Marketing Your Practice

My new coaching client complained that although her practice was pretty good, her efforts to grow it were not working and she was feeling frazzled.  When I asked, “How are you marketing your practice?” she told me all of the different networking events she had attended – 2 or 3 a week in the last month.

No wonder she was feeling worn out and discouraged.  How frustrating to be working hard on marketing your practice with little results to show for it!

What really annoyed her was that she could see attorneys with less skill in her specialty getting more business than she was.  She also noticed that other attorneys she knew who never were at the networking events had thriving practices.  “How do those lawyers find clients?” she asked me.

I can’t speak for the other attorneys I told her but I could help her to generate more business.  Going to 2 or 3 networking events a week would be tiring for anyone but was especially for her since she served a large geographic area and the events were often a distance from her office.  Not only was it tiring but it cut into her practice hours giving her less time to work on her cases. I could help her save time and help her to get more clients.

I asked her to answer these three critical questions:

• How are you currently getting new clients?
• Who is your target market?
• How do you find your target market?

How are you currently getting new clients?

To answer this question my client had to look back in her records to see where the clients she has come from.  Fortunately she kept track of this by asking each client in her intake process where they had heard about her.  She was amazed to find that only a handful came from her networking efforts.  Most came from referrals from either former clients or other attorneys.  She was really surprised by this.

Who is your target market?

She knew she had several target markets.  Targeting one in her marketing didn’t mean she wouldn’t take cases in the others but she would start by targeting just one area.  She would choose from her own criteria either the one that was most lucrative,  the one she enjoyed the most or the new practice area that she was trying to build.  She made a decision to go with the target market where she had a unique expertise. Because of that expertise it was the most lucrative since clients were willing to pay a higher hourly rate for that expertise.

How do you find your target market?

Now that she knew who she was after the decision as to how to go about it was easier. She already had referral sources sending her these clients but it wasn’t a continuous flow. This was probably because she did not keep in contact with these referrers.  Staying in the top of mind of a referral source nets more referrals.  Building her relationships with key referrers became her key strategy in her new marketing plan.

She had about 4 or 5 good referrers that could help her to grow her practice.  She realized she needed more.  By understanding who the referrers were that she was looking for she now knew what networking meetings they would be at.  Now she could cut down on the networking and only go to the events where she knew she’d meet the people who could help her.  Identifying possible referral sources and then finding a way to meet them became her marketing goal.  Her results improved dramatically.

Running in a million directions to attend networking meetings is not a good use of an attorney’s time. In the past my client had focused on finding new clients at the networking events. It did not happen very frequently.  She now knows she gets more leads with less effort from a good referral source. Her focus is on finding referral sources.  This new focus was the key to growing her practice.

Marketing help.

Do you find it difficult to find time to do the marketing you know you need to do? Are you disgusted because your marketing efforts bring little or no results?  I can help to get you on a more productive path that will mean you still have time for your case work— you may even have more time for your case work!   If you are committed to growing your practice and would like some support from someone whose only goal is to help you get your practice to the point where you have a steady flow of potential clients all in your target market, please give me a call at 781-598-0388 or email me at asparker@asparker.com.