LexBlog customer challenge : Let’s take blogs to the masses

Seth Godin published a series of posts today on the marketing of new products, Squid Soup Part I, Part II and Part III.

He wrapped it up with something I wholeheartedly agree.

Marketing used to be expensive. Buy a few million dollars worth of ads and you could have a shot at success.

Marketing is now (potentially) much, much cheaper. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The challenge now isn’t to raise a whole bunch of money. The challenge is to invent a product or service or idea or meme that’s so compelling that the tiny green portion of the curve, the geeks in whatever market you live in, can’t ignore what you have to offer. That, and once they adopt what you’ve got, they can’t help but spread it.

That’s not easy. No one ever said it was. But that’s the challenge anyone with a business to grow or an idea to spread has to overcome.

LexBlog and the clients we’re blessed to have demonstrated that a turnkey professional marketing blog solution is a pretty compelling product. A fair number of our clients find it so compelling they are sharing blog success stories via conferences, interviews, articles, and, perhaps most importantly, their own blogs.

In the coming year, let’s tell more people about the power of blogs. How they are helping you enhance your image, how they are helping you grow your client base, how you are networking with more people, how you are staying connected with current and past clients, how they are helping the people you reach and, if you’re a lawyer, how they are improving the image of the legal profession.

Also, tell us where we need to improve our service to you. What can we do to make you more of a success in marketing via a blog? We’re in this baby together. The better LexBlog gets in serving you the better our product will be and the further we all get in advancing this professional marketing blog solution down the field.

I understand the reluctance of many clients to get up on the rooftop shouting about the virtues of blogs. You don’t want competitors to follow and experience the same success. But in the vast majority of cases, the folks listening to you are across the country and picking you up via the net. In addition, most of your competitors are dumb as a box of rocks when it comes to marketing, let alone marketing on the Internet. Look at those purple and green ads in the phone books with the scales of justice and goofy looking lawyer photo’s. As Grant Griffiths in Kansas (not a client yet) says, the more he tells lawyers in Kansas about his blog successes, the more amazed he is that no other lawyer jumps on the opportunity.

What do lawyers and professional services businesses have to gain from the growth of the professional marketing blog community? A lot. As the community of people networking and exchanging information on the net grows, the greater the networking opportunity for you. This goes for not only networking among legal professionals, but also among other verticals (medical, medicine, insurance, financial) and the general community as a whole.

You are also going to see an aggregation of blog content in the coming year. The more aggregated content there is, the bigger the draw for people to use this aggregated content as a source for reliable and trusted information on niche topics. No matter how fast the number of blogs grows, you’re still going to be one of the few showcased in the the aggregated content for your niche area of practice and your locale.

I know LexBlog will take some shots for asking clients to advance the cause of blogs. Of course we have a vested interested in blogs. But frankly, in America, companies that find a niche that needs to be filled need to be rewarded for their efforts. Otherwise no one quits their day job to launch businesses out their garage.

And we have a need that needs to be filled. Lawyers and professional services businesses are being ripped off by the clowns selling ineffective Internet marketing products. Good lawyers need a way to compete with the firms with huge marketing budgets. The image of the legal profession sucks. Blogs can help on all points.

Let’s go score one for he Gipper in ’06.