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16 viewsLooking for authentic legal consultation is not a daily affair like buying groceries.
People seek legal assistance from lawyers only when they face some serious issues in life.
And even a decade ago, people couldn’t think of anything other than physically visiting a law firm or a lawyer’s chamber to get proper legal advice.
However, as the pandemic taught us about keeping social distance, it also compelled many people to look for online legal consultation services during that phase.
The law firms also got concerned about not getting physical clients and realized the need for content marketing for lawyers.
This article shall discuss the necessity of content marketing for law firms and how they can plan an effective strategy for the same.
But before that,
What Is Content Marketing For Law Firms?
Content marketing for law firms is the strategy of creating and offering foundational and informational online content related to law in various forms to drive more traffic, find potential leads, and ultimately convert those leads into clients.
Content marketing for law firms does not mean creating only blog posts.
Instead, you must try various forms of content like videos, podcasts, social media pages, interviews, landing pages, etc., and see which format yields the best results.
Why Is Law Firm Content Marketing Important?
People are getting busier in their lives, and many of them also do not feel comfortable discussing complex issues of their lives face to face with a lawyer, especially one who is taking legal consultation for the first time.
Hence, they try to find a solution online and hit Google.
Planning effective strategies for content marketing for law firms allows them to touch the vast client base who are potentially looking for online legal advice and gain the following benefits,
- Driving organic traffic to your website.
- Reaching a broad audience using social media, videos, and webinars.
- Building website authority.
- Link-building.
- Creating an email database to run campaigns successfully.
- Acquiring more clients via lead magnets.
- Getting local clients by creating localized content.
For example, the reputed US-based law firm Rudd Law Offices designed its content marketing strategy by offering well-researched content on various legal areas.
How To Build An Effective Law Firm Content Marketing Strategy?
This section of the article shall provide you with expert tips on how to plan an effective strategy for content marketing for law firms,
Optimizing Content To Gain Long-Term Organic Traffic
Most law firms lack marketing expertise and face consequences for the same.
To start off, it will be beneficial to start content marketing for law firms by optimizing content targeting Google searches.
Optimizing your content for the most widely used search engine will help you earn authority and drive long-term organic traffic to your website.
However, you must ensure to offer only authentic content with correct information. Most lawyers are not writers, and it is safer to hire a subject matter expert or external copywriters to create content for your law firm.
You must also offer content in various formats to target different audiences.
Not all potential clients will be avid readers and engage with your blog posts. Many of them may be interested in podcasts or spend a lot of time on YouTube and social media to gather information.
For example, the YouTube channel of the US-based law firm ‘Chisholm Chisholm & Kilpatrick Ltd.’ explains three ways on how the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) can reduce veterans’ disability benefits.
Their YouTube channel is quite successful, having more than 80K subscribers.
Create Content To Satisfy Clients’ Search Intents
The main aim of Google’s search engine is to offer the most relevant content that satisfies users’ search intents.
Hence, if you want your law content to rank higher, you must curate your content around the topics searchers seek.
But how will you know what kind of legal advice your prospective clients seek?
The easiest way to find that is to use Google’s autocomplete feature.
Suppose your law firm offers legal advice on divorce lawsuits.
If you type the search term’ divorce lawsuits’, you can get several topic ideas from Google’s autocomplete suggestion for that term.
The ‘People also ask’ section can be equally effective in providing trending topic guidance.
For example, the ‘People also ask’ section for the above search term yields the above results. Creating content on those topics can be effective for content marketing for law firms.
However, the following are a few more FAQ sources that can provide you with unique topic ideas as well.
Sales Calls: Noting down the questions frequently asked by your potential clients during sales calls can be pretty effective.
Social Media Inquiries: Keeping a record of inquiries your law firm receives via social media can be quite helpful.
Online Forums like Reddit and Quora: Following discussions on topics related to your practice area on online platforms like Reddit and Quora can provide you with unique ideas.
Perform Keyword Research And Create Topic Clusters
Keyword research plays an essential role in any content optimization strategy, and content marketing for law firms is no exception.
You must include relevant keywords naturally within your content to rank higher.
Choosing a free keyword research tool like RankWatch to find relevant niche-specific keywords and targeting them can be quite effective for content marketing for law firms.
For example, if you enter the main keyword ‘divorce lawsuit’ in our keyword research tool, it will provide you with a list of organic and long-tail keywords related to your primary keyword.
The tool also provides search volume, cost-per-click, and keyword difficulty (competition) for each keyword.
Targeting keywords with medium search volume and competition will be ideal for content marketing for law firms, who are yet to become a veteran.
Once you know the keywords you must target through your content marketing strategy, you should then try to earn topical authority by creating topic clusters.
For example, you can create a main page on the topic ‘divorce lawsuit’ and then create content on sub-topics like ‘settlement amount for divorce,’ ‘compensation of wife in divorce,’ etc. Do not forget to interlink your main topic page with sub-topic pages.
Tell Your Success Stories
Sharing the previous cases won by a law firm with a brief before and after narrative in the form of storytelling can be an effective means of content marketing for legal firms.
However, you must be cautious while curating the story based on previous case studies. It should not reveal any sensitive information, like your client’s actual identity.
The following step-by-step formula for creating stories based on previous case studies can be quite productive for content marketing for law firms,
Decide: You need to decide who your target audience is and what action you want them to take after reading your success story. It will help you narrow down the details you must share and what CTAs to include.
Gather: Asking simple questions like who, when, where, what, how, etc., to yourself, will help you gather the content material you must share in your story.
Evaluate: You must evaluate what your target audience will be most interested in among the four central points of your story: the objective, process, outcome, and experience.
Structure: You need to structure your story by following the below steps,
- Share the outcome at the story’s beginning to help readers decide whether the story is relevant to them.
- Share distinct reasons the client chose your law firm over others for the case.
- Mention the key challenges your law firm faced while fighting the case.
- Explain how your firm overcame those challenges.
- Reiterate the final outcome and offer the key takeaways.
Write and Review: Once you finish structuring the story, write it down and review it minutely for further improvement.
For example,
The Australia-based law firm ‘Dooge George’ shared one of their case studies on a financial advantage obtained by deception.
Now, people looking for justice against similar crimes will immediately relate this story and may contact this law firm for legal assistance.
Spy On Your Competitors
It would be helpful to closely monitor what content marketing strategies are working well for your competitors.
You can successfully do that by following the below techniques,
- Monitor how your competitors appear on the search results and read their meta descriptions.
- Follow your competitors’ social media pages and monitor which type of posts drive maximum engagement.
- Subscribe to your competitors’ newsletters and blogs to learn from their content writing techniques.
- Download the e-books and guides offered by your competitors to understand their approach towards long-form content.
- Compare your content with your competitors’ content on similar topics to find out further provisions for improvement.
Create Foundational And Informational Content
Creating foundational content in attorney content marketing is essential to ensure increased online visibility.
It also boosts organic search rankings of your practice area web pages or location web pages.
On the other hand, informational content helps searchers choose the right law firm as per their exact needs.
Your informational content should not try to sell. Instead, it must provide authentic information first, show your value to readers, and offer a seamless reading experience.
For example, the website of the famous US-based legal firm ‘Carney & Marchi’ makes it easier for searchers to understand their prime services and their operating locations.
Leverage Google Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are those tiny boxes of information that appear at the top of Google’s search result pages.
They aim to quickly satisfy a user’s search intent without clicking on any search results.
If your content can rank in Google featured snippets, it can help your site rank higher in search results and attract more clicks, as they are displayed prominently at the top of the search results page.
You can find out how to optimize your content for featured snippets here.
Show Your Expertise And Authority
Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines set a very high standard for web page quality, offering content that can significantly impact the readers’ health, financial stability, safety, welfare, and well-being.
They call them ‘YMYL’ (Your Money Your Life) topics.
The law-related content falls under this category. Hence, you must ensure that your content reflects sufficient expertise and authority in line with Google’s EEAT guidelines.
You can ensure the same by following the below guidelines,
- Choose only subject matter experts when writing content.
- Always include an author’s bio in your blog post.
- Mention your authors’ credentials to substantiate them as subject matter experts.
- Provide easy-to-find contact information with a valid phone number.
- Showcase awards, testimonials, and other certifications to earn readers’ trust.
Use BLUF Structure In Your Content Effectively
Implementing the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) structure in content is another effective tool for content marketing for law firms.
This content structure offers the most crucial information at the beginning of the article and then comes the other details.
It can be compared with an inverted pyramid where the main information is at the top, and then comes other finer details as the pyramid narrows down.
Conclusion
Content marketing is an effective channel for legal firms to boost online visibility, build trustworthiness, and drive new clients.
However, it is essential to plan a clear content strategy before creating content. You must know who your target audience is and what topics will satisfy their search intents.
Then, you must hire subject matter experts to create content on those topics unless you have in-house expert writers with profound knowledge of the subject.
It would be helpful if you follow the expert tips provided in this article to make your content marketing for attorneys successful.
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