6 Questions Lawyers Should Ask Their Marketing Department

Whether you’re a managing partner at a large law firm with an internal marketing department or are the owner of a mid-sized practice and rely on an external marketing agency, you need to know whether your efforts are working. It is critical to stay up-to-date with the operations of your marketing team to ensure their strategies are truly making a tangible impact on your bottom line.

Here are six questions that will give you vital insight into whether your marketing department is on the right track toward meeting your marketing objectives, or if you need to make adjustments in order to boost long-term success. When it comes to determining marketing effectiveness, your goal should be to paint a comprehensive picture of how your marketing efforts contribute to your law firm’s return on investment (ROI).

6 Questions Lawyers Should Ask Their Marketing Department

1. Is our law firm’s website up-to-date and optimized for leads?

People make snap judgments based on what they see on the internet so if your website looks ignored or outdated, it sends a bad message to visitors. It also becomes difficult to convert website visitors to take action (pick up the phone and call, subscribe to your newsletter, peruse through your webpages) when the content is old, the site is hard to navigate, or it is not mobile-friendly, among other things. Did you know that mobile accounts for approximately half of the web traffic worldwide (Statista)? Depending how long ago your website was created, you might have considered it an online brochure and it may not have been designed to drive leads.

Find out from your marketing department if your website is engaging visitors long enough to capture their attention and to capture them as leads.

2. In which areas are we falling short of the competition?

The competition for law firms is at an all-time high. Clients expect more for less and have an increasing number of options for where to take their business. Therefore, your marketing department should always be researching innovative ways to differentiate your practice and give it an edge in a crowded marketplace. 

Lawyers can ask their marketing department questions such as: What analytics and social listening tools are you using to learn what clients, prospects, and influencers in the industry are saying? This data will give insight into their preferences and unmet needs. The goal here is to stay ahead of your competitors by identifying what they are lacking and providing it.

3. Do we need more compelling content to attract clients?

Using blog posts and website content to share thought leadership is one way to position your law firm as a go-to resource. Creating helpful content – and being mindful of the way that potential clients search for information online – will help direct people to your site.

Inquire about the team’s strategy in creating relevant, timely, and captivating content. One of the questions to ask your marketing department is whether they have a way to determine the reception of their content marketing efforts. Also your team whether their strategy captures prospects and clients at each step along the buyer’s journey.

4. What keywords does our website rank for?

Want to see your website on the elusive first page of Google for a given search term? The way to get your law firm’s website highly on Google is by a process called search engine optimization (SEO).

Ask your marketing department to provide you with the list of keywords that you rank for. Find out what their strategy is to a) achieve higher positions for high value terms you’re already ranking for and b) rank for high value terms you’re not yet ranking for.

If you’re not ranking for terms that you’d like to be found for, we recommend you write more authoritative website content that is optimized for those keywords and key phrases. Similarly, you may also consider re-writing your practice area pages if they’re not ranking for target keywords either.

SEO is a complex discipline that combines a large number of tools and best practices that are constantly evolving. Just because you were on page 1 of Google for the search term “construction accident attorney New York” last month, doesn’t mean your position is secured.

5. How are we following up with our webinar attendees?

Too often, law firms focus on creating compelling webinar content and forget to focus on the next step – the follow up. It’s important to reach out to registrants and attendees shortly after they attend your virtual event via email. Remember that one of the main reasons for lawyers to host webinars is to generate new interest and leads. To do that, you need to continue the conversation. 

Are you sending thank you emails and asking about their interest in future topics? Are you following up with those that didn’t attend and offering them a recording of your webinar? Are you sending attendees a short survey after the webinar to see if our content resonated with them? You can also use survey responses to segment your attendees and tailor your follow up marketing messages.

6. How are we tracking and defining marketing success? Does it align with our firm’s strategic business objectives?

Your law firm’s marketing department should be employing tools to track ROI and campaign performance. By doing so, the team can determine what’s working and what’s not.

Ask the team what marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) they’re tracking. KPIs are metrics that allow your law firm to determine your results over time. Some examples of marketing KPIs are: cost per lead, organic traffic, landing page conversion rates, social media traffic, and many more.

It’s up to you to make sure your marketing KPIs align with your strategic business objectives. If your law firm hasn’t aligned its marketing strategy with its business objectives, you may struggle to achieve your goals.

Takeaway

A lawyer’s marketing department, whether internal or external, should be able to confidently answer these six questions and tell you how they got to their answers. When you have the answers to these questions, you can make strategic and tactical decisions with the biggest impact on your most important metric: revenue.

Contact us to learn more, or to get some help with your own digital marketing strategy. We develop unique and customized marketing strategies for law firms of all sizes and practice areas. Let us help you take your firm to the next level, freeing you to focus on your clients and your practice.

Updated and Republished from July 14, 2020.