Have you been throwing tons of money at the latest marketing campaign for your law firm, only to find disappointing results? Do you feel like you’re wasting your money?
You’re probably right.
It’s not that marketing doesn’t work. It does work, when it’s done correctly. Without even looking at your campaign, I can make an educated guess: Your marketing content is just plain boring.
The reason I make this claim so boldly is because poorly written content is the downfall of most marketing campaigns. One study suggests American businesses lose about $400 billion each year from shoddy writing alone. When you have one shot to arrest the attention of a possible client and you waste the moment by shoving boring content in front of them—you might as well throw the money in a dumpster and light a match.
Fortunately, fixing boring marketing content isn’t difficult. Sometimes it’s just a matter of shifting the most captivating statements to the top of the page. At all times, you have two simple objectives:
- Capture your prospects’ attention immediately; and
- Hold their attention long enough to deliver your message.
Interrupt, Engage, Educate, Offer
To generate the most leads, every well-crafted piece of marketing material will follow these four steps, in this order:
- Interrupt—Say something interesting/provocative to interrupt the reader/listener’s train of thought. (Your headline should serve this purpose.)
- Engage—Now that you have their attention, say the next important thing to entice them to keep reading. (Usually accomplished by a sub-headline or the first few words of your text.)
- Educate—Explain how you’ll solve their problem—in this case, the benefits the client will receive by hiring your law firm. (The body of your text.)
- Offer—A call to action at the end.
When attorneys write their own marketing copy, quite often they skip to the third step—they try to educate prospects without first interrupting and engaging them. That’s why the content comes off as boring. They haven’t given the reader any reason to keep reading. If you’re guilty of this mistake, it’s no wonder you’re not seeing results.
So What Do You Do Instead?
The following quick tips should start you on the path toward making your law firm marketing content more interesting:
- Use the headline to touch the client’s hot button issue—their “pain point.” (Interrupt)
- Use the subheadline to promise a solution to the pain point. (Engage)
- Spend ample time to get the headline/subheadline right. (These are by far the most important parts of your marketing copy, so they deserve the most time.)
- Do “A” and “B” testing. (Try different versions of your marketing copy on different segments to see which gets better results. Keep refining in this manner.)
My firm specializes in helping lawyers like you market their law firms more effectively. For more advice on beefing up your marketing content, call us at 888-207-2869.
