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You’ve a lawyer looking to market your firm. The first thing you do is look for a consultant to handle it for you.
Big mistake.
You’ve put some sweat equity into this venture. Probably some cash. At the very least, you’ve pinned your hopes and dreams on the notion that you won’t fall flat on your face.
And now you want to take the single most important facet of your future and give it away to a stranger? Someone who makes money whether you get more clients or not?
Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Period.
Why? Because you, my friend, are a big dummy. There, I said it – I called a lawyer a dummy. May I burn in hell (or simply be called at the end of the calendar on a Friday afternoon – same thing).
Your firm can subsist only if new clients come in the door and pay money. In order to do that, they must be attracted to you and your firm. They must receive some sort of marketing message that resonates with them. That message, done properly, comes from your core.
Who you are and what you stand for are the core of your marketing message. Your beliefs, your point-of-view, your experience, your life – it’s all part of you.
And nobody knows that as well as you. No consultant, no copywriter, no web guru, no social media butterfly, no press flack will ever know you as well as you know you. After all, you’ve known you all your life.
Well, you say, that’s not a problem. I can just feed my story to the marketer and let them come up with a strategy.
Of course, that’s correct. But remember that YOUR core goes to the PROSPECT’S core. In doing so, a sense of congruence is attained between you and the prospect. You “get” one another because you’re speaking the same language.
So you’ve got to know your prospect inside and out. What do they want, need, love, hate, dream about at night? What do they eat, what magazines do they read, what websites do they surf?
Let’s say you decide to pay no attention to my plea, and you hire some marketing consultant to do the job for you. You write a fat check and sit back, waiting for the phone to ring.
Is the website they designed for you any good? The only way to know is by determining if it speaks to the core of the prospect in a language they understand. And if that language is true to who you are, to your story.
Same goes for the Yellow Pages ad. The newspaper ad. Heck, the flyer tacked to the board in the supermarket.
If you don’t know your prospect, and if you don’t take the time to study the marketing materials to see if they reflect who your truly are … then you’ll never know if the marketing piece is any good.
Once you know who you are, and who your prospect is you can figure out that common ground and speak to it. You can hire a marketing consultant to help you tell the story, and to guide you on the right places to tell it.
But even then, you’ve got to know the rules of each medium. You’ve got to understand them, learn how they work. Because if you don’t then someone could easily sell you on nothing but a bucket full of lies. But once you know the right questions to ask you can get to the truth and make an informed decision.
If you don’t take the time to learn then you’ll never know if the marketer is doing a good job for you, or a good job for them. You won’t know if the message is right, the prospect is right, the language is right, or the media are right. You’ll be nothing more than an ATM machine for the marketer – which is good for them, bad for you.
Hire a pro for implementation of your vision, not the vision itself.
What do you think?
Photo courtesy of _saturnine.
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Great article, Jay! I totally agree. Keep up the great work.
Once again, you’re brave (or crazy) enough to just come out and SAY it. When it comes to marketing, now more than ever no one can afford to abdicate the responsibility of doing their own research and inner work to figure out what they need and who they want to present to the world as a professional, in order to bring in the ideal client.
Otherwise, you are a sitting duck. A sitting duck with a wallet. There are a lot of good folks out there just waiting to help implement your vision for you – but you must be able to clearly communicate it. Hard work, but necessary!