There is an arbitrage in the market for private practice attorneys right now, and 90 percent of you are grossly underestimating how big it is. The market doesn’t care about my opinions or feelings, and it doesn’t care about yours either, plain and simple. If you do not adjust to the reality of the social media revolution, you will be completely left behind.
I am not a technologist. If I weren’t in the business of helping business owners grow their companies, I wouldn’t care about this “revolution.”. I am writing this today to explain a fundamental shift in your potential client’s attention, and the attention of our society as a whole, and implore you to take advantage of it. It will absolutely be the differentiator in growing your practice.
Client acquisition begins with one thing, and one thing only, attention. You need to get a potential client’s attention. It used to be through the newspaper, television, and radio. Now it’s called a blog, vlog, or a podcast. It’s the same thing, nothing has changed, except for one thing. Your ideal client’s attention is moving to a new place, and leaving an old one.
The cellphones each of us has on us at all times are the remote controls of our society. The social media sites and online communities where your client spends an enormous amount of time, are the single most important tools in the marketplace right now. There is nothing even close. You might not like to hear that, but it is the reality of the world, my friends.
Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and You- Tube have an ungodly amount of attention right now, and the ad product on those platforms are disproportionally under-priced. This is where you should be spending your marketing and advertising dollars.
I implore you to stop executing a “this is how we’ve always done it” mentality because we are experiencing the most significant shift of our society’s attention since the printing press. You are sitting on a device that literally has the potential to create more influence than the biggest media companies in the world today.
I think we can all agree I’m not hedging right now. I am desperately trying to get you to understand this opportunity, and I’m doing it for one reason only. I know this opportunity is going to go away. When the biggest law firms in America wise up and start putting 90 percent of their marketing dollars into these platforms, you will not be able to compete anymore.
If you are playing poker, and you have the best hand, it’s a good idea to go all in.
I know that if after reading this article, you started a podcast interviewing a thought leader in the industry each week and posted these episodes on all of the big social media platforms, it will absolutely be the differentiator in growing your practice.
It would lead to massive lead generation, extremely powerful branding, and the clients that your practice is trying to chase today, in a year will literally be reaching out to you.
You are either on offense of defense. You either see all these technologies as powerful tools for the future and growth of your practice, or you don’t. You either jump on this revolution and take advantage of it, or you’re upset that it was much easier to do this with old media.
Regardless, if you do not realize, and furthermore, act on, the extreme arbitrage that is happening with your potential clients attention right now, your practice will become vulnerable. Liam Schehl
