We call them the ideal users, buyers, or customers, but in the end, it all boils down to the same concept: a buyer persona.
The idea of buyer personas emerged in the 1990s and ever since the social media boom, most (if not all) law firms that are going digital have their ideal buyer persona already figured out. Knowing who their ideal client helps law firms put “a face” to the ideal customer. You could say that your buyer persona is basically like the compass within your customer journey map that guides you in the right direction towards more qualified leads.
As your law firm evolves, so should the buyer persona. Businesses change. People change. But many businesses fail to realize this and never go back and update the buyer persona. Why? A lot of businesses get distracted with measurements and metrics and fail to look back at their most important asset, their clients.
According to the Search Engine Journal, “Many content marketers had changed their targeting/messaging strategy […] but fewer had revisited their customer/buyer personas.” In other words, a lot of businesses like law firms are missing out on opportunities to grow. You might be, too!
How to create the perfect Persona for for your Law firm Content
Make it Personal
You’ve probably heard the phrase, “it’s not personal, it’s strictly business,” from The Godfather, but we much prefer the tagline, “it’s business, therefore make it personal.”
Business objectives without having the clients’ wants and needs aligned simply won’t do. Nowadays, users have plenty of options to pick from and users want brands they can trust. And how do you build trust? You make it personal. Understand the buyer personas from all of the angles.
Yes, looking into demographics (age, gender, location, etc.) is important…but there are a few other aspects you’ll want to consider, too.
According to Business to Community, you need to know who you are speaking to. To do this, it’s important to go back and create different buyer personas according to their common goals and not common characteristics. (This very important factor is often overlooked).
Why is it important to dig deeper into the buyer persona?
To personalize content. According to Search Engine Journal, “Having a target audience of ‘everyone’ puts you in danger of appealing to no one.” Here’s an example for you to visualize: What perception would you have of a store that sells clothes, groceries, pharmaceuticals, small electronic appliances, and car parts? We asked ourselves the same question and concluded that by targeting so many different audiences with this massive portfolio of offerings, they risk for their potential customers thinking they might have sacrificed quality over quantity. The same applies to the process of content creation!
To survive in today’s competitive legal marketing industry, content has to be personalized to the client. And the more personalized you can get, the more spoken to the right prospect will feel.
Constructing content around a specific target audience can bring your firm a number of benefits such as:
- Developing a deeper understanding of your ideal persona’s wants and needs.
- Connecting with your audience on an emotional level.
- Giving your law firm reference points of its buyer persona.
- Improving your content strategy.
- Increasing campaign efficiency.
- Identifying who you should and shouldn’t target.
And perhaps the most critical benefit of customer personas is more leads.
Creating a buyer persona, or many personas, to better visualize who you want to reach out with your marketing efforts can help your law firm push the personalized aspect of your firm’s marketing. Personalization is important because it shows your firm would go the extra mile to give customers what they need and want. And customers appreciate this. Around 80% of users are more likely to use a service that provides a personalized experience.
Overall, personas are your firm’s North Star towards more calls and cases. If you’re wondering how buyer personas are the secret to your firm’s success, then read on. We’ll explain the buyer persona, how the buyer persona drives engagement, and how it pushes your SEO to exceed your expectations.
Is the Persona the same as the target audience?
Not quite. The buyer persona is a different concept than the target audience. It can be easy to interchange both terms, but your firm must note the differences.
A target audience gives you a general idea of a specific group of people and includes basic demographic information like age, gender, and education. On the other hand, buyer personas go more in-depth and touch on demographics and behavioral aspects. Some of the more in-depth information buyer personas include lifestyles, interests, specific needs, and psychographics. They even have names!
In addition to this, a buyer persona changes throughout the sales funnel. Potential customers looking for information have different wants and needs than a prospect that is ready to call and book your firm’s services. For this reason, law firms can have different personas. Here’s an example: Ready Ronald, who is prepared to take the big step and sign with your firm will not have the same needs as Cautious Carol, who is just starting to research what she might need from an attorney.
Having at least one standardized buyer persona helps shape your firm’s goals and expectations. It can help answer the question, “Does everyone in my firm have the same vision of our ideal customer?”
To help answer this, you can begin crafting your ideal customer with the following buyer persona type of questions:
- Job/Industry questions, i.e., What are the customer’s most significant challenges? How does their typical day look? What are some of their interests?
- Learning questions, i.e., Where does the customer get their information? Who influences their decision-making?
- Personal background questions, i.e., What are their personal and career goals? What are some of the customer’s pain points?
- Shopping preferences questions, i.e., What pushes personas to pick one product or service over another? What’s their preferred form of communication?
While there are plenty more psychographic questions you can ask, these are just a few examples that can help your firm create a marketing strategy that will cater to your audience across the different stages of the customer journey.
Ideal Client Persona: Your key to creating fresh content
Speak Your Client’s Language
According to Hootsuite, keyword search to monitor mentions and competitors is vital real-time information to know what is being said about a business.
According to Neil Patel, gathering all the information from the keyword search gives the business a better reflection of the persona’s search intent and the relationship between certain words.
And why is this important? Because it’s far more efficient to appeal to people that are actually interested in you than trying to please everyone online.
By speaking your customer’s language you can create content that will speak to them directly in channels they are found. This is the moment to make your client’s business your business.
According to Hootsuite, it’s important businesses get out of the feature mindset and start focusing more on the benefits.
Why? Because a feature just says what your business is but the benefits tap into the persona’s psychological wants and needs. For starters, you can think of this: “How would the persona’s life be better if they chose your services over your competitors?”, “Why are the attorneys at your law firm the best bet for a specific client?”
Buyer personas help in the creation of many elements within your firm’s content marketing, and the most crucial one is the customized content itself!
Personalized content helps your firm:
- Identify your prospects’ pain points, i.e., bad customer service or late responses.
- Understand customer habits – i.e., is the average persona impulsive, or do they take their time? How long does the persona usually take to make a decision?
- Understand customer expectations – i.e., what do they expect from your firm in terms of service and results?
To gather this information, your firm can use two different methods: either directly asking clients or using existing customer analytics. The latter works best.
Evaluating your firm through analytics insights gives you more information about your client’s behavior and makes it easier for marketing and sales campaigns. For example, the analysis will help your firm identify and develop a messaging strategy that speaks to your persona.
You can analyze the existing data of your emails, advertisements, PPC, calls-to-action, social media, and other campaigns.
The Power of Emotions
In today’s world, everyone is so focused on metrics, but the reality is that clients are emotional drivers.
Search intent is driven by emotions. According to Kantar’s NeedScope, a new framework tapping into emotional marketing, the “Why?” Is far more important than the “What?”
The truth is that demographics rarely tell (SEO professionals, content creators, writers, etc.) what they need to know about their consumers. It only emphasized the what. According to Google search terms and emotions, there are 6 “Canonical” consumer needs: (Each driven by a combination of “emotional, social, and functional needs”)
It is important businesses within the legal industry tap into the emotional side of the persona’s search intent to understand their goals and objectives more deeply.
Your firm can then implement updated content strategies in:
- Webinars: increases engagement and authority of your firm.
- Interactive content: also increases engagement and builds on trust.
- Emails: emphasizes your firm’s care and consistency.
- Podcasts: increases and retains users in the learning and awareness phases of the sales funnel.
- Videos: increases your firm’s traffic and gives users a push in their decision-making.
- Social media: emphasizes consistency and engagement.
Using the Persona to increase your firm’s rankings
Although many SEO factors make up your firm’s successful marketing, the buyer persona helps tailor the content, so your ideal clients can find you.
The buyer persona gives your firm a push in your SEO strategy by:
- Placing relevant keywords for your client’s research.
- Identifying the pages that get more traffic.
- Helping your SEO optimization, i.e., the SEO schema markup and SEO meta descriptions.
- Optimizing the user experience with design, i.e., preferred colors, calls to action, navigation route, and other design elements.
Besides this, the buyer persona can help your blog posts. By adding a blog section with legal industry-related content, you can get more traffic to your site. It might be challenging to start or remain consistent with this type of content. However, the buyer persona can help you pinpoint topics of interest.
Be there for your clients at the right place and at the right time
With the buyer persona, you can position your firm to be in the right place at the right time for your clients. Creating a persona and keeping it optimized requires constant updates if you want to meet your clients where they are, though.
Strategizing a buyer persona plan, implementing it, and gathering all the results are necessary actions your firm needs to do to guarantee quality content and rankings. But we understand your time is valuable, and these tasks add pressure.
Unlocking Growth
It is important to break out of traditional marketing metrics and tap into the psychological and emotional side of the consumer.
If businesses within the legal industry want to understand where they are heading, it is important to look back, and remember that the client DOES come first. Your client should be considered a personal business, and your client taps into their emotional side with their search intent and loyalty
Business does have to be personalized. It not only gives the entire company-specific directions but it could push your business to long-term success and loyalty with their clients.
Establishing success is also at your reach. If you’d like to know about a more personalized approach to your law firm’s marketing, reach out to us! We’d be happy to help.
