Creating an effective marketing strategy is one of the biggest hurdles that law firms and other businesses face. It requires the consideration of your target audience, legal services, distribution platforms, and other elements.
This can be overwhelming to law firms that lack all of the resources needed to implement a marketing strategy that meets all of its needs.
Taking a phased approach is an ideal option for law firms looking to implement a strategy that achieves their business objectives. It makes the use of limited resources more efficient in order to reduce costs and maximize returns.
Using a Phased Approach in Marketing
Your law firm’s marketing strategy directly influences the decisions and actions that your marketing team takes.
Every phase of your marketing plan should work together to achieve your goals while aligning your revenue, branding, client support, lead nurturing, and communication objectives.
Establishing distinct phases allows you to target objectives at specific times. This leads to more consistent results along with the ability to respond to changes in your market, client feedback, and results from your marketing campaigns.
The phases of your marketing should include analysis, implementation, and evaluation phases.
The Analysis Phase
This initial phase lets your law firm evaluate existing data related to many aspects of your business. This includes financial considerations such as revenue goals, lifetime value of each client, cost per client acquisition, and other key measures.
You should analyze your target audience. These are the individuals most likely to need and purchase your legal services.
Law firms must identify key demographics, purchasing behaviors and history, service offerings, and other factors related to the people they target with their marketing messages.
Competitive analyses and keyword research are other valuable components of the analysis phase. These help you achieve better rankings in search results and gain an edge over your industry competitors.
The distribution channels used to connect with existing and prospective clients should also be considered in this initial phase.
The Implementation Phase
The analysis phase allows your law firm to create a marketing strategy that can then be implemented and tested.
The data you gather helps you determine the best way to reach your target audience with a message that resonates with their pain points and legal needs.
Over time, you can optimize our approach based on your ability to identify those methods and tools that work while eliminating those that don’t. This makes it easy to direct your resources more efficiently.
Your strategy can include the short- and long-term objectives for your law firm along with the details related to your content, social media, and paid marketing.
Implementation requires a plan that’s specific so that all of your team members understand what needs to be put in place and what results to measure.
Evaluating Your Marketing Strategy
The final phase of your marketing consists of the ongoing evaluation of your results. Your law firm must look at the performance of its plan in relation to its defined goals.
Any changes that need to be made can then be outlined for future implementation. By correcting your course over time, you achieve greater results with less effort. This helps you understand your market along with the messages and platforms that work for you.
Your marketing team should schedule periodic evaluations to review the results of your campaigns. Ongoing evaluation lets you respond quickly to changes in the marketplace or to the response from your content and paid marketing.
There are many ways that law firms can take a phased approach to their marketing strategies. What challenges are you facing in analyzing, implementing, and evaluating your existing marketing? Let us know in the comments below.
Taking a phased marketing approach allows you to leverage your existing resources while minimizing costs and achieving greater results for your law firm and its brand.
