For years I have watch the Today Show most mornings when I am getting ready. I have noticed that in the past year or so they are having a lot of musical groups on in the first few hours of the show. Then about 9:00am, they switch to grown up conversation although usually less newsworthy and more chatty than they have in the earlier time slot alongside the bands.
This morning I happen to turn it on at about 8:00am and they had a broadcast from Florida with a boy band of four young men. Reminded me of the Beatles. There were over 15,000 mostly young girls in attendance. They were singing all the words which seem to be repeated over and over again at nauseam and doing a little dancing. The girls were all smiles and enjoying themselves. Girls were also tweeting like crazy and no doubt upping the viewership.
Realizing that this seemed to be a switch from old broadcasting and being a marketing nut, I started to look at why this change in broadcasting. Could it be that now the Today Show has acquired an audience of young people through catering to their musical tastes? Are they the Ed Sullivan show revisited?
Ratings are ratings and if a show can acquire a whole new audience who,although they might tune out after the boy bands, they can still make points with the network. Good marketing!
So then, of course, I wanted to link this to attorneys’ marketing. Because most of our target markets are not young, teenage girls, we can’t offer the same thing as the Today Show to satisfy our clients. But could we take this idea of looking at a segment of an untapped market and providing that extra “value” to satisfy their interests?
Certainly as the Boomers are edged out by the Gener Xers and Millenniums, lawyers are learning that they had better make their communication mobile, short and important if they want to entice them into hiring them. No 25 year old that needs a lawyer wants to deal with someone who is still not texting or doesn’t have a website. The 28 year old that has a new App wants a lawyer who understands his/her world. Even the 30-40 year old that is starting a green-solar business looks for a lawyer who demonstrates that he or she respects that kind of product and uses it themselves.
Probably one of the most underused marketing tool is that of having a person from one of these groups endorse the work of an attorney. Certainly, hearing from someone in their age group who has received value from an attorney would be a great marketing tool. There are probably many, many other ways to entice these wonderful young people to use our services. It just takes some creative thinking as well as a respect for their values which may be slightly different from ours to afford them great service.
SO, YOUR ASSIGNMENT THIS WEEK IS TO IDENTIFY ONE WAY THAT YOU CAN MARKET YOUR FIRM TO THIS AGE GROUP IN A DIFFERENT WAY FROM ALL YOUR OTHER TARGET MARKETS. WRITE IT DOWN AND SHARE IT. NEXT WEEK YOU WILL WANT TO ACTUALLY PUT IT INTO ACTION!