Content marketing means material you publish online to promote your business, and it is important. Whether you choose blogs, social media posts, podcasts or videos, content marketing brings in considerably more leads for a law practice than paid search results.
For example, it has been shown that small law firms with blogs get as much as 126% more lead growth than those with no blog. Your clients aren’t interested in salesmanship – they are bombarded with thousands of ads every day. Traditional sales methods are becoming less and less effective, and content is king.
Content can show authority and inspire trust. Clients want to feel a connection with your firm before getting in touch, particularly when your service typically relates to something very personal and significant for them. But to see the true potential of content marketing for your law practice, you need a strategy.
Read on to learn more about content marketing for UK law firms. We’ll give you tools and knowledge to inspire you to start creating your own high-quality content.
Inbound content marketing
Content marketing is an art form that communicates a client-centric message without a sales pitch. Your audience has problems that need solving, and your content will tell them why yours is the firm that will do that for them. Your marketing will build authority and authenticity when done right, inspiring potential clients to choose you because you know how to help them.
Your content creation should consist of the following stages:
- Research: Gain an understanding of your target clients and the keywords and content topics that relate to them.
- Content creation: it could be blog posts, landing pages, whitepapers, podcasts, videos, webinars, webpages, whatever generates the leads you need.
- Content distribution and promo: Publish your content where it needs to be and use things like social media and your website to promote it.
- Converting traffic into leads: Those who view your content need to be captured into leads through powerful calls-to-action.
- Measuring performance: You can work out which content works best with lead and conversion data.
Construct a marketing funnel around client personas
Your aim is to bring in the right kind of clients through your content. It would help inspire them to take actions that lead to them getting in touch and completing the content marketing funnel.
The only way to succeed with a marketing funnel is to understand who it is you’re trying to bring in. Generate client personas and build your funnel around them – being specific about those personas is key. The personas are your perfect client, and you should create at least one for each service you offer to craft your targeted content.
Details to put into those personas includes:
- Key demographics like gender, age, location
- Their background, including family and work
- What their goals are, both in life and in work
- What challenges they face, and their specific pain points
Performing topic and keyword research
With your client personas created, you need to start thinking about what those people are searching for when browsing online. You should tailor your content to fit their needs, and you can achieve this through topic and keyword research.
By keyword, we mean a term that clients include in online searches when seeking a specific service. Research this by finding those terms and analysing them as the foundation of your content strategy.
- Create a list of topics relevant to your law practice and think about what clients would have to search for to find you.
- Brainstorm some keywords that relate to those topics, such as ‘divorce lawyer’ or ‘criminal defence solicitor’.
- Utilise online tools to suggest related keywords – things like KeywordTool.io are great.
- Use SEO tools like Google Keyword Planner to narrow down your list of keywords based on real metrics like high search volume and low competition.
What questions might your clients have relating to your chosen keywords? The content you create should provide answers to those questions. Avoid using legal jargon because this is unlikely to connect with clients. Remember, you are not talking to legal experts; keep it simple.
Create content that is valuable and authoritative
You have an arsenal of topics and keywords to create your content around. Your chosen content types should both offer value to your target client personas and establish your firm as an authority. You will need to experiment here, trying a wide range of content types to find what strikes a chord with your audience.
You could try the following:
- Blog posts/articles
- Videos
- Visuals like infographics and images
- Webpages
- Podcasts
- Email sequences
- Guest posts on related blogs
The role of domain authority
Domain authority (DA) is a search engine ranking metric that predicts the way a website will rank in search results. A higher (DA) score means a better ability to rank. High-quality content is a foolproof way of boosting your DA, and this is particularly important for UK law firms.
The advice given by legal services both online and offline can seriously affect a person’s wellbeing. Google, therefore, views legal practice websites with real scrutiny, meaning your content needs to be reliable and informative.
Quality is key, and this is about more than just word count or the frequency of your content posts. Say everything that needs to be said, and be sure to proofread and edit that content.
Your content should be:
- Easy to take in
- Accurate
- Actionable in its advice
- Proofread and edited to fit your brand
Distribution and promotion
Distribute your content to the appropriate channels and promote it to drive traffic to your website. Distribution and promotion are not the same – the former is the process of publishing your content on channels, and the latter involves the paid elements of the strategy like Facebook ads.
There are various options for distributing your content, so you need to understand where you can find your client personas:
- Online forums like Quora or Reddit, where you can answer questions and direct people to your content.
- Social media like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Create posts that link to your content with a little preview of the information it contains.
- Email lists to get direct access to individuals in your audience. These are fantastic for getting leads since the recipients are an earned and owned audience, but you must build a list.
- Neighbourhood groups like NextDoor and Facebook Groups where you can answer specific questions. Avoid spamming these groups, but contribute where relevant.
When it comes to promotion, remember that you are paying a financial cost to generate more views for the content you have distributed. Whether you choose social media advertising, Google Ads or anything else, make use of the platforms ad settings to target the right types of people.
Getting leads from the traffic
With content going out to your potential clients, you need to guide them down your marketing funnel. This converts them from interested people to qualified leads, and we do it through call-to-action.
- Landing pages: send people from your paid ads to a landing page that offers your content in exchange for the visitor’s content information. Google and other search engines like landing pages as they indicate relevance.
- Content upgrades: this is bonus content a visitor can access in exchange for their contact information and often includes ebooks, infographics, webinars and other valuable content.
- Page-by-page calls-to-action: every page on your website should have a call-to-action that stands out from the other content. Make the calls-to-action direct and specific, like ‘download our free checklist’ or ‘get in touch to schedule a consultation’.
Measuring performance and ROI
Once your content marketing strategy is in operation, you need to measure its performance and make changes to stay relevant. Successful content is that which generates leads for your firm.
Watch the following metrics:
- Website traffic: this should increase as you consistently post content. Google Analytics can track your traffic and give you an idea of what is working best.
- Lead quality: if you are getting lots of downloads and phone calls, you are getting qualified leads from your content. Ask leads how they found you to keep track.
- Sales: Google Analytics can track conversion rates as visitors move from created content to the relevant goal pages. You need to understand how your content is impacting your sales.
Reality check
Content marketing is not an overnight cure-all when your traffic and leads are low. You must be committed to the long game and expect to see leads coming in after around 6-9 months. Until that point, keep creating and distributing that high-quality content and show your audience that they need you.
Content marketing for UK law firms is a significant undertaking. If you get it right, it could be a game-changer for generating leads for your firm. The key is creating content with your clients in mind and remembering the tips listed in this article. That is a good basis for success with your content marketing.
If you’re ready to maximise your law firm’s content marketing, talk to the experts at Innocent Digital today.
