20 Tips for Marketing Your Law Firm in Tough Times (Tips 6-10)
When economic times get tough, law firm marketing is often the first line item to be lopped from the budget.
That’s extremely unfortunate, because this is precisely the time when you need to increase the number of clients you’re serving; find new clients in new markets to serve and/or increase the amount of revenue you get from current clients.
And it’s only through law firm marketing that you can do all three.
So to help you and your law firm through these tough economic times, I want to share with you 20 tips for marketing your law firm.
With this blog post, we’ll cover Tips 6-10.
6. Make your message interesting—Use your personality and personal experiences (confidentiality permitting) to explain your story and what your prospective clients get when they hire you as their lawyer.
7. Make your message believable—Don’t promise something you can’t do for a client just to sign them. Word-of-mouth can be a harmful thing if you don’t deliver on what you promise. To hire you as their lawyer, their first impression of you is vital and they must be able to trust you. So in your law firm marketing, state what you can do and what you believe in. If you have had an 80% successful case rate state it; however, be prepared to back-up your messages when a prospective client calls.
8. Value their time—Their time is valuable, so at the outset in your marketing message, emphasize what you can do for them. Free consultation forms on your website and even free consults (if applicable) in the office can help you make the most of their—and your—valuable time.
9. Don’t assume you know what your customers want—If you don’t know what each specific target group of your buyers really wants, research. It’s easier to sell them what they want than to convince them to buy what you think they want. From a law firm marketing perspective, you find out what your clients want by talking to them and keeping track of what is important to them. Your marketing can be tailored to focus on their needs. Is it important for a car accident victim to know your previous success with their type of accident or with the auto company they are going against? Listen, learn and apply it.
10. Satisfy their emotions—People often buy on the promise of emotional satisfaction and then justify it with logical reasons. As a lawyer, understand how your prospective client feels about his or her case. For example, if they are angry, empathize with them and see what you can do to help them feel vindicated. And never overlook other powerful emotions like security, safety, acceptance, guilt, fear, longing, and a dozen others, even in business-to-business sales.
In my next blog post, we’ll cover Tips 11-15.
(My thanks to the Marketing Psychology Group for their article “20 Marketing Tips for Hard Times” that provided the ideas for these tips.)
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