Law Firm Marketing and Business Development : The Rainmaker Institute : Stephen Fairley : Professional Legal Marketing

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At The Rainmaker Institute, we have worked with over 6,000 attorneys from hundreds of law firms across the country and one of the questions our clients struggle the most with when it comes to marketing their law firm is “How do I differentiate my law firm from my competition?”

In Practice Made Perfect, our 12 week business development program for attorneys, we cover 10 specific ways to differentiate your services. Here are 3 of them:

1.  Create a micro niche. In these days of hyper-specialization, it’s NOT about “mass marketing.” It’s about “micro marketing”—creating a micro niche that best positions you as a specialist. If you developed a tumor on your brain you would go to an oncologist specializing in neurosurgery, not a general practitioner.

It’s the same way with law firm marketing. You must position yourself as a specialist, not a generalist. One way to do this is by focusing on a very defined niche. For example an intellectual property attorney could say, “I concentrate on helping inventors and owners of small software development companies in Los Angeles with less than $1 million in revenues protect their intellectual property and develop creative ways to generate multiple revenue streams from their invention.”

Creating a micro niche, or focused target market is critical to your success as a small law firm. You should be able to easily fill 1-2 pages with all the specific information you know about your target market.

If you're struggling to nail that down, I recently wrote a special report to help. To get your free copy of the “Target Market Inventory” all you have to do is email us at: TMI@RainmakerRetreat.com

2. Focus on solutions and results. Too many attorneys try to sell their legal services. Attendees at my Rainmaker Retreat 2 day law firm marketing boot camp program are surprised when I tell them that people don’t buy legal services! People buy solutions to their problems. They buy results, not your services.

When meeting with a prospective client emphasize the benefits you offer to clients and the value you bring through your specific expertise with their kind of legal problem. Discuss the results you have achieved for other clients, but be careful not to overstep the ethical boundaries or promise results based on someone else’s case. There's an old adage “Facts tell. Stories sell.” While your colleagues may be thrilled to know all about how you found a loophole for your client, don’t forget to meet the needs of your client by focusing on the solution.

3. Build an online presence. The internet has changed everything when it comes to law firm marketing and how consumers select law firms. Many attorneys either don’t realize or aren’t willing to admit that most savvy individuals will check them out online before they ever finalizing their decision. I was recently talking with Angela Nielsen, CEO of OneLily, a website development firm for lawyers, discuss how she read over 70% of law firms now have a website, yet half of them only came online in the last 24 months. That’s astounding!

For less than most attorneys make from landing a 2-3 clients, your law firm could have a strong and growing internet presence with a new website, a blog, articles, and press releases.

Travis Greenlee, the president of The Rainmaker Institute, recently mentioned how he helped a client go from only appearing on 2 websites (one of them was her own) to a few thousand in less than 90 days.

If you search for my name, “Stephen Fairley” on Google.com, I currently appear on over 300,000 websites. In upcoming posts I'll share with you some of my “secret strategies” for rapidly building your online presence.

In our upcoming Practice Made Perfect, a 12 week business development program for lawyers, we show you step by step how to use several proven low-cost strategies to rapidly increase your online presence.