Have you noticed the generic content on many law firm websites?  It occurred to me part of the problem is a lack of effective target marketing.  The first step in any marketing initiative involves defining your target audience.

I recently gave a presentation to the Evansville Bar Association.  I specifically addressed this issue, among other topics.  Please watch the below video excerpt from that presentation.  You’ll also be able to click a link to my video taped segment on the topic of using video for business development.  I provide some insights into the importance of defining your target market.  More importantly, you’ll learn some simple tips to help you do so.

One of the challenges in defining you target audience is that firms are overly simplistic in their approach.  It’s fine to begin at a high level, but effective marketing requires you to dig deeper.  Your target market is full of individuals with some common issues, but each will have additional fears and concerns.  Those fears are usually the motivating factors behind why they’re now taking action.

People tend to Google their pain points.  

The easiest way to engage with your target audience is to provide content that allays those fears and addresses their concerns.  A great method for doing this is to look for subject-niches within your practice area(s).  Remember, many of your competitors only broad-brush topics.  You’ll look much more authoritative if you provide better information from the outset.  You can feature it in your practice area menus, your blog posts and even your website videos.

As you begin to add niche-oriented content to your marketing assets, you should notice an increase in traffic.  It’s typically more difficult to rank high in search engine results for broad terms.  We sometimes call these “vanity phrases.”  An example would be:  Louisville Personal Injury Attorney.  Research continues to show that the more narrow search topics offer less competition – and better conversion.

Defining your target audience requires that you begin building content around specific questions they might ask.  Consider making a list of initial questions new clients ask.  Nothing is too specific, especially if you have particular expertise in a certain area.  Create content (both written and in video format) that answers those specific questions.  The secondary benefit is that your content will contain even more of those valuable keywords.

After you get started with your content strategy, look for opportunities to scale.  You may be able to attract clients from other cities or counties by including them in your content.  As I discuss in the above video, there’s a tremendous amount of public data available.  Use it to your advantage.  Look for under-served markets and growing areas.  Don’t be afraid to reach out to areas of the state that others may neglect.

It’s not simply about geography.  Defining your target audience means digging deeper so you can address the specific fears and concerns they have.  There’s a simple rule:

If you don’t talk about it on your site, you’re not relevant for those searches.  

You can quickly gain ground on your competition by review your current content and identifying topic niches.  Does it take a little extra effort?  Sure it does.  But the results are going to be worth it.  You haven’t put in this much time and effort to build a generic practice.  Why would you let your website content convey that impression?

If you’d like help in better defining your target audience, contact me at (502) 208-9639.  I’ve spent years helping law firms and small businesses improve online content.