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Mediation Marketing 101: Generating Leads & positioning
19 March 2007What is marketing?
Wikipedia provides several different definitions, you can read here.
In the mediation business, which is a service profession, it is useful to think of marketing in terms of what your objectives are. To develop business, at the most basic level you must do two things:
1) Generate Leads, and
2) Convert these leads into clients.
Thus, your marketing can be defined as efforts to generate leads and position yourself in your market as an expert. As a very personal service, clients will hire you when they know you, like you and trust that you can help them.
In some market niches you will have repeat clients (e.g. some institutional clients, lawyers who will hire you again and again etc.) for different conflict situations. So, once you get a client the next level of marketing would be to
get repeat business.
Most mediators don’t have a “back end” of higher priced services to offer mediation clients.
Some mediators have “dispute resolution system design” programs or other services they offer institutional clients which could be considered a back-end.
So, at its most basic level, your first job (after your strategic business planning, which we will also discuss) is to generate leads.
How you do this will depend in part on your market niche.
Some divorce mediators I know begin this process relying heavily on the internet. This can be effective if you work with parties directly and do not insist they have counsel in the beginning. You may encourage them to have consulting and/or reviewing attorneys. An internet marketing strategy should include an aspect of search engine optimization. Some people have had good luck with google ad words, others have not found this to be cost effective. Listing on my space and other social media sites may be another avenue in the future. Certainly, blogging is a way to increase your search engine traffic (through positioning) and also word of mouth marketing.
Another means of generating leads is to do volunteer or court-annexed mediations. This will not fill your practice but is a great way to get experience and to begin to generate leads for other cases. If you do a good job and counsel knows about another case appropriate for mediation, they are likely to give you more business. You may need to follow up with them on a consistent basis, so that when that second and third case is ready for mediation, you are top of mind.
Finally, you will want to combine a mix of mediation marketing strategies…to accomplish two things: generate leads and position yourself as an expert. You position yourself as a process and niche expert by writing, speaking and taking leadership positions. Networking and building relationships with potential clients and referral sources is also helpful.
As social media continues to grow some of your efforts can be geared to blogs, podcasts and video/audio sharing. For mainstream mediation this may still be a bit ahead of the market. You can begin to be a leader now and when it takes off you will be well positioned.
Think about your market niche and ask yourself 1) who your ideal clients are and 2) how you can generate leads within your market niche(s). Then, incorporate some of the above strategies to position yourself as an expert and generate leads.
In a subsequent “marketing 101″ post, the next step of conversion…
NEVER GIVE UP!
Kristina
ps we are almost out of our first production packages… of the success system, check it out at www.mediationmarketingsecrets.com. Also, if you haven’t signed up for the free teleseminar with Jeff Krivis next week, you may want to do so now….
January 6th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
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