Setting yourself apart from the crowd: marketing tips for private client practices

The market in which solicitors are operating is wider than ever before. In the private client arena, solicitors are competing with lower-cost alternatives such as licensed conveyancers, will-writers, professional McKenzie friends and internet-based semi-legal advisers, some of whom are completely unregulated and vastly cheaper.

How do you position yourself to show your target clients who you are and what you do in a way that sets you, and your expertise, apart from the crowd?

Firm connections

Advertising for private client work has always been unsatisfactory: it’s difficult to target, and for some matters, such as wills and family work, the subject matter is sensitive.

The best way of marketing your practice is to become well known and respected within the circles that are going to make a difference to your business. Most solicitors know that a huge proportion of their work (and often most of the work they really want) comes through recommendation.

Personal connections are the key to success in developing business for private client lawyers.
It’s about having an excellent network, using that network to access other networks so that it grows, and staying visible to that network so that it doesn’t forget you.

Developing relationships with fellow professionals, former clients and those of influence and standing within your target
market will be the most effective mainstay of
your business. An understanding of how those relationships develop is a good starting point: using basic listening and questioning skills, a bit of self-disclosure and a grasp of the principle of reciprocity should enable you to chat easily and make a good impression.

Getting out and about in the community in which your target clients and referrers move is important, but in the twenty-first century there are new ways of doing this. You could devote time to attending networking events, parties, and seminars, and making connections that way; or you could use blogging, article writing, and social media for meeting people, making connections, and becoming and staying visible within the community.

Social media offers fabulous opportunities: most of your local influential business community is on LinkedIn and is unlikely to reject a personalised request to connect; journalists, community leaders and influencers are often found on Twitter and Facebook and chatting with them is as easy as typing out a short message.

The most powerful way to grow your network is to combine in-person and online activities to focus in on your target market and the people who can influence the people you want to serve. It takes time, but yields highly.

Network referrals

In private client work, clients are most likely to come to you when they have heard of you, or been recommended to you by someone. Your general reputation will support your network referrals in their journey towards you.

So when a client is referred to you, what’s the next thing she will do? She will want to find out a bit more about you, so she will Google you. Do you know what she will find?

Your internet presence – personal and firm-wide – is an important link in getting you work. Your website alone may rarely be the reason people make an appointment to see you, but its part in reinforcing a decision to choose you – or making a decision to reject you – is pivotal.

The key is to make people stay on your website long enough to understand that you offer what they are looking for. Images, video, social media, blogs, case studies and well-targeted information sheets are the kind of things you could consider including on your website so that the potential client decides to make the call.

It is also essential to ensure that your website is mobile-responsive, so that it adjusts to screens on smaller devices: if it doesn’t, you’re missing out on a very large proportion of people who want to research you on the move or in front of the telly with their iPads, rather than at their desks.

Internet reviews are increasingly important in the way we choose consumer goods and services. A simple client feedback form at the end of a matter can identify the people who will be advocates for the service you provide; if you feel able to ask them to do a review on Google, or recommend you on LinkedIn (which will require them to waive their anonymity of course), these things will make a difference to your reputation which will support all the work you do to cultivate your network.

Radical, yes, and some may think, tacky – but this is the way of the new world.

Client focus

Most solicitors pride themselves on being
client-focused: it’s in all the marketing material
they produce, all over their website, and something
they recite like a mantra in pitches and first
client meetings.

However, few solicitors focus on what it is actually like to be a person looking for a particular legal service, or consider the art of persuasion they need to employ to ensure that their target client chooses them as their provider of choice.

What does client focus really mean to you? To me, it means looking at your practice from a potential client’s point of view. You can do that by asking people – friends, family, and clients – what they think, want and would expect.

Consider the services you offer: how accessible are they to the individual? Most people know that they need a will, but don’t necessarily understand what the process is for getting one. What should they expect when they come to see you, how long does it take, how much will it cost? Can you package it in a way that reassures people that you know what you’re doing, and they know what to expect? Can you put that in an information sheet on your website?

You might also consider your charging structure. Solicitors have held on to hourly rates for too long: they may suit your business model, but the evidence suggests that clients prefer the certainty of a fixed rate, as we would perhaps if we were engaging a tradesperson to do a job.

Clients can’t get enough information, and whatever you give them helps reinforce the idea that you know what you’re doing, you want to support them through an unfamiliar process, and you’re generous with what you know.

The more information people have, and the better they understand the process, the more they understand what they are paying you for. It also provides reassurance and dispels fear, which can be a disrupting factor to a solicitor-client relationship, particularly where litigation is involved.

Private client legal services are big-ticket purchases for personal matters. The trick is to make people trust you, and the ideas set out above may be useful in that respect.

Fundamentally, all marketing can do is create opportunities: it is up to you to harness those opportunities and do the best job you can with
your clients.

In the end, good work, more than anything else, builds the referrals and builds trust. Some things never change. SJ