Handling Prospects Who Urgently Need Your Service

This is a follow-up video to my presentation on empathy in marketing. Today we’re going to be addressing the urgency that a prospect actually has and it’s a mistake to treat everyone the same. Today we’re going to be talking about people to have an immediate need versus people that have a future need and how to handle those distinctly. I’m going to start out by talking about people who have a present need that is an immediate need that needs to be filled because they are urgently seeking a resolution to a problem that they have. So first of all when someone arrives at your website, there needs to be a clear call-to-action for someone who has their particular need. And we’re going to talk about the structure of a call to action so that people feel inclined to follow through. But your website is obviously not the only place where a clear call to action will take place, some of you will be interested in doing paid advertising either with YouTube in-stream ad which is the little video that comes up in front of YouTube videos and somebody few will be interested in just playing AdWords which is the little advertisements that come up on the side of Google when you’re doing searches. There are a variety of ways of getting a message out there in front of people who have an immediate need. And so obviously you’re going to have to have an understanding of what they’re searching for so that they bring up or trigger your ad. Your advertisement is going to have to immediately signal to the customer that you are the person that they need to solve their problem and to do that by first of all we talked about this in the empathy video. Demonstrate that you understand what the problem actually is. So if I’m using the traffic ticket model once again, but if you are someone that is uniquely able to help them with their traffic ticket their real problem is that their insurance is going to go up if they don’t get this rectified and they may lose their license. So that’s the real problem, the ticket is just a piece of paper that’s not the real problem remember the print. The principle that people buy holes, they don’t buy shovels. So focus on the key problem and how your service can immediately benefit them. So you also want to give them a quick indication that there is something about you that uniquely qualifies you to help. So you might say that you know 20-year trial lawyer veteran is here to help you with your litigation of X Y Z, the lawyers who sell traffic ticket related services, legal services, do this really really well. They might indicate that they are an ex-police officer or that they are a someone that specializes only in traffic ticket legal services. So indicate what makes you uniquely special and why they should pick you. There’s some built-in urgency of course when someone is a now client but you don’t want to take any chances because there’s going to be other people who will be addressing that same audience and you want to be a clear choice going to be the obvious choice to that person. The other thing that you want to do is create some risk reversal particularly when someone doesn’t know you at all. And the best way to do this is to provide an amount of consultation at no charge. So a one-hour consultation the initial consultation no charge for our first phone call and couple that with a clear call-to-action. So call us now to set up an appointment at this number. Don’t make them search for it. So you want to create a situation where you’re acknowledging the urgency of their situation but you’re also giving them every reason to act. You’ve removed all of the mental obstacles, you are clearly the person that is in the unique position to help them with their situation and you told them exactly what they must do now but you’re not done. You also need to indicate what the cost of delay is. Now in marketing, I am really against the false scarcity of gambit where people say limited supply, limited this limited that when you are selling professional services legal services. You have a built-in legitimate scarcity that you can advertise and that is your time. You only have so much time so you can say something like “my appointment book fills up fast, call my secretary at this number to let me know that you want to meet”.  You also need to remind people of the cost of not getting things sorted out quickly so if they leave the problem that they have in an unaddressed state what will happen, what further discomfort might they suffer, how might this situation get worse if they delay in acting. So those are just a few of the things that you can do to address a client who is in need of your services right now. I don’t assume that their built-in urgency is going to cut it unless you’re the only person practicing your specialization of law in your town or area. You should be building in the extra incentives and reminders to remove the friction so that people call you immediately either when they’re landing on your website or when they’re encountering one of your advertisements on Google or in some other area.