Content Marketing for Law Firms: The Guide for Success

5 benefits of content marketing for law firms

More client opportunities at a lower cost

Firms that are interested in a healthy ROI should have content marketing at the top of their priorities. When it costs over 60% less than traditional approaches, it’s a no brainer for any firm looking to maximise their marketing budget and drive results.

Google loves great content

As the saying goes, ‘content is king’, however search engine optimisation (SEO) is a critical aspect of content marketing and the most important driver of website traffic is Google. Google dominates the search engine space, owning 92% of the market.

What does this mean for law firm SEO and content marketing? Ranking at the top of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) gives firms a significant advantage to reach their target audience and drive them to their website. 33% of legal clients start their search for legal representation with an online search. There are several aspects to achieve high rankings in Google, this includes optimising your firm’s content for keywords and phrases that your audience is searching for.

Partnering with a law firm marketing agency that specialises in digital marketing and is an accredited Google Partner can help alleviate some of the pressure and help your firm get ahead quickly.

Your competitors are doing it

90% of marketers that have been using content marketing, plan to invest further into the channel. Firms that are slow to invest and implement a content marketing strategy, risk losing out on valuable online visibility via law firm SEO and relevant website traffic to convert into new clients. 80% of potential clients look for law firms online, making digital marketing, powered by content, a critical strategy for firms that want to get ahead of their competitors.

Control messaging

Content marketing for law firms is a channel for controlled dialogue between firms and their clients, prospects and key stakeholders. By creating relevant, quality content consistently firms are able to get their chosen message across and have the benefit of driving the conversation. Utilising digital experience platforms like Optimizely / Episerver DXC empowers marketers with the tools to go a step further and create online experiences that emulate the quality of service their firm offers offline.

Better conversion rates

Content marketing spans across all mediums, channels and devices. In an always-on digital era, clients expect to be able to access information and the firms that they engage with across any touchpoint that is convenient for them, at any time. Content marketing fuels organic traffic from Google, which generates up to 66% of call conversions in the legal sector.

How to create a successful content marketing strategy for law firms

Situation analysis

A great place to start with your content marketing strategy is running an analysis of your firm’s current situation and carrying out an audit to uncover how effective your marketing efforts have been over the past 6-12 months.

Reviewing and benchmarking your blog posts, social posts and other content against your top three competitors can help uncover gaps in your current content approach and opportunities for improvement.

Set objectives

Identifying what your content strategy goal might sound straightforward, but this is often when we see organisations create content that doesn’t serve a purpose and can’t be measured for success. In the earliest stages you should consider why you’re creating the strategy, what pain point does it serve? And who your audience is.

This process will help to set realistic goals that are S.M.A.R.T (specific, measurable, actionable, reasonable and time-bound). To learn more about this approach, you can speak to a content marketing strategist.

Research

Content is only powerful and valuable to the people it is aimed at. With this in mind, it’s imperative that you research the segment you’re targeting and find out more details about things like:

• Where do they hang out digitally?
• Which medium are they more likely to convert on?
• What kind of content are they searching for?

This information can be acquired through a variety of sources like surveys, Google Analytics and sophisticated website platforms like Optimizely.

Plan your content strategically

Different content is suited for different platforms. Partially due to how people engage and their expectations and also due to how the platform is structured. For example video and image based content performs better on social media platforms, as does bitesize content. This is down to the speed in which users engage on these, their purpose and often because social media is accessed via mobile devices. You wouldn’t necessarily use the same content approach for a client email as you would a tweet for example.

To ensure your firm gets the best results, it’s smart to create a content plan per channel, keeping in mind: who it’s for, why they’d be interested and what the aim is (download, click etc).

Measuring and managing your activity

Importantly, resources and measurement are essential aspects of content marketing for law firms. Having a clear plan from the start of who is responsible for delivering each task and agreed KPIs for each success factor. Monitoring your content activity using these metrics will give you a clear picture of how well it’s performing and what needs to be adjusted.

There are lots of tools that can be used to help with reporting, including:

• Google Analytics
• SEMrush
• Optimizely

How to get started with content marketing

Modern and ambitious law firms simply risk falling behind their competitors by not implementing a content marketing strategy and are missing out on high volumes of new client opportunities. But creating a content marketing strategy can be a burden and overwhelming for firms if they don’t have the existing expertise, tools and time to deliver any of the mentioned aspects in this article.

If you’d like some support with your firm’s strategy and the opportunity to leverage our digital marketing expertise at Ultimedia – contact us, we’d be happy to help you achieve your goals.

We have over 25 years of experience in partnering with enterprise-level organisations to support them in achieving their digital ambitions and getting great results.