If a professional poker player managed your law office, one of the first things he would do is talk to you about hand selection. He’d show you, mathematically, why you should play the hands where the odds are in your favor and, unless you’re planning to bluff, fold the rest.

Play the odds. You’ll win more hands and the hands you win will have bigger pots. The hands you lose won’t cost you as dearly.

In college, I played a lot of poker. Most people didn’t know what they were doing. They’d play just about every hand, often going “all in” merely because they could. By the time the game broke up, they almost always went home empty handed.

You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to waste time and money in your marketing. You want to maximize your wins, minimize your losses, and go home a winner.

Playing the odds starts by choosing the right clients to target. Instead of targeting “anyone” with a legal problem you can solve, as most lawyers do, let your competition fight it out for the bottom eighty or ninety percent of the market while you target (and win) the better clients at the top.

If networking is a mainstay of your marketing, instead of spending your time at generic meetings (e.g., chamber of commerce, local mixers, referral groups, etc.), where you meet professionals who can’t send you much business, or the right business, choose small organizations comprised of your ideal clients and the people who can refer them.

If you advertise, don’t bid on the same keywords as your competition hoping to outspend them. Bid on cheaper “long tail” keywords that target smaller niche markets.

If you rely on “one shot” marketing, hoping to turn first-time website visitors into clients, you’re leaving too much money on the table. It’s much more profitable to capture visitor emails and stay in touch with them and convert them over time.

To be successful in marketing, you don’t need to the best player. As long as you play the hands where the odds are in your favor, and avoid the hands that aren’t, you’ll do just fine.

Marketing is more effective when you know The Formula

An immigration lawyer agrees with the concept of offering more value to prospective clients but is frustrated. He says, “more than 90% of the people out there want free information and advice.”

He sent me some correspondence he’s had with a prospective client. “I’ve been following up with him for more than a month,” he says.

In a nutshell:

The wealthy would-be client wants to know if he has a case. The lawyer explains why he needs to interview him to answer that question and asks a modest fee. He spends a good deal of time explaining everything, making the case for the interview, describing all the work that goes into it, and laying out his qualifications.

The client doesn’t see the value/doesn’t want to pay.

What’s wrong with this picture? What’s wrong is that the lawyer is trying too hard. It makes him look like he is chasing the client.

A lawyer shouldn’t have to personally make the case for the client taking the next step. The lawyer shouldn’t have to personally “sell” the client on his ability to do the job. The lawyer should let his website (reports, brochures, recordings, articles, etc.) do (most of) the selling for him.

By the time you correspond with a prospective client, they should be nearly ready to hire you. They may have a few questions, and that’s fine, but if those questions are answered on the website, the lawyer (or better, an assistant, so the lawyer can maintain posture) should point the client at the documents that address those questions.

The website should have a sales page for the consultation. It should explain why it is necessary, describe (in detail) what you will do, and enumerate the benefits.

What will the client learn? What will they get? How will they better off?

Spell out what they get, e.g., a summary of the law, an analysis of the facts, instructions for improving their odds of success, advice and recommendations, clarity, peace of mind, etc.

Consider hiring a professional to write this for you.

Consider offering 100% credit for the consultation fee if they go ahead and hire you to do the work.

If your consultation delivers a lot of value to the client, and the sales letter does a good job of selling it, you should charge more than a modest fee. Weed out the cheapskates and freebie seekers and create a higher perceived value and demand for your services.

And, no matter how much you charge, if they don’t see the value and they’re not willing to pay, wish them well and move on.

Don’t chase.

It may seem that most people want everything free but if that were literally true, there would be no immigration attorneys making a living and that’s obviously not the case.

What do the best ones do? They charge top dollar, and get it, all day every day, from people who sell themselves on hiring them. By being the pursued, not the pursuer.

Be generous with free information but charge dearly for your time and advice. Make it easy for clients to sell themselves on hiring the best and paying top dollar for the privilege.

How to make your website sell