If you’re a law firm and you’re unsure about this content marketing you hear so much about, there’s no reason to panic. Content marketing consists of publishing content on various platforms. The content you publish can be blogs, social media, podcasts, videos, or anything else that allows you to connect with your potential clients. When it comes to legal content marketing, the most important point to keep in mind is that it matters. In fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing for your firm can garner about three times the number of leads you’re likely to bring in with paid searches. 

Potential Clients Appreciate a Genuine Approach

The web is full of flashy ads that very few of us actually rely upon. In fact, the average online consumer is bombarded with thousands of ads a day, and the sheer volume alone has a way of dimming their shine. It’s difficult to break through that wall of advertising noise with an ad of your own, no matter how well-produced it is. Your potential clients are looking for professional legal guidance, which means they are looking for authenticity, authority, and accessibility. While online ads certainly have their place, they can’t help you connect with potential clients in the same way that well-written, targeted, and informative content can, and this is especially true for law firms. 

You Need a Content Strategy

While you can write a blog or two, tweet a bit here and there, and convince yourself that you’ve got your firm’s content marketing under control, this scattershot approach isn’t likely to do much for your bottom line. In order to engage your prospective and current clients, build your brand, and drive your sales, you need a content marketing strategy. That’s why we’re offering this 2021 content marketing toolkit that can help you get up to speed in no time. Here are seven things to consider as you get started on your legal content marketing campaign.

One: Get to Know Inbound Content Marketing

Inbound content marketing is the fine art of sharing well-crafted content that helps you draw in a larger core audience (also known as fresh leads) – without overtly attempting to sell anyone anything. All told, it’s a balancing act. This content offers your prospective clients the information and guidance they need when they need it – during some of life’s most difficult moments. In the process, you establish their trust in your skillful legal guidance – becoming the firm they turn to when they’re in the market for legal counsel. When distilled to its primary elements, successful inbound content marketing requires all the following:

• Do the Research – Inbound marketing is all about doing the research in relation to your target audience, important subject areas, keywords, and more.
• Create Quality Content – Creating quality content, in the form of blog posts, website pages, landing pages, whitepapers, webinars, and podcasts, is key to generating leads. 
• Distribute and Promote – It’s not enough to have excellent content; you also need to distribute and promote it on your website, social media, and beyond. When you distribute, you send your content out to the appropriate channels, and when you promote, you typically put some cash behind that content, such as with ads on Facebook. 
• Convert Visitors into Actual Leads – The real magic happens when you convert your visiting readers into actual leads via well-crafted calls to action. This is the process of funneling those lookie-loos into bonafide leads for your firm.  
• Gauge Your Results – It’s no fun to do all that work and not be able to measure the return on your investment. This is where lead and conversion data come in, and there are wide-ranging metrics out there, such as lead quality, sales, and website traffic, to get you started.

Two: Know Your Target Audience

Your firm is going for a successful content marketing funnel, which is just a fancy way of saying that the goal is for your content to not only attract potential clients but also to inspire them to take specific actions – like calling your office or sending your email. Put more simply, you want your content to entice your target audience and to transform them into new clients in the process. To maximize your content marketing funnel, you need to identify your target audience and create content that addresses this audience’s client persona, which amounts to fleshing out your ideal client. Some of the issues to consider include:

• Demographics, including sex, age, location, income, and more
• Background, including employment and family info
• Goals, including work and personal goals 
• Pain points

Don’t be afraid to create a client persona for each of your practice areas, and remember that you’re not alone out there – a content marketing pro can help you make easy work of this important task.

Three: Do Your Keyword and Topic Research

You know who your ideal clients are, and now it’s time to think about what they’re looking for. It obviously makes sense to tailor your content to your target audience and their specific needs, and with some basic research skills and a bit of tenacity, you’ll be well on your way to sleuthing out those valuable keywords and topics that resonate with your select clients and to crafting a well-developed content catalog in response.

Keywords are simply the words that your potential clients are most likely to type into Google – or whatever search engine they’re using – in their quest for professional legal counsel. For example, if your firm’s focus is family law, divorce lawyer is a good bet for a keyword, and your research can help you become more expansive from here. The most important basic steps in keyword research include:

• Brainstorm and curate a list of pertinent topics and terms that relate to your firm and your client persona. 
• Employ online tools that help you identify related keywords.
• Use SEO tools to help you finetune your keyword usage

It’s important to note that you’re not writing for other attorneys – you’re writing for your ideal client – so use language that he or she understands and relates to, and ditch the legalese. 

Four: Make Your Content Worth Reading

You know the topics and keywords that are going to attract your client persona, but simply peppering on-topic content with these keywords is not going to get you over the finish line. Your prospective clients need guidance – not content that fits specific web-based criteria – which is exactly why authentic content remains king. Ultimately, you want to provide highly informative content that addresses your readers’ needs, and that bolsters your firm’s authority.  

Five: Enhance Your Domain Authority 

It sounds fancy, but domain authority simply refers to a search engine ranking score that determines how well your website is likely to rank on the result pages for said search engine. In essence, your domain authority correlates with your online reputation, and one of the best ways to protect yours is by consistently generating on-point, high-quality content. This is important for every online sector, but because legal services are included in the Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) category, it’s critical for law firms like yours. 

Six: Make Sure Your Content is Compliant with Advertising Rules

It goes without saying, but it also bears repeating – your content should comply with all relevant advertising rules. You are an experienced legal professional, so tell it like it is (no embellishment necessary). Authoritative content is honest content – that also comports with all the advertising ethics rules for legal content out there. 

Seven: Give Your Readers the Best (Not the Most)

When you focus on quality content that resonates with your ideal clients, you cover all of your bases. Don’t worry so much about word count or how many blogs you’re cranking out each month (although, again, it is a good idea to have a strategy). Fewer high-quality blog posts are going to ultimately do you more good than a glut of fluff pieces that fail to speak to your intended audience. n

Keep Your Tool Kit Well Stocked

With these tools in hand and a content marketing pro in your corner, you’ve got everything you need to effectively and efficiently manage your content marketing, and that is the name of the legal content game. 

Need Legal Content Marketing? Call Us Today

The attorney-led team at Lexicon Legal Content is committed to helping law firms and digital marketing agencies with legal clients create highly effective and visible content marketing campaigns. To connect with a legal content marketing expert, call our office today at 877-488-8123 or contact us online.