Even the fanciest design will not convert website visitors into potential clients like exemplary and empathetic content.
Your most desirable prospective clients are ultimately not interested in your website’s impressive design, dramatic photos, or cool features. They want something more substantial.
Whether the result of a web search or customer referral, visitors arrive at your website with expectations. Meet those expectations and you significantly increase the likelihood a visitor nominates him- or herself as a prospective client. Fail to meet those expectations and it’s likely a visitor’s search for legal assistance continues without you. Meeting visitors’ expectations lies in providing compelling, authentic and empathetic content. Therefore, hire a writer to execute your own personal obsession with creating great content. And do that before you let a web designer push around the first pixel.
Site Design and Average Content Are No Longer Enough
Site visitors arrive with the minimum requirement that your site reinforces the professionalism and effectiveness they’d expect.
While impressive site design certainly helps reinforce professionalism and effectiveness (and poor design has the opposite effect; see “Responsive Design” below) attractive site design has become so prevalent that users have become used to it. It’s a minimum expectation. Conversion requires something more. That “something more,” as Google increasingly demonstrates, is original and engaging content.
By contrast, average or uninspired content will demonstrate to site visitors that you’re just one of several local experts in an area of practice. The great differentiator has been, and will continue to be, the building of trust through providing unparalleled content in your market.
What Makes Content Exemplary?
Any number of useful resources are available in print or online for what constitutes exemplary content and how to create it. I’ve listed a few of my favorites at the end of this article. In short, when creating content, I’ve kept four things in mind. Truly exemplary content must be:
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Original: It is created specifically and only for one site. When appropriate it is localized to town, city or state. Search engines are becoming increasingly more adept at identifying (and rewarding) original content; therefore, it will greatly assist search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
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Empathetic: You wouldn’t bore someone in person. Don’t be a digital bore. Content must be prospective-client-focused rather than firm-focused. Its primary purpose is to answer the question “what’s in it for me, the prospective client” rather than bragging “look at the impressive things I’ve done.” Videos are especially effective modes of em-pathetic content.
Useful: More than simply informative, excellent content is useful. It moves the prospective client along the “buyer’s journey” or inspires deeper investigation. Useful content contains links to additional reading and, in turn, is linked to and from internal or external web pages. Start by creating blog posts that provide a survey of useful information or answer frequently asked questions on a particular subject. Include numerous links to pages on your site — or other respected sites — where those who want may click through to learn more.
Shareable: This is the best kind of content because it is some combination of original, empathetic or useful that it inspires someone to pass it along. Think of using downloadable worksheets, whitepapers, infographics, on-page calculators, etc.
Tips For Creating Exemplary Content
Form Follows Substance: Whether you’re building your firm’s first site or redesigning your current site, there is a powerful temptation to get caught up in design. Resist that temptation. Instead, hire a talented legal writer knowledgeable in SEO tactics. Obsess over the creation of the best content available in your market. Share that obsession with your staff and your freelancers. Make it clear you will not entertain the topic of design until you’re satisfied.
Assemble a Work Group: Assemble a work group of trusted employees and friends of the firm to tackle the issue of creating the content you want. Because you want a diversity of ideas, remove yourself from the work group. Give the group a budget for hiring written or video content. Set the work group in motion with your expectations and then require periodic updates. Remember to be effusive with your praise and generous with incentives. You want them inspired and motivated.
Get to the Point: Visitors are scouring your site primarily for answers — not necessarily a full education on a particular subject. Provide the most important information within the first paragraph. Provide additional — yet still helpful and engaging — information down the page. Hire a writer who demonstrates his/her understanding of this point and the simultaneous imperatives of writing for real people and search engine bots.
Assemble Focus Groups: One of the tasks of your work group is to assemble two or three focus groups for testing your content. None of the work group members should sit on or run the focus groups. Construct no more than five questions aimed at uncovering how the written or video content makes participants feel. Inquire about believability, trust, motivation, and other desired traits of a potential client. Film the sessions for later reference.
When Poor Design Kills Your Great Content
It bears mentioning that all the hours and dollars spent creating fantastic content will be wasted if your site fails these two tests:
Responsive Design: It’s hard to believe with all that’s been said and written, but there are still scores of law firm websites not optimized for mobile browsers. Analytics will tell you what percentage of your visitors are arriving via tablet or phone. My rule of thumb: assume one-third. Are you welcoming all potential clients with a design built to engage, regardless of screen size, or is your lack of responsive design essentially telling a portion of potential clients their preferred method of engagement is not important?
Conversion Tactics that Alienate: The greatest percentage of visitors to your site arrive in order to gather information. If you meet their content needs, they will move themselves through the “buyer’s journey” or the “permission ladder.” No amount of intrusive pop-ups, click-to-talks, or live chat features are going to push them along that journey. However, if you’re intent on using these tactics, make sure they’re employed as a convenience (not an intrusion) and that they work. Test them on desk-top, tablet and mobile screens to make sure they’re not impediments to engaging with your content.
Your Website is Your 24/7 Proxy
Your website is a machine working unflinchingly for you 24/7. While it should be built to allow convenient conversion of visitors to potential clients, it’s great content that should do the heavy lifting. There-fore, take the lead on establishing a culture of ongoing content creation and insist it’s the best available. Firms that adopt such a culture see an ongoing improvement in top line revenue.
RESOURCES:
∙ Th e Ultimate Guide to Content Creation, Hubspot.com: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-creation
Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers, Seth Godin
∙ Empathetic marketing: http://bit.ly/pilmma-empathy
∙ How Does Mobile-First Indexing Work, and How Does It Impact SEO?, Moz.com: https://moz.com/blog/mobile-first-indexing-seo
∙ Test every page of your website for mobile optimization: http://quirktools.com/screenfly/
