It is well known that specialists make more money than generalists, and that applies to the legal arena as well.
As lawyers we often decide what area of law we like to concentrate on. While I’ve done no research, I think I’m safe in saying that general practitioners are fewer when compared to the number of lawyers overall who concentrate on just one or two areas of practice (or are certified in one or two areas). When we concentrate on one or two areas to the exclusion of the others, we have entered a niche. (Even within one or two areas, other niches can be created, of course).
This is a good thing for several reasons, but the biggest one is that we get to know all about our prospective clients, their problems and (obviously) the solutions we can offer them. This, in turn, can make our marketing easier because we have a ready-made supply of data from which to create a client profile to use in targetting our offline and online marketing efforts.
For any kind of advertising, a client profile is esential. You need to know who you help so you can offer them solutions that will make them want to become your client.
But for online marketing, a client profile is even more essential (if that’s possible!), especially if you use pay-per-click (ppc) advertising. Otherwise, the amount of money spent on ppc can be astronomical if you get a lot of clicks from people who do not need your services.
For my divorce and paternity practice, I have four client profiles. Each lets me create content for my web site as well as for the articles I publish online. This content attracts visitors to my web site and leads to phone calls from prospective clients who have identified with one of the problems or issues I write about. I don’t use pay per click for the site, so the only cost I have is the time I spend writing the content, which totals about 10-15 minutes per article (usually about 4 or 5 articles per month).
How about you? Do you /use/have client profiles for your practice? If so, how do you use them, in your offline or online marketing?
Vivian