Many legal marketers who are new to content marketing often get caught off guard by just how tough it can be. And so, many law firms and attorneys give up when they run into legal content marketing challenges, which usually involve time constraints and costs, as well as problems measuring ROI.
And more often than not, these issues stem from not having a complete understanding of content marketing, including how it works, what it’s for, and why it matters.
Content Marketing is a Commitment, Not a Campaign
As Michael Brenner, CEO of the Marketing Insider Group, notes, content marketing is a commitment, not a campaign. (1)
Content marketing isn’t just a matter of looking at a computer screen for one or two hours every day. It’s a continual a top-to-bottom process that encompasses social media, branding, and even SEO and PPC. Where many legal marketers stumble is in assuming that content marketing is a project instead of a long-term effort.
How to Overcome Content Marketing Challenges
For your law firm to overcome content marketing challenges, your entire organization and marketing team must be truly committed to using content as a way to promote the organization. In this post, we list down some of the most common legal content marketing challenges that many attorneys and law firms have encountered, and how you can work around each one.
- Coming Up with Unique and Informative Content
Many legal marketers make the mistake of planning all kinds of content marketing tactics and choosing different content formats (blogs, videos, and infographics among others) to come up with unique and informative content.
This is where many content marketing campaigns start off on the wrong foot.
How to Overcome: If you’re creating content for the sake of creating content, and not for your audience, you’re not doing content marketing right. Remember that one of the tenets of content marketing is that you need to understand — and write specifically — for your audience. (2) Otherwise, what’s the point of producing content if it doesn’t reach out to potential clients?
- Lack of Content Marketing Resources
As your content marketing campaign gets underway, you may find yourself dealing with a growing pile of tasks and a busier marketing schedule. It’s at this point that many legal marketing teams begin to feel the lack of content marketing resources, which is further compounded by deadlines and content topics that have to be produced.
How to Overcome: The key is to set SMART marketing objectives: Specific, Measureable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-Related. (3) By setting SMART marketing objectives, you can ensure that your efforts are not just on point, but can be benchmarked, delegated, and attained within a specific timeframe. This helps to keep your content marketing campaign efficient and within budget.
- Your Content is Not Engaging
If your law firm’s content is not engaging, it could be due to any combination of things. Are people actually able to find your content? Is it actually interesting? More importantly, is your content even useful or valuable?
In the early days of blogging, even just publishing above average content online was enough to generate buzz and improve brand awareness. But this is no longer the case today. In fact, even if you have what looks like vibrant and useful content, if no one can find it, it won’t generate the kind of engagement you want. Conversely, even if your content asset can be found, no one will want to read and share it if it’s all fluff and no substance.
How to Overcome: The solution is a multi-pronged approach that includes using relevant keywords (for SEO juice and discoverability), writing a compelling story that evokes a cognitive and emotional response, diversifying content into different formats, and providing useful, actionable information readers can apply to their situation.
- Measuring Your Content Marketing Effectiveness
If your law firm is struggling to measure your content marketing effectiveness, you’re not alone. According to one report from 2016, inability to measure effectiveness is the fourth most cited obstacle for content marketing success. (4)
Many legal marketers often have trouble deciding what metrics to use to measure their content marketing campaigns. The solution is simpler than you think.
How to Overcome: Ultimately, your choice of metric boils down to what key performance indicator (KPI) is most relevant to your firm. The right KPI, in turn, depends on what your marketing goals actually are.
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- Is it to generate brand awareness? If so, you might want to measure traffic.
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- Is to generate sales? Look for conversions and revenue.
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- Is to increase content engagement and establish thought leadership? Look at the bounce rates on your blog posts.
- Is it to improve the customer experience? Look at your customer feedback.
Final Thoughts on How to Overcome Legal Content Marketing Challenges
Is your firm facing any of these content marketing challenges? While it would be next to impossible to predict all possible obstacles that could slow down your content marketing campaign, just remember that preparation is key to avoid headaches down the line. Again, identify your audience and create content for them, set the right kind of objectives, create a multi-prong content strategy, and know what metrics to use to measure your campaign’s effectiveness. When in doubt, talk to a content marketing specialist with experience in the legal services industry.
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