[The seventh in a series of twelve year-end posts by our friends in the Legal Marketing Association's special interest group on Social and Digital Media. Stop by for additional posts as the LMA publishes them:]
Thanks to Jon Holden, partner at Forward Level Marketing, for revving up our second week of reflection and prediction. Jon and I first met at the inaugural LMA National Conference Tweet-Up when he was at Bennett Jones. I’ve been an admirer of his work ever since. His post shares how they’ve created something called Targeted Marketing Campaigns, applying the shark week mentality, and achieving exception results. How exceptional? Would you call gaining five new clients a success? Read on!
...2017 is going to be a full court press on providing convenient, mobile, highly-focused, and timely content.
What has shifted in the last 12 months in social & digital media?
Wow, tough question. Easier question would be “what hasn’t shifted?”
If I had to name two:
-
Live video is seemingly everywhere now, with Periscope leading the charge, and Facebook Live bound to take over, we are seeing a major shift from the desire for high production value to immediacy and convenience. Content can happen at any time, anywhere. You know when Facebook pivots to focus on a tech, it is, or is about to be huge.
-
Another shift we are seeing is a real push into Employee Advocacy. With social networks such an accessible medium, companies are really starting to see the value of defining their brand internally, and activating their own people as advocates of the brand. The real challenge here is that your brand really needs to be authentic, because one internal misstep and you will lose your internal employee advocates. This shift is critical for smaller firms to understand and leverage, as it is a great way to expand the reach of your content and brand to new audiences.
Like any shifts, you need to identify them, understand them, and determine their value to you before you leverage them into your overall marketing strategy. One thing is certain, 2017 is going to be a full court press on providing convenient, mobile, highly-focused, and timely content. Legal marketing departments need to start leveraging the available data to get buy-in to try new things, and to change internal perceptions to new technologies.
The real advantage of this for legal marketers working with incredibly small budgets and expected to make miracles happen, is that they can start to leverage this information with their firms. Technology is so accessible these days; it really opens the doors for legal marketers. We will really start to see the smart marketers who see the opportunities and take advantage of them, lead regardless of budget.
What has caught your eye as a smart use in social media?
Our team has really embraced the shark-week mentality in producing highly focused, informed, and concentrated campaigns for our clients. We call them Targeted Marketing Campaigns (TMC’s). Most law firms miss the boat in this area. It’s typically a one-off approach that they expect to somehow work. “Hey, let’s do an ad in American Lawyer in March to promote our Litigation practice…”. This approach rarely provides any substantive ROI.
Our approach is an all-out blitz. We have a target goal (i.e. Website conversions), and every single thing we do that month has to support that goal. We recently did a TMC for our client Moodys Gartner Tax Law.
How did you do it?
As part of the blitz, we first researched the topic, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). For this particular campaign, we wanted to educate our audience, but also show the bench strength of the Moodys Gartner Tax Law team in this area. We produced an issue-based microsite, animated video, digital firm brochure, blog posts, curated video clips, social media ads, elevator network ads, public relations stories in national publications, radio interviews, etc.…
How were you successful in accomplishing this?
It was a total blitz for a one-month period. We used organic and paid tactics, and saw a massive increase in web traffic, which was the primary goal. Every piece of content, ads, radio, etc. all pointed to the issue-based microsite.
When one of your senior partners calls you into their office and says “I don’t know what the heck you guys are doing… but keep doing it!” you know you have something successful on your hands.
Why do you think it was successful?
The most dramatic stat was that the campaign generated business revenue for our firm. We received a report from our senior partner confirming the firm had retained five new clients, all who learned of the firm or our specialty in cross-border tax, more specifically FATCA and Renunciation, through one or more parts of our FATCA TMC. When one of your senior partners calls you into their office and says “I don’t know what the heck you guys are doing… but keep doing it!” you know you have something successful on your hands.
What about metrics and analytics?
The FATCA campaign ran from Sept. 7 – 25, generating 139,636 targeted impressions. We received 399 clicks to our content, for a total spend of $1,397.80. We saw a 400% increase in web traffic, which was our key metric for measuring success.
*
[Jon Holden is a partner at Forward Level Marketing, a service-oriented marketing firm with deep experience in legal marketing, both in-house (at national and regional firms), and on an out-of-house consulting basis. Prior to Forward Level, Jon worked as Director of Marketing Communications at a major Canadian law firm, and has served on the LMA national conference committee, and answers to “that Canadian guy” at all LMA events.]
