Qamar Zaman Reports Trends Attorneys & Law Firms Need to Follow in 2017.
Author
Qamar Zaman KISSPR.com – Lawyer Marketing Expert
For law firms that have taken an interest in building an web presence using online Law Firm Marketing, it’s important to be familiar with the core rules of digital marketing.
While being ready to adapt to shifts in technology is certainly crucial, at its heart, digital marketing is about reaching out to real people. As Molly Reynolds notes in a write-up for the Huffington Post, “Digital marketers need an analytical approach and a commitment to staying current with technology to ensure results. Yet it’s also important not to lose sight of the human side.”
Still, digital marketing is as much a data-driven science as it is an art of knowing what makes people tick. And these days, it’s not enough for your law firm to know the surface and different components of digital marketing science, as it takes a deeper understanding to successfully create a comprehensive marketing strategy.
There’s a series of logical steps and rules that go into creating a winning campaign—your job is to know what these factors are. In this guide, we go over s of the most important digital marketing rules and practices to follow in 2017, which should help your law firm build a solid marketing strategy.
1. Identify Your Goals
Goal setting lays the foundation of any digital campaign, guiding your decision-making processes, especially when it comes to allocating resources to produce desired results. To put it simply, if you don’t have goals, you won’t know what metrics to track, much less how to gauge the success of your campaign.
HubSpot has a useful goal-setting framework called the SMART goal system, helping just about anyone create strategic campaign targets. SMART stands for
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Timely
As HubSpot notes, “Goals are totally useless if they’re not grounded in reality. That’s why it’s critical to set SMART goals.”
2. Identify Your Target Client
Many companies make the mistake of believing they’re marketing to a “dream” client, only to realize their efforts don’t seem to be generating any conversions.
The reason? There’s a disconnect between their dream client and who their target should be in the real world. Conversely, marketing to a large group makes your messages disjointed and less focused.
As Jessica Mehring of CrazyEgg notes, “When you write for a large group of people, the message gets watered down because it’s trying to address too many different needs. Or it misses the mark completely because it’s unfocused. It’s the equivalent of trying to hit 10 dartboards with a single dart.”
This issue is precisely why it’s imperative that your campaign is based on well-researched buyer personas. These are semi-fictional representations of your law firm’s ideal customer based on real data, market research, demographics, buyer preferences, goals, and challenges.
Buyer personas help ensure that your marketing efforts are tight and targeted, allowing you to focus your time, product development, and content assets to the right audience.
3. Create Content Assets Aligned with Goals and Personas
With your SMART goals and buyer personas, you now have a reliable framework for conceptualizing and building targeted and relevant content assets. Your content, website, and landing pages need to be optimized according to your digital campaign’s goals. Below are a few places to start:
- Personalize your content for your audience
- Optimize your website and landing pages with a “mobile first” approach
- Offer value on your landing pages (i.e. incentivize conversions through promotions and smart copy)
- Create smart calls to action (CTAs)
- Blog early and blog as often as you can without compromising content quality and relevance
4. Invest in Building Your Online Visibility
Social media marketing is easily one of the most effective ways to improve your online visibility. Although there are other options like PPC, SEO, display advertising, social media marketing is unparalleled in both speed of results and cost-to-benefit ratio.
Social media doesn’t just improve your visibility, it also shapes the kind of purchase decisions your audience makes, making it just as effective as television, sans the obscenely high cost of traditional TV ads.
According to an Ad Age report based on research by CivicScience, there is an “increasing percentage of consumers saying social media chatter influences them the most. The proliferation of portable second screens is no doubt a big factor here.”
When leveraging social media to market your law firm, remember the following points:
- Be sure to have clear objectives. Do you want your posts to generate leads, shares, or likes? Integrate this goal into each post’s CTA.
- Share content that offers value and resonates with your target audience.
- Mix it up. Post blogs, infographics, videos, live streams, curated content—any content format your audience will gravitate to.
- Social media is about interaction. Engage your audience instead of just pushing out content.
Lawyer Marketing Conclusion
Whether your law firm is new to digital attorney marketing or you feel that your existing campaign needs a clearer structure to be effective, these rules should help you create a defined framework for your marketing strategy, one that helps maximize the ROI of your marketing efforts.
Honing these tactics and applying them consistently will also position your law firm to enjoy accelerated growth, allowing you to hit your conversion and ROI goals.
If you need the help of a digital marketing consultant or agency to integrate these rules into your campaign, make sure you approach someone that understands the needs of law firms and legal professionals.
About the Author
Qamar Zaman is a Dallas based Lawyer Marketing Expert. He has worked with over 100 Top Law Firms & Achieved 60% Case Growth every year. He can be reached at 972-961-7319
Sources
Chief Visionary at One SEO Company. An Internet Entrepreneur SEO & lawyer Internet marketing professional & Starbucks Lover.
from Dallas Internet Marketing Blog
