Most of the time, “more is more” in law firm marketing: more blogs, higher word counts, maximal visibility. You will not often hear digital marketing professionals advocating the proverbial “less is more” approach. Occasionally, however, doing one thing better than anyone else can help you stand out from your competitors in a way that doing several things with moderate proficiency never could. If you are ready to “niche down” and offer a highly specialized set of services to a narrow-but-active client base, micro-specialization marketing may be your ticket to making “less is more” work for you.
What Is Micro-Specialization Marketing?”
You have more than likely encountered the concept of “niching down” many times before, whether you have ever considered the niche-marketing approach for your law firm or not. “Finding your niche” has become the go-to expression for a business strategy that focuses on identifying a narrow set of services at which you excel and building depth in that area (that niche), rather than trying to expand the range of services your law firm offers.
Marketing professionals also sometimes use “niche” to refer to the highly specialized industry or demographic your business aims to serve. A business strategy based on offering a limited range of high-quality specialized services tends to lend itself naturally to a tightly targeted marketing strategy based on finding and convincing the clients who appreciate a deep understanding of their needs and a demonstrated ability to provide exceptional results in the core set of services your business provides. The combination of a “niche-down” business model with a targeted approach to reaching and serving a niche market is what we call micro-specialization marketing.
Why Does Micro-Specialization Work?
Law can be a highly competitive profession, not just in the courtroom but when it comes to finding and retaining clients. Micro-specialization gives you the chance to become the absolute best at one thing, instead of “pretty good” at several. It also serves the function of immediately eliminating some of the “noise” that often makes audience targeting difficult in digital marketing campaigns.
By Legal Niche
You can think of niching down as targeting a specific type of legal service (e.g., only due diligence or only pre/postnuptial agreements), but if you are still developing your niche strategy then you may also want to consider offering more than one service, but tightly focused on a particular type of case or client need. Examples of niching down in this way might include offering services for every stage of international divorce, or support for franchising relationships. Without getting too far into business strategy (as opposed to marketing strategy), it’s a good idea to take a close look at how much local or statewide demand there is for a specific service across case types vs. a full range of legal services for a specific case type.
By Niche Clientele
One of the strongest advantages of micro-specialization marketing is that addressing a very specific client need means your marketing team can target a very specific type of client. On social media and to a large extent in search as well, the more precise you can be about the kind of service a hypothetical client is looking for, the more easily you can assess the range of reasons why someone would be looking for that service. These reasons may not affect the structure of what you do with or for the client, once they are in your office, at all. In many cases, however, they do affect the specific searches that person decides to run. They may also give marketing professionals some insights into the “interests” social media platforms may be associating with the individual.
These interests will never be perfectly calibrated by social media algorithms, so they will never be perfectly targeted by marketing teams. On the other hand, you do not have to target every single interest a platform has identified for any given user for its algorithms to decide your posts are relevant; you only need to establish overlap. Search engine marketing can be even tighter, since you are working with queries that users themselves choose to enter. Selecting target keywords to align with the needs of a niche market gives you an edge over competitors who are targeting a broader audience to offer a more general service.
Tips for Niching Down in Your Digital Marketing: Identifying the Who, What, How, and Why
Most business advice is not really aimed at law firm growth (it hasn’t niched down!). That doesn’t mean you can’t use some of the same essential principles that apply to other types of businesses, but you may need to make some adaptations to ensure the implementation works for the specific conditions of your location and practice area.
One part of “niching down” is the work you do: the actual services your law firm performs, and the types of cases for which you offer them. Another aspect of niching down is made up of the clients you serve: the people (or entities) for whom you perform this work. Micro-specialization marketing sits at the intersection of the what and the who. As a general rule, this means your messaging will need to address the how and the why (the when is usually going to be determined initially by when a prospective client gives your law office a call, and by whatever procedural deadlines apply thereafter; you may not have to address the when at all, since normally it is a given).
Who/What/How/Why in Content Strategy
Some of the most exciting potential of micro-specialization marketing for law firms comes from the degree to which it streamlines content strategy. What “content” looks like can vary widely from one industry to another, but law firms are ideally positioned to take advantage of digital audiences’ curiosity and desire for clear, actionable explanations of information directly relevant to their circumstances. Since prospective clients will be determining the searches they run and the kinds of content they seek out, as long as you (and your marketing team) have a solid understanding of what your ideal client’s circumstances are, you can design a content strategy around those conditions.
Rethinking the Relationship Between Topic Selection and Audience Targeting
Often, this content strategy will involve more in-depth and detailed insights than you may be used to seeing on your competitors’ websites. There is nothing wrong with incorporating content with broad appeal, but when you understand a narrow market with exceptional depth, you can speak to legal strategies within your niche that are common concerns among your most likely clientele.
With a broader market, law firms generally stick to content that will be of interest to many, perhaps most, of the people who might need legal services in a practice area. Topics that will only have relevance for a small number of prospective clients get set aside as not having wide enough appeal. Niching down lets you take the opposite approach: You are no longer trying to appeal to as many people as possible, but rather trying to demonstrate expertise and understanding as deeply as possible for a much smaller group of people.
Expanding the Scope of Content by Type, Not Topic
Some lesser-used outreach strategies, like podcast guesting, have their chance to truly shine in micro-specialization marketing. Webinars addressing specific sets of questions within your niche can also be highly effective, whether they are hosted by your law firm or you are contributing as a guest speaker to a webinar organized by an organization. Long-form articles and e-books explaining complex issues in your niche can be an excellent “hook” for clients in some areas. Talk with your digital marketing about possibilities for expanding your law firm digital marketing strategy by type of content, rather than venturing into topics outside your niche. In those discussions, be sure to keep your focus on your ideal client’s needs, so that you can frame your law firm’s approach to topics in terms of providing answers to questions people with those needs will likely have.
The Power of Focus
The wonderful thing about micro-specialization marketing for law firms is that this highly focused approach gives attorneys a chance to show the attention to detail and the depth of knowledge that are central to the quality of legal services you provide, but which can be hard to convey to a generalist audience. Showing that you understand potential clients’ questions and concerns, in a way that underscores how prepared your law firm is to directly address their needs, takes marketing from a crowded meet-and-greet to a quiet coffee chat. If you excel in a tightly focused area of law many of your competitors are not targeting, and you know exactly the kinds of clients who need those legal services, you are ready to develop a micro-specialization marketing strategy that builds a strong reputation and makes your law office the go-to firm for legal representation in your niche.
Annette Choti, Esq., has over two decades of legal experience and is the Founder & CEO of Law Quill, a concierge legal marketing agency for law firms. Annette authored the bestselling book Click Magnet: The Ultimate Guide To Digital Marketing For Law Firms, hosts the popular Legal Marketing Lounge podcast, and founded Click Magnet Academy where she teaches professionals to leverage the powerful LinkedIn platform. As a sought after speaker for Bar Associations, Legal Associations, and Marketing Conferences, Annette provides legal marketing insight along with an entertaining twist. Annette used to do theatre and professional comedy, which is not so different from the legal field if we are all being honest. Annette can be found on LinkedIn or directly through email at Annette@LawQuill.com
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