Those diving into law firm content marketing are making a sound investment, as content marketing offers many opportunities for firms to raise their profiles on Google and reach higher-quality customers. However, that doesn’t mean it’s an easy undertaking: there are plenty of roadblocks to look out for. This guide will help you learn what content marketing can do and how to use it well at your firm.
Why do law firms need content marketing?
Law firms must market themselves to see success. Content marketing is a powerful tool for just about any business, but it can be especially useful for law firms. Some of its biggest benefits include the following:
- Increases conversions overall
- Reaches more of your target audience, resulting in higher quality clients
- Boosts website rankings in search
- Builds audience trust by providing useful, relevant information
- Generates more backlinks from other websites, giving you authority
- Reaches more users on social media when you share and repost your content
That’s just the beginning of what a strong law firm content marketing strategy can do for you. When used properly, content marketing is an important tool to have in your wheelhouse, not to mention one of the most cost-effective.
Building a law firm content marketing strategy: 5 essential elements
If you want the benefits outlined above, then you’ll need to make sure you’ve got a plan that works for you.
Understand the ideal client for your firm
Before you do anything, you’ll need to understand exactly who your perfect client is, which means creating an ideal customer profile (ICP). Your ICP is essentially a template for your dream customer: someone who will most likely use your services, be satisfied with them, and return to work with you again.
To get that level of understanding, you’ll need to analyze your roster of current clients and zero in on your best customers. By pulling as many data points about them as you can, you’ll be able to get a clearer picture of your ICP.
Once your ICP is ready to go, you can use it to better target your content marketing efforts, specifically going for what you think they’d respond to the most.
Conduct extensive keyword research
Keyword research is the next step in your content journey because it’s a smart and efficient way to make sure that your ideal target audience can find the content you create. It’s also a way to make sure that you’re writing about topics your audience actually wants to read about. Content creation merely for content creation’s sake won’t get you anywhere.
By using relevant keywords to help guide and craft your content, you can keep your content marketing efforts relevant, timely, and topical. This is exactly what Ranq does for our clients as we develop their strategies.
Create the content your audience wants to see
Using your keyword research as a launchpad, you can start creating the kind of content your audience is actually looking for. There are many different ways to do this: blogs, service pages, videos, podcasts, infographics, and more. There’s no reason to limit yourself to only one type. That said, you should be paying careful attention to what types of content are best suited for a law firm and that your audience seems mostly likely to respond to.
Because of the nature of law practice, expert-created content focused on explaining legal concepts does best. Potential clients are searching for answers, and they want to feel like they’re getting them from a trusted and reputable source. It’s a great way to show off your firm’s expertise and respond to common client queries.
Optimize your website for search engines
One way to make sure the right people actually find the incredible content you create is to make sure that your entire website is optimized. Using legal SEO best practices, you can work to make sure your site climbs the rankings in Google and shows up prominently in the search results for exactly the right terms.
It’s important to remember that just because you optimized a page or an article when you created it doesn’t mean that it’ll stay optimized forever. You should be updating your site regularly to make sure you can keep your pages ranking high in the results where you need them to.
That’s another reason why it’s great to have Ranq on your side: we optimize existing content and create new, fully optimized content simultaneously.
Measure your success and continuously improve
After putting in all of that work to update, optimize, and refresh your website and its content, you need to measure it to see how well it’s working. This isn’t as simple as merely counting page views and calling it a day, so here’s a list of some of the metrics you’ll want to keep track of to accurately assess your site:
- Page views, including:
- Pages viewed per session
- Time spent on pages
- Scrolling
- Repeat visitors
- Social media engagement
- Backlinking
- Conversion rate
Keeping a close eye on these will help you understand your site’s performance, especially in terms of how it’s actually affecting your bottom line. The breadth of metrics allows you to get a fuller picture of performance so it’s easier for you to find ways to pivot, update, and achieve the success you’re looking for.
How to improve law firm website content
Being on top of your content’s improvement is a crucial part of marketing strategies for law firms because many factors can seriously impact your content’s chances for success.
Nail your content creation and distribution processes
Diving into content marketing without a real plan for who’s responsible for writing, updating, and distributing it is a recipe for disaster. You should have a clear understanding of which people on what teams are going to handle each step and how that fits into your firm’s overall budget.
It’s another great reason why Ranq makes great sense for law firms. Many firms don’t have large internal marketing teams so being able to outsource content creation and optimization to our team of experts can ultimately save you time and money.
As for distribution, you should be intimately familiar with the channels your content is best suited for between owned, shared, and paid channels. Taking the time to think critically here will save your team plenty of frustration down the road.
Conduct a website audit
A website audit is one of the best ways to make sure that your website and its content are actually serving you. The point of the audit is to answer a few important questions: are all of your site’s pages relevant, up-to-date, and search-optimized? The answer to all three should be yes.
You should also be looking to the metrics mentioned above for measuring success. If you think a page is relevant, but it’s not seeing the traffic you expected, then it’s time to reassess if the page is actually doing what you created it for. In these cases, it might be time for a real overhaul.
Check out what competitors are creating
Understanding what your competitors are doing in the world of content marketing can help you see what your site could be missing—and maybe where you might be ahead of the game. Comparing your keyword research to what kind of content your competitors have made can help you see exactly how you might want to set your pages apart.
Remember: it’s not always going to be easy to tell how your competitors’ pages are performing at first glance. They might have a fully built-out page on a topic, but that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily driving the traffic it’s meant to. Pay attention to whatever data points you can see (likes, shares, search rankings, etc.) to try and determine performance before taking any inspiration for your own work.
Improving law firm marketing with high-quality content? That’s what we do
Now that you understand just how much work is involved in making and maintaining high-quality marketing content that makes an impact, you understand just how much Ranq can help! Our team of expert writers and editors can handle everything from audits to SEO research to writing the thorough, thoughtful content your audiences want to see. There’s no reason to wait, reach out to Ranq today.