When it comes to Marketing4Solicitors, you must understand your Marketing DNA before spending any of your precious budget.
It is important to fully know your Marketing DNA because until you know it and understand the rules of it, you will market your service inefficiently and make your life much harder than it needs to be. You might also spend more than you need to.
As always, I don’t want that for you, I want you to understand your
Marketing DNA so that you can then to do the best, most effective and most consistent marketing so that you can generate as many clients as you would like to.
Your Marketing DNA is largely affected by the type of client that you are
selling to; but not exclusively.
These are the two types of Marketing DNA:
- DNA NURTURE
- DNA NOW
It is vital that you know which category you fall into because unless you do you can spend a considerable sum of money investing in a marketing activity or marketing activities that simply can never produce the results that you are looking for.
You could spend thousands, hoping or expecting to generate a return on investment quickly, yet because the service that you are selling is DNA “Nurture” you will never generate the instructions that you need quickly.
In other cases I have seen solicitors who are clearly in the DNA “Now” category spend substantial volumes on marketing activities to generate “Nurture” leads which did not produce any results and never would.
What a waste of time, effort, energy and money!
It really is important that you know which category you fall into. It may be that if you are a larger firm you have legal services in both categories. What is important is that you recognise this so that you can market each of the DNA legal service types appropriately and spend your marketing budget wisely to ensure you get the best results.
Let’s start by looking at a flow chart which will help you determine the DNA of your legal service.
Start by running this chart against your main service, then I will give you some examples to ensure that you are heading in the right direction
Let me give you a few examples of Marketing DNA types so that you can ensure you are on the right line.
Personal Injury
Somebody is involved in an accident, suffers an injury and heads online to look for a solicitor.
That person is in need of instant help.They are not thinking about having an accident and researching what might happen if they do have one, they are injured now and need help now.
Personal Injury service clients are DNA Now.
Employment law – employee
An employee has been dismissed from their job and doesn’t know what to do next. Just like the personal injury client, they need some advice and guidance now because they have just lost their job.
They are a DNA Now lead.
Employment law – employer
What about the employer?
There are two major considerations here:
- Are they researching advice, for example, “How can I dismiss an employee?”; or
- Will they already have in place a solicitor providing a service to them, but perhaps they are not happy with the advice that they are currently receiving so are looking for alternative viewpoints.
In both of these situations it is highly unlikely that the employer is in the ‘buy now’ mode. Both of these examples are firmly in the DNA Nurture camp. You need to capture the contact details of the employer so that you can keep in touch with them until the time that they are ready to change their solicitor or to choose one for the first time.
There may be exceptions to this, in that if someone is looking for a solicitor to represent them at a tribunal hearing, they have an urgent need and a deadline which moves them into the DNA Now category. However, the majority in this service type will be DNA Nurture.
Business Start Up
If someone is deciding to start a business, it is often a long time in the making. They have so many considerations, not least being ‘should they do it?’ They will be in research mode for quite some time.
Therefore, they fit firmly into the DNA Nurture category.
You need to offer them something of value, such as “The 7 Vital Legal Documents Every Start Up Business Must Have” so that you can obtain their contact details and keep in touch with them until they are ready to use your services.
Now that we have looked at how you decide which category your legal services belong to, let’s look at each of them in more detail so that you gain a firmer understanding of how they work and how you can work them to make light work for generating clients for your law firm in the future (enough ‘works’ in there for you?).
DNA Nurture Marketing
DNA Nurture Leads In Detail
The benefits of DNA Nurture clients are that whilst they take longer to warm up to the point that they are ready to contact you, if you have done your job properly and warmed them up well, when they do make contact you are the only solicitor that they are speaking with. You have no competition. It is you or nobody who is going to help them.
All of my clients for my marketing consultancy services are in the DNA Nurture category. If I did not capture solicitors’ email addresses when they arrived at my website, I would not have a business.
Most of the solicitors who later become my clients have been receiving my emails for anything from a few months to a few years.
They download one of my free guides and then, without fail, they hear from me every week of the year until the time comes that they are either ready to ask me for some help or they unsubscribe from my emails; either option is absolutely fine by me. I appreciate and celebrate that I am not everyone’s cup of tea. I regularly refuse to work with solicitors because I know that we are not a good fit and the experience will not be a pleasant one for either of us.
Usually I decline the opportunity to work with solicitors in one of two camps:
- They are a larger partnership and make every decision by committee. I learned about two years into my business that these were the worst clients for me. They can never make decisions without running it past 100 people, all of whom know nothing about marketing but who, regardless, want to ensure that their very important opinion is heard. The result is that progress is slow or impossible and as I am someone who is motivated by achieving results for my clients, it is simply too painful a process for me.
- They are not serious about growth. These ones are harder to spot, so I have to put in place a few tests to discover whether they really want to grow their law firm, or they are just ‘slightly interested’ in growing it but not serious. I can usually tell on the first call that they fall into this camp, but if I am unsure, I will push them towards my Steady Stream Of New Clients Meeting which takes place in my offices in Bristol. I have had clients travel to me from Northern and Southern Ireland, Scotland, Northern England, Southern England, Eastern England and Wales. If the solicitor is not prepared to travel to see me in Bristol then I know that they are not serious about growing their law firm.
By setting up your own DNA Nurture campaign, not only are you creating a steady and consistent flow of new clients pipeline for the future, but you are also going to make it much easier to say ‘No’ to clients who are not a good fit for you.
You know the ones that I mean? The ones who immediately try and beat you down on price at the start of your relationship and who then demand your Diamond level service despite only paying for the Poundland level service.
The good news is that these are the clients who in the future will not contact you to enquire about your services because they will see that you are an expert in your field of law and they know that experts command a good fee for their instructions. You will either win them around to paying a proper fee before they even contact you or they will simply not contact you knowing that you are out of their league.
Either way, it is a much better result for you.
If you had a moment then when you said inside your head as you read the last sentence “But I don’t want to turn people away from me, I want them all!” I assure you that that will not be the case in a few months’ time when you have been following the DNA Nurture plan. By then you will be generating enough of the clients that you really want to work with to gladly be able to turn away the time wasters and hassle creators that you may currently be saying yes to. You will be creating the high calibre, easy to work with clients who will be a dream to work with.
It took me years to really understand this, but I am delighted to say that having fully embraced DNA Nurture into my own business, I now only work with the best solicitors who are a good fit for me and me for them.
We achieve great results working together, they generate a substantial increase in business, are happy to pay my fixed rate fees without quibble and generate a good return on investment. We both receive a benefit from the relationship and are both happy.
It will do the same for you too.
When you get this right and capture your prospects contact details when they download your free guide, book, checklist or video series, then communicate with them consistently and authentically, adding your personality to your automated follow up sequence, you allow your perfect clients to identify themselves and to come forward to work with you.
When you achieve this, by the time your prospects contact you, they are in no doubt that you are the ONLY expert that they want to work with.
It is for this reason that I convinced solicitors to travel to Bristol.
It is how you will convince your prospects that you are the only solicitor for them to work with too.
It is how you will remove the pricing questions and objections that you may currently be receiving.
It is how you firmly position yourself as the ONLY solicitor that they want to work with.
However, from my experience, most solicitors offer services that fit into both the DNA Now and DNA Nurture camps, and even if you fit into the DNA Now camp, you should still have a back up plan in place to capture prospect contact details in case they are not quite ready to contact you when they first visit your website.
Your primary plan should be to go for the instant instruction, but if that doesn’t work, offering something of value in exchange for their email address is a sensible thing to do.
Not vital, but sensible
HOW TO MARKET A DNA NURTURE BUSINESS
With a DNA Nurture marketing service, your primary objective is to grow an email marketing list which is full of your ideal clients.
Once you have your email marketing database in place, how do you generate more people to consistently grow your nurture list so that you can create your steady and consistent flow of new client instructions.
HOW TO GENERATE MORE DNA NURTURE LEADS
Here are the most common methods for generating new prospects.
1. Blogs
Blogging must be on your list if you are serious about growing your nurture list.
If I didn’t blog consistently my nurture list would stagnate and die. It needs feeding constantly.
I blog once each week, but then, perhaps more importantly, I review which of my blogs is attracting visitors every month and then I go and add to them and improve them so that they work even better.
2. LinkedIn Posts
I still believe LinkedIn will grow as a business to business marketing tool.
If you have a great LinkedIn profile and are connecting with the right
people each week, then consistently post links back to articles on your website and ensure that on every article you link back to there is a chance for them to download more information so that people can add themselves to your Nurture List.
From time to time, be direct and simply promote your free guides, books or checklists on your website.
3. Google Ads
If you have the cash flow to fund your Nurture List (remember you are building a pipeline of enquiries for your services in the future, so it might take anything from a few months to a year before this starts to produce a steady flow of new clients) then Google Ads can quickly grow your Nurture List.
4. Networking
I am not a fan of this one personally, but if a lot of your perfect clients attend a regular event, then networking is a good way for you to grow your Nurture List.
However, if there is only one perfect prospect in each BNI or similar group, you do need to weigh up whether the time attending to try and land that one client is a good use of your time, or whether blogging or the LinkedIn strategy above might be a better use of it.
The Follow Up Process For Nurture Leads
The simple follow up process for nurture leads is as follows:
- Email consistently (once a week or a minimum of once per month)
- The content of your email should come from your blog posts so that you are leveraging your marketing assets;
- At the end of each email, offer a free strategy call or invite your readers to email for more information;
- From these calls or emails you will generateyour new clients.
This is the precise process that I use and it works incredibly well.
It takes a small amount of time to get up and running, but I will show you how to outsource and automate it as much as possible. However, as I say in the table
below, you will end up with clients queuing up to work with you at whatever price you choose.
Surely that is worth some investment of time at the beginning of this process?
The Pros & Cons Of A DNA Nurture Marketing System
DNA NOW MARKETING
DNA Now Leads In Detail
If you are selling a DNA Now legal service, it is much easier to generate more enquiries for your services and as long as you have mastered the Meaningful Conversation, you can quickly increase the volume of new files opened each month.
Depending on how quickly your service generates fees, you can also increase your income quickly too.
For example, if you provide a service where fees are billed at the start of the process or within a month or two of instruction, you can quickly generate a return on investment of your marketing costs to such an extent that the marketing becomes self-funding.
How To Market A DNA Now Business
With a DNA Now marketing service, your primary objective is to generate more leads from people who are in need of your services immediately.
By the nature of a DNA Now service, clients go looking for it at the precise moment in time that they need help from a solicitor.
This will include conveyancing services, personal injury services, bankruptcy, lasting powers of attorney etc.
Therefore, your main thrust of marketing is to:
- Use attraction marketing methods (see below) to generate enquiries from people in need of your legal services right now; and
- When they reach your website (or see your message) provide them with all of your instant contact options, from calling, emailing, completing an enquiry form on your website or using your 24/7 live chat hosted by a real person not a bot (if you don’t have this on your website now, email me for an introduction.).
If your legal service is in the DNA Now category, I can promise you that you are missing out on new instructions if you do not offer ALL of these calls to action at the bottom of EVERY PAGE of your website for each DNA Now service:
- Telephone number (hyperlinked so that your prospect can click it to call you (from a mobile or Skype on their desktop));
- Email link;
- Link to online enquiry on it’s own page – not the contact page where there are too many distractions which prevent someone from filling in the enquiry form; and
- 24/7 live chat.
Time and time again I have asked clients to add these calls to action to every service that fits into the DNA Now marketing category and they immediately see an increase in enquiries and instructions.
The reason that this happens is very simple. Your prospects are just like you; time poor. If you make it incredibly easy for them to contact you, you gain their enquiry. If, however, you offer them only one option to make contact with you, you repel others who would otherwise contact you.
For example, personally I will rarely call someone from their website, that is not my way. When looking for a new service provider (as I have been doing earlier this afternoon as I write this) I will either complete a live chat enquiry (I did this twice this afternoon and on both websites, for high priced services I should add, I was talking to a bot which completely put me off the provider) or an enquiry
form.
I completed one enquiry form this afternoon for a free trial and received an instant reply from that business confirming that they will set up a call with me shortly. They are now the leader of the pack.
One of the service providers that I tried to contact had a full blown “Client Avoidance Scheme” in operation, with no easy way to contact them whatsoever!
My preference is to complete a live chat, however, I know others want to be able to speak with someone instantly. Others are happy to complete an enquiry form and wait, whilst email suits other people.
The point is, if you don’t provide all options to your prospects then you miss some enquiries which would otherwise come your way.
Methods To Generate More DNA Now Leads
1. Follow Up
The easiest way to win more DNA Now instructions is to first ensure that you use my follow up process properly and consistently from the Meaningful Conversation.
2. Email Newsletter
Once a prospect contacts you about your services, you must immediately add them to your email marketing database so that if they do not come back to you straight away, you give yourself at least a monthly chance of reminding them of your existence.
If they do not come back to you for the service for which they originally enquired, each time you email them again you give yourself a chance of them coming back to you for your other legal services.
3. Google Ads
If you sell a DNA Now service, Google Ads should be high on your priority list to generate instant enquiries for your services.
For example, you sell conveyancing services, someone heads to Google, types in “Conveyancing Solicitor”, sees your advertisement, clicks onto your website and calls you, emails you, completes your enquiry form or answers your Live Chat request.
You have a new enquiry.
This can be up and running in just a few hours, so if you need more clients and offer a DNA Now service, this is a great option.
4. Blogging
Blogging works for DNA Now and DNA Nurture clients. The benefits with DNA Now is that once you have a blog that is regularly listed in the top 10 of the search results for a search term related to your service, it produces new enquiries for your services every month.
Consistently blogging should be a must for all DNA Now service providers.
The Pros & Cons Of A DNA Now Marketing System
Summary
Knowing which type of service you provide from a DNA Marketing point of view is vital.
Once you know that you can use the methods above to ensure that you always have as many client enquiries as you want and need.
To instantly obtain your full law firm marketing plan, simply click the button now:
