Your Strategy in Digital Legal Marketing

A digital marketing strategy is your plan to achieve your marketing goals: Communication with your target groups, branding, business development. If you don't integrate online marketing into your communication concept in a meaningful way, it will be difficult to achieve these goals...

Of course, a complete strategy still includes traditional marketing measures. More on this below.

Marketing Strategy and Marketing Measures

Do not mix them up!

At a strategic level, you make the fundamental decisions. It's about the central content of the communication. For example:

• Who is your marketing aimed at?
• What are the key messages to be conveyed?

These fundamental questions are usually answered in an analogous way in digital and traditional marketing.

When it comes to the measures, it's all about the concrete implementation – i.e. the "HOW". This ranges from the selection of relevant channels (e.g. LinkedIn) to the various techniques you use: SEO, email marketing, webinars etc.

Marketing measures can change every now and then. Adjustments at the strategic level, on the other hand, are much more subtle and rare.

The basic orientation remains the same, because success comes from consistency in strategy.

Digital Marketing and Traditional Marketing

The fundamental characteristics of legal marketing have not changed significantly as a result of the digitalization of marketing. For example, even in the digital space, legal marketing is mainly "expertise-marketing". If you position yourself and your expertise well, you will be successful.

Clever marketing enthusiasts have already recognized: Online marketing is a copy of traditional marketing in many areas. Here are a few examples:

• Online Werbung <-> gedruckte Werbung
• Social Media <-> Networking
• Webinare <-> Referate
• Blogs <-> Fachbeiträge in Zeitschriften
• Newsletter <-> klassische Post
• etc.

A good marketing mix comes from a combination of digital marketing and traditional marketing. Both have their advantages and weaknesses...

The digital marketing

• scales much better;
• is not geographically limited;
• has a more lasting effect because much content can be found for longer via Google; and
• simplifies the measurement of the success of the measures.

On the other hand, personal contact is often lacking, which only traditional networking can offer. In addition, success does not happen overnight. Digital marketing takes time.

Here's how: Successful lead generation campaigns

When you mix your measures: Choose activities that match your skills. If you don't like writing, you shouldn't bet everything on a blog. You also don't have to use all measures and operate all channels. It's better to do less, but use these things properly!

How Is Your Digital Marketing Strategy Created?

Of course, it all starts with your strategic goals. What do you or your company want to achieve? We will not go into this process any further in this article.

HeadStarterz supports individuals and companies in strategic processes. Contact us for a concrete offer.

Your Target Groups

In a second step, you define the relevant target groups.

Who do you want to reach with your marketing strategy? Caution: This is not just about potential clients. Your company communicates with numerous other target groups that are important for your marketing.

Examples:

• Employees: Current employees and future talent are important target groups of any legal marketing strategy. Without them, no law firm can offer high-quality legal services. Many firms complain about problems in the field of recruiting young talent. It is therefore worthwhile to invest specifically and strategically in a successful employer brand!
• People who recommend you or your company to others. Whether online or offline: Referrals play an important role in the decision-making process of clients. You should definitely consider people who can support you in marketing.

On the importance of referrals in legal marketing

It is important that you know what distinguishes your target groups and what their needs are. Most of the time, this is not so easy to find out.

Your own research can answer many questions in this regard. But before you conduct complicated experiments: Find out if there is already research on these topics. Market research is being conducted and the findings can be (purchased). From reliable sources this investment is always worthwhile!

Particularly in the case of clients, it is also advisable to carry out sensible segmentation according to demographic criteria or based on interests/needs. Not everyone has to be addressed. "Focus" is the magic word. Otherwise...

Differentiation and Messages

Define what differentiates you or your law firm from other offerings.

• What are your "Winning Arguments?"
• Why does a client come to you instead of seeking advice from the competition?
• Why should talented people choose a career at your company?

You usually already know these differentiators from your overall business strategy.

More about the differentiators in legal marketing

These arguments are the central building blocks of your communication. You create your content for the specific target groups around these differentiating features. It is important that you know exactly which messages fit which target group. These do not have to be congruent, but of course they should not contradict each other either!

I also recommend that you think in terms of subject areas. If you want to position yourself in a certain area of expertise, you should think about how you can divide this area of law into subtopics.

Where do the target groups have questions in the next few months? Once you have defined a few such subtopics, you can start creating content from them and distributing it.

Which digital marketing measures help me?

In the digital environment, three marketing measures stand out:

• Email Marketing (Newsletter)
• Social Media
• Blog

These standard measures are part of every digital marketing strategy toolkit. The concrete design is not quite simple.

• Which social media platform should you use?
• How do you design an interesting newsletter?
• Who is this aimed at and how does it fit into your general lead conversion processes on the website?

Of course, other digital measures are now part of the "evergreens" of marketing. For instance, you cannot afford to disregard SEO. How you can better position your law firm website in the search results is a decisive marketing task. You can also gradually improve your individual digital visibility through targeted measures!

Plan, Track, Analyze, Optimize – Rewind!

One advantage of digital marketing is that it is easier to measure the success of the measures. As soon as you implement measures, you should no longer rely on a gut feeling to assess the return on your investment.

It all starts with the definition of the metrics. What do you use to determine whether your activity was successful or not? These key performance indicators (KPI) should be closely linked to your goals. But they need to be defined in such a concrete way that you can really measure whether you have achieved the goal or not.

For example, if you want to position yourself in data protection, a definition could be:

• Goal: Until the new data protection law comes into effect, you want to improve your reach to companies in industries with a lot of data processing (e.g. health, tourism, etc).
• Measures: Among other things, you define LinkedIn as a relevant channel to achieve this goal (other measures are also required).
• KPI: You set yourself the goal of making at least 150 new connections to decision-makers in companies from these industries by the end of June 2023.
• Investment: you commit to investing 2 hours each week in networking on LinkedIn.

Such a statement gives you a clear framework. It allows you to check at any time whether you are on track and whether your investment is worthwhile.

Now you are almost ready. What is still missing is a suitable budget – not always an easy task in partnership structures... In addition to third-party costs, internal costs are also a major factor. After all, the development of content needs the expertise and cooperation of the fee earners.

If your ideal planning exceeds the budget, I recommend to cancel whole measures instead of reducing everywhere a little bit. The latter usually results in a global ineffectiveness of all measures.

How HeadStarterz Can Help!

HeadStarterz supports your team in strategic planning. We analyze your marketing and develop customized communication concepts that fit your brand and your target groups.

HeadStarterz and an effective digital strategy will get you there! Contact us for a non-binding initial consultation – by phone: +41 61 554 55 74 or by e-mail: hello@headstarterz.com