You use all of the same "me-too" law firm marketing platforms and strategies as all other local divorce lawyers. Yet somehow you continue to get the same equalized results as all other local divorce lawyers.
There's a reason Avvo and similar mass-lawyer platforms make you look like every other local lawyer and require you to use THEIR local phone number, which they switch out regularly. They also own your client list and spam it constantly. All Avvo clients you satisfy will return to and refer to Avvo. Avvo is the dominant brand. You’re not. Your clients forget you in 3 weeks.
Meanwhile, your digital agency freely gives any gains it makes on your SEO/PPC accounts to its other local divorce lawyer clients. Other digital agencies have access to all of YOUR digital marketing gains through various paid tools sold by Google and others. They also give your gains to THEIR local divorce lawyer clients. None of your digital marketing assets and data is proprietary or private. You knew that, right?
If you only take marketing actions that are required to be homogenous or that your competitors can easily reproduce, how can you be surprised that your results are equalized and diminishing in a market with a glut of lawyers and a relatively flat demand? In fact, that’s the result you engineered.
It's almost like you should consider picking up at least one form of marketing outreach that you actually control. Maybe something that distinguishes you from the lawyer-crowd. You know - just in case your target clients might be looking for a creative, distinctive, business-savvy, competitive, problem-solving lawyer to look after their future legal and economic interests.
You will never convince an emotional target client to hire you by telling her that you are "compassionate," "aggressive" or whatever other nonsense. They don't care and they don't believe. You must ALLOW them to believe that you are the one, based on your undeniable positioning. Show them. Don't tell them. 1-800-DIVORCE speaks volumes about your competitive acumen without your saying a word.
Once you have clinched the exclusive 1-800-DIVORCE contract for your market, none of your competitors will be able to duplicate what you do. Your SEO and PPC will be unique. Just using 1-800-DIVORCE ® in your SEO/PPC titles and descriptions is a massive competitive edge. (Yes, you can do that. ) Using 1-800-DIVORCE on your website, FB page, videos and in your monthly e-letter to all prior clients (with $200 off referral coupons) will ensure a never-ending stream of referrals that come ONLY to you.This is an investment-based law model YOU CONTROL!
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Get the Competitive Edge Your Divorce Law Firm Needs

There’s nothing wrong with having family law firm marketing accounts at Avvo, GMB, LegalZoom, Yelp, Justia, FindLaw and all the rest. Of course, if you have only free accounts, you won’t get many, if any, divorce clients.

The real problem with the mass lawyer-finder platforms is not just that every divorce lawyer in town has signed up but also that the mass-lawyer platforms have misled you all to believe that signing up with them is the only law firm marketing strategy you need to follow.

So the success of the platforms in signing up all divorce lawyers in town – with relatively flat consumer demand – ensures equalized and ever-diminishing returns for all of those divorce lawyers.

However, the real tragedy here is that you are led to believe that once you’ve signed up for Avvo et al, you’ve DONE your law firm marketing. There’s nothing else for you to do or think about in your law firm marketing.

That’s utter nonsense! Never let ANYONE else control your law firm marketing strategy and positioning.

If you have only free accounts at Avvo and the others, then as more local divorce lawyers (plus those lawyers who claim they can handle divorce) begin to pay for better positions and greater exposure, fewer cases will go to the lawyers in the free listings section.

And any cases that do go to the free listings are equalized across all lawyers with free accounts because all lawyers are required to look the same. Any kind of law branding, positioning or personalization is not permitted on platforms that want their own brands to be dominant with consumers.

If you Pay-to-Play on the mass lawyer-finder platforms, you’ll get cases, but they will be lower profit cases.  You’re actually paying the me-too platform to reduce your profit per case (by increasing your case acquisition cost) in a relatively flat demand market. And the more lower-profit cases you get, the more you will need more……..lower profit cases.

So NOT smart if these me-too lawyer-finder platforms are your only or predominant law firm marketing outreach.

However, Legal Marketing Systems is not recommending that you replace anything in your current legal marketing toolbox. You can do that later. We are recommending now only that you ADD one law firm advertising item to your outreach.

Your target client is looking for a resonant connection with a local lawyer. She is emotional and scared and looking for a comfort level.  She is looking for a reason to choose someone, anyone, from an ocean of identical lawyer ads, websites, GMB’s, FB pages and annoying unprovable promises.

She is looking for some proof that some lawyer has the experience, cost-effectiveness and savvy to understand and resolve her specific situation and personal fears. She is looking for immediate tangible benefits from you, not meaningless me-too promises that cannot be proved. She is looking for some proof of acumen and creative problem-solving from you. Show her! Don’t tell her!

Are you offering your target clients that type of resonant connection? Or are you standing in line offering the exact same digital noise and pollution as every other divorce lawyer competitor in town? Weakness, needy-ness and same-ness are not brands that work in ANY consumer vertical.

Why would any divorce or family law consumer select you from all available local divorce lawyers to look after her legal and economic interests if she sees that you are passive and not even looking after your own economic interests in a distinctive, creative or competitive manner?

Law firm branding is the process of setting yourself apart from the lawyer-crowd.  If your law branding, your divorce lawyer ads and the positioning of your firm make you blend in, how does that help your business? If you do not set yourself apart from the lawyer-crowd, you ARE the lawyer-crowd.

Specifically, family law branding is about ALLOWING your target family law clients to believe, through a sequence of perceptions that you plant (your positioning) in your law firm advertising and other outreach, that you are the unique provider of a relevant and creative solution to their problems and needs – without your saying a single word.

“Wow, if this lawyer has 1-800-DIVORCE, s/he MUST be not only experienced and affordable but also a business-savvy and competitive problem-solver. This is the creativity I want to represent my interests and resolve my problems.”

That is precisely what you allow your target client to believe subconsciously. No target client will believe your mere puffery, but no one will doubt the conclusion you allow them to reach themselves.

Are you ready to upgrade your firm’s legal marketing strategies? 1-800-DIVORCE is the best family law brand in the world. And that’s not puffery. You’ve already reached that conclusion yourself based on your firm’s low and equalized current returns without 1-800-DIVORCE and the reasonable conclusion that 1-800-DIVORCE will set you apart in the minds of your target clients. It’s called competition and 1-800-DIVORCE will provide you the competitive edge you presently lack in your law firm advertising and other outreach.

1-800-DIVORCE will make lawyer branding work for you. However, 1-800-DIVORCE also enables you to position your firm as the most competitive family law firm in town.

And don’t EVER outsource your law firm’s marketing strategy again – to ANYONE. Avvo and all digital agencies have commercial interests that are not in line with yours. Duuh! Legal Marketing Systems can never sell you out!

Clinch 1-800-DIVORCE and use it to create better divorce lawyer ads and position your own law firm marketing strategy, whatever it might be. If you need examples of creative marketing ideas and divorce lawyer advertising, we can provide many, but we urge you to develop your own. 1-800-DIVORCE will adapt to and improve any divorce lawyer advertising and positioning you can think of.

Please note that because of the exclusivity of the 1-800-DIVORCE service, any offer contained herein must be made strictly subject to prior subscription by one of your local competitors. It will probably be that guy you hate from across town, and he read this yesterday.

Check Availability of 1-800-DIVORCE in Your Area

Here Are the 6 Most Common Strategic Marketing Errors Being Made Currently by Small Family Law Firms

Some or all of these are likely to be holding your small family law firm back right now.

There is a commonality in these strategic marketing errors. It is that these marketing positions all flow from the fact that during the Avvo-dominated family law marketing era, lawyers have been taught to subserviate their own interests to those of their marketing “partners.” 

“We’ll handle your marketing so that you can handle your law practice” seems attractive until you realize that false premise has destroyed your competitive edge. The only silver lining is that none of your competitors has a competitive advantage either.  The Avvo gig-economy family law marketing hot mess is not working for any of you.

With 1-800-DIVORCE in your divorce lawyer advertising toolbox, all of that changes.

Below are 6 separate but similar “stories” of current family law practice in America. These stories are inter-connected and operate cumulatively to stifle almost all lawyer branding, innovation, positioning, distinction and competition.

Stop taking ONLY marketing actions and positions that EITHER are easily duplicated by your local competitors or pump the brands of others and not your own brand.

It’s almost like the first small family law firm to act decisively in your town wins.

"Please Hire Me - I'm Just Like Every Other Divorce Lawyer"

Mass lawyer-finder platforms like Avvo, GMB and Yelp keep your financial returns level with those of your local competitors.

Read More

"My digital agency hasn't increased my firm's income since..well, since I hired them"

Remember when they told you that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) results would take 6 to 12 months?

Read More

"Strange. I saw no gains from my digital agency, but heck, I've also seen none since I fired them months ago."

You are in a complete all-encompassing homogenous, non-competitive, equalized, business destroying, law-firm marketing hot mess.

Read More

"Hey, We Do a Little Bit of Everything Here"

All lawyers understand the value of and reason for full-service law firms. But our target clients don't. And guess which perspective counts.

Read More

"I Really Think I'm Swell and So Should You."

Telling your target clients that you are better than other divorce lawyers or even just swell is not a brand that will succeed.

Read More

"Of Course I Compete. I Work Hard Every Day!"

What specifically do you do in your law firm positioning that actually enables you to compete and win clients?

Read More
Business Week, January 16, 2001 (now Bloomberg Businessweek)
Business Week, January 16, 2001 (now Bloomberg Businessweek)
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"1-800-DIVORCE. Good example of how to market with a dignified tone and colloquial language that lay people can understand"
Kevin Gibbons - Managing Director at Blueglass
Kevin Gibbons - Managing Director at Blueglass
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"Become the brand that people think of before they even get to typing a query into Google. Whether it’s paid listings, competitors, vertical search or anything else that may get in the way of potential customers visiting your site, try to make sure they get to you first and then remember who you are, so that they come straight back the next time.”
Lawyerist
Lawyerist
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“Avoid marketing on benefits like ‘hard-working’ and ‘very knowledgeable’ and focus on the tangible. Communicate your knowledge, skill, and experience without talking about your knowledge, skill, and experience.”
Lawyerist
Lawyerist
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“Communicate your knowledge, skill, and experience without talking about your knowledge, skill, and experience.”
Randall Beard
Randall BeardGlobal Head, Advertiser Solutions at Nielsen,
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“For advertisers, it’s vital that consumers make a memorable and meaningful connection with both the message and brand. Regardless of the ad delivery format, be it print, billboard, TV or online, effectively reaching consumers is predicated upon having a message that favorably impacts consumers when making a purchase decision. These favorable decisions are a key metric of marketing ROI.”
Lawyerist
Lawyerist
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“The … lesson is that firms should not waste time and resources trying to promote all its practice areas. They should determine what they are really known for (their brand) and focus their marketing efforts narrowly on one or two practice areas.”
DeSantis Breindel
DeSantis Breindel
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"Me-too brands just don’t cut it anymore in the professional services arena."
Spotlight Branding
Spotlight Branding
Read More
We believe that referrals and repeat clients are the best sources of new business – and therefore, failure to stay top-of-mind is the single biggest missed opportunity for most law firms."
Lawyerist
Lawyerist
Read More
A strong brand is authentic, transparent, and client-focused, three things that continuously build trust. A strong brand is noticeable and begs for attention. As a result, you’ll stand out from the million-plus other attorneys out there."
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"Please Hire Me - I'm Just Like Every Other Divorce Lawyer"

1-800-DIVORCE

They keep your returns equalized whether you have a free account or a pay-to-play account.

Me-Too Free Accounts

The reasons they are able to keep your returns equalized on a free account are that there is a glut of lawyers on the market, there is no limit to the number of lawyers who can sign up for free accounts and there is a relatively flat market demand for family law services.

The mass-lawyer directories have become incredibly successful at signing up divorce lawyers for free divorce lawyer advertising accounts on the false premise that they will handle your law firm marketing and you will handle your law practice.

In reality, the mass-lawyer platforms handle only their own marketing and positioning. You are their commodity, and there are a lot of you.

The mass-lawyer platforms’ commercial interests do not coincide with yours. Your ROI is not their concern or purpose.

After you sign up, all they need to do is keep you standing in line with at least a free account. Obviously, it costs nothing and they know statistically that a free account will bring you a paying case every 6 or 9 or 12 months, depending on the number of divorce lawyers in your market.

They also know that the low level of return on a free account will keep you in line because you know that standing in line is better than not doing so. It’s free!

While you will occasionally get tossed a bone, your free account enables them to bombard you constantly with pay-to-play offers to improve your position and frequency of exposure within the platform’s website hierarchy.

They know that you will eventually pay. “Gee, if I’m getting an occasional case for nothing, just imagine what I’ll get if I pay.” That’s their goal.

If you pay up, and then constantly pay more, you’ll get more cases than with a free account but they’ll be lower profit cases and will be equalized across all paid accounts. Your returns still stagnate.

Me-Too Pay-to-Play Accounts

The paid plans are proportionately worse because as more local divorce lawyers pay-to-play, you get to pay the same fee for a smaller slice of the same pie.

If you increase your payments or bids, it’s worse. You then get the same number of cases at a higher cost and a lower profit margin.

How could that possibly be a wise legal marketing strategy for you? You are on their treadmill.

You are at the mercy of how many other divorce lawyers in your market sign up for each me-too divorce lawyer advertising plan, whether paid or free.

Further, if this is your sole law firm marketing strategy, you have no source of business that you control.

You Work For Avvo

Whether free or paid, the me-too platforms then sell you to their customers using a model that keeps you looking like all other lawyers. At the same time, they maintain ownership and control of your Q & A, your goodwill and your future referrals. Constant spamming of your client list is one of the reasons Avvo has an F-rating at the Better Business Bureau.

Additionally, they capture all of your earned future ethical up-selling income and referral income by requiring you to use their local phone number, NOT yours, in your ads on their platform. Those phone numbers are switched out periodically in order to keep the Lifetime Value of your clients equal to your fee for the first matter.

No ethical upselling or referrals are coming your way, despite the fact that you have earned that business.

And as a kicker to the mass lawyer-finder roulette wheel, the clients you satisfy are going back to Avvo, GMB, Justia, FindLaw, Super Lawyers, Yelp and Legal Zoom in the future.

They’re not coming back to you and they won’t refer friends or relatives to you. They won’t even remember your name or number or website.

Avvo has a stronger and more memorable brand – that you paid for! If you had a great Uber experience last week, will you be contacting that driver or Uber next time?

Avvo will play your clients far better in the future than you have the time to do. You’ll be struggling with either fewer cases and a smaller gross or more cases at a lower net profit margin.

1-800-DIVORCE

By contrast, if you sign up for 1-800-DIVORCE, you will be the exclusive 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in your town. You will BE 1-800-DIVORCE in your town.

You will cheaply, exclusively, uniformly and permanently brand your family law firm or separate PLLC, its domain name, its phone number, its email addresses, your online content, your blog posts, your videos and your monthly emailed newsletter to all prior clients. In short, all of your law firm advertising will be uniformly branded.

You will be the best and most memorable family law brand in the world – better than Avvo.

Your clients will actually remember you and refer their friends and relatives to you. American consumers love to refer. They particularly love to refer to 1-800-DIVORCE. The psychology of the referral is strong.

No other local lawyer will be able to duplicate your performance while you are the exclusive 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in your market.

Divorce Lawyer Advertising Agency Conflicts

Have you noticed that your digital divorce ads agency (SEO and/or PPC) has not improved your small family law firm returns on marketing investment for months or years, depending only on how long you’ve employed that agency?

Are you aware that your digital divorce ads agency has other family lawyer marketing clients in your town? If they didn’t before you, they certainly will have after signing you. That’s called a conflict.

Have you just begun to realize that every gain (keywords, titles, descriptions, tags, slogans, clever website claims, website design, video concepts, FB page, GMB, blog post content, website top page content, etc.) your agency makes on your divorce lawyer advertising account(s) will also be given freely to your local competitors by your agency?

Where do you think your divorce lawyer advertising agency got that excellent long-tail keyword last month? From some brilliant flash of genius? Heck, that came from the account of your competitor across town.

Yes, you are paying your digital agency to keep your local competitors level with you. This is true for all local, regional and particularly large national law firm digital marketing agencies.

Have you ever asked your digital SEO/PPC agency whether you are their ONLY divorce lawyer client in your town? Would you trust them to answer accurately? Is their current client list available for your inspection? Would you believe them when they tell you that they do their best for each law firm client? Should you believe that they keep the marketing gains of each law firm client compartmentalized so that no other local firm benefits from improvements made in your account?

It’s easy to determine the answer to all of these questions. It’s, “no.”

Stop paying any SEO, PPC, lead-gen or other digital marketing agency that is also paid by any of your divorce marketing competitors. And that’s all of them.

The purpose of hiring that digital agency was to make your law firm more competitive and get more paying clients, right? And if that wasn’t the purpose, what was?

All digital agencies are cut-throat and will place their bottom lines above yours. Duuh!

You are in the middle of a homogenous law firm marketing hot mess.

Do you wish to BEGIN to compete for divorce clients and thereby invest in yourself, your firm and your own intended future lifestyle? Do you wish to stop investing in your digital agency?

Are you ready to do so using a scalable investment-based model that inures only to your benefit on an exclusive basis and for as long as you dictate?

1-800-DIVORCE provides you the best family law brand in the world. It does so exclusively in your market.

1-800-DIVORCE provides a competitive advantage over your local competitors by automatically standing you out from the local lawyer-crowd.

But 1-800-DIVORCE also provides your complete and never-ending brand positioning strategy. With 1-800-DIVORCE in your legal marketing toolbox, your creativity, distinction, experience, cost-effectiveness, savvy and problem-solving abilities are already in evidence – without your saying a single word about them.

1-800-DIVORCE inevitably moves your firm away from the me-too law firm marketing strategy epitomized by cut-throat digital agencies.

When you have 1-800-DIVORCE, no competitor can duplicate ANYTHING you do.

More Law Firm Marketing Agency Problems

Your law firm advertising agency freely gives any gains it makes on your SEO/PPC accounts to its other local divorce lawyer clients.

However, the cut-throat digital agency industry does not stop there.

Other law firm advertising agencies you’ve never hired or heard of have access to all of your family law marketing gains through various paid tools. They buy such SEO and PPC tools from Ahrefs, SemRush, UberSuggest and a myriad of other agencies which themselves sell products and services to retail digital agencies.

Those retail digital agencies that specialize in law firm advertising, or specifically in family law marketing, are all perpetually on the lookout for gains any divorce lawyer makes in his or her divorce lawyer advertising, marketing or positioning.

There is no digital content that you or anyone working for you has ever created that is proprietary or private to you.

If you have written an excellent blog post on grandparents’ visitation rights in your state and that article begins to rank on the top page for a competitive keyword and begins to draw 30-40 organic visitors a month, that article and page will be seen via the “competitive analysis” paid tools of the retail digital agencies of your local divorce lawyer competitors.

That article will then be copied and spun (using tools such as Spin Rewriter) lightly so that it’s quality is barely touched but its wording is re-worked beyond the realm of copyright infringement.

Lawyers statewide (nationwide with some substitutions) will own your excellent grandparents’ visitation article or divorce lawyer ad or whatever within days.

Are you still wondering why getting rid of your conflicted digital agency didn’t help?

If you only take marketing actions that your competitors can easily reproduce, how can you be surprised that your results are equalized and diminishing in a market with a glut of lawyers and a relatively flat demand?

Get 1-800-DIVORCE and this income-equalizing quagmire stops forever.

Yes, all of the above will still happen, but you will have placed 1-800-DIVORCE logos, mentions and positioning slogans everywhere in all of your digital content and divorce lawyer ads, whether written or video.

What will your competitors be able to do with your 1-800-DIVORCE content?

They can duplicate the non-1-800-DIVORCE content all they want. They’re already doing so.

They can’t duplicate your 1-800-DIVORCE law firm advertising content, digital or otherwise, because it contains 1-800-DIVORCE!! You will wish that they could duplicate it.

No one will be able to duplicate your law firm branding, divorce lawyer advertising, marketing or positioning after you clinch 1-800-DIVORCE exclusively in your market area.

Jack of All Trades Websites

1-800-DIVORCE

No one looks at more lawyer websites and divorce lawyer advertising than we at Legal Marketing Systems. A primary problem we see is the “jack-of-all-trades” website.

Recently, we were speaking on the phone to a lawyer concerning the 1-800-DIVORCE service.

We told him that he was harming his brand by using a “jack-of-all-trades” website on which he equally featured family law, criminal law and personal injury law.

We also told him that each of those categories of prospective clients, particularly the family law group, was seeking specialization. They couldn’t care less if he valued being a “full-service” law firm. They are only interested in what benefits they would get from hiring him.

Modern family law consumers see specialization as cost-effective, experienced, wise, creative and skilled. They seek not only a resonant and unique approach from someone who actually distinguishes himself or herself from the local lawyer-crowd, but also specialization from that lawyer.

And the perspective of those target clients is the only one that counts.

We advised that he was confusing his putative family law clients. His brand positioning (as a jack-of-all-trades) was a deal-killer and was driving away business.

His confusing and conflicted multi-practice site was also the reason he was getting approximately 20 organic visitors to that website every month and not ranking in the top 100 in his local market for even one decent family law keyword. Google Search knows he is confusing his web visitors. So it doesn’t send him any.

We further advised that family law clients would regard PI cases as bigger paydays and criminal cases as being more critical to someone’s actual freedom. Therefore, they would reasonably suspect that he would always place greater value on those other cases. This was causing conflict in their minds and driving them away.

His family law target clients don’t even want to think about him picking up the phone to them right after he just spoke to a DUI client.

If he didn’t want to handle family law, he should take it off his website! It was also confusing his criminal and PI clients. This was harming whatever he perceived his brand to be.

We recommended a completely separate branding of his family law practice, using 1-800-DIVORCE as his family law PLLC, a separate family law website, phone number and stand-alone divorce marketing platform.

He responded that he had heard such theories about specialization in business school, but that he had always done very well by “going against the grain.”

We always do our homework before speaking to any lawyer. We didn’t know about his PI or criminal practices and didn’t want to know, but it was apparent that he was tanking on family law. He was NOT doing well.

So we responded, “Far more lawyers have multi-practice sites than specialized sites. Specialization would actually be the ‘going against the grain’ option.

Also, we told him, ‘boil the ocean’ marketing doesn’t work anymore. And if it did, who the heck could afford it?”

Well, the cognitive dissonance was strong in that guy. He had to go away and re-affirm his position in his own mind.

Don’t be like that “jack-of-all-trades.” “Hey, we do a little bit of everything, you know? Just trying to get some work.” is way too NEEDY. It is not a brand. It is not successful law firm positioning. It is not competitive. It will not be successful for you, or anyone.

It’s incredible that guy had gone to business school.

"I Really Think I'm Swell and So Should You."

The above-the-fold blurb on the top page of your family law firm’s website is the most important representation of your firm’s pitch for new business. It’s the first real impression your target clients get because Google, Avvo, Yelp and other mass lawyer-finder platforms provide no distinctive up-front impression of you.

The top of your top website page will be used by your target clients, in what Google describes as micro-moments, to determine whether you get hired.

Does your blurb say something like, “…our mission is to provide quality, proactive and zealous legal representation…,” “… comprehensive and professional legal advocacy approach which is uniquely designed and catered…” or “… where personal attention meets exceptional representation?”

If so, why not also tell them that you’re “aggressive,” “compassionate” and a “good listener?” You’ve already shut down their imaginations. They’re not listening anymore.

You needed to intrigue them and instead, you’ve bored them to death in 3 seconds. You’ve only got about 6 or 8 seconds to make a resonant connection before they move to the next divorce lawyer website, which will say the exact same things.

Your only chance to get more cases than your competitors with pitches like these is if your competitors are even more boring.

Even if your target family law clients cared about the unsubstantiated puffery (they don’t), do you think they can somehow subconsciously connect any such pitch with a cogent reason why you could provide a cost-effective unique solution to their specific problems?

How does such a self-serving pitch demonstrate your creativity – other than in creating self-serving pitches?

They don’t care about you!! They won’t believe you anyway. They don’t want to hear about you or what you think about you. They want to hear and see what substance they’re going to get from you to save them from their worst fears or to get them something they badly want. What’s in it for them?

“1-800 DIVORCE understands how difficult it can be to go through a divorce. Outside of dealing with all of the life changes that you will be subjected to during this time, a divorce can also put a severe strain on your finances.”

Do you see the difference? There is empathy and a subconscious meeting of the minds throughout. By the second sentence, they are nodding their heads with you.

Whatever their specific perceived problems might be, they fit what you have said. You’ve even spoken about the cost, which scares them. You are mentioned once – and only to drive the best family law brand in the world so deep into their cerebral cortexes it will never be dislodged. Thereafter, you have engaged their minds. You have spoken only about them. You are now ALLOWING them to imagine incrementally (micro-moments are important) how your unique understanding of their problems will be a path to success for them.

That last pitch is the first line on an existing 1-800-DIVORCE law firm’s website. They are successful because they understand the branding and positioning concepts underlying the comfort level created by 1-800-DIVORCE. So much so that they’ve taken 2 whole 1-800-DIVORCE states and reserved 2 more.

Why is their client engagement so much better than yours? Because they don’t have to begin their above-the-fold pitch by telling target clients that they are clever, bold, creative, distinctive, eager to please, hard-working, experienced, cost-effective and thoroughly swell folks – with no available proof.

1-800-DIVORCE proved all of that with one word!!

Show them, don’t tell them.

People rarely believe what you tell them about you. But no one ever doubts what they conclude themselves. ALLOW that to happen.

What Positioning Does Your Law Firm Do That Cannot Immediately Be Duplicated By Any Competitor

1-800-DIVORCE

Competition In family law marketing means beating your local competitors to more target clients to the extent that you experience escalating success and your competitors escalating failure.

Successful competition in the business of law also makes you a better lawyer as you get more clients as a consequence of your competitive business success. When people do something more often than others, they tend to be better at it. It’s why what you do is called the “practice” of law.

You benefit directly from your business success by positioning yourself to scale your success. Your clients benefit indirectly from your business success by your experience. And so it goes – round and round.

Yet many lawyers today find competition with their colleagues distasteful, perhaps even marginally unethical. That’s their problem. If you choose not to be competitive in an industry that is naturally and beneficially competitive, there are consequences of that decision. We would urge you to reconsider, but not too much. People should determine their own fates.

If you are competitive as a lawyer, what specifically does your firm actually do that competes successfully in the business of law in order to make you a better lawyer?

If you have a digital agency, you now know from reading our website that they place their bottom lines above yours and distribute all of your SEP/PPC gains to their other divorce lawyer clients. That equalizes your results and doesn’t enable you to compete.

You also know now that digital agencies that have no connection to you at all have paid tools enabling them to steal your law firm advertising gains, whatever they might be, and give them to their clients, some of which may be in your area. That equalizes your results and doesn’t enable you to compete.

You also know now that Avvo, GMB, Yelp et al make you look like all other lawyers because their brands suffer if you appear competitive. So they make sure you don’t compete. The only competition allowed on Avvo is the competitive bidding process that provides Avvo its income and increases your case acquisition cost. That equalizes your results and doesn’t enable you to compete.

Further, me-too lawyer platforms own your Q & A, your client list, your goodwill and your putative future referrals. And as Avvo requires you to use its local phone numbers in your ads, which numbers are regularly switched out, you will get no referrals and little in the way of ethical up-selling from clients you have satisfied. That equalizes your results and doesn’t enable you to compete.

You should also now realize that you will never compete and win clients by telling them you are “aggressive” or “compassionate“ when some other lawyer only told them that she is “dedicated to your success.” Unprovable puffery is not a source of business competition. That equalizes your results and doesn’t enable you to compete.

If the above is all you’re doing, you’re doing nothing to compete. You have no marketing assets that are proprietary or private or unique to you. Everything you do can be duplicated easily by your local competitors or pumps the brands of others.

You compete for and win family law clients only by ALLOWING them to believe that you are the one distinctive lawyer who should handle their cases. You cannot convince someone of that ONLY by standing in line with the rest of the lawyer-crowd or by unprovable claims. That’s not competitive.

Instead, you must show them what they want to believe are the benefits of hiring you.

Provide them, through your law firm advertising, with perceptions of you that enable them to believe incrementally what they already want to believe. People infrequently believe what they are told but they never doubt what they conclude themselves.

Provide them with tangible reasons to believe you. Show them. Don’t tell them.

Position yourself apart from others in a manner that does not allow your competitors to duplicate your positioning.

How?

1-800-DIVORCE stands you out. It proves to your target client that you are a problem solver. It demonstrates that you are resourceful, business-savvy, clever and thoughtful – all of the traits she is seeking – just by virtue of your having acquired the best family law brand in the world.

US consumers of all products and services instinctively know that a brand assures higher quality than a product or service without a brand, even though they may not understand why.

Further, 1-800-DIVORCE is the best family law brand. Divorce consumers seek the comfort level of such a brand available locally. 1-800-DIVORCE is a reason to believe you. And you didn’t say a word about what you think of yourself!

Target clients also understand that 1-800-DIVORCE is a referral funnel for you and that you must perform well for them in order to get their referrals. 1-800-DIVORCE adjusts the balance of trust and power between you and your clients to assure a good result for ALL. They like that. That’s competitive.

And no competitor will be able to duplicate your website, web content, FB page, videos, SEO or PPC!

Top Secret (Please don’t tell anyone else this): Google considers 1-800-DIVORCE as a word, NOT a number. Therefore, you will be the only local lawyer who can use his or her phone number in the title of your SEO or PPC ads. Nice! Game Changer!! In Google Ads, no phone numbers can be used in ad titles. In organic SEO ads, lawyers tend not to use their phone numbers in titles because the titles are so short and the phone numbers so forgettable. Not so with 1-800-DIVORCE.

If you are not ready to compete with your local competitors, through law firm advertising, for every single target client, please understand that is not a problem for anyone else. Your continuity of action will be essential to the competitive advantage 1-800-DIVORCE will provide to one of your competitors.