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In my last post, I provided a quick summary of content marketing—what it is and how to do it right. Now that you have the foundation, let’s create a plan that will help you achieve your business goals.
And here’s the thing: you do want to do it right. If you are willing to put time and money into marketing yourself, you need to follow these nine steps to build a content strategy that will achieve your law firm’s goals.
1. Define Your Vision
Before you dive head-first into content marketing, you must first define your overarching vision for your firm and your marketing efforts. Consider what image you want to portray about your firm and services. Outline what makes you different from your competitors. Clearly communicate your vision to everyone involved with your marketing efforts.
2. Set Your Goals
With your vision in place, you can now determine what goals you want to achieve through your (content) marketing efforts. Your goals may include:
It is not enough to define goals, however. You must also tie each goal to a specific and measurable metric. For instance, if brand awareness is your main goal, then you will want to measure how many social shares your content earns. If your goal is increased lead generation, you will want to measure how many leads you receive from your website or how many clicks your emails generate.
3. Identify Your Audience
The well-defined your audience, the greater impact your content will have. Identify your audience as specifically as possible, and then create your content geared directly to that audience.
A proven method of reaching your desired audience is to create buyer personas. Personas can make your website 2-5 times more effective and easier to use. According to Hubspot, a persona is a “representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.”
You should create at least one persona for each service you provide. Doing so will help you craft personalized and highly-targeted content. Personas should include as many details as you can gather for maximum impact, including:
Want help quickly creating personas for your marketing efforts? Download this free persona template from Hubspot. If you feel you are ready for a deeper dive into buyer personas, review a sample persona from the Buyer Persona Institute.
4. Choose Your Media
You do not have to partake in all forms of content marketing to be effective. In fact, I encourage you to avoid taking on every single option. This will spread your budget too thin and leave you wondering why you bothered in the first place.
For greatest impact, consider which content types work best for your audience and your budget. Hone in on two or three specific tactics that you can do well on a consistent basis. These can include:
Consistency and quality are imperative here. Time and again, I have seen attorneys create basic social profiles because they believe they have to be present everywhere. But then those attorneys fail to personalize their pages or to update them with posts, comments, and the occasional like. Failing to show dedication in this way sends the message to potential clients you cannot follow through.
5. Determine Your Platforms
You need a website for your law firm. Beyond that, it is up to you where you distribute your content. But distribute it you must.
Potential clients are out there, and they are seeking out answers to general legal questions they have as they go throughout their days. The majority of these potential clients will go online to find answers. Now you just need to decide how to make that content visible to potential clients.
Your options vary by audience and content type. From an audience standpoint, you are more likely to encounter greater engagement with other lawyers and professionals on LinkedIn. Facebook may be a better route for you, however, if you are seeking clients with more personal issues (such as divorce).
From a content perspective, images such as infographics can spread far and wide on platforms such as Pinterest. And while YouTube hosts videos, they are more likely to spread like wildfire when shared on Facebook and Twitter.
Again, the point here is to choose platforms so that they tie directly to your goals. Focus on the networks that will make the greatest impact on your bottom line.
6. Listen to Your Audience
Before you start publishing content on a consistent basis, you want to make sure you understand what your audience is actually looking for. You can gather this information in a couple of ways:
7. Finalize Execution Details
Once you have documented the elements described above, it is time to create an execution strategy. Here are three items that are essential to execution:
If you do not have time to ensure you are creating and sharing content on schedule, you will want to invest in a project manager. This person can keep your marketing efforts moving while you keep your business on track.
8. Measure Your Efforts
I mentioned at the outset you must set goals tied to direct metrics. The metrics you must measure vary by distribution channel, but they all tend to fall into the same four categories:
You can use the following three tools to help you measure those four key metrics:
Another great metric is simply asking your current followers for feedback with a short survey. Any insight you get here will help you better engage with those who are already interested in hearing from you.
9. Revise and Repeat
The metrics you gather will provide you with an understanding of what is working, as well as what isn’t. Rely on your metrics to help you rethink your approach and adjust your content marketing efforts. Then publish and try again. In an ideal world, the strategize-create-distribute-measure process would go on as long as your business does.
Free Marketing Plan Templates
If you are not one to start a plan from scratch, consider using one of these free content marketing plan templates:
Featured image: “Strategy Planning Plan Process Directing Growth Concept” from Shutterstock.
9 Steps to an Effective Content Marketing Plan was originally published on Lawyerist.com.