What is Your Market Message?
How can you powerfully convey what you do and how you do it to clients? It is hard to overestimate the value of a strong brand. Clients hire attorneys they know and trust. And those clients have access to many smart, effective attorneys which means that you must be able to articulate your brand in a meaningful way. The concept of branding may seem like it is overdone but in order to succeed as an attorney, you must be able to describe what you do, for whom, and how you do it in a compelling and concise manner.
The term “brand” may conjure up images of food packaging, a hotel chain, or an airline. Brand lives in images and in words and evokes emotional responses among customers. Within the context of attorneys, brand can most easily be described as how your clients experience you. It is your reputation, your skill, and your entrée to deepening relationships. It is the way you communicate your unique value. Brand answers the question: “Why should I hire you?”
As you define your brand and plan how to best articulate that to potential clients, we recommend that you take the following three steps.
Step 1: Spend time reflecting
The reality is that some brands can just happen organically but more it means that you take a high level of ownership of your career and performance on a consistent basis. But what does it mean to “take ownership” of or “define” your brand?
The first step in defining your brand is to answer the following four questions:
Who do you help?
What do you help them with?
How do you help them?
How do you uniquely add value that doesn’t appear on a bill?
A simple example might be, “I help large to mid-sized pharma companies…”
Avoid costly litigation
Cut litigation costs on average by 30% and successfully navigate their way out of costly litigation
By giving them operationalized legal advice that makes sense for their business initiatives while minimizing their data security risks.
You might also ask yourself some of the following questions:
What is the piece of work that you are most proud of and why?
Who do you get repeat business from?
What are 3-5 words a client would use to describe you?
After you answer these questions, you will have a market message that allows you to communicate your brand to clients and business prospects. A compelling market message should be concise, enthusiastic, creative, memorable, and even humorous when appropriate.
Step 2: Practice
Once you feel that you have captured your market message content, practice it. Record yourself delivering your market message. Ask for feedback from family and friends, practice on an Uber driver or a neighbor. You will get more comfortable varying the speed and pitch and it will become more natural. The more you practice, the more confident you will become in delivering your market message to clients or business prospects.
Step 3: Refresh
Check in with yourself and your colleagues or clients on a regular basis to ensure that your market message is accurate, relevant and compelling. To do that, you need to cultivate self-awareness. Reflect on what you have accomplished. Check in with clients or colleagues about how they experience you and your work. Inquire about how you could improve or what your clients need. Invest time and energy to set a new baseline each year.
By actively reflecting, assessing, and managing your success, what you’re good at, what you like and then from that place, sharing this in a compelling manner, you will cultivate a strong brand and differentiate yourself.
