Branding and Positioning

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Most lawyers focus their marketing on the wrong person – themselves. Legal marketing, often, is all about the lawyer. His or her experience, qualifications, education, etc.

But the best marketing isn’t focused on the lawyer. It’s focused on the client. 

Instead of talking about yourself, your marketing should show your prospective clients how you are going to make their lives better. How you’re going to help them achieve success and/or avoid disaster. How you’re going to help them become a better version of themselves and achieve whatever goals or objectives they are pursuing.

A couple of examples…

As a business attorney, you’re helping your clients protect their investment and their life’s work. You’re creating a secure foundation for their family and their future generations. You’re helping them avoid legal and financial disaster. You’re enabling them to become confident, secure, and decisive as they pilot their business.

As a divorce attorney, you’re helping your client close a messy chapter of their life and move towards an exciting fresh start. You’re helping them to create that fresh start with confidence, knowing that they have the resources they need to thrive. You’re enabling them to re-discover themselves and live the next chapter of their life without fear.

Here’s a great commercial that illustrates this concept. The advertiser is Procter & Gamble – and they’re promoting diapers, batteries, laundry detergent, and paper towels. (And you thought your law practice was boring?!)

Yet, there’s not a word spoken about how absorbent the paper towels are, or how the diapers won’t leak. Instead it’s all about their target audience – Moms – and how their products enable mothers to become the person they want to be. The rock for their kids, helping them reach for the stars and achieve the impossible, even when it’s tough.

Just try to watch this without tearing up:

Great marketing isn’t about you. It’s about your clients – how you’re going to help them achieve their goals and become the people they want to be. 

Over the past seven years at Spotlight Branding, we’ve worked with hundreds of lawyers across the country. In that time we’ve had literally thousands of conversations with attorneys. And one of the things that jumps out at me, looking back on those conversations, is how often marketing decisions are driven by tools instead of strategy.

Quite frankly, I don’t blame lawyers for getting this backward – it’s our fault, collectively, in the marketing world. So often, marketers talk exclusively about tools with no regard whatsoever to building a cohesive marketing strategy. 

Here are some examples of a tools-oriented conversation:

  • How can I show up higher on Google?
  • How can I reach more people on Facebook?
  • How can I generate more leads from my website?
  • How can I use Instagram in my marketing?

These aren’t bad questions. But they are secondary questions, and too often lawyers and marketers treat them as the primary questions. And as a result, they end up with a disjointed and ineffective marketing strategy.

There are an endless amount of tools that you can leverage in your marketing, and they’re changing every day. Google, Facebook, email marketing, video, direct mail, billboards, radio, TV, third-party apps, PPC ads, and the list goes on. But if you don’t have a defined strategy to serve as a filter and a guide, to create context for these tools, they end up driving you rather than the other way around. 

If you asked me “how can I show up higher on Google?,” I’d ask you WHY you want to show up on Google.

To get more clients? OK – well what if I told you that there are easier, cheaper, and more predictable ways to get more clients? For example, the average lawyer is only capturing about one-third of the referrals that they could be getting from their existing network. Figuring out how to maximize your referrals is a whole lot cheaper and more predictable than fighting for top position on Google! That’s the low-hanging fruit, and that’s where every lawyer should start.

Rather than worrying about Facebook or Instagram reach, first have the conversation about how you want to use social media in general. Are you using it to build your brand, to generate new “cold” leads, to stay in touch with your referral network? There’s no “right” answer, but what matters is that you’ve defined your objectives.

So rather than focusing on the tools that are available to you, or more accurately, the tools that are being sold to you… here are the types of questions you should be considering:

  • Who is your ideal client?
  • Where does your ideal client spend time? What media sources do they consume? What types of events do they go to?
  • What’s your brand – what do you stand for?
  • What makes you different than the competitors in your market?
  • Who are your best referral sources and how can you stay top-of-mind with them?
  • How many new clients/cases/matters do you need to win each month to meet your financial goals?
  • What is your maximum acceptable Cost of Acquisition – aka how much can you afford to spend to win a new client?
  • How are you going to generate leads?
  • How are you going to build your brand?
  • How are you going to stay in touch with prospective clients who haven’t hired you yet?
  • How can you maximize referrals and repeat business?

Do you see the difference?

Once you’ve answered the big-picture strategic questions, you can talk about the tools in a much more strategic and cohesive way.

Strategy drives tools… the tools exist to serve and execute the strategy. Don’t get it backward! 

Want more tips & inspiration for your law firm marketing? Click here for instant access to our Special Report entitled “How Your Internet Foundation Will Make or Break Your Marketing”!