Expert Witness Marketing Plan – Part I

Creating & Implementing an Expert Witness Marketing Plan (or anyone else selling a service)

Written for the Pacific Northwest Network of Forensic Expert Witnesses

This is a part one of a five-part series to help experts craft a successful marketing plan with ways of creating measurable goals and accountability.

This is a part one of a five-part series to help experts craft a successful marketing plan with ways of creating measurable goals and accountability.

You are an expert in a particular field and you have years of experience behind you. So why is marketing yourself so hard? Well – you get busy, and often marketing falls low on the priority list when there are reports to write and to return phone calls to clients.

This is a simple reminder that you need to carve out a space of time every day for marketing your practice. I will also put out the statement that despite all of the claims and easy fixes proposed, there is no simple solution to effective expert witness marketing. You can’t just get active on social media or put up a website – it takes thought, planning and constant attention to get the results you want. Ok – lecture over….I will start with Part One – Looking Down the Road.

Looking Down the Road

Before you start with the day to day tasks of a marketing plan, you need to look long term. This is an important step no matter what you are selling. Where do you want to be in 5 or 10 years? If you can look at the big picture, the details will make more sense. It will also give you a goal to shoot for and you can then adjust the marketing mix once you start to put the details into place.

Three things to consider when thinking about your mission and vision for your expert witness practice:

Target Market: What does my ideal client look like, where are they located, what kind of legal practice do they have and what kind of cases do they represent? If your current clients went out of business, are you ready to move into a different market? Be very specific in your target market. Don’t just say litigator – talk about what kind of litigator you want to target.

Your Practice: How busy do you want to be? How many cases do you want to be on? Do you want to be a consulting or a testifying expert? Are you going to need to hire staff or want to hire staff to help with growth? Do you even want to grow your practice or do you want to stay steady? How recession proof are you? Are there areas of expertise that you have that you aren’t marketing? Be realistic – there is going to be a lesson in examining your own weaknesses later on.

Perception: How are you perceived in the industry? Do you have a good reputation or is there some public relations you need to be working on? Besides asking your own clients, possibly hiring a third-party to conduct a survey to find out what people think of you as an expert to give you a clearer picture.

Once you have thought these three things through, you are ready to write your mission statement and your vision of the future. So to recap the first step – think through where you want to be in the future, what areas of expertise you want to concentrate on, who your ideal client is and where you are now. Spend some time thinking about these questions and write down your goals, mission, and vision to hold yourself and anyone else on your team accountable.