Every law firm—and for that matter, every business—can identify two basic types of clients. We have our bread-and-butter clients, the basic clients who help us keep the lights on month after month; and we have our aspirational clients, the higher-dollar clients we’d like to have more of.
Most of us have plenty of bread-and-butter clients. They don’t pay a lot of money, and the work isn’t that interesting, but at least they’re consistent. But if all we do is market to these types of clients, our growth will be slow to nonexistent. To truly grow your law firm, you need to identify your aspirational clients—the kind of clients you really want—and retool your marketing plan to attract more of those clients.
To Illustrate My Point…
Let’s say you’re an estate planning attorney, and so far your bread-and-butter clients have basically been people who need a few basic documents written up—simple wills, power of attorney, that sort of thing. The clients you aspire to reach are in a higher tax bracket—successful business owners who need a succession plan, people with accumulated wealth who need trust planning, etc. How can you “graduate” from being a document-drawer-upper to providing real estate planning help to these types of clients? How can you change your marketing strategy to bring in more of these people? Some ideas that might help:
- Change your messaging to speak their language. Change the language in your marketing materials to speak to a more affluent audience. Write blog posts and newsletters talking about the benefits of trust and succession planning.
- Change your funnels. Update your website, landing pages, ads and marketing emails to promote your higher-dollar products. Find out where your target market hangs out, both online and offline, and create advertising to reach them.
- Reverse-engineer the acquisition process for your best clients. You probably have had one or two higher-level clients like the ones you want to reach. Try to work backwards to find out how you attracted those clients so you can create a repeatable process to acquire more of them.
- Make room for more high-paying clients in your schedule. It can be difficult to start saying “no” to the bread-and-butter variety of client, but if you’re buried doing busy-work, you won’t have time to serve the bigger clients you wish to attract.
I’ve used the example of an estate planning attorney for this illustration, but these ideas will work across all other concentrations of law. If you want to grow your firm exponentially, start identifying and actively marketing to your aspirational clients. If you need help and advice while adapting your process, call us at (888) 207-2869.
