I’m not sure if this has been influenced by Valentine’s Day, but there is a veritable love fest for Avvo going on in the blogosphere over the past month. Thanks to all of you who have written:

How to Improve your Avvo Rating - by Gabriel Cheong, a widely read Massachusetts based blogger. Gabe gave a very practical (and accurate) accounting of how to optimize your Avvo Rating, covering things that do (and do not) impact it.

The Legal Profession Needs a Ranking System – Pittsburgh attorney, Brendan Lupetin, recognizes the need for Avvo to improve the quality of services provided by the industry. (Hey Brendan, add a picture to your Avvo Profile.)

Social Networking Better With Age - covers 65 year old Jeffrey Crown, who early on figured out how to get the most out of Avvo.

Rainmaking Club: Legal Marketing & Litigation Support Marketing - Legal marketing consultant, Margaret Grisdela, calls on attorneys to take advantage of free or low cost ways to manage online reputation.

Confused About Hiring an Attorney? Avvo Can Help. – In a series on how technology is impacting the law, this blogger writes: “Most of us . . . believe that Avvo will continue to grow and become an even more reliable source than it already is.” Music to my marketing ears.

How to Verify an Expert’s Credentials - a general consumer focused guide, calls out Avvo as a great place to review attorneys’ profiles.

Tweet Me Up Scotty - Jennifer Price covers tackling social media one bite at a time – including Avvo.

Directory Listings for Law Firms – Cool Research Data - spotlights Avvo as the fastest growing legal directory.

Internet Marketing Tips for Lawyers and Legal Professionals - master legal marketer and tax attorney, Roni Deutch, calls out Avvo as a great free way to “strut your stuff.”

AVVO Is Now Rating Lawyers in Mississippi

And on the off chance you thought this was just marketing puffery, it’s not all beer and skittles:

Attorney, Charles Krugel, really wishes we would just go away.

Policing the intersection of online testimonials and ethics - covers the South Carolina bar’s unenforceable and unconstitutional regulation of a “Company X” that looks very much like Avvo.

Happy Valentine’s Day from Avvo. For those of you who are still single with aspirations of mixing love and lawyers, (or for those of you already dating an attorney), check out our Legal Guide: How to Date a Lawyer.

For those of you who were blown away by Vanessa Fox’s talk on Search Engine Optimization last week at Avvocating, I’m glad to say her book, Marketing in the Age of Google, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

We are finishing the Avvocating conference next week with a 20 minute presentation on 20 awesome secrets lawyers can use to make their practice better. This is an end-of-conference format that I’ve seen work very well – the presenter does a rapid-fire one minute walk through of 20 new, cool, interesting, or out-there ideas. The goal is lots of ideas, little depth. I have 21 items already on the list, but I’d love to put them up against some suggestions from the legal community to see who makes the final cut. The more obscure, techie, free, cutting edge, slightly out-there, the better. Suggestions can be hardware, software, websites, or even good old marketing tactics. No flagrant pimping of your product (and we won’t pimp Avvo either.)

If you have any suggestions – just submit a comment below.

Oh – and if you haven’t signed up for Avvocating: Advanced Online Marketing Training for Lawyers, please join us. Speakers include Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Avvo, Microsoft, Justia and the University of Washington. It’s January 21 and 22 in Seattle and there are still some spots available.

Thanks,
Conrad

Today is the last day to sign up for the discounted hotel rates at the Seattle Waterfront Marriott for Avvocating. You can call the Marriott’s reservation line at 800-228-9290 and ask for the Avvo Conference Room Block or make reservations online with the group code AVOAVOA.

160 attorneys are signed up for Avvocating, Advanced Online Marketing Training For Lawyers. With speakers from Google, Facebook, Avvo, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Justia, and the University of Washington, it promises to be an excellent event. If you’d like to join us, just visit www.avvocating.com.

Get the inside scoop from the tech industry leaders themselves, up close and in person. Avvo’s first-ever Advanced Online Marketing Training for Lawyers brings together top executives from Avvo, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Justia to help you take your online marketing and reputation management to the next level.

When: January 21 and 22
Where: Bell Harbor Conference Center, Seattle WA
Who: Lawyers and in-house marketers
Cost: $249 – if you are a current Avvo Advertising client, call your Account Executive for free tickets. 800 441-3596.

AVVOCATING CONFERENCE DETAILS

If you’re a lawyer or an in-house law firm marketer, then join us January 21-22, 2010 in Seattle, Washington, for a first-hand look at how new trends in technology are changing the face of the legal industry.

Online event registration

Attorneys from these 18 states are attending:

As we look forward into 2010, I see the pace of change for the legal world accelerating driven by the economy, technological improvements and lawyers becoming more entrepreneurial in response. My list below may sound very self-serving, but in reality it explains exactly why we’re doing what we’re doing. Innovation can be particularly daunting for risk-averse, issue-spotting lawyers, so strap yourself in, put on your helmet and get ready for a roller coaster in the next 12 months.

1. Growth in Some Consumer-specific Sectors – Trend data from Avvo show the economy has caused major growth in specific legal practice areas, including Bankruptcy, Foreclosure, Real Estate and even Divorce. Anecdotally, I have talked to many attorneys in these areas reporting record years.
2. Growth in Solo Ranks – 2009 saw the worst employment year for BigLaw which culled their ranks at a rate of 4.5%. Cuts were widespread and deep – seven of the largest 50 law firms let more than 200 attorneys go. Following guidance from solo practioner fairy godmother, Carolyn Elefant, many enterprising laid off attorneys have struck out on their own. Expect this growth in the solo community to continue as lay-offs trend into 2010.
3. Price for Online Marketing Products Drops – The number of lawyers paying thousands of dollars annually for basic online products like blogs, websites and directory listings will drop precipitously. Cost conscious attorneys will continue to seek alternatives to the dominant industry vendors who have overcharged lawyers for rudimentary solutions over the past decade. Additionally, the ranks of do-it-yourself lawyers embracing easy-to-use (and often free) platforms will increase.
4. Price for Marketing Consulting Services Drops – 2009 saw an explosion of social media gurus, mavens, ninjas, and self-proclaimed experts providing Social Media Strategy Consultations. These ranks will swell in 2010 as more laid off and bar-sanctioned attorneys turn to a career in marketing consulting. However, the fabricated mystery of social media will disappear as attorneys discover a twitter account can be set up in 10 minutes by anyone who finished 3 years of law school. (Those with congenital social issues may still require a consultant to let them know that online social interaction can be just as challenging as in-person interaction.)
5. Personalized Search Strengthens Large Entrenched Sites – Google recently made a massive shift to search that seems to have gone almost unnoticed by the legal community – personalized search results as a default setting. This means that searches are influenced by the individual searcher – and one of the parameters considered in rankings is previous browsing history. For example, if I’ve visited Nike 4 times this month, that site is more likely to rank higher when I do a search for “sneaker”. The result? Established sites and strong brands will get even more representation in the search results. A side note – SEO’s will respond by experimenting to see if PPC advertising can be used to influence natural search placement.
6. Bar Regulation Catches Up To the Web – Ludicrous ethical requirements enacted this December by the Florida Bar will be challenged and overturned in a very public and expensive process. This will serve as a wake-up call to all state bars regarding how they deal with the Internet. South Carolina will quietly consider how the Constitution applies to their regulations regarding a “hypothetical company X” where lawyers can claim and manage their online profiles.
7. Major SPAM Scandal – In 2008 we had the Findlaw linkselling scandal, in 2009 we had the Lawyers.com comment SPAM scandal. 2010 will be no different as more and more consultants, agencies and attorneys get involved in the online marketing gold-rush. Someone is going to push the ethical limits and get burned. Unfortunately, the ultimate loser may be those attorneys who unwittingly (through sheer ignorance) get swept up in it.
8. Yellow Pages Advertising Continues to Crater – when we researched the concept for Avvo, lawyers were spending $1.4 billion annually on yellow pages advertising. Last year (2008), that dropped to $1 billion. 2009 saw RR Donnelley (the largest Yellow Pages provider) stock hit rock bottom – 88% off its high just two years earlier. As attorneys approach advertising with a more analytical eye, they will continue to pull back from this channel.

Avvo Advertising is backed by a money-back Satisfaction Guarantee. Track the performance of your biggest ad on Avvo – not happy with its performance? Let us know within 90 days and we’ll refund your money. As far as I know, Avvo is the only company serving the legal industry to offer this level of commitment to our advertisers. The obvious conclusion is that we implemented a Satisfaction Guarantee in order to increase the close ratio of our sales pitches. While the Satisfaction Guarantee does help in driving revenue, its real purpose lies elsewhere.

I went to college in Maine, home of LL Bean with their famous outdoor clothing and gear supported by a 100% lifetime guarantee. Have a bag from 1967 with a zipper that gets stuck? Beans will replace it. A cracked fly rod? Beans will replace it. While this helps drive retail sales at LL Bean, the real purpose is in generating a maniacal internal commitment to designing and building the best hunting boots, down jackets and canoes and deliver those products at a reasonable price. Any shortcoming in quality hits the company directly in the pocketbook. The satisfaction guarantee has been in place since Leon Leonwood Bean sold his first pair of hunting boots in 1912. This ethos is the driving force behind the legions of extremely loyal LL Bean customers.

Which brings me back Avvo’s Satisfaction Guarantee. The real purpose for Avvo’s policy is that it pushes us to deliver and demonstrate tremendous value to our customers. Avvo can’t just be good (or even great). We have to be better than any other alternative on the market, or our customers will take their business elsewhere. That provides a very strong focus on delivering real value that extends across the entire organization. One of the things we had to do was demonstrate the value we were delivering. While it’s easy to see that the fleece vest I bought in 1994 still works, it’s harder for an attorney to see direct value from advertising dollars. So we rolled the most detailed comprehensive reporting system every seen by the legal industry into our Avvo Pro product and made it free for all of our advertisers.

The Satisfaction Guarantee isn’t a no-questions asked policy. We’ll absolutely refund your money, but expect a conversation as to why. If you want to leave, we’ll fight to keep your order and want to know what it will take to do so. The few of these conversations we’ve had, have lead to changes to the site, our pricing model and even the development of new products.

Isn’t it open to abuse? Sure there are people who take advantage of these types of guarantees. Certainly Beans gets customers who wear shoes 3 times and return them for a full refund just because they can. But Beans considers this a price of generating a quality product. We’ve had isolated incidents of being taken for a ride . . . but it’s worth it. Because everyone at Avvo knows that our revenue is dependent on our ability to deliver more value than anyone else in the market. And like LL Bean – this is a long term strategy that will build customers for life.

Tomorrow we kick off our Avvo Tour on the east coast – a series of free seminars on online marketing. The tour wraps up 3 weeks from now in Philly and NYC where Ari Kaplan is joining us as a guest presenter. Get a preview of Ari, this Thursday during a 30 minute webinar covering 5 Easy Ways to Create Opportunity in a Down Market.

Join the best technology minds to explore the future of legal marketing.
When: January 21 and 22
Where: Seattle, WA
Cost: $249
Discount Code: $50 off with code AVVO1015

Online event registration

Topics:
Under the Hood at LinkedIn
Going Deep with Facebook
Getting the most out of your Avvo Profile
Social Media Panel with LinkedIn, Facebook and Avvo.
Ethics of Online Marketing
Website Analytics and Website Optimizer
Advanced Pay per click advertising
Cost effective blogs and websites
SEO and the future of Search

Avvocating Conference Detailed Agenda

Online event registration