How To Get More Estate Planning Clients | Best Marketing Ideas For 2021

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Estate Planning is a subset of the law practice Wills & Estates. This practice is all about planning what happens in a deceased estate. Proper estate planning prevents family disputes or family breakdowns, making it something you should consider for your loved ones. There can also sometimes be an element of business succession planning in estate planning advice. Today’s estate planning environment is quite different with companies like Safewill forever changing the landscape of estate planning marketing strategies. Let us learn how to get estate planning clients!

Rest assured, there are still ways to combat this software behemoth and win. Let me give you a strong reason why:

This is in the footer of Safewill’s website and likely, many of their copy cat competitors.

Safewill and similar companies are usually not a law firm and cannot replace lawyer’s advice on complex estate planning issues. So take heart, your realisation of this should give you hope of coming up with an effective marketing plan, as this is a great weakness of Safewill and their imitators.

How To Create Your Estate Planning Practice Marketing Plan

An estate planning practice is usually covering the following areas:

• Wills
• Deceased Estate Administration
• Estate Litigation
• Executor and Administration Services
• Non-Contentious Probate

Every comprehensive marketing plan for estate planning must cover three sources of clients:

• Marketing
• Referrals
• Clients

Marketing is important to expand your business long term and is a serious manner. No law firm can achieve a good size without support from marketing activities. It creates consistency and scalability and is a step to end feast and famine cycles.

Referrals are an area in which you already have contacts and relationships which you could consolidate. Consider your top 3 and focus on engaging with purpose and producing more content and offer value to them on a consistent basis. Networking in the right circles is key to building referrals.

Some natural partners of estate planning law firms include:

• Financial Advisors
• Insurance Agents
• Accountants
• Funeral Services
• Medical Doctors

Client relationships are extremely important in creating warm referral opportunities. So do your work well and professionally, encourage them to refer you on (without breaking the no-commissions rule in some jurisdictions).

Your marketing plans must thus outline strategies with goals on improving and managing these sources of clients and growing your firm.

Estate Planning Practice: Understanding Your Market

To understand and address your market effectively, we recommend building Empathy Maps. These are comprehensive customer avatar sheets that will help you visualise and conceptualise your target market(s). It will help you identify how your clients think and feel in a concrete manner.

Here is a sample Empathy Map:

We will not go into how to fill an Empathy Map out, but if you wish for our consultation, please contact us.

If you have been practising for a while, you inherently know your market via firsthand experience. In this case, you will be able to identify common threads and build a vision of your ideal client.

Sales Funnels For Estate Planning Services

A sales funnel usually refers to a series of landing pages creating a “funnel”. The broader meaning of sales funnel can include offline sales funnels, but for the definition in this article, we will give an example of a successful landing page sales funnel structure.

1. Opt-In
2. Why book an appointment/place in an event
3. Thank you for the booking
4. Short Questionnaire
5. Final Thank You Page

Of course, we are not prepared to share details that are too elaborate, but we regularly develop frameworks and strategies for solid digital marketing execution and bring excellent results for our clients at a budget they can accept.

Estate Planning And Google Ads

It is very hard to justify Google Ads for a will. The Cost-Per-Click (CPC) is just not economical in most cases. Facebook is better in acquiring people who need wills. However, for deceased estate matters like probate, having specific pages that are optimised can produce real return on investment. However, there is a caveat.

If you are in the State of Western Australia, or a state with a smaller population then WA, the chances of this type of advertising working properly is in doubt. In Western Australia, there are roughly 1,000 deaths each month. It does not change much without extraneous circumstances. Whilst this might seem like a large number, the amount of people interested in things like probate only reaches a maximum of 65,000 in any given month.

This is a very small audience and many people will use the lawyer who drafted the will of the deceased to carry out their wishes. Hence, even Google Ads, which is more consistent than Facebook Ads, may not be consistently effective because of a technical or economic limitation.

Find out why you should never do Google Ads yourself here

Estate Planning And Facebook Ads

In a smaller State, Facebook Ads is key. Going after a high value matter like probate is possible, but there may not be that much consistency, as you have to rest the campaign in a start stop manner. The golden key here is wills and this is despite the major shadow cast by a competitor like Safewill.

Here is some general information about Facebook Ads.

What is the general solution to get more will drafting? There is a copywriting technique called Concentration. The objective of Concentration is to highlight competing products, then destroy them as viable choices, leaving you as the obvious choice. Exposing the weakness of Safewill and things like a will kit on Facebook Ads is part of the key to winning this war.

Plant seeds into the mind of your prospect that you are the only choice is one way to go about it. Use video and content to influence the decisions of families to use lawyers for their estate planning. Get your audience thinking of the consequences for the children involved with the matter.

Facebook Ads are an inexpensive way to build an email list and workshops can help with awareness about many estate planning issues. By growing and educating your audience, even with events, you will give them the confidence to use your services. Published articles, even if they do not hit the top ten positions on Google and have little SEO value, still have an inherent value as tools to educate your audience, usually by email.

Estate Planning And Landing Pages

Estate planning landing pages should not only be used on Facebook Ads, but can be used with Google Ads. The awareness state of a searcher on Google is different to some Facebook audiences. The most useful type of landing pages are “squeeze pages” and the assets you might want to use to attract the lead might be information about a testamentary trust, a testator’s rights to limit entitlements to estranged beneficiaries, professional and useful information that does not constitute legal advice, but are highly educational and with purpose.

Here is an example squeeze page:

Estate Planning Social Media Ideas

There now exists an excellent resource for coming up with social media ideas. Safewill, the dreaded software behemoth! Their Facebook Page is not private at all. Pay a visit to their page regularly to come up with inspiration – without copyright infringement. Their team have a wealth of ideas and to look and adapt is a free way to come up with your own inspired material. Safewill are serious players in this market and you would do well to review their content.

Estate Planning Content Marketing Ideas

Safewill is good for social media content, but how about for other content? Drawing on the ideas of Safewill’s huge advertising catalogue can also be a great source of inspiration across other platforms.

If you are planning on doing SEO, we recommend getting the input of your SEO company first. The content must serve to enlighten the audience, setting their expectations when using such services and cement yourselves as the professionals of choice when they have related concerns. Answer burning questions like what happens to inheritance when there is no will, what documents do you need in probate, why you need power of attorneys as part of estate planning, what are the first steps when there is a death in the family, etc.

It is your job to be the authority on these issues and your content must reflect this.

Conclusion

The time for the old way of marketing wills died with the conception of Safewill in Australia.

This is an existential threat to your personal position as an estate planning practice – but it could be the greatest impetus for you, that’s if you know how to use it. Because of Safewill’s constant campaigning, Australian society may be starting to see the need for wills and related services and will take ownership and responsibility to get it done!

You need to advance your career by riding on this trend in a positive manner, rather than feeling beaten in this space. It is worth marketing all estate planning services, you just have to do it right and hiring a navigator like Marketlytics can help you fast track your progress and let you see business growth sooner.

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