In late January Good2bSocial launched the Good2bSocial Academy. Designed to be an easily accessible way to enhance understanding of digital technologies in a law firm/legal marketing context for marketing, business development and communication professionals in a law firm environment, the course features webinars, articles and videos on an easy to navigate dashboard which can be completed at the attendees own pace. On the course’s design, Guy Alvarez, Founder and CEO of Good2bSocial and the course instructor, says, “We wanted to design a course that would provide legal marketers with a verifiable base line of knowledge of digital marketing concepts in the legal marketing realm—with the idea that this course could serve as a benchmark for legal marketing departments vetting potential hires, and make it easier for CMOs to get approval for team training.”
Good2bSocial’s popular Digital Marketing Certification is available on the Good2bSocial dashboard. The course is divided into eight sections, outlined below, with assignments and feedback from Alvarez along the way. After completing the eight sessions, course participants will create a final digital marketing project to earn the digital marketing certificate and upon completion of the course, students will gain access to a private Linkedin Group to network with other alumni.
The eight sessions are:
Session 1: Introduction to Digital Marketing
Session 2: Content Marketing
Session 3: Social Media Marketing
Session 4: Social Media Advertising
Session 5: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Session 6: Search Advertising
Session 7: Email Marketing
Session 8: Measurement & Analytics
The Introduction to Digital Marketing for Law Firms section includes webinars, articles and videos providing a foundation and shared language for participants. Concepts discussed include Inbound marketing for law firms, the buyer’s journey, and client journey mapping, all with a legal marketing focus.
Inbound Marketing for Law Firms
Inbound Marketing for law firms is introduced through a conversation with Anna Norregaard the Principal Channel Executive for Hubspot, and other articles and resources are also included. Norregaard draws a distinction between inbound marketing and content marketing and how content marketing enhances visibility across channels, while inbound marketing uses the increased visibility to convert that additional visibility into leads and opportunities.
Norregaard breaks inbound marketing down into four phases:
- Attract: through strategic content creation, blogging and social media, bring new visitors to your firm’s website so they can get to know you.
- Convert. Once the visitors have arrived at your site, you convert them into a lead by enticing them to fill out a form so you can capture their information, encouraging them to do so by providing valuable content like webinars or case studies.
- Close. In this stage, you turn the leads into business development opportunities through segmentation–by providing regular and appropriate follow-ups, you can nurture the lead to closing.
- Delight. In this phase, consider how you communicate with your clients and how the relationship provides them with value aside from the services purchased–how can you keep clients appraised of what you offer that they might find useful?
The Buyer’s Journey
In order to effectively understand what content will be effective for inbound marketing, analyzing and constructing a buyer’s persona can help contextualize the buyer’s journey for your firm’s clients and develop content that matches the concerns of potential buyers. Broadly speaking, the Buyer’s Journey includes the Awareness Stage, the Consideration Stage and the Decision stage. By identifying common characteristics of your buyer at each stage, you can create content that addresses the concerns and positions your firm as the solution.
Client Journey Mapping for Law Firms
One way to develop the Buyer Persona and conceptualize the Buyer’s journey is to go through a client journey mapping process. Client Journey mapping has been a hot topic in law firms, as traditional buyers of legal services have become more concerned with pricing and consistency. Client Journey Mapping provides an overview of the client experience, and what those interactions look like at each touchpoint. Looking at this process from an external perspective can drive the focus outward, to the client, and encourage the firm to be more receptive to feedback from clients. Additionally, this shift in focus can help identify which touchpoints are critical to clients when making a buying decision and can encourage the firm to be more empathetic. By placing perspective on the client’s experience, the firm can create experiences tailored to the client and extend the relationship, perhaps even broadening the relationship to include more facets of work.
By curating a variety resources in a variety of formats, Alvarez has used his expertise to find assets on the topics under discussion and putting them in a user-friendly, easily accessible dashboard. Alvarez says, “Good2bSocial has been providing training to individual law firms for over 10 years, and through this experience we’ve learned what elements are most useful for marketers in the legal industry. We’ve taken that firsthand knowledge and we’ve packaged it in this course designed to meet the demand—only enhanced by the tight job market and the COVID-19 pandemic– for digital marketing training in an online, on-demand format.”
To learn more about the Good2bSocial Academy and the law firm focused topics covered please click here.
Stay tuned for more details on the topics and key takeaways included in the next seven parts of the Good2bSocial Academy.
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