When lawyers or their business development staff first meet prospects, many find it hard not to talk about the full range of legal services they could provide. The hope is that the listener will be impressed by the thought of having a one-stop shop for all legal services, saving them time and, perhaps, money.
The problem with this sort of brain dump, however sophisticated it might be, is that it can make it difficult for prospects to focus on specific areas and, more often than not, means lawyers fail to answer the specific questions that prospects are asking themselves in the first place.
Many people today don’t necessarily want to deal with the “jack of all trades” but prefer dealing with experts who really understand their particular situation, business, marketplace, and needs.
This means that in order to get into the minds of prospects, your marketing campaigns should include communications that focus on one subset of your legal services menu. This works for both offline communications and social media marketing strategies.
How should lawyers use social media to do this and generate more high-quality leads?
First of all… lawyers REALLY need to know what information prospects are looking for. There should be a systemised feedback collection system in place that gives clients a chance to say what type of services or results they are actually looking for, how they like to be treated and what they do or don’t like about legal service providers.
Lawyers should also have wesbite and social analystics tools to monitor the search terms people use when looking for information, where requests are coming from and what content is more popular.
It is almost impossible to craft an effective social media marketing strategy that focuses on a specific problem without incorporating the two steps above.
Any social media tactics lawyers deploy should point prospects towards information prepared based on the two steps above, and not simply be used to talk about the expertise or services the lawyer has.
Social media is all about conversations and participation, not just the broadcasting of announcements. Clarity of message is key, and it is easy to blur your message if you try to cover too many topics in one conversation. Pretty basic stuff, but this is easily forgotten in the heat of the moment when there is a prospect listening to what you do.
So, when you create your social media marketing strategy, remember to have tactics that focus on one problem you know prospects have and create content that relates to this alone. Don’t worry about missing out on telling people what else you could solve. That can be covered in seperate social media marketing communications or when the opportunity to upsell arises.
Remember, you need to make it easy for prospects to understand how you solve their immediate or biggest problems. Don’t confuse them with too much information in your marketing messages and in the way you use social media to connect or interact with them.
