An attorney of twenty-four years and serial entrepreneur, Steve has made it his mission to help attorneys grow their law practices through strategic implementation of cutting tools and tactics.
A lifelong resident of Minneapolis, MN, he graduated from Law School in 1989 and then spent four years as a JAG in the USMC.
After active service in the Marines, Steve practiced law in the private sector. In addition to having a law practice, Steve owned and ran several businesses.
Many entrepreneurs have tales of the demise of their businesses after the housing market collapse, and Steve is no exception. A manufacturing and fabrication business founded by Steve that served upscale homeowners did not survive the housing debacle and this, in turn, forced a turning point in his professional career.
Steve spent about eighteen months researching the potential of building a business that was entirely online. He quickly discovered the power of search engine marketing. He started out marketing other people’s products and services and was able to generate a one week net income of over $10,000 in his fifth week of marketing.
After this dramatic success, Steve became totally committed to mastering online marketing strategies and tactics. He quickly began to share this knowledge with others as a mentor, coach and consultant. Over the past six years, Steve has conducted hundreds of webinars to help teach individuals and business owners how to effectively grow their business on the web.
Over time, Steve perfected his strategies for marketing small businesses to their respective local customer base. The success he has helped those business owners achieve has prompted him to help his fellow attorneys navigate the online client acquisition marketplace.
As an online marketing expert and practicing attorney with twenty-four years of experience, Steve is in the unique position of understanding the legal marketplace and the issues that attorneys face with marketing online. Most importantly, he understands lawyers and speaks their language. His intimate mastery of the strategies and tactics that get a law firm to rank online and that compel prospective clients to reach out to a law firm found online are a huge value to the lawyers he helps.
No matter the legal area of practice, he also understands the ethical constraints law firms have to follow in their marketing efforts.
Steve states, “I have a passion to help lawyers do a better job showcasing their ability to help clients. I’ve literally looked at thousands of law firm websites. Most of them are ineffective because they don’t answer questions that a potential client has. If a potential client is not overwhelmingly convinced that a law firm can solve their problem, and more importantly, if they don’t have a strong urge to contact the law firm, they are unlikely to pick up the phone.
When people look online for legal services, lawyers need to have their website on the top half of page one. Then, they need to have the same people spend time on their site watching videos and learning more about solutions to their legal issue. Integrating things like compelling keyword-based videos and quality legal copy can dramatically improve the client-getting performance of a legal website. Simply put, the vast majority of law firm websites are blowing it.”
Steve goes on to say, “Most lawyers are very familiar with the term Attorney/Client relationship. Those same lawyers, unfortunately, often focus on the concept of privilege and miss out on the concept of a relationship. Like it or not, we do have a relationship with our clients and we are often privy to very intimate things in our client’s lives.
This unique aspect of the practice of law makes media, such as video, immensely important because through engaging video, our prospective clients can begin to build trust and confidence in us and comfort that we will be able to help them with their very personal problems.”
So it’s a huge opportunity for attorneys that may not have a huge pipeline of clients to build up an online client-getting asset. Most law firms view online marketing as an expense and they don’t view their web presence as an asset.”
“They don’t really realize that positioning a law firm website in the search engines and building a pipeline that works automatically, where people come to your website, they find you, they watch videos, they learn about you, they like you, and they call you up, with the hope that you’re available to be hired – that’s an asset,” says Steve.
As a practicing criminal attorney, Steve has found that when people spend time on his website, issues like the size of the retainer are rarely a deal breaker. The information his potential clients have received from his videos alone are often enough to result in a retainer.
Based on his experiences as an attorney and marketer, Steve believes that video marketing should be a critical piece of any law firm’s marketing efforts. The videos need to be made in the right manner and they need to be properly integrated and embedded into the website. They should be optimized the same as any website so that clients can find them.
Law firms need to be in control of their videos and should own them. Many marketing companies put law firm videos on their own YouTube channels so that the firm that paid for the videos doesn’t even control them.
Mr. Jankowski has a very hands-on approach to working with his clients and believes that makes him more effective in helping them grow their practice. He meets with clients personally whenever possible and gets to know them to so that he fully understands and can meet their marketing needs.
To learn more about Steve Jankowski, visit http://www.attorneyinboundmarketing.com.