If you’re a college student or recent college graduate who will be living in the Los Angeles area this summer and has a passion for marketing, we’d love to hear from you.

This is a part-time, UNPAID internship. There is a possibility of staying on and getting paid, but further opportunities are not guaranteed. The one thing we DO promise:  you will get free lunch. And everyone always told you there was no such thing…

To apply, please read these requirements carefully. If you fit, please send your resume and cover letter with the subject line “Summer Internship at Lucky” to Angie @ LuckyMarketingFirm.com We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Description:

We are a Los Angeles-based marketing company. We focus on helping professional services businesses (and law firms, in particular) market their companies. Our goal is to provide great communication and creative solutions to everyday marketing issues. We believe in collaboration with other marketing firms, and we focus on being one step ahead of “typical” marketing. A creative, friendly and enthusiastic intern would be the best fit for us.

Responsibilities:

You’ll be in charge of helping Lucky Marketing Firm continue to grow within the professional services marketing space. Each day, you’ll be learning more internet marketing techniques and creating new ones! If you’re interested in becoming a marketer, this is the position for you. You’ll be a member of the team for the entire summer. You WILL be creating marketing campaigns, you WILL be executing current campaigns and you WILL be learning. This internship will be great hands-on experience, and it will be challenging. We promise that you will learn a lot and have fun. We also promise free lunch! College credit will be given if needed.

Requirements:

Must be organized;
Must love communicating (email, phone, text);
Must be creative;
Must be efficient with internet-based research (example: Make a spreadsheet of all law firms in Burbank);
Must be familiar with social media, blogging and internet marketing in general;
Must be interested in pursing marketing as a career.

If you’re an attorney who caters to consumers, clients SHOULD be finding you through your website.  Your website should be one of your top three sources of new clients.

How can you make sure that your website is functioning as it should?  Great question.  The answer is a design that lends itself to lead generation.  Here are a few tips I give all of my attorney clients.  If you’re an attorney OR someone who caters to consumers, you definitely need to look through this list and make a mental list of the things you (your brother/ uncle/niece OR a legal marketing firm) must change about your site.  Trust me, you’ll be happy you did!

1. Make sure that a client can contact you the second he or she lands on your site.  No scrolling, no clicking, no hunting.  Your contact information needs to be large and clear and at the top of your home page.  Remember, most website visitors stay on a site for less than two minutes and look at fewer than three pages.  Make sure that even in a short amount of time, they can find your contact information and call you!

2. If you have a contact form on your site (and you should), be sure it is short and sweet.  Get the information you need to contact the client and nothing more.  The more fields you add to the form, the fewer people will complete it.

3. Add the really important information on the top left-hand corner.  This is where people naturally look when coming to a website.  Get your name, phone number and email address in that location.

4. Make sure you have great content.  For those potential clients who browse around the site, you want to look like an expert (even though your state bar rules may preclude you from saying that).  Add content that is useful for the potential client: no “legalese” and no case law.  Clients don’t care about that.  It doesn’t matter how many classes you AmJured or how many times one of your cases was published.  They don’t know what that means and they don’t care.  They just want to know that you can help them with their legal issues.  Keep that in mind.

If you have any questions or concerns about your own website, please contact us.  (What the heck?  Send your brother/uncle/niece our way, too!)  We’re happy to give all of you a free website evaluation and discuss some things that may improve your site.

1. Start over. I know, it’s a terribly scary thought. (And you thought Halloween was over??) However, it may be just what you need. Contact a marketing team to look over your site and give you some ideas. A fresh set of eyes (and professional eyes, at that) will give you new perspective and help you see things in a new way.

2. Change the navigation. If nothing is jumping out at you, simply add some new navigation at the top of the page. Delete the tired “About us” and change it to “Our firm” or “Meet us” or any number of other creative phrases. Or, throw out the old navigation and start from scratch. If you are sick of “Services” break out your navigation into the top two services for your firm. “Car accidents” and “Wrongful death” This gives your potential clients more information and it’s more interesting than “Services.”

3. Add some flavor. Many firms are adding the “speaking lady” to the website. Maybe this could work for you. Others add a chat pop-up. If you think potential clients will react favorably to this, it may be something to try. These types of extras engage the potential client, which is important. The longer they stay engaged, the longer they stay on the site — which means you have a better chance of getting their information.

Redesigning your website really can be as simple as this. Even if you decide to completely redesign your site, it doesn’t have to be difficult. The most important step is to contact a competent marketing firm to review your current site, give suggestions and hit the ground running. All you need to do is make the decision to change!

Poor Jason! If watching a grown man cry on a game show doesn't bring you joy, I don't know what will.

This evening, I had the pleasure of going to a TV social media meet-up in Culver City.  It was enjoyable and informative.  Although I am a marketer by trade, there are always a few little gems each time I attend one of these mini-seminars.

Tonight, the message was clear — content is the thing.  If you have something interesting to say, and you can produce interesting content (whether written or on the “little screen,”) people will be interested. Oh, and a little creativity never hurt anyone, either.  Listening to Steve Amato from Omelet talk about how they got people interested in actually watching the Oscars was fabulous and quite a miracle.

So, when in doubt, get creative!  If you want people to read your website or your book or your blog or your fill-in-the-blank, ask yourself what YOU would want to read.  Would this post be interesting/inspiring to YOU?  If you came across this post, would YOU read it?  No?  Then go back to the drawing board.

What it all boils down to is that writing interesting content is just as easy and as difficult as losing 100 lbs in three months.  It’s simply calories in/calories out.  It’s being interesting and engaging.

So, you have an old, crummy website and it needs a little something.  If you have limited time and a limited budget, the thing you’ll want to do first is to give the site a face lift.  And, I mean the Demi Moore kind, not the Michael Jackson kind.  Just a little something that can help things out without freaking out your regular website visitors.

Here are a few things you can try to give your site just a little boost it needs to increase the conversion rates and raise its self esteem.  Of course, before you do anything you can’t reverse, you’ll want to do some A/B testing and figure out if these minor changes help as much as you’d like.

1. Change the font in your header.  It can be just that simple.  Sometimes a font can really date a site.  If you haven’t updated the design of your site in more than two years, it may be time to freshen up the font.  Here are a few ideas.  Have fun, but make sure that whatever font you choose is easy to read.

2. Upgrade the color.  When you need something fast, slapping on a coat of paint can do the trick.  There are literally billions of colors out there, so the choices can certainly be overwhelming.  However, my new favorite site can help you choose a great palette.  Warning — you could get sucked into this site for hours just looking at all of the beautiful colors!

3. Change the images.  If you have a few images on your home page, experiment with different ones.  Be sure to only change one image at a time and track the traffic changes with each new image.

4. Add a little something.  If you generally like the site colors and images, you may be missing something with the layout.  Look at where you’re losing people on the site. If they’re only looking at one page, you may need to add a contact or buy element to the home page.  (This is probably a good idea, anyway.)  If you have an ecommerce site, you may want to add a “suggestion” feature to the site to increase sales.

5. Content, content, content.  When all else fails, rewrite the content!  As you probably know, the content of a site can either encourage people to buy or scare them away.  You want the former!  Trust me!  Take a look at the content and send it to an honest friend.  Ask them if they would buy something from the site.  If not, ask what content could be changed to increase the chances of a sale.

OK, website fans!  That’s it for this week.  If you have a website in need of help, be sure to check back soon for the second part of the series!  If you really need help, contact us.  We’re ready to take a look at your site and give you some ideas.

Figure out what’s working.  Honestly, this is the only way a marketing campaign stands a chance of success.  You absolutely must track the success of your marketing efforts.  How do you do that?  Get a calendar and set up Google analytics on your site.  Whenever you start a new push, or run a contest, or write a blog post, mark the calendar.  (Trust me, if you don’t write it down, you’ll never remember – a very hard lesson learned.)  After you start a new campaign, give yourself a few days and check the analytics.  Did you get more traffic after you started the campaign?  Did your conversion rate increase?  Did anything happen at all?  You’ll know what’s working by checking out the analytics before and after.

Limit your social media time. Yes. It’s fun.  It’s entertaining. And, it can be a super time sucker.  Before you know it, three hours are gone and you haven’t even begun to work!  Before you start social media, determine which social media outlets will work best to achieve your goals.  Then, make a strategic plan to conquer!  Do not waste time on social media – use it with efficiency and purpose.  Keep your business goal in mind and get tweeting (or your social media gerund of choice)!

Get organized.  Of course this one is a no-brainer.  If you have a plan and stick to it, you’ll see results much more quickly.  And, when you’re running your business and handling the marketing, quickly is the most important adverb!

Hire help.  If you can afford it, hire a marketing firm. (I never promised to avoid shameless plugs.)  If you can’t afford it, hire an intern!  I’m partial to the Kansas State internship program (K! S! U! Wildcats!), but you can choose a local school or your alma mater.  Location doesn’t really matter as much anymore, since all communication can happen via email, text, IM or Skype.  Give a kid some experience and get some of their valuable feedback, too!

So, there it is.  A little list that will save you a ton of time! Now, get marketing!

If you don’t know the answers to these questions — don’t worry.  It’s just as easy as checking in with your marketing team and making sure they are working toward your goals in the most efficient way.  Here are a few tricks of the trade to make sure that your marketing dollars are going as far as possible.

1. Ask questions.  I know this one seems obvious, but it’s definitely worth a mention. Ask your team what they’re focusing on and why.  Determine if that’s where you want them to be spending energy and effort.  If not, be specific about the goals and time lines you have in mind.

2. Get reports. Marketing is only as good as the reporting you get.  If you get good reports, you’ll see the results.  No reports — no results.  So, make sure you’re getting reports.  You should see some hard numbers that show what is happening.  Be sure to ask for only results that reflect the current marketing campaign.

3. Meetings, meetings, meetings.  I know — the only thing worse than a meeting is a long meeting.  But, meetings are there for a reason.  You can be productive in a very short period of time, you just have to know what questions to ask.  So, here you go…

• How many hours have you put in on this project?
• Where did we start (in terms of numbers)?
• Where are we at now?
• What seems to be working, and how did you come to that conclusion?
• What is not working and how did you come to that conclusion?
• What is your recommendation going forward to achieve our goal the quickest?
• How much will this recommendation cost?
• Who is the best person to carry out your recommendation?

There you go!  Fastest meeting ever.  But, you learned a lot about what is happening and why.

4. Read up a bit on the latest and greatest online marketing news.  My personal favorites are SEOmoz.org and SearchEngineLand.com.  If you review these two sites once a week, you’ll get all of the information you need to be “in the know.”  When you know a little bit about online marketing, you’ll feel more confident when your team starts talking in “lingo.”

So there you have it!  Lucky Marketing Firm’s four ways to keep up with your in-house marketing team.  You’re feeling better already, aren’t you?

So, to attempt a “proper prepping” and to act as a resource for the future (when I inevitably improperly prep), here is a mini-list of things to expect when you’re working with an online marketer.

1. Expect a lot of communication with the marketer, and expect to help out a bit.  The marketer knows how to market, but she doesn’t know your business like you do.  She understands social media and content writing and affiliate deals and PPC and the rest of it — but she doesn’t know YOUR business.  (At least, not as well as you do.)  She will need to know the goals for your business, time lines you’re working with, previous marketing you’ve done and probably more information along the way.  Please, please, please communicate openly and often with the marketer.  Believe me, the better the communication, the more successful the campaign.

2. Expect to hear about and to be open to new ideas.  The marketer is coming at your product/business/website with a fresh set of eyes.  This can actually be helpful to you!  She is looking at a problem with her own experience and will come up with some ideas that you have never tried.  That’s what she’s there for!  Be open to the ideas, and add to them.

3. Expect to test and test some more.  One of the most important parts of online marketing is the testing aspect.  Your marketer will come up with an idea.  You’ll agree to the idea and she will put it into play.  Now, the testing begins.  If you have a very large online presence, you may be able to test the idea in a couple of days or even a couple of hours.  However, if you have a smaller online presence (fewer than 5,000 unique visitors per day), it may take several weeks to see if an idea will work.  It’s part of the process.  Go with the flow on this.  Trust me.  Sometimes, the payoffs are huge.

4. Expect to give the marketer some time.  Nothing happens overnight online (well, almost nothing).  For search engines to “discover” website changes and properly rank takes weeks or months, for new campaigns to roll out may take weeks or months.  Do not expect to see much action before 90 days.  (If we’re being perfectly honest, it may take as many as 6 months to really see progress.)  This is completely normal, and you should be prepared.

5. Expect to spend money before you make money.  Things take time, particularly online.  You will definitely spend money before you make any.  Your marketing budget should be large enough that you can go for at least six months without a return.  Of course, this depends on your goals and your site.  However, six months is a good rule of thumb.

6. Expect some failures.  Marketing is ultimately about brainstorming for new ideas and taking a new approach to things.  As as result, some of the ideas won’t be home runs.  (Don’t get me wrong — some ideas will work beautifully, but not all.)  Expect to have a few set-backs and a few discussions about how to tweak a current campaign.  If you or the marketer knew exactly what would work and exactly how long it would take, we’d all be billionaires!  Remember, there is a very volatile third party involved — the consumer.  It’s not always (in fact it is rarely) that this group is predictable.  We can do our best to make an educated guess, but sometimes we guess wrong.

7. Expect to learn a lot about your business and get a lot of information from your marketer.  You should be getting reports about the work that is going on and the progress you are making.  You should be hearing from your marketer at least once a week with new information.  You should be able to contact your marketer and ask questions.  After all, she’s working for you.

Overall, online marketing can make a good company a great company, and an online marketer can help you succeed.  However, it’s very important (for you and for the online marketing firm you hire) that you have realistic expectations.  If, for any reason, you aren’t sure that you’re ready to take on a marketing campaign, wait.  Seriously.  You will be thankful and your marketer will be thankful.

After that, things got semi-serious.  I thought that I would really use Twitter to project my business into orbit.  I wanted to be cutesy, but still focus on things that were website/marketing oriented.  “What’s would you put on your website if you could choose any piece of art?”  (Yikes.)  By the end of 2009, after more than 1,000 tweets, I had fizzled.  I just didn’t have it in me.  I would check in every couple of days, post once or twice and move along.

In 2010 and early 2011, I had nearly abandoned my Twitter account and only had Twitter interaction when analyzing my clients’ accounts.  I was reviewing the traffic that would come to their websites and noticed that Twitter wasn’t a traffic driver — no matter what the business.  It didn’t appear to me that the number of tweets corresponded much with the amount of traffic that came to the site.  It seemed that most of the traffic was coming from the profile, not links within the  tweets.  Was Twitter dead?

Skip to about one month ago.  I had two clients who were preparing to go to BlogHer, a giant blogging conference.  We were discussing the conference strategy, and one client mentioned that she was connecting with a few Twitter “friends” to ask if they were also going to the seminar.  That’s when it finally dawned on me — Twitter isn’t about traffic, it’s about relationships!

I know what you’re thinking — social media has “social” in the title!  Of course it’s about relationships!  Absolutely true. However, not all social media sites are based solely on the “meeting and visiting” aspects.  (Yes, I’m looking at you, Facebook.  It’s a major traffic driver!)  Twitter seems to be most useful when it’s used as ONLY a social tool.  It seems that the most successful Twitter accounts (with the exception of celebrity accounts) are those that focus ONLY on building relationships among people in similar or complementary businesses, not necessarily potential clients.  Why?  It’s all in the delivery and the folks who are following you.

On Facebook, most of the people who are “friends” or “fans” are people you know, people you’ve worked with, current clients, etc.  On Twitter, it’s quite the opposite.  Certainly, you may know 10 or even 50 of your followers.  But if you have 2,000 followers, you won’t know the majority of them.  And, they don’t know you.  And, they’re following 1,500 other people who are constantly tweeting about their business and what they can offer and what they want and …  ahhhh!  So much chatter.  No one wants to listen to that. Your tweets, along with everyone else’s tweets, are ignored. People are just spouting and not reading or listening, much less actually clicking on a link.

So, think about your own Twitter reading/clicking habits.  Who do you want to listen to and read?  Friends or people who could become friends.  What’s the best way to do that?  Conversations.  Short, back-and-forth conversations.  Enter Twitter.

Now you know why to use Twitter — to engage in conversations and start meeting other bloggers or others within your professional field or within a complementary field.  So, how does one do that?  The same way you start relationships in life: be friendly, say hello, ask a few questions.  You know, have a pleasant conversation.  Read some of the posts that look interesting and make a comment.  If someone says something to you, respond!  Don’t even think about driving traffic to your site through your tweets.  Keep Twitter all about the personal interaction.  The relationships will follow, and more business will follow that.

In the meantime, it’s getting late, and I need to check in with my Twitter account.  Old habits die hard…

If your goal is to show off your artistic skills, it may be fun to have a beautiful site that doesn’t do a lot.  It’s perfectly acceptable to for your site to be functionally void but with a gorgeous design. (Wait — I lost my place.  Am I talking about a website or Matthew McConaughey?)   If you’re an artist, an interior decorator, a photographer or even a website designer, your site should look stunning.  You want people to look at the design, because that’s what you’re selling.  (One word of advice — NO FLASH. Seriously. It’s too slow to load and it doesn’t work on mobile phones.  You’ll lose people.)

If your goal is to sell products or any other service, you want a site to function properly.  You’ve got to get the navigation working so people can easily contact you for more information or buy a product.  the idea is to put the fewest number of clicks between the home page and the sale.  Always think about that when you’re considering designing the website. Of course, the design needs to be pleasant, but it certainly takes a back seat to functionality.

So, there you have it.  In a nutshell — if you’re an artiste, go for design.  If you’re anything other than an artiste, make sure the darn things works and works well!

What type of site do you have?  Does it need a design/functionality review?  Contact us.  We’ll be happy to take a look!