Did you know that – according to the Content Marketing Institute – 89 percent of B2B companies are using content marketing today? We’re willing to bet that most law firms and the companies who supply software and services to them fall into that other 11 percent not making content marketing part of their strategy. We all know that law firms – and the companies that support them – are notoriously slow adopters. We understand. After all, the rest of the world’s industries have been able to advertise for 150 years longer than U.S. law firms.
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. Some of the many benefits include:
- Attracting website traffic. If you’re blogging and posting new downloadable content, you can continually add fresh new material that includes your keywords and search terms. This helps optimize your site for search engines and increases your domain authority.
- Building thought leadership. The more times people see your authoritative content, the more they’ll remember your company and the better your reputation with those individuals will be.
- Converting visitors to contacts. Individuals are willing to give their name and contact information for well-written, helpful content. That information can be used for future and ongoing email marketing campaigns.
- Moving contacts through the sales funnel. Content that is delivered in a well-timed manner will help move contacts through the sales funnel to become true sales leads.
But if there’s anything that will convince legal-related businesses to adopt a new marketing strategy, it is seeing the real results and success a similar business has achieved.
Edge Legal Marketing client Innovative Computing Systems is a partner to law firms, municipalities and professional services organizations looking to define or improve a comprehensive IT strategy; implement, integrate and support best-in-class legal and horizontal technologies; enhance security; and leverage the power of cloud computing. A little more than two years ago, it made the strategic move to content marketing and invested in HubSpot as its chosen platform to manage and automate its content marketing workflow.
The results of its content marketing efforts since March of 2015, when its content machine was up and running at full steam, are enviable. Innovative now has:
- 6,019 contacts in its database, up from 1,928 at the start
- 452 blog reads
- A 14.06 percent email open rate and a 4.93 percent click-through rate
- 889 Twitter followers, up from 597 at the start
- 178 Facebook followers, up from 132 at the start
- 777 LinkedIn followers, up from 692 one year ago (which is as far back as LinkedIn reports)
- 55 content items, which have resulted in 804 downloads
Innovative’s content marketing strategy has not been without occasional pain points. While the company’s top managers support the strategy, developing new content often falls low on the priority list given their client focus and becomes the last item on the to-do list of Innovative’s experts. The marketing team has learned to accommodate this by turning every new content item into as many additional content items as possible. As an example, live webinars are recorded and loaded onto the website for future promotion and downloads. The content of the webinar becomes an article or a top 10 tip sheet that sits behind a “gated” form. The article or tip sheet becomes a series of blog posts with a call to action to download the webinar on the topic. The blog posts become articles in the next month’s newsletter. The blog posts – and all the new content – are promoted through social media and email. The cycle continues until a new piece of content gives the team a fresh start.
Today’s prospects have an appetite for information and a resistance to the old-fashioned hard sell. Prospects want good content that helps them make solid decisions. Great content marketing starts with a plan, an understanding of the target audience and a process to accomplish goals. Ready to make the case for content marketing at your company?