Why Your Law Firm Website Should Repel (Some) People

February 22, 2017
Daniel Decker

Question – should your law firm website repel visitors, actively discouraging them from contacting your law firm?

The answer is (sometimes) YES, which may come as a surprise to some.

Of course, your website should make you extremely attractive to your target market – by positioning you as an expert in your area of practice, by providing valuable resources, by making it easy to contact you, among other things.

But almost as importantly, it should discourage the wrong people from contacting you. You do this gently and subtly of course, but your website and the content on your site should make it clear that you’re NOT the right lawyer for people outside of your target market. Here are some examples of the people you should be discouraging from contacting you:

  • People who can’t afford your rates
  • Prospects who need work outside of your areas of focus
  • The wrong gender, if applicable – i.e. if you’re a divorce attorney focused specifically on women
  • Prospective clients who have unrealistic expectations or demands

I could continue, but hopefully you get the point. You don’t want these people contacting you, for at least two reasons.

First – because they gum up your intake process. You or someone on your staff has to waste time getting in touch with them, setting up a consultation, following-up – only to ultimately find out that they aren’t a good fit.

Second, and arguably even worse – because some of them may become nightmare clients. Clients who can’t pay their bill, who force you to work outside of your area of focus, and sometimes just straight-up jerks. I understand that it can be hard to turn down work – any work – when you have bills to pay, but in the long run doing work you don’t want to be doing, and working with clients who don’t energize you, is a sure path to a burn-out. Not to mention a weak, diluted brand and position in your market.

That’s why it’s important that your website serves as a gatekeeper of sorts – making you VERY attractive to your target market, but also making it clear to people outside of your target market that you’re not the solution for their needs.

We’ll have more information on this in the weeks to follow, but in the meantime if you have any questions about how to make this happen, shoot me an email – daniel@spotlightbranding.com.

And if you’d like to talk to our team about how our services can help your law firm grow, click here to schedule a consultation.

 

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Daniel Decker

Daniel Decker is a co-founder and Partner at Spotlight Branding. In addition to helping lawyers stand out from the crowd, he spends his time writing, dreaming up new marketing strategies, and coming up with catchy subject lines. In his spare time, Daniel enjoys playing sports, guitar, politics, and Minnesota sports.