How IP Lawyers Can Create Effective Web Marketing Strategies And Win New Clients In An Increasingly Social Media Obsessed World
If you are like many of your peers within the IP legal services profession, you care a lot about your professional image. You may even be obsessed by what others – your peers, clients and prospects – think about you, and want to make sure any web marketing strategies you use show you as a leading IP legal services professional.
Ironically, this obsession could be stopping you from doing what is best for your IP legal services practice – attracting good quality clients and growing.
How can that be?
Well, consider the following:
How often do you simply tell people about your expertise and experience when asked what you do?
Do you always stop yourself considering new methods of attracting clients because they seem too outlandish and are not what other IP legal services professionals do?
Do you continue to rely on industry dinners, golf matches or other networking events to try and get the connections you desire?
Do you think your profession has a certain way of doing things to win new business, and hence ignore successful strategies that have worked elsewhere because you don't want to change the status quo?
If any/all of the above apply to you, then you need to step back a bit and think about the fact that you just might be hampering any efforts you make to grow your business.
For many IP legal services professionals, one key worry is the control of information to prospects and clients and the impact any web marketing strategies may have related to this. This is a legitimate concern, but you need to realise a key fact – the increased use of social media and the Internet to search for information means more opinions about you are formed from the online contributions other people might make about the benefits, or not, that result from the services you provide.
So, you may have some control of the information you want the world to see about you, but the world does not consume it in a linear fashion (i.e. only from you when you send it out). More often than not, opinions are formed by what people get from forum posts, blog comments, third-party articles, facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
The challenge you therefore have as an IP legal services professional is to get an effective online marketing strategy in place to create, and point interested parties to, information that is easy to understand, can change people's lives and sets out the specific steps others need to take to achieve their desired outcomes.
If you get the above working right, then the leverage you get from the contributions other people make regarding the benefits and results of your IP legal services practice will inevitably help you attract more clients. By focusing on the needs of those that are actively searching for information, and less so on your expertise and qualifications, you give others the opportunity to widen your sphere of influence when they in turn propagate the information you have or provide feedback on the results they get from working with you.
The first step is to get into the minds of your clients. Not only do you need to know what information they are looking for. Ideally, you should have an idea of the channels and various media they use to search for information, and how they share that information with others.
Secondly, you need to systemise your communications to take into account the increased use of the Internet for information searches, and the greater reliance on various social media platforms for third-party commentary on the services you and your competitors provide.
Finally, you have to provide information or deliver results that others who actively participate in the social media revolution can share with their contacts. You may even do the sharing yourself.
Remember though, you should not do social media simply because everybody else is doing it, but because you have a valuable contribution to make and can help you attract more fee-paying clients (e.g. a good example of this is LinkedIn). In the least, you should consider participating in some forums where your prospects would value the contributions you make. Your online marketing strategy should therefore be more than an email and website update-type campaign, but a two-way flow of information where your contribution is shaped by the feedback you get from prospects and clients.
When you have systemised any web marketing strategies you put in place, and if you have done the work to position yourself as a leader within your target niches, you will not be held back because of the fear of moving on from the four things I highlighted at the start of this post.
If you want to know how to use The Magneto Effect to build an effective web marketing strategy and attract an endless stream of clients or prospects to you, please sign up for the FREE 7 day video series via the link in the author bio below. You will never think of web marketing the same way again.
I help Intellectual Property legal services professionals build profitable practices by showing them how to attract high quality clients easily, even if their past efforts have failed miserably. The business model I implement is called The Magneto Effect.
Many Intellectual Property legal services professionals have poor marketing strategies, which are not measurable and based on targeting prospects they have no relationship with.
I work with IP lawyers to implement a new business model that focuses on developing trust with prospects first. This is done by finding out the conversations going on in prospects' minds first, and then providing information (via blogs, reports, articles, newsletters) to a profitable niche that addresses the fears and frustrations people have.
Using direct response marketing strategies, my clients market the information that people are looking for. They do not start off by telling prospects what their expertise and services are.
This makes them stand out from their competitors as the opportunities to interact with a hot list of prospects removes many of the barriers that spring up when IP lawyers try to sell their services.
This is more than just a marketing system. It is a whole new way of building a position of authority in a niche, which in turn attracts IP legal services prospects that want to do business with you. It means you do not have to do any traditional hard selling to prospects, as they are the ones that request your services instead.
Remember - how you win IP legal services clients will influence how long they stay with you. If you invest enough resources at the start of relationships to develop a trusted leadership position, and know the aspirations your prospects have, you are more likely to provide the IP services that clients really need.
Check out http://www.eriaodhuba.com for various posts and articles that explain a lot of what I do when implementing The Magneto Effect in Intellectual Property legal services businesses.
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