If your clients wrote your marketing plan

November 14, 2023 by
Share

Your clients know what they want (and don’t want) from you and can give you insights into what you can do to attract more clients like them.

Which is why you should survey your clients and find out what they want, what they like, and what you can do to get more clients and increase your income. 

You can use surveys to learn about

  • Your image in the marketplace
  • Your services, fees, offers, and benefits
  • Your “client relations”
  • Your content—what they like, what they want more of, what they want you to do differently
  • Your marketing, advertising and social media—did they notice your ad? What did they like about what you said? Why did they choose you instead of other attorneys?

You can learn a lot by asking questions. 

But surveys aren’t the only want to find out what your clients (and prospects) think about what you’re doing. You can also do interviews, going more in depth and asking follow-up questions, and find out what they “really” think. 

Another way to do “market intelligence” is by tracking metrics—opens, clicks, downloads, sign-ups, how long a visitor stays on a page, etc. 

Finally, you can find out what clients think by listening. Nothing formal, just listen to what they talk about, what they ask you, how they feel about their situation, and what they complain about regarding your competition (and about you). 

It can be a lot of work, but if you have the numbers, it could be worth the effort. If you don’t have the numbers, or don’t want to invest the time or money, stick with surveys. 

At the least, survey every new client, to find out what they want and why they chose you, and survey every exiting client (at the end of their case or engagement), to find out if they got what they wanted. 

Surveys are easy to do and can tell you what you’re doing right and what you need to improve. 

Share
Filed Under: Law office management, Marketing Plan Tagged With:

Survey says!

October 10, 2023 by
Share

“Got a minute? Please take my one-minute survey about your favorite ways to market your services.”

That’s how easy it is to survey your clients, readers, or audience. You can survey them by email, in a blog post, during a presentation, even when you’re chatting in person. “Can I ask you a question?” Yeah, that’s a survey too.

Why do it? Because surveys can help you learn what your audience wants or needs, what they think, what they do, and what they might do in a given situation. And you can use this information to improve your marketing. 

Surveys can help the people you survey recognize the need for your services and generate more leads and appointments. They can also help you build your list. 

Surveys can show clients and prospects what others do (or mistakenly didn’t do), building interest in your solutions, offering social proof of their need, and creating urgency for taking action. 

Surveys also provide you with material you can use in your content, improve your offers and packages, and identify better ways to describe what you do and why people need to talk to you.

In short, surveys help you build your practice. 

You can survey new clients about how they found you, why they chose you, if they have other issues you can help them with, and if they know anyone who might need to talk to you or get a copy of your report. 

You can survey former clients and find out if they need an update, need help with any other legal matter, or know anyone who might like to read your latest article.

You can survey prospective clients, subscribers, social media connections, or visitors to your website. You can distribute surveys via flyers, advertising, or at the bottom of an article.

Surveys are flexible and powerful. And everyone who sees your survey, even if they don’t respond to it, sees your name and learns what you do. 

It’s all good. And it’s all easy to do. 

Share
Filed Under: Marketing legal services Tagged With:

Could this be true?

August 2, 2022 by
Share

I was on social media the other day. Yes, I do that occasionally. A company had surveyed a group of lawyers, asking them what they wanted out of their practice, and posted the results.

Nearly everyone said they wanted better systems and automation, to make their practice run more smoothly. They also wanted more affordable help.

Makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is that only 14% said they wanted help with marketing—“getting more good clients, more reliably.”

Why so low? Who doesn’t want more good clients? What’s going on here?

Ah, what’s going on is that the firm that conducted the survey helps lawyers automate their practice. So their clients’ and followers’ primary interest is in becoming more organized and efficient.

That’s their bias.

Go ahead and survey a cross-section of attorneys and I think your results might be a little different.

Of course my list is also biased. If I did a survey, I’m sure I’d find that most want more good clients and cases.

Because who doesn’t want more good clients?

Okay, some lessons.

  1. Before you draw any conclusions about the results of a survey, make sure you know who’s conducting it and of whom.
  2. Surveys are a great way to engage your list. People like to share their opinion and are curious to see what other people say about the subject.
  3. Surveys are an easy way to generate content for a blog or newsletter and social media. I just did that and it wasn’t even my survey.

Go forth and survey some folks. Or find someone else’s survey and talk about it.

Share
Filed Under: Blogging, Content creation, Newsletters Tagged With: ,