Being a law firm, marketing, in general, might not be up your alley. However, creating your own marketing plan for your online marketing campaign does not take as much time and effort as creating one for the traditional media channels. Of course, it still takes a lot of work, but the results it reaps is definitely worth it.
What Is in a Digital Marketing Plan?
Generally, a marketing plan is an outline of your marketing strategy for the coming year, quarter, or month. In your marketing plan, you must determine the following:
- Objectives and Long-Term Goals
- A Description of Your Law Firm’s Current Marketing Position
- A Timeline of Tasks
- Target Market
- Investment and Budget
- Strategies and Creativity
- Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
Having a detailed plan allows you to know how you’re going to communicate with your target market online, how you want them to perceive your law firm, and what are the indicators that you’ve met your marketing goals.
Online marketing shouldn’t only be about being on the Internet just “for the sake of being on the Internet.” You’ll be overshadowed by the other law firms that might be around your area and provide the same services as you do.
A well thought out marketing plan will not only give you the online visibility you need, but it helps you get the revenue you want.
Top 6 Effective Tips on Creating Your Marketing Plan
- Define Your Goals and Objectives
- Consistent increase traffic for the website in 3 months
- Consistent increase social engagements in 3 months
- An increase in revenue within the year
- An increase in clientele within the year
- Research Is Key
- Target Market – You need to clearly define who you’re supposed to sell your services to. You need to think about the demographics, psychographics, and geographics of your target market.
- Demographics: How old is your target market? What is their age range? What kind of jobs do they do? What are their jobs? What social class do they belong to?
- Psychographics: What are their likes and dislikes? What are their goals in life? Are they more politically inclined? Are they into business? When do they go on social media? What kind of social media platforms do they have?
- Geographics: Where do they live in? Do they live in the city or do they live in suburban areas?
- Competitors – Who are your biggest competition online, especially within your area? Studying your competitors and knowing what they’re doing online will give you an idea as to what they’re doing right or wrong and taking them into consideration when coming up with your strategy.
- SWOT Analysis – This means Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Creating a SWOT analysis helps you assess your law firm’s current position before coming up with marketing strategies. This helps you determine what you’ve got to your advantage. With this, you can also reduce your chances of failure by understanding your limitations and eliminating the hazards.
- Online Marketing Strategies – You need to learn about the tools and platforms you can use to carry out your online marketing strategy. Having knowledge of SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, and other online marketing concepts allows you to come up with strategies that will help you achieve your objectives and goals.
- Create Your “Big Idea” or “Signature Solution”
- Determine the Right Online Marketing Strategy Will Help You Get the Traffic and Conversions You Need
- Create a Timeline of When and Where Your Outputs Should Be Posted
- Track Your Progress and See What Should Be Improved
Here’s the thing, if you start marketing online without a clear goal, then you’re obviously not going to go far. You need to have set goals and objectives in mind. Your objectives are the short-term achievements you want to attain while your goals are long-term achievements.
When you have your goals and objectives planned out, you will at least know where to exert your efforts and how you can achieve them.
For your objectives, make it something you can achieve in weeks or months. For example:
On the other hand, since your goals are more long term, you can think big. For example:
Know that your goals are also the basis of your strategy, so as much as possible, have a timeline set for them and make it clear. Also, for your goals, you don’t have to set a lot of goals. This will only be too much on your plate. Instead, focus on one and then move on to the next one if you’ve already achieved it. Take every success one step at a time.
Before writing or typing down your plans, you need to do thorough research on your market, competitors, the platforms you’re going to use, and the likes. Even if it is not as complex as planning out marketing through traditional forms of media, you still need to learn the best online marketing practices to make your message visible to the right people.
So what should you need to learn about?
The “Big Idea” or “Signature Solution” is the core of your marketing message and what you truly want to convey to your target market. Make sure that your “Signature Solution” comes from the research you’ve done on your target market. Will the message resonate well with them? Will it effectively tell them that your services are what they need to get through their bankruptcy?
It has to be specific and created in a way that will address their needs. At the same time, it should also stay true to your law firm’s brand.
When you’ve gotten a grasp of online marketing and its concepts, it’s time to apply what you’ve learned. You need to come up with visuals and other types of content that will convey the message you want to present in your marketing campaign. If you have bonuses or incentives you want to give for your target market for engaging with your content, you can add that in your plans as well.
However, when you come up with your strategies, you must ensure that they are in line with the goals and objectives you have set for your marketing campaign. The visuals and other forms of content should also be in line with the preferences of your specific target market. Once you have enough content planned out, now, it’s time to create a timeline for your tasks.
Having a schedule of when to post your content is important. Frequency is another factor of getting people to engage with your brand and improve your law firm’s visibility online. Through the research you did on your target market, you’ve gotten to know how often they go online and what times of the day they usually look at their social media accounts.
You should plan for consistency, but at the same time, it should not be too overwhelming that it will annoy your target market.
Once you’ve run your online marketing campaign, knowing the performance of your campaign is a MUST.
To know your progress and the success of your efforts, you should have “Key Performance Indicators” or KPIs. These measure the results of your marketing campaign, which can be obtained through numerous tools that can run digital statistics.
Going through your stats, which include your online engagement and website traffic, among others, you can see if you’ve accomplished your objectives, what areas of your campaign you need to improve, and what aspects of it actually sell.
Know that planning an online marketing campaign always takes time and patience. The Internet is always changing, and it will continue to innovate in a way that will make consumer-to-business interactions more convenient for both parties. That’s why you need to constantly build your presence online and create solid relationships with your target market, so you can keep up or rise up to your competition.
How Binary Ideas Can Help You
Don’t have time to do your law firm’s online marketing yourself? Then, perhaps you can have professionals do it for you. Binary Ideas has a team of experts that can work with you in coming up with an effective marketing plan that will increase your online visibility.
We’ve worked with numerous clients over the years and have helped improve their website traffic and get more revenue in the process. You can rest assured that we are knowledgeable on the latest online marketing trends and practices that will help your law firm rank high on local search results and get more engagement on relevant social media platforms.
If you want to know more about the services we offer, feel free to contact us today!