Begin your law marketing strategy with four questions
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For many lawyers and collaborative professionals, marketing can be one of the most dreaded tasks. Many lawyers believe it is a “necessary evil” and see it as an uncomfortable yet essential activity for growing a profitable practice.
Yes, marketing is essential for accelerating your practice, especially in today’s challenging economic time. However, it does not need to be uncomfortable or dreaded.
Marketing is often mistaken for advertising hype, slick promotions and selling. Marketing is not selling, particularly in your profession. Nobody wants to be sold a divorce but everybody wants to get their problems solved in a compassionate, understanding way so they can move on.
So what is marketing? Marketing is about choosing target markets and delivering superior customer value. Your best marketing strategy starts with being authentic. This means knowing who you are, including your strengths, your core competency and your best clients. One of the best examples I have seen on the power of being authentic is from a video showing how one man was able to convince the US senate to fund 20 million dollars for public television in 1969. View Fred Rogers' defense of PBS in front of the Senate in 1969.
Once you define who you are and who your clients are, the next step is to excel in your area of strength and focus. Then you are ready to communicate your (targeted) message to the world.
The key to enjoying marketing is to be who you are, and deliver exceptional client value. By excelling in these two areas, you will experience higher satisfaction in your work and your marketing efforts.
Begin your marketing strategy today by answering the following questions:
- Why does my practice exist… what contribution am I making?
- Who are my ideal clients…what are their goals?
- How do I solve problems for my ideal clients better than anyone else?
- How do I differentiate my practice?
Once you answer the above questions, put your plan in place by communicating your message through your blog, web site, twitter, articles, presentations and outreach meetings with your referral network.
