There are a lot of digital marketing strategies out there. Depending on your marketing plan, you can implement Lawyer SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing simultaneously and separately. However, not all options work for everyone.
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Some keywords are harder to compete for, while some social media platforms simply aren’t fit for law firm marketing. Since these strategies require time and effort to plan and implement, continuing with a strategy or tactic that isn’t working is counterintuitive. If parts of or an entire digital marketing strategy aren’t working for you, then you need to either stop or change something as soon as possible.
So, how do you know something’s not working for your law firm?
Let’s talk about managing your law firm’s digital marketing strategy, planning, and auditing.
What Is Auditing?
By looking at your stats, performance, keyword rankings, conversions, traffic, and other vital data, you’ll be able to look for the things that are working for you, the things that aren’t, and the things you need to change.
For example, if you’re posting content on your legal blog, you’ll want to know if your blog posts are actually bringing you great ROI. If it’s not getting any traffic or if people are bouncing off as soon as they enter your site, then your blog post isn’t bringing any marketing benefits to your law firm.
Another example is looking at your social media stats. For instance, if your law firm’s Twitter page isn’t getting a lot of social shares and interaction, then it’s a sign that something in your social media marketing strategy isn’t quite working. By auditing data, you’ll discover what isn’t working and what you can do to improve your current strategy.
How Do You Audit Your Law Firm Marketing Strategies?
That said, there isn’t a universal auditing process that applies to all types of law firm digital marketing strategies. You need to figure out how each strategy can be researched and observed, with all the varying stats and ranking factors.
Let’s take a look at the most common law firm marketing strategies and how the auditing process differs from one another:
1. Lawyer SEO
SEO deals with continuous keyword, ranking, and backlink auditing.
It isn’t a one-and-done deal. Most SEO experts will continuously lookout for changes in page ranking, keyword search volumes, backlink qualities, and site structure. If people are bouncing off your pages, you should be looking into the possible problems that lead people to immediately click off as soon as they see your page. If your rankings are quickly dropping, you should look into potential issues like bad backlinks, high bounce rates, poor user experience, and unoptimized keywords.
Again, all of the above concerns can easily be observed through stats. Simple SEO tools like Google Search Console and Ahrefs could easily give you the data to work with.
Additionally, ranking factors can change depending on search engines. Google has updated its search algorithm before, and since you’re trying to be on the top spot, you’ll also need to update the keywords and optimizations you’re implementing to get with the times. If you fail to observe the trends and aren’t vigilant with your rankings, you might struggle each time search engines update for new algorithms and features.
2. Social Media Marketing
Social media is, in many ways, so different from SEO. You need to pay attention to posting times, consistency, interactions, and content creation.
Depending on the platform, the ideal strategy is different. This is primarily due to variations in the available features, differing user base demographics, and distinctive platform user cultures.
For example, your Instagram and Facebook strategies will vary based on the available platform features you can use. Instagram focuses on visual media, while Facebook allows for longer text content. The language, content, and tone that does well on each platform might also vary.
That said, you can still use tools like Socialblade, Twitter Analytics, and other third-party tools to collect and observe data on your social media platforms. For example, look at your follower count, total views, social shares, interactions, and other data. You can also look at which types of social media content or posts do well and which don’t, giving you an idea of what types of content you should and shouldn’t be making from here on out.
That said, new features and algorithm changes can still happen. However, if you keep track of your data and regularly audit your performance, you ensure that your law firm’s social media marketing efforts stay an effective marketing strategy.
3. Email Marketing
You can audit email marketing through testing, conversions, click-through rates, and responses. But, again, since it’s a different strategy, the standards for good content, keyword use, CTAs, and layouts will be different. You also need to think about how your emails are laid out, designed, and paced.
Again, there are multiple tools to help you send out, test, and audit emails. You might also incorporate a more detailed tactic, like personalization, audience research, and exclusive content.
Some email marketing strategies send more personalized content based on the sign-up data of the subscribers. For example, you can send different emails to different groups of subscribers. Some can get personal injury law content, while others get employment law guides and listicles.
That said, regardless of which strategy you implement, you want to make sure you’re looking at your stats and performance. Your email marketing strategy isn’t effective if your subscribers aren’t clicking on your CTAs or opening your emails. Then, using the data you have, figure out what’s wrong with your email marketing strategy, change or stop doing something, and continually test and reoptimize as you go.
Don’t Forget To Audit Your Digital Marketing Strategy!
Digital marketing doesn’t start and end with building websites, creating social media accounts, or posting blogs. You need to rank, get clicks, get traffic, and convert potential law firm clients. To get these results, you need to know which keywords and strategies work best for your niche, location, and industry.
Just because your SEO and content marketing strategy isn’t doing too great right now doesn’t mean things can’t be changed and improved. That said, you won’t know if you’re improving or not if you aren’t looking for the possible weaknesses in your strategy.
Author’s Bio
JC Serrano is the founder of 1000Attorneys.com, one of the very few private enterprises certified to process lawyer referrals by the California State Bar. His marketing strategies have continuously evolved since 2005, incorporating ever-changing SEO strategies into lawyerleadmachine.com.