Having a content marketing strategy is crucial for all companies nowadays, but for some sectors, knowing what content to publish can be more of a challenge. Law firm marketing can be especially challenging because content about legal issues is often thought to be more specialised.
However, law firm marketing content can be as accessible and digestible as other content, as long as it is presented in the right way. That’s why choosing the right type of content is crucial for a law firm’s content marketing strategy.
How do you write content for a law firm?
It is true that legal content can be difficult to read, so it’s important that you target your content to the right audience. Keep them in mind while you’re writing and ask yourself if someone who isn’t a legal expert would understand what you’re saying.
A great way to work you what content your audience would like is to create a persona. A persona is a representation of your ideal client. It factors in their age, gender, lifestyle, interests and many other things. Having a persona can help keep your content focused and ensure it is relevant to your audience.
You should also bear in mind how your content will look on a screen, both for mobile and desktop. Using shorter paragraphs and sentences can help readers digest the content more easily, so they’re less likely to close the tab.
Your content should answer questions your audience has accurately, with relevant statistics from reliable sources. Legal content also needs to answer your audience’s questions and give them something to act on to solve a problem. That might be through calls-to-action (CTA) in the content or a step-by-step solution they can do themselves.
Your content should also be edited and proofread. This ensures that there are no typos, spelling mistakes or grammatical errors and that your content is consistent with your brand’s voice and accessible to your target audience.
What is considered marketing content?
There are lots of different types of content you can publish, and it’s important to find a type that your audience will engage with. You can find this out by doing a few surveys and asking them what kind of content they want to see – blog posts, videos, eBooks or maybe something else entirely.
You can then tailor your content marketing strategy to your audience’s questions, presented to them in their preferred format. This will make your law firm’s marketing content more successful and ensure you’re addressing your audience at all times.
Blogs
Having a blog on your website is a great way to answer your audience’s questions. Blogs help show your expertise on your subject, which means that blog posts are a great way to build backlinks to your site. You can also contribute your blogs as guest posts to other websites to help increase your brand awareness and reach, as well as building more links to your site.
The important thing when it comes to blog posts is to have a schedule and a plan of content ideas. You can find this out by doing keyword research using tools like Google Keyword Planner or Semrush and looking for longer keywords with a lower search volume and competition. You’ll then be answering the questions your audience has with authority and expertise, increasing the trust readers have in you as you answer their questions.
You’ll also need to consider the proper structure of a blog post, with an attention-grabbing title, an opening paragraph and your main content paragraphs, separated by subheadings. A good blog post should also have a conclusion or summary paragraph that rounds up the text for the reader, and at least one call-to-action (CTA) to let the reader know what you want them to do once they’ve finished reading the article.
Landing pages
The pages on your website still count as content in terms of content marketing, but you have to remember who will be looking at them and write the text with those people in mind. These pages are important for users at the bottom of the conversion funnel who have gained trust in you from the other content you have produced, as well as reviews, recommendations, ads and any other ways your users find your services.
This means that these pages are where you convince your potential clients why your services are the ones they should be using. You want to include persuasive text and compelling CTAs to convince them to contact you and become your clients.
Videos
More and more internet users are interested in watching videos when researching the answers to their questions. This means that having videos on your site, with transcriptions and explanations for the users who can’t watch the video, is a great way to promote engagement, increase brand awareness and audience reach.
Infographics
A picture is worth a thousand words, and an infographic is a great way to share information about a topic that might seem difficult to make interesting in a blog post. They’re also really easy to share, so if you have a really well-made and thought-out infographic, you might find that you gain a lot of backlinks from it because so many people find it useful.
Infographics can also help illustrate points in blog posts, especially when there’s a lot of data, or you can share them on social media to create awareness of a particular point or set of data. This means you can use them in multiple ways to illustrate your points across various types of content. This makes them an extremely valuable type of content, with a great deal of versatility and a number of different applications.
Interviews
Interviews with other sites or interviewing individuals in the legal sector can provide you with valuable content and opportunities to present a number of different opinions on the same idea. This shows that not only are you an expert in the legal field but that you can engage with others and that you keep up to date with the latest changes. This will help users to trust you more, which is essential to them converting and becoming clients.
Podcasts
Just as many people like to watch videos now, more and more people are enjoying listening to podcasts as they run, commute or do chores. Producing a podcast that answers your audience’s questions is a great way to increase your brand awareness and demonstrate your expertise to your audience.
eBooks
eBooks are well presented in-depth resources about a particular aspect of a subject. They are also great lead magnets, as you can have them as resources users can download if they sign up to your mailing list. Because they provide detailed answers to user’s questions, they’re also good opportunities to show your authority on the topic about which they’re written, and therefore to help build backlinks to your website and other articles.
Emails
Email marketing is a great way to promote some of your content as well as contact an audience that is already interested in your brand and has engaged with them. While you may not be expanding your audience with email marketing, you can focus on keeping your current audience engaged, tailoring the emails to suit their wants and needs.
Email marketing is also a good way to continue sharing content with your current audience, as you can let them know when you publish new content. This shows that you engage with your audience and want to provide them with useful information even if they’re not actively looking for it.
Guides
How-tos and guides are a great way to give users step-by-step advice and instructions for how to solve their problems. They have to present a problem that can be solved by the reader following the instructions and advice provided in the article, and explain what to do clearly enough that users can follow them without any problems.
This type of content is incredibly useful as it helps build trust in your brand as users seek to solve problems on their own, and can be embedded with various CTAs to remind users that if they need help, your firm is there to help them.
White papers
White papers help communicate your firm’s philosophy on a particular issue, as well as providing an in-depth exploration of that issue. Publishing them helps to build trust with your audience, and demonstrate your authority and expertise. White papers are also a really good way of showing the results of any surveys or studies you might have done while doing research, and linking the statistics in a narrative arc can show audiences why your philosophy is what it is.
Similarly to eBooks, white papers are another great form of lead generation, with the potential to exchange them for information about your potential clients like e-mail addresses, sectors or areas of interest.
Case studies
Case studies are extremely important for users who are interested in your services, but not sure they want to become a client. You can show people who have been in similar situations and how you helped them, giving potential clients a chance to see that not only are you an expert in terms of your content, but you can also work effectively and get the results they need.
Summary
While these are just a few examples of the types of content you can create, you can also combine them. You might make a video about a case study, interviewing people while also showing how you solved their problem, or include infographics in your blog posts. You might also decide to promote your blogs, eBooks or podcasts through email marketing as well as social media channels.
It’s important to remember that your audience will have a particular way that they want to consume your content. Experiment with these different forms and find out what works best for your firm. It might be that they prefer articles, or ebooks and white papers they can download as a pdf and read at a later time.
Author bio: Rachel Gowland works at digital marketing agency, Tillison Consulting. She’s a passionate gamer and avid reader who loves to travel, using her knowledge of foreign languages to connect with people around the world.
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