I often write on this website and blog that Las Vegas businesses often try to market to the masses, which is a huge marketing error for any business or company in Las Vegas. To run truly successful marketing campaigns that are targeted and well planned, you should identify your target market.

Even with your target market in mind when running a marketing campaign, another successful marketing strategy and tactic that many Las Vegas businesses use is targeting zip codes. Targeting a zip code will enable you to reach a specific demographic in the Las Vegas valley or a group of potential customers close to the area where you do business.

By considering targeting a specific zip code, you can plan a mailing, door-to-door marketing, flyer, print, newspaper or internet marketing campaign and target zip code/s of your choice.

Resources to find Las Vegas zip codes and Las Vegas demographics:

• Zip Code Lookup – Yahoo! Small Business
• Las Vegas Zip Code Map – Henderson Zip Code Map – greatlasvegashomes.com
• Las Vegas Zip Code Map with detailed views – act4u.com
• Las Vegas, Nevada ZIP Code Map – hellovegas.com
• Free Las Vegas Demographics Report Available For Area Business Owners And Operators – lasvegasnevada.gov
• Las Vegas, NV – Neighborhoods & Demographics – neightborhoodlink.com

Marketing A Law Firm in Las Vegas - The Importance of Marketing

In any kind of sales, competition determines market share of clients. In the legal field, where competition for business is cutting edge, marketing a law firm is exceedingly important. Even in locations where competition for business is minimal, solid marketing strategies can make a difference to a successful practice.

Planning a Marketing Campaign for Law Firms in Las Vegas

Some law firms are involved in general practice, incorporating more than one area of law. Or, practices may be specific. In either case, planning a marketing strategy is key to establishing law firm reputation as well as to promote new clients. One factor that shouldn’t be overlooked is “Word of Mouth”. Often, this is the best type of advertising for marketing a law firm. Part of marketing strategy should include promoting referrals by existing clients. Another facet of legal marketing is image. Most law firms prefer to adapt the image of reliability, professionality and truthworthiness. Prospective clients are attracted to law firms they feel offer “individual” service rather than perfunctory legal consultancy. This is especially true of law firms involved in more than one type of legal discipline.

Getting Marketing Off The Ground

With law firms, advertising directs attention to details of the practice as well as to collective experience and background of firm lawyers. Plan an advertising campaign that will format firm branding far into the future. This may include a broad promotion in newspapers, magazines, legal newsletters and magazines and internet marketing via a law firm website. The website should reflect the intent of the services clearly and in a concise manner. In addition, it’s a good idea to provide information about the firm’s lawyers. The most excellent branding occurs when uniformity is maintained throughout advertising, marketing materials such as letterhead, envelopes, business cards and brochures outlining services. These should bear a professional logo that incorporates law firm image with an eye-catching appeal. Logos are singularly important to any business and is an identifying feature in branding. It should be used in all facets of business promotion. This is especially true whenever new services are to be marketed. Adopting a creatively designed logo project’s the firm’s name for fastest public recognition.

Professional Marketing Consultants

For the sake of expediency, marketing consultants do the work of planning advertising campaigns, arranging for logo design, business cards and letterhead, and assisting with website design and planning. For new law firms, it’s helpful to take advantage of professional Las Vegas marketing consultants. Ideally, a law firm website should be interactive so it will encourage client contact. Create an interactive website to best advantage by making it user friendly, including search engine optimization features. The measure of importance of marketing a law firm should be a business priority.

As a marketing professional in Las Vegas, I am often asked the same two questions. Do I really need a business plan?  What details should I include in my business plan? Here are some answers to the questions:

Do I really need a business plan?

For most Las Vegas businesses the answer to this question would be yes. The majority of new businesses and ones that require investment by way of a loan or a business partner, a business plan is an absolute must. Potential investors will want to see, for example, your growth projections before they commit to invest in your business.

Types of businesses that do not require a business plan:

• A business that is happy to stay as is and has no plans to expand
• A business that never has the need to take out a bank loan
• A business that is a one man shop, self-sufficient, without the need of outside help.

It is one thing being aware of your need for a business plan, problem is most people have no idea of how to go about creating one.

The business plan will show its readers all the plans and growth of your business and how you are going to reach these gaols. You need to have a solid strategy in place before even attempting to write your business plan. You should know the direction you are going to take, the investments you are going to make in hiring staff, and equipment. You need to have business goals and an idea of when each goal is going to be met.

In the majority of cases a business plan is used to attract people to invest into your idea and your business. It is your sales copy in effect and therefore must be a professional, well laid out and solid business plan, people will take you seriously and invest.

On the other hand if it is rushed, badly written and weak, you are not likely to receive the financial backing you’re looking for.

What should be included in my business plan?

Readers of your business plan will not only want to know about the business itself, they’ll also want to know about you and your experience. Be sure to give them a brief summary of your history and what you have achieved career wise. Jot down all of your ideas and really sell the positive side of your experience and character to them. The fact that you’re hard working and that you work well under pressure. You love a challenge and can work well as part of a team and on your own.

Describe the current market place that your business is in, your competition and the opportunities for growth in that market.

List out financial figures including operating costs, projected earnings, growth forecasts and any financial history the business might have had already.

Show in your business plan that you are flexible, that you have a plan B if plan A does not come to light.

Sell them your ideas by telling them why you’re setting up the business in the first place for example, and where you dream it will be in five years time. Lastly, be sure to include a mission statement.

Email marketing for your Las Vegas company or business is a very cost effective form of marketing and advertising and can help you keep mindshare in your client’s minds and help find your business new leads.

A professional email marketing services company in Las Vegas can help assist you in desinging a template for your email marketing campaign, help you import your contacts and can train you on how to write your own newsletters, send them out to your database and track the results of your efforts.

In general, you can sign up with a company, like constantcontact.com, and starting at $25/month (cost depends on the size of your email database and the frequency you send emails out to that database), you can communicate directly with your clients and customers from your email database and inform them of:

• Latest company news
• Timely articles, tips and tricks
• Changes in your product and services offerings
• Key management changes
• Specials, promotions and bargains
• Keeps your company in your customer’s mindshare

35% of visitors fail to achieve their goal when they visit Las Vegas websites! By following two simple rules, you really can increase your web revenue by a third or more!

Respected website usability researcher, Jakob Nielsen, published results of his latest study. His test subjects visited over 139 websites and on average they failed to find what they were looking for about 35% of the time. Shockingly, 37% of users couldn not even find company location details and contact information.

What was truly surprising was that users did not give up… they found the information they were after, but they found it at a competitor’s web site.

So how exactly do you stop potential customers falling into the hands of your business competitors? Nielsen is right when he suggests user research. Yes, it is imperative that know what your users need and are looking for at your Las Vegas web site. But what he does not say is how to structure your website so it meets your users needs.

There are two main rules to follow:

1. Write first and build later
2. Write to your customer

The real message on most Las Vegas web sites is in the writing and the writing should determine the structure.

This is not the case for most local businesses, however. Most of the time, the writing is merely an afterthought and they design their website first, then try to fit the writing to the structure they have created. This makes no sense. You should not decide on a structure, then change the message to fit.

For a truly user-friendly website, you should plan what you want to say and communicate before you create the website and even write all the pages out before desigming or building.

So how do you decide what to write? Most customers will want to know the basics:

• What do you do exactly?
• What benefit do you offer them with your service or product?
• Why should they choose your service or product over a competitor?
• How much does your service or product cost?
• How can they contact you and where is your location?

Your Las Vegas website has to convey a lot of information and you must use your home page real estate wisely. Your website visitor should be able to find ALL relevant information on the home page (without scrolling) in a single window. So you’re probably thinking now ‘how am I going to fit it all in a single window?’ That’s where planning out your copy for the home page comes in, just do it carefully.

Your web site is an important marketing tool and is a very cost-effective way to communicate and find new customers. Remember, however, your competitors are doing the same thing. It’s important that your writing is clearly written and short and to the point, especially with your competitors’ web sites in mind.

8 More Reasons to Write Specifically for Your Audience

1. There are over 550 billion documents on the web
2. Every day another 8 million are added
3. Visitors take so long trying to find information that it costs organisations $750 billion annually! (A.T. Kearney, Network Publishing study)
4. Reading a web page from a monitor is 25% slower than reading from paper. (Sun Microsystems)
5. Helpful content develops interaction and website loyalty.
6. 79% of users scan read when online (Sun Microsystems)
7. Information gathering is the most common use of the Internet – 73% (American Express survey)
8. 48% of people use the Internet to find work-related information as opposed to 7% who use magazines. (Lyra Research)