What Does Marketing Have to Do with Practicing Law?

The answer: Everything, if you are a small firm practitioner. How can you practice law without clients? Without marketing, how do you get clients? Most law schools don’t even mention the concept of marketing, much less teach aspiring lawyers how to sell their services. Selling and marketing, in fact, are dirty words among lawyers, being considered cousins of the unethical practice of soliciting.

The reality is, however, that you are probably engaging in marketing every week. The question is, how effective are you at it? Every time you respond to the question, “What do you do?” you are marketing. Every time you meet or greet someone who already knows what you do for a living, you are marketing. What are you advertising about yourself when you are not even talking about your business? Are you communicating by your demeanor and conversation that you are competent and knowledgeable, yet compassionate and trustworthy enough for someone to safely reveal a significant and troubling problem to you? Or do others feel inferior, judged and unimportant in your presence? Which professional would you choose to handle your important concerns?

Instead of marketing unconsciously, get on the road to becoming an effective marketer by following these three tips:

Many lawyers sabotage their own marketing by having a focus for their marketing efforts that is too broad and vague. Not only will you strain your brain if you are trying to be all things to all people, but that also makes it much more difficult to design an effective marketing program. When you use a buckshot approach instead of a laser approach focused on your strengths, your listeners are less likely to recognize themselves or a friend as someone who needs your services. They often need to hear you describe just their situation to recognize the benefit of your service in their lives. Federal Express offers several categories of delivery service, but they market to “when it absolutely, positively has to be there.”

Clients have more confidence in specialists. Neurosurgeons make more money than general practitioners. (Never say you are a general practitioner. If you won’t narrow your focus, at least say that you have a “full service firm.”) Don’t be afraid of losing the business outside your niche. You are still free to accept business that doesn’t fall into your niche category if you have the requisite expertise. And, if you develop a reputation for handling your niche market, you’ll be overflowing with business. Even your competitors in the broader market will refer to you.

Here are a few examples of well-defined niches other lawyers have staked out:

The next step goes hand in hand with identifying your niche. Develop the client base you want by making conscious decisions about who you want your marketing to attract. You have to know where your target is to effectively aim at it. As Yogi Berra said, “You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”

Here are some useful questions to ask yourself, but don’t stop there. Create a description of your ideal clients that is so vivid that you will recognize them when you meet them.

What are the traits of the most ideal clients among your current clients?

What traits would your really ideal clients have?

What problems do they have?

Are they computer and technology literate? How do they use the Internet and email?

What kind of budgets do they have?

Do they belong to any particular ethnic, gender, age, geographic or other category?

Who else do they do business with? What other services or products do they buy?

Where do they gather or network?

Are they vocal about your services to others?

In identifying your target clients, it pays to look at growing markets and become knowledgeable about them. Today women start new businesses at twice the rate of men. Women employ more people than all the Fortune 500 companies combined. In general, women value relationships, even with their product manufacturers and service providers. Women would prefer to buy detergent from a company that sponsors after-school programs, for example. There is a savvy reason why Yoplait yogurt advertises that they will make a breast cancer donation for every Yoplait carton top sent in to them.

Other growing markets are seniors and ethnic minorities. The baby boomers are aging. The Hispanic population in Texas is mushrooming. Hispanics constitute about 35% of Houstonians now. By 2010 they are predicted to make up 54% of the Houston population. There are about 10 million Asian Americans, and their median household income is above the national average.

The SOHO (Small Office Home Office) boom has spawned whole new industries to serve that market. How are you positioned to appeal to SOHO workers?

Now that you are clear about what you do uniquely, and who you want to do it for, craft a clear and concise statement about it that you could tell someone in the brief time between floor stops in an elevator. This defining statement is your 30-second commercial that you get to broadcast every time someone asks you what you do.

Make it conversational in tone. It has to be something you will really say, without stumbling over yourself. Make it memorable. You want your listener to repeat it when they encounter someone who could use your unique brand of service. That is exactly what you are doing: creating a brand. Steve Scholl, a Houston lawyer, says, “I’m a trial lawyer who practices peacemaking.” Ted Hirtz, another Houston lawyer, uses humor and imagery to make his elevator speech memorable. He says, “I’m a proctologist in the courtroom.” Both of those statements catch the listener’s attention and tend to generate follow-up questions. They give the lawyer an opportunity to engage his listener in a conversation about the lawyer’s practice or the client’s business.

There are different schools of thought about what your defining statement should include. Experiment with each of the approaches described below, and use what works for you. If people hear your defining statement and ask for your business card, you have a winner!

Most effective defining statements are either dream-focused or pain-focused. Really good ones incorporate both. The statement should reference who your target clients are. Dream-focused statements speak to the situation or outcome that the client would like to have. For example, “I’m an Executive Coach for lawyers. I help them make more money while shortening their work day.” Pain-focused statements highlight the problems your target client needs your services to solve. For example, “I work with lawyers who feel stressed or stuck,” or “I work with lawyers who can’t get their staff to do it right the first time.” A statement that does both would be “I help lawyers turn chaos and lost time into profits and ease.”

Begin creating your dream-focused statement by filling in the blanks in this sentence: “I work with _________ who want _________ and _________.” (“I’m a collaborative family lawyer. I work with divorcing women who want a reasonable settlement and a quicker resolution.” Or: “I work with divorcing women who want a prompt and reasonable resolution so they can get on with the healing process.) For your pain-focused statement, try “I work with ______ who [have ______ problems].” (“I work with divorcing women who are afraid the stress of bitter parental disputes will harm their children.”)

Continue experimenting and tinkering with your defining statement over time. You want it to spark follow-up questions that give you a chance to showcase the results you have achieved for other clients. You also want it to stick in the memory of your listener like a radio jingle. You will know it really works when strangers call you and repeat your defining statement as they ask for your services.

With your niche, your target clients and your defining statement determined, you can begin your marketing campaign the next time you walk out your door, without spending a penny! To optimize their marketing efforts, however, professional service providers need to create visibility and credibility with their target audiences. We’ll explore how to do that in the next issue of Raising the Bar.