I was recently reading an onboarding document that a law firm provided to Market My Market. It’s always fun working with lawyers on both sides, and in this case, experiencing a law firm’s client experience. What I appreciate about this document is what it encouraged clients to do and not do. Basically, the “do’s and don’ts” of the relationship. That got me thinking about some of our own words of encouragement for new and existing clients. Consequently, I’ve compiled the first five that came to mind.
If you’re currently working with a digital marketing agency that is helping you with SEO, content marketing, or paid advertising, these would be my words of wisdom for you to feel confident about. The words of discouragement aren’t a priority at the moment – no one likes telling a lawyer what they can’t do!
Do Ask Questions About the Deliverables You’re Receiving
Search Engine Optimization can get somewhat complicated and technical, but don’t let that jargon ever be a substitute for expertise or know-how. If you’re seeing tasks being performed in strategies or reports that sound odd, this isn’t supposed to be a dense shroud that allows the SEO team to hide behind. Ask questions, and tell your contact that you’d like to see a few details on what this looks like and what they believe the outcome of this should look like. When you talk to clients, you aren’t constantly speaking in Latin and deferring every response to case law. You put it in words your clientele understands. This is exactly the same case as your marketing partner.
Do Attempt to Measure ROI on Your Marketing Efforts
A marketing partner is not going to be one of your lower expenses. It is important to hold all marketing sources accountable for some (or all) level of return, and your marketing partner is no exception. Reports from your marketing sources should always include data to support what they believe qualified leads that they generated. The success of the campaign is not contingent on how many website visitors you received or how much your rankings improved. They are based on leads that converted into clients that paid you.
On one end, it is the responsibility of your marketing vendor to provide accurate and transparent information on their lead generation efforts. On your end, you are responsible for having something in place, whether it be reliable internal processes or a CRM, to keep track of your leads, conversions, and retainers. This is a fundamental business activity that no law firm is free from. Client acquisition and retention are the lifeblood of a law firm, and so every marketing dollar that goes out has to be tracked on its way back in.
Do Forward Audits and Call-Outs of Your Website That Look Legitimate
You probably receive several emails a day offering to do a website audit or pointing out a flaw on your website. While many will be alarmist and therefore illegitimate (also confirmed by poor grammar and misspellings of your firm name), you’ll occasionally receive a few here and there that do mention something minor or major on your website. I recommend forwarding these on occasion to your marketing company.
Is it to threaten them or keep them on their toes? Not necessarily. At any given time, there may be hundreds of factors that go into your website for how it ranks, converts, and overall performs. There’s nothing wrong with viewing this as “outside perspective” in a non-threatening way. Also, it gives your partner a chance to interpret and tell what their thoughts are as well.
When we receive audits forwarded from our client from our competitors (and we do, in volume), admittedly, many of them use irrelevant, baseless metrics to gauge site performance in a self-serving way, but there are certainly those that make a decent point about how the site displays under a certain resolution, if there’s a misspelling on a particular page, and if a malicious backlink made its way to the website. This input does have value, so there’s no reason to be dismissive of all feedback, even if it wasn’t requested.
Do Attempt to Make All Marketing Meetings
Marketing meetings are your time for face-to-face interactions with your marketing team and their undivided attention. Make the most of them! This “do” is straightforward from my experience: those clients that use the full time allotted for meetings get great insight, talk out ideas, and benefit from the consultative collaboration that occurs at the meeting. The clients that forgo all of their meetings don’t have the same experience, and while the campaign could still very much work out fine, it just doesn’t have the same edge as the other relationships.
Do Approve and Give Feedback for Content as Quickly as You Can
If a part of your marketing is to receive ongoing pages and blogs for your website, I can’t stress enough how important it is to get into a cadence for content approval. Content is a cornerstone of any organic digital marketing campaign, and any holdups on the content side will essentially result in a long-term delay in results. We may not always be in the mood to scrutinize website content for marketing purposes, but as long as that’s technically the largest time sink you’ll have when partnering with a marketing company, it is a time expense that is worth having.
Contact Market My Market for Assistance Today
All of these do’s are strongly encouraged by us at MMM, and we’re confident your campaign will zoom out of the game even faster if you follow our outline. Your agency will likely even thank you for it. At Market My Market, we work to take digital marketing off your plate so you can focus on what you do best. Our top-of-the-line team of SEO and content experts has years of experience helping lawyers like you stand out in the crowded industry. To learn more about how we can help you, contact us by calling (866) 696-0248 or completing our online contact form today.