Law Firm Content Marketing Strategies That Work

Among content marketing’s inherent qualities and capabilities, one thing stands out in particular when looking at it from a communications perspective — especially for more niche industries: engaging with and educating customers.

As a law firm, unless your business model is set up to engage with and provide legal counsel to retired lawyers, paralegals or other law professionals only, then the benefits of publishing comprehensive and educational content are innumerable.

Content marketing isn’t just for flashy businesses that sell equally flashy products; rather, it’s for any entity that wants to cultivate an awareness about their industry and services. 

As law professionals, educating and informing people about their rights; what they’re entitled to following an incident, such as a workplace injury or car accident; and how to begin a legal process in the pursuit of justice and/or compensation are ideal areas of focus for a law-based content marketing campaign. 

In publishing valuable legal content marketing collateral, you’ll not only drive traffic to your website and generate leads, but provide truly insightful and crucial information for people in a time of need.

How? Let’s have a look.

Do Law Firms Even Need Content Marketing?

Here’s a question that content marketers have been asking themselves since the inception of this particular digital marketing limb: Who even needs content marketing? In short, the answer is: Everybody — across all kinds of businesses. 

But when we look at those more niche industries or sectors that, historically, are more difficult for the everyman to understand, an educational content marketing strategy is the bridge that connects to, and funnels new clients through, your front door.

This is also true for other industries that you might not immediately think would need a content marketing strategy, such as:

• Human resources.
• Health care.
• Real estate.

But the need is there, and businesses operating within these fields stand to reap much of the same benefits as everyone else.

But back to law…

In this particular industry, there are so many things to know that I don’t think it would hurt anyone’s feelings if we said: Legal matters can be confusing. Most ordinary people who don’t have a background in such a discipline probably aren’t spending their free time researching all there is to know about medical negligence or the personal injury claims process in their region.

That said, when someone does need that kind of information, it’s usually because either they or a person close to them has just experienced something a lawyer should be involved in. In times like these, it’s of utmost importance that information pertinent to their circumstance can be found and comprehended, and that they know there’s someone who can help them understand their options and pursue justice.

Thus, content marketing, coupled with effective legal knowledge management, can not only help you reach new clients, but educate the general population about important legal processes, so they know:

• If their unique circumstance qualifies for any sort of compensation.
• What exactly they’re entitled to.
• Who to contact in terms of filing a claim or initiating a legal process.
• What those legal processes look like and how long they have to take action.
• And how you, the law professional, can help bring them justice.

But wait — there’s more.

How Does Content Marketing Benefit Your Law Firm?

For most industries, there’s a fairly standard set of benefits that a robust content marketing strategy can provide for the business. However, there are a couple of benefits that are unique — or at least more relevant — to a law firm than they are to other fields.

Let’s break down some of those expected advantages while also diving into some of the more particular perks of content marketing in the industry of law:

1. Builds Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is quite a large piece in the marketing puzzle and an important thing for most companies. In law, in order for a potential client to choose your practice over your competitors, they have to know that you exist. This is done in a few ways, all of which are products of a hearty content marketing strategy.

We’ll dive into specific types of content that can help you do this a bit later. For now, what’s important to note is that building brand awareness means extending your reach and publishing content that’s tailored to specific channels for the best possible impressions.

2. Generates More Leads

By building brand awareness and attracting more traffic, you are, at the same time, generating a greater number of leads. The more eyes that are on your content, the more likely you are to find a wandering pair that are in need of what you’re selling: expert legal counsel.

3. Positions You As An Expert In Your Field

There are few other industries that benefit as greatly from positioning themselves as experts than law firms. Between complicated subject matter and the high stakes that prospective clients may be dealing with, it’s paramount that you know what you’re talking about, and that your expertise is clear to potential clients.

It’s crucial that you’re able to communicate your competence, trustworthiness and value — so that potential clients ultimately turn to you when they need legal counsel.

4. Increases the Authority of Your Website and/or Blog

Increasing a website’s authority through search engine optimization (SEO) presents some pretty lucrative benefits for businesses of all kinds, such as:

• Better SERP positioning.
• Advertising opportunities.
• Increasing affiliate sales.

But what about for law firms? Better SERP positioning, which means having your website or a webpage appear closer to the top of a results page on a search engine, effectively makes your practice seem more credible. The higher you are on Page 1, the more of a thought leader you appear. When you have the content to back up that kind of positioning, it really helps improve your credibility in the eyes of searchers, i.e., potential clients.

5. Drives Organic Website Traffic Via SEO-Focused Content

Organic traffic encompasses a user base that finds its way to your website, well, organically. That means that you haven’t paid for them to arrive at your virtual doorstep, as you might with a paid ad strategy.

Organic traffic can be earned by playing to the tune of major search engine’s algorithms and, as far as those AI-enabled algorithms are concerned, that’s best done via a content marketing strategy that takes advantage of SEO best practices.

All of this is to say … content marketing can benefit your law firm by making it more discoverable and presenting you as an authority and thought leader in the legal industry. These qualities can help build up a brand image that’s trustworthy and reputable, especially when you have all the proper resources to back it up.

What Does a Law Firm’s Target Audience Look Like?

It’s not unusual for a law firm to specialize in a specific area. While lots of practices help clients across a range of claims and cases, there are also some lawyers who have particular expertise in certain niches. Take these common specializations, for example:

• Corporate law.
• Personal injury law.
• Labor law.
• Health care law.
• Criminal law.

Whether you operate in one or many of these categories, it’s important to nail down your target audience so that you have a better understanding of who your ideal client is. Doing this will make it easier to design content in a way that resonates with that particular persona and, therefore, ensure that it’s inherently valuable when potential clients encounter it.

What’s more is, by leveraging keyword research (more on that later), you can produce content that targets each of these specializations, effectively extending your reach.

Oh — and it’s never a bad idea to develop some buyer personas. This can help you better understand your target audience and, in turn, produce more relevant content. To generate a solid buyer persona framework for your law firm, consider these things about your ideal client:

• Their motivations and interests.
• Keywords and phrases that they may use when searching for legal services.
• What their ultimate goal is.
• Any concerns or skepticality they may have.

Also beneficial when defining these personas are identifying things such as their:

• Age.
• Gender.
• Occupation.
• Income.
• Location.

Once a persona is defined, it can be tweaked to suit certain specialties.

Law firms that understand the importance of recognizing who their target audience is are already miles ahead of their competitors — and that will shine through in the subsequent content.

Types of Content Law Firms Should Be Creating

When considering what specific types of content are valuable to law firms, a handful come to mind. And while there’s an argument that all content fulfills a purpose for this industry, it’s important to nail down some of the basics, or most strategic options, when getting started.

Here are a few examples of valuable products that can benefit your practice, and how:

eBooks and White Papers

Communicating credibility is critical for law firms and ultimately what helps attract and convert new clients. eBooks and white papers are great, low-cost ways to do that.

When coupled with expert design, these resources come out looking professional and user-friendly, communicating important information in a way that’s easy to digest. Plus, they are highly shareable and fit nicely in an embed download link on a landing page.

Blog Posts

A content and digital marketing staple, blog posts are one of the tried and true methods for reaching new customers. This type of content really shines as an accessible, reader-friendly content option that can take myriad approaches, such as:

• Listicles.
• How-To’s.
• Interviews.
• And more.

Usually more on the short-form side, a blog post is a resource that not only informs and educates readers about a specific topic or problem, but brings them directly to your website, too — where there’s huge potential to encourage a conversion.

Moreover, using reliable SEO strategies, blog content can be tailored to appeal to certain keywords or prospective client concerns. Once a healthy reservoir of optimized blog content is stocked on your website, you should see a boost in organic traffic.

Want to see what we’re talking about? Check out this case study we did that highlights the incredible improvements we facilitated for Australian law firm, Gerard Malouf and Partners, with comprehensive blog content and professionally written and optimized landing pages.

Case Studies

Case studies are among the most valuable pieces of content in service industries where a problem and resolution can be illustrated. In the instance of law firms, it just so happens that you’re dealing with literal cases … court cases.

Publishing case studies that highlight client successes, speak to various legal situations that people may find themselves in and outline how your counsel helped bring them justice or receive compensation can instill more confidence in potential clients by showcasing the real-life value of what you do.

Social Media Content

Beyond the memes and hubbub, a social media platform remains an excellent place to engage with your audience directly. As a lawyer, you’ll probably want to consider platforms that are more tailored to professional goings-on, like LinkedIn or even Facebook. But that doesn’t mean that having a Twitter presence is a terrible thing, either.

Publishing a content-focused social media post makes it easily discoverable, and these platforms are a great way to present and amplify all types of content, especially the ones we’ve listed here.

Videos

A well-produced video is invaluable because it helps to communicate important information visually instead of through copy. There’s a whole demographic of people who absorb material better this way, and it’s only becoming more so. In fact, 69% of people say they prefer short-form video as a means to learn about a new service.

A talking head style video, where a law expert sits down in front of the camera and explains something — such as a complex claims process or legal concept — can inform and encourage an entirely new crowd of potential clients to take action.

Content Marketing Strategies That Work for Today’s Law Firms

All content marketing strategies should be built with the following key components in mind, all of which will help construct an unshakeable approach to content that gets results. Here are a few of those important items:

• Relevant personas. As mentioned, creating these will help nail down your target audience, which, in turn, will allow you to better-tailor your content.
• Clear and achievable goals. Any strategy, but especially a marketing one, needs clear and achievable goals to aim for. These keep you on track, hold you accountable and make it easier to pivot when needed.
• Branding. A robust content strategy that isn’t branded might as well fade into the ether (and it will). When communicating such valuable information, having readers know who it comes from is paramount.
• A content distribution strategy. Before things really get into motion, you should have a solid distribution strategy in place. When the content starts rolling in, you need to know how you’re going to send it out so that it can be found — and produce the reaction that you’re expecting.
• Success metrics. You might have the most streamlined content marketing process in the world, but without a way to measure its performance, you’ll never know if it’s actually working. Collecting data on everything that you send out can help you understand what’s working, what’s not and how to improve your strategy over time.

With these essential pieces of the framework in mind, here are a few tactics you can use when producing content items, like the ones we mentioned earlier in this article:

Keyword Research

This is arguably one of the most important aspects of a strong and coherent law firm SEO strategy that can lay the foundation for the entirety of a content marketing campaign. Keyword research refers to the practice of researching and discovering keywords that users are inputting on search engines when looking for a product or service.

As content marketers, when we know what these words are and how frequently they’re being used in queries, we can determine the value of a piece of content that focuses on that particular word, and tailor material like blog posts to appear on SERPs when people search for things related to that term.

Some examples of common keywords in the law industry might be:

• Law.
• Attorney.
• Lawyer.
• Legal advice.
• Legal services.
• Legal consultation, and others.

But, digging beyond these surface level words is where you can really begin to tailor content for specific niches. For example:

• Medical negligence.
• Workers compensation.
• Car accident.
• Dog bite compensation.
• Estate planning lawyer …

… just to name a few (and there are thousands).

Repurposing and Reoptimizing Old Content

Content that’s been sitting stagnant on your website and isn’t actively providing value doesn’t mean that it’s dead — or that you should forget about it. Oftentimes, repurposing and optimizing old content breathes new life into those pieces, turning them into beneficial commodities that will continue to serve your business and help you achieve your goals.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is an integral part of content marketing — especially for copy that lives directly on your website, such as blog posts or landing pages.

The great thing about legal content is that it’s rich with terminology that makes great keywords, as we outlined above. Using those words to your law firm’s advantage via an expert approach to SEO will have search engines singing your praises. Having quality content is good, but optimizing that content for its forthcoming life on the internet is so much better and will prove much more valuable than simply creating content for the sake of it.

Teaming Up With a Law Firm Content Marketing Agency

Law professionals are busy people with incredibly important jobs. Amid all that they do, it can be difficult to find the time to take advantage of these content strategies. After all, there’s a lot that goes into producing valuable, relevant and customized content that helps you meet your objectives.

The good news is that there’s help out there. Hiring an agency — especially one that handles everything from content to consulting across many mediums and areas of expertise — can help get your law firm on the right track in terms of having a meaningful and authoritative online presence.

Among the many benefits of hiring a law firm content marketing agency to handle the entirety of your content strategy are:

• Having a dedicated team of experts who will focus on content when you can’t.
• Having access to a robust knowledge base that knows how to best reach your target audience.
• Getting support across the board for all of your content endeavors.
• Ideating and building out an effective editorial calendar to keep the content flowing.
• Having the ability to produce virtually any piece of content, written or visual, to help your business boom.

Channels That Law Firms Should be Focusing On

When working with an agency, one of the key benefits — aside from the content creation itself —  is having access to a robust distribution strategy that gets the right content on the right platform.

Usually, this would mean considering all of your options, however, in our experience, what we’ve noticed to work best for law firms across the board is focusing on their owned channels. This means publishing informative, client-focused website content in the form of blogs and landing pages. These items will drive traffic, help potential clients find answers to their problems and overall provide the most value for your business.

In Conclusion

Law firm content marketing, besides being a great way to boost site traffic and generate leads, is uniquely positioned to educate your audience on incredibly important and sometimes sensitive matters. For that reason alone, it’s immensely satisfying to know that you’re helping to inform and assist people during some of their most difficult and vulnerable times.

So what are you waiting for? If you haven’t gotten started on a law firm content marketing campaign yet, we’re sure there’s a lot of individuals out there who would benefit from reading or seeing your expert legal content.