The Found Gen

Marketing That Works.

Search Results for: email

by

Why Blogging is So Dang Important for Law Firms

You’re a busy legal professional. You’ve got clients to manage, court appearances, research and research and research. Who has time to blog?

Well, you might not want to hear this, but you need to make the time. Blogs are number one for driving traffic to your site, establishing trust and authority,  and landing leads. However, if you don’t want to make the time, there are some great options (ahem, like us) for outsourcing all your marketing needs

You’re just not going to escape the need for blogs in your law firm. They’re just that important.

One of the great things is that you probably already have a massive amount of content just sitting in your legal documents, your client emails and in-house communications that can readily be turned into blogs. So, look at the bright side. All that finger strain and knowledge poured out can fuel future blogs and a strategic marketing campaign.

Now, let’s get into the nitty gritty. We can push you to blog all day, but you need to know why it’s so important for your law firm. Here’s why…

Trust and authority

In the legal field, your clients need to know that they can count on your knowledge, skills and expertise. You can talk up your practice all you want but the proof is in the pudding. Think of it from your client’s perspective. If they came to your website and just saw you tooting your own horn with no content to back it up, they wouldn’t establish the kind of trust they need to reach out to you. Show them that you’re an expert, that you understand your legal field inside and out and that you understand their needs. Share stories that they can relate to – and how you would solve or approach the issue at hand. This can provide a level of solace to a potential client that makes converting that lead and done deal. Yes, you can accomplish all this and more through blogs.

Not only are trust and authority important to your clients, but they’re important to Google’s crawlers as well. SEO is about way more than regurgitating keywords. Google actually has algorithms to examine your authority and credibility. Write great blogs with relevant and informative content and boost your SEO. Speaking of SEO…

SEO

Hands down the best way to get yourself on the first page of search engines is through content. And for most law firms blogging is the best form of content to accomplish this. 96% of people are using search engines to find attorneys. 75% of people never look past the first page. Writing blogs that target the key questions that your potential clients are searching for will put you on their radar and drive all that traffic home.

Foster relationships, expand your reach

Consumers just don’t want to be “sold” anymore. They are savvier than ever and know when they’re getting a sales pitch. These days the best way to attract clients and build a brand is through relationships. You build relationships through content. This means providing content that speaks to your audience’s needs and wants, that meets them where they are and answers the questions that are on their minds. Do this and you foster relationships. Relationships lead to trusting and satisfied clients.

A cost-effective marketing strategy

The bottom line is always heavy on the mind of any business owner. Your law firm is no different. One of the best things about blogging is that it’s extremely cost-effective compared to other forms of marketing and offers one of the best ROIs of any marketing strategy. Valuable blogs also pay for themselves year after year. If you wrote about a particularly sticky issue that your clients are needing help on, you could see return traffic to this blog for months and years, helping you rank on search engines and building your authority.

Feed the content machine

With an effective content marketing strategy, it’s imperative to look at the big picture. Blogs are great, of course, you’ll never hear otherwise from us. But without an overarching campaign and strategy, you won’t utilize your blogs to their full effectiveness. Blogs can (and should) work in tandem with social media, newsletters, video content and any other piece of your overall marketing plan.

Are we blog-biased? Of course! But for good reason. Blogs are one of the best forms of content to drive quality traffic to your site, establish authority, and easily convert leads, not to mention they’re so dang cost-effective.

Bottom line. You need to blog. Hope we made that clear. Now, let’s talk content marketing strategy to give your blogs the best shot.

by

How to Save Money and Market Your Law Firm without Spending Big Bucks on Ads

More business. More notoriety. More growth.

For most law firms, the business goals always seem to revolve around the concept of more. But we’d like to introduce a different perspective: less.

Less spending, less moving parts, less confusion.

When it comes to marketing, we are big believers that less is more. It can be difficult for many law firms to develop a solid marketing strategy for a number of reasons, but most of the time it’s because there is a lot of conflicting advice out there as to how to grow or market your law firm in today’s online economy.

If your firm is burning through your marketing budget faster than you’d like, then it’s time to re-evaluate your strategy. Many firms heavily rely on ad campaigns, both online and out-of-home (read: billboards), to drive leads and build brand recognition.

While ads can have a valuable impact, there’s a time and a place. And often, those are secondary to a strong content marketing campaign.  Here’s a quick breakdown of steps you can take now to lessen your budget and increase your marketing impact.  

Content, content, content

We harp on content a lot, and for very good reason. Content is one the most cost-effective ways to market your law firm and it’s one of the best forms of marketing overall. Content marketing is the number one way to grow your reputation, build trust quickly, and boost your SEO while increasing traffic to your site.

Content marketing provides informative, engaging and valuable content to your potential clients. The three best things for a firm to focus on when it comes to content marketing? Blogs, blogs, and email. And maybe some more blogs, just for good measure. Don’t believe us – get in touch and we can cite seriously cool case studies to show you the impact of blogging on a law firm.

Review management

Clients look to reviews more than ever when choosing their attorneys. Your reputation is everything! So, make sure you’re getting online to manage your reviews. Respond to every review, positive or negative. But give special care to the negative reviews and see what you can do to address the client’s issues. This will show potential clients that you want your customers to feel heard and appreciated. The more you engage the more you show that you’re an approachable and caring law practice.

Local listings and legal directories

One of the easiest ways to market your firm and make yourself visible is simply by making sure your local listings are updated and accurate. Scan across the board, Google My Business, Facebook, Avvo, Yelp, FindLaw, etc. Make sure your contact information is correct and all relevant details are supplied.

Legal directories are also a great low-cost or no-cost way to put your name out there. You might have to take a close look at which directories are best for your particular practice and which make the most sense for your budget, but do not skip this simple marketing tool.

Outsource

Believe it or not (you should definitely believe it) outsourcing your marketing is huge for law firms in savings of both time and money. If you’re trying to wear every hat or keep all of your operations in-house, you could be shooting yourself in the foot. You and your legal team have specialties. This is what you should focus your time and energy on. When you step out of your area of expertise you waste valuable time and you’re not producing the best work. Hand your marketing needs over to an agency that knows their stuff. You will take so much off your plate and find yourself able to focus on what you do best, as well as growing your business.

We just happen to be one of those marketing agencies that knows their stuff. We keep our finger on the pulse of the latest marketing trends, SEO strategies, content marketing strategies, social media and data analysis. By letting us do what we do best you get to do what you do best. You get great marketing, your clients get your undivided attention and you can focus on goring your practice.

Reach out to talk marketing strategies for your law firm.

by

Are You Seeking the Right ROI?

How understanding ROI and setting correct expectations can play a critical role in your return on investment

Return on investment (ROI) is the measurement for the success of any investment that your business takes on – in marketing, training, software, hardware, even staples and paper, etc. It’s the benchmark for your bottom line. It tells you whether your investment was successful and how you might make future ventures in your business.

It’s great to be ambitious and continue to raise the bar in your business. Stagnation is the swamp that eventually swallows businesses whole. So, it’s appropriate to seek a high ROI.

But on the other hand, it’s critical that you set yourself up with realistic goals. Sure, everyone wants to increase their revenue by 10,000% but in the real business world – with real human customers and real-life constraints – this is not credible for most companies.

We all want our dollars turn into more dollars. How do we maintain that determined business drive while also creating realistic expectation on our ROI? And how do these expectations play a role in a successful marketing campaign?

Know thy self (and thy business)

To correctly gage ROI and to accurately predict the expected ROI you need to know how your business has historically performed. This takes detailed data over a substantial period of time and a correct analysis of this data (Blog: When Was The Last Time You Looked at Your Data?). You then take this data and decide where your marketing dollars are best spent.

For instance, if your business has seen a great ROI from email marketing campaigns but social media campaigns flopped, it’s not realistic to expect a 5x ROI from a social media campaign that has historically underperformed. You’ll either need to try a different approach or consider a different marketing avenue.

In a nutshell, you need to know your business and your goals in order to set a realistic expectation for your ROI.

Crunch the numbers

The standard ROI formula goes like this: Net return ÷ cost of investment x 100.

Seems straightforward enough but this formula is incomplete. Calculating ROI for marketing is notoriously difficult for a number of reasons. Huge corporations actually have customized complex formulas and algorithms that factor in any number of variables to accurately assess their marketing ROI.

You might think your ROI on a Google ad campaign is a simple formula but it can sometimes take months to see the full fruit of your marketing labors. Additionally some ROIs must take into consideration your business’s gross margin target, overhead expenses, cost-per-lead, and so much more.

The lesson is this: It’s never a good idea to invest blindly in anything. So, review your data, crunch the numbers and do your due diligence before setting goals.

Lifetime value

There’s another factor to consider in your ROI known as lifetime value. This is the value a customer brings to your business over their entire lifetime as your loyal supporter. It’s important not to get too fixated on that single transaction because a great business builds loyalty and trust, which leads to repeat business.

Let’s say you ran a marketing campaign that brought this hypothetical customer (let’s call her Kay) in through a pay-per-click ad. Kay factored into your ROI on that campaign, but she’s now a lifelong customer who will continue to invest in your business. Perhaps on the that first PPC ad the business only achieved a 2x ROI. Well, that’s not a great investment. But when you factor in the repeat purchases that Kay has made (and many more people like her), that ROI starts to grow to a 6x dividend as the months and years go by.

Give me the ROI numbers, already!

All right, all right. We know you’ve been waiting for a direct answer to ROI expectations but we wanted to make sure that the full scope of ROI calculations was understood first.

Here are the real numbers you can expect from a good marketing campaign.

You’re basically looking for a 3-5x ROI as a standard for a successful investment. So if you put in $1,000, you could expect $3-5,000 back.

This is a ballpark estimate because it really does vary by industry and it depends on the type of investment, each individual businesses’ benchmarks, bottom line and long-term business plan, in addition to any number of specific targets.

2x ROI is so-so, but for some businesses this can be a success depending on long and short-term goals. 10x ROI is fantastic and every would-be marketing guru wants to claim they can deliver this but it is rarely realistic.

Are you ready to see your best ROI? We can help you assess your business’s bottom line and create a campaign that can see an obtainable and valuable return on investment.

by

Marketing Is Not Sales. Here’s Why That’s Important.

Marketing and sales… They go together like a horse and carriage.

That doesn’t rhyme as well as Sinatra’s original version but the final line remains the same: You can’t have one without the other.

Marketing drives customers to sales and sales teams close the deal to generate the right ROI so that the marketing teams can keep their jobs.

Marketing is not sales. Sales is not marketing. But they are both crucial to the buyer’s journey and they are both dependent on each other.

For too long there has been this erroneous assumption that marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin. This not only does a disservice to the work and process of both marketers and salespeople but it creates an inaccurate notion of the purpose of marketing.

We’re here to set the record straight. And we’re also here to broker a peace treaty between marketing and sales because, ultimately, we need both for our businesses to be successful.

Awareness, Consideration, Conversion (or Decision)

Known as the marketing/sales funnel or the buyer’s journey and also known to have a hundred different variations, this model breaks down the road map of how a prospect becomes a customer. We like the simplified version of 3 steps: Awareness, Consideration and Conversion.

It’s a funnel that captures interested audiences until finally leading them to make a purchase. It’s important to visualize this process because, just like the shape of the funnel, the jobs of the marketing team vs the sales team become narrower as the potential buyer progresses on their journey. And the narrower it gets, the closer we get to differentiating marketing vs. sales.

Awareness

Building brand awareness is the primary job of marketing. This awareness leads to engagements, which leads to trust. Through content, social media, blogs, newsletters, paid advertising, and all those other nifty tactics, marketers cast a wide net to interest potential customers. Marketing provides relevant information, fosters conversations and communicates the value of a service or a product. It is as simple as that. But it’s also quite complex.

Building awareness with marketing isn’t just about throwing out a campaign blindly into the internet-ether and hoping for the best. It involves tons of research, evaluation and, most importantly, knowing your customers. When all this is done properly, with the right marketing tactics and a well-designed content marketing campaign, you capture the customers that will actually gain value from your brand. This will then lead them to…

Consideration

Here, the potential customer has become what’s called a “warm lead,” meaning they’re qualified, close to saying yes, but they need a little more information and convincing. The marketing team steps in again here to give even more targeted materials. Perhaps this is a personalized email or maybe it means engaging more on social media. These days this often ends up as the prospect researching and digging in on their own, most likely by reading your blogs or examining your product or service through reviews.

We’re still in the realm of marketing here. But as the customer gets closer and closer to making a decision, that’s when sales steps in to take over.

Conversion/Decision

Finally, we have reached the tip of the funnel. The customer has decided that they must have your product or service and they are compelled to make a purchase. In traditional businesses this could mean a salesperson stepping in and closing the deal, but more often these days it’s a matter of putting an item in a cart (either physically or online) and making the purchase.

If a more traditional sales model is taking place, then it’s absolutely crucial that the final stage in the buyer’s journey leaves them feeling good. If a buyer is happy with their decision and has a great experience, they will go on to become a loyal follower and even refer others.

The moral of the story?

While marketing and sales are intertwined, they have different roles and serve different purposes. Marketing is creating interest and awareness in goods or services. Sales takes these interested leads, reinforces the value of goods or services and converts the prospects into customers.

Marketing needs sales and sales need marketing. They rely on each other, so the best business will create a relationship between marketing and sales teams to best support the other and to let each team do what they do best.

For a smaller business or a single owner entrepreneur this means a bit of mental aerobics. But the primary consideration is to not turn marketing into icky sales drivel. Let marketing do what it does best: creating awareness and giving customers information. Then when it’s time to make a sale, seal the deal and leave your customers feeling fantastic about their decision.

Now, how do you feel? Confused? Amped? Let us know how we can help you master your marketing strategy so you can make the sales.

by

Are You Tracking Traffic to Your Blog Properly?

A successful blog can mean different things to different people and businesses. One company might be seeking higher engagement and PR. Another might be solely interested in converting leads. While another company may want to build a loyal following.

Regardless of your niche, industry or area of expertise, everyone needs the data that will tell them whether or not their blog is successful based on their key performance indicators (KPIs). With all readers coming to your site, engagements and leads, you are sitting on a treasure trove of data that can further fuel your business. You need to make sure you’re tracking all that priceless data correctly.

Welcome to the wonderful world of blog analytics.

Analytics can help you track your impact with impressions, clicks and click-through rates. They can help you understand your traffic performance, your authority, your readership engagement and your lead generation.

Here are the key tracking methods you can use to measure your blog’s success.

Page views and visits

A visit measures the number of times your site was seen by a user. Any time a user views a page on your website this qualifies as a page view. This can tell you how many people are visiting your site, what pages they’re visiting and how your inbound links may be assisting  or hindering them from more page views.

Search impressions

These come from the number of times your post has been seen in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The higher you rank, the more traffic will be driven to your site. If you’re ranking low, it’s time to review your SEO.

Clicks

It’s great the people are searching for your topic, but you need them click. the more clicks, the more traffic. The more traffic, the more potential customers.

Click-through rate

The click-through rate measure the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click. A high percentage means your impressions are doing great. Even if your post had low traffic, if your click-through rate is high, you’re doing something right.

Traffic by channel

The channel refers to the path your readers take to visit your content. This could be coming from social media, email campaigns, landing pages or search engines. This can tell you which channel is most successful for your business.

Time on page vs. bounce rate

You want your readers to spend as much time on your page as possible. Analytics can measure the average time people spend on your site. This can tell you how engaging and relevant your content is. On the other hand, bounce rates refer to people coming to your site or page, finding nothing worth their interest, and leaving. Both metrics will help you gage whether your content is resonating with your audience.

Top traffic posts

By seeing which posts gained the most traffic you can get a better understanding of what content your audience wants. This can help you tailor future blogs to meet your customers’ needs.

The list could go on… But we don’t want to wear you down with too much tactical analytical talk.

We hope you get the point. Analytics are crucial measurements to help you determine the effectiveness of your blogs. Analytics will also help you build your bottom line when it comes to your marketing strategy and budget. DO NOT skip analytics or simply gloss over your indicators. This is priceless data that your business needs.

And we didn’t want to leave you without some tools for tracking your traffic.

Here are some of the best tools for measuring analytics.

  • Google Analytics
  • Tableau
  • Momently
  • HubSpot Marketing Hub
  • SEMrush
  • Google Search Console
  • Visitor Analytics
  • Clicky Analytics
  • Bitly

We wish you the best in digging through your data. If the numbers are overwhelming you, we can help!

by

What Type of Content Is Best Suited for Your Business?

We’ve said it once, we’ll say it again (and probably 1,000 more times): Content is king.

Your business needs content like fish need water. Content in an essential component to business these days – any and all types of business.

But with all these forms of content, how do you know what’s going to work best for your business?

It’s a great question with no simple answer. But you can start answering this questioning by knowing your customers.

Who is your content for?

Start with the who. Who are your customers? Get to know them inside and out, not just the demographics and numbers, but the psychographics, the studies, the research, and, perhaps most important, the things you can only learn by speaking with an actual human being.

Then move on to the what. What are your customers searching for on Google? What are they interested in? What do they need to know more about? What are their pain points and what solutions can you offer?

Next, the where. Where are your customers going for information, to meet their needs or for entertainment? Are they on LinkedIn or Instagram? Are they looking local? Are they searching on Google or do they rely on referrals?

Now, the how. This may be the most important question to ask in order to determine what type of content will work for your audience. How are they accessing information – laptop, phone, tablet, word of mouth? How do they best consume information? How do they prefer to interact with brands?

Getting to know your customers is the majority of the work in determining the content that will best reach them. Without thorough and accurate knowledge of your clientele, your content marketing plan doesn’t have the bones to hold up your body of content (gross image, we know, but hopefully it sticks).

Types of content

Content is the art of communicating directly with your audience. Do it right and you get people to read and view your content, derive some kind of benefit from it, then eventually give you their business. That’s the big idea, but to do that you need great content and you need to make sure it’s the right type of content for your customers.

Here’s a breakdown of the top forms of content and how they might work for different types of customers and businesses.

Blogs

Blogs can improve your SEO, drive traffic to your site and provide useful information that speaks directly to your customers’ needs. They’re a great way to build authority and trust and you can use the content from blogs in other types of content marketing. If you had to pick one type of content for your business, blogging would probably be it.

Videos

Video is quickly overtaking other forms of content as consumers’ preferred way to learn about and engage with brands. Videos can be used across platforms so they’re an incredibly versatile form of marketing. To sweeten the deal, videos are easier to create than ever. Our phones come equipped with high quality cameras and software to create videos, plus there are tons of cheap or free apps to help you create great video.

Interactive content

Interactive content is one of the best ways to improve engagement. Try out interactive content to get your customers to respond to your posts and even gain valuable information about them. Use polls, quizzes, lists, interactive maps and more to create excitement and interaction.

Infographics

Who doesn’t love a good infographic? You get a whole boatload of information in a fun, engaging, visual representation. Infographics are great for trying to educate your audience, present a complicated subject or present statistics. Since the brain processes visual information faster than text and many people are visual learners, infographics are a great way to get your message across.

Webinars and online courses

If you have valuable information to offer your audience webinars and online courses are a great way to demonstrate your expertise and even create a new form to monetize your knowledge.

White papers

One of the best forms of B2B marketing, white papers are a great way to stand out as a thought leader in your industry, gain more respect and create a lead magnet. Since white papers tend to be more [information dense and data driven,] you need to know that this is something your customers are looking for before you invest.

Case studies

Case studies are one of the best forms of content for conversion. If you have a great product or service and a strong history of success and satisfied clients, case studies could be right for your business. Another great thing about case studies is that they can convert into other forms of content marketing too.

Once you’re making the right content – then you can move on to how to distribute that content (social, email, etc). Content marketing is one of the best ways to foster organic growth for your business. But before you go gung-ho on your content, make sure you’ve got a killer content marketing plan and a trusty content calendar.

Go forth and create content!