This article continues my series on the key points that a legal marketing professional or lawyer needs to bear in mind when putting together content. The first article looked at the importance of title, the second at topic and keywords.
This third article tackles the issue of personalisation.
Everywhere you go on the internet these days, you will see examples of content personalisation. You only have to search for a particular item of clothing or a car to then see advertisements for that item everywhere, from your browser to an online newspaper.
Who is your audience?
Effective marketing (and therefore content) has a clear idea of its audience. What many lawyers and marketing professionals fail to grasp is that, if you don’t have a good idea of who your article is aimed at and what they are interested in, your targets are unlikely to read your piece or act upon it.
So your first step is to identify the client/s you want to engage.
This may sound obvious but I wonder how many lawyers have actually done this beyond such general thoughts as “I am aiming at solicitors/IPs etc” or “I want people to know that I have just been involved in an important case”.
You need to really think about which areas you want to develop. You can then consider the different types of client involved in those areas and plan a series of content pieces aimed at each area.
In what are they interested?
Which leads me into the next point. When you know whom you are targeting, think about, research and listen to what your target is interested in – NOT you!
Only now should you start putting together your content.
Develop the relationship
So you have followed all these steps and written an excellent, informative and commercially focused piece which has got some good readership. What next?
Don’t sit back and expect the work to flow in immediately. Most clients will not instruct on the basis of one piece of content. You need to nurture the relationship and consistently and repeatedly feed them information they want to hear and find useful.
Be realistic. We are all busy people so aiming to write something every week is likely to be doomed to failure.
Finally
This is not in itself a long article but putting into action the points I have made will take you quite a long time if you do things properly.
And, as most of your competitors won’t be doing this, if you follow the steps I have outlined, you will reap the benefits!