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This article is one in a five part series. Here are links to all the articles in this series:
Law Firm Marketing Resolution Part 1: Don’t Feel Guilty
Law Firm Marketing Resolution Part 2: Run Your Law Firm Like a Business
Law Firm Marketing Resolution Part 3: Make Marketing a Priority
Law Firm Marketing Resolution Part 4: Pick a Niche and Get Rich
Law Firm Marketing Resolution Part 5: Measure, Manage, Multiply
Law Firm Marketing Resolution: Wrap-up
Law Firm Marketing Resolution 4: Pick a Niche and Get Rich
There are many reasons to select a specialty and concentrate your marketing efforts toward dominating that area. Yet most attorneys fail to do this effectively. This happens partially because they lack the discipline and desire to define their practice as a specialty.
This can be easily resolved by adjusting your approach toward the acquisition of new clients. An effective approach —one that includes sound strategy and aggressive tactics—can help provide enough discipline to get started down what, at first, seems like a limiting path. Once you start and see some results, you are more likely to stick with this approach. The results, like exercise, build upon one another over time. The hardest part is getting started.
Below are five reasons to focus on a specific market niche with your law firm.
In a market niche there is decreased competition and the competitors are well- defined.
As a specialist you can claim that generalists cannot compete directly with you. This leaves only other attorneys in your area of specialty as direct competitors. This will allow you to do direct research on each competitor and define them (and your firm) within the market.
As you stake out your claim within your competitive field, prospective clients will want to draw comparisons between your firm and the others. You might as well do this for them. It is easier to do this in a specific niche than it is to do in general legal environment.
A focused effort on a specific niche offers a shorter path to market dominance than a generalist approach.
You goal in a entering a market niche should be to dominate that market. You should be the best in your field (at a minimum you should be the best in your field within a specific geographic area). It is much easier to achieve this kind of dominance in a specific market niche than it is as a generalist.
Your law firm can command a fee premium if you focus on a specific market niche.
As a specialist, and a good one —no…as the best in your field—you can command a pricing premium. This means that you can abandon hourly billing and charge almost any dollar amount you’d like.
You can pick and choose your clients.
Think of yourself as a “free agent” in the legal industry. You are free to go anywhere and charge anything you want because you are in high demand.
If you focus on a specific market niche you will use your resources more efficiently.
When you use a targeted marketing approach you can easily decide what time, money and effort you can spend. You can do this because it is easier to measure the return on your investment since your efforts are focused.
In other words: The clients are easier to target so your investment is more efficient. In the cases of most clients and legal specialties, your marketing can be tailored to the clients’ needs. As a generalist, your marketing needs to be generic and vague enough not to exclude anyone. This means that you will attract fewer clients for each dollar spent on marketing.
It is easier to expand your law firm outward from a well defined center.
Starting from a generalist position and moving toward a specialist position is difficult once the market knows you as a generalist. Going in the opposite direction is much easier. Once you are a specialist you will always be viewed as a specialist —regardless of the field you choose to enter next.
Do you think you would pay more for a physical from a renowned brain surgeon or an internist? Same exam. Who gets more money? (Leave the insurance company out of this equation.)
Focusing on a specific market niche is difficult at first but it pays big dividends in the long run.