Probably one of the earliest proverbs we remember from childhood is: “The early bird gets the worm.” When you’re a child, your parents may have said this to you to get you to go to bed because you have to rise early for school the next day. When you’re older, it’s said to you to convey the message that if you prepare, work hard, and have initiative, you will be successful.

What it means in the context of law firm marketing is that if you do something before everyone else, you reap the rewards.

Being first is not easy. You have lots of competitors all vying for the same clients. Every day, your competitors are becoming more savvy about online marketing strategies. Some have bigger budgets. Some started before you and have an established presence.

So what can you do to be the early bird that gets the worm?

The latest Legal Trends Report from Clio, which provides cloud-based practice management platforms for the legal industry, found that responding quickly to phone calls and emails is the most important factor for potential clients (67%).

Of course, you have to do all the right things to get them to contact you in the first place, and you already know what those are:

• A content-rich website tailored to the needs of your potential clients

• Active social media profiles

• A blog

• SEO

• PPC

• Email marketing program

Since you will probably not be the only attorney a prospective client contacts, it is critical that you are the attorney who returns that phone call or email immediately. And you can only do that if you have a great intake system.

So my challenge to you today is this: conduct a test. Go all out to return a prospect’s calls or emails within 5 minutes of receiving them. Do this for 2 weeks. Then see if your conversion rate improves. If it does, then you will know that something so simple is going to reap you a lot of benefit for your bottom line.