The law of marketing is that once you become known as Wal-mart, you can never become a Tiffany’s. By not discovering – and emphasizing — true competitive differences, you are relegating yourself to being just another lawyer who is casting a fishing line into the vast ocean of legal marketing.
Here are several great ways an attorney can start to set him or herself apart from competitors:
Emphasize Your Service: I’m not referring to the services you offer, but how you serve your clients. At the Rainmaker Retreat, our two day legal marketing seminar, we use the phrase “micromanaging the client experience” to describe how law firms can create a unique and powerful experience for clients by treating them like VIPs (without spending a lot of money).
Market Like a Specialist: It’s always easier to build a financially successful law firm that focuses on a specialty area. The more practice areas your firm promotes, the fewer referrals you will receive. There are several major benefits to specializing, including:
- You can command higher prices.
- More people can send you referrals because they don’t view you as a competitor.
- And you can develop a deeper knowledge about your clientele and their legal issues.
By choosing to specialize, you increase opportunities to form alliances with other professionals.
Create a “Double Niche”: Focusing on a particular industry is a great way to niche your firm. Jeff Matsen is a well-respected estate planning attorney and a long-time client of ours, but over the last two decades he has become a nationally recognized asset protection attorney (first niche). Even further, he has created a niche targeting asset protection for doctors and dentists (second niche) because he knows it’s easier to position himself as a true expert when he applies his first niche (a specific niche within a practice area) to a specific industry (like doctors and dentists) thus creating a “double niche.”
Clearly Define Your Perfect Client: Once you have narrowed down your niche, you need to determine who your perfect client is. This puts you in a much better place to educate potential referral sources.
Be Smart About Your Office Location: You’ve heard the importance in real estate of “location, location, location.” The city you practice law in will determine a lot of things; it can also be a factor in your success. Targeting immigration law in Los Angeles provides you with more opportunities than practicing immigration law in Fargo, North Dakota.
See below for a new free report I’ve just penned on how to position yourself as a specialist, not a generalist.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
New Free Report: Position Yourself as A Specialist, Not a Generalist
Being a generalist is one of the deadly mistakes that attorneys can make!
Why?
First of all, it makes it much harder to get referrals. If you are a generalist, a jack of all trades, what do sources of referrals see you as? A competitor!
When someone has a referral to give, they want to give it to someone who specializes in the kind of problem or situation that the referral has. You want to specialize because it creates more credibility and more loyalty.
Here’s what you’ll discover when you read this report:
- 4 ways to position yourself as a specialist
- Benefits of specializing
- What to do about cases that don’t fit in your specialty
- How other attorneys have successfully specialized
- …And much, much more!
Click here now to receive the latest free report in our 4 Keys to Becoming a Recognized Expert in 180 Days series: The 4th Key-Position Yourself as A Specialist, Not a Generalist.