I love this topic, because for an estate planning attorney the way you market yourself makes a huge difference in whether or not a prospective client becomes a lead for your business. The way people can work with you tells a huge story about whether or not you’ll have success in growing your law firm, and growing it through your digital marketing efforts. In this blog I’ll do my best to compare and contrast the two, from a marketers perspective.
Mobile Estate Planners Have It Made…. Sort Of
First off, what the heck is a mobile estate planner? For the purposes of this blog, an estate planner is a licensed and practicing attorney that writes estate plans, wills, trusts, powers of attorney and all the necessary estate planning documents anyone requires in preparation for their demise. A mobile estate planner is an estate planner that will travel to meet with clients where they are be that in a residential home, nursing or senior-living home, hospital or coffee shop. A mobile estate planner is not limited by their physical location within the metro area or city they reside and practice in.
As you can probably tell from my description of a mobile estate planner that by marketing yourself as mobile you give yourself a leg-up on your competition as an estate planning attorney. Not only that, there are several things you can do, depending on your metro area, to gain an organic search advantage through the use of multiple mailing address or offices where you can meet with clients at.
Why is this important?
Because people like to support local, and with something as personal as managing their estate after their passing they like to know that the person [the attorney] they choose to work with for their estate plan is local, and can be contacted in the event they need to make a change or someone they name in their plan has a question for them.
On the downside, most people don’t know that an attorney that is licensed in the state can write an estate plan for them no matter how far away they live from them. Writing and publishing blogs and making your messaging clear on your website are great ways to overcome this.
Additionally, most people think their county has specific laws and rules that an estate planner that lives outside of their territory will not understand, and therefore something could be missing in their estate plan. Blogs and great messaging again are the answer here.
Virtual Estate Planners Have More Disadvantages Than You May Think
A virtual estate planner is an estate planner that does not meet with clients in-person, ever. They only meet over the phone, audio and video conferencing. This can be a big factor in whether or not a prospective client will choose to reach out to you and become a new lead through your digital marketing efforts. People want to meet in person, they want to know you live near them and understand the lay of the land as it pertains to their estate.
On the upside, if you are solely a virtual estate planner for your metro area or city you practice in, but you also live in that area, you need to make that clear in your messaging or else you could miss out on a lot of business that would convert into a lead through your website and digital marketing efforts.
If you choose to practice estate planning as an attorney in a city you don’t live, you might consider setting up a mailing address within that city, and connecting that with a Google My Business profile. That will give you an element of trust with prospects that live there, even though you don’t.
Lastly, through your digital marketing I encourage you to make the fact that you’re a virtual estate planner clear up front. One of the first things your prospects are looking for is a yes or no answer to “are they local?” If you can answer that question, along with questions like “are they an estate planning attorney” then you’ll be well on your way to converting that website prospect into a lead.
Virtual Estate Planning Vs. Mobile Estate Planning: Which One Is Best?
Wrapping up it really depends on how you like to practice law and what your process is. After converting a prospect into a lead, a lead generation company’s role with your company is not to create the process for you, rather it is to help automate it and free up your time for you. Depending on what your law firm’s digital footprint looks like currently will determine the best way to go about marketing yourself more effectively as a virtual or mobile estate planner. If a conversation about that is warranted, I invite you to schedule a call with me now.
📈 Onward and 📈 Upward,
Heath Rost
