In the last post, I wrote about the 3 kinds of clients that lawyers can get.
As you probably know, most lawyers get mostly poor and mediocre clients. Only a few lawyers know how to reliably attract great clients.
Which is a shame because when you are mostly only serving great clients your practice will be exponentially more fulfilling.
Last time I mentioned there was a system for reliably attracting great clients. And I said I’d start explaining it to you, which is what I’m going to do now.
But I also mentioned that the system is not easy to set up. So if you’re too impatient or desperate to pay close attention to what I’m going to share…
You might want to stop reading now.
However, if you’re sensible, realistic and patient then buckle up because I’m going to explain the exact strategy you must use if you want to attract the highest quality clients.
In doing so, I’ll explain some business concepts and marketing concepts that you are probably not that familiar with, if you’ve even heard of them at all.
The Total Addressable Market
Out there in the world there are many people that might want to hire you and that you could theoretically represent. In business terminology, this is your “total addressable market.” (“TAM”)
In that TAM are a whole bunch of poor clients, a lot of mediocre ones, and many great ones. But percentage-wise, the great ones are less than the poor ones and mediocre ones.
Let’s say that your TAM of great clients is about 20% of the total TAM. Obviously, these are the folks you want to target with your marketing efforts, right?
So how are you going to do this? Well, there aren’t a lot of good options. That’s the bad news.
The GOOD news is if you use one of the good options you’ll have very little competition because most lawyers are using one of the many bad options.
The bad options are the ones you’re most familiar with because it’s what you see everyone else doing: billboard ads, TV ads, radio ads, print ads, event sponsorships, and internet ads (Google, Facebook etc.)
The “strategy” with the bad options is simple (and flawed): get the attention of as many prospects as possible, hoping they’ll contact your law firm and hire you.
In other words, the entire focus is on getting attention.
And after that, there’s no focus, and no strategy.
The assumption is: (1) get attention and (2) potential clients will call you and hire you.
This is an unrealistic assumption because only a small percentage of people will call you after you interrupt them with an ad that has your phone number.
You know this is true, right? Well, if you need to think about it please do.
Stop and think about this: how often you take immediate action after seeing an ad for a product or service? Not that often, I’d guess.
Look, when the world is continually bombarding us with ads…we tend to (1) NOT pay attention to MOST of them, and (2) NOT take action on the few that we might actually be interested in (if our minds weren’t so fragmented and skitish from overstimulation by advertising and social media)
A.R.T.A – The 4-Step Attraction Process
If you want to understand how effective marketing works, then you need to understand the A.R.T.A process.
The original acronym is A.I.D.A., but I’ve modified it to apply more precisely to legal marketing.
If you talk to someone who claims to be an expert in marketing ask them if they know what A.I.D.A. is. If they don’t then they’re not an expert. Even if they do know, that doesn’t mean they can actually help you get more business.
But at least you know they’re not completely ignorant.
And if they DO know what A.I.D.A. is, then they only know the “generic attraction formula.”
They almost certainly don’t know how to tailor it to the legal profession.
P.S. If you want my Ultimate Guide to Technology for Lawyers click here.
