Acquiring Foreign-Born Clients: Marketing Legal Services to a Growing Niche
Copyright © 2004 by Nina Ivanichvili, CEO, All Language Alliance, Inc.
Educate Prospective Clients
Differentiation is critical to successful marketing in any profession, but especially important when targeting clients from abroad. The last thing a law firm wants is to be perceived as fungible by its prospects. For the law firm's marketing message to be successful, it needs to differentiate itself in a compelling way in the minds of its foreign-born prospects and clients. One way to do this is to preemptively position the law firm as having expertise in the types of legal problems the prospects are likely to encounter. Knowing that foreign-born clients are, literally, hungry for accurate information on many legal issues, law firms can satisfy that need by crafting customized education-based marketing messages in the languages of foreign-born clients and include such messages in the law firm's marketing materials and website. As with any marketing and advertising in English, law firms need to be mindful of the Code of Professional Conduct and other ethics standards before finalizing their foreign language marketing and advertising messages.20
Professionally translated marketing materials should convey legal expertise, cross-cultural sensitivity, and empathy. These materials should not be perceived as part of a sales pitch. Their role is to position an attorney or a law firm as a generous source of free and reliable information in the minds of prospective foreign-born clients. Although such information typically would be available in the public domain, the law firm should assume that their foreign-born prospects and clients may not know how to find it, especially in their own languages. As a result, such clients would be less intimidated contacting that attorney when they need help.
A marketing plan may further include publishing articles or columns in the ethnic print media and on ethnic websites in the languages of the niche market to educate foreign-born readers on various subjects. Some of the topics might include: what constitutes a misdemeanor or crime; Miranda rights; the attorney-client privilege; the role of the federal and state courts; the jury system; wills and probate; and what business owners and employees need to know about business entities and liability issues, workers compensation, and labor law.
The law firm also should post published articles on the law firm's website, as well as include them in the information packets provided to prospective clients who attend educational seminars sponsored by the law firm. Further, such articles may be incorporated into the law firm's online newsletters and be made available electronically by subscription. Another idea is to add a "frequently asked questions" ("FAQs") section on the law firm's website to educate prospective and existing clients on key legal concepts and terms relevant to the law firm's practice areas. Make the FAQs available in languages of the law firm's niche market.
