How To Market A Law Firm With Market Segmentation | JD Supra

An important part of marketing a law firm is targeting the right audience. To do this, you must first make sure you know who your targets are and understand as much as possible about them.

In our annual study of the use of social media and digital channels by the top 200 US law firms, The Social Law Firm Index, we discovered that market segmentation is a growing trend in legal marketing.

Defining your target audience will help you be smart and strategic in your marketing tactics, increasing your return on investment and allowing you to get the most out of your marketing and business development efforts. If you haven’t completed the exercise of identifying and segmenting your target audience, we have some ideas to help you.

Ways to segment your audience

Geographic segmentation

This is probably the easiest way to target, and the most effective for many types of law firms. For companies specializing in real estate or wills and estates, outreach in a certain geographic area can be extremely beneficial. Name recognition can go a long way if you are able to become widely known in your area. Try targeting by state, city, and county, but don’t ignore other segments that may be more specific. Look at school districts, electoral districts or areas where people work.

Demographic segmentation

Demographics are the unique characteristics of an individual. Things like age, gender, income, family size, occupation, or religion can be helpful in narrowing down your audience. These features can be especially beneficial for attorneys who specialize in practices such as discrimination, class actions, or criminal cases.

Behavioral segmentation

Behavioral segmentation can be of particular interest to lawyers working in the areas of product liability and matrimonial law. Examples of behavioral factors include marital status (such as married, divorced) and product use (example: talcum powder).

Firmographic segmentation

If you are a business law firm, firmographic segmentation can be a great option. This is a method of sorting customers by qualities such as company size or industry. Consider the following: one client is a company with 100 employees seeking to resolve an employment law issue, while another company is a multinational corporation with 10,000 employees seeking assistance with property law intellectual. Should these two customers receive the same emails or be approached with the same marketing tactics? Probably not. Market segmentation allows law firms serving various types of clients to implement more accurate marketing campaigns, which ultimately increases client engagement and conversion.

Needs-based segmentation

Along the same lines, needs-based segmentation lets law firms know what resources they need to provide to specific clients. Clients looking for help in different practice areas will most likely find different types of content useful. Needs-based segmentation can help you deliver the right content to the right customers. The small business looking for employment law help may find a blog post on workplace arbitration agreements useful, while the large business may want a more in-depth webinar on the differences between patents. , trademarks and copyrights. Market segmentation for law firms can help inform content strategy.

Prioritization of customers

Customer prioritization is a way to segment your customers based on how closely they match your business goals. In this form, you examine the importance of each lead and customer and rank them in terms of value or return on investment. Using this information, marketers can decide which customers to focus on based on who could generate the most revenue. Maybe it’s not worth the time or effort to pursue a case for a small business with a small business. It all depends on the goals and experience of your law firm.

Market Segmentation Application

After segmenting your audience, you might wonder what tactics you should use to cater to these different audiences. Here are some ideas:

Blogs

The truth is, not every blog you write will resonate with every audience. Consider creating separate blog subpages that cater to different topics relevant to each segment.

Resource Centers

As you create different content such as blogs, webinars, videos, or e-books, consider organizing them by market segment into easy-to-use resource centers on your website. This makes it easier for your audience to navigate and ensures that your users won’t see irrelevant information that might deter them from seeking a relationship with your business.

E-mail

One of the most common ways to cater to different market segments is to create different email campaigns or newsletters for each audience. Consider creating a newsletter for your broader segments, filling it with the most relevant information and updates. segment. Also, make sure that any segments you’ve created are uploaded to your CRM system as a list for easy organization and availability.

Social media pages

It has become very common for businesses to have multiple social media accounts on one platform; for example, one for careers or one for each area of ​​practice. Some platforms even cater to this type of segmentation, like LinkedIn’s Affiliate Page feature.

Carry

You can start defining a target market based on any of these segments, or a combination of all of them. However you develop your target market, finding that specific audience and getting to know them is the first step to making your marketing plans successful. Once you’ve segmented your leads and customers, you can even begin to develop successful, personalized email marketing campaigns based on your contacts’ needs.

This post was edited and reposted on September 21, 2018.