How to Understand (and Market to) Your Law Firm’s Ideal Clients

Marketing is one of those tricky parts of business that nobody really understands unless you’ve previously worked in the field. There are so many tips out there and everyone thinks that their way is the only way. The thing is, there are a few key principles that every marketing tactic or campaign needs to be successful. Determining who your law firm’s ideal clients are is one of those keys.

Today, we want to show you how to nail down your ideal client. Working under the impression that everyone is your ideal client and needs your services quickly leads to serving no one. Quit throwing everything at the wall and hoping it sticks! Once you know who you’re talking to, it’s a whole lot easier to know what to say.

At Betties, we started out offering our services to any small business that wanted us! We quickly realized that many people and businesses didn’t value what we offered. We also realized that it was impossible to offer the level of service we wanted to while juggling calls for multiple business types. Our team took a step back and asked: Who do we like working with the most? The answer was unanimous: Attorneys. At that point, we were able to nail down the specific problems our attorney clients needed help with. This has helped guide our messaging as well as the services we provide.

If you’re currently marketing to everyone, or not marketing to anyone at all, you need to keep reading! Let’s get your ideal client nailed down so you can start truly helping them.

Steps to identifying your law firm’s ideal clients

1) Brainstorm the problems your law firm solves

Remember those handy dandy bubble maps we made in school before starting a paper or project? Take us back because that’s the perfect start to finding your firm’s clients. You need to know what problems you solve before you can know who needs help with said problems! Start with the types of law you practice and branch out with various case types underneath those branches. Get as detailed as possible so that you can really understand the problems your clients are facing.

2) Make a list of your favorite clients

This step is definitely more so for established firms and businesses. Once you’ve discovered certain people that you love working with, make a list of them. Start to process some of their characteristics and find similarities. Do they live in similar areas? Do they share careers? What about familial status? What are their personality types? Male or female? How old are they? Political affiliations? Answering as many of these questions as possible and finding similarities can make it surprisingly simple to understand who your law firm’s ideal clients are. You may already be working with them!

3) Determine how many client profiles you serve

Your clients may not all be in exactly the same circumstances. Especially if you offer multiple services or practice more than one area of law. If you notice that your favorite clients don’t necessarily overlap, or perhaps you solve different problems, consider creating multiple profiles. Start with the problem you are solving and work backward as to who that solution serves. This will help when advertising different services or marketing on different platforms. If one set of clients hangs out on Facebook, target them there with messaging directed at them. If another set of clients hangs out on LinkedIn, market to them there!

Keep in mind – you don’t want to go overboard. Slight differences do not necessarily require an all-new profile if your messaging can work for both ideal clients.

4) Who are your competitors serving?

If you don’t yet have a robust favorite client list, look at your competitors. Who are they serving and who do they market to? Follow them on social media and check out their lead magnets. Who are they speaking to? What are they offering? This might help you to determine if your ideal client is similar or if you have a unique audience that they can’t help.

If you don’t want to make it known that you are “spying”, Kim Garst offers some valuable tips on software to follow your competitors’ email blasts without actually subscribing.

 

Okay, I know who I want to serve. Now what?

Speaking to your ideal clients

Now that you know who you are talking to, it will be easier to determine your messaging and how you market to them. The most important part of marketing your firm is to ensure that your potential clients want to hear what you are saying. Nothing turns you off of a company faster than a message you don’t align with, right?

1) Create content that speaks to solving their problems

You identified the problems your law firm solves and you determined the problems of your ideal client profiles. Put those together and market directly to each problem that your ideal clients face. You can do this through informative and helpful blog posts and other free content, as well as speak to how you help solve those problems in your advertising and landing pages. For instance, if your ideal client is having trouble planning his estate and wants to be sure his family doesn’t have to worry about anything, you might create messaging around your uncomplicated, done-for-you estate planning services that will set his family up to thrive after he is gone.

2) Show up where your clients hang out

If your ideal clients hang out on Facebook, you want to advertise to them there and have an active Facebook Business Page. If your ideal clients ride the bus, you might want to utilize bus stop advertising opportunities or have your ads inside the bus. Do your clients attend conferences? What kind? Show up as an authoritative figure there!

When you know where your clients are and what problems they are having, it’s easy to attract them to you with marketing that surrounds them.

 

Did you find this post helpful? We’d love for you to share your ideal client profile in the comments or over on Facebook!