What Legal Marketing Leaders Are Investing in This Year

In an ideal world, marketers would have endless budgets to invest in new programs or experimental initiatives. But in reality, law firm marketing budgets are often limited around what’s proven to work — which looks different from firm to firm. 

As you search for new opportunities to market your law firm online, keep in mind what your peers and competitors are focused on.

Growth Marketing 

Google has reported that the search term ‘growth marketing’ has risen by over 100% in the last five years. This term describes the experiments and resulting processes that law firms and organizations use to build and retain a client base over time. This type of marketing embraces using data-driven decision making processes. Think of these tactics as a way to increase client acquisition. A/B testing, conversion rate optimization, design changes, and content updates all relate to growth marketing as they can help firms remain adaptive, consistent and recognizable for their target audience. Growth marketing also focuses on reaching potential clients at every stage of the pipeline, making contact with them throughout a variety of channels. Growth marketing focuses on defining customer segments, and then leveraging data and testing to find the most cost-effective way to convert leads. 

Reacting at Speed

If the pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that we all need to be able to adjust our strategies based on what’s happening in the world. Because of this, many marketers report that they’ll be investing in systems and tools that will help them react more quickly. Specifically, marketers tend to report that the main issue to reacting at speed is developing unique, creative content at a fast pace and adapting quickly to trends. Marketing teams can combat this by developing an action plan for future content in advance, as well as having a thorough understanding of client needs and concerns in real-time. You may need to restructure your team in order to be able to make changes quickly, even at a moment’s notice. Many marketers are investing in AI to help make the content creation process more streamlined. While it’s not smart to rely fully on AI, a combination of social listening tools and AI tools for content creation can help speed up processes when faced with a unique change in your audience’s preferences.

Marketing Technology (Martech)

In one study, over half of marketers said martech investments could increase revenue. These investments can directly impact the two areas already mentioned – growth marketing and reaction times. Often described as martech, this term describes any software or technology used to attract and retain clients. Ranging from data analytics platforms to CRMs, to internal team collaboration and project management tools, effective martech can help firms to streamline their communication processes and take a more systematic approach to their marketing tasks. CRM and marketing automation are two areas that will remain vital for savvy marketing leaders. Now, as using marketing technology becomes the norm, marketers who do not invest in their martech stack will find themselves falling behind.

Diversity Marketing

Social justice issues have been at the forefront of many corporate conversations this past year, and we expect that trend to continue.Nowadays, 84% of Americans believe businesses have a responsibility to drive social change. Today’s clients care more than ever about finding a firm that aligns with their values. Smart leaders will commit to diversity marketing that is particularly representative of the communities their firm serves. That being said, it’s critical that firms are genuine in these efforts – meaning they need to follow up what they say with action, or they’re likely to turn people off more than interest them. Be sure to be authentic in your communications, or you risk coming off as opportunistic.

Personalization

It’s become increasingly important to interact with your audience in a way that feels unique to them. In fact, 97% of marketers witnessed improved business outcomes as a result of personalization. Personalization has been proven to increase retention rates and advance client relationships. The best way to enable personalization is to invest in the correct marketing technology. Doing so will provide the key data and insights required to develop content that’s relevant to your different audiences. Data analytics platforms are particularly powerful for these purposes. You can even leverage data technology like intent data in order to learn what content your segments most want to see.

Related: What’s In Your Law Firm Martech Stack?

Takeaway

We continue to see more and more legal marketing leaders focusing on and investing in the trends mentioned above. Understand how each one will affect your firm’s strategy, and join other marketers in these investments.

If you need help evaluating your marketing strategy or your marketing technology in order to better connect with your clients, we can help. Contact us today for a consultation.

This post has been edited and republished from May 4, 2021.