Client engagement is vital for the future of law firms, in a world where clients have more choice than ever and expect to be treated as valued individuals by the companies they engage with. I recently explored the reasons behind this in my blog post about the age of the customer, and my colleague Kate went on to describe the new era of client engagement in her awesome blog post last week.
So you get it – client engagement is here to stay, and law firms need to invest in it in order to keep up with the competition and stay in business. But how exactly do law firms go about building relationships with their clients? What can they do to get clients to be emotionally attached and loyal to the firm?
As with most things, there’s no simple answer: this must be a sustained effort that is undertaken by several parts of the firm, from the business development team to the lawyers themselves. But if they do it right it will lead to happy clients, increased client retention, and more new business.
Here are five steps law firms should take to build engagement with their clients and prospects:
Step 1: Really understand content marketing
Content marketing isn’t a new concept, but it’s recently exploded in popularity as more companies realise its benefits to lead generation and client engagement. Simply put, content marketing involves creating and promoting valuable content with the purpose of attracting prospects to a company, and keeping clients interested by providing them with valuable information.
The concept of thought leadership marketing has been key for law firms for many years, where firms publish their expertise to help position them as leaders particular fields in the legal industry. Content marketing goes one step further than thought leadership marketing, by tailoring content to the needs and interests of prospects or clients, and nurturing them by offering them more content that keeps them coming back to the source.
For law firms, where information and expertise is the “sell”, it’s vital that they establish their worth to their audience by delivering relevant, useful information that isn’t billable. By offering assets such as white papers, blog posts, videos or blog posts for free to prospects and clients, firms can build trust and establish their worth to clients and potential clients, and position themselves as a desirable source of useful information.
Step 2: Tailor this content to the right audience
Making clients feel valued is key to keeping them engaged and making them stay as a client. Law firms have to show them that they understand the needs and interests of their clients by giving them access to content that is relevant and helpful to them. Firms should provide their clients with a service that is personalised at all levels, and one that enables them to tailor what they receive to their own requirements.
This applies to prospects too; firms should leverage content that is captures the interest of prospects, answers their questions, and nurtures them into becoming clients. This may sound complicated, but the main thing that law firms need to do is understand their prospects. The concept of nurturing clients is key to content marketing. The Marketing Sherpa B2B Benchmarking report shows that 70% of leads are long-term opportunities that are not yet ready to become customers.
Produce content that is relevant not just for the subject matters that clients are interested in, but also for their stage in the buy cycle, taking into account whether they are fresh leads, nearly ready to convert, or existing customers. Tailor the messaging of each piece of content to each of these stages and make sure that there is plenty of valuable, varied content for each one. Firms should choose a content marketing platform that enables them to deliver tailored content relevant to each client or prospect, whether this is through email newsletters or through a content portal that users can access.
Step 3: Make content available through multiple channels
People today consume content through various media and on several devices, so it makes sense to try and reach clients or prospects on as many of these as possible. In fact, according to Forrester 78% of marketers believe that cross-channel marketing is important or very important to their business. However, marketers in all industries, including law, can struggle to reach their audiences in all of these channels because it is simply logistically challenging to publish content through multiple different platforms, social media, publications and devices.
Helpfully, there are content marketing platforms available which have been designed to tackle this problem. They enable marketers to create their content once, in one format, and automatically publish and syndicate it across multiple channels, such as the firm’s website, microsite, intranet or client portal, multiple social media accounts, RSS feeds, and email alerts, as well as making it accessible on desktop, tablet and mobile.
Reaching clients and prospects on as many channels as possible maximises the readership of content. Making the firm present on most channels keeps it top of mind for clients and prospects and builds a level of trust, reliability and engagement for the client or potential client. Making content accessible on mobile devices is vital, as a reported 56% of online content is now consumed via smartphones. Law firms certainly don’t want to miss out on this opportunity.
Step 4: Let clients choose what content they receive
The best way to encourage engagement is by giving people choice. When clients and prospects are able to choose which content they receive and how and when they receive it, they are more likely to read it and engage with the firm. In fact, a survey by Neolane found that 54% of marketers who have implemented web personalisation generated positive ROI within months.
Certain content marketing platforms allow users to self-select the type and topic of content they wish to see, which they can access in their own personalised content portal or intranet site. They are also able to sign up to flexible email alerts which they can choose based on subject matter, region, or industry. A study by Marketing Sherpa discovered that 82% of prospects say that content targeted to their specified industry is more valuable than any other content.
Ultimately, firms firms want to become the go-to resource for all information on a given subject that is of interest to the client. By tailoring this content to each client or prospect and making it relevant to their needs and their stage in the buy cycle, they will be more likely to engage with the content and the firm.
Step 5: Measure, evaluate and iterate to improve engagement
As with any exercise, it’s important to continuously evaluate client engagement efforts to see what can be improved. Firms can measure how successful their efforts are in helping clients to engage by asking questions like: which channels are clients accessing content from most frequently? Which content types are delivering the most conversions from prospect to client? How did prospects discover the firm’s content for the first time? What is the average number of content touch-points required to convert a prospect into a client? How many pieces of content does the average client consume each month?
Considering questions like these, firms can improve on their client engagement efforts by identifying any blockers to engagement or any opportunities where engagement could be increased, whether that’s through offering more content on a particular subject, for a certain stage in the buy cycle, or deliver more content through a specific medium.
In summary
Key to client engagement is understanding the audience and offering them easy access to information that is valuable to them and a choice of how they consume it. By delivering a well devised client engagement strategy through an integrated content marketing platform, law firms can position themselves as trusted sources of information that clients and prospects turn to for guidance. This in turn builds a relationship between the firm and the client or prospect, ultimately leading to customer loyalty and repeat business.
