Inbound and Outbound Marketing [All You Need To Know]

by Marketing
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Introduction

There are two basic types of marketing – inbound and outbound marketing. The focus of each is different and they involve different strategies and techniques. Outbound marketing includes proactively reaching out to consumers to get them interested in your service. On the other hand, inbound marketing focuses on creating and distributing content that draws people into your website. Ultimately, leveraging these marketing strategies can help small business grow their customer base.

What is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing is also referred to as interruption or push marketing. This type of marketing sends a message to a large number of people in the hopes of making a sale. Its strategy is rooted in the thought that the larger the group, the larger the return. Thus, it involves aggressive techniques that interrupt people in their daily lives. That way it impacts the audience whether they want it or not.

Nowadays, outbound marketing is considered to be a traditional way of reaching potential customers. Moreover, it requires a lot of marketing messages and various channels. However, oversaturation in today’s digital world caused people to start ignoring this type of advertising. Hence, outbound marketing is less popular in comparison to another type of marketing.

The Benefits

  • It promotes brand awareness, helping you reach people who haven’t heard of your services before.
  • This type of marketing can yield immediate results. People interested in your services are likely to take instant action and make a purchase.
  • Consumers are accustomed to outbound marketing. They may even trust those ads more than the ones presented to them on newer technology.

The Challenges

  • It’s difficult to make outbound marketing appealing to everyone because it is generalized.
  • It’s easy for consumers to tune out outbound marketing. Many people mute the TV during commercials or immediately throw out or recycle their junk mail.
  • It can be challenging to measure the effectiveness of some outbound marketing strategies like billboards.
  • Outbound marketing can be costly- paying for banner ads, purchasing billboard spaces etc.

Types of Outbound Marketing

  • TV and radio ads
  • Direct emails
  • Banner and display ads
  • Billboards
  • Newspaper and magazine ads
  • Cold-calling
  • Pop-up ads
  • Contextual ads
  • Flyers and Catalogues
  • Trade Shows
  • Sponsorship

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a collection of activities, in which purchasers conduct their research online towards brands. It is focused on attracting customers to your services. Moreover, it aims to connect your brand with buyers. In comparison to outbound marketing, it allows you to attract your best prospects. Above all, those who are actively looking online for solutions you provide.

Its goal is to get those prospects to find the information directly related to their needs. As such, your content should explain how your services will resolve their issues or satisfy their needs. Ultimately, each of your content pieces should serve as a way to differentiate your product from the competition. 

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The Benefits

  • It has a non-invasive approach. In other words- prospects can read your blog posts or attend a webinar on their own time. Customers appreciate it because they get the information they want. They can get it when they want it and in the format that is most useful for them.
  • Its content is educational — It benefits everyone. In addition, it is specifically designed for each stage in the sales funnel.
  • Inbound marketing is quantifiable. Meaning you can strategically monitor metrics over time.
  • Your website and content are continuously being updated. Hence, Inbound marketing continues drawing in qualified leads over time.
  • It’s multi-channel allowing a more integrated approach. Thus, you can reach people through channels they prefer and at their convenience.

The Challenges

  • It requires continuous maintenance. That way it ensures that content always speaks to consumers’ evolving wants and needs.
  • It requires constant effort in developing and testing out different content. Because only that way it will engage customers to convert.
  • Finally, it demands a holistic strategy. In other words- you’ll need to purchase tools to help you implement integrated, cross-channel campaigns.

Types of Inbound Marketing

The Difference Between Inbound and Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing typically has a more aggressive, wide-sweeping approach. Moreover, it nurtures the expectation that at least some people will convert. It also involves interacting with the customer whether or not they want your service. Inbound marketing means that the customer comes to you. Hence, its marketing techniques are more subtle. It usually focuses on convincing a particular group of individuals to purchase over time. The idea behind inbound marketing is for relevant and valuable customer content to be developed and distributed.

Inbound marketing provides informative content tailored to specific audiences, written to help solve consumers’ problems. Outbound marketing provides passive content designed to capture any consumer’s attention and sell products. Outbound marketing is a traditional method of marketing seeking to push messages out to potential customers. It includes activities such as trade shows, seminar series, and cold calling. Moreover, it is costly and the ROI is much lower than inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing uses a strategy to spread brand awareness so people learn about you. As a result, they might visit your website for information. In addition, they might show interest in your service and potentially make a purchase. In general, outbound strategies take lots of time and effort and may yield no leads. Inbound strategies allow you to engage with an audience that you can easily qualify as a prospect of lead.

Conclusion

No matter your marketing strategy, you need a way to keep up with the constantly changing marketing landscape. However, inbound marketing should be the essential foundation of your marketing plans. For instance, it aligns with the preferences of modern purchasers, compounds profits and lowers the cost per purchase. In addition, it helps you be visible to people already interested in your industry. On the other side, outbound marketing can still be effective and acceptable as part of a comprehensive marketing mix. Ultimately, both marketing types can serve a purpose in your marketing strategy.

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Find out how can lawyers generate more leads and improve their business.

How Can Lawyers Generate More Leads

by Marketing
Find out how can lawyers generate more leads and improve their business.

Introduction

Lead generation in marketing is the act of gaining actionable customer interest for your business’s output. This typically involves a customer initiating a conversation or providing you with their contact information. As a result, you can use it for follow-up regarding your business’s services.

For example, for a law firm to generate business leads, they might receive:

  • Form submission from a potential client that is inquiring about their services.
  • A phone call or an email from a potential client to schedule a consultation.
  • A direct message on social media asking about their rates.

Thus, finding new business leads involves structuring a specific marketing experience. The one that makes it easy for customers to engage with your company. Your lead generation strategies should always result in the exchange of a prospect’s contact information. The following techniques will help you generate leads for your business:

Identify Your Target Audience

To successfully reach and sell to your ideal customer, you need to know exactly who that is. Hence, it’s important to research your audience so you can craft your ideal buyer persona. For instance, collect the following information:

  • What they like to do
  • How much money do they make
  • What is their lifestyle  like
  • What is their personality 

Consequently, use them to shape your future marketing approaches.

Practice Direct Engagement

One of the effective approaches to generating new business is directly engaging with a potential customer. When you establish that potential prospects might be a good fit for your business, reach out to them. You can do it through social media, email, phone or in-face conversations. Furthermore, set up live chat or help center to make sure every query is handled properly. Studies have shown that 42% of customers prefer live chat for customer support questions. Ultimately, more engaged customers result in better word-of-mouth and more leads.

Generate Leads on LinkedIn

Making connections with relevant industry leaders is a great way to generate business opportunities. Moreover, connecting with members of your target audience can result in them reaching out to you in a need of a service. Furthermore, engage with their posts and message them directly to offer your service. This can be extremely effective when generating leads on LinkedIn.

Try Digital Advertising

Digital advertising can be one of the most effective ways to generate leads for your business. Use targeted pay-per-click advertising on Google or Bing to market to search engine users. This will help you serve highly relevant ads. Moreover, you can use a geo-filter to target consumers that are searching in your area. When a user clicks on your PPC ads, you can use display retargeting. It will show visual advertisements for your products on other popular sites across the web.

Foster Customer Recommendations and Referrals

If your service has delighted a current customer, ask them to share their experience. For example, suggest them to share it with those who also might benefit from your service. The quality of your business’s offerings may be good enough that customers do this for free. Or you could set up an incentive system. For example, give your customers a certain percentage of their next monthly retainer fee for a referral.

Customer referrals are a great way to get more leads for your business. The best part is that your current customers are doing most of the work. Research shows that more qualified leads come from recommendations than any other source. Here are some software solutions to get started with partner, employee, or customer referrals:

  • Extole
  • Incentivit
  • Vocal References
  • Everfave
  • Influitive
  • InviteBox
  • Invite Referrals

Write Guest Blogs

Spread your message and reach new audiences by guest posting relevant content on other blogs. It is a great way to generate referral business through content marketing and improve your SEO. You can find leads for your business by guest blogging for sites. These sites should be relevant to your industry but shouldn’t directly compete with you. For example, if you’re a law firm, you can guest blog for real estate companies in your area. You know that the real estate audience is interested in purchasing a house. Hence, your services act as relevant information.

You should rank in search engines in order to generate more leads.

Rank in Search Engines to Generate Leads

When your target audience searches for your services online, make sure they can easily find you. Thus, generate more leads for your business by trying out SEO and SEM for your website. Start by doing keyword research to determine what phrases your target audience searches before purchasing your service. Use tools like SEMrush or the Google Ads Keyword Planner to find search data.

Once you’ve identified the right keywords, optimize your page content. If you’re selling a highly competitive service, ranking organically might be difficult. Consulting an SEO company can be a great way to generate consistent leads if you’re willing to invest.

Offer a Free Tool or Lead Generation Magnet

Offering a free tool is a great way to generate sales leads and build trust with your audience. However, check out what opportunity exists within your industry for a start. Popular examples include building calculators, compiling case studies, offering free guides etc. You can even offer free consultations to help generate leads for your business.

Interview influencers

Learn from experts by Interviewing leaders in your industry. It is a great way to network and create powerful content. For example, you can record your interview and turn it into a Q&A blog post. In addition, it will help you attract interested users to your website or social media profiles. Moreover, consider assembling these interviews and requesting contact information to improve your business lead generation. Your potential customers will see this as proof of your credibility. Ultimately, this will increase your chance of attracting new leads.

Start Networking

Networking rarely leads to direct revenue. However, it is great for nurturing professional opportunities. Events within your industry are a great way to gain more contacts. For instance, you can meet a complementary business that you can partner with. Consequently, you can share leads, expanding your reach. Networking can even open up guest blogging opportunities for your company. For example, network with existing customers to get introduced to new customers. In addition, take lead contact information such as emails or phone numbers.

Create an Email Offer

If you’ve built your list of email subscribers, consider putting together a special offer. Accordingly, you might have business potential in your email lists. A special discount or limited-time offer can effectively turn a passive bystander into your next paying customer. Ultimately, strive to actively partner with complementary businesses in your industry. Thus, think of structuring a deal that lets you promote yourself to their audience.

Optimize Your Website Pages for Conversions

Your website needs to be optimized to persuade individuals to take action. When it comes to lead generation, you should strive to gain a prospect’s contact information. In addition, gather their other qualifying attributes that will aid your selling process. A click from a specific keyword search or Google advertisement should go to a unique landing page. Every landing page should offer the exact solution the person is looking for. Conversion optimization such as a call to action (CTA) will help increase sales leads. Ask the visitor for a name, email address, and phone number in exchange for a gift. For example, an eBook or a Guide.

Run a Giveaway or Contest

A giveaway or contest can generate a ton of leads in a short period. For example, offer a prize in exchange for participants to share your content and like your profile. Choose engaging reward types as well as the actions needed to collect points.

Combine inbound and outbound marketing to generate more leads.

Deploy Outbound & Inbound Marketing

Outbound marketing involves proactively reaching out to consumers to get them interested in a product. By contrast, inbound marketing centers on creating and distributing content that draws people into your website. Content comes in interactive forms, such as social media posts, blogs, reports, webinars, etc. Hence, deploy both approaches in a balanced manner as this will help generate leads for your business. Personalize your email communication and get active in online communities. Share informative content regularly and try to solve common customer problems. This will help you establish healthy relationships with your customers and build more leads.

Invest in New Technology

New technology sets the trend in the market, hence, think about investing in new technology. For example, most people access their mail or browse websites through smartphones or tablets. Thus, you should invest in making your marketing efforts compatible with these devices. Besides, reaching the maximum amount of customers. In addition, keep an eye on emerging technology through which you can get more leads for your business.

Optimize Your Content

Content can be a great source of web traffic which will ultimately result in more leads. However, it needs to be informative and appeal to your target audience. Don’t forget to include images, video and infographics to increase share counts and engagement.

Tap Into Databases

Data.Com is a huge database where you can find potential leads for your business. Ultimately, it can contribute to a 25% increase in sales. It maintains a list of companies with accurate contact information. Accordingly, you can use it to identify relevant leads.

Answer Forum Questions

Answering forum questions is a great way to prove your expertise, generate leads and improve SEO. For example, answer forum questions on sites like Reddit or Quora. Find a category that is relevant to your business, and start answering user questions. In addition, make sure to include a call to action (e.g. website link or contact for consultation). As a result, this will help solve the user’s problem.

If your law firm offers family law services, subscribe to a legal subreddit. There you can find users who ask questions specifically about what your business offers. Furthermore, search for any questions that you can offer some insight into. By offering free advice, users might be compelled to reciprocate by paying you for legal services in the future.

Share Videos on YouTube

YouTube is a massively popular search engine. It is also the best channel for sending referral web traffic in the long term. For a start, this platform enables you to create your channel. There, you can share videos regarding particular events, tutorials and more. Hence, use the opportunity to showcase your expertise and reach a new audience. You can do it by providing relevant content on YouTube. Consequently, this will help you stand out from your competitors. Ultimately, you will attract more leads to your business.

Add a Quiz to Your Blog

Posting a quiz to your blog can make your content engaging. This can ultimately draw more attention from an online audience. In fact, it can easily entice the readers to share their feedback about your blog. This will also help you establish a stronger relationship with your audience. In addition, it will get you more leads in the long term. The tools above can help you create a quiz and publish it on your blog:

Use an Email Newsletter to Build Relationships

One of the best ways to generate more leads is through an email newsletter and blogs. They let you stay in touch with existing customers and cultivate relationships. Blogs and newsletters should be filled with fresh and rich content that readers want to read. If you have a high-quality blog, generate leads and backlinks by posting on other websites.

Leverage Social Media to Connect and Engage

Social media provides many opportunities to create conversations with prospective customers and generate new leads. For example, you can create a Facebook page, Twitter profile, LinkedIn company page or Pinterest account. Use it to attract and engage your audience, then funnel them through your process to become leads.

Afterward, use your social media profiles to talk to them. That way you can find out more about what they need and want. Specifically, your goal should be to provide as many positive touchpoints for your customer as possible. Consequently, your customer will be more likely to trust your brand and eventually purchase from you.

Make warm calls to generate more leads.

Make Warm Calls

Warm calling is getting in touch with calling a prospect with whom your company has had prior contact. Warm calling can be extremely effective if done right. For a start, you should target prospects similar to your company’s most common customers. Find them by researching your target company and its decision-makers.

By knowing their needs and values you can better serve them or customize your marketing strategies. Next, grab your target’s attention quickly while demonstrating your value proposition. Try to state all your key points in a minimum of time and words. Utilize various methods to ensure several points of contact. For example, include an offer to provide more information, tips and further assistance.

List Your Company on Directories

Make sure you are listed in online software directories, especially if you are B2B company type. This will help drive leads to your website who are looking for similar services. Some online directories include:

  • G2Crowd
  • Capterra
  • GetApp
  • CabinetM
  • Software Advice
  • SaaS Genius

Get More Online Reviews

87% of B2B decision-makers look online for honest reviews before purchasing. If you have customers leaving good reviews, you should be able to generate more leads. Customers with high NPS scores are most likely to give good reviews.

Use SEO to Increase Website Traffic

Use search engine optimization (SEO) to get your website to the top of Google search result pages. Make sure to target keywords people enter to describe your service. Setting up lead capturing on a page can increase sales leads from SEO. To increase SEO rank, work to build good backlinks by guest blogging or other means. You should also understand which keywords are important and target them with content. The following is a shortlist of good tools for optimizing your website SEO:

  • Serpstat
  • Screaming Frog
  • Hit Tail
  • Ahrefs
  • SEO book
  • Google search console
  • Google Analytics
  • Moz
  • Scrape Box

Use Webinar to Generate More Leads

Webinars are online conferences where a presenter discusses a relevant topic to the audience. They are usually done through slides or interview-style presentations. Common webinar tools include:

However, webinars require a certain amount of time, knowledge and preparation. You can read here how to successfully prepare for a webinar.

Use Press Releases to Generate More Leads

Issuing a press release will help drive traffic to your website and generate more leads. Some online press release sites include:

Conclusion

Lead generation should be thought of as a long-term and continuous process. For  a start, get an efficient system in place using the sales lead tips above. Consequently, you can streamline the lead generation process and increase your opportunities for business growth. Use these creative ways to generate leads, increase your revenue and grow your business. Additionally, read our latest blog 12 Reasons Why You Don’t Get Clients.

We can help your business grow and progress.

If you require guidance with setting the winner marketing strategy, contact us today.

Fill in the application form below and schedule a free consultation with us!

Check out these useful tips on how to successfully prepare for a webinar.

How To Successfully Plan a Webinar

by MarketingPersonal/ Professional Development
Check out these useful tips on how to successfully prepare for a webinar.

Introduction

Webinars are one of the most popular ways to deliver content online and connect with a global audience. When done right, webinars can build your brand, establish your authority in your industry and generate new leads. For a start, they allow you to educate audiences about topics related to your brand. In addition, webinars can also offer major lead generation benefits. Finally, they can be repurposed into blogs, videos, and other types of content.

You Can Use Webinars To:

  • Reach people from anywhere in the world
  • Interact with your audience
  • Establish trust and position yourself as an industry leader
  • Gain leads and conversions
  • Gain new inspiration

Use the tips below to successfully plan a webinar.

How To Successfully Plan A Webinar

Know Your Attendees

Focus on our audience in order to successfully plan a webinar. Depending on the type of event, put yourself in their shoes and think about what you’d like to see. Think about what they need to make the most of the webinar. Consider the challenges are they facing, their goals etc. Addressing them will help you plan a webinar that’s laser-focused on improving your attendees’ lives. When you have that figured out, put the pieces together and start planning your event.

Be An Expert In Your Subject

To deliver a good session, master the topic you’re going to cover. Read and re-read the materials and double-check all the facts. Plan a webinar by collecting all the necessary sources to share them with your audience. Also, try not to provide any vague responses to questions you don’t know the answers to. Instead, double-check and follow up with the attendee after the webinar.

Choose a Topic of Interest

One of your goals is to demonstrate your authority as an information source. Hence, define a specific topic your audience will find interesting and which you can go into in great detail. This will help you plan a webinar more efficiently and make it easier to stay focused on a topic. Explore FAQ or poll your audience to find the topics they find interesting.

Check Google Analytics or research competition to find the topic that received the most attention. This will help you understand which topics your audience is interested in. Check if there is a particular question your audience frequently asks that you could address in a webinar. If you find suitable answers to these questions, you will find your topic for the upcoming webinar.

Set The Date and Time

Recent statistics suggest that the best days to host your webinars are Wednesdays and Thursdays. However, the best time to conduct your webinar depends on your target demographic. Use Google Analytics to locate world regions where most of your online traffic comes from. You can also ask your audience for the most convenient time for them to attend the webinar. Take the following into consideration:

  • Time zones. Keep in mind that not everyone will be in your time zone. If you’re based on the West Coast, don’t start a webinar at 6 p.m. PT. This is probably too late for attendees living on the East Coast.
  • Make it clear if your webinar will be recorded, In addition, state that by signing up someone will get that recording. That way you’ll increase conversions even when someone can’t attend live.
  • Ensure all necessary parties are available and your date doesn’t clash with any other major calendar event.
  • The duration. It’s important to accentuate whether it will last for 45 or 120 minutes. That way you will ensure your attendees will organize their time to stick to the end.

Prepare a Consistent Story

Plan a webinar by establishing a cohesive storyline to ensure consistency. Consequently, the information you’re planning to present will be easier for your audience to comprehend. Start with the basics and then continue to build on that knowledge already introduced to the audience. In addition, launch a quick poll to get an idea of how many attendees already know the basics.

Accordingly, be ready to make a quick overview if needed. Don’t forget to capture your audience’s attention immediately. Keep them around by getting straight to the point as soon as you can. Outline their pain points and make it clear you’ll solve them by the end of the webinar. Furthermore, list everything your audience is going to learn.

Write an Attention-Grabbing Title

Plan a webinar by coming up with the attention-grabbing title. Your webinar’s title is your first interaction with your audience. When they see it, they’ll decide whether to sign up. This means the first step toward crafting a magnetizing title is to know your audience and their pain points. Simply identify your audience’s problem and craft a title that promises to solve it. However, never be misleading and don’t make promises your webinar content can’t keep.

Write an attention-grabbing title in order to successfully prepare for a webinar.

Think About Visual Branding

To keep an audience engaged, make your slide deck visually appealing and related to the topic you are discussing. For instance, make sure the copy adds to the presentation and reinforces what you are talking about. Stick to one color palette throughout the webinar deck. Be consistent and try to align everything with your brand’s visual tone.

Insert your logo where it makes sense, such as the opening animation or the main slides. Moreover, use fonts, colors, and other visual elements that match your brand’s overall style. These details are essential to creating a cohesive experience for your webinar attendees. In addition, they’ll make your brand more recognizable. Use your deck to strengthen and emphasize the points you intend to make in your script.

Back up your points with as much data and evidence as possible, and make it entertaining. When developing your slides, use keywords instead of paragraphs. In addition, use data visualizations rather than creating lists to iterate statistics. There are plenty of free and affordable online tools available such as Unsplash, Pexels, Canva, Visme and more.

Use Different Media Formats

As seen above, visuals play a significant role in your webinars. They keep people engaged and can be extremely informative. However, they must act as a method to enhance the topic and support the speaker. To keep audiences engaged during the event, consider using a variety of media types for your webinar.

For example, add a video or animation to further illustrate your points. Walk the attendees through the process in real-time to demonstrate how a product works. Mix your live video broadcast with pre-recorded videos, share your screen, use images and switch between different cameras. If you want to use live streaming software for creating impactful webinars, try ManyCam for free.

Have a Moderator or a Host

Having a moderator or host to present with the speaker can help the dynamic of the webinar. The moderator can manage the time, flow and audience questions, while you focus on the content. That person can help you with questions from the audience during the Q&A session. Besides moderating interactions with attendees, your support should be able to troubleshoot issues.

Choose the Right Speakers

Plan a webinar by choosing the right speakers. Consider including industry experts or thought leaders in your webinar. Leveraging experts will make your event more interesting for your audience. Ultimately, this could also help you gain more reach. However, make sure the speaker has the proper knowledge and experience to talk about the webinar topic.

You can either use speakers from within your company or industry experts or influencers. Either way, they should be credible and demonstrate authority. Hence, when selecting presenters for your webinar, ensure that they have mastered the topic. Finally, make sure they are comfortable talking on-camera.

Decide on Your Webinar Format

Before you start creating your slide deck, decide on the right format for your chosen topic. The complexity of your subject, and the availability of suitably qualified speakers, should inform your choice of format. Consider the following: 

  • Is there going to be more than one speaker?
  • Will there be a discussion panel?
  • Will there be interviews? 
  • Are audience members going to be participating?
  • Will you be adding survey questions to the presentation? 

Accordingly, choose a format that will best relay your message while engaging your audience. Once you know what topic you want to cover, break it down into more specific topics. Next, plan the webinar formats you’re going to use. Test different formats until you find the one that works best with your audience. Or you could have a mix of a single expert presenter and Q&A.

In order to successfully prepare for a webinar, decide on a format.

Webinar Formats

Single Speaker: It involves a single speaker communicating with the attendees and sharing their insights. The speaker will also demonstrate the contents of the webinar and answer all queries raised by the attendees. Accordingly, this type of webinar is recommended if you have a small audience.

Interview Format: A speaker is acting as an interviewer. He is usually asking predetermined questions to the Subject Matter Expert(s). This type of webinar can be very engaging to the audience, encouraging them to ask questions. Furthermore, having a popular influencer as a guest speaker is a great way to boost attendance and build your authority.

Moderated Panel Discussion: A panel webinar has several speakers who talk over a predetermined topic. It is recommended that a moderator facilitates this type of webinar. Just like a live panel, you could host a group of experts discussing a specific topic.

Q&A: A Q&A webinar is a great opportunity to maximize the engagement of attendees. This type of webinar allows the speaker to answer questions coming from the audience. Collecting the questions beforehand will ensure that you stay on schedule and review the questions coming from the audience. 

Choose the Right Webinar Platform

Plan a webinar by choosing the right webinar platform. When choosing the platform for your webinar, check the following:

  • Does it fit your budget?
  • Does it include the features that you need, such as the ability to offer surveys?
  • How many attendees does it allow?
  • Can you record?

Determine the pros and cons of the top webinar tools on the market. Check the format as well as the intended number of speakers and participants. Take into account the cost and features you’ll want or require. Make sure to use software that can record your broadcast. That way you can send it to registrants after the webinar. Conduct thorough research to pick the platform that will serve your needs best. 

Here are some of the webinar platforms:

Set Up the Right Equipment and Surroundings

Choosing the right equipment and surroundings will improve the webinar quality. Moreover, it will ensure a great experience for your audience. Hence, plan a webinar by setting the right surroundings. Consider a conference room or a non-distracting workspace free from background noise and interruptions. If you’re hosting your webinar from a home office, ensure that your surrounding won’t interfere.

Have a keep a backup laptop that’s fully charged, with all data copied and stored in it. This will ensure that everything goes smoothly in case of technical difficulties with your primary computer system. Moreover, avoid using the wireless internet when at all possible and test everything beforehand. Keep your space clean and turn off devices that could distract you or your audience during the webinar.

Promote Your Webinar

Plan a webinar by preparing your marketing strategy. To make sure your webinar gets maximum participation, promote it beforehand. Consider press releases, relevant hashtags, vlogs, blog posts and informative banners. Also, include newsletter emails, and social media posts to publicize the webinar.

Start by creating a landing page with detailed information. Don’t forget to add a call-to-action for people to sign up to attend the event. List the necessary details- webinar topic, FAQs, speaker names, date and time etc. Create a banner or advertisement on your website’s homepage to make visitors aware of the upcoming event. In addition, write a blog post to promote the webinar in advance.

Send multiple reminders emails showcasing the countdown to your event. On the day of the event, make sure to send emails with the direct link to your webinar. Consequently, a well-prepared promotion strategy can lead to more registrants for your next webinar. 

Leverage The Power Of Hashtags

Promoting your webinar on social media is one of the best ways to boost attendance. Use this opportunity to leverage the power of hashtags. Create a dedicated and original hashtag to publicize the event. Furthermore, use it to interact with the attendees. For instance, create a community of people with something in common before the webinar.

During the webinar, encourage attendees to use your hashtag when asking questions or discussing the webinar. This strategy will increase the audience’s sense of involvement. Consequently, it will introduce more people to your brand. Finally, after the webinar, use the hashtag to follow up on unanswered questions and send additional information. 

Practice Your Presentation

To successfully plan a webinar, practice your presentation a few times. Rehearse your script in order to inject proper tonality and personality in your words. Run a test webinar to ensure you find a comfortable pace for the session. Understand how much time you need to cover all the essential points and gain more confidence.

Make sure your sounds and slides are working well. If you have other presenters or co-hosts, invite them. That way everyone will get a chance to test things out. Fine-tune all the details and memorize what goes where and what you need to do. Address the common mistakes and make the necessary adjustments before going live.

Prepare a Script

Your script is essentially your roadmap to keep you on course. It will help you stay on topic, keep track of time and ensure you don’t leave anything out. This will also enable the speakers to have a clear understanding of deadlines for practice sessions. Create a list of the questions as they come in so you can keep them organized. Remember that your goal should be to convey your message as comprehensively as possible. Hence, don’t be afraid to elaborate if your audience requires additional clarification.

Test Your Gear

Don’t forget to check your equipment before the webinar. Run a test webinar including every single feature you wish to use. For instance, start with your audio and video recording equipment. Ask for someone’s opinion regarding your sound, video quality, or other elements that your audience will notice.

If you use a particular webinar platform, familiarize yourself with all the features it offers. On the day of the webinar, make sure that you’re prepared and all of your gear is working. In addition, check your internet connection. Switch to a wired connection of at least 3 MBPS upload speed, if possible.

Test your gear in order to successfully prepare for a webinar.

Plan for Interaction

To make sure your audience pays attention up to the end of your webinar, encourage them to participate. Ask poll questions, provide challenges or launch a quiz during the webinar. Most webinar platforms provide a handful of interactive tools. These allow you to engage with your audience during the event. For example, some have a chat area where attendees can communicate freely. Thus, leverage these elements so your audience doesn’t feel like they’re passively listening to a speaker. Pre-determine these factors in advance to set your attendees up for a good experience.

Follow Up With Your Audience

Continue engaging your audience and follow up with your audience after the webinar. Include people who registered but didn’t show up, attendees who left the webinar early and people who converted. For example, email the participants a full recap blog post, SlideShare of the webinar, or link to the video recording. Send them an email thanking them and asking them to share their feedback and rate their experience.

Make sure to send a recording of the webinar to the people who were unable to attend. Following up will go a long way in encouraging the audience to attend future webinar events. Afterward, use their feedback to make adjustments and ensure that your future webinars are even more successful.

Include a Call to Action

After the webinar, make sure the audience knows what next step you want them to take. For example, provide links in the webinar and the follow-up email. Let them know they can download a whitepaper or sign up for a free trial. In addition, make sure your call to action is:

  • Clear and easy to understand
  • Easy to use and either time or money
  • A great deal that they can’t get anywhere else
  • Only available during the webinar promotion
  • There to solve problems

Test Your Campaign Tracking

Webinars can be an excellent lead generation tool if you set them up properly. It’s important, therefore, to test your campaign tracking parameters ahead of time. Make yourself a checklist of the steps you need to accomplish. For example:

  • How many people registered
  • What were the top sources of registrations
  • How many people attended
  • How much time did they spend watching the webinar

Once you figure out the targeting and segmentation, you can focus on the logistical steps.

Document Your Webinar Process

Plan a webinar by planning to document your entire process. Doing so will streamline your webinar production in the future. Create an editorial calendar where topics, speakers, and dates are tracked and planned before the event. Also, make a list of every task for every stage of your webinar so nothing gets forgotten. You can use a project management tool to make sure everyone stays on time. In addition, make sure to keep separate records for different webinar formats.

Save Your Layout

Saving your webinar layout and the content you’ll use in advance is another way to prepare for a webinar. That way you don’t have to worry about:

  • Uploading your presentation and other files like images, audio, or video before the event
  • Searching last minute for videos on YouTube
  • Creating surveys or call-to-action buttons

Save it before your webinar is live and keep all your content set up ready for the big day. This way, you’ll know precisely how things work and what to do at the different stages of the webinar. Consequently, you will be able to focus on your audience and presenting your content.

Conclusion

Webinars are a highly effective way to communicate in-depth information in an engaging format. Creating a webinar takes a lot of planning, coordination, and follow-through. From settling on a specified topic, finding an awesome speaker, to preparing for the live event.

For an effective webinar, you should always:

  • Listen to your audience
  • Outline your current strengths
  • Practice your presentation
  • Follow up with the attendees
  • Repurpose your content

Adding webinars to your content marketing strategy can help you build brand awareness, authority and trust. It can help you position yourself as the industry’s thought leader and speed up the sales process. In addition, it can help you increase prospective and current client engagement and gain more clients. Use these tips to successfully plan a webinar and track your performance so you can improve accordingly.

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Check out these tips to increase your website traffic.

29 Tips To Increase Your Website Traffic

by MarketingSEO
Check out these tips to increase your website traffic.

Introduction

One of the key challenges for every online business is getting the stable flow of traffic to their website. And in order to attract new business, you need to get more visitors to your website. Increasing traffic to your website can be the most cost-effective way to increase your sales, which means you need a solid strategy for growing your online audience. If you’re looking to increase website traffic with both organic and paid ways, the list below will help you increase the traffic to your website, generate more leads, and improve ROI.

Post engaging content on your website

Create quality content focused on trending industry topics that will naturally attract a higher number of visitors to website. As a result, it will help you establish your authority in a particular subject, which is critical for attracting new customers. Blogging not only keeps your website fresh for visitors but also helps increase your visibility on Google. People use Google to find specific, thorough and accurate answers for their questions, and your content should be there to provide those answers.

To write a good blog post that will draw in the right audience, follow these steps:

  • Identify your buyer persona: Understand everything from job title to pain points.
  • Conduct SEO research: Learn what your audience is searching for so you can provide relevant content.
  • Write an engaging post: Publish it on your blog site and use SEO tools to optimize it.
  • Promote it accordingly: Promote your blog post on social media and email newsletters to generate traffic. The more traffic your post generates, the higher it will rank in search engines.

Send Email Newsletters

Promoting content through email newsletters is an effective way to increase website traffic. Here are a few email marketing best practices:

  • Include enticing information from the content in the subject line and in the body of the email.
  • Insert a link or button that subscribers can click to read more of the content.
  • Make sure emails are mobile-friendly and links are easy to see.
  • Employ personalization tactics by including the name of the subscriber.
  • Make the email visually appealing with the use of well-designed templates.
  • Conduct A/B testing to see which versions of emails receive more opens and clicks.

Build Relationships With Influencers

Influencer marketing is a budget-friendly option to drive traffic to your website. When influencers post discount codes, links, reviews, or giveaways, you are tapping into their audience to drive traffic to your website. Hence, build relationships with thought leaders and influencers in your industry. Industry influencers are eager to share content that their followers will love and you can connect with influencers by:

  • Tagging them in a social media post if your piece references their content or research.
  • Asking them for an interview/ Q&A and tagging them when posting that content so they can share it with their audience.

To find the right influencers in your industry, try using tools like HypeAuditor and BuzzSumo or reach out to a digital marketing agency that can do influencer outreach for you.

Try Guest Blogging

Guest posting for other websites is an effective way to generate backlinks, boost referral traffic, and increase search engine results page (SERP) rankings. To get started, thoroughly research websites within your industry to pitch. Look at a website’s content and make sure it’s high quality, check its domain authority and study its guest posting guidelines. Also, ask the publication if they’ll promote the post on social media and if they’ll tag you. Securing a guest post on a reputable site can increase blog traffic to your website and show you’re active in your community.

Invite Others to Guest Blog on Your Site

Publishing guest posts is a good way to get backlinks, reach a new audience and establish yourself as an expert. In addition to posting content to other blogs, invite people in your niche to blog on your website. They’re likely to share and link to their guest article, which could bring new readers to your site. Just be sure that you only post high-quality, original content without spammy links, in order to rank high on Google.

Invite others to guest blog to increase your website traffic.

Get Active on Social Media

Use social media to drive traffic to your website, by using a channel of your choice. Here are some ways to increase website traffic:

  • Post useful, relevant content (blogs, e-books, white papers, infographics, videos, etc.)
  • Interact with followers by replying to them, reposting their content and tagging them
  • Use relevant industry hashtags
  • Update the link in your bio to promote new content/service
  • Change a cover photo to promote new content/service
  • Be active on relevant social media platforms and in niche communities
  • Be an early adopter of new features
  • Get active in group discussions on Twitter or Facebook

Google+ promotion can help your site show up in personalized search results and is especially effective in B2B niches. On the other hand, Pinterest and Instagram are efficient for B2C product companies. In short- know your audience, offer them value, and craft content that speaks directly to them. Furthermore, stay active with community management. If you humanize your business, people will be coming back for more content.

Use Advertising to Increase Website Traffic

Advertising through paid search, social media and display ads can be an efficient way to increase website traffic quickly, and it’s a good opportunity for newly built websites. However, look at it as the easy way to start getting traffic while working on more long-term strategies.
For small businesses, Facebook advertising and email newsletter marketing are the best places to get an easy return on investment. Both of these options will allow you to easily measure results and adjust your future ads. However, it’s important to set budgets and goals before investing a ton of money into them.

When doing pay-per-click (PPC) ads, start with one campaign and a few different ad groups containing the keywords you want to target most. Once campaigns begin, see how audiences behave with various keywords. Monitor which one resulted in impressions and which one resulted in clicks and conversions. If you’re hoping that more traffic to your site will also result in more sales, target high commercial intent keywords. Ultimately, your strategy will most likely include a combination of different types of advertising like social media, display, and search ads. Check out our Ultimate Guide for Advertising to help you out.

Submit Press Releases to Influential Publications

Distributing press releases can help you build brand awareness and generate traffic to your site. If done correctly, your press release can be picked up by multiple outlets, which means more exposure for your business. When creating press releases to promote your business, send them to influential websites and publications in your industries that your audience reads.

Perform Keyword Research

Include relevant keywords throughout your content- the meta description, the page title, the URL, headers. Furthermore, use tools like Moz, Ahrefs and SEMrush to conduct keyword research. They will show you valuable information to guide your keyword strategy. For example, what keywords competitors are using, how often people search for keywords, how expensive the keyword is for pay-per-click ads etc. Hiring an SEO agency is also an option as they can offer valuable insights and perform audits to identify issues that may be keeping your site from being shown in search engines.

Start Affiliate Programs

An affiliate program is a deal between a marketer and a content publisher, also known as “performance marketing.” You can set the terms of engagement, paying the publisher who is promoting your content based on the number of clicks or sales he or she sends your way. Usually, these are partnerships are set up through a network, such as CJ Affiliate or the Google Affiliate network. The network will help ensure your promotions get in front of an interested audience.

Create a Helpful Industry Tool or Content

Giving prospects something of use is a great way to drive more traffic. For example, create various free tools and content that would help out others in your industry. Offer them in exchange for the user’s contact information to maximize your returns and find new leads.

Create helpful tool or content to increase your website traffic.

Exchange Backlinks

Reach out to relevant sites and offer your content as an additional resource to include in one of the site’s posts. Moreover, you can ask for a mutually-beneficial backlink exchange, offering to add one of their links to a post of yours as well. If websites with high authority link to your site, it will give you more credibility.

There are two main ways in which high-quality backlinks can help drive more traffic to a website: boosting ranking and driving referral traffic. By constantly earning high-quality backlinks from relevant websites, you’ll improve your rankings in SERP and, as a result, see a lift in your organic traffic.

Backlinks can also drive a substantial amount of referral traffic. For example, if you get mentioned on a popular news website or in an article that’s already ranking well for high search volume keywords and is getting a constant flow of traffic.

Pay Attention to On-Page SEO

Optimizing your content for the search engine can help your website rank higher in search engines and bring in more traffic. Some on-page SEO elements include the page title, header, meta description, image alt-text, and the URL (plus more). Showing up in search engines will generate more traffic for your site.

Interview Industry Thought Leaders

Request an interview with thought leaders in your industry, and publish the interviews on your blog. As a result, name recognition will boost your credibility and increase traffic to your website. Moreover, the interviewee will probably share the content too, further expanding its reach.

Make Sure Your Site is Responsive and Fast

Today, more people than ever before are using mobile devices to access the web. Hence, ensure that your website is accessible and comfortably viewable across a range of devices, including smartphones. Furthermore, if your site takes forever to load, your bounce rate will be sky-high. Make sure that your pages are as technically optimized as possible, including image file sizes, page structure and the functionality of third-party plugins.

Examine Your Website Analytics Data

Google Analytics is an invaluable source of data and you should use this information to inform your promotional and content strategies. Pay attention to what posts and pages are proving the most popular. Inspect visitor data to see how, where and when your site traffic is coming from. Analyze your website using platforms, such as Crazy Egg, to learn about your audience. Accordingly, you can create the right content to drive the right traffic to your website.

Foster a Sense of Community

Building a community into your site is a great way to start a conversation and increase traffic to your website. Implement a robust commenting system through third-party solutions such as Facebook comments or Disqus, or create a dedicated forum where visitors can ask questions.

Utilize video marketing to increase your website traffic.

Utilize Video Marketing

Video content can be a valuable asset in both attracting new visitors and making your site more engaging. Video marketing is an excellent way to attract your audience’s attention and boost traffic to your website at the same time. You can create videos for Instagram or Facebook Stories, live videos, IGTV, Facebook Watch, news feed videos, YouTube, etc.

Research the Competition

Don’t forget to check out your competition and conduct a competitive analysis. You can use software like BuzzSumo to check out what your competitors are up to. These services aggregate the social performance of specific sites and content to provide you with an at-a-glance view of what topics are resonating with readers and, most importantly, making the rounds on social media. Find out what people are reading and talking about, and emulate that kind of content to bring traffic to your website.

Host Webinars

Combined with an effective social promotion campaign, webinars are a great way to increase traffic to your website. Send out an email a week or so ahead of time, as well as a “last chance to register” reminder the day before the webinar. Make sure to archive the presentation for later viewing, and promote your webinars through social media.

Engage In A Community

Building a community of brand enthusiasts is a great way to continuously drive traffic to your website. The more brand recognition you have, the more traffic you will drive to your website. One way to achieve brand recognition is to be active and engaged within the market. For example, participate in Facebook group discussions in your industry, answer questions on public forum websites, and interact with your followers on social media. Furthermore, build a Twitter chat, LinkedIn Group, or Quora Space specifically for your followers and others in your industry where you create value, while also linking back to your site. It’s a great way to engage with your followers and learn more about your audience as they evolve over time.

Repurpose Your Content

A great way to continue driving traffic and leads is to repurpose old content. Take a well-performing blog post and repurpose that into a video. Or if you have a podcast that did really well, write up a blog post on that topic. Using content that has already performed well will continue to drive traffic to your site.

Utilize Voice Search Optimization

In order to drive traffic to your website, it’s important to show up where people are searching. Voice search is an increasingly important area in which to rank and optimize your content for voice search is essential.

Here are a few tips to get started:

  • Research long tail keywords: When people use voice search, they speak in full sentences rather than short phrases. To optimize for voice search, research longer-tail keywords.
  • Write answer-focused content: Your content should answer your audience’s questions.
  • Optimize for snippets: Smart speakers like Alexa and Google Home look for short, concise answers. Writing quick summaries in your posts makes it easier for search engines and smart speakers to find the answer they need.

Implement Local SEO

To gather information for local search, search engines rely on signals such as local content, social profile pages, links, and citations to provide the most relevant local results to the user. For example, when someone types in “best family attorney” on Google, the results are generated by the user’s location. Tools such as Google My Business can help businesses manage their directory listings and citations so they show up in local searches.

To rank for local search:

  • Ensure your name, address, and phone number (NAP) is consistent on your Google My Business and social media pages.
  • Use a directory management tool to monitor directories like Yelp, Foursquare, Best of the Web, etc.
  • Research and use location-based search terms on sites like Google Trends, which analyzes popular search terms across various regions.

Here are our SEO tips to help with your overall strategy.

Implement SEO techniques to increase your website traffic.

Don’t Forget Technical SEO

Technical SEO focuses on the backend of your website to see how the pages are technically set up and organized. It includes elements like page speed, crawling, indexing, and more and results in growing your organic traffic.

To get started with your technical SEO, use the following steps:

  • Fix broken links and redirects.
  • Create an XML sitemap for your subdomains.
  • Set up language meta tags.
  • Add custom H1 and introductions to topic pages.

Link Internally

When a visitor comes to your blog, your goal should be to get them to stay longer on your website. It can be done by providing internal links for them to continue reading the other pages of your website. As a result, they’re more likely to convert and become brand enthusiasts. Consequently, it will boost your site’s credibility on search engines, while also increasing the likelihood of a conversion. In addition, it will result in a better, more useful experience for the user – the cornerstone of increasing traffic to your website.

Include Social Share Buttons

Social share buttons are links that make it easy for your readers to share your content on social media. When your readers become promoters of your content, your traffic will increase. Once you’ve created your social share buttons, get people to create action by:

  • Asking them to share on social media.
  • Creating strong content.
  • Including quotable content.
  • Adding multimedia such as images, videos, infographics, etc.

Create Knowledge Base Posts

One form of content that can drive traffic to your website is educational content. If you create courses, certifications, or educational posts that are helpful to your audience, you’ll likely see an increase in traffic. For example, provide videos, certification courses, and knowledge base articles to answer your audience’s questions.

Organize Contests and Giveaways

A simple way to drive traffic to your website is through contests and giveaways. For a start, you should decide what platform on which to host your giveaway. You can host giveaways on social media, through your email list, or both. Next, choose a prize- it can be free tickets, discounts, etc. Afterward, select the criteria- e.g. website comments, email sign up etc. Write the ad copy and create the graphics. Finally, post and promote the contest or giveaway accordingly.

Conclusion

There are so many paths your future customers can take to reach your website, and you have to find the one that works best for your business. While many of these tactics can provide instant gratification, others will take more time and patience. By trying out these methods, you will see which one will provide a significant traffic boost. By using a combination of these marketing techniques, you can begin to drive more traffic to your website.

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Check out these 18 top blogging tools for lawyers.

18 Blogging Tools For Lawyers [Ultimate List]

by Marketing
Check out these 18 top blogging tools for lawyers.

Introduction

Producing high-quality content regularly increases organic visits and SEO rankings. In addition, it helps you become an expert on the topics you write about. Maintaining a business blog can be hard sometimes. Determining what to write about and what types of information would appeal to your audience can be time-consuming. Luckily, there are multiple blogging tools for lawyers you can use for your next blog post. These will bring more visitors to your website for lawyers and inform your current and potential customers.

Website Analytics (Free)

Pull ideas from your website data. Check what content performed the best, and why. High-performing content will show an interest from people on the subject matter. Furthermore, use it to find upcoming trends you can talk about and apply them to your industry. That way, you can attract traffic to your site by either commenting on a hot topic or being the first to cover it.

Daily News (Limited Free)

Keeping up with the daily news is a way to find topics and related content for your next blog post. Whether online or in print, news items can be a valuable source of information. Articles that affect your industry directly are the prime sources of inspiration for your online content. Hence, take trending news stories and find interesting ways of relating them to your niche industry.

Blog comments (Free)

Go through blog post comments of leading blogs in your niche and read what the audience was talking about. Read their latest blog posts that discuss a topic in your area of interest. Moreover, go through their comment section and write down the consistent queries people are talking about. Finally, choose the blog topics you haven’t covered before.

Twinword (Limited Free)

Twinword is focused on keywords and volume, not necessarily topics. However, you can still find ideas here for topics you hadn’t considered before when you type in your keyword phrase. This is one of the blogging tools for lawyers that allows you to filter the search area. Accordingly, you can explore the topics of your keywords and see groupings.

Social media groups (Free)

Join a Facebook group for bloggers to answer people’s questions and discuss their problems. Consider writing a blog post about the most common questions to help them find solutions. For a start, search for groups where your target audience hangs out. Check for keywords related to your niche in those groups. Go through the popular conversations and discussions to find topics that you can write about.

EBooks (Limited Free)

Find eBooks in your niche. Besides their educational value, they can also provide you with blog topics to write about. For example, you can find a popular eBook in your niche on Amazon and make a list of all the topics the book discusses. Afterward, you can find a unique angle for each of the chapter topics and write about it.

Social media analytics is one of the blogging tools for lawyers.

Social media analytics (Free)

Use social media analytics to find topics and subjects to write on. Check out the metrics and find which post has the highest number of views or engagement. As a result, you will get insights into the posts that your audience likes. So, when you create a blog post around them, you can easily drive traffic to the post from these platforms. Also, check out relevant YouTube videos with the most views and engagement.

Google trends (Free)

Google Trends can show you what search topics are getting the most action and in real-time. Hence, you can use Google Trends to see what’s trending now and generate content ideas. Start with exploring the relevant topics and check out the ‘Related Queries’ section. Go through both the queries that are on ‘Top’ and those that are ‘Rising’.

Search trends can be broken down into several different sub-groups, so you can see what trending topics are of particular interest to people in your industry. You can also perform an individual keyword search, looking for trending news items, blog posts, and user searches that are directly related to your keyword.

Competitive analysis (Limited Free)

Checking out your competitors is another one of the blogging tools for lawyers to try out. For example, visit their websites to see the kind of content they are producing. You can even use tools like Ubersuggest, SEMrush, and Buzzsumo for competitive analysis. As a result, they will tell you about the most popular and shared content of your competitors. Finally, you can use this data to gather ideas for your next blog post.

Ubersuggest (Free)

Ubersuggest will extract related keywords from Google Keyword Planner and suggested ideas from Google. As a result, you will get topic ideas for what you type in, but also closely related ones. Search for the relevant Hashtags, go through the tweets and you will find plenty of content ideas.

SEMrush (Paid)

SEMrush has multiple blogging tools for lawyers that can help with content research and inspiration. For example, their Topic Research tool is a great resource for finding relevant, grouped topics around the web. You can get well-ranked content examples to get an idea of what’s relevant and popular. Another SEMrush feature for keyword research/planning is the Keyword Magic Tool. This tool can give you content ideas and help you be strategic about what you’re writing about.

BuzzSumo (Limited Free)

This tool will show you what content related to your topic has been getting the most shares on social media. In addition, having access to this information helps you track the news in your industry. A search for a keyword phrase brings up the topmost shared content on that subject within your search parameters.

You can use BuzzSumo to find content for social media, but also to come up with blog topic ideas. Start by finding blog topics by typing in a keyword related to your niche. Afterward, make a list of all the popular topics, and get writing.

Forums are one of the top blog post tools and resources to use for your next blog post.

Forums (Free)

Forums are a prime source of ideas for blog topics. Plenty of online users are still gathering in forums to discuss a wide variety of topics, both general and niche-related. Hence, don’t forget to check out online forums or communities in your industry. Collect the most popular questions users are asking, and turn those into blog post topics. This is a great way to get more readers because you can share your blog post in response to their questions.

Furthermore, using a listening tool, such as Google Alerts, you can monitor forum conversations looking for topics that might be exploited in your next blog post. The good examples of forums for topic research are Quora and Reddit. Both platforms are having explosive growth as other social platforms are limiting certain speech in today’s times.

Quora (Free)

Quora is a platform where you can ask a question and people will answer to the best of their abilities. It resembles a social network where people can ask questions and anyone can answer. Consequently, people are asking all sorts of questions from all different subjects. Just do some searching and quickly see what kinds of questions are being asked about your subject.

Moreover, you can use its search bar to find topics per your niche. Next, go through the conversations and discussions and pick the questions that best fit your interest. Finally, write an expert blog post on the content you highlighted. Just like Quora, Reddit can be a valuable source for content ideas. Search for the relevant topic and you will find a pool of user-generated content to draw your ideas from.

Keyword Tool: Autocomplete (Limited Free)

You can use a keyword research tool specifically meant for this, like KeywordTool.io. Just type in your keyphrase or topic and shift through the results. As a result, you will get a list of all of the different Google searches that people do on that topic. It makes a good way to check out what might be a popular search in your industry. Another way is to start typing your keyword into Google and check out what auto-fills are in the search bar.

Doing keyword research to find blog post topics is a great idea because you’re able to find actual Google search results. These are the topics that people are regularly searching and want an answer to, and you can now write these answers for them. Additionally, you can also search YouTube’s autocomplete, Bing’s, Amazon’s, and more.

Feedly (Free)

Feedly is another one of the blogging tools for lawyers to try out. It allows you to follow plenty of relevant blogs and websites all in one place. Also, it is a good way to get content ideas based on the news in your industry. In addition, it allows you to keep an eye on your competitors.

Twitter (Free)

One of the best sources for topic ideas is Twitter and you can use it to look for your new blog content. For example, type in your topic and look at the top tweets that mention that topic. You can also check the “News” to see what’s been making the news in your industry.

Using Twitter’s search function, you can find out what is trending for any given keyword or phrase. Simply enter a keyword in the “Search Twitter” field and hit search. As a result, you will get a quick sampling of trending topics that include your keyword. That way you can see what people are talking about as regards your keyword choices and what interests them.

Answer the Public (Limited Free)

This tool will give you ideas in the form of questions that the public is asking about a certain topic. Typing in a keyword phrase will deliver you multiple sets of questions that are being asked online. For example, if you search for family law, you will find the questions related to that keyphrase. For instance- what is family law mediation, can family law trials have juries, why practice family law and more.

Conclusion

If you found yourself struggling to find topics for your next blog post, there’s plenty of inspiration to explore. Go where your readers go, investigate the trending topics on forums, social media networks, and news feeds. To come up with fresh ideas, include effective brainstorming, research new topics and discover what needs customers have that aren’t being met. Also, try out these blogging tools for lawyers to see which one is the best fit for you.

We can help your business grow and progress.

If you require guidance with setting the winner marketing strategy, contact us today.

Fill in the application form below and schedule a free consultation with us!

Learn about the importance of customer journey map for lawyers.

The Importance of Customer Journey Map for Lawyers

by Marketing
Learn about the importance of customer journey map for lawyers.

Introduction

A customer journey map for lawyers is a visual representation of how your customer experiences your service. It highlights key aspects of the legal journey as a lawyer interacts with potential clients. Ultimately, it demonstrates how a particular goal can best be accomplished. Mapping out customer journeys helps explain why customers make the choices they do. 

Moreover, it is proof of which aspect of your service is most valuable to them. A customer journey map allows you to capture the unique experience for each persona. In addition, it shows you how to solve potential problems and design a personalized customer experience. Consequently, you can understand which updates will benefit your customers the most and when to update your services.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map

Set clear objectives for the map

Before you start creating your map, set clear objectives. Think about what you want to accomplish. What goals are you directing this map towards? Who is it specifically about? What experience is it based upon? It might be a problem you’re trying to solve or a service you’re trying to launch. It can also be an update or an experience you want to learn more about.

Without a goal, your customer journey map will have difficulties achieving the right impact for your business. Hence, start with articulating the challenges you’re facing so you can better use your journey map. Afterward, identify existing and future buyers. Accordingly, adjust goals specifically for those audiences at each stage of their experience.

Profile your customer personas

Build a complete picture of the customer whose journey you will capture on your map. Use all the demographic and psychographic data available to create your customer personas. Furthermore, research to understand who your customers are. Gather as much information as possible about the persona your customer journey map is based on by:

  • Conducting interviews
  • Talking to employees who regularly interact with customers
  • Emailing a survey to existing users
  • Examining customer support and complaint logs
  • Monitoring social media discussions about your company
  • Leveraging web analytics
  • Gathering Net Promoter Score (NPS) data

Look for information that references:

  • How did customers initially find your brand
  • When/ if customers purchase or cancel
  • How easy or difficult did they find your website to use
  • What problems did your brand do or didn’t solve
  • Did they get the needed support
  • How can you improve your customer service

Click here to download our Buyer Persona template.

Defining customer touchpoints is one of the step when creating customer journey map for lawyers.

Define customer touchpoints

For a start, identify all the paths that your visitor may take on your website. If your visitor is a pre-existing customer, the first thing they might do is log in. Other activities include browsing, searching for products, comparing products, and more. These activities will help you identify all your touchpoints and the goals associated with each touchpoint.

Touchpoints are all the places in your brand journey where customers might interact with your company. It includes all the steps a customer comes into contact with your brand – before, during, or after the purchase. This also includes moments that happen offline/ online, through marketing, in person, or over the phone.

The number and type of touchpoints on your customer journey map will depend on the type of business. Some touchpoints may have more impact than others. Hence, take all potential touchpoints that occur between your customers and your organization into account. That way, you won’t miss out on any opportunities to listen to your customers. Moreover, you will be able to make the necessary improvements to keep them happy.

Touchpoints You Should Cover

Based on your research, list out all the touchpoints your customers and prospects are currently using. In addition, list the ones you would like them to use in an ideal world. This step will give you insight into what actions your customers are performing. If they are using fewer touchpoints than expected, does this mean they are quickly getting turned away? If they are using more than expected, does this mean your purchase process is complicated?

A typical customer journey should cover the following five client touchpoints. Awareness, Acquisition, Consideration, Service, and Loyalty.

Answer the following questions to cover the touchpoints above:

  • Who is aware of your firm?
  • What makes your clients choose your firm over others?
  • What happens during the consultation that makes clients sign? 
  • Are client matters & cases being handled on time?
  • Is there anything your staff can do better?
  • How can you keep in touch after disbursement?

Identify customer actions, motivations and pain points

List out all of the actions your customers perform throughout their interaction with your brand. This might be a Google search for your keywords or clicking on an email from you. Recognize when they are being expected to take too many actions to achieve their goals. Moreover, take the necessary steps to reduce the number of those steps and improve the overall process.

Every action your customer takes is motivated by emotion. And your customer’s emotions will change depending on which part of their journey they’re at. The emotional driver of your customer’s actions is usually caused by a pain point or a problem. Knowing this will help you provide the right content and adjust the customer’s emotional journey through your brand.

Get to know which barriers are stopping your customer from making their desired action. For example, your customers could love your service but decide not to purchase it upon discovering high rates. Highlighting these potential obstacles in your customer journey can help you improve them. For example, you could provide an FAQ page that answers common questions about overall costs.

Potential Questions To Ask

Bring together all your data to identify potential obstacles or pain points in the customer journey. Include information that addresses elements of action, emotion, and potential challenges. Note down areas where you’re currently doing things right. Moreover, figure out ways to improve. To do this, ask yourself the following questions, and interview customers and customer-facing staff.

Some potential questions might include:

  • Are my customers achieving their goals on my website?
  • Where are the main areas of friction and frustration?
  • Where are people abandoning purchases (and why)?

Understand your buyer’s goals

Once you’ve learned how different customer personas interact with your business, focus on one of them. Remember, a customer journey map tracks one customer’s experience who’s taking a specific path with your company. If you group too many personas, your map won’t accurately reflect your customers’ experience.

For your first map, choose your most common customer persona. Consider the route they would typically take when engaging with your business for the first time. Afterward, create a new map for the ones you left out that’s specific to their customer types.

Next, determine the goals for each customer phase clearly on your map. That way you’ll be able to examine how well you are meeting those goals and answering customers’ questions. Understand what each of your customers hopes to achieve as they go through the customer journey. Think about what their ultimate goals are in each phase. However, have in mind that these may change during the process.

Some examples might be:

  • Researching the different available options
  • Ensuring that s/he is paying a fair price
  • Seeking reassurance that s/he has all the necessary information about the product
Understanding buyer's goals is one of the step when creating customer journey map for lawyers.

Determine the resources you have and the ones you'll need

Your customer journey map is going to touch on nearly every part of your business. This will highlight all of the resources that participate in creating the customer experience. Hence, take inventory of the resources you have and the ones you’ll need to improve the customer’s journey. For example, maybe your map highlights some flaws in your customer service offer.

Maybe you notice that you don’t have the tools to properly follow up with customers after a service interaction. Using your map, you can invest in customer service tools that will help your team manage customer demand. By including new tools in your map, you can accurately predict how they’ll impact your business. Ultimately, you can drive more revenue.

Take the customer journey yourself

The most important part of the process is analyzing the results. The exercise of mapping the customer journey remains hypothetical until you try it out yourself. Analyzing the results can show you where customer needs aren’t being met. By approaching this, you can ensure that you are providing a valuable experience.

Furthermore, you can make it clear that people can find solutions to their problems with your company’s help. Follow your persona’s journey they take through their social media activity, reading emails to searching online. See if you can answer the questions you posed at the beginning of the process. Then, you can better visualize how to improve.

Make the necessary changes

Your data analysis should give you a sense of what the overall customer process should look like. And once you’ve test-driven the map, make any necessary changes. Moreover, repeat the process over time as you add new features and updates.

Even if small, the changes will be effective as they are directly correlated with customers’ pain points. And your visualized customer journey map will ensure those needs and pain points are always addressed.

Review your map on a monthly or quarterly basis to identify gaps and opportunities. Above all, to adjust your customer journey further. In addition, analyze how new products or offerings might have changed the customer journey. Optimize it accordingly whenever you introduce significant changes to your service.

Click here to download our Customer Journey Map template.

Conclusion

Completing a journey map for your clients is a vital first step in your firm’s marketing plan. The process requires analyzing all the steps a client takes before and during their relationship with your company. As a result, you will recognize the client’s needs at each stage of their journey. Consequently, you’ll be able to provide them with the information they need to become a loyal client.

Use a customer journey map to get a better idea of how various personas interact with your services. Furthermore, use it to explore the customer experience fully. Finally, understand how the customer experiences different parts of your service. When you understand your customer’s journey completely, you can establish the best way to serve them. Accordingly, create different pathways for different personas to provide a more personalized experience. 

In addition, use it to track staff performance, client satisfaction, find opportunities to reduce costs and more. Consequently, it will help you focus on sending the right information to the right people at the right time. And that will result in happier, loyal clients and a growing business for you.

We can help your business grow and progress.

If you require guidance with setting the winner marketing strategy, contact us today.

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If you struggle with marketing your law firm, check out these free marketing ideas for lawyers and law firms.

Free Marketing Ideas for Lawyers and Law Firms

by Marketing
If you struggle with marketing your law firm, check out these free marketing ideas for lawyers and law firms.

Introduction

Small businesses often have a tight marketing budget to work with, which can make promoting a challenge. However, there are plenty of ways for you to market your firm without spending any money. If your marketing budget is slim, check out the below list of free marketing ideas for lawyers and law firms:

Practice Networking

No matter what type of law you practice, networking is necessary. Attending events will help you network with other leaders in the industry, gain new customers and get your brand in front of a large crowd of people. Hence, be active in the community- attend conferences, civic meetings etc. In other words, use any occasion that might spread the word about your business. Tell the people you meet what your specialty is. Moreover, invite them to share your information with friends and associates who might need your services.

Utilize Social Media

Establish a business profile on all the major social sites. Host Q&A session on Facebook Live answering followers’ legal questions. Interact with other attorneys, local business people and community members and others, who follow you on Twitter. Enter into dialogue with the connections you make, share your blog posts and offers and other content on LinkedIn.

By educating your potential customers, you can build your brand and earn trust and respect in your industry. Increasing social media engagement and building a community online is a free way to grow your small business. 

In addition, you can:

Tagging your loyal customers, brand ambassadors and other collaborators on social media can broaden the organic reach of your business to a new potential audience. Encourage your followers to tag you on social media handles or business locations in their posts. Incorporate trending, custom, location-based hashtags into your social media posts to reach a wider audience.

Volunteer Your Expertise and Time

Volunteering is a great way to establish a reputation, gain valuable experience and insight. Charity events are a great place for small business to increase their brand visibility. Potential customers will acknowledge your business and you’ll just have to donate your time and possibly some service.

Claim Your Profile in the Legal Directorires

Claim your practice on Justia, Avvo, Yelp and similar directories. This is a simple but effective marketing idea for small businesses operating service businesses. Yelp is a fantastic way to find new customers, as long as you keep up a strong presence. Depending on how much you want to invest, legal directories can be a paid or free marketing idea. A basic first step is to either register or claim your business, add your location and start responding to your customers’ reviews.

Create your Google My Business Account

For local businesses especially, a Google Business Profile has become one of the most effective free marketing strategies available. This free listing allows your business to show up on Google Maps, the local section of Google Search, and the right-side Knowledge Panel for branded searches. In order for your Business profile to show up higher on Google Maps or local results, you need to optimize your business profile. Accordingly, you need to have verified ownership of it, which can be done through your Google My Business Account.

One of the free marketing ideas for lawyers to try is local SEO.

Do Local SEO

Local SEO is free, but it can take some time. Here are some local SEO steps to take:

  • Add location-based keywords to the titles, headings, and body content of your main website pages.
  • Get listed in online directories, making sure your information is identical across platforms.
  • Publish pages or blog posts specific to the neighborhoods you serve.

The listed steps can help your business get found on the web. Furthermore, good local SEO can get you on Google’s 3-pack.

Develop an Email Marketing Plan

Email marketing is a great way to get new visitors engaged with your business, as well as maintain relationships with your existing customers. Email marketing is still the most reliable way to achieve a strong return on your marketing investment. Here’s how to ensure that:

  • Make sure every email has an offer that encourages your readers to take the next step.
  • Track your performance and run A/B tests to see what copy and offers resonate with your list.
  • Get new website visitors to sign up for your newsletter by offering a coupon or a discount for subscribing.
  •  Start your promotional email campaigns with a free email marketing service like MailChimp.

Create Infographics

Infographics are a powerful marketing tool and a great way to drive up referral traffic and links. You can make your own with free tools like Canva, Adobe’s free vector kits or Visme, which provide all the elements needed to make a clever, shareable infographic. If you don’t have any original, proprietary data to use in the infographic, you can find existing data. For government data, check out data.gov or The Census Bureau. Global statistics can be found through UNICEF and the World Health Organization. 

Apply for Business Awards

Most industries have business awards you can win, providing you with an online badge you can place on your website. Badges like these can boost credibility, and as a result, increase sales. Be sure to check for the latest awards or rankings in your industry so you don’t miss an opportunity. If there aren’t any awards for your industry, host your own. You’ll get attention from other industry businesses who want to apply for your award. Which will ultimately result in more connections and more possible future collaborations.

Start a Blog

Content marketing serves to demonstrate your authority, expertise and benefit your audience. It can, therefore, be a highly effective marketing tactic. Moreover, Google prioritizes high-quality content that best answers the questions its users are asking. Hence, it makes your website more visible on Google and brings in more free traffic. 

One great way to make content a regular part of your marketing efforts is to start a blog. Small businesses use blogging to drive traffic to their website, increase user engagements, improve their online visibility and strengthen their overall SEO. It’s a completely free way to promote your small business online, through useful information your potential clients are seeking out.

Form Industry Partherships

Team up with a business related to your industry for a joint project. This can be done locally and offline through some kind of special event, or online with a webinar or promotional giveaway. Furthermore, it can be for a short period or extended for as long as you want. Partnering with another business means twice as much notice and exposure to a whole new audience related to your niche. Industry partnerships are a great marketing tactic because they allow small business owners access to marketing, technology and customer bases that they could not have achieved on their own. 

Post Helpful Videos

Video is a highly popular medium for consumers and you don’t have to hire a professional. DIY video marketing is easy with today’s devices and social media apps. Videos are great for demonstrating how to complete a task, but video marketing works in pretty much every industry. You could create a video that explains what your business does or reflect on a topic that relates to your business. For example, you can create:

  • Instructional videos and how-to
  • Behind the scenes coverage of what it’s like to work at your company
  • Interviews with your staff and industry experts

Finally, don’t forget to include a strong CTA (call to action) and distribute the video on your website, social media channels, email etc.

Turn Employees into Brand Ambassadors

For many small businesses, word of mouth is an important marketing strategy to boost sales. Research shows that customers are more likely to purchase a service if they get a recommendation. By encouraging your employees to become brand ambassadors, you can utilize the potential of their networks. If your employees have a genuine interest in your business, leverage their social networks to reach out to a larger audience. Host an exclusive discount sale like a ”friends and family” promotion. Create an event on Facebook, invite employees, and ask them to share it with their contacts. Furthermore, encourage them to post the status and tag people to increase the reach of your event.

One of the free marketing ideas for lawyers to try is recycling their old content.

Recycle Your Old Content

Make the most out of the work you have already done any repurposing existing content for other channels. Turn a successful webinar into a video tutorial. Transform related blog posts or other content from your site into an Ebook that you can promote through site pop-ups or your email marketing program. Chances are there will be a ton of people who never saw that content and it will be a fresh information for a large segment of you audience.

Host a Class or an Event

Plan an event to host or a class that will attract new customers to your business while educating them about your industry. In addition, print out flyers and post them on community bulletin boards. For example, in libraries, coffee shops, local colleges and adult ed centers. The event or class will be its form of advertising, as well as a good reason to advertise. 

Host a Social Media Contest or Giveaway

Running a social media contest or giveaway is an effective marketing strategy. You can offer a service at no charge to get potential customers to invest their time in applying. Contests are a great way to gather potential customer data, like emails. In addition, it is an opportunity to get them to spread the word about your business to more potential customers. There are plenty of social media contest types, but the main idea is to require registrants to follow, like or tag your business or tag someone else on your post, in order to introduce potential clients to your services.

Do Business Card Drawing

Place a bowl at your workplace with a sign inviting visitors to drop their business cards in for a chance to win something from you. For example, a free consultation. As a result, you will collect plenty of business cards. Use their email addresses to let the users know they are more than welcome to join your mailing list, which will notify them of future special offers.

Develop a Customer Referral Program

Word of mouth marketing for small businesses is a powerful way to market your business. According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends or family over all forms of advertising. One way to boost your word-of-mouth marketing is by introducing a customer referral program. Offer your existing customers a free month of service, a discount or a similar reward for referring new customers. 

Having your customers tell their friends and family about your business can be incredibly valuable. Plus, a customer referral reward can help you show some appreciation to existing customers, as well. Hence, invest in the relationship you have with your existing customers. In addition, starting a customer appreciation program might encourage people to continue using your services.

Send Out a Customer Satisfaction Survey

A customer satisfaction survey is a great way to learn about your customer base. Moreover, it is a great way for customers to remember you exist. Customers will appreciate that you asked for their opinion and they will feel invested in the results of the survey, which will result in better loyalty over time. in addition, you might get some valuable insight into how to improve your overall business.

Celebrate Company Milestones

Periodically, check if any significant story comes through the data. Maybe you’ve done business with over 1,000 clients in your area, or perhaps you provide your service at a percentage higher than industry standards. Publish the results online or put a sign out in front of your law firm. People respond well to numbers because they are easily digestible data points. For example, ”The community loves us!” will be outperformed by ”Over 2,500 satisfied customers in our area!”

Engage in One-To-One Marketing

Use this customer relationship strategy to boost personalized interactions with customers. It can include sending handwritten postcards to valued customers or personalized birthday emails. Finding good customer relationship management software can also help automate the process. As a result, it can foster greater customer loyalty and better return o marketing investment. 

One of the free marketing ideas for lawyers to try is hosting a webinar.

Host a Webinar

Hosting a webinar or collaborating on one with another business can be a great way to help potential new customers get to know your business. Webinars are a free way to promote your business by providing helpful information to potentially interested customers. This can be fairly simple like going live on Facebook or Instagram and taking questions from the comments or interviewing one of your top employees. Or you can utilize Webinar platforms such as Webex and GoToMeeting. Make sure to promote your webinar on social media or through an email newsletter before the event and include reminders to registrants so that they don’t miss it.

Send Email Newsletters

Email marketing is a great way to get new visitors engaged with your business, as well as maintain relationships with your existing customers. Even the most basic email marketing plans can have a big impact. Advertise your email newsletter on your website or in your company so people can sign up. It’s a great way to establish customer loyalty or nurture subscribers to become paying customers over time. Start your email campaigns with a free email marketing platform like MailChimp or SendPulse—prices scale up as your business grows.

Take a Stand on a Controversial Industry Topic

Get your consumer’s attention by taking a stand on an issue important to them. For example, if your company is anti-smoking, stop smoking cigarettes in your company’s area and issue a press release. If you care about the environment, make your business eco-friendly, and write a post on a publishing site like Medium about the experience. In short- take a stand, act on it and then tell people all about it. You may lose some customers in the process, but you’ll strengthen your other customer relationships and gain new ones.

Sign up for HARO

If you want free press, you should be on Help a Reporter Out (HARO). HARO is a platform for reporters looking for help on articles or other pieces of content they’re working on. Reporters submit requests for responses on specific topics, and industry leaders and specialists answer. If your answer is used in the article, your name and business will appear with it. If you consider yourself a thought leader in a certain industry or topic, be sure to be on HARO responding to reporters. It’s a quick and free marketing idea for small businesses that want to be placed in the news.

Build a Presence on Online Forums

If your customers are online, then the best marketing ideas for your small business will be online, as well. Build a presence on online forums like Quora, Reddit, or any forum where your customers are posting. Answering questions in a non-promotional, helpful manner will help build visibility among your potential customers. On Reddit, you can find scores of people already interested in what your business has to offer. Check out 20 places on Reddit where legal professionals and people with legal questions gather.

Partner with Influencers

Use your social media channels to interact with your customers who are either reviewing you or commenting on your posts. Let them know you’re listening to what they have to say and that you care. Partner up with influencers on social media to elevate your social media presence. Send them a gift and they might feature you in a post or on their story. In addition, this collaboration tactic can be worth the investment if you find an influencer whose audience base overlaps with your own.

Conclusion

Even if you are low on budget, you can reach potential customers who will help grow your business. Try out these creative marketing ideas and find the ones that work for your company. Once you determine which channels are worthwhile for your business, you can start investing.

We can help your business grow and progress.

If you require guidance with setting the winner marketing strategy, contact us today.

Fill in the application form below and schedule a free consultation with us!

Check out top free online legal research tools and platforms.

Top Free Online Legal Research Tools

by Marketing
Check out top free online legal research tools and platforms.

Introduction

This guide contains selected free online legal research tools and resources. These are related to United States federal and state materials. Moreover, they can be a great way to get started when you don’t have access to paid databases. Additionally, they can be useful to get an overview of a topic before purchasing potentially expensive searches. We’ve listed free primary and secondary resources available, online platforms and tools. Ultimately, these will provide you with detailed and relevant legal information.

Federal Law and Government Documents

GovInfo

The U.S. Government Publishing Office’s Govinfo website provides access to select federal court decisions. In fact, these documents cover the period from 2004 to the present day. Moreover, GovInfo provides public access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government.

Federal Court Finder

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts provides a Federal Court Finder tool. Accordingly, it is used to locate the websites of individual federal courts. Hence, many of them include the text of recent decisions from that court.

Legal Information Institute (LII)

LII provides open access to legal materials. It includes annotated versions of the constitution, federal statutes, Supreme Court decisions, CFR, and more.

The Public Library of Law

This database provides access to a wide range of resources. For example, state and federal cases, court rules, statutes, regulations, forms, and constitutions.

American Law Sources On-line (ALSO)

ALSO collects online sources for legal materials including state and federal amicus briefs. Moreover, these are geographically based on the United States, Canada and Mexico

Federal Data Sources

Bureau of Justice Statistics

The Bureau of Justice Statistics provides free access to data on courts, crimes and law enforcement.

CDC Data and Statistics

This CDC website offers data on topics relating to general health topics as well as specific diseases.

Government's Data Catalog

This searchable catalog includes over 70,000 datasets on a wide range of topics. For instance, it includes datasets from federal, state, academic and other institutions.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

This website offers access to publications and data sets on labor and economic issues.

U.S. Census Bureau

The U.S. Census Bureau provides access to data about the United States in a variety of formats.

U.S. Supreme Court Databases

This database includes data on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1953 to 2005.

TRAC

TRAC provides information about staffing, spending, and enforcement activities of the federal government. 

Federal data sources are one of the top free online legal research tools that provide plenty of useful information for lawyers.

Statutes and Legislative Materials

Congress.gov

This site offers access to a wide range of government documents and information. For example, it includes annotated constitution, legislation, committee reports, congressional records, and treaty documents. Consequently, this makes Congress.gov an excellent source for in-progress bills.

USA.gov

This website offers a wealth of federal government information. For instance, it includes links to the websites of departments, agencies and branches of government. Accordingly, these can be a good source for statutory and legislative materials.

U.S. House of Representatives

The next resource is The Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives. It offers a searchable version of the most recent version of the U.S. Code. Moreover, this website also provides access to session laws.

American Memory

The Library of Congress’s American Memory collection includes Congressional Records up to 1875. The best part is that these can be searched or browsed.

Supreme Court

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court website includes the full text of certain materials, including many opinions. In addition, it suggests resources for finding briefs and provides access to recent decisions. Also, it includes the bound volumes of the U.S. Reports from 1992 to the present.

Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases

This site from the American Bar Association provides the full text of briefs. In fact, they come from a large number of U.S. Supreme Court cases. Additionally, these include cases that have not yet been heard.

SCOTUS blog

This blog covers Supreme Court cases. Furthermore, it compiles the documents for most major Supreme Court cases including petitions and amicus briefs.

Oyez

This website contains a wide range of primary and secondary materials related to the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition, Oyez offers audio recordings of selected oral arguments.

State Law

National Conference of State Legislatures

This website includes a searchable database of state legislature websites. 

Open States

This site from the Sunlight Foundation provides access to state legislative information. Moreover, it includes pending legislation and legislator votes.

Cornell Legal Information Institute

Cornell LII contains constitutions, statutes and legislative information by state.

Court document database is one of the top free online legal research tools for lawyers.

State Case Law and Court Documents

Caselaw Access Project

The Caselaw Access Project (“CAP”) expands public access to U.S. law. Moreover, it made all published U.S. court decisions freely available online, in a consistent format. Also, it offers digitized formats from the collection of the Harvard Law Library.

U.S. Court websites

This website from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts collects links to the federal court’s websites. In addition, it offers digital copies of recent opinions.

CourtListener

Court listener is an alert tool for the U.S. judicial system that is updated daily. Moreover, it includes all precedential opinions from the Supreme Court and Circuit Courts. Non-precedential opinions are also included, except the D.C. Circuit. In addition, this site also offers a citator.

FindLaw

This searchable database from FindLaw offers U.S. Supreme Court opinions since 1893. FindLaw also maintained a database of case summaries for lower court opinions since 2000.

Justia

Justia includes an extensive database of federal cases. It is one of the top free online legal research tools you can use to your advantage.

RECAP Archive

This is a database of federal district and bankruptcy court documents from PACER. In fact, it has been contributed to the RECAP Archives for free access. However, not all documents that are on PACER will be available here.

National Center for State Courts - Court Websites

This website collects data on state courts and also includes links to state court websites.

LLRX

LLRX offers a free collection of state court rules, forms and dockets.

Avalon Project at Yale Law School

This project provides digital copies of historical diplomacy documents including treaties.

Congress.gov Treaty Documents

Treaty documents are available on Congress.gov for all treaties submitted to the Senate since the 94th Congress. Treaties submitted prior to the 94th Congress are included if they were pending in 1975.

Law Library of Congress Guides and Resources

National Archives

The Codification of Presidential Proclamations and Executive Orders is an online version of an out-of-print publication. That publication ran from April 13, 1945. to January 20, 1989. The Public Papers of the Presidents collected links to the online versions of these compilations starting with President Reagan.

The American Presidency Project

This website from the University of California Santa Barbara collects data, documents and media. Specifically, these are related to the American Presidency. Moreover, they include inaugural addresses, executive orders, proclamations and more.

WhiteHouse.gov

The White House website offers links to presidential documents. For example, executive orders, presidential memoranda, and proclamations.

Guide to Law Online: U.S. Judiciary

Bibliography of links to federal courts’ websites and online repositories of decisions issued out of the federal courts.

How to Find Free Case Law Online

Law Library of Congress guides freely available options for tracking down electronic case law.

Secondary sources are one of the top free online legal research tools that provide plenty of useful information for lawyers.

Secondary Sources

Google Scholar

Google Scholar offers access to many legal documents. For example, these include patents, legal opinions and journals. Hence, this is one of the top free online legal research tools you can use to your advantage.

American Bar Association's Legal Technology Resource Center Journal Search

The next source is American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center Journal Search. It lets you search over 400 open access and free legal journals.

SSRN Legal Scholarship Network

SSRN offers a large collection of working papers, both pre-and post-publication. Moreover, these papers cover a range of law-related academic subjects.

Directory of Open Access Journals

This database collects open access journals on all topics. Furthermore, the legal sub-category contains 139 journals.

Feedspot

Feedspot provides you with relevant blog articles within your legal practice area. In fact, you can check them out on their Top 45 Legal Marketing Blogs list. 

JSTOR Open Access Content

Most of the articles on JSTOR are only available to individuals at institutions with a JSTOR subscription. However, JSTOR partnered with leading presses on a project. Consequently, this led to adding open access ebooks to their collection. Thus, thousands of titles are now available from various publishers. For instance, University of California Press, Cornell University Press, NYU Press, and University of Michigan Press and more.

WEX

WEX is the Legal Information Institute’s free legal dictionary and encyclopedia. Hence, it is another top free online legal research tool you can use to your advantage.

Law.com

This site offers a free legal dictionary that defines important legal terms. Thus, it is a good resource when getting started with a new legal topic.

Justia.com Dictionary

Justia also offers a legal dictionary that is both searchable and browsable by major legal topics.

NOLO

This legal encyclopedia offers articles on a wide range of practice areas. For example, Bankruptcy, Disability Law, Family Law, IP, Real Estate and Finance.

Directory of Open Access Books

This database provides access to open access books on a wide range of topics, including law. In addition, it is searchable or browseable by title, subject or publisher.

Trove

Trove is another top free online legal research tool you can use to your advantage. In fact, this database collects newspapers digitized as part of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program.

World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

OKR contains works from 2009-2012 on a wide range of topics and all regions of the world. In addition, it includes links to datasets associated with research.

Google News Archive

Google’s News Archive allows users to search historical newspapers. Furthermore, you can retrieve scanned images of their pages. Although it is not specific to legal newspapers, it is worth a try. Especially if you are searching for a PDF of a newspaper article.

Conclusion

If you’re a solo practitioner or small firm, save these free legal research tools to get started. Accordingly, they will help you familiarize yourself with a new area of law. Moreover, they will save you the amount of time it takes to find what you need. Additionally, when you switch over to paid subscription service you will already have your search terms. To continue exploring similar topics, we recommend reading Top Legal Directories.

We can help your business grow and progress.

If you require guidance with setting the winner marketing strategy, contact us today.

Fill in the application form below and schedule a free consultation with us!

Learn how to improve your SEO strategy.

34 Tips To Improve SEO Strategy

by MarketingSEO
Learn how to improve your SEO strategy.

Introduction

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It’s the process of increasing your website traffic through search engine results. Ultimately, this helps your website become more discoverable. When potential customers search terms related to your brand, they’ll have a better chance of discovering your website. Consequently, you have a better chance to convert them into customers.

According to the statistics, 93% of experiences on the Internet start with a search engine. Moreover, the first five results that show up on Google get 67% of all clicks. In other words- if you’re not number one on the page, you miss out on a third of potential traffic. If you’re relying on people to find you through a Google search, SEO needs to be at the top of your priority list. There are certain things you can do to increase your chances of getting ranked higher on Google searches. Follow these suggestions to improve your SEO strategy and rank your website to the top of search engine results.

Improve your page loading speed

Page speed matters when it comes to both SEO and conversions. If your load speed is too slow, it will harm your ranking. In addition, a slow website will also impact the way your website visitors engage with your pages. Research shows 40% of visitors will abandon websites if the page takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Furthermore, 80% of those visitors won’t return to that website.

On the other hand, if your page loads fast, people will keep coming back. Google’s algorithm will recognize your website’s popularity and adjust your search ranking accordingly. This makes it extremely important to optimize both your page speed and server response time. If you want to test the speed of your website, try online services such as Pingdom for free.

This will allow you to test your website from different locations all over the world. If you find that your site is running slow, check your website theme and plugins. Moreover, Google’s PageSpeed Insights gives you valuable insight into how fast your site loads across all devices. In addition, it shows you the specific issues you can fix to make your site faster.

Produce high-quality content

Improve your SEO strategy by producing high-quality content. Your content needs to be high quality, recent and relevant. That way you can drive more traffic to your website and increase its popularity. Another factor that impacts your SEO ranking is so-called dwell time. This relates to how much time people spend on your website per visit. Websites that provide highly informative content typically have long dwell times. When users bookmark your website from a Google Chrome browser, it can help your SEO ranking. High-quality and relevant content will increase the chances of your website being bookmarked by visitors.

Optimize your images

Make sure to optimize your images if you want to improve your SEO strategy and overall ranking. This includes factors such as the file format and size. Huge images can slow your page loading time, which can ultimately harm your ranking. Therefore, resize or compress your images to optimize them. You can also use your images to sneak in keywords by naming them accordingly. Hence, strategically use keywords in the title of your image as well as the caption or description.

Organize your content with header tags

Headings are another way to help improve the user experience on your website. They break up the content and make it easier to read or skim. Plus, headers make everything look more appealing, which is always beneficial. If your website is full of text, it’s going to discourage people from spending a long time on it. As a result, your SEO ranking will suffer. If you’re running your site on WordPress, you can easily change the header tags.

Start blogging

Blogging is an outstanding tool for lead generation that helps you engage with visitors to your website. Furthermore, blogging also improves SEO rankings. Producing fresh, updated, and relevant content can drive people to your website. Moreover, it can give them a reason to stay on your pages for a while. If you can establish a large group of faithful readers, you can get lots of traffic to your site daily.

Use outbound links

Increase the credibility of your website by linking your data claims to trustworthy and authoritative sources. Use citations from authority sources for facts you present in your blog posts through outbound hyperlinks to those websites. In addition, make sure they are recent and up to date. For example, outbound links to resources from 2009 are irrelevant. Hence, they won’t be as effective for your SEO ranking. Moreover, you should also include internal links. As a result, these links will direct visitors to other pages on your website.

Add imagery

Improve your SEO strategy by adding relevant imagery to your website. Consider adding other multimedia elements such as videos, slideshows, or audio to your site. This will help improve the user experience for it will be easier for your visitors to watch than read. Moreover, it can dramatically improve the amount of time someone spends on your website. Depending on the length of your videos, people could be on your page for several minutes. Consequently, it will definitely boost your search ranking.

Make sure your site is readable

Keep your audience in mind when you’re writing content on your website. If you want people to visit your site and spend time there, speak in terms they can understand. In other words- create your content in a way the majority of people can understand. If you’re not sure if your content is readable, use online resources to help such as Readable.com. It can help you identify words that might be too long or difficult for people to comprehend.

To improve your SEO strategy, make your website readable.

Fix broken links

Improve your SEO strategy by fixing broken links. It doesn’t look good when a link you provide to your visitors brings them to an invalid website. You can use tools like Dead Link Checker to search for links with errors on your website. Anytime a link goes dead, you’ll be contacted right away so you can replace it. As a result, this will drive more traffic to your website.

Optimize your site for mobile devices

Over 60% of Google searches come from mobile devices. Google recognizes this and ranks sites accordingly. Moreover, it has launched the mobile-first index. This means you might rank better if you focus on mobile friendliness. Therefore, your website needs to be optimized for mobile users. If your site isn’t optimized, it’ll hinder the user experience, adversely affecting your ranking. Responsive design offers the easiest solution. You can download free and premium WordPress themes that have responsive design built-in. In other words- you don’t have to worry about adding any extra code.

Properly format your page

If your website is cluttered with too many pictures, advertisements, colors and blocks of text, it can appear untrustworthy. Your site architecture and navigation also fall into this category. A clean format and design will improve your SEO ranking. Organize the layout for your website to be neat, clean and uncluttered. Consider things like your font size and typography. Use colored text, bold font, and italics sparingly. In addition, bullet points and checklists make it easy for visitors to scan through your content.

Provide appropriate contact information

Improve your SEO strategy by proving contact information. Avoid people starting reporting your website just because you forgot to include basic information. Your contact information should be clear and in plain sight for people to find. Therefore, provide your phone number, email address, location etc.

Set up on Google Business

Local SEO is important, hence focus on setting up an account on Google Business. Edit the info on your business, verify contact info, add images, monitor reviews, and more. This can give you a huge advantage over competitors who fail to capitalize on this powerful resource.

Encourage sharing on social media

You can get your SEO ranking improved if people share links to your website on social media. One of the best ways to do this is by including social sharing icons on all your content. In addition, you should also share links on your social media pages. When that information appears on people’s timelines, all it takes is just one click for them to share it.

Use keywords

Keywords play a major role as they can improve your SEO strategy. Hence, include words people will search for throughout your content and fit them naturally into sentences. Include them in your header tags and even in image captions. You should also use long-tail keywords, which are three or four-word phrases that could be found in a search. For example, someone probably won’t just search for the word “lawyer” when they’re looking for something. But they may type in the phrase “personal injury lawyer” as an alternative. If your keywords match their search, your website will have a greater chance of getting ranked higher. However, avoid saturating your website with keywords, for it will have an adverse effect on your ranking.

Conduct thorough keyword research

Tools like Ubersuggest help you find keywords related to your business and niche. Use it to find long-tail keywords that fit with your prospective customers’ user intent. Think about why they would search for a particular keyword and what they would hope to find on a page about it.

Start with a broad keyword. Ubersuggest will provide you with a list of keywords that you can filter in several ways. You’re looking for long-tail keywords you can use to attract a specific audience. Do this over and over again as you create more pages for your site. Write long, in-depth articles that provide as much information on the topic as possible.

Write click-worthy titles and descriptions

When writing titles for search engines, you only have 65 characters to write your headline. Therefore, keep several tips in mind. Firstly, front-load all of your keywords in your titles. People will typically only scan the first two words of a title. Next, keep it predictable. Your title should click-through to a page that meets the expectations of the user. Finally, keep it clear. Your reader should know what your webpage is about in 65 characters or fewer.

Write a great meta description

The meta description is the next element you must optimize. Here are the three most important Google tips on how to create a good description: Make them descriptive, unique and short. Firstly, front-load keywords that are relevant to the article. Use the journalist formula to answer the important questions: “Who? What? Why? When? Where? How?” Next, each meta description should be different from other pages’ descriptions. Finally, make them short because Google limits meta descriptions to 160 characters or fewer.

Create a mobile app

Creating a mobile app can help improve your SEO strategy. This is a rather expensive option, but it’s also an investment. Google is now indexing apps on Google search with Firebase App Indexing. When people are searching for keywords in your niche, they could find your app. As a result, it will increase your SEO. For example, when you search “reserve a restaurant” on Google, you’ll find an app on page one. When your app pops up on a Google search, it automatically becomes a valuable resource.

To improve your SEO strategy, create a mobile app.

Use latent semantic indexing (LSI)

Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is very powerful and can give your site a serious SEO boost. LSI is the process search engines use to find related keywords in addition to your main keywords. In other words, LSI finds synonyms for keywords. For example, if you’re writing an article about Facebook, you’d include “social media network” as an LSI keyword. This article is a great example of how LSI can improve your SEO. Utilize it to see just how effective it can be.

Eliminate unnecessary code

If your site has excess code, search engines will take longer to showcase your site. Therefore, your code should be as lightweight as possible. This will also help your page load time, which will ultimately help you improve your SEO strategy.

Join Q&A sites

You can increase your website’s traffic by growing your personal brand. Afterward, use your personal brand to boost traffic and generate high-converting leads. Start sharing your knowledge tactfully and helping others without giving away your business secrets. First, register at Q&A sites such as Quora or wikiHow to showcase your expertise. Furthermore, consider LinkedIn groups and reach out to other sites in your niche that could benefit from your guest authorship or input.

Compose a thorough, well-written answer to someone’s question, preferably a question that doesn’t have many answers. Write the best answer possible and include links to your site when it’s relevant. By doing this, you’re helping the person asking. Moreover, you’re getting attention to your links, exposing them to countless readers. As a result, you’ll be seen as a valuable resource by the community and people will be more likely to click your links.

Use infographics

Utilize infographics to improve your SEO strategy. Include professional design and valuable content in order for your infographics to be powerful. Furthermore, fulfill your infographic with at least 2,000 words of high-quality content. Google won’t index the text on the infographic itself, so writing long-form content will give you extra ranking power.

Give your audience what they want and expect

If you meet your audience’s expectations and help them find what they want, you’ll secure a customer. You want your audience to convert at much higher rates. Hence, study your audience closely and give them what they need and expect. If you’ve applied the data to your site, you can expect a jump in conversion rates. The people who visit your site find what they need quickly and appreciate your brand for providing it. Therefore, create a site with valuable content. Moreover, provide plenty of opportunities for visitors to convert.

Get some press

Use press to help your company rank higher and faster. A simple way is to pay a PR agency like PR Serve, which has a performance-based pay model. In other words- it allows you to pay it only when it gets you press. A cheaper way to get press is to build relationships with reporters. Consider continually helping them out with their stories and giving them feedback. As a result, you will increase your chances of them eventually being interested in covering your company. Finally, if you want to go for the cold approach, you can always follow this PR email pitch template.

Get interviewed

Improve your SEO strategy by getting interviewed. One of the easiest ways to generate links is through interviews. Every time someone interviews you, chances are they will link to your website. The links will be fairly relevant too as the linking web page will typically talk about your story or what your company does.

Diversify your links

There are a lot of different types of links you can get. For example- homepage links, links from blog posts, directory links, educational links, footer links etc. If you want to rank high, focus on several types of link-building methods such as directory links. Get links to your site from blogs, directories, and sometimes from the homepages of other sites. Moreover, make sure those links are also relevant as in order to have the biggest impact.

Turn a standard post into a long-form post

Long-form content ranks better than a typical 500-word post. Look for a shorter post, under 1,000 words that can be improved to its full potential. Then spend 30 minutes “beefing it up” by adding more content, charts, graphs, visuals etc. As a result, you will have long-form content that will rank better in search results.

To improve your SEO strategy, write long-form posts.

Get into Google News

News articles get pulled by Google on two SERPs—the traditional SERP you’re used to and the News section. Getting into Google news requires perseverance, honest reporting, cutting-edge articles, and regular updates. If you want your website to show up on the Google News SERP, here’s what you should do:

  • Start a “News” section on your blog/site.
    Update it regularly (1-2 newsy posts a day is a good practice).
  • Publish authoritative, unique, original, and newsworthy content. For research, set up a Google Alert for keywords in your niche.
  • Informational articles such as how-tos and guides do not qualify. Every post must be newsy.
  • Do not publish aggregated content.
  • Every news article you write must be authoritative.
  • The byline of each post must be linked to the author’s profile, which should contain their contact information and links to their social media profiles.

Follow the Google quality guidelines before starting your news section.

You need to subscribe to a paid Google account to become a Google News Partner. Consider signing up for a Google Apps email account, available for as low as $6 per month. Finally, start publishing, and enroll as a Google News Partner after building up sizeable content (at least 50 pages).

Make your website useful for your specific audience

Focus on your goals to:

  • Serve up the best possible content for your audience
  • Create a positive website user experience
  • Prioritize content that offers significant value

Give your audience what they want and write content that people love to read. Make sure to provide meta information to help Google better understand the copy. If you optimize your website for conversions, focus on guiding visitors toward a specific goal. Knowing how to optimize your website for SEO and conversions simultaneously furthers both of those goals and creates a better relationship between your site and the search engines.

Grow your organic traffic

Invest your time and, if necessary, money into growing your organic traffic. Attracting organic traffic through SEO is free, but you have to pay to develop and promote the content. However, that’s not nearly as expensive as pay-per-click. When you compare the close rate between searchers who arrive at your site via organic search and those that come via paid ads, the results are illustrative. Organic search closes at nearly 15 percent, while paid search closes at less than 2 percent. It might take longer, but the results last longer and result in more conversions.

Capitalize on existing traffic

Learning how to optimize your website for conversions requires an understanding of the user experience. Figure out how visitors navigate your site, whether they scroll down the page, and how often they click on your calls to action (CTAs). When people visit your website, make a lasting impression and encourage them to return. If someone signs up for your email list, you can contact them at a later date with offers, incentives etc.

You can also encourage visitors to follow you on social media, visit your product pages, and read your blog posts. Capitalizing on existing traffic helps improve your conversion rate because a higher percent of your organic traffic will convert. You know which offer your audience will respond to and how to present it to them in an appealing way.

Analyze all of your website data

User behavior reports and Google Search Console traffic data to analyze your website. User behavior reports, show you how people behave once they land on your site. On the other side, GSC data tracks key metrics, such as number of sessions, number of unique sessions, bounce rate, and more. Hence, analyze the data for specific patterns. Referral sources can tell you a lot about your audience. Look for pages that get more traffic and more conversions than others. Reverse-engineer that page’s success to replicate it across your site.

Get quality backlinks

Backlinks are a prime factor in helping your website rank better. When high-quality sites link to yours, Google interprets the link as a signal of your site’s credibility. As you build a solid backlink profile, your pages will climb up the ranks. Getting quality backlinks takes effort, but you’ll see results. Moreover, consider emailing influencers and other blogs in your niche. Share your article with them and point them to a page where you’ve shared a piece of their content.

Conclusion

Learning how to optimize your website for SEO and conversions is crucial for your business’s success. If you have good SEO, you can attract more traffic and get more opportunities to convert potential customers. The previous tips and strategies will help you learn how to improve SEO ranking and conversions. As a result, you will better your SEO strategy and achieve overall business success.

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Learn how to keep your clients happy and improve your customer service.

Keep Your Clients Happy & Improve Customer Service

by Customer ServiceMarketing
Learn how to keep your clients happy and improve your customer service.

Introduction

Customer happiness refers to providing a happy and satisfying user experience to your customers. It’s when the expectations of your users are met at the right time with the right intention. Happiness is the first step towards achieving loyalty and building a truly customer-centric brand. As a result, you generate loyal and happy customers who become your brand’s true advocate. Making your customers happy can be a great goal to have in terms of understanding if your business is scaling up in the right direction.

How can you improve customer service and customer satisfaction? It happens at every stage of their customer journey, whether they are a new client or one that has enjoyed a positive customer service experience from you for years. The solution simply requires you to take a more mindful approach to establishing and maintaining customer relationships.

Here are all the steps you can take to improve your customer service:

Define your brand’s personality

Your brand needs to have a personality and identity in order to be easily relatable. Defining your buyer persona and crafting your brand voice embodies what your brand stands for. It is imperative to know your target audience persona because your personality must always be the right fit for your target audience. For instance, if your target audience consists of 70-year-old men and women, your brand cannot be youthful and cool. Furthermore, your brand personality is going to help in humanizing your brand. It will make your brand more relatable and likable. This is ideally the first step in crafting your customer’s journey and improving your customer service.

Attract the right customers

Check your website, your social media accounts, Google My Business listing etc. If your website looks outdated, you’re going to have a hard time reaching Millennials and Gen Zers. If your social media accounts don’t have content or your GMB page doesn’t exist, no one will check your website. Google is where most people search first when they want to find out about a product or company.

With Google My Business you can provide prospects with a quick overview of what you do. In addition, you can provide high-quality photos, local contact information and client reviews. Furthermore, your website, social media and legal directories give you a chance to share your mission and values. That way you can write for your ideal customer and reach more audience.

Understand Their Business

A client-firm relationship has to be a partnership if both sides are to succeed. How can you help someone accomplish their goals if you don’t understand their business, brand or market? Therefore, take time to get to know your client. Craft an onboarding process designed to get as much information about your client as you can and clarify project goals.

Be Proactive

A proactive approach applies to any area of the salesperson’s company that serves the customer. Notice all the questions that need to be answered and effectively respond to occurring problems. Solve the problem easily and fast in order to build trust between clients and your law firm. Use the opportunity to show them that what you promised in the first place is what they will get. Finally, treat each customer like they are the most important person on your list. As a result, your customer service will improve.

Keep you clients happy by communicating regularly.

Communicate regularly

Whether it’s before the sale, during or after the sale, communication is the key to a healthy client relationship. Therefore, listen to your clients carefully and ask relevant questions. For example, how would they like to be contacted and how often. Also, check if your company is doing everything to serve your client well. Collect valuable information from the customer to ensure the small problems don’t turn into big ones.

This is one of the most effective ways of improving your customer service. Good communication starts with a series of conversations that help you understand a project’s scope and goals. The client will tell you what they want to achieve, and you can manage their expectations before work begins.

Once a project gets started, keep the client in the loop by using a project management solution such as Toggl Plan. By using charts and logical and easy-to-follow timelines, you can share them with the client. That way they can view all project tasks that have been completed, are in progress or haven’t been started yet. They will appreciate these real-time insights more than the end-of-week email reports.

Follow up proactively with progress updates

Always follow up on every transaction with a personalized thank you message. Also, if you tell a customer you are looking into an issue, follow up with a status update. Contact them through e-mail and offer information that would be useful to them. That way you show customers that you’re there for them even when they’re not buying. A phone call or email can make the difference between a happy customer and a disgruntled one.

Research shows that as many as 82% of customers will leave if they don’t feel appreciated. Some companies offer discount codes for the customers’ next purchase. Others send out thank you email with some suggestions of other purchases to consider. No matter your approach, always thank your customers to ensure they are happy with the experience.

If you keep your clients happy, they will tell friends and family about your company. They will post about your product to social media and write online reviews. They are, in short, priceless ambassadors of your brand. Improve customer happiness today and you’ll improve your overall business tomorrow.

Listen to your customers

The next step to improving your customer service is listening to your customers. Now that you know who your customers are, pay close attention to what they are looking for. Furthermore, what are the problems they face, how much are they willing to pay for the solution and so on. Paying attention to those details gives you a clear picture of your customer’s intention and expectations. And the best way to keep your clients happy is by knowing and meeting their expectations.

Provide a personal touch

Communication is vital to keep your clients happy and maintain a healthy relationship. Personalizing your website content, customer experience, and conversations allows your users to feel special and unique. Personalization can start with something as small as using the customer’s first name in the email or live chat conversation. However, it can also mean customizing your web pages depending on the demographics of the viewers.

RedPoint Global survey revealed how frustrated consumers are with a lack of attention to the personal data they share with businesses. In retail, in particular, customers are disappointed when:

  • They receive offers for something they already bought
  • They are shown completely irrelevant offers
  • Not being recognized as an existing customer

Therefore, collect details about your clients to personalize your communications with them. For instance, you should have their name and email address. One tool that can help you email your lists or personalize individual emails is Copper.

If you can infuse every email and call with a level of personalization, your customers will remember that. You’ll be the person who went to the trouble of noting down those important details, which reflects well on your attention to detail—and your business!

Keep your employees happy

Happy employees make happy customers. One of the easiest and the most effective ways to improve your customer service is to start with your employees. Align your team around customer happiness, inspire them, be nice to them and provide opportunities to grow.

Every company can win over the long run with employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it. It’s amazing the difference transparency can make when you’re rolling out team goals. Emphasize to your team that improving customer happiness will forever be important for your team, and every goal you set will be an actionable step towards achieving it.

Keep you clients happy by engaging with your customers.

Engage with your customers

It is important for your brand to engage your customers at the right intervals and frequency. Keep them engaged by staying in touch. Send regular updates via mail or email- for example, a monthly or quarterly newsletter. It is a fantastic way of keeping customers informed and simply reminding them of your business name.

One of the best ways to engage your customers is to have live chat messaging software installed inside your product. This makes your brand accessible and reliable as your customers can reach out to you at any point. It allows you to stay in close proximity to your customers and be there for them whenever needed.

Fine-tune your goal

To fine-tune your actions into a reasonable goal, ask these questions:

  • What will our team do differently each day to make this happen?
  • How can we track this together? 
  • How will we stay accountable? 
  • When will we assess the success of this goal? 

Now you can put those pieces together in a single, achievable goal.

Communicate the goal to your team

Goals can only be achieved when your team understands what they’re working towards. That’s why team transparency is so important. Discuss your new goals with your team so that everyone is on the same page. At any point in time, every teammate should be able to explain your team’s goal and what they need to do to achieve it.

When you roll out a new goal to the team, tell them the information they need to feel invested in. For example, why you’re setting this goal and how important it is to your company. Furthermore, what’s expected of each individual and what you promise to deliver for them.

If this goal involves a significant change to your team’s workflow, develop a plan to help them make a change and stick to it. Usually, the best way to do this is with scheduled check-ins — weekly, monthly, or whatever makes sense for your team.

Ask Customers for Their Opinions

To really improve your customer service, reach out for your customer’s opinion. Ask them about their experience and what improvements they would like for you to include. This can provide valuable information on how you can improve products and your service delivery. For example, explore what would your customers change about your product to make them want to buy it. This question goes to the heart of whether a customer would invest their hard-earned money in the service you offer.

Ask for Customer Reviews Regularly

Whatever your preferred review site, such as Google Reviews, Facebook, Yelp or others, encourage your happy customers to share their positive comments. Monitor review sites so you can reply if needed and respond to unhappy customers.

Your prospects will instantly decide whether to buy from you or move on to a competitor, based on your reviews. It’s not just bad reviews that cause customers to pass on buying from you. Having no reviews is also bad. People won’t have a comfort level so they would rather skip past your business than risk being dissatisfied.

If you haven’t received positive feedback from clients, ask them if they are satisfied with your services. They will see it as evidence of your law firm’s commitment to giving them a positive experience. In addition, they will appreciate your willingness to hear their opinion. If there are any problems, use this opportunity to discuss what’s frustrating them and suggest ways of improving the situation.

Keep your clients happy by responding to their feedback.

Respond to all feedback

When you receive negative commentary, be ready to step up, acknowledge the mistake or reason for their dissatisfaction, apologize and try to make amends with them. This goes for anywhere you might receive reviews and includes both your negative reviews as well as positive ones.

A tool like ReviewTrackers, BirdEye or Podium would be useful for this. With a reputation management tool, it’s much easier to keep your eye on all of your online feedback. Plus, if you can save time monitoring your reviews, you’ll have more time to thoughtfully respond to all the feedback you receive.

Respond promptly to questions and concerns

In order to improve your customer service, answer phone calls immediately and reply to emails within an hour or two. Ideally, you should respond to their messages within a day. If you are busy and won’t be checking emails or voicemails regularly, arrange for someone else to support the client. You’ll come back to a happy client instead of a disgruntled one. Acknowledging your customers immediately goes a long way in improving customer satisfaction. Simple gestures show you care. Train your team regularly to make sure they show your company’s best side.

Build customer loyalty with a reward program

A proven strategy to keep your clients happy is to reward them for loyalty. Many businesses have a “buy 5 – get 1 free” card or something similar. However, you can also reward customers unexpectedly. After a repeat customer visits you a few times, give them an added service or a special discount. A tool like Candy Bar manages your loyalty program automatically and a customer can use it from their phone.

Treat Customers Like People

Establish your customer communication on trust and shared values. Be kind, responsive and genuine. Don’t see customers as a sale, instead see them as a person. Going the extra mile to care how your customer feels about your services. Keeping your clients happy is the best way to maintain your company’s revenues. Also, a happy customer will naturally spread the word about your business and become loyal to you. And loyal customers are the core of your long-term growth.

Keep tabs on your individual customers

Knowing your customer’s unique details will help you build stronger and more meaningful relationships with them. For example, you can make note of your client’s birthday. Afterward, you can plan on sending him a handwritten note reminding him that you remembered his special day. There are plenty of online tools to help you manage lots of customers and keep track of all important details.

Present Them With Relevant Data

Every client wants analytics relevant to their goals and industry. When you provide metrics and data, use information that fits their campaign. In addition, explain how everything will be tracked and measured. You’ll inspire confidence and be able to forecast project results with greater accuracy.

Design a great experience

Your service should be designed to provide a great experience and supports your customer journey. Think of all the things your customer would want to achieve with your product to complete a job. Create a journey map accordingly and design your product to provide an interactive experience.

Your design should also ensure that it stands by your brand’s voice and buyer persona. For instance, if your brand’s persona is luxury, then a black background can add more meaning than a different color. Always think in terms of offering a great experience instead of offering plain service or a set of features your customers would use.

Keep you clients happy by providing an outstanding service.

Provide an A-class service

Customer service is a way to meet your customer’s expectations. Ensure that you are in constant touch with your customers starting from onboarding. Keep your clients happy and build a loyal relationship with them. Have a complete understanding of why they are using your product and how to make the experience better for them. Understand which problems they are trying to solve using your products. Maintain a content repository to help them attain their goals easily. Talk to them, write to them, stay connected at all times. Send newsletters and product updates regularly. Solve their queries efficiently and make them feel special.

Provide an outstanding support

Be ready to provide support if your customer needs it in all phases of your collaboration. By being empathetic to your customers’ needs and problems, they’ll feel grateful instead of frustrated or angry. In fact, after a positive customer service experience, 42% of customers ended up making another purchase. However, after a negative experience though, 52% of them ended their relationship with the business.

As your business grows, it will become difficult to manage customer details. Rather than try to keep tabs on every point of contact, it’s best to monitor and manage support through a single channel. Zendesk is a good solution for customer support, for example. With it, you can provide white-glove support to customers, even if you’re a one-person operation.