[An in-house perspective from Rich Bracken, a Business Development Manager at Stinson Leonard Street, on the ways data can drive collaboration at the intersection of marketing communications and BD:]
In the ever-changing legal marketplace, time is of the essence more than it ever has been. While trying to fit activities such as personal branding, firm branding, business development, client service, and AFA’s into the small 
allotment of time that exists outside of billing hours, attorneys and their marketing/business development staff must be extremely strategic.
Content creation remains the top and most consistent marketing activity for an attorney to engage in to build their brand awareness and draw more attention to themselves and their firm. With the growing use of data analytics, including around content, marketing communications can now assist business development efforts in a much more laser focused way.
Here are five immediate data strategies that can be leveraged to ensure that the time your attorneys spend creating content is as efficient as possible:
1. Use Article Analysis to Know What Interests Your Targets
Until there is a true, tangible way of reading the minds of clients, data analytics will be the truest vehicle to figuring out what your clients and prospects are interested in. Take, for example, the roster of clients and prospects you may be targeting.
Even if it’s 5-7 companies, would you be willing to bet your income this year that you can guess the main topic that is of interest to them right this second? If you said yes, you’ve already figured out how to read minds.
...data analytics will be the truest vehicle to figuring out what your clients and prospects are interested in.
Data analytics can decipher what articles are trending the most, what content is most relevant and important from the reader's standpoint. You may think that clients are focused on cybersecurity because, isn’t everyone these days? However, through the data that can be analyzed, you may find that they have been reading an inordinate amount of employment articles. Even if this is not your area of expertise, think about how much your client would appreciate an introduction to your top employment attorney.
No more guessing, no more throwing darts at a topic idea board, with reader analytics have the ability to figure out what is front of mind of your target contacts with accuracy.
2. Double Down on Critical Keywords
In the legal world, precise word selection has always played a critical role in success. The emergence of keyword importance for legal marketing and business development has exploded over the last few years with search engine optimization (SEO), keyword searches and yes, data analytics. Don’t think it’s massively critical? When was the last time you used “Google” as a verb?
With the granular specification the exists within one practice, let alone the entire legal world, how are you keeping track of what words matter in your content and marketing? The landscape is always changing and a phrase or word that is important today might be a 4th priority in as soon 3 months.
Is that word most important to you or to your clients?
If you think about your practice alone, you can likely write down 10-15 keywords that matter within the next couple of minutes. If you were to look at that list, could you pick which is most important right now? Is that word most important to you or to your clients?
By analyzing keyword searches, you are able to see what words are leading to content views. You can then analyze your other content, your website and your bio to make sure that the trending words are present. If they are, the likelihood of your content coming up in searches or aggregated emails is much higher. However, if those critical keywords are not present, you might as well stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the general content creators.
3. Optimize Your Biographies
Attorney biographies are consistently the top viewed pages on any law firm websites. Prospects aren’t going to call the main number of a firm with their problem and they’re likely not going to show up to your reception desk and ask for the best person to help them with a pending class action lawsuit.
They are going to search out subject matter experts and get a feel for the experience and fit that the individual attorney will provide.
...look for words that have a higher search frequency that apply to your legal expertise.
As mentioned in the previous section, it is extremely likely that your biography (either firm or LinkedIn) will be the search result that comes up when a prospect searches “financial services class action attorney Minneapolis.” However, if they add something specific like “TCPA” to that search, you may or may not turn up. Even if you do and you end up on page 3 of the searches, do you think a panicked prospect is going to sip their tea and casually browse multiple search pages to get there?
Probably not.
This is often a finesse exercise because you don’t want your biography to look barren, but you also want to stay away from it looking like a dump of every single word that matters to an entire industry.
Again, data analytics to the marketing rescue!
By researching the data on article and keyword searches, you can look for words that have a higher search frequency that apply to your legal expertise. Maybe you’re a financial technology expert and notice that “bitcoin” has a high search volume and you know a lot about this hot topic. Is it in your biography? Have you written any content or presented on bitcoin? If the answer is no, you may be missing out on some great business development opportunities.
4. Focus on Competitive Intelligence
Strategy is the key to success in any industry. While you should mainly be focusing on your efforts, if you are not paying attention to what your competition is doing, you may find yourself playing a catch-up game in efforts to attract and retain clients.
When was the last time you blocked your calendar to analyze the efforts of your competition? If you are like most, you will come across an article they’ve posted or something on LinkedIn because you were looking for something else.
There is a much more effective way to recognize trends and efforts with your competition.
You guessed it! Data analytics!
Not only will this new approach show you what content they’re creating, it will show what is catching the eye of clients and prospects. Read reports, trend reports and individual attorney views will help you spot a focus topic, area of additional effort and what clients are responding to through higher volumes of reads.
5. Boost Your Brand with Shared Content
Imagine being the best at what you do and having all the knowledge in the world about your area of expertise. That’s you? Great.
Now imagine having all of that knowledge and an extremely limited number of people in the world know it. Is that you too?
Let’s get to work then.
Gone is the excuse that “there’s not enough time” with the options of alerts, blogs, videos and podcasts being available as vehicles for content sharing. In as little as 30-45 minutes, you can have content in circulation that will help market for you, build your personal brand and help you with your business development efforts while you’re working for your clients.
Additionally, with this minimal time and effort investment, you can share your knowledge with your own internal firm network. As your fellow attorneys know more about you, the likelihood that they would refer you to a client is much higher.
If no one knows what you do and how good you are, how can they hire you?
Final Thoughts...
No matter how you look at it, content is going to remain relevant and will continue to impress and engage your potential clients. If you’re not speaking up about a topic, your competition absolutely is. But most importantly, do not create content without some sort of feedback or data on it. If you’re not tracking this data on the backend of your efforts, then you are simply sending your time and words into a black hole.
...do not create content without some sort of feedback or data on it.
Harness the data that’s available to you to be able to track the success of your work or manage the tweaks to make your content that much more powerful. Your book of business will thank you for it.
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[Rich Bracken, a Business Development Manager at Stinson Leonard Street, is an expert in providing creative approaches for retaining and developing new clients and advising on leadership and cultural opportunities. A self-proclaimed data nerd when it comes to marketing strategy, he also has a highly successful background in client service differentiation. He is also the co-chair of the Legal Marketing Association of Kansas City, a frequent blogger/speaker on leadership and self-improvement and a regular contributor on Fox 4 News in Kansas City. A self-proclaimed human jukebox, Rich is a music aficionado who can be found carrying on a concert in his car every day.]
