Word of mouth is and will always be the most effective marketing tool–people trust other people’s opinions above advertisements almost 100% of the time–but it is possible to stimulate word of mouth through good marketing strategies. For lawyers, social media is a perfect way to start the conversation. Through social media, lawyers can really talk directly to their potential clients and demonstrate the value of their firm, and this will encourage them to talk to friends with legal problems about how much this lawyer helped them.

Nothing feels quite as good as hearing “X referred me to you because you’re good at what you do” and this always adds credibility.

I totally agree with your post. I recently had a word of mouth experience that has nothing to do with the law but is very telling about how the world works.

I am on the board of directors for the First Tee of Denver, a local organization that works with over 3,000 Denver Public School kids. Our full time staff works hard on securing grants from local foundations and corporations to help fund our organization. One particular foundation was excited about what we do and how much we help Denver kids. But, they would never award us grant money.

Over the past year I have been inviting friends to be on the board who have a deeper reach into the Denver community. Over this past weekend, one of the new board members went out with his wife and a few other couples for dinner and drinks. Over the course of the night my friend mentioned that he was on the board of the First Tee of Denver. One of the dinner guest said “Wow, that’s great! I’m on the board of this really big foundation and we would love to support your organization.” (Or something to that effect). It turned out that this person is on the board of that foundation that likes us but never gives us money and now because of their friendship we have a significant chance of being awarded grant money. Obviously, the foundation isn’t going to grant us money just because they like my friend. They are granting us money because they trust my friend and they are impressed with the work that we do.

Some would say using connections is an unfair advantage. But that is how the world works. No matter how great our website looks (right now it’s kind of clunky), how great our presentations are or how many kids we help, without that inside connection we had no chance.

So how do you mine those personal connections to get your foot in the door? Take your friends out for a beer and see where the connections lead. You never know.