[The third in a series of twelve year-end posts by our friends in the Legal Marketing Association's special interest group on Social and Digital Media. Stop by for additional posts as the LMA publishes them:]
On this third day, we talked to Matt Parfitt, President of Vuture. He talked about how marketers can use AI and Marketing Automation in their overall digital marketing strategy to achieve better results. These two topics have definitely been "hot" in digital marketing - it would be interesting to see how we, legal marketers, will utilize these in the next few years.
What has shifted in the last 12 months in social & digital media?
Personalization is good, hyper-personalization is bad. We all agree that personalized content resonates better with the consumer and best achieves the end goal of marketers. Recently, though, we may have taken it too far. By hyper-personalizing everything, each consumer will only ever see 1) content that they know they wanted to see, and 2) content that marketers want them to see. As a result, each consumer’s world becomes smaller. A visible example of this is the recent presidential election; look at the Facebook feed of a Trump supporter and that of a Hillary supporter. The information they receive is so personalized that they will never see information presented in a way that would challenge their beliefs or add another perspective.
What has caught your eye recently as a smart use of social & digital media in legal?
The concept of “live” is stimulating social and digital media both in and out of the legal sector. Not everyone can attend a conference or event in person, but everyone can attend that same event, in real time, via tools such as Facebook Live. This feature helps your contacts feel included and interactive with your firm by having a virtual experience alongside you. Live Q&A sessions are a popular genre of live video as they allow viewers to ask specific questions and be answered personally and immediately. “Live” is a focus for many firms and is present in quite a few other platforms including Periscope, Snapchat, Instagram, and the very nature of Twitter itself.
...tracking the marketing team’s impact can feel ambiguous and indeterminate. Technology is key.
What’s the biggest challenge for law firms trying to be active in the social & digital media space, and how can they overcome it?
Proving the value of marketing. It is difficult to measure the impact of a social & digital media strategy within a law firm. So much of legal marketing is centered around the internal client: the lawyer. Because the client nurturing process is often an extensive and personal relationship exercise, tracking the marketing team’s impact can feel ambiguous and indeterminate. Technology is the key. Implementing an automation process for capturing essential information about an opportunity lifecycle provides the data you need for a comprehensive, quantifying analysis around your marketing efforts rather than relying on anecdotal evidence. Once you have this information, the next challenge is to share your findings in a productive way.
In legal I have seen automation come in three flavors: automating repetitive tasks, nurturing client relationships, and generating BD opportunities...
Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is defined as: “a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior.” In marketing, AI is the next generation of automation, which exists to “automate repetitive tasks such as emails, social media, and other website actions.” When AI and Marketing Automation are combined, we get something exponentially more powerful - the ability to automate the decision-making processes of how to best execute an initiative and achieve the desired outcome. Think of it like a mission: THE GOAL is to get the right people to attend an event. THE RESOURCES to help are 1) event details, 2) content, and 3) CRM data. THE PLAN is made and adjusted by AI and THE EXECUTION takes place with Marketing Automation. One step at a time, though; marketing automation must come first. In legal I have seen automation come in three flavors: automating repetitive tasks, nurturing client relationships, and generating BD opportunities. Read more about it in this article.
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[Matt Parfitt is the President of Vuture, a professional service marketing communications technology. With 18 years of marketing communications experience, 9 of which are exclusively within the Professional Services industry, Matt helps firms design and implement ongoing marcomms programs. Matt is a regular speaker to legal marketing teams and is an active member and speaker at LMA events. He is currently serving as Chair for the LMA New York region.]
