If you’re into business, you need clients to survive. Without clients, you don’t have a firm. If you find that your business is having a difficult time obtaining new clients, you may want to checkout these points and see how you can change your firm’s current predicament.
1. You Lack Focus
Focus. Focus. Focus. In marketing there is this saying, “When you market to everyone, you’re marketing to no one.” And yes, this is applicable to firms looking to attract new clients.
Think about it.
If you were a potential client in need of an employment discrimination lawyer, who would you rather go to if given the options between the following 2 law firms:
Law firm 1 – A general practice law firm that specializes in startups, discrimination, criminal law, medical malpractice, business law, etc. They claim to be great at everything.
OR
Law firm 2 – A discrimination law firm that has subject-matter expertise in employment discrimination. They pride themselves in being the best discrimination lawyers out there.
If you chose law firm 2, then you’re thinking like the potential clients you want to attract.
2. Need Professional Photos
Your headshot is very important because it can easily communicate that you know exactly what you are doing. People are attracted to photos and often make decisions on what they see. If a potential client can not imagine the person in the photo winning their case, they will look another direction regardless of your qualifications.
3. Poor Reviews
Reputation management is more important today than it has ever been. Big companies are becoming more and more popular amongst the general public, because they take the time to monitor the various channels and address any negative feedback, as it can detrimentally affect your business.
It’s not required to live on these review sites, but it’s important to be aware of their existence and check back occasionally to respond to bad (and good) reviews of your firm.
4. Not Mobile
Is your company’s website mobile-ready? If it isn’t, then it needs to be. Majority of users have a smartphone nowadays, and most of them use their phone to go online to make purchase decisions.
That means, if your site is not optimized for phones, then mobile users will not be able to see or interact with your website. If they can’t see you online, then they’ll pass over you for a competitor that is online.
5. You Don’t Know Where Your Audience Is
The cardinal rule to owning a business is identifying who your audience is. That means you understand how your audience becomes qualified to be your potential clients and know where they come from.
For example, if your firm focuses on startups, then you would know that your audience frequent certain sites and are densely populated in various startup hubs around America like San Francisco, Denver or Cambridge.
If your company focuses on car accidents, then you would set up ad alerts on Twitter to capture anyone that types in “a car hit me”, “just got hit by a car” or any other phrase that would indicate that this potential client was recently involved in a car accident.
Find out where your audience is located, harness that knowledge, and redirect that audience to your business.
6. No Brand
Branding is a lot more than a nice logo, letterhead, stamps, and business cards. Branding is the message that differentiates your firm from the rest.
Why are your services better? Why is your firm uniquely qualified to handle the issue at hand for potential clients?
If you cannot definitively answer these questions, then your firm does not have a brand.
7. Existing and Previous Clients Don’t Like You
Referrals via word-of-mouth are an important source of new clients for every firm. In fact, it may be the most important source of attracting new clients for some firms.
For example, if you have a successful business owner as a client, the chances that that client has a cohort of other business owners are extremely high.
With that said, it’s important to get to know your clients as people. Don’t just talk shop and focus solely on the issues at hand. Attempt to forge a real relationship with them.
8. No Website
You don’t have a website. The entire world has gone online. Although, many firms get their business through word-of-mouth, failing to bring your firm online can limit the speed of growth for your firm. Most importantly, it will give the opportunity for competitors that are online to swap up any potential clients before they get a chance to learn about your firm.
9. No Internet Marketing
Just because you have a website, it doesn’t mean people will automatically come to your site and become new clients. You still need to market your firm. Unfortunately, without internet marketing, there’s a good chance no one will ever find your business online. This leads us to the next point – poor SEO and social media marketing.
10. Poor Online Strategy
SEO stands for “search engine optimization”. It is the process of getting traffic from free, organic or natural listings on search engines. If your existing website is not optimized properly by using the correct keywords and signals, then you’re leaving out an entire segment of your potential client market.
And the same goes for social media marketing as well, as you can reach out to several potential customers via sites like Twitter & Facebook.
Your firm website is an ad that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, if your ad is not seen, then there is no way for it to convert new business.
Final Thoughts
In summary, take a look at these points and take massive action to grow your business. If done correctly by your in-house marketing team or outside web marketing agency, the momentum will be placed back into your firm’s favor.
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