Your marketing strategy may already include T.V. spots, personal referrals, or print advertisements, but it can also include so much more. By creating a diverse range of content and then promoting it, your law firm can establish a pipeline of inbound interest and sign more clients as a result.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a type of digital marketing that utilizes the creation and sharing of content on a website. This content, made up of blogs, articles, landing pages, and more, helps attract prospective clients to your law firm's website. Through content marketing, your firm can find new clients that you may not have before.
To maximize content marketing for law firms, follow these tips:
1. Know Your Audience and Your Firm's Strengths
Before penning your first masterpiece, take a moment to envision the type of person who requires your legal aid. How old are they? What sort of questions do they want answered? How much will they know, if any, about the type of law you practice? Answering these can guide how you write so that your content speaks to the exact type of client your firm wants to attract.
Also consider what your firm brings to the table that other firms may not. Whether you’re a multi-generational practice in business for the last 150 years, or your firm is just starting out and is hungry for new clients, you offer something unique. Communicating that value is critical in an industry as competitive as this one.
Once you have established this, you can build your content strategy for your law firm.
2. Publish Content on Your Own Site and Accounts
Writing your own content establishes your staff’s knowledge to potential clients, which can make all the difference when they are still researching other firms. Unless you have an editorial team at your disposal, however, you’ll need to prioritize content on media through which your target audience is most accessible.
Posting on social media accounts, for example, can engage users not actively searching for legal help but already aware of your firm; while publishing blog posts about industry developments or legal questions in your practice area can spark the interest of those who are actively searching but who don’t follow your law firm. Regardless of medium, always keep your content up to date. Nothing deters a user faster than a company’s most recent post dating back a few years. Continuing to update old content should be incorporated into your law firm's content marketing strategy
3. Write Original Content for Other Websites
Writing content for sources beyond your own website, blog subscribers, and social media followers is an important way to reach those who are unaware of your firm but could still benefit from your services.
Start by offering to write content for law journals, blogs, and associations related to your practice area. This could mean writing content for advocacy groups in your niche, posting to your state bar association’s blog, or joining a LinkedIn group of attorneys in your industry and posting thought leadership articles there.
Many attorneys stop here, but you can reach a wider audience of potential clients by posting practice area information on legal forums and other Q&A legal resources. Not only will you have connected with an individual who is actively seeking legal help, but it creates future opportunities for internet users to learn about your law firm when they search for legal advice, as your responses may display in organic search results.
To expand your audience further, your law firm could hold free webinars about general and niche legal topics, ask to promote an article on a website outside the legal industry but still relevant to your practice areas, or set up an email referral channel to capitalize on your existing client network.
It's important to remember, however, that a wealth of general legal information is available to the savvy Google searcher; so, in lieu of broad topics, create content that highlights your expertise in your niche to appeal to the concerns of your target audience.
4. Turn Content into Marketable Materials
Writing informational content on a legal blog doesn't have to be altruistic. You are running a business, after all. Every time your content appears somewhere outside your website, it is a path for a new potential client to learn about and reach out to your firm.
An easy way to make your content more share-worthy is to add visual aids. If you have the graphic resources, create a custom infographic summing up the message of your content to appeal to those who digest information visually. At a bare minimum, select a free stock photo to serve as a header image to make your content more appealing and set it apart from a bland wall of text.
As you compose new website copy, law journal submissions, and social media posts, break out that red pen and carefully read through your preexisting web content. Is it written in a way to that encourages a reader to reach out to your firm? A few simple changes to your writing can gear your content toward conversion.
What is most important to remember about marketing your content is that you must always provide a way for readers to get in touch with your law firm. Readers reaching and fulfilling this action is your ultimate objective. Adding a call-to-action, offering a free consultation, listing a phone number, and including a link to your website can turn a diverse audience of readers into your new potential clients.
How to Get Cases in the Meantime
Implementing a content marketing strategy can help ensure a future pipeline of cases for your law firm at relatively low cost, but it takes time to build out your content library. In the interim, consider supplementing case volume with a lead generation company like eGenerationMarketing. We provide attorneys and advocates high quality Social Security disability, personal injury, workers' compensation, employment law leads. To learn more about our services, reach out to us at 617.800.0089.