Marketing to Your Ideal Client

There's an old joke - being a lawyer would be great, if not for the clients.

I'm sure every profession has something similar. And guess what - THEY'RE ALL WRONG.

The problem is very few people actually know who their ideal client is. So that's step 1.

Create Your Ideal Client Avatar

• Who are they?
• What are their needs?
• What do they do?
• How much do they make?
• What are their pain points?
• How can you help them?
• What is their normal day like?

You need to have the answers to most of these and many other questions. The better image you have of them, the better all of your efforts to find them will be. If you REALLY want to go deep into this (which you should), click here to download a presentation I did on feel good marketing. It starts with a very long handout on creating that ideal client.

Where is my Ideal Client Going to go for Help?

Again, another question that needs some thought, but the benefits of answering it are clear - less time, effort, and money wasted spraying and praying marketing dollars.

• Are they going to search the internet? If so, what are they going to look for?
• Are they going to ask someone? If so, who will they ask and how will they ask them?
• Are they going to wait for you to come to them via a mailer or a text or an email? Or are they going to go find you?

Then, once you have an idea on that, you need to think about the process they want to go through to hire you. For example, we don't run internet or social media ads, we rely upon referrals, recommendations and people seeing our presentations and knowing they want US. So we don't have an answering service. If you're looking for someone to be there 24/7 to get on the phone with you immediately and that's how you want to hire a lawyer - then we aren't a good fit, and you're not our ideal client.

We want clients who go off of referrals from trusted friends/relatives/other professionals and who then check out our great reviews and case histories and come in knowing we are the right fit. So we market by providing an excellent client experience, but staying top of mind with clients via a newsletter and firm events, and then by finding and building long term relationships with referral sources (many of whom start as clients, then become referral sources, and then become friends).

There's ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with doing it a different way from how we do it, but I want clients who want to work with US. When I used to advertise, I had an answering service so we got the calls all the time, and I hated it. It wasn't for me, it wasn't for my firm, it wasn't for my BRAND.

Because remember, how you advertise needs to be consistent with your business' culture and brand.

Advertising Your Awesomeness

Now that we have the who (ideal client) and the where (to advertise). We need the what (to say).

I remember the other day reading a lawyers ad where they talked about being a one person firm and how they specialized in criminal law, family law, personal injury, immigration, business law, social security cases, property law, wills and trusts, and "and more." What the hell more is there?!?!?!? How can this person be caught up on every law ever? They must not actually do any work to stay knowledgeable about everything.

You don't have to focus on just one thing. You can have a few specialties, but emphasis on a few. And regardless of what you do, you have to have something unique about you, your business, etc. If you don't you've already lost.

• You worked for the other side so you know their tricks
• You are a one person shop - so they will always have access to you
• You have a patent or trademark on a better product than anyone else
• You can accomplish the need faster than others
• AND MORE!!!!!

You can 100% compete on price, if nothing else, you can be the cheapest, but remember, their might be someone else willing to go out of business faster than you are. Regardless of what your unique point is, that's the focus of you're marketing. Letting those ideal clients know what is unique about you and why they should hire YOU.

Be a Mad Scientist Rather than just Being Mad

Marketing is an art. And I hate that. I want marketing to be a science. But it's not, so instead I become a mad scientist and I track EVERYTHING that I think is important to my marketing efforts.

This can mean tracking everyone you went to lunch with and when, it can be tracking every ad on google, it can be tracking every open and every click of each email you send. It HAS TO BE tracking where EVERY lead came from.

If you don't have a fancy system - use a spreadsheet. At least get the following:

• Name
• Contact Info
• What they really needed
• How did they find you
• Did they hire?

If you have nothing, start there, and then keep the list going and add things to track as you go on. If you already have a system, make sure you are getting all the data you want.

Then...and here's the important step - look at it. What does it tell you?

If you are running ads - are people finding you off of them? Are they hiring you?

If you hired a new marketing team member - are they generating leads? Are those leads hiring?

If you're getting referrals, who is sending you the best clients? Who is sending you the worst? Who is sending you nothing?

Don't expect these efforts to work overnight, but give them a month, look at the numbers, make any small changes, go another month, make some small changes. Then after 3-6 months, take a longer look. Is it working? Do I need to change it? Do I need to stop it? Etc.

If you stop it or make changes, track the new things and after 3-6 months, have the same review of those new efforts as you did on the prior ones.

Then do it all Over Again

I wish I could tell you that once you got a solid stream going you could sit back and relax, but you can't. You can somewhat relax, but you can't sit back. You need to stay on what is working, keep trying to make it better (or paying someone to do that), and trying new efforts (or paying someone to do that). Heck, sometimes you might need to scrap everything and create a whole new ideal client avatar and restart the process. And guess what - that's awesome! Be Netflix, don't be Blockbuster. Be Facebook, don't be Myspace.

You can do it! But it all starts here.