Content That Converts: Get More Referrals by Being Visible, Credible and Findable
My team and I were having a status meeting with a client recently, to look at the first six or so months of a marketing and business development program. He already had a well-deserved reputation as an accomplished criminal defense strategist and a skilled trial lawyer within the criminal defense community, particularly in his geographic region. Our LinkedIn-based campaign had as its goals to reinforce his reputation, highlight his expertise and increase his visibility with a wider audience of potential referral sources. The core components of our strategy included updating his LinkedIn profile to show his experience as well as his approach and work style, expanding his connections on the networking platform and publishing his monthly criminal law articles in a LinkedIn newsletter and on his account.
We had charts and graphs with stats and analytics on his connections, subscribers, reach and engagement and how his content was performing on LinkedIn. In the team’s opinion, the metrics were pretty good for the initial six months of a program, but we wanted to hear his thoughts. He told us he had been at a conference recently and a number of people had mentioned reading and enjoying his articles. We were thrilled that this real-life feedback supported what we were seeing in the LinkedIn analytics.
Then our client told us that he’d recently gotten referrals for new client work from sources that didn’t know him personally. Our client believed that the referral sources were aware of his reputation, particularly in the courts and jurisdictions in which he litigates, and that his activity on LinkedIn confirmed for them that he was still actively practicing in the area and in criminal law.
We call these unknown or silent referrals—in part because the referral source often doesn’t tell the lawyer they are making the referral. Instead, they tell the potential client they’ve heard “good things” about the lawyer, that the lawyer has a great reputation or that the lawyer seems to be the go-to person for specific types of work or in specific jurisdictions. These referrals are driven not by a personal or professional relationship between the referral source and the lawyer but by the credibility, reputation and visibility of the lawyer.
These seemingly out-of-the-blue referrals are fantastic. Who doesn’t want work to drop into their lap?
They are also challenging for a number of reasons. They often don’t come with solid information about how they actually occurred, because you don’t know and can’t really ask the referral source. You can only rely on what the client tells you, which is often not the full picture. These referrals are not easily duplicable; it’s almost impossible to build a referral pipeline that captures silent referrals.
But most disheartening is that some silent referrals never lead to a phone call or an inquiry from the potential client because somewhere in their (often online) vetting of you, they don’t see the proof points they need to feel confident that you are the lawyer to whom they should entrust perhaps their most significant or life-altering legal problems. In other words, your online presence doesn’t have enough information about the work you do or evidence of your experience and expertise to support the referral they’ve been given. And, because they don’t reach out, you never know about the potential work you missed.
Fortunately, there are ways to help keep your referrals flowing and minimize the potential that prospects drop away before they contact you.
Identify your usual referral streams.
It’s unlikely that your client referrals come from a single source or type of source. In fact, you probably have a number of different referral streams.
Experience-based referrals come from people who have direct experience with your work in some way. Current or previous clients are the most obvious, but experience-based referrals can come from other lawyers, both from within and outside your firm who know your work, or from co-counsel, opposing counsel and perhaps even judges before whom you’ve appeared. These types of referrals can carry tremendous weight with potential new clients because they come from someone who has firsthand knowledge of your skills, legal knowledge, and approach to representing clients in court. If the referral sources are clients, they know how you work with clients and they (hopefully) have benefited from your representation of them. The extent to which your clients are willing to make referrals will depend, at least in part, on the kinds of criminal defense work you do.
Reputation-based referrals come from people who are familiar with you, your practice and your reputation but haven’t worked with you directly. This category also includes other lawyers, both from within your firm and from other firms, as well as members of associations, such as the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Reputation-based referrals are from people who typically know at least some proof points supporting your reputation—specifics about your skills and approach, the cases you’ve handled and your overall track record of successes—but they don’t have a complete picture.
Specialization-based referrals are the flip-side of reputation-based referrals. These typically come from people who may know “of you” because of your specialization, whether it’s the type of criminal defense work you do or the courts, jurisdictions or regions in which you’re most known for handling cases. In other words, they know you for what you do—defending public officials in white collar cases in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania, for example—but don’t have additional information or proof points to provide. This category can include other lawyers at your firm or other firms, and members of associations and other communities to which you belong.
Content-based referrals come from people who neither know you personally nor know your reputation or specialization. Instead, they’ve experienced your content—your website, bio, LinkedIn or other social media, or articles or other thought leadership—and feel confident enough from that content to recommend you when someone asks whether they know a criminal defense lawyer. This is different—and somewhat rarer—than a potential client finding you through your website or other content.
You probably already have some sense of how you get new clients and work, and it’s worth spending some time delving a little deeper and gathering some information. If you know the referral source or if they reached out to you before they made the referral, you have an opportunity to ask them some questions—and of course, to thank them. It’s not always possible to categorize specific client referrals, in part because new clients often don’t have complete information from the person who referred them to you. That said, the information clients give you can be helpful in identifying your referral streams, so it’s always a good idea to ask.
Our client knew that experience-based referrals were not likely to come from existing or previous clients, based on the fact that his white collar work often involved defending high-profile clients who would prefer to keep their legal troubles out of the public eye. His experience-based referrals were more likely to come from other lawyers who had firsthand knowledge of his work and his approach to representing clients. He also knew that he had referral streams that included both reputation- and specialization-based referrals for both the type of white collar work he does and the jurisdictions and regions in which he practices.
Be findable for referral sources.
Our client attributed the new client work to his increased visibility on LinkedIn—a very deliberate objective of our marketing plan for him. He surmised that the referrals were either reputation- or specialization-based and that his activities on the professional networking platform confirmed for those who knew of him that he was still actively practicing. Or, as he so creatively put it in our meeting, that he was alive and well and practicing law instead of pushing up roses in the local cemetery. (There is a reason his writing is so well received!)
Our client is on the right track with his thinking. LinkedIn is the primary social media platform for lawyers. According to the ABA’s most recent Legal Technology Survey Report, more than 90% of lawyers, regardless of the size of their firm, use LinkedIn personally. Not having a profile on LinkedIn means you’re not visible and likely not top of mind for referral sources. More importantly, you’re not “findable” if someone who knows you by reputation or specialization wants to do a quick check before they refer you.
Use content to build visibility and trust with your referral streams.
Having a profile on LinkedIn is a marketing and business development must. Engaging on LinkedIn with other users’ posts—liking, commenting or sharing—can help enhance your visibility with your network and beyond.
But posting content is the key to supercharging all your referral streams.
According to LinkedIn’s own research, the vast majority of active users on the platform—around 90%—are “lurkers.” They consume content but don’t engage with it. Forget commenting, lurkers often don’t even hit the “like” button. Another 8% of users engage with content but don’t post their own. Only 2% of active LinkedIn users put content on their accounts, and the percentage that post regularly is even smaller.
Being in that small group of regular content creators makes you—and your credentials, knowledge and experience—so much more visible. Publishing content around your work, your area of practice and your approach to clients and cases builds and enhances trust and confidence with your audiences, so they feel comfortable referring you. It also supports their referrals with proof points they can provide to the potential clients to whom they are making the referrals.
Different kinds of content support each category of referral. For example, content focused on the specific areas of criminal law you handle most will help reputation-based referral sources feel confident that they are referring you for the right type of work, while content that shows your experience, approach and work style will help specialization-based referral sources feel confident that you not only practice in that area but also excel in it. Fortunately, a lot of content—whether it’s substantive articles, select matters lists or your LinkedIn profile overview, for example—can do double or even triple duty across different categories of referrals.
Remember those lurkers? They can be a covert but important audience with whom to build trust and credibility. Lurkers can fall into any one of the categories of referral sources—even content-based. They may not be vocal about your content online, but they are still noticing it, consuming it and perhaps even recommending it to others. You can’t know for certain whether you have referral sources among your lurkers, but it’s likely that you do, given both the number of people who use LinkedIn and the high percentage of those who consume content without responding. And when one of your lurkers needs to make a referral, they can do so quickly and with confidence because you’ve earned their trust with your content and consistency. Your lurkers may even be more than silent referral sources; they may be covert builders of your credibility and visibility, talking about, recommending and sharing your content. The conference attendees who complimented our client on his articles on LinkedIn may not have been engaging or commenting on his posts, but they were reading them.
Prevent prospect drop-off with content.
Your online content is also essential for preventing prospects from dropping out of the hiring process before you’re even aware of them. At a minimum, you need to be findable online, because the vast majority of clients do at least some internet vetting before they hire a lawyer. Your online profiles (LinkedIn and website bio) should be up to date and accurately reflect the cases you handle and the clients you represent. But much as your content can help build trust and confidence with your referral sources, it can do the same with potential clients. A body of substantive online content—blogs, articles, client alerts and/or posts on LinkedIn—can give a potential client the proof points they need quickly and at the moment when they need to decide, often under time pressure, to hire a lawyer.
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