It is estimated that over 85% of customers do not opt for miss sold loan protection insurance when they are purchasing a loan, credit card or a mortgage for redundancy insurance or critical illness cover.

Payment Protection may have been added as a lump sum on top of your loan, or you may have been offered a regular monthly premium; this will be paid for separate to your monthly loan repayment.

How to reclaim PPI Insurance and save money

The Top3 points that will help consumers to avoid purchase needless payment loan insurance or from being mis-sold this cover.

• Interest rate (APR) of a loan does not include the cost of payment protection.
• You should be able to cancel the agreement if you are unhappy with the cost of the loan insurance or were not aware it had been added to your loan.
• Some consumers may already be covered by another policy without realizing, meaning they could be paying for unnecessary cover.
• Most importantly, check that the policy cover is appropriate to the consumer’s circumstances.

For claiming PPI, finding a professional and experiences lawyer who can successfully protect your rights on mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance  is a tough task.

The hardest part is not choosing an attorney, but convincing yourself that he or she is right for your particular situation. You may want to do some window shopping so to speak. The Yellow Pages of your local phone directory and the Internet are two valuable tools when seeking legal representation. Shop around, read the testimonials from previous client, review the case studies and not to forget to take the views your close one before finalizing any particular attorney.

It is possible to get 10000 loans if you demonstrate your credit score in an online application and get approved. The best thing about signature loans is that they don’t make you secure the loan by any means other than your honourable name, which is reflected in the name of the loan. Be sure to fill out the application and don’t worry, it is perfectly safe and the lending societies guarantee they won’t give out your details to any third parties. Many lenders will be interested in your application so don’t despair and start planning today what you can spend your loan on.

First of all, you should understand, the less money you spend on gifts, the worse these gifts will be. That is why make sure not to save on anything. If you are going to use personalized calendars, make them good looking by a quality image imprinted on them. You should understand, that it will be enough for not regular customers only. For others you will need something different. If a person comes to you often he expects something in return. Give him a discount or simply something more expensive and useful.

When talking about business partners, you should stick to the maxim mentioned above. Use quality recognition items and other things to make them understand you need them a lot.

Time is running. Don’t just sit and wait, you should start buying Christmas gifts right now.

There are two things at work here. One is personalizing the message. “Delivery Available” is sterile. “We deliver” is warm. By using “we” in the ad, we are actively engaging in the activity of delivery. Making it personal. Putting a face to the business. Building a relationship.

The second thing that’s happening is that we’re communicating on multiple levels. “We deliver” has a bigger meaning. It means that we do what we say we will do. And it is an expression everyone is familiar with. So it is reinforcing a promise, and continuing to build that relationship.

How can you incorporate deeper messages in your ads?

#1 Lead Your Marketing with the Highest ROI Vehicle

• Of the hundreds of marketing vehicles which one offers the possibility for the highest return on your investment? Invest in the highest-ROI vehicle first. Only after you have saturated your highest-ROI vehicle should you move forward to your second-highest-ROI vehicle.
• Monitor and modify frequently. Any time your ROI slips, adjust your message or the delivery mechanism. After adjusting, if you don’t see a return to high ROI, withdraw your funding and invest in the next highest ROI vehicle. Review frequently.

#2 Understand the Difference Between What you Offer and What People Buy

• You offer services; people buy solutions to their problems. (Proctor and Gamble sells shampoo to people who want clean hair.)
• Go deeper. (People want clean hair because…)
• People buy perception, not reality.
• Express your services in terms of what people buy (security, confidence, experience, loss protection, value, likelihood of success, understanding, etc.).

#3 Understand Who Buys Your Stuff

• Understand who buys your stuff. Business people? Other lawyers? Consumers?
• Define your audience from every possible perspective: socio-economic, geographic, image-sensitivity, age, risk-sensitivity, etc.
• If your firm provides services to more than one group, design unique marketing strategies (messages and delivery vehicles) for each group.

#4 Define and Target Your Audience

• Before you design any marketing communication, know who wants or needs your services-know your potential customers intimately.
• Design your communications to meet the needs and desires of your potential customers.
• Speak to only one customer at a time.
• Buy media that reaches your target audience, not media that reaches the largest number of people.

#5 Design Your Marketing Around Problems and Solutions

• People hire lawyers to solve problems, or to prevent a problem from occurring. Design your marketing so that it is clear—you solve problems.
• In print advertising, use the headline to present a problem. In the subhead, provide the solution.

#6 Define Your Unique Market Position

• Why should somebody hire you rather than your competition? Be realistic.
• Brand your unique market position (e.g., “the insider,” “always here,” “the lawyers’ lawyer”).
• Find ways to communicate your unique market position in an irresistible fashion.

#7 Be Faithful to Your Unique Voice

• Once you have created your unique place in the market, stick with it: actively and intentionally grow your brand. Remember, people buy things (including services) because of their uniqueness, not because they are like other things.
• When you stand apart, you get noticed. (Don’t follow others.)

#8 Make Yourself Easily Accessible

• Create an image of warmth and availability. (Too many law firms create images that focus on prestige and tradition. Granite walls may create the image that you’ve “made it,” but if those walls get between you and your potential clients, your marketing will have to work a lot harder to generate new clients.)
• Create marketing-only telephone lines for your office. Publish a unique number in all of your advertising so when that line rings, everybody knows it’s a prospective client calling.
• Create a welcoming, we-are-here-to-please-you message both within your office and in all of your external marketing.

#9 Know Your Resources

• How much money do you have to invest in marketing? How much time do you have? Allocate your resources to achieve the maximum return on investment for your marketing programs.
• If you have more money than time, hire a consultant with a track record of success and give her a budget. Step out of the way and monitor results.
• If you have more time than money, pursue marketing programs that are time-heavy and money-light. (Direct contact, seminars and workshops, networking, volunteering, public relations, practice brochures, publishing, trade services, etc.)

#10 Know Your Competition

• Your firm is not the only firm actively pursuing new customers. To win the lion’s share of the pie, you must know what your competition is doing. You must be more aggressive. You must be smarter. To edge out the competition, you must know what they are doing, and you must play the marketing game better than they play the marketing game. When it comes to generating new clients, the second choice never gets the telephone call.

#11 Keep Egos and Marketing Separate from Each Other

• Your marketing is not about you; it is about what you can do for potential clients better than anybody else.
• If you create a marketing message that makes you look good, throw it away. Even Charlie knows people don’t want tuna with good tastes.

#12 Don’t Design Marketing Communications to which You Think You Might Respond

• You are not your potential client. Your potential clients don’t think like you think. They don’t even like the same food you like! Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking that if you like a marketing message, potential clients will like it too.
• Don’t design an ad layout or direct mail piece so you will like it. Too many truly great marketing pieces have been left on graphic artists’ tables in favor of less powerful pieces because the client liked the lesser piece, and did not see or understand the value of the powerful piece.
• Don’t look at your marketing messages through your eyes. Take your marketing messages out to others for their opinions. (If you take your marketing messages to your staff or to your spouse for “more objective” opinions, you will get more, and varied, opinions, none of which will be much more valuable than your own. The only person whose opinion counts is the potential clients’. Think of it this way: Don’t ask your wife and staff what flavor of ice cream the kid standing on the street corner likes the most. You may love your wife and your staff, but they don’t know what flavor of ice cream that kid likes any more than you know. Ask the kid.)

#13 Don’t Buy Statistics

• Most people who sell advertising have compelling statistics that demonstrate buying their advertising vehicle is a prudent choice. Ignore these statistics; they mislead. If you need to rely on statistics, get them from an unbiased source.
• Statistics are not clients. (Nobody has 1.9 children.)

#14 Tell the Truth

• Always.

#15 Adopt a Winning Attitude

• The return you get on your marketing investment is influenced by your attitude. Create and maintain a great outlook every time you participate in building content, designing marketing material, or buying media. If you discover you have a bad outlook on a day you have scheduled yourself to work on your marketing, reschedule.
• Go all out, as though you are designing your future. You are.
• Plan to win. Big.

#16 Never Advertise From Fear of Loss

• Advertising decisions that are motivated by fear (“some other firm will get these clients if I don’t advertise here”) will almost definitely result in poor returns.
• Advertising decisions that are motivated by possible gain tend to produce? gain.

#17 Sell Only the Best

• If you decided to sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door, wouldn’t you research to find the best-value, best-performing vacuum cleaner on the market, and then get a job with that firm? Your advertising will always reflect your beliefs about your firm. If you don’t believe you can offer the best value and performance, your advertising will reflect that.
• If you can’t offer value and performance, change.

If you abide by these seventeen time-tested marketing principles, your marketing cannot stray too far from success.

Nothing. The name was changed from NMRI to MRI because people were afraid of being tested by a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Indicator. (“Nuclear” refers not to atomic energy but to the nucleus of the cell, which is charged magnetically to get a picture of what is going on.)

Did you know there is no chocolate in “white chocolate.” White chocolate, which is a combination of butter (or oil) and sugar, was commonly called “almond bark.” Almond bark was not very popular until the confections industry renamed it “white chocolate.” Now, it seems white chocolate is everywhere.

Have you noticed that the GOP no longer uses the term “global warming?” Instead, they use the term “global climate change.” The public does not seem to be very alarmed about global climate change; it’s weather.

Simple word changes can make huge differences in perception and, down the road, in attitudes and action.

That is why many lawyers choose to be called attorneys. The public often perceives lawyers as the “bad guys” and attorneys as professionals.

What does the public think about “personal injury lawyers?” It is not pretty. How about a name change that better communicates what PI lawyers do?

Personally, I like the term “negligence attorneys.” A lot of people don’t like to sue — that is until they have a good reason to. Negligence may be a better reason to sue than personal injury.

People get hurt; it is not always somebody else’s fault. However, when we sue for negligence, it is clear who the “bad guy” is.

I say let’s become “negligence attorneys.” The term clearly defines who the good and bad the guys are.

What terms do you use in your marketing that might serve you better if you change a word or two?

Let’s start with what I’m talking about when I say search engines. Search engines are web applications that crawl the web indexing text. Search engines allow users to search the index by keyword, and provide links to matching resources.

Directories are also lists of internet resources, but they are manually entered by a person (rather than the automatically crawled by search engine spiders). Directories also allow users to search an index by keyword.

Because people use directories in the same way as search engines, they are often lumped together as search engines. There is also confusion because Yahoo started out as a directory, but added crawl-based search in 2002.

The business of search engines is fascinating.

The race in the search engine world is going faster and faster, with the giants adding new tools and services left and right.

Google just launched a new cost-per-impression and targeting for Ad Words beta, and a personal search tool in beta – allowing users to keep a detailed history of their past searches. Yahoo launched My Web in beta on Wednesday (4/27), boosting their personal search history service. Google’s IPO was the hottest news in technology since the 1990’s.

And the usefulness of search engines is mesmerizing.

According to the January, 2005 Search Engine Users study by Pew Internet, 38 million American adults use a search engine every day.

We use search engines to find definitions too modern to be in the dictionary.

We use search engines to find an exact address.

We use search engines to research geography, history, and astrology.

We use search engines to see photos of landscape designers’ prior work.

We use search engines to learn all about Britney Spears.

We use search engines to find a lawyer when we have no referral.

People often like to do a little reading about an attorney to establish an image of who the attorney is. We want to see what kind of a relationship we can have with the lawyer before calling with him or her.

This is a good reason to have a website. And a good reason to market with search engines, so people can find your site.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has many parts – advertising (sponsored links and pay-per-click ads), directory submission (paid or unpaid), and search engine optimization (SEO – where your site’s copy, design, code, and structure make it easier to get higher results in search engine queries).

Each of these factors of SEM is valuable, but you need to evaluate your business goals to see which are right for you.

Paid advertising is often a good way to jump-start your search engine rankings.

There are a lot of attorneys on the web, and attorney directories have been marketing on the web for a long time, so they hold the highest organic rankings. Findlaw is everywhere.

It takes time to get organic rankings on search engines, and in directories.

While directory administrators are reviewing your submission, and before the web crawlers have found and indexed your site, you might use sponsored links and pay-per-click ads to get your site to be listed on the first two pages.

And since most users don’t look at results past the second page on a search engine (iProspect’s Search Engine User Attitudes Survey), you really want to be on the first two pages.

If you provide valuable information (and my first recommendation is that you do – include links to resources, for example) you might even get a link or two from an outside site. And those links boost your organic rankings on many search engines.

Submitting to directories can not only allow your site to appear in directory results, but some search engines also use directory listings to determine the rank of their crawled results. Some directories allow you to submit your site to them for a fee, some simply require that you do your research and submit to the proper category.

Within your site, there is a lot you can do to boost your organic ranking. You can optimize your site’s copy to utilize competitive keywords for your practice, so crawlers associate those keywords in their index with your site.

You can optimize your sites design, code, and structure, to enable those spiders to crawl through your site quickly and efficiently. Building search engine optimization into your site is becoming standard, but it’s best to make sure your web designer is on top of it.

Using search engine marketing, you can help get your site on search engines so people who need you can find you.

As a result of this content mix, when people read newspapers and magazines, they expect to see advertising. Frequently, people read newspapers for their advertising content. Sales, movie listings, tire pricing, classifieds, and coupons are valuable and integral to the make-up of newspapers. Many travel, health, fashion, and sports magazines are purchased for their advertising content as much, or more, than for their information or entertainment content.

Advertising in print media – be it in newspapers, magazines, or yellow page directories – is often welcome; it is certainly expected. Though no publisher of note has tried it yet, industry experts have long held the position that were the advertising content to be removed from magazines and newspapers, readership would drop precipitously.

Broadcast Media: Contrast the way viewers feel about advertising in print media with the way viewers feel about advertising in broadcast media. When viewers watch television, they are doing so because they want to be entertained or, in the case of news or talk radio, informed. These viewers are decidedly not looking for advertising content.

Viewers see television and radio advertising as intrusive.

How do viewers respond to advertising in broadcast media? They hate it. Oft times, they switch channels, or get up from the sofa to take care of a quick chore. To say the least, viewers avoid advertising in broadcast media. Witness the rapid growth of commercial-free radio programming such as Web radio and XM Radio and the new generation of digital recording devices designed to edit out television advertising

Consider the importance and memorability of these slogans:

Just Do It! (Nike)
Kills ’em Dead (Raid)
Built Like a Rock (Chevy Trucks)
The Ultimate Driving Machine (BMW)
Um, um, um, um, um, toasty! (Quizanos)
Run for the Border (Taco Bell)
The Rock (Prudential)
Like a good neighbor… (State Farm)

Notice each slogan communicates something unique about the firm that is significant to the consumer.

If the message in your current slogan could apply to most law firms or generally to the practice of law, you are missing an opportunity to brand your firm in a way that will make your firm stand out from others. The following are probably good slogans; they are also probably true, and they may contain an element of interest to consumers. However, since they could be applied to just about any law firm, they do not make any law firm stand out.

On Your Side
Here When You Need Us
Let Us Guide You
Know Your Rights
Don’t Get Hurt Twice

To persuade a potential client looking for legal representation in an advertising medium (such as the yellow pages directory), the firm slogan needs to communicate something unique about a practice, and that “something unique” needs to be of value to the potential client.

The following slogans do set firms apart. But, their slogans miss the “what’s in it for me” message that is critical to generate consumer interest and a telephone call.

Serving the County for 17 Years
Three Generations of Service

To be effective at generating new clients, slogans need to:
1) set the firm apart, and
2) offer something of value to the consumer.

Recently, I was working with a firm that had been using “Remember we don’t get paid until you win” as their slogan for four or five years. It was an effective slogan. It set the firm apart from other firms and it offered something of value to the consumer. However, other firms in the area saw its value and they started using similar terms (not as slogans, just bullet points) in their print advertising.

As I thumbed through the yellow pages directory, I found the following text in the ads that preceded my client’s ad in the directory.

All personal injury cases are handled on a contingency-fee basis.

No Fee Unless Successful Recovery
No Fees Unless You Win
Contingency Fees 1/3 – Never Higher
No Attorney Fees Unless We Are Successful
No Fee Unless We Recover For You

Six of the seven ads that appeared before my client’s ad had scooped my client’s slogan! The only one that did not make reference to not getting paid until settlement or unless recovery was made was a family law advertisement.

Imitation may be flattering, but in this instance it sure robbed my client the power of his slogan. (When you develop your slogan, be certain to make it a slogan that cannot be imitated.) Clearly it was time to change my client’s slogan.

When I presented my client with the need to change his slogan, he hesitated. After all, he had “invested five years of time and money promoting” his practice through this slogan. After this much of an investment, is it wise to change a firm’s slogan?