According to Entrepreneur, the one strategy that holds the key to your success is building a solid marketing funnel. An effective marketing funnel is critical for any law firm wishing to attract more clients. It is a robust marketing system that guides your prospective clients through their buying journey towards the end goal of conversion. By providing value to leads as they move down the sales funnel and forward with their buying journey, law firms succeed in increasing their revenue and their clientele base.
Yet, somewhere along the line, many law firms fail to succeed. They devote their energy and their money to marketing, but they never seem to hit the jackpot. Sometimes, scaling your business by building a solid marketing funnel still seems like mission impossible, doomed to fail; unless, of course, you make it around your client personas.
But first things first.
What Is A Marketing Funnel?
The marketing funnel shows the journey your buyers go through from when they realize they have a problem that needs solving when they decide that the solution to their problem is your product or service. The funnel is made up of a heavy top part that ends in a narrow part, characterized by the plethora of people that enter the funnel and the few that actually convert in the end.
The funnel is comprised of 4 stages, following a linear path from top to bottom. Therefore, it is critical to understand these stages and focus your marketing efforts on the client persona that represents each stage.
What many law firms get wrong is crafting one unique client persona and assume that it is an accurate representation of potential customers regardless of where in the marketing funnel or their buyer journey they are.
This is a detrimental mistake and why their marketing funnel never seems to do what it promises to do. Therefore, when crafting your client personas, you must consider the stages of your marketing funnel and align the two.
Client Personas At Each Stage
1. The Awareness Stage
The Awareness Stage is where your potential client finds you. When people visit your site for the first time, they may not even realize that they have a need for your services and are, therefore, not actively seeking for you. It is the step where you use your inbound marketing to bring leads, grab your audience’s attention, and make yourself visible.
Your client personas should be broader at this stage, including people from various strata of the socioeconomic environment you operate, multiple ages, gender, and demographics. This is where content marketing, done by an expert writer, can help you introduce yourself, show your services, and make sure that you and your services will be the first solution that comes into their mind when the need arises.
2. The Research/ Education Stage
During this stage, your marketing efforts should be targeted towards a more specific client persona, depending on the services your offer. At this point, your potential leads have already identified their need or their problem and are searching for a solution. With prestigious content done by professional writers, you can rest assured that your firm has already made itself visible during the awareness stage. Now is the time to create content to show how you can help your clients with more specific legal matters at hand. Your client personas should therefore represent all potential clients and the legal issues they might need help with.
3. The Comparison / Validation Stage
During this stage, the marketing funnel becomes even narrower, as fewer and fewer people will proceed with their buying journey towards actual conversion. At this point, they already know you exist, and they have researched your services and know what you have to offer. Your clients at the comparison stage are searching for alternative law firms, comparing prices, and trying to reach a conclusive decision on who is the best. Your pool of client personas is now even smaller and more specific.
Therefore, your marketing efforts should focus on showing your clients why you are the best and why they should trust your firm instead of others. Compelling content, crafted by eloquent, expert writers, who know what your clients want and need, is critical at this point.
4. The Purchase Stage
At this stage, your potential client has already decided to convert and purchase your product, or in the case of law firms, hire your services. Your client personas should therefore represent the even smaller pool of potential leads that convert. The content you create at this stage should be about backend services that solve all your clients’ problems. Your client personas should represent the prospects at this stage which are much different than the ones at the awareness stage.
Building Your Marketing Funnel
A client persona is the representation of your clients at each stage of the buyer’s journey. Building your marketing funnel around your client personas is critical. It is not enough to throw a few SEO keywords in your content and expect it to do wonders for your leads. A content writer can write compelling content that will rivet your audience, grab their attention and offer value to them during their journey until they finally convert. A content writer understands your client personas needs as they develop and change through each stage of the marketing funnel. If you want your law firm to succeed, you should build your funnel from those keeping in mind your client personas.
