This document discusses strategies for law firms to build credibility through multichannel marketing beyond just their website. It recommends creating quality, relevant content and distributing it across owned channels like the website and social media. It then suggests partnering with influencers in your industry to distribute the content to new audiences in order to establish expertise, drive traffic, and build trust with potential clients.
Unveiling the Legacy of the Rosetta stone A Key to Ancient Knowledge.pptx
Marketing Beyond the Website: Best Practices to Build Credibility Through Multichannel Distribution
1. MARKETING BEYOND THE WEBSITE:
Best practices to build credibility
through multichannel distribution.
ANDREW MERANUS
Regional Vice President
PR Newswire
2. June 10, 2014 // CASE STUDY: Marketing Beyond the Website
ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
@asteven14
Andrew.Meranus@prnewswire.com
ANDREW MERANUS
Regional Vice President
PR Newswire
3. June 10, 2014 // CASE STUDY: Marketing Beyond the Website
ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
PR Newswire is the GLOBAL LEADER
in innovative communications and
marketing platforms, enabling
law firm communicators
to BUILD COMPANY CREDIBILITY with
their target audiences worldwide.
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
INFORMATION OVERLOAD
PROBLEM:
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
YOUR WEBSITE
Image source: http://sciencelakes.com
How will customers find you?
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
DISCOVERY VIA CONTENT
SOLUTION:
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
The value exchange
LAW FIRM
Currency = Content
AUDIENCE
Currency = Personal Info
Jane Smith
jane.smith@xyz.com
555-555-5555
CEO, XYZ Corp.
The firm continuously delivers
relevant content & establishes
its worth to the audience
The audience trusts the firm
enough to identify themselves &
grant permission for engagement
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
Content drives them all
OWNED
MEDIA
EARNED
MEDIA
PAID
MEDIA
SOCIAL + SEARCH + MOBILE
A brand pays to
place ad or content
in a channel to
drive conversation
forward.
Publicity gained
through influencer
promotion,
including shares,
likes & tweets.
Brand published
content to drive
earned media and
sustain buzz
around brand.
• Advertising
• Events
• Direct Marketing
• Press pickup
• Blog mention
• Social sharing
• Word of mouth
• Company blogs
• Company website
• Company social
accounts
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
YOUR WEBSITE
Image source: http://sciencelakes.com
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
Creating a Content Strategy
CREATE
QUALITY
CONTENT
POST
TO OWNED
CHANNELS
DISTRIBUTE
TO NEW
AUDIENCES
1 2 3
• Compelling
• Relevant
• Website & Blog
• Social Media
• Distribution
• Influencers
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
CREATE QUALITY CONTENT
1
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
There are
journalists &
bloggers being
followed by the
specific audiences
you want to reach.
Target these
influencers
to get your
content to their
audiences.
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
Be heard by new and
existing audiences following
these conversations
Establish
your expertise
Get noticed by influencers
looking for expert sources
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
Establish expert profiles for your attorneys on platforms
that can get them interviewed and quoted by relevant
journalists and bloggers.
EXPERT
Tax Law
EXPERT
Criminal Law
EXPERT
Immigration Law
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
Establishing trust as a thought leader
• Your firm’s content must
be highly-relevant and
compelling to your target
audience.
• Timely content with a
consistent push of new
content will ensure your
audience continues to
follow and trust you.
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
Map your content to the
client’s buying process
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
Looking for ideas of what content to create?
Start by listening
Client
FAQs
What questions do your
partners and associates
hear most often?
Incoming
Search Terms
What are the most
popular keywords &
phrases bringing
searchers to your site?
Social Media
Channels
• Twitter hashtags #
• LinkedIn groups
• Relevant blogs
• Anywhere your audience
is talking
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
Visual elements will increase views & engagement
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
Tips for Creating Online Videos
KEEP IT REAL. SHORT IS SWEET.
RECORD MORE
THAN YOU NEED.
ALIGN WITH YOUR
BRAND VOICE.
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
OWNED MEDIA CHANNELS
2
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Your clients and potential clients are there,
so engage with them and establish your
counsel as the authorities on relevant topics.
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
1) Display social
media accounts
on homepage
2) Prominently
reference & link to
blogs on
homepage
3) Use Twitter &
other accounts to
drive blog traffic
4) Try to tweet at
least once a day
5) Post questions
on Facebook &
Twitter to
encourage
discussion
6) Be sure that
blogs focus on
specialty, niche
areas
7) Importance of
Linked In
company pages
8) Short, original
YouTube videos
focused on
problem solving
Key tips for
firms leveraging
social media
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
DISTRIBUTION
3
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
Posting Content to Owned Media
Reaches Your Known Audience
YOUR
EMAIL LISTS,
WEBSITE,
& SOCIAL
MEDIA
PRESENCE
Distribution Increases Awareness
& Grows Your Known Audience
Content
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
Distribution
Media
pick up
Major
media
Online
discoverability
benefits
“Art of Dairy”
May 3, 2013
Picked up
multiple times
RANK 13
Google search
of store name
WIRE
“World Vegetarian Day”
October 1, 2013
Not Picked up
RANK 35
(below the fold)
Google search
of store name
NO WIRE
Distribution vs. Owned Experiment
Large Grocery
Retail Chain
Source: 2013 survey by leading professional services firm.
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
PRNewswire.com
Blogs
PRN Widget
National
News Sites
Local News
Affiliate
Sites
Portals &
Databases
Trade News
Sites
Mobile App
Partnerships
Mobilized
Websites
Your
Website
MediaRoom
Video
Portals
Multimedia
Release
PRN Mobile
Site & App
High
Ranking
Search
Results
PR Newswire
for
Journalists
Media Outlet
News Feeds
“The Wire”
Twitter
SocialPost
Email
Microlists /
Media Lists
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
LINK DRIVES
TRAFFIC TO
COMPANY SITE
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
LINKS TO
BRANDED
CONTENT
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
LINK DRIVES TRAFFIC
TO BRANDED
MICROSITE
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ANDREW MERANUS @asteven14
Publish a steady
stream of content
Keep it relevant
& interesting
TRUST RELIABILITY DELIGHT
Adapted via: http://danspira.com/2011/09/10/make-room-for-follow-through/
Notes de l'éditeur
Sure you can make the title text look better
Replace photo / info w/Andrew Meranus
Sarah to review/provide text for law firms –NEW TEXT BELOW BUT I TRIED TO TWEAK & SHORTEN MYSELF ABOVE.
PR Newswire provides end-to-end solutions to produce, optimize and target content — from rich media to online video to multimedia — and then distribute content and measure results across traditional, digital, mobile and social channels. These comprehensive platforms enable law firm communicators to build their company’s credibility through heightened exposure among potential client leads, as well as through PR Newswire’s trusted third party content distribution network.
Now let’s talk how this relates to law firms - I don’t know if you want to keep this one.
Once upon a time… it was easy for you to get in front of your audience.
Today’s problem: Information overload. This is generally everyone’s problem right?
WITH LACK OF ENGAGEMENT WITH YOUR CONTENT THAT SITS ON YOUR SITE YOU MUST RETHINK STRATEGY.
Your owned media is just a small portion of the audience who are interested in your content.
Add distribution and syndication to your content strategy amplify your reach and thus increase awareness and discoverability.
Don’t waste your content investment by solely relying on your owned media channels for promotion
Fix the problem with influencer engagement along with syndication of content.
Remove
We’re entered the era of more interactive, two-way communication between consumer and brand across all media. Companies must provide value and engage customers in meaningful and exciting ways in order to gain their trust.
DO WE HAVE AN UPDATE TO THIS SLIDE. THINK IT’S STILL IMPORTANT EITHER WAY.
WITH LACK OF ENGAGEMENT WITH YOUR CONTENT THAT SITS ON YOUR SITE YOU MUST RETHINK STRATEGY.
Your owned media is just a small portion of the audience who are interested in your content.
Add distribution and syndication to your content strategy amplify your reach and thus increase awareness and discoverability.
Don’t waste your content investment by solely relying on your owned media channels for promotion
Bloggers and journalists
produce content for communities that follow them
own a small piece or real estate online that is trafficked by interested parties.
Engageinfluencers to “rent” a portion of this real
Using a credible third-party distribution service helps because journalists and bloggers need content and are more likely to use content from a reliable source.
Another tactic is to use platforms that get experts (i.e. attorneys) quoted by relevant journalists and bloggers.
Needs a source
Whether it be a key Supreme Court decision or some other event, things are happening every day that provide an opportunity for a firm to share its perspective and expertise. We have seen many firms jump in on issues such as Obamacare, new tax laws, the fiscal cliff, gun control, etc. By engaging in newsjacking, the firm is able to draft off of an event to accelerate its Marketing efforts and drive more leads. And the beauty of this is that so long as the quality of the content is high, a small firm can be just as effective as a large firm.
Bloggers and journalists
produce content for communities that follow them
own a small piece or real estate online that is trafficked by interested parties.
Engageinfluencers to “rent” a portion of this real
Using a credible third-party distribution service helps because journalists and bloggers need content and are more likely to use content from a reliable source.
Another tactic is to use platforms that get experts (i.e. attorneys) quoted by relevant journalists and bloggers.
More advanced/sophisticated content strategies should map to “desired outcome”
Bringing customer voice into content… this will also help get your content seen in future searches (as you’re incorporating terms and keywords that your audience is using)
By nature, humans are drawn to pictures.
Multimedia 1) grabs attention, 2) simplifies complex ideas and 3) conveys emotion.
Because of this connection, multimedia is a key factor in search algorithms and social streams.
1. Keep it real. Make your attorneys more approachable by showing their human sides. Don’t script the video; come prepared with a list of questions and record the natural answers that follow. Prep your subject and make sure he/she understands that honesty and approachability are paramount.
2. Make it short and sweet. No one will watch an epic video on your law firm (unless it has an extremely compelling story, of course). Keep your videos short and to the point—no longer than a minute if you can fit everything in. That way, you’ll keep your viewer’s attention in that short window.
3. Record more than you need. You’ve heard of the cutting room floor. Now, it’s time to put your producer’s cap on and use it. Always record more material than you could possibly use in a video. That way, you can trim the fat and have plenty of valuable content left over.
4. Represent your brand.If you’ve developed a unique voice to match your brand identity, make sure your videos align with
Like most lawyers, I have control issues. Giving up control by posting something in social media can be scary. That said, more and more firms are doing it, especially to establish their attorneys as thought leaders. Your clients and potential clients are on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and social media is often the best way to engage with them and establish yourself as the go to person on a topic. There are many ways to increase your followers on social networks.
All LinkedIn example companies have a LOT of followers. They are all regularly posting content to the platform.
clients are congregating there professionally more than on any other social platform
The big issue/push back is balancing risk/reward in an online environment. Lawyers are control freaks and the more you push out, the less you own. I think it’s important to weave into remarks.
<Slide build>
Posting content to owned channels will only reach your known audience.
By adding syndication and distribution to targeted audiences, you can increase visibility and awareness.
Here’s a look at one of the experiments, for Awareness, a company that released two similar pieces of content
One through our network, and another one only through its own channels
Distributing through PR Newswire drives several types of outcomes:
Media Pickup
Display on major media websites
Better SERP
Source: 2013 survey by leading professional services firm.
Distribution allows for discovery.
Brings users back to your site who find this content through search, social, etc.
Clear call-to-action allows readers to immediately dive deeper into this information and connect with your brand.
Great use of multimedia: Captures attention and humanizes law firm.
Content must be mapped to business objectives – whether you are simply looking to position yourself as a thought leader or you are looking to drive more tangible results, your content strategy must support your business objectives so that you are driving results that will have an impact on your organization.
Content must be appealing – If your content isn’t interesting, engaging, useful or appealing to your audience, they won’t care. They won’t read it; they won’t share it; they won’t act on it. It will just be more noise.
Content should include specific ‘Calls to Action’ – Whether the “Calls to Action” are focused on sharing the content or asking the audience to provide you with information in exchange for the content or lead to an immediate sales opportunity, CTAs are critical to measuring the results of your content marketing efforts. If you have a benchmark like State Farm did, you can measure against that.
Content has to be easily found by your audience - Search engines and social networks play a huge role in the ability to drive content marketing, but so does syndication. When your content is visible on websites that your audiences rely on for information, the content is credible.