Location based social media is growing rapidly and foursquare is probably the most popular of all such sites. I joined about 3 months ago and was so proud when I became the Mayor of my favorite Starbucks. The other day, one of my employees told me that he is trying to replace me as the Mayor of my own business and I was delighted because that means he is checking in regularly which means more visibility for us.

If you are unfamiliar with foursquare, you might want to watch the video below where the co-founder of the company explains how he uses foursquare.

I’ve known Shirley for about 5 years now and she’s one of my dearest friends.  Shirley just celebrated her 85th birthday and she still runs circles around most people.  I stopped by her house today and she told me a story.  It was about 2 different department stores that we have all heard of.  She visited them both today and one provided great service and one was substandard service.  As she told me the stories I thought about it from a marketing perspective.  What makes this account especially fascinating to me is that Shirley is what I would call an “influential.”  Shirley is a “go to person” for many of her friends.  She is very bright, knowledgeable on numerous topics and has lots of life experience and common sense.  Besides all that she is absolutely delightful, entertaining and lovable!

So here’s the story.  Shirley happens to have a 55 year old handicapped son, Glenn.  She brings Glenn home every weekend.  Well, with summer approaching and Glenn’s birthday being in the summer, she was out shopping for an air conditioner for his room today.  She began the story by telling me this – “Target has so many helpful people all over the store that it’s just wonderful.”  As she began her shopping excursion in the store several employees were helpful right off the bat.  She was having trouble finding the air conditioners and so she asked for help.  A very pleasant employee told her to look just beyond where she was and pick up the phone.  He told her that somebody would then come to help her within 60 seconds!  Did you get that?  60 seconds.  Shirley’s next words to me were “58 seconds later, I had help.”  A woman arrived, she had a walkie talkie and she was heard saying – “I’ve got it, I’m here.”  It almost sounded as if a team of people were standing by to make sure Shirley got her help.

There’s more to the story than that but this struck me.  If I perceive this story correctly, I believe that Shirley was very pleased with the service but she was WOWED by one particular policy and that was the focus of her great “word of mouth advertising” on behalf of Target.  It was the “60 second rule.”

I can tell you that it is very likely that the Target experience and the 60 second rule will be repeated multiple times because Shirley is an influential and she talks to a lot of people.  It was a little thing, but I think that is a big part of her VERY favorable impression of the store.

What happened next was also fascinating from a marketing perspective.  Shirley then went to another department store that will remain nameless.  The first thing she said about it was this – “there was no one around anywhere to help me.”  For me as a listener, I immediately had a bad impression of the store.  But as she went on I learned that she got some great prices and some other very favorable things happened at that store.  She also said that she “finally found someone and she was very nice.”  But Shirley had already compared this store to Target and their 60 second rule.  Target won by a landslide.

Application for us?  What kind of word of mouth do you think your firm is getting?  What do your clients say about you?  They are probably not talking about your legal skills.  As I’ve said before, your competence as an attorney is assumed.  They are probably talking about service issues.  They may be saying – they’re a great firm, but it’s hard to get somebody to call you back.

Here’s my marketing recommendation for the day.  Put a system in place so that every client phone call – whether new or existing – is returned in 60 minutes or less.  That doesn’t mean that you need to have an attorney call back with an answer.  It means you need to have a knowledgeable and professional staff member call back to say – “we got your call and Mr. X will be following up with you tomorrow morning.  Is there a good time to reach you?”

How are you creating the WOW factor?  As I survey PI clients across the country I can tell you that the top 2 things that they consistently report as being most important to them as clients are:

1. Phone calls are returned promptly
2. Legal staff is knowledgeable

What are your “Shirley’s” saying about your firm?  If you instituted a one hour call back policy – I bet that would be part of what they’d be talking about…

A year or so ago I emphatically rejected the idea of using shills to conduct paid word of mouth marketing for your law firm.  Why?  Because I believe that to be positioned at the top of your market you must endeavor to conduct all aspects of your business in an authentic and genuine manner.  I still believe that.

 However, I intend to further investigate the concept of paid word of mouth.  It is a hot trend in the advertising/marketing world and a burgeoning industry.  What is happening in many agencies is that armies of teen-agers are paid to go into internet chat rooms and promote products and services as well as movies and celebrities.  My big objection is that they do not reveal that they are paid shills.  Therefore, this particular application does not interest me.

There are a few more examples that I believe have better viability because there is an honesty in that the “workers” are obviously paid to promote the word of mouth.  For example, to promote USA Network’s TV series “Traffic” (about drug cartels) they hired a NY agency (Media Kitchen) to affix stickers with the show name, logo and air date to 50,000 real $1.00 bills and get them into circulation in bars in New York and Los Angeles beginning early January.

Trump’s show “The Apprentice” also utilized this strategy when they paid to have 5,000 fake $100.00 bills with Trump’s face handed out on New York City streets two days before the show’s premiere.

I am contemplating the potential for combining our Client Advisory Panels with motivated word of mouth initiatives.  However, I firmly believe that as we test this strategy it must be conducted in an authentic and genuine manner.