Free Tips and Advice to Make Your Law Firm Content Marketing Generate New Cases and Clients
Regardless of whether you are a solo practitioner or a part of a larger firm, executed effectively content marketing can directly lead to adding more clients to your book. By creating a plan that identifies and targets a specific niche clientele and engaging with them through various channels, you can make your content marketing work for you and build business. Although the key to content marketing is starting, it is also imperative that a strategy is created at the outset to avoid wasted resources and improving return. There are a few key tips law firms can ensure are implemented into their content marketing plan to increase productivity and optimize efforts.
Identify and Focus on Your Niche
Creating a content marketing strategy is in many ways like casting a fishing net. Casting a net or dropping a line into uncharted or empty waters is simply a waste of time and effort. It is critical that your law firm identifies the type of client it seeks and casts a net in their exact direction. This involves understanding where your target market primarily engages online and writing to connect with their wants and needs specifically. Focusing on meeting a specific audience’s needs will also help to position you as a thought-leader in that niche, and over time your name will be recognized and synonymous with that area of law or practice. In the legal field, it isn’t necessarily better to be a jack-of-all-trades or wear too many hats. Most clients would prefer an attorney who can provide supreme legal services in one or two concentrated areas than mediocre representation in a plethora of areas.
Build an Audience, Not Write a Blog
It is important for attorneys to remember the purpose of developing a blog and focus on the big picture and overall goal of building an audience. Engaging with members of your target audience is key and losing sight of that can lead to a loss of purpose and effect. A blog is not a self-perpetuating and maintaining marketing cool. It must be nurtured and properly managed in order to keep it running efficiently and creating results.
Like many attorneys, you probably don’t have time to scour the internet for relevant topics or come up with writable issues. A helpful way to ensure you are consistently writing, and producing content your audience cares about is to embrace the widely used tactic of newsjacking. Newsjacking involves monitoring news streams for topical issues you can write about to engage with your audience. Setting relevant Google notification alerts will ensure you don’t miss audience-worthy issues that you can use to write articles your client market would find interesting or helpful.
Remember That Content Marketing is Part of the Client Lifecycle
Maintaining realistic expectations by truly understanding how the client lifecycle works will help manage your goals and curtail your impatience. Blog writing on a consistent basis and developing an audience starts the cycle by creating visibility and thought leadership. After an audience is built your brand and your visibility online begin to build traction and credibility both in your offline community and online in search engines. From there you may be asked to speak at an event or conference based on your expertise in certain areas. Generally, most events are covered by reporters, and topical issues are covered in the newspaper and in online platforms. Prospective clients read about your expertise online or in the newspaper and are more compelled to contact your firm or remember you for future needs in a specific field.