When you began practicing law, you probably had a lot of goals in mind. First, you undoubtedly wanted to pass the bar. Then you wanted to get experience in your chosen field and build up your roster of clients. Longer term, you probably dreamed about becoming partner or opening your own firm.

It’s smart to come up with this type of goal-oriented master plan. You should be doing the same thing for your legal marketing.

The best legal content writing is done with specific outcomes in mind. The best content campaigns are aimed at achieving something concrete, such as improving your newsletter’s open rate. Here’s what you should be doing to build successful content campaigns.

1. Outline Your Goals

One of the biggest mistakes law firms make with marketing is failing to set a goal. Whether you are starting an email newsletter or improving your blog, you should have a short-term and long-term goal in mind.

A short-term goal could be as simple as getting 50 newsletter subscribers or writing three blogs a week. Think bigger for long-term goals, though. Performance, such as getting X number of new clients from a new content strategy, should be the focus of your long-term goals.

1. Set a Cost

Every legal content writing campaign will have an associated cost, whether you use someone from your law firm to write the copy or hire an outsider. The cost of the campaign should line up with your goals. If the goal is attracting more clients, then it may be worth investing more dollars in the outside professional.

1. Topics of Interest

What topics are of interest to your clients? What would they want to read or learn more about? These questions are central to determining the focus of your campaign. For example:

• Divorce lawyers might want to cover prenups and custody agreements, but not a change in DUI regulations
• DUI lawyers might want to cover differences in DUI laws between states but not estate planning

1. Target Audience

Who do you want your legal marketing to connect with? You should have a clear picture in your head of this target demographic and where to find them. For instance, if you practice elder law, you probably don’t need to be on Twitter, which has a low percentage of users over age 55. But you may want to jump on Facebook, where a lot of grandparents use to keep in touch with their grandkids.

The Ingredients of a Smart Campaign

There’s a lot to keep track of in a successful legal marketing campaign. You don’t have to do it yourself. If you need help organizing your legal content writing goals and targets, contact Lawyers Writing for Lawyers to get started.

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