Digital Transformation: Message in the Market

For many, cell phones have become the primary tool for communication, including as a way to consume the news. According to Andrew Keller, global creative director at Facebook, the average person scrolls through 305 feet of data on their mobile device per day — the height of the Statue of Liberty!

Regardless of the medium, how can your law firm and lawyers break through the clutter and ensure your thought leadership is reaching the marketplace? The Marketing Technology and CMO/Senior Marketer Shared Interest Group (SIG) webinar “Digital Transformation: Message in the Market” with Jessica Aries of by Aries and Sue Serna of Serna Social explores this challenge and discusses how you can succeed.

Start With Strategy

First, like all successful marketing initiatives, breaking through the noise starts with identifying goals and strategy before getting to tactics. Come up with two to three specific and measurable goals, such as finding 200 clients in a year using social media or increasing website traffic by 10%.

Then, figure out who you want to talk to; not all audiences are the same. Where does your audience lives — LinkedIn, Twitter, email or somewhere else? Remember, you cannot make your audience come to you; you need to go to your audience.

Identify Your Audience

After identifying your goals, determine who is deciding to buy your client services. Analyze your CRM data or Google Analytics, and then create client personas. While you do not have to be super specific, the more you identify about your buyer, the more you will understand your audience and the message they’ll be most receptive to.

Test Your Tactics

Next, identify the marketing channels available to you. There are so many ways to get your message out into the marketplace that it can be hard to identify the right channel, but if you take the time to build out your personas, you will know what channels you should be targeting and where to spend your time and effort. Your channel section drives the type of content you create.

Generally, there are three types of content: visual, text-based and audio. When posting on social media, add pictures, videos or audiograms to your posts. Visually-focused platforms require strong visuals that are properly sourced and sized. A great resource for correct image sizing is Sprout Social’s social media image sizes.

One platform does not work for everything anymore. Like any other marketing campaign, repurpose and adapt content to the platform. For example, if you have a live recording, make a snippet of the video and post it to LinkedIn and YouTube; use a transcription service to transcribe the video and post on your blog; and create an audiogram of the video for Instagram.

Use social listening to monitor online conversations for topics of interest to your target audience, as well. You can monitor your clients to identify opportunities where they may need your assistance. You can also use social listening to monitor the conversation about your firm and lawyers to protect your brand. You need to know what people are saying about you — good and bad. If your lawyers want to join a social conversation, they first need to do some social listening to find out the environment of the conversation before stepping into the conversation.

Tools are available to help facilitate this monitoring, such as Hootsuite or TweetDeck. Monitor for topics via hashtags, organizations’ and people’s names using quotations, and online social/account names for tagging. Keep in mind names might not be tagged, thus no notifications via social channels will appear.

Examine the Analytics

Analytics and reporting are the power behind digital marketing. Online, almost everything can be tracked, so the question is: What numbers matter to you most? Align your metrics with your strategy and look at engagement. If you have low views, mentions, replies and shares, are you using social effectively? You can also measure brand awareness and traffic to content through various distribution channels, and the amount of traffic to your website can help legitimize your social efforts.

Ensure you come up with some benchmarks to measure against. First, start with the data you have and set firmwide, industry-specific and practice group-specific benchmarks. Consistently audit your performance and set new quarterly goals and yearly benchmarks.

Focus on the Future

There’s always somewhere new for you to amplify your message in digital marketing. When an attorney comes to you and says they want to be on a platform, ask them why. Talk to them about their goals and come up with a strategy to select the right digital channels to engage.

If you missed this webinar, or want to hear it again, visit “Digital Transformation Webinar Series: Part I: Message in the Market.” Make sure to download the slides, including the useful “Social Medial: Tailor Your Message Cheat Sheet.”