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Marketing automation: making it work for the legal profession
Practical Law UK Articles 3-617-5105 (Approx. 3 pages)
Marketing automation: making it work for the legal profession
by David Gilroy, Conscious Solutions
| Published on 23 Jul 2015 • United Kingdom |
David Gilroy of Conscious Solutions looks at how the legal profession can capitalise on the tools and techniques offered by marketing automation.
Attracting and developing new business is one of the biggest challenges for many law firms. Lawyers in private practice usually take responsibility for most of the marketing and sales work in addition to the demands of their legal work. This often means that, in comparison to carrying out work for existing clients, generating new business may be high on the list of business challenges but low on the priority list.
However, there are ways to manage the sales and marketing pipeline which may make the identification and cultivation of prospective clients easier, and more intelligent and effective.
What is marketing automation?
Far from a mass, anonymised approach to sales and prospecting for business, today's marketing automation techniques shorten sales processes by identifying and tracking potential and existing clients. As a result, lawyers are able to undertake insightful and targeted sales and marketing activities.
Tracking tools and software that identify who is accessing a law firm's website, what they look at and how often they return, are a key way of building up profiles of prospective clients. These are warm leads with real intelligence behind them as to what that particular prospective client is interested in, making it easier to pinpoint which services will be of most use to that client.
By monitoring this activity, lawyers can assess what kind of follow-up will work best, for example, a call if it is an existing client, or an email about a specific service that it has been looking at. The more proactive law firms may look at remarketing techniques, such as online advert placement, which will place their adverts on the other websites and search engines that their prospective client goes on to visit.
The beauty of this approach is that it is manageable and flexible: there is no need to use the blunt tool approach of mass-marketing, unless that is what the law firm prefers. It is also measurable, with tracking and insight at an individual level. There are a lot of marketing automation tools available, for example, CANDDi provides a wealth of data, is intuitive, easy to use and highly affordable compared to many competitors' products (see box "Getting started with marketing automation").
Marketing automation in legal practice
Despite a name that suggests simplicity, marketing automation can appear daunting to newcomers. But getting to grips with the principles and processes involved can bring significant returns for those law firms that are willing to embrace it.
There is a straightforward route into marketing automation for the lawyers. It starts with attracting website visitors, identifying who they are, what they are interested in and cultivating a useful and informative dialogue. In fact, what may sound well out of the comfort zone of many lawyers is actually fairly straightforward once they get into the detail of what needs to be done. There is no need to be a technological guru to take advantage of the latest marketing automation technologies. These tools are designed to be user-friendly, save time and bring measurable results.
Using the marketing automation approach, lawyers can allocate as little as one hour a day to their marketing and sales efforts. It can be as simple as sending out an email newsletter to an existing customer database, or a few direct emails to individual prospective clients, and tagging it with the CANDDi code. Then the stream of data and new business opportunities will start to flow.
David Gilroy is the Sales & Marketing Director of Conscious Solutions. More information is available at the Conscious Solutions website (www.conscious.co.uk).
More information about CANDDi is available on the CANDDi website (www.canddi.com).
Getting started with marketing automation
These three simple steps will help lawyers to start using marketing automation in practice:
Get the right tools for the job. Software such as CANDDi enables lawyers to identify new visitors on their law firm's website and to track what those visitors choose to access. This information is presented in an easy-to-use dashboard so that identification can be followed up with relevant messaging.
Use smart marketing. For example, when emails are sent out, CANDDi automatically uses an individual code that directs recipients to the sender's website and encourages recipients to click on links to, for example, a blog or information on a specific service. This allows lawyers to see when the recipient decides to access their firm's website. Also, CANDDi will immediately provide the identity of that recipient because it recognises the personalised link that has been clicked on. This approach can be used for mass-marketing emails through tools like MailChimp, or directly from an Outlook email account.
Get personal. For example, once a stream of data about a prospective client starts to filter through the CANDDi system, the sales follow-up process becomes easier, and can be tailored to be more relevant to the client's needs. The lawyer will also be forearmed with information from CANDDi, such as where the prospective client is located, what services he is interested in and which company he works for. All of this data can be used to target future marketing and sales approaches to be relevant to the prospective client.