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| The "Pebble in the Pond" Approach to Marketing |
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| by
Sara Holtz |
The other day I was sitting at the lake near my house, soaking up a beautiful
autumn day, daydreaming and tossing pebbles into the lake. Voila! I knew exactly
how to tell my clients where to begin their marketing.
Each pebble I tossed into the lake created ever-enlarging concentric circles.
This same approach works perfectly for marketing--focus on the smallest circle
first and then widen your approach, one circle at a time.
Start your marketing with the first concentric circle, your current and past
clients. After marketing to your current clients, you'll move to the next
concentric circle--people who have referred matters to you in the past. The
third concentric circle represents people within your firm who could refer you
but so far haven't done so. Finally, after you've marketed efficiently and
effectively to the first three circles, as the waves are getting less distinct,
you can market to "strangers"--people with whom you have no previous client
relationship.
For most lawyers, the No. 1 source of new business comes from past or current
clients--whether in the form of new matters for those clients or the referrals
they make.
In fact, statistics consistently show that 80 percent of all new business comes
from existing clients. In other words, marketing to people who know you and your
work almost always trumps marketing to strangers. When you leverage
relationships with existing or past clients, your marketing activities are more
efficient which gets you faster results while you spend less time on business
development.
It's not hard to understand why clients are such a good source of new business.
People hire people they know, like and trust. Clients who have worked with you
know that you're capable. Unless something has gone wrong in previous
engagements, they trust you. When your clients know, like and trust you, they're
ready to send you more business.
Consider the scenario clients face when they hire someone they've never worked
with before. They don't really know the new lawyer's capabilities; the
relationship hasn't yet been developed; and, most important, no real trust has
yet been established.
A real estate lawyer I work with wanted to, in her words, "take her practice to
the next level and play a bigger game."
She had many big ideas (meaning time-consuming and resource-intensive) for how
to accomplish her goal. I said that before we worked on those activities, she
had to do one thing. She had to meet with each of the clients she had
represented in the last two years and ask them either for more work or a
referral to someone who might find her services valuable. She agreed.
A month later, we spoke again. When I asked her how things were going, she told
me she was at that next level without putting into place any of those big ideas.
Her plate was completely filled with work from those meetings.
Before you consider marketing to any other audience, start by marketing to your
current and past clients.
After you've exhausted gaining new business from your clients, your next step is
to connect with the people who have referred you to others in the past--whether
they're within your firm or from outside-–such as opposing or co-counsel,
accountants, investment bankers or consultants. These people present good
marketing opportunities for you because they already "know, like and trust" you
and they've demonstrated a willingness to act on your behalf.
Next, focus on internal referral sources in your firm who have not yet referred
business to you. Because these people are your colleagues, at the very least,
they will have a modicum of trust in your abilities. Again, you've addressed the
critical element of the "know/like/trust" factor.
Only after you have mined all these relationships should you turn your marketing
energies to "strangers"--people with whom you don't already have a professional
relationship.
Remembering those circles the pebble in the pond creates, you can expand your
marketing to the increasingly larger circles, but only after you've exhausted
the inner circles.
Need some ideas for how to market to those circles?
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