#208: Strategic Legal Marketing (To Uplevel Your Reach & Clients)

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Hello, hello, everybody. Welcome to Life & Law. This is your host, Heather Moulder. And I am super excited about today's topic because I'm answering two questions from subscribers of my newsletter. If you are a subscriber, then you probably already know this. But once you sign on, I welcome you, and I ask you to fill out a quick survey.

This survey is basically a chance for me to get to know you better and also allows you the chance to ask me specific questions that I will then answer. And so, that's what we're doing today. We are answering two of those questions that I've gotten.

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But although they're different questions, they're actually very interrelated, and they have the same answer. So that's what we're getting into today.

Quick Business Development Review: What Are Your Business Development Options?

So there are so many different legal marketing strategies out there, right?

SEO

There's SEO, search engine optimization, which is about optimizing your law firm's website to rank for specific keywords that your clients would search on the web so they'd easily find you.

Content Marketing/Thought Leadership

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There's content marketing, which is creating content that educates, answers questions, and meets your clients where they are, their current needs. Now, this can be done in a variety of ways, such as through articles, blog posts, videos, podcasting, presenting, speaking, and so on. It's also often referred to as thought leadership, because when you start to do this regularly, you become known as a thought leader, an expert in your area.

Social Media Marketing

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Then there's social media marketing, which honestly is a type of content marketing, but done through social media like LinkedIn, where most of my clients are, some on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even TikTok.

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This has the added benefit of allowing you to better engage with your audience through comments and DMs. And for those of you who aren't quite sure how to do that, I covered this recently in respect of LinkedIn. So go back and listen. If you haven't already listened to my episode on how to use LinkedIn for networking, I will put a link to that episode in the show notes.

Email Marketing

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There's also email marketing through a newsletter like the one that I have, which I send out every Tuesday. And by the way, if you're not on it, you really should get on it because it's not exactly the same as my podcast. Sometimes I cover similar or the same topics, but often I cover different things.

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So this is something that many small law firms do, but you don't see much with the bigger firms. The good thing about email marketing, if you don't know, is that you own your own list of subscribers. People sign up, you have their email address, and you can directly speak to them through email.

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Even if your email service provider goes out of business, you can transfer your email list to another one and still be in contact with your list. But if a social media channel goes away, you lose everything that was there, including the connections you made. So that's the value in email marketing.

Advertising

Next, you have advertising, which, although paid, is a way of marketing your firm's services.

Networking

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And then finally, you have networking, which technically isn't quite the same as marketing, but we lawyers tend to think of BD as one big thing that includes all of the above. So I'm putting networking in there.

Today's Focus: Traditional Marketing Strategies

So, for today's purposes, I'm talking primarily about traditional marketing strategies because the question I got wanted scalability, and networking isn't really scalable.

Why Not To Focus On Advertising Too Soon

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Also, neither is advertising, at least past a specific budget, because we all have limits there. And I don't think anybody should start with ads. They might make sense for you at some point, but they only make sense, advertising only makes sense once you know exactly who your people are, where they are, how best to speak to them. And frankly, you learn that a lot better through traditional marketing. So that's where I would start.

What Is Strategic Legal Marketing

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Yet that still doesn't narrow things down, does it? Because you still could post or write articles on LinkedIn or Instagram or X or Facebook. You could write for third-party publications. You could post videos on LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube. You could give presentations at conferences or at client sites or maybe at local industry meetings.

Know Your Target

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It's still a lot. How can you, the individual lawyer or a small law firm, a couple of people in a law firm together, narrow this all down into one or two main strategies that will actually work for you? And when I say work for you, here's what I mean. Targeting the people you truly want, right? Your perfect clients. And that does mean higher-end clients. Being able to stick with it, right? So

Picking the Right Strategies

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Having a system, being consistent, and doing that enough so that it continues to work. So you've got to be motivated to do these things. Otherwise, you're not going to be consistent with it. And working for you also means without taking up so much time that it feels like it isn't worth it. Because yes, it will take some time. There's no way to get around that. But you shouldn't take so much time that is a drain on your energy. You should actually enjoy some of that.

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So today I'm going to teach you a portion of what I do with all of my business clients. It's how to kind of dig in and ask the right questions to start identifying, you know, what it is you want to be doing for your main marketing strategy and how to figure out where to go to get in front of the right people.

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Now, before getting into the details, I want to make something clear. This is super specific to each individual or firm and the practice itself. It's specific to your goals. It's specific to your industry. It's specific to your strengths and even your personality. So I cannot identify for you on this podcast what to do.

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But what I can give you is the first part of my system so that you can start identifying this for yourself and get started. And again, this is a big piece of what I do with all of my business clients very early on in the early stages, including within my mastermind.

Want To Do This Together? Check Out ELEVATE

And I will just say a quick note or side note for today. It's your last chance to get on the waitlist for my mastermind because doors open soon.

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And in case you're wondering, okay, what are you talking about, Heather? My mastermind is called Elevate. It's a group program for lawyers who are ready to go all in on growing your own book of business.

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or wanting to build it from the ground up. It's for partners and shareholders of counsel and senior counsel attorneys, along with law firm owners, who are ready to do this work that we're talking about today while being supported by a lawyer and lawyer coach, that would be me, plus fellow lawyers going through the same thing. If that resonates,

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I recommend that you check out Elevate and sign up for that waitlist. Doors open soon and being on the waitlist is going to give you early access plus a few additional perks that others will not get. So to learn more about Elevate and get on that waitlist, go to lifeandlawpodcast.com and see the banner at the top of the page. That will take you to where you need to go.

Strategic Legal Marketing Step-By-Step

Step One: Brainstorming

Okay, let's talk about how to strategically narrow down your marketing options. Step one.

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Answer some serious questions.

Brainstorm Around Past Efforts

Now, you may need to, if you're in a car or somewhere where you cannot take notes, you're going to want to come back to this and write these down at some point. But here are the questions.

• What have you done in the past? Have you written? Have you spoken? Have you been interviewed on podcasts? Have you given quotes in articles? You know, what have you done in the past? What types of marketing activities? List them.
• What have been the results of these past activities, if anything?
• How often or long did you do these things? So if you did not get the results you wanted, but you only tried it for a little bit, a couple of times, this is likely why. So you want to be honest about that, okay?
• What did you enjoy about doing these things (if anything)? And then what did you not like or enjoy about them?

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So that's all encompassed under part A. It's a bunch of questions, but they're all interrelated. So you want to get honest about what you've done in the past, what did and didn't work, what you enjoyed, what you didn't, that type of a thing.

Identify Your People (Who They Are, Where They Are)

The next part is, okay, where are your people?

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Are they online? And where would they be? Most of my clients' people are on LinkedIn. Not everyone, though. So I have one client in this past mastermind who's a PI attorney. He does still market on LinkedIn, by the way, because most of his best opportunities come from referrals who are on LinkedIn.

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So you've got to figure out, well, where are your people?

And when I say your people, you need to understand who you're marketing to. So if you don't know that, you need to get clear about that. And a lot of that has to do with what's your niche, right? Who is it you're trying to target? And you need to pick someone. It can't be everyone.

So get in there, figure out who your people are, and then you can start answering, okay, where are they? So where are they online? Where do you think? And if you don't know 100%, you've got to go with your best guess and give it a try.

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Where might they be reading, right? Like, are there industry professional publications, whether online or in print, that they likely read? Are there podcasts they listen to?

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What conferences do they go to? What industry and professional associations are they members of? These are questions you need to be able to answer. And if you can't, you need to do your research. And by the way, the easiest way to do this is to go talk to your perfect clients if you already have them or the people you know would be and ask them these questions.

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And just say, look, this is for marketing purposes. I'm trying to get a better handle of my people and where they are. People will answer these questions. You'll be surprised. The next stage is to then start listing out, well, what professional associations, industry organizations, business organizations, civic and charitable organizations, and or legal organizations are you already an active member of? And then what are your opportunities through these organizations to write and speak?

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What have you done or not done already? You've kind of answered that before, but now you can get really specific about these because you may have forgotten some of this stuff. And look at those and say, okay, what have I not leveraged? What else could I do? You would be surprised the opportunities that you have in these types of organizations. Now, after looking at all of these types of industry, professional, business, legal, charitable, civic, that you're already an active member of,

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You want to ask, well, what else is there that I could be doing/going? And this is somewhat based on your previous question: where are your people?

By looking at this, you're going to be able to see whether there's a gap or a disconnect in where you've been hanging out versus where you need to be hanging out. So that's the purpose of answering these questions. The next one goes to conferences. What conferences do you regularly attend? Who is there?

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Have you spoken or presented at one or more of these? What kind of results did you get? Why or why not? You need to get real about whether you're at the right places. And the right places need to have the right people. Like, again, who are your people? And then if you're in the right places, but you're not doing anything, it's going to tell you where you can get more involved.

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And oftentimes, these bigger conferences have local, smaller meetings that you can get more involved in first and then get into the big conferences to present or get on a panel. But it's going to kind of help you, again, identify the gaps.

A Note About Presentations

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The other thing I would note is if you've been going to the right places with the right people and you're still not seeing results and you've been like presenting, then that tells you your approach isn't quite right yet. You need to tweak it. I will tell you most presentations are not very good, at least not for the purpose of the presentation. So there's two purposes to any presentation.

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Purpose one is to give the audience what they want. Purpose two is to showcase that you're the expert they need. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll all hire you because they won't, but you're planting a seed for them to remember you, too, as one of the experts they would want to go to. And typically, we lawyers focus on one and not two. They need to do both.

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So what conferences do you attend? Which ones could you attend? Let's get more strategic about that.

Identify Your Best Skills & Strengths

The next one is, well, what are your best skills and how do you most enjoy utilizing them? Do you love to write? Do you like to speak, but you only like to speak in smaller, more intimate gatherings? Do you love to teach and train? What do you like to do? How do you utilize your skills?

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And then what are your strengths? And strengths are not quite the same thing as skills. They are, why do people come to you for advice or help? I think I've mentioned this on a recent one, on a recent podcast, but one of my skills is breaking down complex things into simpler step-by-steps.

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I do that in my podcast. I do that in all of my marketing on LinkedIn. I do that in the stories that I tell. I showcase that in the way that I tell stories oftentimes. The reason it's important for you to identify this is it kind of helps get you energized around the how, the kind of things you want to write about and what you want to focus on, and the style, the stylistic strengths that you have that you want to showcase in your writing or in your speaking.

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All right, so the answers to these questions are going to help you focus in on the things that would make most sense for you based on who your people are, where they hang out, and what you actually enjoy doing and are good at.

Step 2: Analyze & Prioritize Your Options

So once you've done all of that, we move on to step two. That was your brainstorming, and it is a pretty intense brainstorming. And I will tell you that's not everything I ask my clients, but it's a good portion, and it's going to help you really get started.

Analyze The Time Commitment (Realistically)

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Take a close look at all the things you've brainstormed. Analyze the time commitment for the things that are popping up that might make sense for you. Oftentimes, we find there are several things. You know, a lot of lawyers like to write and speak, but you can't do both, or at least that's not what you want to start with. So you need to be realistic about what you really have time for, okay?

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The other thing I would say is be realistic. Almost everything takes up more time up front. But once you get it done and into a system, it doesn't take as much time. So don't overestimate the time either.

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So for example, if speaking makes sense for you, it will take time to figure out the topic, figure out where, reach out to places, get them settled, outline your presentation and put it together. But if you do this correctly and you pick a presentation that can kind of be more of a signature of these are the top things people need to look out for,

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then you can use it again and again for a long while with some minor tweaks. Okay, so yeah, it'll be time-consuming initially, but not so much in the future. And you can leverage it over and over again. Another example, if writing articles, if you love to write, well, bigger articles for bigger places, the bigger publications can really take a long time.

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And you probably don't want to do that again and again and again, but writing shorter posts on LinkedIn probably won't take as much time if you enjoy writing, right? So the biggest time commitment there is the first couple of months, where you're trying to brainstorm your topics and you're getting them all kind of like written down.

Realistic Planning & Systematizing

And then you have to create a system for capturing your ideas, and then a good rhythm for writing. But once you get into that, it really doesn't take as much time as you might think. And then oftentimes you can write them

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So writing on LinkedIn, you do very small piecemeal like things, very small posts. Oftentimes, those can be combined into a longer article like many of them. So then that can help you with maybe just one or two bigger articles and really well-known publications per year. So there's ways again to leverage this. All right, so that's step two.

Step Three: Choose & Commit

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Based on your skills and strengths, based on your clients, who they are, where they are, and based on the time commitment involved, some things are going to jump out as being a clear fit. Pick one. May just be one clear thing, but if it's several, pick one and commit to doing it for the next 120 days for measurement purposes before changing something big.

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So what this process will do for you is it's going to help you narrow down your options strategically based on who your clients are and what they want and need, based on your skills and strengths, and based on your personality. The key here is to do this in a strategic manner and then just commit to doing it because

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You do not have to do all the things. You just need to pick one or two things and do them consistently. It's about figuring out what is really gonna leverage you and your talents and your strengths in a way that puts your best foot forward in front of the right people and then where. That's where this strategy comes into play.

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And that is what creates what I call a snowball effect. Like, you know, let's say you're rolling the snowball and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And before you know it, it's huge and ready to go down the big hill. Well, that consistency with the right strategy is gold and expanding your reach over a period of time, making you more noticed.

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Others will start reaching out. You'll start getting more referrals. And it up-levels who you're in front of because you're being consistent. There's something to that consistency that people need to see to really trust you, especially for the right people, the higher level people to trust you.

Tips for Expanding Reach & Up-Leveling Clients

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All right, now we're going to get into some tips for ensuring you truly do expand your reach and up-level your clients. So yes, the strategy will help you do that in and of itself. Yes, consistency with the right strategies will help you do that in and of itself. But let's get into a couple of tips for how to expand your reach and up-level your clients.

Tip 1: Understand Your Perfect Clients (Well)

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Well, I've already said this before, but it bears repeating. Know your clients backwards and forwards. And when I say know your clients, maybe not the clients you have now, but the clients you want. You need to know that niche. You need to know the industry. You need to know the specific type of law and how you help. And it doesn't mean you have to be the biggest expert, but it does mean you need to know

Confidence Is Key

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Have confidence in what you're doing. Confidence behind yourself to get in front of people who feel a little bigger, okay?

Tip 2: Know Where They Are (In-Person, Online, Reading-wise, etc.)

So you need to know who they are, and you need to know where they are. Where are they? Because you got to go there. And that's tip number two. So know your people backwards and forwards. And then tip two is know where they are. You got to know where to go, okay? So let's put these two things together.

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Let's say you don't really know where your people are. You know what they want. You understand them pretty well. You understand their needs. You understand the things that get in their way. You understand their lingo and their language because you've got a number of clients like that already, but you really want to up-level that and get more, but you don't know where they are. So if you give an amazing presentation to the wrong group of people, it's not going to go anywhere, right?

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Let's flip that. Let's say you get to the right place. You know where they are, but you don't really know how to address their needs. You give a presentation that doesn't address what they think they need, so that means you really don't know them that well. It's not going to land well. Know them.

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and know where and make sure you're combining both.

Tip 3: Differentiate Yourself

Now, this is why storytelling is so key, by the way. When I talk about presentations, when I talk about writing on LinkedIn or even in articles that you write for big publications, you wanna make sure that you tell some stories, and it's just the examples that you utilize to make your point that showcase very clearly what you're talking about and why it matters to them.

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That hit their hot button items, the things they care about. That is what highlights that you understand them. It highlights your abilities. It also highlights your strengths and your way of lawyering, your way of being with clients, your styles. And all of this helps to differentiate you. That's tip number three.

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Differentiate yourself from everyone else and don't be afraid to do that.

• What do you believe that many other lawyers don't?
• How do you analyze or think differently?
• What do you not agree with that's common within your industry?

Get really clear about what these things are and get in front of it. Get out there and talk about these things. Remember, you wanna attract the right people, okay?

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Not just anyone, the right people, your people, people who value your opinions, people who value your style, your way, your approach. So for example, I believe strongly that you must put your values front and center when building your law practice. What does that mean? Running your goals through your values, not taking on clients who conflict with your values, firing clients who conflict with your values, choosing a culture or firm that's values aligned, and

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It sounds to me so simple and obvious, but not everybody agrees with this. They don't think it's as important as I do. I believe it's primary because I also believe it's a big reason why people end up burning out and unfulfilled, why so many lawyers do.

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which is why I lead with this. People know this is what I believe. And not everybody agrees with it or resonates or thinks it's primary. Those people are not my people, and that's fine. There are other coaches out there for those people, and there are plenty of people with whom it does resonate that can keep me busy. This is key to getting more high-end clients. Differentiate, how do I say this? Differentiate yourself.

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Be the person who believes something specific that's different, who does something a very specific way that's different, who has a style or approach that's different from what's done by most.

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And make that clear from the get-go. In your writing, in your speaking, in your networking, when you're talking to people, high-end clients, they appreciate this. They value this more than anything. And by the way, high-end clients are not just those clients with a specific name or revenue. They are the clients who will gladly pay you for your services because they truly value you and what you do for them. This is why differentiating yourself is so key.

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And again, you do this very naturally within your examples, within your storytelling, when you break things down in the way and the how of breaking things down within your marketing.

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Bonus tip here that kind of goes under this, if and when you have the money for this, something that I do see work well for lawyers is when they hire a really good, let me stress, a really good PR firm that help with placements. And what I mean by placements is getting quotes and articles, podcast guesting, opportunities, etc.,

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So this can be very pricey, but it's worth it if you hire the right people, which means people who understand your business, your industry, your clients, and can pitch you for things that make sense for the type of people you need to get in front of.

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It also only makes sense if you utilize every opportunity you can and leverage those opportunities. So if you get quoted in an industry journal that's the gold standard in your industry, you post about that on LinkedIn. And there's an art to that that I'm not going to get into today, but you want to leverage it.

Tip 4: Leverage Clients, Colleagues & Other Connections

All right, my final tip. Leverage your current high-end clients and connections. You've got them. You may not realize it, but you do. Take a look at

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at your connections, the people you actually know. Think through all of the different associations, groups, organizations that you're a member of. Think through the people you've met at conferences in the last year or two. Who do you know who are already high end? Who could be clients, would be a perfect client, they're not. Ask them for referrals and introductions. And if you don't know them well enough, network with them, get to know them better.

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Create a real relationship. This is one of the best ways to get really great clients. If you've done everything right, like we've discussed, people will want to do this for you because they're going to want to reciprocate, right? Networking is about reciprocal. I help you, you help me. So it's not just about a one-way street relationship here, but they will want to reciprocate. I've talked about this recently.

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And they will want others to benefit from what you do because they will know how valuable you are. All right, that's it for this week. Bye for now.