Let’s discuss content marketing for law firms. What is content marketing, and why should a law firm invest in content marketing in the first place?
In today’s highly competitive digital environment, firms are always seeking creative ways to capture attention. Content marketing offers a unique opportunity for businesses to announce themselves to a broader audience. So, the question is, what is your law firm doing to gain online visibility?
Anything you produce that people watch, read, or listen to is content. These include blog posts, videos, podcasts, and even infographics. You can use content marketing to capture attention and create massive brand awareness. You can also rank high in search engine result pages and generate more traffic with the right content marketing strategy.
Here, we will share information on content marketing and how your law firm can benefit from it. But if you need urgent content marketing help, you can ask the Law Firm SEO Expert for professional assistance.
Explaining The Meaning of Content Marketing For Law Firms
Content marketing involves the creation of content that appeals to your target audience to stir up their interest in your law firm.
Here is an infographic for Micklin Law Group. The content is on the topic “10 things accountants should know about divorce.” The target audience includes people/accountants considering or who are in the process of filing for a divorce.
Any prospect in this category that lands on this infographic and finds it helpful, which is the case, will consider the law firm as an expert in divorce cases. They may contact the law firm immediately or do so in the future should they decide to proceed with their divorce.
Another case study of how content marketing can bring online success to your law firm is the infographics for BB&G (Briskman+Briskman+Greenberg). You can check out the infographic on the personal injury law firm’s website. The content details what clients should expect from their personal injury cases.
A prospect with a personal injury looking for legal advice or representation and stumbles on such informative infographics will develop an interest in the law firm. The content can also build prospects’ confidence in the law firm and convince them to assign their cases to the firm.
You can use content marketing to create awareness, generate leads, and showcase your expertise in your practice area. Detailed and professionally-crafted content can easily convince prospects that you are the right person for their cases. It can easily convert leads to paying clients.
Is Content Marketing Important For Lawyers? 7 Authentic Benefits
When people need legal representation, where are they most likely to go in search of a lawyer? They’ll go online in search of a law firm or lawyer.
A study shows that 68% of all online experiences begin with a search engine. And what search engine is the first port of call for potential legal clients? It’s the Google search engine.
Your law practice doesn’t matter. Just get yourself a website and invest in content marketing to create awareness. With content marketing, you can rank your law firm’s website high in search engine result pages and make it a breeze for potential clients to find you.
You can rank high in local search with an effective content marketing strategy. In other words, potential clients in your location will easily find you. And you’ll become popular in your locality.
A study by Hubspot reveals that 70% of marketers are investing heavily in content marketing. That is because they understand the benefits their businesses can derive from content marketing.
In another study by Statista, 87% of marketers agree that content marketing enables them to achieve their awareness goal.
Here is an example of how LegalEagle uses video content marketing to attract clients to law firms. The platform has 3.2 million US subscribers and has produced 596+ videos. The platform is hosted by Devon, an experienced litigator who explains how the legal system in the United States of America works.
You can check out their YouTube page to learn how they have used video content to create awareness, attract millions of Americans, and generate massive revenue. You, too, can use a similar strategy to grow your business.
You won’t see results overnight. But if you continue to create valuable content and be consistent, you’ll achieve your marketing goals.
Having a website is crucial for your law firm’s content marketing strategies. 87% of law firms report that they have a website.
You can see LegalEagle. On their YouTube channel, you’ll find a link to their website. Once you click on the link, you’ll land on the professional-looking website below.
Other benefits Of content marketing For attorneys
1: You’ll become an industry authority:
Content marketing can make you an industry leader. When you produce high-quality and valuable content that helps users solve their problems or answer questions, they’ll start seeing you as an authority in your practice area.
You’ll also become the go-to place for legal information for prospects, who may convert to paying clients when they need legal services. Building your online reputation will benefit your law firm in the short and long term.
When prospects find your content, read it, and consider it useful; you’ll be at the top of their minds. When it’s time for them to hire a lawyer, you’ll be the first they’ll approach.
2: Boost your SEO effort:
You can boost your search engine optimization efforts and improve your website ranking and organic traffic via content marketing. How? Firstly, when you produce high-quality content, you can get niche-relevant backlinks from high-authority websites.
Journalists, bloggers, and writers seeking authority information to reference may consider your content because of its quality. You can get hundreds or thousands of backlinks naturally. You won’t even have to stress about it.
On the other hand, search engines like Google reward high-quality and valuable content. Google’s search engine will rank your content high on the search results page so that more people can benefit from your knowledge in legal matters.
3: Attract new clients:
A great way to attract new clients to your law firm is content marketing. When you produce high-quality content and share it on social media, your followers who have developed unwavering confidence in your work will consume and share your content with their followers and friends.
And the cycle continues. In no time, you’ll start getting calls and visits from prospects who appreciate your content, have done their homework, and discovered that you’re the right person for their cases.
Your law firm will benefit so much from content marketing. So, consider deploying an effective content marketing plan to achieve your desired goal.
Other benefits of legal content marketing:
4: With downloadables and lead magnets, you can acquire new leads
5: You can use webinars and videos to reach more potential clients
6: Content marketing can help you reach a wider audience via social media posts
7: You can build a robust email list for further campaigns
How To Perform Content Marketing For Law Firms
To do law firm content marketing successfully, follow the steps below.
1: Identify your target audience:
Who are your proposed clients? What are their age group and the type of cases you expect them to contact you for? Find the answer to this question, and you’ll better understand your target audience.
If your target audience is anyone with a legal issue that needs legal advice, then you don’t know who your target audience is.
The best way to create content that targets your audience is to have sound knowledge of your target market or audience. That way, you can tailor your content marketing strategy to attract your audience and implant your law firm in their minds.
There are several ways to go about target market research.
The first is to use Google Forms to conduct a survey. Find out what your proposed target market would want from a law firm or would like to know. Here are some possible questions you can ask in your survey.
- Mention the most vital legal issues you have faced in the past.
- Mention the legal issue(s) you are currently facing.
- What resources have helped you the most in this trying time?
- Did you observe any issues about the resources that should be addressed?
- What traits and qualities would attract you to an attorney or law firm?
- What legal topics do you need to learn more about, or are you keen to learn more about?
Use the survey to learn about your target market. You can come up with more creative questions to get what you want from your target market.
The second way to conduct target market research or learn about your target audience is to ask your sales or paralegal team to note down every question potential clients ask. If they do, in no time, you’ll have enough questions that will give you more clues about your target market.
Social media queries are the third way to learn about your target market or audience. Look for questions your potential target audiences are asking and responses you or others provide.
The fourth way to learn about your target audience is to use social media platforms like Quora, local forums, and even Reddit. Search for questions you can answer satisfactorily.
You can see the question that a prospect asked on Quora. The person could be someone contemplating divorce and genuinely need answers to avoid making a mistake. A law firm that provides the most satisfactory answer will not only earn the prospect’s trust. Other potential divorce clients who stumble on the response on Quora may develop an interest in your legal services.
The response someone gave to the question on Quora has gotten 4.9K Upvotes and responses from other potential clients in the comment section.
2: Conduct in-depth keyword research:
Keyword research is essential. While a survey will give you insights into questions your potential clients may ask or are asking, SEO keyword research gives you insight into the viability of a keyword for the legal industry.
In other words, keyword research exposes the search terms/keywords your target audience is using, the search volume, and the difficulty of ranking for the said keywords.
You can use tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to conduct keyword research. But keep in mind that there are free and paid keyword research tools.
Keyword research and use advice:
- Create a long list of keywords during your research to determine the best one to target.
- Target relevant keywords such as long-tail keywords
- Avoid keyword stuffing and cannibalization
- Place keywords in the meta title and meta description, including the body of your content, strategically
3: Keep an eye on your competitors:
Spying on competitors is allowed in content marketing. When you spy, you’ll know what your competitors are doing differently and create superior content that can outrank theirs.
You can spy, but don’t copy their work to avoid plagiarism. Instead, consider spying to get creative ideas and create a higher version of their already existing content.
How to spy or learn about your competitors:
Use essential SEO tools:
The essence of using such tools is learning about the keywords your competitors use to add to your content marketing plan.
Visit your competitors’ blog:
Check your competitors’ blog posts. And pay attention to the headlines and keywords they are targeting. Again, don’t copy. Take whatever information you think is relevant to your content marketing strategy, and walk away.
Check your competitors’ web pages:
To outrank your competitors, you must do what they aren’t doing. An example is to check their web pages. Do they have pages you don’t have? If yes, then create them and even include extra pages.
4: Set your content marketing objectives:
What are your objectives? State them clearly. You can’t have a content marketing plan without an objective or goal you wish to achieve. So, what do you plan to accomplish with content marketing?
Do you want to build your online reputation, attract more clients, or establish yourself as an authority in your legal profession? Make it clear before you start producing content.
Knowing your goals will help you create the right content and even understand the ideal distribution channel to adopt.
5: Decide on the type of content to create:
You can achieve marketing success with different types of content. These include blog posts, videos, podcasts, social media posts, infographics, and e-books. However, two things should guide your choice of content. These include your target audience preferences and your marketing objectives.
6: Start creating your content:
Now that you know the type of content to create to achieve your marketing goal, start making your own content. Your content must be superior to what your competitors have. Give your target audience something they have never tasted. That way, you can grow their appetite and make them want to visit you whenever they need answers to a burning legal question.
Make your content simple, information-packed, and easy to read. Use images to captivate and keep readers hooked to your content. Note that the longer users stay on your content on your website, the higher your dwell time.
A Handy Tip: Dwell time is the length of time a user from the search engine spends on your page before returning to the search engine results page.
A higher dwell time is good for your SEO efforts. It means people enjoy your content, which sends a good signal to search engines (Google) about your content.
7: Share your content:
It is essential to share your content to reach a wider audience. You can share your content via different channels, such as on your website, social media, and email newsletters.
Distributing your content via different channels will increase your probability of being found by potential customers. So, distribute your content to as many channels as possible.
8: Monitor, analyze and optimize content:
Monitor and analyze your content occasionally. Please do not abandon your content when you share it on different channels. Monitor to see the content that is performing well and the content that is underperforming.
That way, you’ll know the content strategy yielding results so that you can focus more on the strategy for maximum results. Additionally, you can optimize your content to achieve your marketing goal.
Conclusion
Content marketing for law firms is a marketing strategy every lawyer must adopt. It can help your law firm website attract and convince prospects that you are the ideal legal professional for them.
Compelling content marketing can help you reach a wider audience and clearly understand your audience. It can increase your website ranking, organic traffic, and online reputation.
Content marketing can take any shape or form. It can be infographics, well-optimized blog posts, videos, podcasts, and e-books. Find what works for your target audience and focus on growing your online presence.
You need an effective plan for your content marketing strategy to yield the results you seek. This post details how to create and distribute your content to your target audience.
Julhas Alam is a seasoned SEO strategist and the leading voice behind the insightful articles at LawFirmSEOExpert.com. With a rich background in digital marketing and a specialized focus on the legal sector, Julhas combines industry expertise with a deep understanding of SEO to deliver actionable insights and strategies tailored for law firms. Holding a passion for data-driven results and cutting-edge SEO techniques, Julhas has been instrumental in boosting online visibility and client acquisition for numerous law practices. When not dissecting search engine algorithms or exploring the latest digital marketing trends, Julhas enjoys reading success stories of other businesses, adding a personal touch to their professional acumen.