Baker McKenzie’s Will White (@WillWhite365), Global Director of Marketing & Communications, and Erin Nixon (@MrsErinNixon), Head of Digital Marketing join us on the Legal Marketing 2.0 podcast, and encourage legal marketers to:

“Don’t be afraid to fail!”

Baker McKenzie is one of the world’s leading law firms, with 77 offices in 47 countries, and took the top Facebook spot in our 2017 Social Law Firm Index. Erin and Will talk about the content sharing checklist they shared with us, and offer insight into how social and digital media should fit into your overall marketing and communications efforts, along with their approach to analytics. 

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Shownotes

How does social media fit into Baker McKenzie’s overall marketing communications efforts?

Social media has to be at the heart and center of marketing. By planning traditional, digital, social, and internal strategies in tandem, Baker McKenzie’s campaigns work together seamlessly. Despite different mediums, the overall strategy remains connected. Firms should take technology out of the equation when they begin creating a campaign. Technology shouldn’t lead the strategy, rather firms should have objectives and identify their audiences before choosing the right channel for their message. Digital is no different than traditional marketing, it’s just the tactics that vary. It’s still important to set goals and measure the ROI for your company.

Creating a content strategy to appeal to various audiences

Baker McKenzie’s content marketing strategy begins first with identifying an audience. Different approaches work for different clients and segmenting these clients helps to create targeted marketing campaigns that differ slightly by social platform.

Each channel is best for hosting different types of content and reaching different audiences. For example, Facebook is excellent for showcasing pro bono work and recruiting potential employees. To create valuable content, it’s crucial to understand the issues your clients are facing and write about key topics in their industries. Then, you can identify how your law firm’s expertise can help.

Baker McKenzie’s recent initiatives to build social and digital presences

Over the past 9 months, Baker McKenzie has rebranded themselves through a marketing campaign called The New Lawyer that aimed to create awareness around the firm’s expertise and experience. A variety of media was used in this campaign including a video to launch the refreshed brand, contextual display, native content, and a sponsored social element on Facebook and LinkedIn. Throughout the six weeks the campaign ran, it was refined to better target its audience. A survey was conducted to measure brand awareness before and after the launch of The New Lawyer to measure how well it met the firm’s original objective. It’s important for law firms to have evidence for why they need a campaign and goals of what they want to achieve before they start planning.

A contextual approach to analytics

Analytics are constantly changing, which is why understanding your firm’s metrics in terms of industry standards is key. Working with agencies can help give you an in depth knowledge of analytics and help narrow the overwhelming amount of data into KPIs that make sense in context of the content you are producing. Discussing which analytics you’ll be measuring before beginning a marketing campaign can help your marketing team identify what success will look like at the end. By assessing your data for trends and patterns, you can see which types of content are working best and on which platforms. Overall, analytics aren’t about collecting as much data as possible, but rather ending up with leads and meaningful conversations between your firm and potential clients.

Takeaways

In order to have a strong marketing communications strategy, it must be fully integrated amongst different mediums to achieve your firm’s overarching goals. Having people at the top that are active on social media and understand what the new digital world is all about, makes a big difference and encourages clients to become engaged on social as well.

In digital marketing, you can’t be afraid to fail –  now is the time to try new things. Technology is only making it easier to test ideas and see what works for your law firm.

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