“When marketing is done right, selling becomes unnecessary.” Peter Drucker

If you do your marketing, becoming “friends” with and getting your clients and prospects to become aware of you and your services, “selling” them without infringing on the no advertising rule is possible. 

In my last week post, titled, ‘Business Lessons From A Date That You Can Apply In Your Practice,’ it was quite clear that assumptions shouldn’t be made about the needs of your clients but rather find out from your prospective clients/ clients what they want. This will help you to adequately provide rightly tailored solutions to their needs.

If you have not digested that post, read it here.

So, how do you a lawyer find out and know what your prospects and clients want?

We will approach it by looking at 5 personally tried and tested ways you can do this.

1. Forum and groups

2. Influencers/thought leaders

3. Amazon school of business reviews

4. Your List

5. Online searches

1. Forums and Groups:

Join forums and groups where your prospective clients congregate. The aim is to understand them better, understand their language, terminology and the ‘tonality’ they use in expressing themselves. The key is that you can then communicate with them using their very own language. If you can talk with them the way they actually communicate, it will create a bond, quickly build trust and make them open to doing business with you.

You can find groups where you can join online to connect with prospective clients. Such groups are on social media platforms. For instance, if you specialize in working directly with particular types of business organizations, you can find online associations of these businesses that are open for different people to join. These groups can easily be found by searching platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.

When you join the group, follow the conversations in the group, provide answers to the questions that they have in the comments sections. Contribute meaningful to all discussions. Establish yourself as an authority. This will bring you the necessary publicity you need and make those who have issues that you can solve to reach out to you and establish a relationship.

It is far easier for them to actually engage your services after making connections with you and getting value from you. It is pretty much networking but this is done online.

Secondly, create educational or enlightening posts on the questions that they have. Put up such posts or articles regularly. Make sure that what you contribute answers questions and issues that you have gleaned from the discussions in the group.

With consistency, over a period of time, without you “peaching yourself” you will attract a lot of interest and people who will connect with you and take the relationship further.

2. Influencers/ Thought Leaders

Look for about 10 Influencers or thought leaders in your area of specialization and follow them on social media. Check out the conversations going on in their page, the questions people are asking and their responses and the general activities and engagement that are going on.

Reads questions that people are asking and the comments they are making. Join the discussions going on. Answer questions people ask. Add your own comments to the posts by the influencers or contributors. Be valuable. You will attract attention to your website or social media handle or have people contacting you directly.

3. Amazon School of Business Reviews:

Here is a one platform that gives you access to reviews of people’s work. Reading through the reviews will let you know what your prospective clients want, the areas that their needs are not being met, and what to do to meet the existed needs or fill the existed gap.

There are a lot of legal books on Amazon or journal hosting sites. Find them. Go to the reviews section. Read the reviews, especially the top positive reviews and the very negative reviews. Those are the people who are really passionate about their responses. Understand the pains. Understand what it is that they liked about the book. Understand what else they expressed their opinions on.

You will generate a lot of ideas on how to improve your services. You will find ideas on how to reach more people. Each pain expressed is an opportunity for you to provide a solution. This will give you ideas on what to improve on in your own practice.

From the top or negative reviews you will get ideas on what you can improve on or add to your practice or in your articles and publications.

4. Your List:

If you have been communicating with your clients or prospective clients through email (using an auto responder), or WhatsApp or text messages (SMS) you should have built a list by now. The good thing about having a list especially if you have been engaging with them the right way, is that you can send them a specific message or messages asking for suggestions or feedback on challenges, pain points, problems etc. they are experiencing. You can ask them what they would love to get more of or any other question you may have.

You definitely will not get a response from everyone, but majority of them depending on how engaging your list is, will gladly respond to you. With their responses you will know exactly what they need without guessing.

5. Search Engine

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube and so on have made things easier. To know what your clients or prospects want, do some “keyword” or “phrase” searches. The search engines will display similar search terms that your prospective clients and clients are actually searching for. It is that simple. That is a great way to find exactly what searches are being done daily in relation to your services. You will gain insight to the type of issues that people are facing or the areas they need help with.

I assure you that if you diligently try the 5 methods above you will get results and gather insights on how to position yourself and your practice to meet prospects and clients at the point of their needs and pains. You will know how to speak their language and get them interested and looking at you and what you ultimately have to offer.