What are the best questions in an ASK campaign to make sure I get helpful information?
What is an ASK Campaign?
In case you’re not familiar with what an ASK campaign is, you’re basically asking people what they want. The idea is that the easiest way to market anything to anyone is just to figure out exactly what they want and then sell them that. And the same is true for legal services.
As A Lawyer, You’re Selling Emotion
And I say this all the time: As a lawyer, your business is law but you’re selling emotion. You’re selling the peace of mind that comes with the resolution of their case. You’re selling the benefit because nobody wants to hire a lawyer. No offense, but nobody wants to hire a lawyer. No one wants to go to trial and no one wants to sue anybody.
What they want is the desired result and the lawyer is the means to get them there. So, a lot of times people will advertise, for example, file for bankruptcy for $249 or whatever.
People Don’t Really Want Bankruptcy
But bankruptcy is not what they want. What they want is to eliminate their debt. They want to buy a house in five years or they want to fix their credit or they want to be able to pay their bills. Or they want to consolidate everything into a payment that they can actually afford or they want the bill collectors to stop calling.
People Don’t Really Want Divorce
With a divorce, maybe they want freedom, maybe they want to make sure they have more time with their spouse maybe they want to make sure that they’re financially taken care of. The divorce itself is not the thing that they want. There’s something else on the other side of whatever the service is that you provide.
What I Do
If you can identify what it is that they want, what their desires are, then it’s a lot easier to sell them stuff. So, I don’t tell lawyers, “Hey I’m going to get your website to number one on Google.” What I do is I say “Hey I’m going to help you get more clients so you’re going to make more money.” Because that’s what they ultimately want.
How To Do An ASK Campaign
So, one of the ways you can figure out what it is that they want is by doing an ASK campaign. An ASK campaign is where you ask them specific questions.
I actually have a copy of my book here. If you don’t have a copy of my book go to freebookforlawyers.com and you can grab it.
But, in here I have the ASK campaign completely laid out, with all the questions. So you’re going to ask them a series of questions, you’re going to try to identify what they want and you’re going to try to identify their fears.
How I Got Started With ASK Campaigns
So, for example, I always start off with “Do you want to learn more about something?” So, let me put this in context. Basically, before I started, about a year ago, I did a thing where I told lawyers I was going to create some content about marketing a law firm and I wanted to ask some questions to make sure that I wasn’t actually leaving anything out.
I want to make sure the resources were as complete as possible, so what I did is, I asked anybody that was interested in receiving a free copy of this training if they wouldn’t mind answering a few questions for me and you can do this with your clients too.
How To Get Started With An ASK Campaign
So, what you can do is you can contact some current clients and past clients. They need to be your ideal clients. Don’t ask your business partner, don’t ask your law firm partner or your spouse or whatever because they’re not your ideal clients. You have to ask your ideal clients.
So, you reach out to them and say, “Hey listen, I’m creating some free resources and I want to make sure that I don’t miss anything. So, would you mind answering a few questions?
“Because I want to basically create this content so that people that are in the same situation you were in before you hired us have some resources and can get some answers. And I want to make sure that these resources are as complete as possible so I want to make sure I don’t miss anything.”
The First Question
So, the first thing I always ask is, “Are you interested in learning more about whatever?” So, for example, if I’m creating something for lawyers about social media, I always ask them are you interested in learning more about social media?
If they’re not interested in that then I don’t even care about their answers because they’re not interested. They’re not my ideal clients. Now, it seems like a very basic thing but I would ask them and you definitely want to ask something like that.
The Next Questions
The next question, which I’m quoting from my book here is, “What is your number one question about whatever?” So, for example, “What was your number one question about divorce?” “What was your number one question about DUI?” “What was your number one question about your injury case?”
The next question is “What was your main goal?” So, I’d ask for example, “What was your main goal regarding your personal injury case or your divorce or your bankruptcy or your real estate deal?” or whatever it is.
And then you ask “What was the number one thing that you want to learn about this thing or what was the number one thing that you wanted to know about this thing?” So, it wasn’t everyone thinking you wanted to learn about divorce or bankruptcy.
Another Key Question
Now, you also want to ask, “What is the number one thing about whatever that you want to avoid at all cost?” And, this is really important, so be sure to ask what’s the number one thing about bankruptcy that you want to avoid at all costs or the number one thing with your DUI that you want to avoid at all cost.
What I Learned
And what you’re going to learn is what they want and what they don’t want. By doing this for myself I learned that all lawyers want more clients, which is pretty obvious, but even though I thought I knew the answer, I still made sure to ask.
And the three biggest fears, the three biggest things that lawyers wanted to avoid is they wanted to avoid losing time and money, and they wanted to avoid getting screwed by a marketing company.
So that’s why pretty much everything I do, even the cover, even my book is called How to get more law firm clients without losing time and money or getting screwed by a marketing company.
What You Can Do
So what you can do is this: You take the answers of your ask campaign and you figure out what do most people want and what’s the thing that most of them want to avoid?
And then I would create what’s called a how-to without statement. So, you say, how to get more law firm clients without losing time, money or getting screwed by a marketing company. It’s pretty simple. And then once you do that, then you can take that content and use it in all of your marketing.
So if you’re a bankruptcy attorney, instead of How to file for bankruptcy you can say, How to eliminate all of your debt and get the bill collectors to stop calling you without losing your house.
Or if you’re a DUI attorney, instead of How to continue driving for DUI clients, you can say, How to continue driving to work even after a DUI to make sure that you don’t lose your job so you don’t lose your house.
That’s basically what you do. You figure out how do they get what they want while avoiding what they’re afraid of and it’s like running downhill from there. It’s so easy when you do that. It’s all about the messaging.
