10 Ways to Use Data to Drive Your Content Marketing Decisions
25 November 2024
Data has always been a vital asset for making informed decisions for legal and professional service firms. Whether you are an lawyer, accountant, consultant, or financial adviser, data-driven content marketing can significantly enhance your ability to attract, engage, and retain clients.
Data-driven content marketing allows legal and professional service firms to create tailored, relevant content that resonates with their target audience, leading to better outcomes and more efficient use of resources.
Here we explore 10 ways to use data to drive your content marketing decisions, and how it can make a difference for legal and professional service firms.
1. Identify Your Audience's Needs, Wants and Fears
At Ruche, we always say that effective content marketing begins with understanding your audience! This means identifying their specific needs, wants and fears. Data can help you go beyond general assumptions about your target market and pinpoint exactly what your prospective clients are searching for.
How to Use Data
- Surveys and client feedback: Conduct surveys to gather insights into the types of challenges your clients encounter. This can help you create content that speaks directly to them and addresses their needs, wants and fears.
- Social media analytics: Use tools like LinkedIn Analytics or Meta to track which topics are getting the most engagement. In the legal space, for example, if posts relating to compliance or corporate law receive high engagement, it’s a signal that your audience is interested in these areas.
By gathering data on audience behaviour, you can ensure that your content addresses their most pressing issues, positioning your firm as a valuable resource.
2. Analyse Content Performance to Refine Strategy
Once you’ve started creating content, analysing its performance is essential for making data-backed improvements. By measuring how well different types of content perform, you can refine your content marketing strategy to better align with what resonates with your prospective clients.
How to Use Data
- Website analytics: Tools like Google Analytics provide insights into how visitors engage with your blog posts, whitepapers, or case studies. Track metrics such as bounce rates, time on page, and conversion rates to determine which pieces of content are driving the most value.
- A/B testing: Test variations of headlines, formats, and topics to see what performs better. For example, you can test two versions of an email marketing newsletter — one more technical, another more client-focused — and see which drives more traffic and engagement.
Using performance data allows you to allocate resources toward the types of content that yield the best results, whether that’s more educational articles, case studies, or client testimonials.
3. Leverage SEO Data to Optimise Content For Search
Search engine optimisation (SEO) plays a critical role in ensuring that your content reaches the right audience. By analysing SEO data, you can make more informed decisions about the types of content to produce and how to structure it to improve visibility on search engines like Google.
How to Use Data
- Keyword research: Use tools such as SEMrush or Ahrefs to identify the keywords your target audience is searching for. Focus on long-tail keywords specific to your industry. For example, instead of targeting a broad term like “business law,” you could target “business law for startups” to attract a more niche audience.
- On-page optimisation: Review SEO data to ensure your content includes the right keywords in key areas like headlines, meta descriptions, and subheadings. This not only improves search rankings but also aligns your content with the terms prospective clients are actively searching for.
SEO data helps you align your content marketing efforts with search trends, driving more organic traffic to your firm’s website and increasing your visibility.
4. Use Client Data to Personalise Content
Personalisation is key to building stronger relationships with clients and prospects. By leveraging client data, you can tailor content to specific segments of your audience, making it more relevant and engaging.
How to Use Data
- Client segmentation: Use your CRM system to segment your clients based on factors like industry, case type, or stage of the customer journey. For example, corporate clients may be more interested in articles on regulatory compliance, while individual clients might prefer content on personal injury claims or employment law.
- Email marketing data: Analyse the open rates and click-through rates of your email newsletters to see which types of content resonate with different segments. If a specific client segment is more responsive to newsletters about tax law updates, you can focus on providing more content in that area.
By personalising your content marketing based on client data, you create a more tailored experience that speaks directly to the interests and needs of each audience segment.
5. Monitor Industry Trends With Social Listening
Staying on top of industry trends is crucial for legal and professional service firms, as the landscape is constantly evolving. Social listening involves tracking mentions of key terms and topics across social media platforms to understand what’s gaining traction in your industry.
How to Use Data
- Track relevant hashtags and keywords: Use social listening tools to monitor trending topics within your field to identify emerging conversations around your field of expertise.
- Competitor analysis: Analyse the content your competitors are sharing on social media and how their audience is responding. This can help you identify content gaps and opportunities for differentiation.
Social listening data helps you stay ahead of industry developments and create timely, relevant content that addresses the most current concerns of your prospective clients.
6. Use Engagement Metrics to Optimise Formats
Content comes in many formats, such as blogs, videos, podcasts, webinars, and more. By analysing engagement metrics, you can determine which formats are most effective for your audience and adjust your content marketing strategy accordingly.
How to Use Data
- Measure engagement rates across formats: Look at metrics like time on page, video watch times, or webinar attendance to see which formats are engaging your audience the most. If your audience is spending more time on video content compared to blog posts, it may be worth investing in more video production.
- Track conversions by format: If you find that whitepapers and in-depth guides lead to more client enquiries or bookings compared to shorter blog posts, focus on creating more long-form content.
Understanding which content formats drive the most engagement allows you to allocate resources to the most impactful formats, improving the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.
7. Track Lead Generation Data to Refine Content Offers
Lead generation is a primary goal for most legal and professional service firms, and content can play a significant role in nurturing prospective clients. By tracking lead generation data, you can fine-tune your content offers to better appeal to potential clients.
How to Use Data
- Monitor gated content performance: Track how well gated content, such as whitepapers or eBooks, performs in generating leads. If one piece of content generates more leads than another, analyse what made it more appealing — whether it’s the topic, format, or value proposition.
- Identify conversion paths: Use tools like Google Analytics to track the content paths that lead to conversions. For example, if a prospect typically reads three blog posts and a case study before contacting your firm, you can focus on creating more content that fits into this journey.
Lead generation data helps you understand which content assets are driving conversions, allowing you to create more effective lead magnets and optimise your sales funnel.
8. Use Data to Enhance Client Case Studies
Client case studies are powerful forms of content that can build credibility and trust with prospective clients. Data on client success stories can help you create compelling, data-backed content that showcases your firm’s expertise.
How to Use Data
- Highlight measurable outcomes: In your case studies, use data to highlight specific results your firm achieved for your clients, such as a favorable legal settlement or improved business outcomes. Prospective clients are more likely to trust your expertise when they see tangible results backed by data.
- Analyse case studies’ performance: Track the performance of case studies on your website or social media. If certain client stories resonate more than others, use these insights to guide future content creation.
By leveraging data from client success stories, you can create compelling, authoritative content that demonstrates your firm’s value to prospective clients.
9. Use Competitor Data to Benchmark Your Content
Understanding how your content stacks up against competitors is crucial for staying competitive in the legal and professional services sectors. By analysing competitor data, you can identify areas where your content marketing can improve or differentiate.
How to Use Data
- Competitor content audits: See which content topics and formats are performing well for your competitors. Identify gaps in their content strategy that you can fill, whether it’s through more in-depth articles, unique case studies, or client testimonials.
- SEO benchmarking: Track your competitors’ search rankings for key industry terms. If they consistently outrank you, analyse their content to see what they’re doing differently, whether it’s more frequent publishing, better on-page optimisation, or more backlinks.
Competitor data gives you valuable benchmarks for improving your content marketing decisions and identifying opportunities to stand out in your field.
10. Measure ROI of Content Marketing Efforts
At the end of the day, your content marketing efforts should contribute to the overall growth of your firm. Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of your content marketing campaigns ensures that you’re getting the most value out of your efforts.
How to Use Data
- Track lead-to-client conversion rates: Track how many leads, generated from content marketing campaigns, converted into paying clients. This will help you assess the overall effectiveness of your content in driving business growth.
- Measure content costs vs. revenue: Compare the costs associated with creating and distributing content (e.g., production, promotion, etc.) with the revenue generated from clients who engaged with your content. If certain content assets are driving more revenue, focus on producing similar content.
Measuring the ROI of your content marketing allows you to allocate resources to the most profitable efforts, ensuring long-term sustainability and success.
Data Driven Marketing is the Key to Effective Content Marketing
For legal and professional service firms, data-based content marketing is essential for creating tailored, impactful content that resonates with prospective clients and drives business growth.
By using data to inform your content marketing decisions, you can refine your strategy, optimise content formats, and improve overall performance. From understanding your audience’s needs, wants and fears, to measuring the ROI of your campaigns, these data-driven approaches will help you stay competitive.
Let’s Talk About Creating Data Drive Content
Data-driven content marketing is a powerful way to build authority and potential clients. Our award-winning team, with over 40 years’ experience, knows what it takes to build content strategies that enable data-driven content marketing decisions to be made.
Whether you’re looking to boost your online presence or generate more enquiries, we’re here to help. Ready to take the next step? Get in touch today for a free consultation, and let’s make your firm the go-to legal expert in your field.
All content in this article was correct at the time of publication.
