Marketing Automation: Gain Digital Traction For Your Firm
Approximately 1,315,561 (2016) licensed attorneys competing for clients in 2017 and beyond will require superlative sales, marketing, and PR strategies. In this ever-changing, unforgiving economic climate, the legal firms (whether small or large) that will fare the best will be those that employ proactive digital marketing campaigns. Achieving such, moreover, will require the use of marketing automation.
What’s “Marketing Automation?”
Simply put, marketing automation is the use of software technologies and platforms to streamline/optimize online, multiple-channel (i.e., social media, email, websites, etc.) marketing campaigns. It also reduces or even eliminates repetitive tasks. This allows computers keep track of, manage, and report on (potential) client activities.
Benefits of Marketing Automation:
1. Marketing automation can benefit your practice/firm by:
2. Increasing efficiency & decreasing operational/administrative costs
3. Freeing personnel for other tasks/processes
4. Helping your firm stand out
5. Improving market positioning and brand
6. De-emphasizing the “competing-based-on-price-alone” paradigm
7. Providing extensive, multifaceted, updated, useful, easily-accessed, not-otherwise-available data (site visits, shares, blog subscriptions, etc.) from multiple e-sources
8. Improving marketing Return On Investment (ROI) & activities measurably
9. Minimizing errors inherent in manual, repetitive tasks
10. Establishing connections/leads with users
11. Opening doors for creating functions, such as integrating data, projects, and initiatives
12. Putting to more efficient/effective use social networking site information
13. Helping the sales/marketing team to more efficiently utilize landing pages, website features, traffic-driving content, score leads, email campaigns, etc.
14. Improving use of webinars, “special-order” content, case studies, eBooks, etc.
How Else Can You Put Marketing Automation to Good Use?
Most of the benefits listed here provide practical ideas on how to put marketing automation to practical use for both the client and attorneys.
For example, the use of in-app messages, SMS, emails, surveys, links, white papers, informative/entertaining content, etc. All of these things are relatively new marketing tools that lawyers can tastefully and effectively employ in the battle to not only find clients but stay in touch with them; both as individuals and as members of important socioeconomic groups.
You can further make use of this relatively new technology by:
1. Encouraging all members of the staff to incorporate their social networking sites’ activities into their work/PR responsibilities;
2. Continuously making your official website more visitor-friendly, entertaining and in-touch with the different demographics . . . for example, consider having children-friendly (perhaps with the use of videos and illustrations) web pages that can turn your website into a whole-family-friendly destination;
3. Encouraging your staff to write thought-provoking content.
So the question you should ask isn’t “Should we use marketing automation” but “How soon and how aggressively?” Are you using a marketing automation tool? Share below what your experience has been? Until next time, stay enchanting…
