Key Takeaways
- Most attorneys come to marketing with a tactic in mind because nobody has ever walked them through strategy first.
- A billboard recommendation for a brand-new estate planning firm showed me how rarely marketing advice starts with the most important question: “WHO are you trying to reach?”
- The Three-Question Test (Who, Where, Trust) is a simple filter for every marketing decision.
- A clear ideal client profile turns marketing from a guessing game into a series of easy yes-or-no decisions.
- If your past marketing hasn’t worked, you’re not the problem. The missing piece is usually strategy.
Billboards for a Brand New Law Firm? That Was My Wake-Up Call
My very first client came to me with a marketing plan someone else had written for him. He was starting his own estate planning and elder law firm, and he’d hired a marketing consultant to put together a plan. Simple enough. As a friend who happened to be in corporate communications, he asked me to take a look at it.
Even though I didn’t have direct marketing experience at that point, I saw a problem almost instantly. The plan recommended billboard ads for a brand-new firm that nobody had heard of. It had no established reputation, no referral network, and no budget to spend on something that broad.
Picture this: a solo attorney, just getting started. It’s him and one other person answering phones. He’s watching every dollar he spends. And he’s being told to buy billboards.
As my weepy two-year-old niece once said to me as I explained to her that her mom would be back soon and we were going to have fun while she was gone, “That’s not a good plan, Aunt Elisa.”
Billboards are a mass-reach tactic. They make sense for brands with big awareness goals and budgets to match. They do not make sense for a brand-new estate planning attorney who needs to connect with a very specific group of people at a very specific moment in their lives. That’s not strategy. That’s throwing darts in the dark.
But here’s what really got me. The question that never got asked was the most crucial one: Who are you actually trying to reach? And where do they spend their time?
That question is where every strategy begins. It has shaped everything I’ve done since, because I learned something really important that day. Most attorneys have never been asked WHO they’re trying to reach before the marketing advice starts.
Why Almost Everyone Starts With a Tactic Instead of a Strategy
I’ve been in this industry for close to 20 years now, and almost every new client comes to me the same way, with a specific request:
“I need a new website.”
“I need Facebook ads.”
“I need to fill a workshop.”
I get it. Oftentimes, they’re running a firm with fewer than five or ten employees. They’re doing the legal work, managing staff, and keeping the lights on. They don’t have time to sit around philosophizing about marketing strategy. They want a solution, and they want it now.
The catch is that marketing tactics without a strategy behind them usually cost more and deliver less than they hoped.
So my first job is to ask questions. A lot of them. More than most people expect. I want to understand the bigger picture before we touch a single tactic, because I refuse to spend their time or money on something I don’t have a really good reason for.
The Doctor Analogy That Explains Everything
Here’s how I think about it. When somebody comes to me with a tactic, I see it the same way a doctor sees a patient who walks in and announces, “My knee hurts. I need surgery.”
A rushed doctor says, “Sure, let’s schedule it.” A good doctor says, “Okay, but is this symptom pointing to something deeper?”
Marketing should work the same way.
| What an Attorney Says | What It Usually Means |
| “I need a new website.” | Their marketing isn’t bringing in the right clients, and the website is the most visible place to start. |
| “I need Facebook ads.” | They want to show up where their competitors are showing up. |
| “I need SEO help.” | They’ve heard search matters (maybe from a very persuasive cold call) and want to be found. |
| “I need to post more on social media.” | They know visibility matters and want a simple way to show up. |
Every one of these is a reasonable instinct. Each one is also a symptom, not a diagnosis. Treating the symptom without understanding the deeper cause burns through time, money, and energy. Three things attorneys are limited on.
And the underlying “diagnosis” almost every time? Nobody has helped them clearly define who they’re trying to reach.
Your Ideal Client Profile Is Your Decision Filter
When you start with a real understanding of who you’re trying to reach — specific people with specific circumstances, fears, and motivations — everything else gets easier. You choose better tactics. You spend your dollars more effectively. And you spend your time wisely.
For smaller firms, that matters enormously. You don’t have the luxury of a marketing department or a six-figure ad budget. Every dollar and every minute counts.
Think of your ideal client profile as a filter for every tactic that crosses your desk. (Seriously — use it as a filter. Every. Single. time.)
Someone suggests billboard ads… Run it through the filter:
- Does your ideal client see billboards?
- Does a billboard create the kind of trust someone needs before handing over their most sensitive family and financial information?
If not, you can confidently pass.
Someone suggests a QR code on your brochure… Run it through the filter:
- Your ideal clients are often people over 50 who already feel overwhelmed by estate planning (and technology).
- Is adding a tech hurdle going to make their experience easier or harder?
- Is a moment of confusion going to push them back into procrastination?
This is where the Three-Question Test comes in. Before you spend a dime on marketing tactics, you need to ask the following three questions:
- Who specifically am I trying to reach? “Everyone who needs a will” isn’t helpful. You know who your best clients are. Start there with specific people. Specific circumstances. Specific fears.
- Where can I actually reach them? Not where you wish they were — where they actually spend time and make decisions.
- What would make them trust me enough to act? In estate planning (and other areas of the law), trust isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the whole game.
Once you can answer those three questions, every marketing decision gets easier. You stop chasing shiny tactics and start investing in what actually connects.
How to Tell When a Vendor is Selling Before Listening
I’ll be honest: marketing can turn into a money pit if you let it. There’s always a shiny new tactic being pitched, and when you’re busy running a firm, it’s hard to know which pitches deserve your attention. Here are a few signs that a vendor is leading with a sale instead of a strategy:
- They recommend a specific tactic in the first conversation, before ever asking about your clients.
- They promise rankings or results on a guaranteed timeline.
- They can’t explain how their service connects to the people you serve.
- They talk more than they listen. A good partner asks more questions than they answer early on.
I’ve watched attorneys come to me after they’ve already been burned. They’ve spent thousands on a website that doesn’t convert. They’ve paid for ads that reached the wrong people. They’ve signed contracts with vendors who promised the moon and then disappeared.
Every dollar they wasted was a dollar they could have used to actually grow their firm and serve families who needed their help. That part never stops getting to me. (See my origin story here.)
Bad Marketing Isn’t a Reason to Give Up on Marketing
After one bad experience, it’s natural to think marketing just doesn’t work. A lot of good firms stop there. But that one experience usually wasn’t marketing failing. It was marketing that skipped the strategy step.
My best clients came to me after a marketing relationship that wasn’t working. They trusted their gut. Something felt off, either about what they were doing or who they were working with. They were willing to say, “Thank you, but this isn’t working for us.” That takes guts, especially when you’re stretched thin and second-guessing every decision.
Then they did something even braver. They didn’t give up on marketing. They gave up on marketing without a strategy behind it, and they went looking for someone who would start there.
If that sounds like where you are right now, here’s what I want you to hear: you are not the problem. The tactics weren’t the problem either. You just needed someone to help you build the strategy first.
That’s exactly what we do at CoComm. We start with who you’re trying to reach, build a simple clear system around that, and use strategy as the filter for every decision that follows.
FAQs
Usually, it’s because the marketing was built around a tactic, such as a website, ads, or SEO, before anyone defined who you’re trying to reach. Without that, even well-made marketing ends up in front of the wrong people or fails to earn their trust. Start with a clear ideal client profile, then choose tactics that reach those people and builds trust.
Before hiring anyone, have an idea about who your ideal client is — specifically. A good marketing consultant will ask this question first. If they lead with tactics before asking about your audience and goals, that’s a warning sign.
An ideal client profile is a detailed description of the specific type of client your firm is built to serve best — their circumstances, concerns, and how they make decisions. Use it as a filter for every marketing decision: if a tactic doesn’t effectively reach that person and build their trust, don’t invest in it.
A strategy defines who you’re trying to reach, where to find them, and how to earn their trust. A tactic is a specific action — a billboard, a Facebook ad, an email campaign. Tactics without strategy are expensive experiments. Strategy makes tactics predictable.
In many cases, marketing consultants recommend tactics without first understanding your audience, your goals, or your budget constraints. If your consultant led with deliverables instead of questions, the strategy foundation was likely missing from the start.
Run it through three questions: Does it reach the specific people I’m trying to serve? Does it meet them where they actually make decisions? Does it build the kind of trust someone needs before sharing their most sensitive family and financial information? If the answer to any of these is no, skip it.
Look for someone who asks more questions than they answer in early conversations — specifically about who you’re trying to reach and what’s worked or failed before. A partner who understands the estate planning and elder law space specifically will be far more effective than a generalist agency.