Engagement strategies for law firms to compete in the age of the customer
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Today’s business relationships can be initiated online using personalized thought leadership content to attract prospects to your firm, engage with your attorneys, and transport them along a buying journey to becoming a client. Your digital platform is now the tool that builds trust and relationships with your clients.
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Engagement strategies for law firms to compete in the age of the customer
- 1. Part of 7 Engagement Strategies for Law Firms to Compete in the Age of the Client
- 2. Shad Alam, Senior Consultant, Digital Solutions Shad Alam, Senior Consultant, Digital Solutions Shad is an avid digital technology enthusiast and a senior consultant at edynamic who works with marketers in professional service firms, especially law firms, helping them realize the true potential of their digital technology investments and deliver great customer experience. About your host
- 3. Today’s Client ○ Better informed ○ Starts the buying process ○ Has many options ○ Decides where to engage
- 4. Client Engagement Engages with clients consistently and with relevant information at all touch-points driven by measurable insight. Integrated technology will impact seamless engagement Socialand Community Website Email Marketing Mobile 360 Degree Client Insight Have you solved similar problems?
- 5. Firms need to ascend the digital marketing maturity curve to drive Client Engagement IT Led • Brochure-ware • Webmaster bottleneck DigitalClientEngagementMarketingDrivenInformational Marketing • Sprayandpray • Staticcontent • Marketing-driven • Interactive • Someintelligence • Disconnectedassets • Functionalfocus • ThoughtLeadership Driven • Personaland Contextual • Social • Multi-device Experiences • Predictive1to1 Marketing • Measurement • FocusonROI 2005-2015 2016+1995-2005 1 2 3 Legal marketing must move up the Maturity Curve
- 6. Digital Engagement BrandPositioning Differentiate and position clients in a more meaningful manner Relevancy Adapt to the information needs of our audiences; align content with how they want to receive it and where they want to receive it DigitalEngagement RelationshipBuilding Engage with audience through Thought Leadership Marketing, nurture these relationships and enable client acquisition.
- 7. 1 BUYING LIFECYCLE & CONTEXTUAL EXPERIENCE 7StepApproachtoClientEngagement 5 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT 2 CONTENT MARKETING THAT NURTURES 6 MEASURE ENGAGEMENT 3 MULTI-DEVICE EXPERIENCE 7 TECHNOLOGY THAT ENGAGES 4 SINGLE VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER
- 8. 1 BUYING LIFECYCLE & CONTEXTUAL EXPERIENCE 6StepApproachtoClientengagement 4 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT 2 CONTENT MARKETING THAT NURTURES 5 MEASURE ENGAGEMENT 3 MULTI-DEVICE EXPERIENCE 6 TECHNOLOGY THAT ENGAGES 7 SINGLE VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER
- 9. Think like a client
- 10. 50% OF MARKETING SPEND IS MISALIGNED WITH CLIENT NEEDS WITHIN THEIR DECISION JOURNEY (LIFE CYCLE). McKinsey & Company Research
- 11. Understand the Buying Cycle Typically a few stages clients pass through from the point of need recognition to a purchase decision
- 12. Segment and target content to buying lifecycle Identify content that address customer expectations. Consider buying cycle, segmentation, pain points and motivators Understand your Buying Cycle Segment your audience Map the Messages Implement the Platforms
- 13. Context drives engagement Context places the experience in the control of the visitor, aligning to their expectations, leading them to the next steps The right message to the right person at the right time leads to engagement ○ 82% of prospects say content targeted to their specific industry is more valuable ○ 67% say content targeted to their job function is more valuable ○ 29% prefer content targeted to their geography *MarketingSherpa Stats Context can be gathered through the experience ○ Visitor generated (implicit digital footprint), visitor supplied or externally supplied (services like DemandBase provide industry, presence, location, revenue, etc.)
- 14. Utilize context to personalize communication and experience… Personalization is all about…
- 15. RIGHT MESSAGE RIGHT TIME RIGHT DEVICE
- 16. 54% OF MARKETERS WHO HAVE IMPLEMENTED WEB PERSONALIZATION GENERATED POSITIVE ROI WITHIN MONTHS OF IMPLEMENTATION Neolane Survey
- 17. 72% OF MARKETERS SEE THE IMPORTANCE OF ONLINE PERSONALIZATION BUT DON’T KNOW HOW TO INCORPORATE IT. eConsultancy, Realities of Online Personalization
- 18. Personalization—How do we Start? Personalization can be taken from any or all of the following sources of insight ○ Users' profiles and preferences: everything they’ve told you about themselves (if you already know them). ○ Clients' history with you: what they’ve done on your site, in your community, in response to your emails, etc. ○ How they found you: the search terms that delivered them, or a tagged campaign URL that they clicked on. ○ Their immediate behaviors: what they’re doing in the current session (clickstreams, site searches, etc). ○ Client life stage: are they new to your firm, have they been reviewing your attorneys’ bios, are they an existing client—perhaps a previous client?
- 19. Examples Location Based personalization that makes sense Client-driven practice pages—specific to location and Industry
- 20. 1 BUYING LIFECYCLE & CONTEXTUAL EXPERIENCE 6StepApproachtoClientengagement 4 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT 2 CONTENT MARKETING THAT NURTURES 5 MEASURE ENGAGEMENT 3 MULTI-DEVICE EXPERIENCE 6 TECHNOLOGY THAT ENGAGES 7 SINGLE VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER
- 21. 50% OF LEADS ARE NOT READY TO BUY Gleanster Research
- 22. Importance of Nurturing 17.50% 12.50% 70% Average B2B Initial Lead Break-down Discard / disqualified Sales-ready now Longer-term opportunity / worth nurturing Marketing Sherpa B2B Benchmarking Report Moving people from consideration to commitment is the most important path of the sales process - also the most necessary
- 23. The Value Exchange LAW FIRM Content CLIENT Personal info Jane Smith jane.smith@xyz.com 555-555-5555 Inside Council, XYZ Corp. The firm continuously delivers relevant content & establishes its worth to the audience The audience trusts the firm enough to identify themselves & grant permission for engagement
- 24. Thought Leadership Thought leadership marketing (TLM) can drive client Acquisition through engagement THOUGHT LEADERSHIP ASSETS WHITE PAPERS WEBINARS EVENTS BLOGS VIDEOS
- 25. Consulting leaders engage clients through exceptional content that is merchandized, distributed across channels, and is measured McKinsey & Company ₒ Website showcases thought leadership aimed to position the brand ₒ Website focuses on engaging clients with thought leadership Accenture ₒ Thought leadership across the site ₒ Types of content assets includes whitepapers, publications and videos Consulting Firms can be Considered as Benchmarks
- 26. Use different types of content Consider Social Content ○ Infographics ○ Video ○ Blogs Webinars Whitepapers
- 27. COPE PUSH TO AUDIENCES MOBILE SOCIAL MEDIA ONLINE NEWS SITES & DATABASES SEARCH ENGINES CLIENTS & POTENTIAL CLIENTS MEDIA OUTLETS VIDEO PORTALS BLOGGERS JOURNALISTS
- 28. 1 BUYING LIFECYCLE & CONTEXTUAL EXPERIENCE 6StepApproachtoClientengagement 4 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT 2 CONTENT MARKETING THAT NURTURES 5 MEASURE ENGAGEMENT 3 MULTI-CHANNEL & MULTI-DEVICE EXPERIENCE 6 TECHNOLOGY THAT ENGAGES 7 SINGLE VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER
- 29. 78% OF MARKETERS INTERVIEWED BY FORRESTER BELIEVE THAT CROSS-CHANNEL MARKETING IS “IMPORTANT” OR “VERY IMPORTANT” TO THEIR BUSINESS. Forrester Report
- 30. 5% OF THE MARKETERS INTERVIEWED, ONLY 5 PERCENT SAID THEY WERE “VERY PREPARED” TO EXECUTE A CROSS CHANNEL STRATEGY. Forrester Report
- 31. The Marketer’s perspective WEB MOBILE EMAIL SOCIAL YOUR FIRM: WEB EXPERIENCE YOUR FIRM: MOBILE EXPERIENCE YOUR FIRM: EMAIL EXPERIENCE YOUR FIRM: SOCIAL EXPERIENCE Cross-channel Engagement
- 32. The client’s perspective YOUR FIRM: WEB EXPERIENCE YOUR FIRM: MOBILE EXPERIENCE YOUR FIRM: EMAIL EXPERIENCE YOUR FIRM: SOCIAL EXPERIENCE COMMUTING IN MEETINGS AT LUNCH AT THEIR DESK AT HOME YOUR FIRM: ONE BRAND AND CONTENT EXPERIENCE Device: TabletDevice: DesktopDevice: PhoneDevice: TabletDevice: Tablet Channel: WebChannel: EmailChannel: TwitterChannel: WebChannel: Email
- 33. Client expectations are the Benchmark Your Clients have two benchmarks ○ Experiencing their own brand ○ Experiencing the brand of other service providers Their expectations become your benchmark for an experience Which online channels does your organization use as part of its Marketing efforts?
- 34. Responsive design ○ One website: Not a separate mobile and desktop site ○ HTML5 & CSS3: New technologies to create sites that respond to screen sizes and orientation ○ Easy to maintain and update ○ Future proofing: Do you know what is next? Getting to a Mobile Strategy
- 35. Challenges that marketers face ○ Being available to your clients where they are ○ Being available on devices your clients use ○ Getting visibility across all channels ○ Outdated technologies Addressing the challenges ○ Use the channels your clients prefer—web, email, social and communities ○ Engage them on devices they prefer—desktop, tablets, smartphones ○ Listen to them across all channels—plan for cross- channel analytics—see engagement behavior holistically by client, rather than by channel Delivering Cross Channel Experiences
- 36. 1 BUYING LIFECYCLE & CONTEXTUAL EXPERIENCE 7StepApproachtoClientengagement 4 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT 2 CONTENT MARKETING THAT NURTURES 5 MEASURE ENGAGEMENT 3 MULTI-DEVICE EXPERIENCE 6 TECHNOLOGY THAT ENGAGES 7 SINGLE VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER
- 37. Source: A study by Martindale-Hubbell Use of Social Channels by law firms
- 38. It starts with LISTENING Social Media Channels ○ Twitter hashtags # ○ LinkedIn groups ○ Relevant blogs ○ Anywhere your audience is talking Client FAQs What questions do your partners and associates hear most often? Incoming Search Terms What are the most popular keywords & phrases bringing searchers to your site? Adding the client’s voice to your social content
- 39. To start a conversation with a professional contact on social media, follow these steps: ○ Say hello ○ Respond to someone ○ Ask questions The only way to leverage these relationships is through conversation Moving from ‘broadcast’to ‘conversation’
- 40. LinkedIn
- 41. Twitter
- 42. Facebook
- 43. 1 BUYING LIFECYCLE & CONTEXTUAL EXPERIENCE 7StepApproachtoClientengagement 4 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT 2 CONTENT MARKETING THAT NURTURES 5 MEASURE ENGAGEMENT 3 MULTI-DEVICE EXPERIENCE 6 TECHNOLOGY THAT ENGAGES 7 SINGLE VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER
- 44. Is getting more hits on your website a sign of engagement? Does it tell you anything? How do you measure client engagement?
- 45. Measure how digital is helping clients engage more with the firm and creating new opportunities for them
- 46. Identify what moves the needle ○ Time spent on site ○ Frequency of visits ○ Core user actions ○ Engagement with critical content Start here…
- 47. Identify hot and cold leads and those in between COLD HOT TOO LATE Beyond web analytics.. measuring engagement is what really matters
- 48. Score Description Marketing Action A4 The right prospect but no interest. Priority but may need specific “why now” messaging. B1 Good fit and very interested. Send to sales queue for follow-up. C1 Not the idea prospect but very interested. Will they ever be a good fit? Continue to nurture. D4 Wrong Fit. No interest. Fulfill request and segment out. Define your lead scoring model to measure engagement
- 49. Empower your business development team and attorneys with measurable Finally… but most important
- 50. 1 BUYING LIFECYCLE & CONTEXTUAL EXPERIENCE 7StepApproachtoClientengagement 4 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT 2 CONTENT MARKETING THAT NURTURES 5 MEASURE ENGAGEMENT 3 MULTI-DEVICE EXPERIENCE 6 TECHNOLOGY THAT ENGAGES 7 SINGLE VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER
- 51. What is the best thing technology can do for marketers? Technology needs to get out of the way! Technology needs to be unobtrusive and give the power to marketers to accomplish their objectives.
- 52. Significant issues that prevent marketers to succeed Challenges with Digital Technology
- 53. Digital marketing technology is exploding; too many options to chose from. Digital technology is confusing the world of marketing
- 54. Must haves ○ CMS ○ Analytics ○ Onsite Search While there are many options there are a few technologies that law firms should consider ○ Email automation ○ CRM ○ And now, social tools Digital marketing technology in Law firm
- 55. Technology platforms + Integration + Engagement strategy = increasing engagement Web Page Landing Page Email CMS CRMMarketing Automation Forms Tracking Tags Content Personalization Engine Behavior Data Rules Engine Profile Data Customer Profile Link Personalized Email Personalized Landing Page Personalized Web Page Prospect Increasing engagement with your audience
- 56. 1 BUYING LIFECYCLE & CONTEXTUAL EXPERIENCE 7StepApproachtoClientengagement 4 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT 2 CONTENT MARKETING THAT NURTURES 5 MEASURE ENGAGEMENT 3 MULTI-DEVICE EXPERIENCE 6 TECHNOLOGY THAT ENGAGES 7 SINGLE VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER
- 57. 90 % OF THE CUSTOMERS SAY, SVC IS ESSENTIAL TO CROSS CHANNEL SUCCESS Signal Report
- 58. Create a Customer Experience Platform that integrates with data Orchestrate individual experiences across every channel CMS Marketing Automation Analytics Actionable Customer Profile Insight Optimize Identify ideal customer attributes, behaviors and preferences Analyze performance and tie back to revenue goals Optimize cross channel experiences with data and insight CRM External Data Internal Data
- 59. 1 BUYING LIFECYCLE & CONTEXTUAL EXPERIENCE 7StepApproachtoClientEngagement 5 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT 2 CONTENT MARKETING THAT NURTURES 6 MEASURE ENGAGEMENT 3 MULTI-DEVICE EXPERIENCE 7 TECHNOLOGY THAT ENGAGES 4 SINGLE VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER
- 60. www.edynamic.net twitter.com/edynamic contact@edynamic.net youtube.com/1999dynamic 1-877-339-6264 facebook.com/edynamic.net Connect with us
Editor's Notes
- Hi My Name is Shad. At edynamic I work closely with marketers in professional service and law firms around helping them realize the true potential of their digital technology investments and deliver great customer experience. Today, I’m going to discuss engagement strategies that firms can deploy to compete in this era where the client is in complete control and what we refer to as the ‘age of the client’. edynamic has deep focus on the professional service and legal space and over the last 7 years, has been privy to, and part of the digital transformation in numerous firms including 6 of the Am Law top 20 and several mid and small size firms. Therefore, most of what you will hear today is a result of our experience over the years. I hope and wish you would leave this session more aware and better informed of strategies you can deploy to improve client engagement.
- Legal firms must move up the marketing maturity curve to enable seamless and meaningful client engagement in the age of the client.
- Your client today is better informed with huge amounts of data available to fuel their research. Literally inundated with tons of data, their options are not limited. And thus it is up to you, as a professional service provider, to stay ahead of competition by delivering content and experience relevant to your client. They are in the driving seat, if you will, and therefore in complete control to decide when, where and how they will engage with you. Thus they initiate and tend to drive the buying process. They confirm word-of-mouth recommendations with online research. They leverage social media.
- So, in their quest for a provider of services, what does the prospect really look for? They want to know 3 things: 1) Do you understand my business? 2) Have you worked with similar businesses/people; have you solved problems similar to the ones I have? 3)Can I work with you; or do you have the people/processes and expertise to cater to my needs? From the web to email and social to video, Law firm marketers need to develop tools and outreach strategies to offer relevant, consistent information to clients based on their needs as they go through their daily lives. professional/legal Superior client engagement seeks to engage the client throughout the buying cycle and across all touch points (web, mobile, email, social, etc.) with relevant information. This needs to be driven by measureable insights around client behavior enabled by marketing technology that is integrated, banning data siloes and making it available in a cohesive format that is comprehensible and actionable.
- Legal firms must move up the marketing maturity curve to enable seamless and meaningful client engagement in the age of the client.
- Brand should differentiate your firm and position your content and offerings in a more meaningful manner. Relevancy is key. Content should be strategically aligned to client needs and delivered across channels, wherever your clients prefer to engage. They idea is to build relationship with clients by creating mindshare with relevant content and thought leadership marketing. Strengthen and nurture these relationships with thought leadership and gradually move the needle towards client acquisition.
- The 7 step approach/strategy to client engagement.
- To understand the buying lifecycle and to create contextual experiences, marketers need to get into the customer’s shoes and think from their point of view.
- Stats by McKinsey research indicate 50% of marketing expense is not aligned with client needs within their decision process. It further explains that ’It’s not enough to identify the decision makers in an organization. For marketing and business development activities to be effective, companies need to focus on those points in the decision journey where they can be most successful in influencing those decision makers.’ So what does this decision journey or the buying cycle look like?
- Lets try to understand the Buying Cycle. Traditionally, firms have been focused on the selling process rather than the buying process. They think about how to sell to prospects or acquire clients. This approach needs to change. From the point of identifying a need to making a purchase/hiring decision, clients typically pass through the following phases: Identification – Where clients create a preliminary list of potential firms based on their research of the firm’s services, experience, etc., Qualification – At this point they engage with potential firms to evaluate further based on their success stories, client references, working methods etc. and create a shortlist of potentials. Selection – This is where they meet the shortlisted firms to determine the best fit firm to work with and select the final one they intend to work with. In contrast to the traditional sales push, firms now need to think about how to connect with your clients as they move through their own journey. You want to understand how to pinpoint thought leadership material to entice them to walk through the journey with your firm, and position yourself as the one ideally suited to meet their needs. Law firm marketers and business development people need to match their activities with the client’s buying cycle and engage them appropriately at each stage in the cycle. The marketing process should tightly integrate with the client’s buying process. Marketing activities that aim to create awareness about your firm’s services should coincide with the identification stage, so that potential clients become aware of your services, expertise and experience and identify your firm as a potential. Next, firms need to keep clients engaged with relevant content and thought leadership during the qualification stage and aim at building relationship. Plan and execute marketing events to allow potential clients the opportunity to interact with your firm and perhaps with your clients, who would recommend you. Seize this opportunity to talk to prospects about their issues and challenges and talk about potential solutions that you may have offered to other clients in a similar situation. Then based on your understanding of the client, their requirements, challenges, etc. gained through engaging with them, business development should shape offerings and tailor proposals, contract terms, pricing, etc. to enable and guide clients through the selection process. Once you’ve understood this, you would want to map an engagement strategy to foster relationships between your clients/ prospects and your attorneys. This process involves the use of thought leadership and other targeted content to reach out to clients with relevant material across channels and devices.
- Now, Firms need to segment their content and deliver it to prospects based on where they are in the buying lifecycle. Here’s the buyer Lifecycle tool we use to map the buyer's journey along with criteria across each stage in the lifecycle. This aims to create an end-to-end experience that touches your prospects and clients, across segments, at nearly every point in their day, on every device they use, and at every stage of their buying cycle. You may want to think about ways you can leverage your online tools to focus on the buyer and their needs. Clients want to be able to use the channel convenient to the moment, whether that's a website, captive team/call center or a video chat with a live expert for minor issues.
- It’s imperative to understand what your prospects value. Remember, whatever content/experience you deliver to your clients needs to be contextual and should meet their expectations. It should be able to impress on your clients that you have context of the situation your client is in. Context can be gathered in a few ways. You may use your prospect’s implicit digital footprint they leave behind every time they engage with you online. Or, use third party provided data services like DemandBase etc.
- Having context will enable you to personalize both content and experience.
- Personalization is all about delivering the right message, at the right time and on the right device.
- When you personalize, you connect and more importantly, you give your prospect the impression that you understand where they are at. Survey reveals that 54% of marketers generated positive ROI within months of implementing web personalization.
- Personalized websites effectively deliver the right message to the right person at the right time - on the right device, and is a critical differentiating factor on today's websites. Unfortunately, most marketers do not understand how to affect personalization.
- Personalization can be done once you understand your client, their needs, their footprint, how they found you, what they are looking at on your site, at what stage they are in the buying lifecycle, etc.
- Examples of good personalized information may include offering location-based material that is relevant to your geography, personalizing some content or imagery by industry, or recognizing if your visitor is a new or returning visitor. For inspiration, you can Look to examples from soft• ware cornpanies.as they are really leading the charge into on line personalization.
- Now comes an important question – Not all the leads that come to you are ready to buy or begin working with you immediately. What do you do with them so they don’t fall through the cracks?
- Of all the leads that you receive over 70% of these leads may be categorized as not ready to buy/hire immediately. They may have needs that will mature in the near future, may be take 6 – 12 months or more to get to a stage when they may want to connect with you or evaluate your offer. Moving prospects from consideration to commitment, and more importantly managing them and staying engaged in between, is the most important role of Marketing and/or BD. You need to think about how you cultivate your relationships using lead nurturing. An automated lead nurturing process linked to your content distribution strategy is the answer. Once you have pulled in good Leads at the top of your funnel, you want to make sure to consistently nurture them through the buying process by consistently delivering relevant, quality content over time.
- Between consideration and commitment, law firms continuously need to engage with prospects with relevant content delivered across channels and create value for themselves in the eyes of the prospect. In return, the prospect starts trusting the firm and gradually gives out more information about themselves and their situation, challenges and needs, which would enable marketers to further personalize experience and stay relevant. Thus the firm and prospect exchange mutual value for each other.
- Thought leadership. when developed and delivered in a meaningful manner, guides prospects through the buying process and leads to client acquisition.
- McKinsey and Accenture make benchmark examples when it comes to keeping prospects engaged with thought leadership and positioning the brand effectively.
- Firms should invest in creating several types of content based on user preferences and their appetite to consume content. There are many different kinds of prospects, and they will want to consume information in a variety of ways. It’s important to develop thought leadership in multiple formats to ensure that you reach your prospects at every stage of their decision-making process. Also, you should have a mix of both freely available and gated content (housed behind a lead form) to make sure you are both drawing your audience in, and also using lead generation forms to fulfill your business development goals.
- To maximize your content's visibility, we recommend adopting a COPE strategy for your content distribution, which is ‘Create the content once, and publish it on as many channels as you can’. There are a variety of channels to consider in this outreach strategy, as highlighted in this graphic. In addition to publishing content on your website and pushing it out through email, social, etc. firms should adopt a content syndication strategy to push your thought leadership, blogs, articles, videos or any piece of web-based content out to third parties who would then republish it on their own sites. This is done with a view to reach a much larger audience. For example, you could publish your blogs on LinkedIn, place paid ads that would point people back to content on your site.
- Most marketers understand that Cross-channel marketing is important is for their business…
- … but very few are prepared to execute.
- Marketers tend to think about channels as a means of pushing out content. These could be across web, mobile, social, emails, etc. They think about engagement in terms of the hits and attention their content gets across these channels. But they tend to forget the buyer’s perspective.
- In addition to developing exceptional content, you need to pay attention to how your reader will consume this material. Remember, todays buyer is driving their online experience. Your readers will choose how - and where - they read and absorb your content. Make sure you meet your clients where they live and promote your content on key channels, including email, social media, your website, co-marketing partner sites, etc.
- Most organizations invest in online channels including the web, email, social, SEO, etc. What channels does your firm market through? Your clients decide where they will engage with you; you must where they will engage with you most and invest in those channels, be it web, email, social, mobile or others. You must meet your client’s expectations in terms of channels as well as experience. Your clients set benchmarks drawing majorly from two different types of experiences – 1 experience they have with their own brand and 2 experience they have with the brand of other service providers, such as yourself, your competitors.
- Though you need to deliver experiences across multiple channels, these experiences should be seamless and unbroken. Your website and mobile site, whether responsive or otherwise, should present a similar experience. It should reflect a single brand. This is best approached using responsive design where your website adapts to any device or screen size they render on without affecting any change in the actual design or the brand experience.
- Common challenges that plague the law firm marketer relate to being available to your clients across channels and devices, visibility of engagement across channels and outdated technology that is difficult to integrate and cannot be operated without regular IT intervention. Therefore it’s important that marketers understand where their audience wants to engage with them. Your website and content need to be optimized for all device types. You should be enabled to gather analytics & insights from across all channels and be able to see engagement holistically by client, rather than by channel.
- A number of law firms use social to engage with their clients. LinkedIn happens to be the most preferred mode of social engagement among law firms.
- So, how to engage with social… Say hello. If you are not yet within that person’s network, start by making a connection. Introduce yourself. Respond to someone. If someone writes a post about an experience they’ve had, shared a white paper or some interesting news, make a comment about it. Or re-post the item, referencing them as the author. Ask questions. If you notice a common interest detailed in the person’s profile, ask a question related to that interest. If someone publishes a report on your practice area, ask them about some of the data points that are of most interest to you.
- According to the Social Media Monthly, law firms have seen a huge increase in using Facebook and LinkedIn engagement - to the tune of 41 to 67% increase in Facebook and LinkedIn acquisition.
- Does measuring vanity metrics give you a true measure of your client engagement? Are footfalls, page views and hits all that needs monitoring? How do you measure real engagement?
- Firms need to measure how digital is helping clients engage more with the firm and creating new opportunities.
- Here’s a snapshot of what metrics help you measure engagement plus a few other things…
- Firms need to move beyond web analytics and identify leads at critical stages in the buying lifecycle to enable them to engage in a more meaningful manner. This should enable you to understand what leads are at the initial stages in the buying cycle and need to be targeted with content that will generate interest, which ones are midway in the buying cycle and thus marketing needs to keep them engaged with relevant content with a focus on relationship building and which ones are hot and ready to receive an offer document or a proposal.
- You need to set up a scoring model for leads to gauge their maturity level in the buying life cycle. Leads need to be scored using explicit and implicit data. Explicit relates to their profile, geography, organization, etc. while implicit data relates to details about their online activity, content browsed, search criteria, etc. This scoring model should indicate what leads need to be nurtured further, which ones are ready to be contacted by the business development team, etc. The image here illustrates a sample scoring model where the profile score B1 indicates that the lead is a good fit, ready to enter into business discussion and can be contacted in person.
- The scoring model should empower the business development team The above image illustrates a sample dashboard for the business development team to understand which leads are super interested signified by the number of light bulbs against each and also how far along they are in their buying journey indicated by the number of chilies against them.
- Technology is the key enabler.
- It should empower marketing in a way that it’s easy to use and facilitates engagement.
- Major challenges with marketing technology platforms are around complexity, ease of use and high dependency on IT.
- The expanse of digital technology has marketers utterly confused. With too many options to chose from, selecting technology is nothing less than daunting for legal marketers.
- However, even within the extremely crowded digital technology landscape with literally hundreds, if not thousands of options, some technologies are absolute must-haves for legal firms. Such as a contemporary content management system that enables marketers to manage content on their website and supports capabilities like personalization, etc. Analytics should be set up to enable marketers to gather insights around user behavior, marketing asset performance, client engagement, etc. Faceted search with auto suggest and autocomplete capabilities that enable users to locate information with ease. Email and marketing automation that enable automated delivery of targeted content and multi touch campaigns can be set up to engage with prospects at every stage in the buying process, without manual intervention. CRM that can house all your customer data and provide an accumulated view of the sum all client interactions. Social tools that enable you to listen into what clients/prospects are saying about you in public and how it’s impacting your brand.
- Firms need to start with technology platforms – The CMS, Marketing/Email Automation Platform (MAP) and CRM Next sharing a common view of the lead and how they move across channels requires integration across platforms An engagement strategy needs to be formulated and implemented to drive content personalization and relevance Integration between the CMS, MAP and CRM will enable the creation of centralized buyer profiles that could then be mapped to a defined buying process. Implementing dashboards, reports, and measurement tools necessary to support ongoing performance measurement and management.
- 90% of the A single view of the customer is essential for marketers to create 1:1 marketing – to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time, and now, on right channel.
- Throughout the buying lifecycle, your prospect is engaging with you across a variety of channels and devices. It is true that no single technology by itself can provide a 360 degree view of the customer. An Integrated Customer Experience Platform (CXP) will empower marketing: To orchestrate experiences across every channel the tools and platforms within your marketing technology ecosystem should be integrated and should work in sync. The CMS, MAP and CRM should be connected and automated to enable rules based personalization. Such that when a prospect views a piece of content ‘X’ on your site, the marketing automation platform should trigger an automatic email to the prospect with content related to ‘X’. Similarly when a prospect receives an email communication from your firm related to topic ‘Y’, he clicks on a link in the email and lands on your site, the home page should be personalized to show content related to topic ‘Y’. All these interactions should find their way into the CRM platform. Analytics should provide actionable insights into client engagement. Armed with these insights you can further refine and optimize customer experience and create deeper engagement and build on your relationships. Facilitate Single View of Customer (SVC) – Once your marketing technologies are integrated and are performing in cohesion, you can bring engagement data from all channels to one place to create what we call a single view of the customer. This view can be created within your WebCMS or Marketing automation tool or even as a separate dashboard.
- So to sum it up, these 7 strategies will enable you deliver customer experience that will drive engagement with prospects and enable you to build deeper relationships with your clients. That brings us to end of the session ‘Engagement strategies for law firms to compete in the age of the customer’