Marketing your legal content seems easy enough – write stellar copy and get it out there where it needs to be. There are, of course, challenges along the way. One of the primary building blocks of solid legal marketing is understanding the terminology that populates its principles and methodologies. Because even major players use terms in different ways – sometimes with newly imagined meanings – it’s important to have a nuanced understanding of the basics. Others may play fast and loose with their legal marketing terms, but once you and your team have settled on meaningful definitions that work for you, you’ll be far better prepared to make your mark in legal marketing.

One: Audience

We all know what an audience is, but understanding your audience and directly targeting this group with your content marketing is a more complicated matter. Your prime audience amounts to those people who need specific legal guidance or information and who are motivated to find a legal resolution to the conflict at hand.

Two: Content Marketing – as Art (and Science)

According to DICTIONARY.COM, content marketing attempts to attract potential customers, but instead of relying upon traditional advertising practices, it proffers information that the target audience mentioned above may find helpful. While this definition is all well and good, there’s more to the story. Content marketing is less of a marketing strategy and more of an art. The goal is to apply your unique marketing magic to your body of content, including:

• Written pieces
• Photos and videos
• Social media offerings

And in so doing, you’re attempting to extend your content’s reach, staying power, and overall effectiveness. It’s a lot, but that’s what legal marketing professionals are for.

Three: Content

Content remains king, and the thing about your content is that it has to be written and polished. You want to connect with your audience, which means that slapping words into a doc isn’t going to cut it. You are obviously going for pieces that are timely, relevant, and compelling, which includes paying attention to all the following:

• Writing style
• Tone
• Voice

Keeping your target audience in mind is paramount, but don’t be afraid to explore your firm’s inner voice and use it to express your unique brand.

Four: Content Creation

Writing mechanics are critical to polishing your content and should not be ignored. Consider the following:

• Copyediting – Once you have copy in hand, it’s time to copy edit, which amounts to reviewing the content for any missteps in terms of style, grammar, punctuation, and/or overall readability.
• Proofreading – Proofreading is all about giving the writing another peek and ensuring that the piece is ready for the presses. This is where any minor typos, misspellings, or grammatical snafus that have made it this far need to be caught.
• Fact-Checking – When your content is legal, facts matter, which makes fact-checking essential. Make it your policy to never skimp when it comes to double-checking the accuracy of your content (and the veracity of its sources).

Five: Call to Action

A call to action (CTA) refers to an element of your content that underscores the reader response you are going for. And if you work in legal, your content requires a specific type of call to action – contacting your firm for the professional legal counsel your audience is looking for. Calls to action are critical, and those CTAs that shine are not only clear, concise, and inviting but also pop.

Six: Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about honing a strategic path forward toward achieving your highest rank on the search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher you climb, the better positioned your content is to garner clicks, which is the bottom line when it comes to legal content marketing.

Seven: Keywords

Your keywords describe your content (in a nutshell), and they are a key component of your SEO. The keywords you mine and employ should be based on the terms that the people who populate your target audience are likely to use. When well-considered, keywords are an asset that help keep your legal content marketing vibrant.

Eight: Sales

Your legal content marketing is intended to promote business, and this boils down to sales. Your sales break down into the following fundamental categories:

• Consumers – Very generally, consumers represent your intended audience.
• Customers – Customers are those consumers who’ve already availed themselves of your legal services in some capacity.
• Conversion – Conversion refers to customer-generated actions that your firm deems meaningful. Contacting or calling you to schedule a consultation is a prime example.
• Ideal Customer Profile – You have ideal customers, which means you should also have an ideal customer profile (ICP) that identifies those potential customers who perfectly match your vision of a dream client.
• Sales Funnel – Your sales funnel defines your target audience’s decision-making journey from the moment they dip their toes in your market to the time they pull the trigger and hire an attorney. Your sales funnel is the pathway from potential consumers to conversions, which makes it a big deal.

Nine: Metrics

Metrics refer to those workaday measurements that quantify specific value adds your firm offers. Examples include:

• The number of likes your social media posts receive
• The number of page views your website receives

Ten: Measurements

In the end, you need a verifiable means of assessing how well your content marketing is doing – so you can fine-tune it along the way – and some of the most credible tools of measurement include:

• A/B Testing – A/B testing is a means of testing one piece of content against another – in a randomized experiment approach. The upshot is a glimpse into which approach, A or B, is better suited to your marketing goals.
• Return on Investment – Return on investment (ROI) is a measurement of how hard your marketing dollars are working for you. When you know your ROI for specific content marketing campaigns, for example, you’ll have a better feel for where and how you should be investing.
• Analytics – Analytics, unsurprisingly, analyze metrics data to provide you with readings on your ROI in relation to the content-marketing tools you employ.

Call Us Today for Help with Your Legal Content Marketing

If you need content for your law firm’s content, you have come to the right place. Call or contact us today to discuss your needs with a legal content marketing expert.