is what creates the technical magic.  When this article is linked to, automatically a trackback is generated.  (You can filter trackbacks like Richard is doing so that only certain tracbacks get shown.)  Each subscriber gets an automatic notification by email.

C. Technical Details - Subscribers

Where do you subscribers come from? Let's look at the MT Notifier section.

Here is the brutal truth.  Many people who read your article and are interested or even impressed without commenting.  Industry standards put these readers at 95% or more of your audience.

How do you get them to form part of your subscriber list?  Well, you cannot.  But since Richard is an attorney in Key Partner of the IAFD, he can - or more accurately, the IAFD can do it for him.  

Richard's article was run in the May 2011 newsletter and was be seen by over 7,000 active subscribers.  Some will click on his article and read it.  The IAFD will then follow up and ask these readers if they want to subscribe to updates to Richard's article and if they accept, Richard will have built in audience and remain top of mind - for as long as there are interesting updates.

It is not a mystery, we ask them to subscribe.  Some will.  Some won't.

We can even enter in any email or list of emails directly and propose to a person that they subscribe.  The person opts-in and signals interest.  We propose and they accept - which is how the IAFD creates your subscriber base for your online articles.

What could be easier than to remain Top of Mind, being an IAFD Key Partner?

"The IAFD cannot make your business better.  We cannot give you a better reputation than you have.  

We do have a marketing program however that maximizes your reputation, builds your social audience, and amplifies reputation, the Key Partner Program. 

But, if you use it, you will have to get used to the fact that it eay, works better than any other solution, and is affordable at $29.95/month.  

If you can live with easy, better, and cheaper, then the IAFD would love to have you as a Key Partner.

Payment Options

2 Years : $327.00USD - yearlyMonthly- Cancel Anytime : $29.95USD - monthly