Easy marketing bloopers to avoid
I love the fact that in the legal industry we are becoming honest about how we fail and can learn from this. Growth mindset is such a powerful thing in all aspects of life. So for this reason, I don’t really like to talk about “marketing failures”. It is, of course, my job as a marketing coach to ensure you get the best results, but there are some things you need to invest in to ensure that happens, some “marketing bloopers” best avoided whether you are a founder, a SME law firm or legal services business, or even when you are working in a bigger business where the pace is sometimes so fast, it’s hard to find the time and the resource.
Strategy and planning blooper
Not having a marketing strategy or plan in place. I know, I sound like a broken record on this sometimes, but whether you’re a founder, an SME or a larger legal services business, it is important you have a solid understanding of your competitive space, your customer personas, your targeting and positioning, your promotional tactics, how you will measure success and ensure this all feeds into a deliverable plan. It can sound daunting and it can be tempting to skip this step and launch into quick win tactics if you are low on resource, but investing in strategy and planning up front will give you clarity, focus and remove that overwhelm you might sometimes feel (as a small business owner myself I assure you, you are not alone!)
Customer understanding blooper
Not having a clear set of customer personas. It’s so important to have a set of customer personas to allow you to do the most effective marketing. It helps everyone in the business to understand customers better. It ensures you are marketing to somebody and not just anybody. In legal services there are probably a number of personas involved, so it’s important to develop a set and ensure your messaging and marketing resonates with each of them. You will always have the same value proposition, but you might use different language and imagery. Having this clear understanding of who your audience is will allow you to connect on an emotional level. You’ll know who you are targeting, where to find them and what they need.
Content dearth blooper
Having a website with no new content. If you want a website that performs well, there is so much to invest in from an SEO perspective from getting quality backlinks to using alt tags on imagery but most importantly, ensuring you publish regular, relevant content. I know, I know, it is hard to find the time to put pen to paper a lot of the time – luckily I am here to help download all that brilliant thought and support you on business blogs and content creation! So get cracking on those client stories, testimonials, blogs and articles.
Social media blooper
Ignoring your social media strategy. The right social media marketing strategy will lead to increased website traffic, improved SEO, brand awareness, will help you connect with customers and in general play an important part in inbound marketing. But it does require a robust approach when it comes to understanding those personas, setting goals, allocating resource, research, establishing primary and secondary platforms, content and how it integrates with the rest of your marketing strategy. Most people know how to “use” social media now – and its accessibility and ease of use is a great feature. But tactical, ad hoc activity will not produce the right business results. Invest in your strategy and plan, use the right tools, be focussed in your goals for each platform, measure obsessively and iterate and you will reap the rewards if you are consistent over time.
Employee advocacy blooper
Missing a trick with employee advocacy. We live in a world where communication has been democratized. Gone are the days of all marketing being delivered through a press release. It is dynamic and fluent, happening on media and the reality is that people trust familiar faces over a corporate logo. So from a company sense, create content that your team are proud to share and comment on and develop an approach to social media that encourages and empowers rather than inhibits.
ROI and reporting blooper
Not measuring return and iterating activity. Every marketing activity should be robustly tested to check it is performing for your unique business. There are too many sets of metrics to list of course and every business has different strategy and goals, but measuring marketing qualified leads, sales qualified leads, revenue month on month, website metrics, social media metrics, SEO reports, email marketing…creating a dashboard you can review every month is important, especially as a small business. And also not completely disregarding that anecdotal feedback, as there can be gold in those verbatims.
Not investing in marketing blooper
Not investing in your marketing for the long term. Well, I guess I would say that wouldn’t I? Marketing in its fullest, greatest form is more important in our post peak Covid world than ever before. As the legal industry continues to innovate new products, services, technologies and business models, great innovations need to be paired with great marketing. Innovation on its own is not enough!
I work with legal services business from founders and start-ups, SMES in scale up mode and law firms to try and strip away the marketing overwhelm on all of the above. If you’d like to discuss how I would work with you or your business, book a Discovery call on here, email me on helen@saltmarsh.marketing or find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok on any of the links on here….I am pretty hard to avoid!