The Rainmaker Blog : Law Firm Marketing and Business Development : The Rainmaker Institute : Stephen Fairley : Professional Legal Marketing

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In these challenging times, it’s very tempting to want to serve everyone, never turning down any client, and trying to build your client base with whoever comes through your door.

But that is counterproductive. To make more, you must do less.

When you’re trying to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to no one. And in your prospective clients’ minds, you become one of the many, many lawyers out there, a big legal blur. And if that’s the case, how are you going to attract any attention, much less attract clients you can serve?

The answer: specialize. Now I’m talking more than focusing on an area of law, more than earning a specialist certification through your bar association, although both of these are important.

What I’m talking about serving a specific niche (man’s divorce attorney) or even a niche within a niche (man’s divorce attorney emphasizing child custody).

The 8 Benefits to Positioning Yourself as a Specialist:

• Significantly higher rate of referrals.
• Can charge higher rates.
• More opportunities to offer them more expensive services.
• Better client retention.
• Not perceived as a commodity.
• Value is based primarily on credibility and expertise.
• Better positioned to get positive media coverage.
• Easier to dominate your niche.

With all of these benefits, it pays to spend time carefully defining what “specialization” means to you. Certainly, it must make sense from your experience, training and if there’s a need out there. When you get inquiries from prospective clients, what’s drawing them to you and your services? Keep track of your clients and see if they don’t begin to naturally fall into one or more groups. You may find that you attract clients you can learn from or who can learn from you. Their situations may mirror your current or recent challenges.

Becoming aware of these commonalities is a way to let your niche find you, which In turn helps you develop your law firm marketing strategy.

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