What’s Your Persona? Using Client Personas To Drive Marketing and Business Development
A version of this article was originally published by The Legal Intelligencer here, Oct. 25, 2024.
Who are your ideal clients and why do they (or should they) hire you?
This simple but key question for marketing and business development is often deceptively challenging to answer. Most lawyers and practice groups can describe the general category of their target clients — Fortune 100 companies, high-net-worth individuals, private equity funds, technology startups, advertising agencies, commercial real estate developers, pharmaceutical and life sciences companies, etc. But they often can’t identify with specificity which prospects within those categories would be ideal clients for their practice.
As a result, they are likely spending time, energy and money marketing to an audience that might be too broad, using messaging that doesn’t resonate with — and perhaps doesn’t even reach — the clients they want to attract. It may also mean taking on work for less-than-ideal clients and missing opportunities to build client relationships with gold-standard clients that could not only lead to better and more satisfying work but also open doors to other similar clients.
Developing client personas can help maximize marketing and business development resources as well as boost profitability by bringing in more and better (and perhaps better paying) clients.
Understanding client personas
Sometimes called ideal client profiles or client avatars, client personas are detailed composites of your gold-standard clients. They’re fictional in the sense that they don’t represent any one client you have or prospect that you’re targeting, although you can draw from those clients and targets in developing your personas. Rather, your client personas combine the qualities and demographics, challenges and concerns, and typical behaviors of the ideal clients you want to serve.
The goal is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the audiences for your marketing and business development efforts — not only the individuals or organizations that are most likely to need your legal skill and expertise, but also the people who influence and make the legal hiring decisions, whether that’s the general counsel, the CEO or founder of a business, the matriarch of a high-net-worth family, or the individual who needs representation. In building these personas, you’ll not only develop an understanding of the type of client who will want to hire you, but also the clients that you want to work with, whether that means the size of an organization, the value of a transaction, or the type of regulated business or individual, for example.
Building client personas
While lawyers, practices or firms that have a very narrow practice or industry focus may need to build out one ideal client persona, most will likely have at least a handful of ideal clients and therefore need to build out a few client personas.
Comprehensive personas for lawyers and firms whose clients are principally businesses or organizations should include information on:
Type and size of organization, industries and market sectors: What type of businesses or organizations are your ideal clients? What industries or market sectors do your clients operate in — or across? How big are they, how are they structured, and where do they fit into their industry or sector? Are they established players or new entrants in the marketplace? Market leaders or disruptors?
Business concerns: What business risks, opportunities and challenges are your ideal clients facing today — and on the horizon? Are they expanding, seeking financing, navigating regulatory hurdles, and/or looking to buy or sell?
Goals and objectives: What are their immediate and their longer-term business goals? Is it scaling the business, going public or maximizing profits from a sale?
Risk profile and tolerance: How risk averse are your ideal clients? Do they want to make bold business moves or are they more conservative, looking to reduce risk and protect their interests as much as possible?
Enterprise legal needs: Think beyond the immediate work that you can do for these clients. What other legal services might they need in the future, whether provided by you or others in your firm?
Lawyers and firms that work primarily with organizations may be tempted to keep their client personas at the organizational level. But while it may be the organizations that hire the lawyers and law firms, legal services is still very much a person-to-person business. Understanding both the people you work with within the client’s organization and those who make the legal hiring decisions will positively impact how you market your services. In this way, personas for business clients need to include many of the same considerations as do personas for individuals.
Decision-makers and points of contact: Do you work directly with the CEO, general counsel or other C-suite executives, or will you be working with other people within the organization? Are your client points of contact the same or different from the legal decision-makers? Does the organization have a board of directors or others to whom your client contact needs to report?
Challenges and pain points: What keeps your client contacts and legal hiring decision-makers up at night? What are their chief concerns — personally and professionally?
Decision-making process: How do your ideal clients choose the lawyers they work with? Do they ask for personal or professional referrals, search online, issue requests for proposals or have a panel process? How important are reputational factors such as legal awards and recognitions or membership in legal or industry associations?
·Goals and outcomes: What does success look like for your ideal clients? Is it avoiding litigation or securing a favorable settlement? Protecting business or preserving reputation? Do they value speed to market or to close a deal, or cautious negotiating and papering of transactions?
Personal demographics and psychographics: Many lawyers tend to shy away from considering personal demographics and psychographics of clients, whether they represent individuals or organizations. But while it may not be the sole reason why clients choose to work with lawyers, client information such as age, race and gender; profession; position or role; location; marital status; income and the like can influence both the hiring and the ongoing lawyer-client relationship.
Test and refine client personas
While much of the information included in client personas can be intuited with some careful thought about current and prospective clients, trends in industries and markets, and the lawyer’s or firm’s talent and expertise, testing and refining the information using additional research is essential. Consider both internal and external research resources to get a comprehensive profile of your ideal clients, including formal client satisfaction surveys and interviews, as well as informal chats with clients; client, market and competitor intelligence; analytics from websites, blogs, social media and other owned media channels; information gleaned from contact lists and CRM systems, experience and firm financial databases; outside research consultants; and any other resources to which you might have access.
Using client personas
Once developed and refined, client personas can be used to drive more effective marketing and business development in a number of ways.
Focus your service offerings. Many lawyers and firms are hesitant to emphasize certain service offerings over others, fearing that they will miss out on opportunities. Client personas allow you to effectively position your service offering to meet the needs, challenges and objectives of your ideal clients.
Prioritize and target high-value prospects. Client personas provide clarity on who high-value prospects are and where to find them. Instead of casting a wide net, using client personas allows you to focus on the most relevant and profitable client segments.
Build the right networks. Client avatars can guide you toward the right networks and events to sponsor or attend, ensuring you are spending your time and resources where you will most likely meet your ideal clients.
Tailor your messaging. Understanding your ideal client’s objective, challenges and pain points allows you to develop more relevant and compelling messaging, whether in traditional marketing collateral like practice descriptions and bios, or in thought leadership and branded content. It also allows you to message on the right channels, where your ideal clients are most likely to be looking for information.
Build solid client relationships. Understanding your client personas allows you to better position yourself as a trusted advisor who understands their business and legal needs beyond just the current work you are doing, opening up opportunities for better, more or different work, either for you or for others in your firm.
Building and implementing comprehensive client personas enables lawyers, practices and firms to refine their marketing and business development strategies to attract clients that align with their expertise, experience and values. Client personas can help maximize marketing and business development resources to focus on those high-value prospects and clients.
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