Let me know if these statements ring true:
- You have clients but would like to build closer relationships to them and ultimately want them to buy more services.
- You have invested heavily in a customer relationship management system (CRM), but aren’t seeing the ROI.
- You have a team of marketing experts at your call but efforts are de-centralised and managed in the business.
- You blend old hard copy marketing with the latest content marketing ideas and social channels.
- You struggle to get the right sort of engagement or reaction from your efforts.
If you say “yes” to any of these statements then read on as at least one of these tips could help you.
Firstly let me say you aren’t alone.
Legal marketing techniques and approaches have changed in the last five years and they will continue to do so. The rise of content marketing and marketing automation and changes in approaches to things like SEO and old school hard copy brochures are all intertwined.
Don’t let these changes intimidate you.
Focus on the following four considerations and you’ll be guaranteed to be moving in the right direction.
The marketing list
Let me start on a potentially touchy subject. The marketing list. It’s almost certain that you will have a whole raft of marketing lists in your CRM. Each for their own purpose though rarely are they managed as closely as they should be. Email marketing can be a powerful thing when used in equal measure but it’s vital to make sure that you do it in an ethical way (i.e. no spamming!).
Here’s what you need to do to ensure your marketing lists are leveraged as an asset and doesn’t become a risk to your company’s reputation.
Manage
Ensure you focus on managing your lists. Marketing lists are never 100% accurate or current; people change their email addresses, leave their jobs, or change their email preferences. The lists should always be evolving and being cultivated. Build out a marketing list strategy by thinking about the types of content you are sharing and how you want to slice and dice your CRM. Is it by practice, sector or perhaps service? Almost all firms have too many lists. Don’t be scared to have a big tidy up to get you on a even keel.
Build out a preference database to allow your clients to select what format and what content they prefer, and when they would like to be sent content. If they are in control of these simple settings they will more than likely choose settings which will encourage their engagement. Ensure these preferences are captured and passed through to your CRM automatically. Ensure marketing lists are up to date with the right information, especially opt outs.
Cull and curate
Ensure you are using analytics to influence your lists. Make sure after every campaign you review the read rates and click through rates. These are no brainers but in the modern day business world not enough time is spent reflecting on what went wrong as much as is spent on what went right. There are simple ways of working marketing automation into your campaigns and website by building out calls to action which capture new information and syncs it back to the CRM and automatically adds them to the list.
Use them carefully
A carefully curated marketing list is vital. It can be used in many different scenarios. Once you have a good solid base of a list, don’t flog it to death. Just because it’s accurate doesn’t mean to say the people on it want to receive updates every day. Think like one of your clients. Think about the amount of spam you get in you Gmail account. I’m not saying your message is spam but think carefully how often you are sending content to your clients and prospects. It’s just a single click to opt out, something you want to avoid.
Personalisation
No one likes to feel like just another number. Making your clients feel special is key to keeping them happy and making them stay being your clients. You want to provide them with a service that is personalised at all levels, and one that enables them to tailor the experience to their own needs and desires.
Platform personalisation
Choose a marketing platform that enables you to tailor the messaging for each client or individual. When a user logs in, they will see custom messaging and content that targets their organisation (set by an administrator), but they can personalise this further in their individual preferences. Ensure that all emails are personalised to the recipient, not just sent to your “Dear Customer”.
Personalising elements of an email text is easy to do (even easier than mail merge!) as long as you’ve got a clean email list and a decent email marketing platform. When individual users access links to content in the platform, the platform should recognise the user and automatically log them in so that they can access the content effortlessly (such as for event invitation microsites). The idea is to make the platform become the one portal for all of the information a user could ever need without them even realising it.
Pull vs Push? You need both
The best way to engage clients in your content is to let them choose what they want when they want it. Allow clients to select the type and topic of content they want emailed to them and the frequency – that could be as soon as new content meeting their criteria is posted, or a daily or weekly digest. Not only does this mean that clients are more likely to read the emails they receive, but also it reduces the amount of email campaigns your marketing and business development teams need to run.
Publish through multiple channels
Create once, publish many has been the mantra for many CMS providers and marketing teams. Often many have disparate systems with no or little integration. A single integrated platform can ensure that your product is a content destination as well as a content distributor. At the same time, ensure your content can be filtered, syndicated and shared to other systems and mediums. Get your content out there into as many places as possible to maximise the readership and get your message across to the largest possible audience.
Publish to other systems and social channels
Instead of manually publishing and republishing content on multiple platforms, publish content and share it to multiple systems automatically through your marketing platform. This could mean syndicating content to company websites and microsites, or to the RSS feeds in your clients’ enterprise collaboration platforms to help maintain current awareness. Enable users to share content to public micro sites to distribute content further outside of the company network.
Focus on really good content
Everyone is talking about content marketing, it is the future. Good content is key to getting your clients engaged and there is really no point in doing any of the above suggestions if you don’t have great content to offer your clients. Content marketing encompasses more than simply articles and news pieces. Now, it spans different media and requires new, innovative hooks to catch the reader’s attention amid a sea of blog posts, newsletters and videos. Here’s how you can get your content to stand out.
Leverage different media
Variety catches people’s interest, so make the most of different kinds of media that the marketing platform supports. Create, embed and share videos, slideshares and infographics through your marketing platform alongside standard text content. Maximise the value of your content by recycling it into different formats. For example, transform the text of an article into an infographic, or record keynote speakers presenting and post a video of the talk, but also create a SlideShare from the slide deck. These different formats each become valuable resources and each will appeal to a different user maximising the reach.
Reach the right audience
In order to reach the right audience you need to know exactly who your audience are. Make sure you create content that is relevant and helpful to your audience. Chances are there will be a number of different types of people with different needs that make up your audience, so remember to create content for each of these types of people (or personas). Tailor the messaging of each piece of content to each of these personas and make sure that there is plenty of valuable, varied content for each one. This helps to ensure that there is content that will appeal to each individual. This allows you to personalise the content that your clients receive and they are more likely to sign up to receive it by email.
Of course, marketing encompasses an array of elements that aren’t covered in this guide. However, by using content to reach out to your clients, you ensure that you keep them engaged and build a deeper relationship with them, raising the possibility that they will come back to you to buy more services. After all, isn’t that what you want from your marketing and business development efforts?
