All lawyers operate in a competitive landscape.
It doesn’t matter what area of law you’re practising, what your niche is, or who your target clients are, all lawyers have at least some competition.
There’ll be lots of other lawyers operating in your space who will be trying to get the same clients as you.
So the question is, how can you stand out from the crowd?
How can you build authority in your space that sets you up to be a recognised expert in your industry?
I have a three-step framework to helping you to do exactly that.
I’ve used it myself, both in my law firm and with Automio, to help me to become a go-to person for my ideal client.
If you want that for your firm, then read on…
#1: Education-based marketing
I see a lot of lawyers going out onto social media and talking about their beliefs, and their opinions, and their thoughts on things.
The truth is, that’s just not interesting to people.
Yes, it’s an important part of marketing to share your opinions and thoughts, but what is more interesting to your target client is answers to their questions.
Or solutions to their problems.
That’s where education-based marketing comes in.
This is where you create content that provides solutions to your ideal clients’ problems.
The best way to do this is to go out to your ideal clients or to clients you’re currently helping and find out what they want to know.
Make a note of the questions they ask you, the common problems they need solved, challenges you see them experiencing.
You probably already have an idea of the most common issues that come up for them.
Take those common issues, or questions, and create an education-based marketing strategy to solve them.
You can do it in a number of different ways. You can do it in a podcast, a blog, a video, on your YouTube channel, or on your social media.
The important thing is that you meet people where they are, so they can actually get the benefit of that content.
If you can create content that will meet them where they are and will solve a problem for them, then you will begin to establish yourself as a recognised expert in their eyes.
#2: Social proof
This is all about getting clients and other recognised experts in the industry to say nice things about you.
When it comes to clients, have a look at the clients who you’ve done really good work for, or got great results for, and see if you can get some case studies or testimonials from them.
Something I’ve noticed with lawyers is they often aren’t very good at doing testimonials and case studies.
Often I’ll see lawyers sharing a review they’ve had on Google, and it’ll say something like, “Ellen provided good service, five stars.”
That’s not the sort of testimonial or case study I’m talking about. You can do much better than that.
I’m talking about actually getting a case study that you have purposefully gone and got from the client.
A good case study covers three bases:
The first is what your client’s problem was, or what their life looked like before they worked with you.
The second is what the work was that you did for them and what it was like.
The third is the result.
You need to talk about the before, and really illustrate what their life was like and what their problem was, and you also need to really show the transformation in their lives that came as a result of working with you.
Those three components make up a really compelling case study, which is excellent for social proof.
The other part of social proof is using other industry leaders to rave about you.
Whatever your specialist field, you will have worked with many industry leaders or experts. No doubt you will have done some good work with them and they will like you.
This is about going to them and getting them to say nice things about you publicly, or endorse you in some way.
It is quite hard to begin with to ask people to do these sorts of things, but it is such an effective way of building authority in your area of law.
Write a list of all the people that you’ve worked with and then start going to them and asking them to say nice things about you.
It could be some sort of testimonial that you can share. They could tag you in a social post, or they could write something on their email list.
There are so many ways they could go about it, but the important thing is that you get them to do it for you.
#3: Build a powerful platform
This is all about bringing people together and building a community.
It’s also about bringing in other experts who can also help you to add value to your community.
There are a number of ways you can do this.
You can have some sort of a podcast, or YouTube channel, or some other online forum where you can bring experts on to talk to your target market as guests or speakers.
You can run events. Obviously we haven’t really been able to run many in-person events in a while. Before COVID, we had started running our own in-person event for lawyers, and it was such a great way to connect with people and bring in other industry experts to provide value.
But events don’t have to be in person – they can be online, they can be webinars, or they can be day-long conferences or other things like that.
You can build an online community. It could be a Facebook group, or a LinkedIn group, or a Slack group. There are so many places to build online communities.
These communities allow you to deliver great content to the people in them and really add value to their lives so that they start to see the kind of things that you can offer them.
Again, you can bring in other recognised industry experts to deliver content as well. Just by cultivating and sharing that knowledge, you can really build a powerful platform.
Speaking of online communities, you can sign up to my Savvy Lawyers Facebook group for plenty more tips and ideas on growing and scaling a modern, successful, 7-figure law firm.
