3 Things That WILL Make You LOSE Clients

What are three things that will make you lose clients? Welcome to Legal Marketing 101. I'm Toby Rosen. As experienced legal professionals, I know I start like that a lot, you already know that the legal industry is competitive. And retaining clients is obviously crucial for the success of your business. But a lot of lawyers make mistakes in their marketing that could turn potential clients way, resulting in obviously lost business, decreased revenue, and in the worst cases, having to close the firm or go somewhere else or pivot in a large way. In this episode, we're going to talk about three of the most common mistakes that make you lose clients. They will make you lose clients, and we're going to provide you with a couple of actionable solutions to improve your marketing efforts. Number one is failing to identify your target audience. This is something that I see with a lot of firms, but it's really pretty easy to fix. One of the biggest things that lawyers do is they just fail to identify their target audience in the first place. A lot of lawyers take a one-size-fits-all approach to their marketing and to their business, which is really just ineffective because it doesn't speak to the unique needs of your ideal client. As a result, you end up wasting resources, missing out on potential business, damaging your reputation. the list goes on. And we've talked about building a niche law practice on the podcast before, and one of the biggest benefits of going niches to avoid taking this one size fits all angle, and under marketing to your good potential clients. If you haven't listened to that episode, check it out. So to avoid this, what do we do? Well, we need you to identify your target audience and create marketing campaigns that are specific to those users that will resonate with their specific needs. So many lawyers that I talked to haven't even taken this first step of identifying who their target is. So for example, if your law firm specializes in personal injury law, your ideal clients might be individuals who have been in car accidents or experience medical malpractice, but we don't want to stop just at what their case type is. We want to talk about what their income levels are, what their other elements of their demographics are, and get even Beyond That, something that I mentioned before, client story, we want to get into client story here as we identify our audience because by being more specific, we're actually going to hit more people. Even if it feels like we're too focused, we're going to be able to resonate with more people by being specific. So understanding the specific needs of your target audience, you can then tailor your marketing campaigns so much more specifically to address their pain points and position yourself as the ideal solution for their problem. So to identify that audience, start by examining your existing client base. What characteristics do your clients share? Are they from a particular area, particular income range? Are they in a particular type of car accident in a certain place? Are there any patterns in these types of cases that you're handling? What can we see here as far as who these people are, what their cases look like and how can we find that common ground between those people? That will give you this better understanding of who your ideal client is. And once you have a clear understanding, you can start to create these targeted campaigns for marketing that we're talking about. So right away, number one is identifying your audience correctly and then using that information to guide your campaigns. Number two, using too much legal jargon and talking about yourself. Probably I would love to say that this is the most common and really all three of these These are equally common in most law firms, but this mistake is so critical because using legal jargon or talking about yourself too much puts people off. The legal jargon itself can be really intimidating and confusing to potential clients and right away it makes them feel disconnected from your law firm. Now, it's important to note that I'm not talking about with evergreen content and more in-depth articles that are on your website, but right on the homepage in bio pages, we can be human. We can talk to people in a normal conversational manner. We don't have to sound like lawyers all the time. On top of that, we've talked about client story, but if you focus too much on yourself rather than focusing on the clients and how you can make their lives better, it's going to make it difficult for them to understand what your services do for them. They won't understand why it is they should hire you and why you're the solution to their problem. So to avoid this, instead of focusing on using this type of legal jargon, work on plain language and work on highlighting the benefits of the services and how they affect the user. Rather than talking about your qualifications, experience, degrees, you can focus on how the law firm helps clients solve their problems, both future and past clients. Instead of saying we have so-and-so years of experience, say we have helped hundreds of clients recover millions of dollars in damages, even though just those tiny shifts in your marketing language can help clients get a more tangible understanding of what it is you can do for them. When it comes to the legal jargon, again, I don't want to hammer this too much, but less is more. If you have to use legal terms, make sure you define them in simple language so people know what you're talking about. when we're talking about blog posts, newsletters, your goal should be able to make clients feel more comfortable and confident in their decision to work with you. If they're not comfortable in signing the check or swiping their card, they're not going to do it a second time. So number two is cutting down on that legal jargon and don't talk about yourself because while it is important for you to make that connection, if it's not about who you are as a person outside of the legal space, nobody really cares. So let's go to number three. And this is a really big one. It happens in every type of business, but law firms tend to be really focused on the practice of law. And so I think this happens a lot in law firms. And that's ignoring feedback from your clients. So many lawyers make the mistake of ignoring feedback from clients. And client feedback is so essential for improving your marketing efforts, retaining clients, improving your business, and similarly, listening to feedback from your employees is the same, but we're focused on clients today. So by understanding though what clients like and dislike about your services, not only can you make changes in your marketing that will more accurately reflect what you do because sometimes the mismatch is in your marketing, but you can also make changes in the process of the business. So you can improve the client experience, increase your chances of retaining clients beyond that initial consultation. So how do we avoid this? How do we avoid ignoring feedback? And this is, as lawyers, you'll know, you're not great at taking feedback. So you have to shift your mindset. You need to actively seek out feedback from clients at every step and immediately look at how you can integrate this into your process. This kind of feedback seeking can be done with surveys or feedback forms, but like with reviews, which we've talked about before, the most powerful way to get a response from people and usually to understand it best, is to just directly ask the clients for their thoughts on your service at the end of a case. Once you've collected the feedback, whether that's in text format or just as a story from your client, use that to make the changes that address the concerns of your clients. There will be times when their concerns are things in the legal realm that we can't change, but there will also be a lot of times when those complaints or those concerns or positive feedback even is related to the business aspect of the law firm. And that's where we can really make improvements and make people happier. So for example, if clients are consistently mentioning that they have difficulty reaching you or your law firm, you should consider implementing a new communication system or hiring more staff or turning off that weird filter that blocks calls after 5 p.m. By listening to the feedback though and making the changes actually executing on this stuff, you will improve your client experience and increase your chances of retaining clients, again, beyond that first consult. So retaining these clients, obviously it's crucial for the success of your law firm. And if you avoid these three mistakes that so many law firms are making, you'll hopefully achieve that goal. By identifying your target audience, keeping your language simpler when possible, and listening to and actually executing on client feedback, not only are you gonna improve marketing efforts and make it easier to get things like reviews, but this is all good for the revenue, it's all good for the bottom line. But at the same time, remember, marketing is not a one-time event. It's an ongoing process that requires constant attention and adaptation. You have to stay engaged with your clients and adapt your marketing efforts to meet their needs and be communicating with whoever's executing your marketing. But by doing this, you'll build a really loyal client base that will not only return for future business with your law firm, but they're also going to refer others. And that gets into the bigger part of marketing here, which is having that good word amount. We'll be back next week with more cool tips and tricks on marketing, on websites, things like that. But for this week, that's it for Legal Marketing 101. Check out rosanadvertising.com for more. Thanks.(gentle music)[Music]