Page 29 - PIC e-newsletter Spring Issue 8

This has led to voice-enabled virtual assistants in ltrating thousands of households as well as those integrated in our smart phones.
The reason why this is important for your digital marketing is that most people don’t speak the same way they type, especially when it comes to searching online. When you’re searching for something through typing, you tend to use shorthand e.g. typing “hospital negligence claim” – if you’ve suffered due to a surgical error in hospital. When you speak, it’s more likely that you’ll use the complete question, e.g. “How do I claim compensation for an operation that went wrong in hospital?”
Based on market intelligence including responses to our survey, Voice Search is unlikely to be an area of immediate concern; in fact a quarter of respondents said it is unlikely to impact on their business in 2018. However, should the trend continue then the 31% already planning changes to their SEO activities will be better placed to take advantage in 2019/2020.
Digital marketing to engage
and retain customers
Firms that invest in attracting prospective customers to their websites or social media channels do so with end goals in mind. It’s all well and good bringing people to your ‘virtual shop’, you also require the right user experience (UX): a place where visitors want to interact/transact with you, where they want to come back to seek insights, where they not only will like what you offer but will love it enough to share with others.
Engagement tactics used by rms that we work for, for both attracting and retaining customers, include:
Content Marketing (incl. Video & Blogging)
Web Design & User Experience (UX)
Email Marketing
Social Media Engagement
Online PR
While Paid Digital absorbs the biggest proportion of
law rms’ budgets who use it, 97% of rms in our survey invested in both Content Marketing and Social Media Engagement in 2017, with this investment predominantly in areas of personal injury and clinical negligence, closely followed by family law and private client related services.
Video is one type of content that rms are planning to increase digital marketing spend on, particularly as it
will make up nearly 80% of internet traf c this year and 65% of people who watch a video will then go on to visit your website.
Top 3 engagement tactics that contributed signi cantly to new business acquisition.
1. Content Marketing
2. Email Marketing
3. Online PR
While both Content Marketing and Social Media Engagement outperformed all other areas of online engagement in our survey, they were poles apart in making a ‘signi cant’ impact on acquiring new business, with Content Marketing being 111% more effective. Social Media Engagement was also dwarfed by Email Marketing and Online PR for making a signi cant contribution to acquiring new business.
Another area of engagement we have been tracking is the adoption of Mobile Applications. This is by far the least used marketing tactic, with only 13% of our survey respondents having invested in a mobile app of their own. Although the adoption is currently low, almost half of UK law rms are considering apps in their marketing plans this year.
Our prediction is that rather than rms creating their own apps it is more likely that they will be white labelling others, recommending particular apps to complement their services or simply utilising them for customer service – such as embracing messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger – to communicate with customers in a similar way they have done with email and SMS, particularly as their usage is expected to exceed 3.6 billion people around the world this year.
Summary
Generally, from our own and other research into the UK legal market, it is clear that this year’s trend will be about paid forms of digital marketing and the production of legal marketing content that resonates with your target customers wherever they are, and particularly on mobile devices.
Social engagement is still the most used digital marketing tactic, and despite most rms stating it not having a signi cant contribution to customer acquisition, we foresee that rms
will continue to increase investment in Facebook and Twitter to build long-lasting relationships with consumers (particularly PI and clinical negligence) and Twitter and LinkedIn for commercial clients.
Growth in newer forms of digital marketing over the long term will involve arti cial intelligence and machine learning as rms look to improve ef ciencies and personalisation. In the shorter term and for the majority of law rms, personalisation and ef ciencies will most likely come through use of messaging applications and marketing automation tools. This will streamline and enhance the customer journey, from nding you on a search engine right through to engaging with your content and then taking a desired action. In fact 25% rms that currently use automation tools said they signi cantly contributed to new business acquisition.
Rob Macfarlane is Director of Marketing Performance at mmadigital.
To get in touch about customer acquisition, contact either:
Rob Macfarlane or
Dez Derry on 0161 452 0311
mmadigital.co.uk
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