Whether you’re creating content for your website or social media (or both), you need to know who your audience is. Who is reading your content? Why are they reading your content? If you write marketing copy without knowing this, you will have very little chance, if any, of resonating with potential clients and getting them to contact you. You need to “understand your human.”

Who Is Your HUMAN?

But how do you do this? By having clarity as to the following five things.

(H)ow Do They Engage Online? in essence, where is your audience? What platforms or web sites do they use? This is particularly important if you’re posting on social media. You may be posting lots of stuff on Instagram, but if your ideal potential client doesn’t use that platform, you’re wasting a lot of time and money.

(U)nderstanding What They Need. You need to have a clear understanding of the legal problem your potential client has and how you have the solution. This is an understanding from your point of view, not theirs, although you should use their words in describing the problem.

(M)indset. What are their fears, motivations, what keeps them up at night? Oftentimes these are things that are secondary to the legal problem. Their legal problem may be that they can’t possibly pay their bills and need to file bankruptcy, but what weighs on their mind are things like fear that they’ll lose their home, have their bank accounts frozen so that they can’t pay the bills, or have their wages garnished.

(A)ssets. Like any business, you need some demographic information on your ideal client. This is a key marketing asset. Do they live in a certain geographic area? Are they in a certain age range or income bracket? This type of information can be critical to the success of your marketing, in that it can help you target it so that it speaks directly to that ideal client.

(N)ow. What’s happening to them now? Where are they in their journey? You need to be aware that visitors to your web site may not be ready yet to hire a lawyer. They may have just been in an accident and looking for information on how to make a claim or fight with the adjuster. You need to be the one to provide them with the information they are looking for now.

This becomes critical when it comes to your call to action (CTA) at the end of your content. If they aren’t looking for a lawyer yet, don’t tell them to call you! They won’t! Provide them instead with a downloadable resource (in exchange for their name and e-mail address) that will provide them with more of the information they are looking for. This will allow you to follow up with them through email campaigns, so they will remember you when they look to hire a lawyer!

What is Their Awareness?

Another thing to determine as far as where they are in their journey (what marketing guru Dan Kennedy calls the “Moving Parade of Interest”) is whether they are “problem-aware” or “solution-aware”? They may know they have a problem but are looking for a solution. They may know there is a solution, but want to know more about it. Knowing this will tell you whether to write content about the problem or the solution.

It comes down to where are they in solving the problem that they have? Write content that speaks to it, but understand their language and speak to them with it. Use their words, not yours.

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