95% of decision-making is emotional.
Yes, logic plays a crucial role in making decisions – it leads our subconscious mind to feel particular ways about a product or service, and it reinforces the decisions we make, so we feel better about making them.
At the core of almost every purchasing decision is an emotional connection to the product or service we are buying. Whether it’s fear of missing out (e.g., the latest Apple product), guilt at not having a clean house, or excitement at trying something new, emotion drives our decision to sign on the dotted line every day.
We would argue that this is not only true for lawyers, but it is especially true for lawyers. Every lawyer has credentials. Every lawyer has experience. Every lawyer has resulted from cases they have won.
How, then, are your prospective clients supposed to decide to sign with your firm?
The answer is a subconscious decision-making process that leads someone to feel that you are “the right fit” for them. Included in this process are the following:
• Do you seem likable or relatable? Could they sit down and “have a beer” with you?
• Do you truly understand their biggest headaches, and can you help solve them?
• Do you truly understand their deepest desires, and can you help fulfill them?
If you want to boost your conversions and sign more excited clients, you need to answer those questions. You need to write to prospective clients with more heart. You need to use your marketing copy to make a genuine emotional connection with prospective clients so that more of them will feel you are “the right fit” for them.
How do you do this? We have a 4-step process to create marketing copy that emotionally connects with your prospects:
1. Find Your Story, Tell Your Story
2. Know Your Prospective Clients
3. Write to Connect with Them
4. Implement This Everywhere
Find Your Story, Tell Your Story
How you connect to your prospective clients needs to be unique to you and your firm. In other words, you need to tell your story and your clients’ stories.
Two questions you can answer to help find your story:
1. Why did you get into your area of law?
2. What keeps you getting up every morning and going into work?
Your passion for the service you provide your clients needs to shine through, and the answers to these questions can help illuminate that passion.
In order to tell your clients’ stories, you should think back to those standout moments where your firm has changed a client’s life. The stories of how you’ve made a deep impact on someone’s life help your prospective clients connect with you and your firm.
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We can almost guarantee that how you talk about your services doesn’t go far enough to make the connection to how you make people feel. Consider this statement: “We will come to you if you don’t have transportation.” Okay, so what? Why should your prospective client care? Because that means they don’t have to drive and save time. Okay, so what? Their car may not be in working order, or they may be too injured to visit you? So what? By coming to them, you free them from the worry of figuring out how to get to you, and you service them in a comfortable, familiar environment when their entire world has been turned upside down. Now you’re on to something.
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In order to get to those ways your firm changes people’s emotions, keep asking the “so what” question for all of your services. What you’ll find is that your services have a profound impact on people during a very turbulent portion of their life. If that doesn’t come through in your copy — if your prospects don’t feel that you will change their life for the better — then your copy likely isn’t converting as well as it should.
Know Your Prospective Clients
If it’s not already clear, you need to know your prospective clients through and through in order to connect with them emotionally. You need to know their biggest headaches so you can prove that you understand those headaches and can solve them. You need to know their deepest desires so you can prove that you understand those desires and can help fulfill them.
The problem is that too many lawyers think of their clients in generic terms. “Anyone who has been injured” or “anyone with a disability claim” just isn’t enough.
You need to get specific with your clients. That’s why we suggest that you take the time to use 2 “worksheet” tools provided by Digital Marketer (Google these names and “Digital Marketer” and they will pop right up for you):
1. Before/After Grid: this worksheet asks you to brainstorm how you change a client’s life. It has rows for “Have,” “Feel,” “Average Day,” and “Status” and columns for “Before” and “After.” By filling this worksheet out, you will help identify the key ways that your services change clients’ lives.
2. Customer Avatar Worksheet: this work-sheet asks you to imagine your ideal client, then create a fictional “avatar” for that client. This will help ensure that you have a much more specific mental picture of your clients.
Finally, we recommend that you regularly hop on Quora to look at the questions people are asking about your area of law. These questions — the genuine questions people have, not the questions you think people have —
will give you greater insight into the headaches and desires of your prospective clients.
Write to Connect with Them
So how do you marry the above two steps to create actual words?
Well, you may find that in brain-storming elements of your story and working to identify better who your prospects are, you will end up with some emotionally compelling marketing copy.
There are some specific strategies you can use:
1. Get specific in your copy. “We’re here to help” doesn’t connect with people emotionally. Even a simple tweak like “We help people get back on their feet” connects a lot better.
2. Don’t be afraid to tap into extreme emotions. Some of the most successful marketing campaigns tap into very strong emotions like grief, despair, fear of death, or fear of financial ruin.
3. Write like you talk. Conversational writing sells better since people want to feel like you’re talking directly to them. While you still need to use SEO keywords, try using simpler words like “hurt” instead of “injured” or “heal” instead of “recover.”
4. Likability is king. As many as 80% of purchasing decisions are made because people either like the product/service or they like the face behind it. Your marketing copy should help people like you. Establish your similarities to your prospective clients. Show your attorneys with their families and their hobbies and their passions so that people can connect the faces of the firm.
5. Use the following: metaphors that help bring heady topics “down to earth,” stories (especially emotionally stirring ones), phrases that help paint a mental picture for readers, and testimonials/reviews from your clients. These all help form emotional bonds with prospects.
6. Use high-quality, relevant statistics. Stats aren’t just logical — the human brain is wired to like specificity, and good stats make us feel like we understand something better. They also pique people’s interest, and an interested person is much more likely to form an emotional connection with you. Boredom is the killer of an emotional connection, so don’t be boring.
7. Avoid generic platitudes. If your website says that your firm is “here to help,” you may want to consider more compelling ways to say that.
8. Write to individuals, not to groups. Your clients think of themselves as individuals, not as a group of “people who have been injured.” That phrase should generally not appear in your copy. Instead, use words like “you” and “people” that position your clients as unique individuals.
Implement This Everywhere
Our final piece of advice here is to not just make these emotional connections but make them everywhere. Don’t just change a few phrases on your website and call it a day. Some of the marketing platforms where emotional connections are critical include your website (headlines, body copy, etc.), your marketing videos, your TV ads, and your social media advertising.
Consider something like your billboards or bus wraps. These don’t need to appeal to people’s emotions, right? In some cases, if you’re just using those for branding, then absolutely they don’t. But if you’re trying to communicate a message regarding your firm, then they should. It’s unlikely that people are going to form a strong emotional connection to your firm in the second or less that they look at your billboards. However, by employing the tips above there, your emotional messaging can help reinforce this connection from all of your other marketing materials.
We obviously can’t guarantee that if you take this advice and change your marketing copy, you’ll boost your conversions. Here’s what we can guarantee: very few lawyers are doing this, and you will stand out from your competition if you do. In a crowded legal market, writing with more heart is an excellent way to differentiate your firm. ◆
