Many successful lawyers understand that delegating is the most efficient way to accomplish more tasks, more quickly. However, once you have created the foundation for your digital presence with a strong and optimized website, outsourcing the rest of your marketing isn’t always in the best interest of your firm.
Read on for three instances when you should avoid hiring someone for your firm’s marketing and why some tasks are best tackled on your own.
In House vs. Outsourcing: What’s the significance for digital marketing?
Before digital marketing, attorneys commonly outsourced their marketing due to the need for physical, outside-the-home advertisements such as billboards and print ads. Now, attorneys can reach their ideal client right through the internet. This has shifted many attorneys away from outsourced marketing as it is easier than ever for small firms to employ their own digital marketing practices.
Here are three times you shouldn’t hire someone for your digital marketing if you’re a small law firm looking to target local clientele:
1. Blog writing/thought leadership
One of the most significant benefits of blogging for lawyers is the opportunity to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field. A thought leader offers, based on their knowledge and experience in an industry, valuable insight and influence for others. By getting creative with engaging blog posts, attorneys can become thought leaders for their peers and potential clients.
If you’re interested in pursuing thought leadership for your industry or practice area, write from your unique perspective rather than outsourcing these posts. The main objective is to share your thoughts and opinions with your potential clients and this may be difficult to achieve with a third party handling the writing. In addition, it may be difficult for an outside source to properly communicate your analysis of a topic, creating missed opportunities to emphasize your expertise.
2. Posting on social media
Social media is an excellent tool for expanding your online presence and can be effective when used correctly. For many attorneys, social media can be intimidating and there is often some confusion around how involved you need to be in order to get the most out of it. However, attorneys of any tech-savviness level can employ social media to effectively drive traffic back to their website without the need for outsourcing. Plus, LawLytics members can create, caption, and post new blog posts to all their social media channels right from our platform, saving both time and money.
It’s important to oversee your firm’s social media channels because this is a reflection of your practice and you as an attorney. If you have outsourced your social media and there is any discrepancy in tone of voice or factual information that is shared with your audience, this can reflect poorly on you. You also want to ensure that all social media posts are compliant with ethics guidelines– something that your social media manager may not be familiar with.
3. You don’t have a system for reporting and tracking marketing metrics
If you’re planning on outsourcing any of your firm’s digital marketing, it’s important to have a system for tracking, measuring, and analyzing progress. Set clear expectations on how often you will receive reports from your provider– make sure you know where these reports are pulled from and that you can assess them for accuracy. Have a system in place for interpreting the reports to properly evaluate your return on investment and to guide any marketing decisions based on the results.
If you’re not able to track and understand your marketing performance data, it may not be the time to allocate a large portion of your budget to outsourcing your digital marketing. Instead, stick to internal marketing initiatives that are easy for you to implement and monitor. Not only does understanding your analytics help you self-audit your marketing strategy, it will also help to prepare you for when you’re ready to pass the torch to an employee or outside source.
When you trust major pillars of your digital marketing strategy to an outside source, there is a risk of unfocused objectives, misuse of budget, or a misrepresentation of your firm. While hiring someone for your digital marketing may be the best solution for many practices, solos and small law firms can often benefit from keeping certain digital marketing initiatives internally managed.
LawLytics delivers a done-for-you website in as little as two weeks and continues to work with you through unlimited strategy sessions to ensure you have all the necessary tools to succeed with your online marketing. If you’re looking for an effective and affordable website solution for your small law firm and would like to know more about our platform, schedule an interactive demo with our team.
