In this installment of our marketing tips for attorneys, we will focus on three areas. One, create a time budget for marketing. Two, clearly identify your ideal client. And, three, tips for cause marketing or how to maximize the benefits of your charitable involvement. As always, these are general tips to be adapted to your style, practice, and life.
Tips for Making Time to Market
- Determine how much time that you can dedicate to marketing each week. For those who track time, you have billing requirements, client demand, firm responsibilities, a personal life, and other interests. So, step one is to figure out how much time you can dedicate to marketing and business development.
- Now you have a time budget, figure out what you will do with it. The key is discipline. If you can find time to go to the gym, meal prep, have online poker matches with your buddies, you can squeeze in time to market.
- You have 7 hours a week in your time budget. A sample plan may look like this:
- 3 hours to meet with clients, prospects and referral sources – could be coffee, drinks, lunch or Zoom.
- 1 hour to engage on social media – post, like, comment, and share.
- 1 hours to focus on your content marketing strategy. In other words, writing blogs and articles.
- 2 hours networking at bar association, trade organization and other events.
Tips for Identifying Your Ideal Client
- To know where to fish, you need to know what kind of fish you want to catch. For lawyers, we recommend that you identify your ideal client. We have heard, anyone who will pay my bills. To us, that is not the answer. Be specific.
- This will allow you to allocate limited resources – your time and money. It will also allow you to focus your efforts and position yourself as a leader in a particular area.
- This approach will allow you to make a determination of what marketing and business activities work, and which ones do not.
Cause Marketing Tips
- Attorneys are often leaders in their communities. As such, they sit on boards, run committees, offer pro bono legal services, donate money, and volunteer precious time. We recommend that you realize marketing benefits from your charitable endeavors.
- Promote your involvement far and wide. If your sponsor a table at a charitable event, send out a press release, add to your website, and create social media posts. You will draw attention to a cause that is important to you and to yourself. As a result, it is a win-win for you and the charity.
- Three things to remember – have a passion for the charity, put the charity before your own needs, and be patient. The comment about patience is if you are new to the charity, you may not be the Chairman of the Board immediately. Ease in.
Again, we understand that these marketing tips for attorneys are very general. They need to be tailored to you. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how these tips can help you – call us. We love talking about legal marketing.