Green Bananas, Legal Articles, and Growing Your Law Firm

Here’s how to use it:

Step 1

Start with the end in mind. Decide what specific services or legal documents you want to promote in your article before you start to write anything.

Take action

What’s your version of the green banana?

What are you offering that your prospective clients don’t realise they need?

This was the advice I gave recently to one of the lawyers at my marketing clinic when they asked for feedback on an article to promote their legal services.

If you write articles, blogs, or any kind of written content to promote your services, this could help you too.

The article I was reviewing covered 5 steps to ensuring compliance with specific data protection rules.

At the end of the article, the lawyer reminded readers that they could get further help with this topic and invited them to call for an initial discussion.

So far, so good.

But, in this final section, the article talked about specific legal documents and services the lawyer could provide, such as “privacy policies” and “consent forms” and “sharing arrangements” to ensure compliance with the data protection rules.

These documents hadn’t been mentioned anywhere else in the article.

Which means the need for these documents hadn’t been covered either.

So the call to action was to get legal help with specific legal documents which the reader might not realise they needed. And therefore would be unlikely to want.

To fix this we applied the ‘Green Bananas’ Strategy to the article.

Step 2

‘Reverse engineer’ your article. Identify what your prospective clients need to know or understand in order to want that service or document.

Step 3

‘Seed the Need’ for your services. The article content must educate about why the reader needs that service or document so that when you invite them to get that service or document in the call to action, they already want it.

So if you were selling green bananas (rather than the yellow ones that most people buy) your article would need to teach your reader why green bananas are a better option before you say “buy our green bananas”.

About The Author

And what should you educate them about for them to want it?

Use the 3 Step ‘Green Bananas’ Strategy to make sure you’re educating your prospective clients about what to want, so that more of them will buy what you’re offering.

If you’d like my help to identify which other practice growth and marketing strategies will work best for your firm (and the best way to implement them effectively), come to my online workshop ‘Profitable Practice Growth Secrets For Small Law Firms’. We’ll work together to analyse the growth opportunities within your firm or practice area and to create a customised bespoke ‘Accelerator Plan’ to ensure you achieve your growth goals in the next 12 months. Find out more at www.thebusinessinstructor.com/ workshop

Michelle Peters (Founder of The Business Instructor) is a former practising solicitor from a Magic Circle firm and the creator of the Profitable Practice Programme for sole practitioners and small firm owners who want more clients and to increase their profits without working more hours.

Michelle is also the author of the No.1 Best-Selling Book ‘The Client Magnet Formula for Lawyers: How To Attract And Convert More Of Your Ideal Clients’

Michelle helps her law firm clients to identify exactly what they need to do, in what order, to get the clients, fee income, and profits they want, and then helps them to get those things ‘done’ so that they get fast results. She provides a blend of strategic advice, coaching, and skills training (including marketing and ‘conversion’ skills) through her ‘Profitable Practice’ programme for small law firms.