How to increase targeted traffic to your firm’s site: key strategic principles for legal marketers
If attracting great-quality leads to your firm’s legal site is your ultimate campaign goal, take a look at the steps I’ve outlined below to avoid attracting unqualified traffic which may jeopardise your conversion rate and stretch your budget.
By the way – I’ll be giving a talk about this and more at our FREE legal workshop – read more about our workshop and register for tickets here!
Know your digital channels
Finding the right digital marketing mix may appear to be a challenge but sometimes we get so caught up in the detail that we forget to review the fundamental capabilities of our digital channels.
I recommend you map out which channels you actively run as part of your marketing mix and divide them under three pillars:
- Owned media encompasses your website, your blog, YouTube channel and organic social media. You’ve got 100% influence on these including their content, branding and comment moderation.
- Earned media describes your “word of mouth” interactions which will include comments left on your blog, 3rd party review sites, social media pages etc. as well as any web mentions and replies on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and more. Essentially your customers form their own channel.
- Paid media is funded by your firm. Channels which fall under this category will include any form of paid advertising such as PPC, display, affiliates and paid social media.
Figure 1: Pinterest.com
Know your channels’ benefits & challenges
Each element of the marketing mix and each channel on its own has got its unique benefits and challenges.
You may find that owned media gives you greater control over your output, cost efficiency and the ability to be highly targeted. Then again, it takes time to build your firm’s image and turn your clients into brand advocates.
Paid media is immediate and often produces quick, measurable results, however, users are getting increasingly clever about ad blockers and paid ads.
Lastly, earned media gives you credibility because it includes client-to-client reviews of your firm, it’s authentic and can be THE channel for client referrals but you have little control over the outputs and scale at which communications may evolve at.
Use your target persona knowledge when placing ads
Try to apply as much as you know about your target audience to your channel selection and targeting. We recently published a post outlining 4 ways to understand your firm’s audience. For instance, if you know the key sites your audience may visit to find out information about specific legal lingua or to look for recommendations about your firm, then ensure to outreach to them organically first. You can offer them unique content about your firm, case studies or an expert opinion piece by one of your solicitors.
If they aren’t interested in an unpaid collaboration, explore if they offer advertising options, or if they run display ads on their site as this could influence your display ad campaigns.
Figure 2: Marketingland.com
Bear in mind a user story when brainstorming content ideas
Get together with other members of staff from various areas of your firm, all the way to the interns, and brainstorm content you could add to your site. Your team should aim to brainstorm content which will resonate, attract the interest of and engage with your target persona. You can try this by taking on a customer role with a specific user story, a problem your potential clients may be looking to find an answer for.
It’s also often easier to brainstorm ideas outside your usual environment, so perhaps book a meeting room somewhere else, or spend 30 minutes in a coffee shop. A change of scenery will spark your creativity!
Create content aimed at your target persona
When writing your content, try and think of how you consume content online. Could you break it up with subheadings, bullets, different fonts or quotes?
You may think this is a long shot but it very much falls in line with attracting users to your site. If the content presented onsite, is plain and visually hard to digest, users may leave instantly. In fact, a study by Google confirmed that if your site’s content wasn’t mobile optimised including the formatting, users will leave within 3 seconds.
Beyond this, make sure to update any blog content at least 2-3 times per week to keep it fresh for both, potential clients and the search engines as they will index your content more often if they notice your sites is active. Did you know that depending on the size of your site, Google’s crawlers may visit it hundreds of times per day?
Invest in paid media, organic search & outreach
A popular way to attract traffic and promote your content is by using paid media such as PPC or paid social channels. A clever way to find more out about the audience visiting your site and retarget them is via Facebook’s tracking pixel.
The Facebook pixel is a piece of JavaScript code for your website that enables you to measure, optimize and build audiences for your ad campaigns. Using the Facebook pixel, you can leverage the actions people take on your website across devices to inform more effective Facebook advertising campaigns. (Facebook.com)
Whilst they can be very helpful in supplementing your strategy, targeting custom audiences and can produce quick results, this shouldn’t be your one and only strategy to drive traffic.
Your website’s backlink profile is enormously important and falls under the area of SEO / organic search and outreach. Over the last few years, these two disciplines have worked closer together more than ever before. They can help with both offsite engagement and building authority around your firm’s site.
In 2016, Google updated its’ algorithm which now establishes your backlinks in real-time. Our SEO and outreach experts at Hit Search can help you get the word out about your brand the white hat, Google-friendly way.
I’m speaking at our free legal workshop on Thursday 23rd March. I’ll speak to about strategies on how to attract and convert traffic to your firm’s site. Don’t miss out – register for your free tickets today!
