2nd Annual Conscious Client Conference

Following on from the success last year, we held our 2nd Annual Client Conference on 14 & 15 May at Coombe Abbey (a somewhat ‘unique’ venue which has quickly become a favourite with us & our clients).  You can still review the full conference programme should you wish.  You can also download the Powerpoint presentations from here if you wish :-

• EPOQ
• Email Newsletters
• Kim Tasso
• Maximising Marketing Spend
• Content is King
• Product Development

We had 28 delegates from all across the country and we had an enjoyable and invaluable day and a half with them. Here's what three of the participants thought of the conference as a whole.  There are more testimonials below.

The video was created by our friends at FooCo.

Day 1 - Morning

The first day was kicked off with a session run by Richard Cohen, Joint CEO at Epoq. He discussed the online document assembly service which Epoq develops for legal service providers. He talked about what consumers of legal services wanted from a law firm and emphasised the importance of a website being more than just brochure ware for a firm. A range of interesting queries were raised by our delegates including whether documents could be produced which don’t need to be reviewed by a lawyer, and whether client loyalty will be affected by these online services and how you could work to retain these clients.

Kim Tasso, a consultant at 360 Legal Group then followed with her 10 top tips for managing a law firm in 2009; 5 tips to help firms survive and 5 to help them thrive. Providing a lot of food for thought, delegates were keen to learn how they can benchmark their firm’s profit against their competitors - a task made even more difficult as the majority of firms don’t appear to be giving their marketing departments access to the figures themselves! Another trend is the lack of transparency within firms about how they’re performing, which can lead to staff being uncertain over their future. “Merger mania” was also touched on and the adverse effects this can have further down the line.

After a short break, I ran a demo of SugarCRM, a software programme which we have recently adopted at Conscious and which I‘m a great fan of. We talked about the importance of having ‘advocates’ in your firm who you can get onboard with using the CRM system and who will then prove to their colleagues it’s merits and ease of use. As with any decent programme, with SugarCRM you can set up permissions and restrict the editing power of your users as required. We also looked at the Outlook connector and discussed synchronisation between Outlook and Sugar.

I then handed over to FooCo, a provider of high definition, bespoke video for use on the web. They also discussed which factors influence the choice of a law firm and how important a website is for making a good first impression. Video improves average time on site for visitors, can be used to direct people to different areas of your site and can get uploaded to sites such as YouTube, Google and Facebook. It can have various uses including video newsletters, key staff biographies, recruitment infomercials and client testimonials.

To put this to the test, we asked our delegates to give brief testimonials on our conference during lunch, the results of which can be seen in the near future on our website.

Day 1 - Afternoon

After a well deserved lunch, clients were split into streams and attended a range of workshops according to their size;

Smaller Firm Stream

Bryony Cole, our Project Manager ran a CMS workshop which addressed the common requests asked by clients in terms of updating their site; including resizing and adding images to a page, and adding new pages.

Steffan Cole, one of our Account Managers then ran a session on Google Analytics and how to interpret the data.

Bridget Cooper one of our Marketing Consultants looked at how to maximise marketing spend on a tight budget.

Peter Bowen, another of our Account Managers finished the afternoon looking at how email newsletters can generate more business. Peter sparked off some thoughts about how the software can be used for other communication purposes as well including event invitations.

Larger firm stream

I started the afternoon session looking at how email newsletters can be used by larger firms, looking at the importance of using a proper email marketing service and how to track ipen & click thru rates.

James Farnell from ContactLaw then talked about their enquiry referral site, a network which a number of our delegates are currently members of. A lot of excellent questions were put to James including how they decide which firm in a particular geographical area to refer the case to and what level of expertise the call handlers have to deal with the enquiries. The general consensus among the delegates was that the jury’s still out, but it was great to have that discussion and share experiences first hand.

Following James, Steffan Cole looked at Google Analytics Reports in depth; profile splitting, AdWords integration, custom reporting and motion charts (the bouncing coloured ‘balls’ attracted the greatest interest amongst our delegates!). I wrapped up with a discussion on what’s working and what’s not with websites and marketing in 2009, with a particular focus on enquiry referral websites like Contact Law, TakeLegalAdvice, The Legal Alliance and QualitySolicitors.com.

The day finished with a well earned drink at the bar before the "one day" attendees departed for home.  For the rest of us it was off to our hotel rooms for a "wash & brush up" before meeting again for drinks and dinner.  The after-dinner discussions extended well into the late evening.  With a group of four of us being the last ones to retire.

Day 2

Joe Reevy, our Editorial Manager started the second day with a look at maximising legal content on websites, the do’s and don’ts of producing content and the different types of content.

We then looked at web statistics and search engine optimisation in more detail; how to interpret WebPosition reports, and a detailed look at how Google ranks sites, the importance of inbound links and PageRank.

Andrew Gray came up with the fact of the day, enlightening everyone that the term ‘PageRank’ is named after the inventor, Larry Page, rather than just being a descriptive term!

One delegate asked if our sites get penalised by Google by using duplicate content in the form of news articles, but we’ve found this isn’t an issue and a lot of our clients tailor the articles to their firm.

We ended the morning with a product development brainstorm, outlining what we expect to be working on over the next year and looking at smart PDFs and how these can be used by law firms. Finally, we canvassed opinion on what the delegates would like themselves and us to be doing; top of the list came online data collection, followed by looking at blogs and social networking - if and how they can be used to good effect.

All the team at Conscious found the conference extremely enjoyable and insightful, and would like to thank everyone again for attending and for their input throughout the event.

Client Testimonials

Our clients talking about the event in their own words :-

• Partner - Great venue really useful time well spent
• Marketing Manager - Not again! :
• Marketing Manager - A fantastic conference - worth every minute out of the office.  Great location, highly relevant content & great delivery & enthusiasm from the Conscious team
• Marketing Manager - Very enjoyable coupole of days.  Very interesting & informative seminars.  Also VERY useful to talk to other people in similar roles.  Thank you
• Partner - Very interesting. I've come away with lots of short term and long term ideas for developing our website and marketing generally
• IT Manager - A great opportunity to network with legal, technical & marketing professionals.  Make time for it!
• Practice Manager - I have thoroughly enjoyed the conference again this year.  I have found it interesting and useful and would certainly come again.
• Solicitor - Reassuring expertise, innovative and best of all approachable.
• Business Development Exec. - Well organised conference with useful, interesting mix of sessions - lots to think about!
• Partner - We all felt that the conference and especially the workshops were very interesting and useful , not at all like legal conferences. The venue and catering was excellent and I really enjoyed the company of you and your colleagues before and during dinner.
• Solicitor - As a complete marketing & IT novice the course was extremely helpful & informative
• Marketing Manager  - I always dread conferences & networking as I question if they are a good use of my time, this was quite honestly a most worthwile use of 2 days not only for the various presentations that qwere given but also the contacts made at other law firms.
• Partner - This was an excellent conference that pulled together some very useful BD advice & IT opportunities.  Most importantly it helped to reinforce my vision of how a small/medium-sized law firm is going to have to look within the next couple of years

Seminar Feedback Scores

We asked clients to fill in a feedback form at the end of the conference.  The following is a summary of their feedback.  Clients were asked to rate each item on a scale from 1 to 4, 1 being Poor, 4 being Excellent :-