Law firm owners, like many entrepreneurs, are confused and frustrated when it comes to marketing. Mostly they don’t know how they will be able to market for new business AND serve their current clients. This often ends up creating a feast or famine cycle as there isn’t an existing funnel to consistently feed new clients into the firm. In this week’s episode of Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor, I talk about how to reframe your mindset to set up recurring revenue by focusing on one key question: “Who do I serve?”
Who Are Your People and Where Are They Hiding?
Marketing isn’t just about online or digital marketing. The better definition of marketing is putting yourself in the public domain so that people who need your service are aware you exist and can find you.
But in order to help people find you, you need to know where the right people are so that you can focus all of your marketing energies, whether that’s ads, social media, or local marketing efforts, on those key places.
The first important step is defining who your people are in the broadest sense and then narrowing it down.
Who Do I Serve?
Answering the question “Who do I serve” is about defining both your client base and your referral base. In a broad category, who you serve can be an easy question to answer. If you are a real estate attorney, you can serve anyone who needs assistance with the acquisition or disposition of real estate. If you are a family attorney, you can serve anyone who needs assistance with a divorce, adoption, etc.
But beyond answering the question of who you serve in the broadest sense lies a deeper question that can help you determine where you people are and put you on the right path to creating a recurring revenue stream. And that question is “Who are my people?”
Who Are My People?
Why is this second question on a deeper level than the first? Because this question deals with who you WANT to serve. Serving clients draws upon your energy, your efforts, and your mindset. And you know what I mean by this if you conjure up the image of a client who was both physically and mentally draining to deal with. We all have them and while we do our best to serve them like all or our other clients, if you can find a way to not have to deal with that type of client you would, right?
And there is nothing wrong with that. Your resources are finite, and if you focus on clients you enjoy working with then you have more energy left over for other things, such as growing your law firm, while providing a better level of service to your existing clients.
Who Do I Enjoy Working With?
To answer the question of who are your people you are asking yourself the question “Who do I enjoy working with?”
We’re talking about defining the people that you want to serve from the perspective of what it is that they want to achieve and who they are as people to the extent that that matters for your service.
If you are a criminal defense attorney, maybe you don’t want to take certain kinds of cases because your credibility in negotiating has a certain premium at this point. And if you start taking cases where there is less meritorious value behind whatever is the crime being prosecuted there, there could be some erosion of that negotiating power that you otherwise have.
Grab My Avatar Worksheet to Start
We have a worksheet called the Avatar worksheet. If you could visualize who is the client that you would most like to work with, that would be your ideal client avatar. You can download that sheet by clicking here.
I want you to think about who are my people from the perspective of not just what is their legal problem, but who are the people that I would most like to work with in my law firm, because those are the people that are going to be most appreciative of your service. They’re going to give you the least amount of pushback on the fee that you choose to charge them. And they’re going to be best suited to not just work with you and follow your legal advice, but also be great referrals for more of those people because like equals like.
Once again, you can access our Avatar worksheet here. To learn more about this topic and where you can focus your marketing efforts, listen to the full episode “Creating Your Law Firm Marketing Plan” by clicking here.
And if you are interested in our More Money, More Free Time Course that goes in even more in depth on marketing, click here.
Happy Holidays Everyone!