With the many barriers that get in your way when marketing your law firm, there seem to be an endless series of things that you need to get “just so” before you can pull the trigger.
Today I want to encourage you to stop worrying as much about a few of them and focus on the things that move the needle.
Hangup #1 – Finding the “Best” Thing
I get this one. You want to put your time and money in the place where it's going to have the most impact.
In truth though, you actually can't find the “best” thing without trying a bunch of different stuff.
A classic example is social media. Which social media platform should you be on?
All of them?
None of them?
What if you pick 2 – which two would you pick?
There are so many variables to this question that it's honestly a crazy thing to ask. You won't know which social media channel is best for you until you start using one.
But I can guarantee you that you'll see precisely zero outcomes if you do nothing for a year while you think about which one is “best”.
Another great example is video marketing. What's the best camera, the best microphone, the best editing software? What's the best way for me to share my videos? Natively on LinkedIn? Live on Facebook?
Again, these questions are all worth asking, but not worth asking in a way that prevents you from getting started.
The best camera is the one you have. Use that – get going. Then with the feedback you'll receive you can tweak, pivot and change up your strategy to see more and more results.
But 0 videos = 0 views.
Hangup #2 – Search Engine Optimisation
I'm not going to tell you that SEO isn't important for lawyers.
But getting caught up in the intricacies of SEO as a lawyer can be a path to pain, suffering, and nerd-like inactivity.
Why?
Because there's too much information, most of which shouldn't matter to you.
If you read my guide to SEO for lawyers you'll see the things that I think matter. Once you've got that stuff down, it should take you about 5 minutes per piece of content to check that you've done it right.
But if you let yourself get tangled in the web of SEO, there's a good chance that you're going to waste a huge amount of time focused on robots, rather than people.
And good content is about people.
Hangup #3 – Professional Gloss
This one might be a bit debatable in some contexts, but the polishing process that lawyers use on their content is not just a waste of time, but often it's actually harming the success of your content marketing strategy.
The flow, cohesion and value of any content you produce are important, and I'm not suggesting otherwise.
The polishing I'm referring to is where we take something that was completely capable of human connection and turn it into something that isn't.
Video marketing is a classic example. With the options for video marketing at the moment you've got quite a range of styles that you can adopt.
The go-to lawyer video marketing strategy is to aim for highly polished, make-up covered studio lighting environments. Put another way: we're focused on high production value, normally out of a concern that we look “professional”.
But as soon as we dress up and sit under the bright lights, we turn into quasi-actors rather than human lawyers.
And when that happens, you lose some of the main benefits of video – trust, confidence and connection are all eroded, simply because you're trying to make a movie, rather than have a chat.
Aim for having a chat, which is exactly what you'd do with your clients anyway.
We do the same thing to our articles and blog posts, and in the process, we remove any prospect of standing out from the crowd.
Hangup #4 – It Might Put Someone Off
This one is huge for lawyers.
But, for any brand to be successful (including a personal brand) you need to know not just who you are targetting, but to be prepared to alienate a few others along the way.
That means if your ideal client is a woman aged 55 who runs her own business, there's no point in worrying about whether your content might offend a 19 year old unemployed boy.
If you're not prepared to make that judgment call, then you're going to be forever frustrated in your content.
Because in trying to make your content attractive to everyone, you render it too uninteresting for anyone.
What's your Hangup?
What's getting in the way of you getting your digital marketing strategy working?
If I can help – reach out.
