5 Key Points of Progression

In both 2014 and in 2016, members of the team at Wildings Solicitors have joined The University of Salford in MediaCityUK for the SSMM course. For Solicitor Director, Kid Harwood, who attended SSMM in 2014, the course reaffirmed just how much of a pivotal role legal marketing would play in the development of the legal sector.

 

 

 

Getting involved with the communities in which we work is extremely important to us at Wildings. Seeing The University of Salford offering real value to businesses in the North West is something we found extremely heartening and is one of the reasons we were keen for our staff to rejoin in 2016.

Away from the SSMM course, Wildings have been involved with some great events at The University of Salford. KickFactor, launched at Creative Entrepreneur, was a Wildings Solicitors sponsored competition that took place in Media City in April 2016. The event saw young entrepreneurs from the business school competing for a one thousand pound investment in their business ventures.

 

 

Along with getting involved with some exciting initiatives at the university and sharpening our knowledge on the various aspects involved in a successful legal marketing strategy, the course inspired us to go away and explore some of the exciting tricks, channels and techniques we were introduced to.

 

Below, we have chosen 5 of the most important legal marketing messages we took away from the course.

 

5 Key Points of Legal Marketing Progression

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing has played a central role in the legal marketing strategies of Wildings Solicitors and LawBid for quite some time. However it was only after attending the SSMM course that we were able to gauge just how much of an impact considered content marketing can have as a vehicle for attracting relevant search traffic to key areas of your website.

By identifying keywords and phrases that are related to the areas of law that we provide as a firm, or by identifying queries that potential clients could have, and including them in the content we produce, we can lead potential clients to relevant areas of our website.

As well as attracting relevant search traffic, content marketing can be a great way to build trust and display your expertise. In the legal industry, reputation is everything and valuable and informative content gives law firms the chance to show that they live up to their straplines.

 

 

2. Optimisation

In the legal services industry, PPC advertising on Google Ads is expensive and highly competitive. Using one of the many keyword planners available, it is easy to gauge the amount of money that can be saved by devoting time to keyword optimisation instead of money to a cost per click campaign.

Using a keyword strategy to optimise pages where you sell your services is something that all businesses should look into before setting aside money for paid advertising.

Statistics portal, Statista, reported 236 Million Adblock plugin users worldwide in 2016. The number of Adblock plugin users, which has risen every year since 2010, is expected to continue this trend into 2017. Unfortunately for advertisers, this trend indicates that paid ads will increasingly fail to reach their intended target audiences.

Having the pages where you sell your services competing for those key positions organically has never been more important.

 

3. Conversion optimisation

As anyone who works in legal marketing will tell you, getting traffic to your website is one thing, but getting those users to take an action you intended is another.

The pages of your website should be there to serve a particular purpose and each should be planned with this purpose in mind. Whether you want the user to subscribe to your newsletter or give your offices a call, your on-page copy is the ideal place to point the user in your intended direction.

Writing copy with the end user in mind, as well as a search engine, is essential to increasing your conversions.

After the SSMM course we were able to return to the content on our pages and ensure that our messages were clear and our calls to action were in the correct places.

 

 

4. Guest Blogging

Forming relationships with complimentary companies and producing guest blogs for their website is a legal marketing technique few people from the sector experiment with. It can however be a great way to direct the right kinds of users to your website.

After attending the SSMM at The University of Salford and hearing more about guest blogging, we reached out to a company named Agent Legal who provide legal marketing services for law firms and they were more than happy for us to publish a blog post on their platform.

LawBid and Agent Legal both sell their services to solicitors without being competitors, making them an ideal complimentary company to build a relationship with.

Publishing your content on another website might seem strange at first. However, given that you have identified a website that attracts traffic relevant to your own services, you stand to benefit from social promotion to your target audience and backlinks to your website. Not to mention that by sharing your thoughts on a topic you are well versed in, you can display your expertise and show your authority on the subject.

5. Running a webinar

 

In much the same way that guest blogging can allow you to set yourself up as a trusted authority on a particular subject, webinars give law firms the opportunity to show potential clients that they live up to their claims.

Running a webinar is a chance to provide real value to your attendees and collect client leads whilst you are at it. The legal sector is complex, so there are no shortages of questions and queries to clear up for your attendees. In a webinar setting you are able to display your specialisms and engage directly with potential clients.

However, the relationship between yourself and your attendees should not end when the webinar finishes. The session can be used as an opportunity to identify the concerns of your attendees. You can then follow up by sending personalised emails with useful advice that is relevant to their problems.

The SSMM course equipped us with the knowledge required to explore different ways of getting our message across and the confidence to experiment with new legal marketing ideas.

Want to get in touch?

Be sure to follow both @WildingsSols and @LawBidUK for regular company updates, blog posts and industry news.

 

 

 

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