It’s no secret that leveraging content should be part of your marketing strategy to generate more online traffic and leads and help your firm stand out from the crowd. But how can you make the most of it to maximise your impact? 

It’s well-recognised in the legal sector that creating great content can be a struggle. Time, expertise, resources and which topics to cover all form part of the challenge, as well as producing content to strict ethical and legal standards. Law firms spend around 2-15% of their annual revenue on marketing. The top 200 UK and US law firms spend between 2.67% - 4% on their marketing budget, but when you look at the example of Kirkland & Ellis, who earned $4.1 billion in 2019/2020, their marketing budget was around $84.5 million, which is pretty significant.

A well-spent marketing budget, regardless of the size, is better than a bigger marketing budget used poorly

Editor of Lawyer Monthly, Oliver Sullivan discusses:

“An essential tip would be to consider your company standing from a customer perspective and not your own. If you have already got a good marketing presence (such as a good website, a content strategy, Search Engine Optimisation, social media etc.), then you could class yourself more in the ‘established’ category even if you are a law firm that has only been open for a few years. But if you have none of those things and your marketing amounts to very little, even if your law firm was founded in 1862 you must class yourself as one of the new guys in the marketing world, because while others in the legal profession may know your name, it is highly likely that – without any previous marketing – your target audience will not.”

Build your content marketing strategy

One effective and smart way to make the most of your marketing budget is to commit to a content strategy that will grow your online presence, leads, and traffic.

• Valuable content that is thorough, optimised and easily accessible helps improve your search engine rankings and discoverability in the legal field - especially in areas of your expertise

• When your content starts being referenced, and the links are added on other sites (called backlinks), this builds the credibility of your content and pushes you up the search engine rankings

• The Content Marketing Institute recommends creating content that has multiple purposes. For example, if creating a blog post, use it to drive organic traffic and social shares. Add client testimonials and case studies (also known as social proof) to encourage shares across the wider network

• Experiment with different types of content, like blog posts, podcasts, infographics and videos. Passle, the leading content marketing platform for legal and professional services, showcases a TV-style video series from Kennedy’s called Claims Apprentice, creating a mix of brand, content and entertainment. Similar to the popular BBC Apprentice series, six candidates join forces and take on challenges, with one winning the title of Claims Apprentice. It’s a clever way to position people, expertise and personalities in the firm as clear choices for clients and prospects

• Let’s talk ‘remarketing’. This is where you reshare, reuse and repurpose existing content that still has plenty of life left in it. Take the time to look at what has been produced - can any of your existing valuable content be condensed into bitesized chunks and used across different mediums like social posts and banners, and videos aligned to current trending topics? Maybe existing content is highly relatable to current news and should be reshared

Law firm websites of the future

Legal marketing experts Nancy Stein, Siobhan Burns and Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle ran a masterclass at the Legal Marketing Association 2022 event called Law firm websites of the future. They recommend: 

• perform a content audit to check whether existing content positions your fee earners as experts in their legal niches and represents your brand

• create content guidelines for more consistent valuable content, and what not to produce

• make your content accessible to everyone

• change your mindset from what content type you publish to focusing on the topic - put the needs of your clients first

• structure your content as short pieces with highlighting pain points and solutions, attention-grabbing headlines, short sentences and paragraphs, include call to actions and make your content timely

• Your website is never 'done' - it should continuously deliver value by evolving to meet what your clients want

• Functionality + Technology = client experience

The four pillars of successful thought leadership

Passle specialise in high engagement for busy fee earners who need to create content with ease. Thought leadership is a great way of demonstrating your firm’s knowledge and value. Passle recommends the four pillars to help ensure your thought leadership programme is a success:

1. Author-centric publication - empower authors, give them ownership of their content and make the process as easy as possible for them

2. Clear governance - have a well organised consistent way to publish content with a clear approval process. Try and go from submission to publication in hours, not days

3. Create one, publish everywhere distribution - content without reach wastes time and money. Send out content across multiple channels to ensure it is received by your target audience when it is convenient for them.

4. Relevant feedback - show authors feedback on their content to keep them motivated and empowered. Inspire content creation and behavioural change to continue creating valuable content.

Now that we know the importance of content, how do you and your fee earners get time to do it?

By specialising with small to medium law firms that want to grow their presence, we have a unique understanding of how to help you level up and compete with larger firms. We build design-rich, super-fast JamStack websites integrated with the leading content marketing platform for professional services, Passle through an exclusive partnership.

JamStack websites easily integrate with third-party services, meaning that you can add, update, and change features without having to rebuild the back end. This is why Amazon, Nike, Tesla, Louis Vuitton, and Peloton are just some of the big international brands that have moved to JamStack. Create a unique user experience and stand out from the crowd.

We offer small and mid-sized law firms the best-in-class digital technologies so you can demonstrate to both clients and talent why you should be their first choice.

Talk with us. We offer a free "digital discovery session" to evaluate your current digital footprint, identify your needs, and give you expert advice on how to improve your online presence.

hello@indieridge.com  |  legalwebsites.indieridge.com

Sources:

https://blog.passle.net/post/102i0ru/the-law-firm-website-of-the-future-lmane2022

https://www.interlinkrecruitment.com/blog/importance-marketing-legal-sector#:~:text=Your%20content%2C%20whether%20that's%20written,access%20the%20appropriate%20legal%20advice.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/law-firm-content-marketing-plan/439834/#close

https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2021/07/how-much-should-i-spend-on-my-legal-marketing-budget/

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/articles/drive-web-traffic-social-media/

https://blog.passle.net/post/102hxo5/the-4-essential-pillars-of-successful-professional-services-content-marketing-pro

https://blog.passle.net/post/102hth1/the-future-of-content-marketing-in-professional-services