Think Locally to Feel the Pulse of Your Target Audience

These days, we use apps to order groceries, and many of us have not set foot in a bank in years, even if we are fortunate enough to have a bank account.  This does not mean that local business is a thing of the past, though.  For example, you probably know your dental hygienist and the person who cuts your hair by name, and you might have even gotten recommendations from them about local restaurants that have since become your favorites.  Yes, it is possible to download templates of legal forms from the Internet, but when people realize that they are in over their heads and need to hire a lawyer, they look locally, and if your law firm’s website is sufficiently visible to Google, they will find you.  Your legal marketing content is your opportunity to show local clients that you can meet their needs.

One Afternoon of People Watching Is Worth a Thousand Customer Personas

Marketing professionals sometimes create customer personas for businesses; they sometimes call them buyer personas, but the attorney-client relationship is not really about buying and selling.  The classic example of a customer persona is Becky, the soccer mom, the target audience for the Contemporary Christian radio format.  No one wants to be a buyer persona; the idea of turning the beneficiaries of your services into a product is horrifying.

Instead of trying to create your customers in a thought experiment on a whiteboard in a cubicle farm, meet them where they are.  Spend a day people-watching; remember, you don’t have to market your services to the entire American public, only the ones in your city.  If you are a family law attorney, spend a day at an indoor playground with a hefty admission fee, where the children play with environmentally sustainable toys while one mom tells another, “I knew I wasn’t going to have any more babies, so I decided to get a puppy.”  If any of the parents here are divorced, what are their co-parenting challenges?  What are the child-related expenses they will have to fight about or cut back on if they get divorced?  To find out about the co-parenting challenges of working-class parents, go to Chuck E. Cheese.  You might not be able to hear over the noise, but you will see what it looks like when cash-strapped parents try to make room for some fun in their limited parenting time.  What do the parents at the pricey indoor playground and at Chuck E. Cheese need from you?

Local content marketing is not just about adding oranges to your logo if you practice law in Florida and adding crabs to it if you practice law in Maryland.  It is about responding to the needs of real people in your community, in person and online.

Your Local Focus Will Show, Even If You Hire Professionals to Write Your Blog

The professional law firm content marketers at Law Blog Writers, LLC can deliver custom-written blog posts that show your awareness of the needs of your local target audience.