The legal and accounting professions are intellectual professions. Highly technical and often difficult for the general public to understand, communication around these professions must respond to a difficult problem: how can a brand be promoted if the usefulness of its know-how cannot be understood by its target audience?
Here’s a quick summary of three essential marketing concepts for generating influence that’s both intelligent and lead-generating.
THE OBJECTIVE : EARNED MEDIA
Definition: refers to the exposure a brand receives free of charge.
The legal market is not a traditional market. Unlike other markets, which can leverage image and impulse buying, this one remains partly dependent on customer recommendation and word-of-mouth. As a result, hammering the brand all over the place to make an impression is ineffective in this type of market.
The aim is to convert customers, prospects and visitors into informal brand ambassadors. Just as a manufactured product is not sold in the same way as an intellectual service, the exposure of a player or legal know-how cannot be bought (at least, not in its entirety), but rather “earned”, hence the use of the term earned.
STRATEGY: INBOUND MARKETING
Definition: the principle by which a company seeks to get its prospects to approach it naturally, by providing them with useful information in line with their needs.
In an “expert” market, inbound marketing is the weapon of choice. The concept is simple: to assert yourself as the best expert, you need to present yourself as the best teacher. Instead of exposing the brand and its message head-on, through an advertising message for example, the inbound strategy reverses the relationship by “inviting” the individual to discover the brand.
To achieve this, the company must “offer” the general public a range of content that, on the one hand, distills some of its know-how and, on the other, responds in a vulgar way to the individual’s need or question.
This content creates a natural link between the expertise promoted and the need expressed, and stimulates interest in the brand in an intelligent (rather than instinctive) way. Quite simply, because the individual gains something, intellectually.
THE MEANS: BRAND CONTENT
Definition: refers to all the content produced by a brand to fuel its communication, primarily online, but not exclusively.
A classic of modern communication. In the age of social networks, brand content has become legion.
But first, it’s essential to have a clear vision of a social network. Beyond being an advertising space, a social network is essentially a receptacle for content. Hence the phenomenon of virality. An individual posting content A can get more leads than a multinational posting content B. Moral: financial means will not solve the visibility equation.
In the legal market, the guiding principle is to generate virality through veracity. The content produced by a law firm must shed light on a topical legal issue, or one related to the targeted sector, in a way that is educational, concise and attractive to visitors.
Obviously, to be properly popularized, the answer will always be partial. The key is therefore to ensure that the content is properly angled to provide only the answers required by the target audience.
At present, the explosion of content production on the networks is causing brand content to depreciate. But when it comes to legal issues, the field remains relatively open.
For three reasons. Firstly, content relating to legal issues remains underdeveloped, compared to other sectors such as banking and insurance. Secondly, legal issues remain so varied that it’s always possible to find a blank space for content.
Finally, the production of French-language content remains far below that of the English-speaking world. This gap represents a real opportunity for French law firms to enter the digital space.
ELIOTT & MARKUS TIPS: EDITORIAL THINKING AND GOVERNANCE
Contrary to popular belief, designing content is often more difficult than producing it. It’s therefore a good idea to create a more or less formal editorial governance structure within the firm to determine:
1) who the content is aimed at (professions, level of legal knowledge, geographical areas…) ;
2) what form is appropriate (white paper; infographic; blog article; barometer; video; case study; comparison; tutorial…);
3) does the content address the issues raised by the target audience (and not by the law in general)?
Be careful to choose the right form for your resources and time. In terms of time/benefit ratio, “fat” video (cf. BRUT online media) and computer graphics are two good compromises, both of which don’t require overly ambitious or time-consuming technical resources to produce a satisfactory lead, if, once again, the design has been properly thought out upstream.
A final word of advice: the essential nerve of content production is creativity. Creativity in design already. In the case of an infographic, for example, the angle and graphic presentation must appeal to the visitor. An infographic that’s too full, too technical or too “flat” graphically won’t generate any interest.
Creativity in the choice of media too. In the long term, it’s imperative to vary the forms of content, depending on the target, but also on the choices made by competitors. For example, if the space around an issue remains saturated with “white papers” (good practices), why not create a “black book” (bad practices) to stand out from the crowd?
