Advertorial: Digital marketing – exploiting the potential

The future of marketing is digital. Web, Google, e-mail marketing, social networking, Twitter, podcasts, blogs… the list of new media goes on and on. The challenge for law firms is to use this technology to help enhance relationships with existing customers and to convert new prospects into business. But how does the brash nature of digital work alongside the inherent and justified conservatism of law firms? And what will happen when more aggressive legal organisations enter the market following the introduction of the Legal Services Act 2007?

By Mike Fieldhouse, managing director, RealityHouse – Digital Marketing People

We live in interesting times. The economy is exposing the need to justify every penny spent on legal marketing. New highly aggressive entrants are ready to drive into the traditionally low-key legal market. And marketing itself is going digital at a rate that defies belief.
In this article, I will to look at the digital landscape for high street practices and for corporate firms who are more focused on the business to business marketplace. Then, I will look at the best ways to approach digital. This will involve:

Developing a digital strategy;
Delivering a lively, content driven website that acts as the centre of your marketing activity;
Building relationships online with social networking and e-mail;
Search engine marketing;
Twittering – it’s not just for Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross;
Seminars – online invitations and after the event summaries;
Online video – the return of the talking heads; and finally,
Analysis of some digital pitfalls.

Read. Enjoy. And please let me know what your thoughts in 140 characters or less at http://twitter.com/realityhouse or in full by visiting www.realityhouse.co.uk

From the high street to the digital highway
For high street firms, clients have typically walked in off the street or have found legal services in the Yellow Pages. Now when potential clients’ ‘fingers do the walking’ it’s likely to be on a PC keyboard or the touch screen of an iPhone. This means that the first sight of your firm is likely to be your website – and that your website will probably have been reached via Yell, Google Local or via a recommendation on a social networking site such as Facebook.
This different route to your door means that impressing clients becomes much more complex. Your website will need to truly represent your strengths and entice people to contact you – via email or phone. There is also the potential for clients to buy services online – and solicitors should expect competition from further transactional websites to appear for conveyancing, divorce and so on, once the Legal Services Act 2007 (LSA) bites. As a high street firm it is worth emphasising the importance of real people and real expertise and pushing people to talk to you via your website.
This personal service and expertise can also be underlined by running blogs, creating legal groups on sites such as Facebook and also gaining a following on twitter and positioning yourself as a legal expert. This is the equivalent of providing an advice column in your local newspaper.

Corporate firms - take your relationships online
For corporate firms working primarily with businesses there is a different route to market. Ask most corporate lawyers and they will confirm that most new business comes from recommendations and referrals. And this is set to continue in the future but many of those referrals and recommendations are likely to come from new electronic routes.
Once again your website is at the heart of this approach. It should encompass the firm and its range of services as well as the character of your brand as a whole. But the real goal is brevity. Keep the website short and sharp and focused on driving a phone call or e-mail from the potential client.
But how do people find your website? Search marketing will play its part in this process – Google is still God in the digital world. But other more interactive routes are increasing in impact. A quick search for solicitors on LinkedIn – the business networking service – delivered 10,099 results. In the current climate, plenty of those entries are younger solicitors looking for work but delve deeper and you’ll find a range of firms already advertising their services to other professionals online.
A more direct approach to relationship-building is tracked e-mail marketing. In this scenario, a firm sends e-mails to their existing clients and warm prospects providing legal updates but also information on services offered by the firm. These e-mails are then tracked to see who receives them, who opens them and who clicks from the e-mail to the firms website to see the details within a particular article. It is here that the relationship develops; if you know that Fred Smith – and client of a fee earner in employment – is looking at an article on commercial contracts then an opportunity has been created for building business.
The obvious question here is shouldn’t a fee earner know what interests his clients? In theory yes, but in practice who has the time to regularly contact every client? In this case the e-mail is acting as a way to strengthen existing relationships and to provide further information on a specific client.

Creating your digital marketing strategy
So whether you’re a high street practitioner or corporate firm, you need to consider digital marketing. The first step in this process is adopting a digital strategy – which can be divided into three simple steps:

Creating the digital strategy
The goal here is to identify what digital assets you currently have – website, databases, online presence and so on, and then to assess how to make the best use of these. Where can you reduce marketing costs compared to conventional routes? where can you increase returns? And where you can gain the rapid return on investment that’s so critical in this financial climate?
Digital isn’t one single answer. It’s a group of online media tools that must be applied in the right way to address your market. It could be search with Google, networking with Facebook or Twitter, e-mail marketing or increasingly web on your mobile phone.
You will need a combination of digital resources depending on your specific markets. The aim is an agreed set of requirements and insights that will drive your digital marketing forward;
Choose your digital media
The smooth transition from conventional to digital media involves maximising your investment in the online world. It may start with great looking websites but the reality is that as a marketer you will need to show results, justifying and demonstrating payback to your partners and fee earners.
By now your firm should have the basics covered:
> A strong, sales focused website that is full content managed to enable you to make easy updates online;
> Regular e-mail marketing campaigns that sell your expertise and cross-sell your expertise to existing clients;
> Online invitations/sign-ups to seminars;
> Search marketing – in other words getting to the top of Google (and the other search engines!) with your chosen search terms.
The next step would be to look at feeding content from your website onto appropriate third-party sites – for example blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter and so on. This is achieved using a technology call RSS [really simple syndication]. And from there you should use the expertise within your firm to create online followings. This works in just the same way as an individual solicitor may bring a following of clients when they join your firm.
And from there we’re into rich media (online video, online presentations podcasting and so on) – creating high quality content perhaps from offline seminars which is presented online as an incentive to get visitors to contact you.
Once you have this content in place, you use the statistics delivered to assess and measure your success.
Measure the results
The proof of digital success is in the statistics: the detailed analysis of each campaign that shows not just the volumes of visitors to your website but the cost per enquiry, the cost per sale and the savings you’ve made over conventional marketing methods.
It is in the measurements and metrics that digital marketing beats all other forms of marketing hands down. Lord Leverhulme’s infamous comment, "Half my advertising money is wasted. The problem is that I don't know which half”, is no longer valid as you can tell not only what is working, but you can switch your budget to what is working best at the click of a mouse.

Bringing your website to life
The challenge for every law firm is how to create a website that is lively, current and interesting – but without weighing the site down with numerous pages of legalise. Your website should be a place for raising issues rather than giving answers. In an ideal world clients should have their concerns raised and highlighted by the website and then be encouraged to contact your fee-earners for a (chargeable) solution.
This means that alongside the usual people profiles and outlines of areas of specialism, it is important that a legal website should be regularly updated with the latest legal ideas and issues.
For high street firms this might mean reassuring comments about the affordability of divorce following the recent high profile ‘big money’ cases – and an invitation to make contact. Or it might be an invitation to sign-up online NOW for fixed price conveyancing services.
For corporate firms, these updates should be short and sharp and point to problems (for example, new regulations) that can be solved by the firm. Typical clients are unlikely to want to read a law report, they want to know what the core issue is, to know that your firm can solve this – and then to have an easy way to make contact. Alternatively, you could invite visitors to an offline seminar (possibly one they will pay for) or to an instant online presentation (once they’ve handed over their contact details).
The key factor here is interaction – information is being provided and visitors are being encouraged to, at the very least, make contact or to buy online now. And it is the regular updates on your website that should form the basis of the next area of online marketing – social networking.

Twitter, Facebook, Linked in – and what on earth can I do with all that?
Keeping a website up-to-date is hard enough. Add to that the need to update your corporate Facebook page, your Twitter link, your Linked in group and your blog and virtual life starts to look very tough indeed.
But in essence all of these media can be fed with the same core information. By using RSS feeds from the news and events sections on your website, you can update not only your website – but also all your various social networking sites with one click. So when you announce a seminar on your website – you’re automatically also announcing it on all your social networking websites – attracting a gradually larger and larger audience.
Unfortunately you can’t leave it at that. It is important to add additional updates to the various media. For example a high street practice might create a Facebook group – and advertise divorce services across Facebook to people who’s marital status is set to 'It’s complicated'. This group is likely to generate questions which will need answering – but which will also lead to business. Alternatively a firm might set-up an employment law 'tweet' on twitter that highlights the latest tribunal case decisions. This could be fed by the employment news RSS on your website – but further comments would be required to bring the tweet to life and attract a ‘following’.
It is clear that the social networking phenomena is in its early days but with some travel websites now receiving more visitors from Facebook than from Google, a similar impact on business is only a matter of time and now is the time to make sure you’re ready.

Find yourself on Google
Social networking is the future. Google is now. The search engine giant remains the driving force of the Internet and your firm should be highly visible when relevant searches are made. You should be top of the search engine when your name is entered (and be aware that your competitors can now sponsor your name on Adwords – paid Google advertising). You should also appear near the top when your specialisms are searched.
If you’re a personal injury specialist then your keywords could vary from the colloquial 'sue the council' to the more professional 'personal injury lawyers'. However, driving visitors to your website is one thing – tracking the enquiries you receive from the website and which search terms have created those enquiries is where the smart money is going. Here’s how it works.
You sponsor the term 'sue the council' using Google Adwords 'pay-per-click'. You pay 10p per click and receive twenty visits to your website that costs £2. If one of those visitors then contacts you via a form (which can be tracked), then you have paid £2 for one sales enquiry. If 200 people visited and you only had one enquiry, the cost is £200.
This same approach can be applied to ‘free’ Google listings so that you can focus your search optimisation effort on words and phrases that deliver the best results.

Online video – killing the internet star?
The head of an international architect’s practice recently asked: 'Do I need a website or a TV Channel?' It is both a perceptive and thought provoking query. The traditional marketers chant of 'show don’t tell' is very relevant here. Don’t tell me why you’re team is good – introduce me to them. And online video is making this not just possible but highly affordable. Imagine your partner profiles on your website featuring video of those partners; possibly a mixed blessing!
But video can also be used tactically. Recently Haines Watts, the national accountancy firm, launched a petition on the number 10 website to ask the government to give more support to small to medium enterprise’s. The campaign for people to sign up was launched with a video of one of the firm’s key partners – this was e-mail marketed – and then a viral campaign was launched to attract further signatures. With the end results of more small businesses becoming aware of Haines Watts and their services.

Going mobile
So where does the Internet go next? The short answer is onto your mobile with up to seven per cent of UK web browsing currently being carried out via mobile phone. The UK is second only to the USA in mobile internet use – with over 20 per cent of the world mobile browsing market (according to www.bango.com) – and businesses with a mobile friendly presence will soon have a clear head start.
From simply finding directions to your office to a client searching for a conveyancing practice while standing in their chosen property, the opportunities are endless. And simply relying on your existing website to work on a mobile isn’t going to work – take a look at how the BBC or eBay have reworked their sites for mobiles to get a flavour of the mobile future.

How will digital marketing help when new businesses enter the legal market?
The impact of digital marketing when everyone from insurance firms to supermarkets can enter the legal market can be seen as a threat or an opportunity.
What is clear is that these highly competitive organisations will be using every digital weapon at their disposal to attract legal customers. The challenge for the highly talented and competitive law firms in England and Wales is to respond to this attack with similar high profile use of digital marketing. The priority must be to get a digital strategy in place quickly and to pre-empt what are likely to be some very aggressive competitors.

Digital risks – editorial control
As all the above information shows, the reach of digital media is vast. And it is easily accessible for anyone within your organisation which does raise one key issue – editorial and employee control. Appointing an online guardian or editor is vital to ensure that when anyone within your organisation adds a tweet, blogs or enters information on Facebook or on any other website that it follows the party line.
Undoutedly, most people in the legal community are aware of http://deidredare.com/ and her fascinating blog of the activities of ex-pat lawyers in Russia. Her employer Allen & Overy certainly made their opinions clear. But this case shows how careful editorial control – and clear messages to employees about what is allowable or otherwise online is vital as part of any digital strategy.

In summary
This article has skimmed the surface of digital and what’s currently possible. Not every element will be relevant to every firm. However, with the current focus on measurability and value for money, digital technologies offer the potential to make stretched marketing budgets go that much further. Websites, search marketing and e-mail marketing should already be part of every firm’s marketing mix. The challenge now is to deliver greater results from the emerging technologies of social networking, video and mobile.
It could be argued that the legal sector has been far from the forefront of digital technologies and perhaps this offers innovative firms the opportunity to take the first step and move ahead of the competition.

Mike Fieldhouse is managing director at digital marketing consultancy RealityHouse – Digital Marketing People. For more information visit www.realityhouse.co.uk and http://twitter.com/realityhouse