The 5 Biggest Content Marketing Mistakes

Content marketing can be your law firm’s most powerful lead generator or it’s biggest waste of money.

Without the right strategy, many firms drain resources and fail to attract their desired clientele.

What follows are five critical mistakes. Avoid making these mistakes to ensure your content marketing sets you apart in the competitive legal landscape, so you can make the most of your marketing efforts from the start.

1. The content doesn’t fit into a broader strategy.

Creating content is expensive. It either takes a large time or a large financial investment (often both). You need to have a reason to be creating it that fits into the broader strategy of your website.

I have seen attorneys:

• Haphazardly share vacation photos and thoughts about life. This could be a great strategy for being seen as a real person people want to work with, but they don’t tie back to the legal practice. This is a huge missed opportunity for personal brand building! Showing your personality through your publications can attract clients to you not just because they trust your legal authority, but because they like you as well. The issue with having multiple posts just concerned with your personal life is that it does not help you build expertise. It muddies the theme of your website which confuses the reader and Google’s ranking algorithm.

• Post about random legal topics without a clear theme beyond “law.” Through doing keyword and market research, you should determine the gaps in your content and create a plan for having that content written. This will 1) help you figure out where you’re losing clients on your website. If you have an article introducing the idea of an education trust, but no other content on the topic, you’re leaving your potential clients wondering: What are the steps to set up an education trust, and how long does the process take? What are the costs associated with setting up and maintaining an education trust? How does gifting to an education trust affect my overall estate planning strategy? What are the key differences between an education trust and a 529 plan? These could - and probably should - all be separate articles that the website guides your client through their journey from awareness to purchase.

2. The content is outdated

Most legal content is evergreen, but articles are dated from back in 2012! That information, even if it’s still accurate, has lost all credibility. Some books age like fine wine, but all blog posts age like milk. I recommend to simply remove the dates on your posts.

If your posts require the date, I recommend you go through your content yearly, double check each page for accuracy, and add a stamp that says “updated: today's date” so that you don’t lose credibility on great content!

3. The content is too info dense

The law is complicated. Part of the job of an attorney is to simplify for clients! Write in language they can understand and use analogies and examples.

4. The content is incomplete and does not tell the client how to proceed.

Part of this is like we discussed above: you need to have your content fleshed out so people know where they should be going.

If your client just finished your generic page about education trusts, where should they go next? Do you have a series of articles on how to set up an education trust? Or an article on education trust benefits? Clients want to understand what the process of working with you is going to be like. If you only give them surface level information, it makes it difficult for them to educate themselves on your website, which means they will probably go elsewhere for the information and you will no longer be their source of truth.

You also must have an engaging and clear call to action so clients who are ready to work with you know the next steps. Should they call you? Should they fill out the form? What will happen once they do call? Do you guarantee a 24 hour response time? What is going to happen? Lay it out clearly for the client.

5. Not optimized for SEO

I often ask: would you expect a business card to generate leads if you kept it in your desk drawer? Of course not. In order for it to work, you have to go out and hand it to people. So, why would you spend 1000s of dollars and countless hours designing a website to not promote it properly?

SEO can generate massive business for service based businesses like law, yet so many attorneys neglect it. When people have a legal query they don’t ponder to themselves. They GOOGLE IT. You could be the best attorney for them with the most concise and expert strategy to help them with their exact problem. You could have helped 100s of clients just like them and be the perfect person for the job. How would Google know that? Google doesn’t know what’s in your heart and in your mind. Google’s search algorithm only knows what’s on your website.

That is why it is so crucial to understand what your clients search and what google already believes are the best answers for that search. This way you can give google what it wants which will in turn help clients find you. This way, you can help more of the right people AND make more money doing it!

If you’re ready to learn more about SEO, learn more about SEO for law firms.

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Content marketing can transform your law firm’s visibility and client engagement. However, with a practice to run and without experience in producing content that converts, many attorneys neglect their website.

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