You’ve read the books and blogs, watched videos about marketing professional services, attended seminars, listened to podcasts, and subscribed to more than a few newsletters about legal marketing.
You have a long list of ideas, things to do to bring in more clients and better clients and increase your income. That’s the good news. Too often, it’s also the bad news because with so many ideas and options, with a long list of tasks on your marketing todo list, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and do nothing.
Ask me how I know.
You have clients and cases to work on. You don’t particularly enjoy most of the things we call marketing and often have to force yourself to do them. You don’t want to hire more people or spend more on advertising, but you know you need to do something to build your practice and you are willing to do it, you just don’t know what “it” is.
I have a solution. A way for you to cut through the overwhelm and resistance and make progress.
The first step is to gather up all of your ideas and notes and lists and put them in one place. Create a master list of things you could do, might do, want to do, and (you believe) will do (eventually).
Put everything in one big pile. Get everything out of your head, out of your drawers, off your desk, off your legal pads, out of your computer files.
Go through that pile and make a master list of tasks and projects and ideas. Or get your favorite ai to do it for you.
It’s still overwhelming, I know, but less so than when you had notes and notebooks and files everywhere. You’re making progress.
Okay, you have a list. It’s messy and long and unorganized but it’s a list.
What’s next?
Next, read through your list and put a star or symbol or tag next to anything that stands out to you as urgent.
If there is an upcoming event you need to prepare for, an inquiry to respond to, an email or phone call you need to do, a bill to pay, a problem with your website, anything that shouldn’t wait, take care of them. Do it or delegate it. You’ll feel better.
But this is marketing, not legal work, so there’s probably not a lot that’s urgent.
What about everything else?
You might think I’m going to suggest prioritizing your remaining list in terms of importance, Eisenhower Matrix or Priority Matrix style. If you can, have at it. If it’s still overwhelming, you don’t know what’s truly important, or you just don’t feel like going through this process, there’s something else you can do. I think you’ll like it.
Read through your list, quickly, and choose five to ten things you would like to do this week.
Not twenty, five or ten. Not things you think you should do, things you’d like to do.
Later, you’ll zero in on what’s important. For now, pick five to ten things you’d like to do–because they seem fun or easy or quick wins. Theis will help you get started, and getting started on something you resist doing (e.g., marketing) is key.
Let’s recap.
You’ve made a master list, taken care of urgent matters, and made a list of five to ten things you’d like to do this week.
You’ve sorted out your week. The next step is to sort out your day.
Go through your list for the week and choose one task for today. Just one. Okay, two if you must, but one is great.
Do that one task today. Look at you, you’re marketing.
If you finish that task, you can go back to your week’s list, or, if that’s complete, your master list, or your “inbox” and choose something else.
I follow this process for all of my tasks, not just marketing. Each week, I choose six tasks I want to do for the week, one or two I want to do today. (These are my most important tasks. I have separate lists for routines, etc.)
This system works for me. I get a lot of important tasks done. Try it and see for yourself.
Overwhelm, marketing or otherwise, will be a thing of the past.
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