The key to marketing a general practice

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The key to marketing a general practice is simple: don’t do it.

You’ll get much better results marketing each practice area or service separately, because most prospective clients are looking for solutions to specific problems.

When they need a divorce lawyer, they search for “divorce lawyer” not “general practice”.

They want an expert. Someone who eats and breathes divorce law and is the best of the best at that. . . not “everything”.

Don’t confuse people by marketing all of your services in the same breath. Tell them about divorce issues, and share stories about divorce clients you’ve helped. Let them see you as the divorce lawyer they’re looking for.

Yes, that means more work and more expense—websites, content, ads, keywords, and marketing collateral. But that’s what you have to do if you want to compete with lawyers who “specialize”. Or appear to because they market each practice area separately.

You can ALSO have a website and marketing collateral that features all of your practice areas, but that’s more about branding and reputation.

If you want traffic and leads, if you want to build your email list, fill seats at your events and your waiting room with new clients, market one practice area, service, or solution at a time.

There are exceptions. Practice areas you can combine and market together. Estate Planning and Elder Law, Personal Injury and Workers’ Comp, and Business Transactions and Business Litigation, for example.

But maybe you shouldn’t.

If you get a lot of referrals from other lawyers (or you want to) and they see you do the same thing they do, they might be reluctant to refer clients to you.

If you handle PI, maybe you don’t want to refer comp clients to a firm that handles comp and PI.

Just sayin.

More on this subject in The Attorney Marketing Formula

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