There is one thing that will make or break your law firm in terms of profit this year. Do you know what it is? The answer is conversions, but I guarantee that it isn’t in the way you think.

Conversions equal profit, right? Yes.

But what has an even bigger impact on your success isn’t the number of paying clients you do have, but all the business you miss out on from unconverted leads.  The remedy to this problem isn’t as simple as implementing more lead generation strategies.

The solution is learning how to target your lead generation to the markets that are more likely to commit.

A common mistake that law firms make in their marketing strategy is thinking the broader the reach, the more leads will come your way. True, a generalized one-size-fits all strategy might get you noticed by more people, but this does nothing for your bottom line if the audience you are reaching doesn’t need or isn’t ready for your services. Instead, it wastes resources.

How can your law firm generate leads that actually turn into conversions? Here are three ways to target the new clients who need you now.

Realize It Isn’t About You

What do every single one of your paying clients have in common? They had a problem.

The issue with many lead generation strategies is that they focus too much on the image of the law firm, and not enough about how you can solve your audience’s problems. Sure, it’s great to know that your law firm has 20 years of experience, and has a list of specialties a mile long, but you aren’t really doing anything to target a specific market with this strategy.

Instead, focus on the immediate problems that you can solve. For example, let’s say one of your specialties is family law. Many people who are looking for legal help don’t understand everything that falls under umbrella terms such as “family law”. So, when you attempt to generate leads with such a broad category, you are missing out on the opportunity to connect with potential clients that have a very specific problem.

Begin by taking each of your specialties and breaking it down into what problems or questions you can solve for your clients. For family law, those problems might be:

• I’m separated from my spouse and want visitation rights with my children.
• We want to adopt a child, but need legal direction.
• My spouse has filed for divorce and I need legal help.
• My ex is three months behind in their child support. What are my options?

By approaching your lead generation strategy from the client point of view, you can now optimize your marketing strategy to reach out to the people with these specific problems. For example, when someone does a search on visitation rights in your area, your law firm will come as a solution to their very specific problem.

Don’t Leave Their Sight

Have you heard of the rule of seven? It is the marketing theory that you need to make contact seven times before a lead turns into a conversion. Broad, generalized marketing strategies don’t provide the opportunity to connect one on one, repeatedly, with leads. However, a targeted strategy can keep you right where you need to be for when they are ready to commit.

This approach is multi-leveled. First, you need recognize which problems you can solve. Then you need to create content that appeals to those with that problem and finally, make sure it reaches them.

If you have optimized your marketing strategy to get leads with specific issues to land on your page, you can tag them by the search that brought them there. From here, over the next days or even weeks, you can use retargeting strategies to keep your law firm in their line of sight. This works even better if you include useful, problem solving content.

Let’s say a lead lands on your site after searching joint custody laws. They read a little bit, thought about making contact, but decided to wait. Now, what if they next time they logged into Facebook, an article popped up from your law firm titled “The 5 Things You Need to Do Before the Custody Battle”?

Are they going to click on it? My money says yes. And when they do, they will be redirected right back to your page. Except this time, they are a step closer to contacting you. With this strategy, by the time they contact you for a consultation, the hard work is already done. They already know they need your services, they respect your expertise and that free consultation will be focused on the first steps of action (read conversions), not trying to win them over.

Go Vertical

Look at your existing client base. Do you notice any similarities among them? Is there one area of focus or expertise that stands out, regardless if you planned for it to or not? Rather than reaching out into the unknown to generate leads, law firms can do more by targeting the vertical market connected to their current client base.

Begin by thoroughly examining your client base to determine a vertical market to work with. From there, learn more about the members of this market. Who are they? What are their common legal needs? How can you help them? Where can you reach them?

The advantage point here is that you are reaching out to a market in which you have already established experience, and you can use this as leverage in your marketing and lead generation strategies. The very same lead generation strategies that fall flat when used on general audience, can lead to conversions when targeted to a vertical market.

For example, an email campaign might not be the best lead generation strategy for a law firm, but what if that was only because we have been taking the wrong approach? What if instead of general form style emails, you sent out ones that not only identified your lead’s legal needs, but also gave away a free secret or two? The results would be completely different.

For your law firm to generate the leads that turn into conversions, you not only need to be smart about which lead generation strategies you use, but how you use them. Learning how to target your audience, so that they notice you, even when they didn’t realize they were looking, is the key to fewer unconverted leads and zero missed opportunities.

Quality lead generation is the key to success for building your law firm, starting today.