Law Firm Content Marketing Campaigns
A clear and effective attorney content marketing plan can be put in place by law firms to build brand awareness, attract leads, and stay ahead of competitors. Lawyer content marketing is a proven and effective way to stay relevant in today’s digital realm.
Content Marketing for Law Firms
Lawyer content marketing is the process of creating valuable, relevant content your prospective client base needs. It is then distributed through a group of channels where readers engage with it and view your company as a thought leader. This helps them inform their legal decisions, because your content gives them a resource to help make decisions.
Why An Attorney Content Marketing Plan is Important for Law Firms
At PaperStreet, we have created a law firm content marketing guide.
Today, nearly all consumers conduct online research before making decisions, and their legal needs are no exception. In order to capture their attention, your online presence must be noticeable, authoritative, and provide answers to their questions. Once they find your content, they will see you as an expert on the subject and will begin to establish a lasting relationship with your firm. This is how content turns into leads. When you continue to produce valuable content that satisfies their needs, you will continuously generate new leads, while maintaining relationships with current clients.
How to Create High-Quality Content for a Law Firm
In order to convert, your finished content must give the users what they need, or as we say in the legal content marketing world, match their intent. An experienced agency understands the needs of law firm clientele and can create the right content strategy to match their intent, give them the best possible experience, and ultimately generate the lead.
Creating the right type of content within their set of needs is crucial. Different types of content are more effective in specific scenarios, and your agency will know when your audience will get the best experience from an infographic, an expert guide, a video, or another tool. Examples of content types for your law firm marketing plan includes:
Detailed explanations of the services you offer, so the client knows you can address their needs.
Details of attorneys in your firm that gives your potential client an overview of their expertise and credibility.
Regularly posted blog content that gives readers an in-depth look into legal matters that may apply to them and help educate their decision-making.
White papers are detailed, thorough explanations of a particular concept or service on which you have expertise. They are more accessible and easy to read than academic journals but effectively establish your expertise on the matter. eBooks are similarly composed but are generally presented as a free downloadable resource in exchange for a user’s contact information.
As mentioned above, downloadable content refers to free resources available to your audience in exchange for entering their email address. The content is then emailed to them.
Newsletters maintain relationships with clients on a long-term basis. An agency will design newsletters aligned with your brand, deliver on a set schedule, and continually engage with your mailing list.
Videos offer another means of delivering a compelling message for visual learners. PaperStreet offers a variety of video packages for every budget and will help with script writing, SEO and more.
Maintain your standing as thought leaders in the legal industry by garnering press mentions and guest blogging opportunities.
Regularly posting content to your social media channels will add to your overall online presence while actively engaging with your following. PaperStreet can handle this process from start to finish.
Infographics are remarkably effective, and studies have shown they’re even 30 times more likely to be read than articles. The combination of text and design helps communicate complicated ideas in an engaging way. They are particularly effective on social media.
While you may think press releases fall under the umbrella of traditional advertising methods, they have a revitalized purpose in modern digital marketing as they can be optimized for targeted keywords when distributed across your marketing channels.
Key Elements of a Law Firm Content Marketing Plan
There is a general structure a content marketing plan follows.
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1
Target Audience + Writing
First, there must be a well-thought-out strategy to reach a target audience, then comes crafting informative, engaging content like blogs or videos.
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2
Optimized + Distributed
Content must be optimized for the web using current SEO best practices; once that is done it’s time to distribute it to audiences. Content distribution involves sharing it on social media, email, industry publications and of course, your website.
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3
Analytics and Shares
Finally, once this is all complete, you gauge your lawyer content marketing plan’s success using analytics tools to measure conversions, views, shares, and other important performance metrics.
Choosing The Right Content Types
A content marketing plan isn’t just writing a blog post, sharing it, and then measuring success. There are multiple content types that make up an effective content marketing strategy, and choosing the right ones is vital to your plan’s success, as it brings its own set of benefits to the table. Examples of quality content types include:
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Content downloads
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Legal blog writing
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Newsletters
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SEO
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Site architecture
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Videos
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eBooks
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Infographics
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Optimization
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Press releases
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Social media campaigns
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White papers
How to Write Compelling Legal Content That Ranks
First, accept there is no place for legal jargon on your website.
Also, keep in mind you should avoid long paragraphs like the plague.
As stated, engaging and informative content that your audience needs is the main component of an effective law firm content marketing plan. However, there are certain strategies and tactics you need to put in place in order to make sure it ranks.
Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing the content you distribute with relevant keywords for success on search engines. In order to rank high on the search engine results page, your content must follow modern SEO best practices. This complex process includes keyword research, optimizing meta titles and descriptions, and writing headlines the right way.
Legal Blog Writing for Law Firms
Blogs effectively assist SEO by supporting your firm’s site content. They can generate both backlinks, which help your domain authority, and site traffic, which can lead to conversions.
The tricky part of blog management is knowing what topics to write about. Some of our favorites include:
- Answers to common questions on legal topics
- Community news that impacts your practice areas.
- Firm updates: Case verdicts, new partners, community service, etc.
- Popular culture: Commentary on legal matters in the entertainment industry are excellent for social media and search traffic.
- Educational posts: When you offer educational guidance without promoting your services, you’ll develop trust.
Additionally, use blog posts as “spotlights” for your practice area pages. These can be posts such as:
- Statistics connected to your practice areas
- Comparisons of the types of cases you handle
- Safety tips connected to your practice areas
- Detailed discussion on a particular topic within your practice area
At PaperStreet, we provide turnkey blog writing services that deliver fresh, SEO-optimized content to enhance your website’s authority and attract organic traffic. Our services include research, topic development, writing, SEO, editing, and uploading directly to your site.
Formatting to Enhance User Experience
Proper formatting of site content enhances readability and user experience. If you haven’t already determined, user experience is extremely vital for executing an effective marketing plan, no matter the content type. With formatting, design elements such as headings, bullet points, and visuals both break up text and introduce new information effectively.
Examples of formatting rules to follow include:
- Small paragraphs of just a few sentences each.
- Headers that break up every few paragraphs
- Bullets and/or ordered lists
- A call to action at the bottom of the page with a linked phone number and contact page
Not only should your site look visibly appealing, but it must also engage and inform your potential client as to why your law firm is right for them. Thus, your law firm content marketing strategy is as critical as all of your other marketing efforts.
Promotion & Distribution of Quality Content
The Importance of Promoting Content
Whether your chosen medium is social media promotion, email marketing, email newsletters, press releases, or some other form, it is crucial to get your content out there. An experienced marketer can determine which channel will best reach your intended audience, whether it’s the firm’s website, social media platforms, email newsletters, or industry publications.
Stay Consistent
Staying consistent is a tough habit to build, but it’s crucial to keep your content strategy alive. Depending on your goals, you may not need to publish more than one piece of content on a monthly basis. Whatever your content calendar looks like, the key here is to commit to writing quality online content that will keep your readers’ attention so you can turn that into leads.
Benefits & Value of a Content Marketing Investment
The undeniably cost-effective ROI, combined with advancing industry trends, makes traditional advertising less attractive in comparison to content marketing. The long-term benefits of establishing a loyal base are hard to quantify, but are undeniable. Investing in content marketing will give your firm an edge over competition, while continually bringing in clients.
How to Measure Law Firm Content Marketing Success
Marketers measure the success of your content marketing plan with metrics including website traffic, engagement, lead generation, and conversion rates. This data will pinpoint exactly how successful your plan was in reaching your goals. Engagement metrics, such as bounce rate, time on page, and click-through rate reveal if your audience is having a good user experience while on your site, and if not, you can adjust accordingly. Social media success is typically measured by likes, shares, comments, and follower growth. As you post, you’ll begin to understand your following’s preferences, and can post tailored content accordingly.
Advanced Strategies for Law Firm Content Marketing
Considering the legal field is such a competitive environment, the fundamental content marketing techniques must be enhanced by more advanced tactics.
Be A Thought Leader
Establish your firm as a thought leader in the legal industry. Post your commentary on industry trends via your blog or social media channels, and your followers will have no doubt you’re an authority on the subject matter. This content will actively generate leads as users search for insight into the areas you cover. Here is an example of Thorn Tax Law’s #1 ranking for a specific FATCA article.
Securing Media Coverage and Backlinks
Building a portfolio of backlinks from reputable sources to your site is a key part of establishing its domain authority. PaperStreet has experience in media outreach and other successful link-building tactics.
Staying Ahead of the Trends and Adapting Fast
As search engines continue to evolve, marketers must stay up to date on industry best practices and adjust quickly. As algorithms change, content must adjust to whatever new standard is set in place. In early 2024 AI generated content was trending. We’re still waiting to see how this might impact your overall content marketing goals.
Optimized Contact Forms Assist With Conversions
Most attorneys simply generate a standard contact form that collects very little information from ideal clients. A more enhanced contact form, however, prompts more engagement from clients. Expanded contact forms encourage potential clients to describe why they need legal services a bit more than just asking for contact information.
As an added bonus, your client intake manager or whoever assists with scheduling clients will have a better understanding of what will be discussed at your consultations — and whether the site visitor has a valid claim.
Site Architecture as Content Optimization
This is the process of optimizing website structure so the most relevant content is front and center and accessible on an easy-to-use site. In a perfect legal marketing world, a potential client would simply visit the practice area page that corresponds with their claim and contact you right then and there. Unfortunately, the process is not as clear-cut as that. Experts know how to create a site architecture that is both search engine and user friendly without sacrificing aesthetics. A workable site architecture helps boost crawlability and indexation.
Practice Areas
As a rule of thumb, the most important law firm content marketing tip is to clearly establish what services your law firm offers. The more clicks it takes for a potential client to see if you can help them, the worse your conversion rate will be. Therefore, clearly state what you can do for ideal clients in order to avoid confusing or misleading site visitors. The key is to build content hubs dedicated to your service areas. This involves a catalog of related content on the subject, all working together to establish your firm’s expertise on the matter. An example of clear practice areas for the website is with Warren Baker. You can see an example of 50 best practice areas here.
Attorney Bios
Working in SEO, we see that the attorney bio pages are often what receive the most traffic. Many site visitors are looking to see how experienced you are, your practice areas, schooling, etc. Therefore, an important aspect of your content marketing strategy is to focus on the quality of the content of each bio. Visitors want to get a better feel for who you are.
An example of one attorney bio is below for Stacey Ann Taylor. You can see 50 more examples on our blog post on Best Attorney Bios.
What PaperStreet Has to Offer
Why An Agency The Best Choice for Law Firm Content Marketing
You practice law not marketing. Working with an agency ensures you have the time you require to practice law, without distraction. This relieves the pressure of time constraints and gets your marketing plan out the door faster, and leads in the door sooner. When you hire an agency, you are hiring an expert in audience engagement, creating long-form content, and legal industry specialists. At PaperStreet, our content marketing team includes former practicing lawyers and attorney writers. We have a unique insight into the legal market, as well as knowledge of the latest web-writing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices.
Our Team and Process
PaperStreet has been providing content marketing solutions to attorneys and firms alike for over 20 years. Our company founder is an attorney, and he established the company because he saw the need for high-quality legal web sites and content. We have a proven track record of helping clients obtain top rankings. We use experienced, professional writers and editors to produce accurate, engaging content. We conduct a full analysis of your site, discuss goals, and help you create the campaign that best fits your firm.
After our initial strategy consultation, we will deliver the following items monthly:
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Research We conduct keyword research, analyze competitors, and build a content plan.
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Writing We compose monthly long-form content pieces targeting a specific practice area.
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Publishing We post the article on the desired platform.
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Outline We outline a 2,000-word article with 10 to 20 subtopics, subject to your approval.
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Editing After your review of the content, we will complete one round of revisions based on your feedback.
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Link Building PaperStreet will acquire links focused on supporting key content pieces.
Law Firm Content Marketing FAQs
There is no definitive timeline for your marketing efforts to take effect. Patience is key.
Typically, businesses allocate a portion of their overall marketing budget to legal content marketing.
Content marketing promises the users value and the resources they need. It does not interrupt their day; they are actively seeking this information.
The success of a tactic varies based on the subject matter and target audience. For brand awareness, visual content and social media posts have a lasting impact. For communicating complex concepts infographics can be effective. For lead generation, gated content such as ebooks and whitepapers works well. For customer retention, newsletters, blog posts, and testimonials are valuable.
Quality Content Case Studies
We contacted Paperstreet when our web hosting company went out of business and our site went down without notice ... The entire process was painless and made a great experience out of a potential disaster situation.
"I really enjoyed working with PaperStreet.The team worked continuously throughout the night and was diligent when reviewing the website for all redirects, migrated content, last minutes changes, etc. Overall, very impressed with the PaperStreet team and would absolutely recommend them for future projects."