What makes you unique? 🤔 There are 1,300,000 lawyers; 400,000 firms...why should clients choose you?

Am I Unique?

For me, I know the answer is YES (often to my detriment...)

But for you, and your firm, are you?

And if so how?

If you immediately answered both of those questions, awesome, just skip the rest of this newsletter, congrats!  If not, then read on.

Because here's the thing, I think we all agree that we SHOULD be unique, but how do we figure that out, and how do we present that uniqueness in a way that attracts our ideal client?  That's what we are talking about today.

Remember, 1,300,000 lawyers; 400,000 firms...why YOU?

Why is a Niche Important?

When you have limited time, money and energy to spend marketing, a niche helps you use it all wisely, or at least not waste as much of it as I once did.

For my niche, what do you think I would be better off doing for marketing?

A. Buying a billboard on I4

B. Presenting to the local teacher's union on 5 things they need to know about their insurance policy

C. Running ads to the richest zip code in my county

It's B.  Sort of duh...but also, sort of only duh because we spelled it out.  So if you do real estate law, sponsor the realtor convention.  If you do UHNW (Ultra-High Net Worth) estate planning, don't just run google ads to anyone, etc.

Having this carved out is key to so many decisions, but now let's take a step further.

How Does My Niche Make Me Unique?

And here's where the magic happens.  Because it's not just WHERE you market.  Or HOW you market.  It's really what you offer and how you say it.

Again using us the example, for a "normal" car accident client, what is their biggest concern?

MONEY, specifically showing it to them!

Which is why, if your state is anything like Florida, all of your lawyer billboards have a GIANT image of how much money the person got for their case, and a VERY small text saying something like "...all case outcomes are different based upon the facts and circumstances of each case..."

Which makes billboards GREAT for volume pi practices.  But for us, that's not my clients' biggest need.

My client is (usually) concerned about - everyone else in their life.

How do they get the kids to school?

If they miss work, does that mean they can't afford the family vacation?

Who's going to take grandma to her doctor's appointment next week?

So that means we:

• Train our staff about the process of getting a rental car and where to find the coverage in their policy
• Have some car brokers we can connect clients with so that they can get a new car quickly
• Make sure our onboarding drips go over property damage claims
• Have our system designed for virtual consults (way BEFORE Covid made it mandatory)
• Etc.

Boom, there's 3 things that I don't think MOST firms do and 1 that everyone SHOULD be doing by now...

How Else can we be Unique?

We then repeat this same thought process for other places where we think or know our ideal client has a VERY specific need.

It also helps us frame our brand and the language we use.

That blue collar professional, hopefully isn't just working for the weekend and appreciates that we have a little bit of fun as a group with our team building events.

Hopefully, they are of similar age to me which leads them to liking attorneys who are more approachable and not always in a SUIT and TIE and also (fingers crossed) enjoying our bad puns (hence our Florida Man Facebook stories).

And while the firm page doesn't curse, it's cool if I do on my personal page (or privately).

LAWYER MARKETING DISCLAIMER: and all of these things are genuine and authentic to me/us/the firm

That's the real key, it's finding the overlap between who you really are, and what your ideal client really wants from you.

It applies to where you marketing, how you market, what you say, how you charge, what you offer, etc

So How Do I Figure This Out For MY Firm?

1) Hire us to do it for you - I really don't want to call this the EASY way, but hopefully it's the easIEST way

2) Spend the time figuring it out - download our free resources on it, follow our social media, email me your questions, set team meetings, etc

3) Work backwards - figure out the clients you liked the most, then pay them to answer some questions for you (usually covering lunch or something will be enough), really ask them about what you did right, what you can do better, what else they would like to have seen from you, etc

4) Ask around - if you don't have clients you like (sorry, but that happens ALL the time), try to find other lawyers (ideally in other states) with similar niches and ask them, setup a zoom and send them an uber eats gift card or a bottle of their favorite drink and pick their brain for 30-60 minutes, but again...they need to have a similar NICHE.  I don't care if they do the same WORK as you, it's about having the same ideal CLIENT as you (even if they practice a different area of law).  Example, higher volume criminal defense/personal injury lawyers/domestic violence family law attorneys/etc, probably have clients in common even if it's different practice areas.

And then at the end of the day - try it out.

Try a new marketing plan, change who you network with and track the results, tweak your follow up and check-in emails and see if you get more engagement, etc.

Have follow up questions: as always, reply to this email and it comes to me.  But also, next Monday at 1:00 PM EST, I am doing a webinar, details below, but that's a great time to get me answering your questions live - wink wink nudge nudge, hope to see you there!

And if you're like Orange County, Florida and you're celebrating Spring Break with your kids, congrats!  Enjoy it, they are (or should be) a HUGE reason for why you're trying to run a firm the right way.  And for that, you have my unending support (and also my backing when they say something too smart for their own good that cuts you to the core...amirite?)

Anyway, have a GREAT weekend, and see you Monday at the webinar!

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