In today’s digital-first world, being able to reach people effectively on digital and mobile channels is essential for both acquiring and retaining customers, and the legal sector is no exception.
Without an integrated plan to grow and engage with your customers digitally, you could face losing customers (and vast amounts of revenue) to competitors who are using their digital channels more effectively than you.
If you currently have no digital strategy in place, it’s worth considering that there are huge benefits to investing in digital marketing; it typically costs less than traditional types of marketing and advertising, it’s easier to measure performance and it offers more detailed targeting options to get the message in front of the people who are more likely to need your services.
For example, if you specialise in divorce, rather than targeting everyone in Wales (which could cost a small fortune), you might choose to target a location within so many miles of your head office and only show the ad to people who have listed themselves as married on social media, or for people who have searched something similar on their search engine. This is all done through the general public leaving digital breadcrumbs for you to make the most of.
Here are a few methods to consider investing in if you haven’t already.
Don’t worry if you feel overwhelmed, agencies like Spindogs are here to help with all your digital needs from websites and branding to digital marketing and design!
Paid Online Advertising
Paid online advertising is the method of using digital channels to pay for traffic and, ultimately, leads.
This relies on you undertaking research to find out where your target audience can be found online. What are they searching for on Google? Do they use social media? Once you have this information, you can pay the specific channel to be put in front of them at optimum times.
Two of the most effective types of online advertising are pay-per-click and social media ads, a little more on them below!
Google Ads (Pay-per-click)
There are different types of PPC available, but the most common is the paid search advert. This allows you to bid on certain keywords to become more visible and you pay a specific amount every time someone clicks on your ad.
Other types of PPC include display ads, retargeting, Gmail ads and Google shopping ads.
Social Media Advertising
If you’re going down the paid route on social media, a good place to start would be looking at which platforms you’re already using and are performing well organically.
You may have allocated time to someone internally to run your social media, replying to Twitter comments and posting relevant articles (from Legal News Wales…) on Facebook, but incorporating paid ads on social media can be very time demanding, which is why a lot of firms choose to outsource.
If you’re going to put real budget behind it, everything needs to be spot on, from the visuals to the copy! You’ll also need to be analysing the reports from each campaign to ensure your budget is being invested in the right places!
Content Marketing
You don’t always have to pay! Any media that you create counts as content and a lot of these things are free. Posts on any of your digital channels count as content and if you have internal resource these posts will be at no direct cost to your business.
The organic side (a standard post without budget behind it) of social media can be a really effective way of implementing this, along with website content and blogs to get you ranking better on search engines, you could even consider recording a podcast, get creative!
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is the strategy of getting your website’s content to rank higher in search engines. It can take time to see the results of improved SEO activities, but high-quality optimised content that meets the requirements of Google’s crawlers will eventually increase the traffic coming to your site.
Email Marketing
Email marketing remains one of the most effective digital marketing channels. The ability to reach all of your databases (or only those whom the content is relevant to) with highly personalised content remains one of the highest converting digital marketing tools for many businesses.
Handy functions like automated messages can also save you and your business a lot of time!
And remember…
It’s important to keep in mind that if you’re putting your time (and budget) into any of the methods mentioned above, your website needs to be primed and ready for conversion for anyone who lands on it.
Ensure that all of your digital marketing efforts direct people to specific landing pages designed to convert that specific audience and that the page encourages them to complete the one action you would like them to take – the call to action.
Outsourcing your marketing services could take the pressure off your team and will give you access to a host of specialists in the specific areas we’ve outlined above.
We’ve had lots of calls this week asking to support firms who have no marketing teams who are finding that their marketing team is pressure during the Covid-19 outbreak – or who have marketing personnel that are on sick leave or can’t work due to childcare responsibilities.
When you work with an agency they should become an extension of your team and use their expertise to help your business succeed, remember they work in digital day-in, day-out!
While Spindogs may be working from home, we’re still fully operational so if you’d like to get in touch, contact one of our experts by clicking here.