Let’s face it, referrals are pretty much everyone’s favorite marketing method.
What’s not to love? Clients come to you, pre-sold, so you sign up a high percentage. They tend to be better clients than the unwashed masses who find you online. They are less likely to complain or try to mico-manage you. They tend to stick around longer. And they are themselves more likely to refer.
We love us some referrals, don’t we?
Anyway, other than referrals, what’s number two on your list of favorite marketing methods?
Me? No question about it. Advertising.
Advertising gives you control. You run an ad and if it works you continue to run it. And run it more frequently. And buy bigger ads. And run ads in more publications or on more sites.
If your ads don’t work, you change something–the headline, offer, copy, publication or list–until you find the right combination.
You can start with a small budget. If your ads work, you scale up. If they don’t, you pull out.
You can use ads to test new markets, new services, and new offers.
You can advertise your services directly, or you can advertise your seminar, book, or report, and build a list that produces clients over the long term.
Advertising can bring in clients fast. Run an ad this morning and you can have new clients this afternoon.
Yep, advertising works. I’ve done a lot of it over the years and swear by it. It’s my number two pick, however, because you have to know what you’re doing. (The preponderance of horribly ineffective attorney advertising proves my point.)
So, start with referrals. Make them the foundation of your practice-building strategy. Then, if you have a mind to, use advertising to scale up your practice, but take your time to do it right. Your referral-based practice will give you the time to do that.
If you do it this way, referrals first, you’ll also have more flexibility with your advertising. You can run ads that break-even, for example, because you have a system in place for getting referrals from those new clients.
Make sense? Good. Now go make some dollars.
Marketing legal services via referrals
