Key Takeaways
- Most attorneys come to marketing with a tactic already in mind — skipping strategy is why most marketing budgets get wasted.
- A billboard recommendation for a brand-new estate planning firm revealed how rarely marketers ask the question that matters most: “WHO are you trying to reach?”
- Your ideal client profile is a decision filter. Run every tactic through it before spending a dollar.
- Marketing without strategy is a black hole; vendors too often sell solutions before understanding the actual problem.
- The attorneys who make it don’t give up on marketing — they give up on bad marketing.
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. This was a brand new estate planning and elder law firm that nobody had ever heard of, with no established reputation, no referral network, and certainly no budget to burn on something that broad and untargeted.
That was the moment I realized something that has shaped every single thing I’ve done since: not only do most attorneys not understand who they’re trying to reach, but a whole lot of marketing consultants don’t understand that either.
The Billboard That Changed Everything
Let me paint you the picture.
Here’s a solo attorney, just getting started. It’s him and one other person answering the phones. He’s watching every single dollar that goes out the door. And the marketing professional he trusted told him to buy billboard ads.
As my 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.”
Billboards are a mass-reach tactic. They make sense for brands with enormous 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 in a very specific moment of their lives. That’s not strategy. That’s throwing darts in the dark.
But here’s what really got under my skin. It wasn’t just that the tactic was wrong. It was that this marketing consultant had clearly never asked the most basic question: Who are you actually trying to reach? And where do they “hang out”?
That’s the question from which all strategy begins. And almost nobody asks this question first.
Why Every Attorney Shows Up 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. They walk in thinking they know what they need.
“I need a new website.”
“I need Facebook ads.”
“I need to be on social media more.”
They come with a tactic already in mind. And I get it. They’re busy. They’re running a firm with fewer than five or ten employees, doing the legal work, managing the staff, keeping the lights on. They don’t have time to sit around philosophizing about marketing strategy. (Honestly, who does?) They want a solution, and they want it now.
But jumping straight to a tactic — without any strategy behind it — is not going to give them what they’re looking for.
So my job, immediately, is to start asking questions. A lot of them. More than most people expect, honestly. 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 bad doctor says, “Sure, let’s schedule it.” A good doctor says, “Okay — but is this symptom pointing to something deeper?”
Marketers should be doing the same thing.
| What an Attorney Says | What It Usually Means |
| “I need a new website.” | Their current marketing isn’t generating leads, and they assume the website is the problem. |
| “I need Facebook ads.” | They saw a competitor doing it and felt like they were falling behind. |
| “I need SEO help.” | Someone cold-called them and promised first-page rankings. |
| “I need to post more on social media.” | They feel guilty about not being visible enough online. |
Every single one of these is a symptom. Not a diagnosis. And if you treat symptoms without understanding the underlying condition, you’re going to waste a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of hope.
The underlying condition, almost every time? They’ve never clearly defined 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 tactics more effectively. You spend your dollars more effectively. You spend your minutes more effectively.
And for smaller firms, that matters enormously. These attorneys 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 decision 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? No? Then let’s not go there.
Someone suggests a QR code on your brochure? Run it through the filter. Your ideal clients are often people over 50 who are already overwhelmed by the estate planning process. Is adding a tech hurdle going to make their experience easier or harder? Is any moment of confusion going to push them further into procrastination? You already know the answer.
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? Not “everyone who needs a will.” 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, 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 things that actually connect.
Marketing Is a Black Hole If You Let It Be
I’ll be blunt: marketing is a black hole of wasted money if you let it be. The industry is infamous for chasing the latest shiny object. (And selling that shiny object to attorneys who don’t have time to know better.) SEO firms are especially bad about this. I see it over and over. Vendors selling solutions before they’ve ever bothered to understand the actual problem.
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.)
The Attorneys Who Make It Have One Thing in Common
They trusted their gut.
Something felt off — about what they were doing, or who they were working with. And they had the courage to say, “I’m sorry, I don’t need your services anymore.” That takes guts, especially when you’re already stretched thin and second-guessing every decision.
But then they did something even braver. They didn’t give up on marketing. They gave up on bad marketing. And they went looking for someone who would actually help them by starting with strategy.
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. The problem was that nobody helped you build the strategy first.
That’s exactly what we built CoComm to do — 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. Because there’s no good reason to spend another dollar on anything less than what actually works.
FAQs
Most estate planning attorneys invest in marketing tactics before establishing a strategy. Without a clear picture of who they’re trying to reach, tactics like websites, ads, and social media are expensive guesses rather than targeted decisions.
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.