In my personal injury practice, I had every client bring in their auto insurance policy. As I reviewed their policies, I noticed that most of my clients were spending too much for insurance.
They bought coverage they didn’t need, had deductibles that were too low, and routinely purchased from companies that charged double or triple what other carriers charged.
Anyway, I fell into the habit of going over their policies with them and showing them how to improve their coverage and lower their costs. A nice added value service that my clients appreciated.
One day, I decided to wrote a book on the subject. I thought that in addition to giving copies to my clients, I could sell the book, something I had always wanted to do.
And I did sell a copy. Yep, just one.
Why? It was a good book. The problem was that I didn’t have a viable way to market it.
This was before Amazon and other online book stores. No websites, no “online”. Advertising was my best bet but my margins (the gross profit on the book) weren’t enough to cover the costs of advertising.
I didn’t have a back end product or service to sell. If I had been in the insurance business, I could have sold the book at break even, or at a loss, and made my profit on the back end selling insurance.
The lesson is that it’s not the product, it’s the marketing. It doesn’t matter how good your product is if you don’t have a profitable way to reach your target market.
That’s true whether you’re selling books or candlesticks or legal services.
You may deliver outstanding legal services but you will starve to death if you don’t have a way to reach potential clients and deliver your message. On the other hand, if you are merely competent as a lawyer but you use sound marketing strategies, you can make a fortune.
The good news is that legal services have big margins. You can afford to spend money (or the equivalent in time) disseminating your message. The even better news is that most attorneys do such a poor job of marketing that you can easily beat them to the punch.
Ready for more good news?
Today, we do have Amazon and other online book stores, and websites of our own. We can economically reach book buyers, and then sell them legal services on the back end. Our marketing is paid for by book sales. Instead of paying for advertising, our advertising pays us.
How to identify your best target market
