Every summer, Berbay Marketing & PR likes to take a pulse on the marketing trends shaping the professional services landscape. While firms should consistently evaluate their marketing efforts, the midyear mark is a great time to consider what’s new and on the horizon. Here are our insights on the must-watch trends for 2024 and how you can leverage these tools to achieve success for the remainder of the year and beyond.
Business Intelligence
No, this is not another discussion on using artificial intelligence (AI); it’s about AI’s sister – business intelligence (BI). If you are unfamiliar with BI, it refers to the technologies, processes, and practices used to collect, integrate, analyze and present business data. The main goal of BI is to support better business decision-making. While AI and BI have overlapping applications, each has distinct capabilities, limitations and goals. AI attempts to mimic human intelligence, whereas BI is used to support or enhance human decision-making. AI works with unstructured or dynamic data, and BI relies on structured or static data.
BI’s ability to gain strategic insights and make informed decisions can include everything from client behavior and market trends to financial performance and process inefficiencies. Rather than manually culling through your data and identifying trends, BI can do it for you and pull insights you may not have considered. You will still need to determine how these insights can be integrated into your marketing campaign, but this will reduce your time input and greatly assist in decision-making.
Some popular BI platforms are Tableau, Power BI, Looker Studio and Sisense, although many tools and features may already be available in your current CRM and similar programs. Your platform selection will depend on the size of your firm, extent of data and analysis requirements, integration needs and budget.
Google’s E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T is an acronym that represents four factors Google uses to assess the quality and credibility of online content. It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Successfully demonstrating E-E-A-T can directly impact your website’s ranking and improve your online performance over time.
The good thing is you probably don’t need to start from scratch if your firm is doing some of the basics: making sure your website is secure; optimizing site speed and mobile response, regularly posting articles/blogs that provide advice and cite credible sources, providing clear contact information, etc.
However, as search engine optimization is constantly evolving, new strategies should be implemented to ensure you’re staying ahead of the curve. A few tactics include:
- Add an author and short bio to key pages. About Us, services landing pages, blogs and other essential pages should include an author with their credentials. This practice demonstrates to Google that the information is accurate and written by someone knowledgeable.
- Publish a Community Involvement page. Rather than only discussing your firm’s participation in an annual food drive, showcase your professionals’ commitments. Go into detail on their board positions and organizations where they contribute time and resources. This reinforces your firm’s trustworthiness.
- Post custom images, videos and graphics. Ditch the stock photos and publish custom assets to complement your content. A short video of the author expanding on points in a blog can further demonstrate expertise and trust, and signal to Google you know what you’re talking about.
If you’re not incorporating these into your website, it’s time to talk with your SEO agency and get going. We go into more detail about E-E-A-T in our Essential SEO Strategies blog.
Cross-Marketing
Whether you call it cross-marketing, cross-selling or collaboration, your firm must crack the code to make it second nature for your professionals and firm. Cross-marketing can be one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to generate new business and increase revenue. This approach can boost your firm’s bottom line and strengthen client relationships by addressing broader needs.
We hear from small and large firms alike that the challenges they face when trying to cross-market are:
- Siloed practices and lack of communication. Professionals tend to specialize in a specific area and don’t think about other services the firm offers and/or don’t talk with other practice groups to be able to identify cross-selling opportunities.
- Internal competition. No one wants the client to work with a colleague who won’t provide the same level of service or possibly poach the client from them.
- Fear of overselling clients. Professionals are afraid of damaging relationships by upselling and losing the client’s trust.
- Compensation structure hinders collaboration. Many firms still take an “eat what you kill” approach, which disincentivizes professionals to think beyond their own financial interests or to take time to cultivate internal referral opportunities.
These are valid issues and concerns if no one is leading the charge and working with your professionals on how to cross-sell. This can’t be an agenda item at the firm retreat and then you expect everyone to leave and magically start collaborating. There must be a system in place. A few foundational steps include:
- Designate a point person or team. Someone must oversee cross-marketing efforts and keep initiatives moving forward. Without this, you may get things off the ground only to see people quickly revert to their old ways.
- Create an onboarding program. This introduces new hires early on to the importance of collaboration within the firm, educates them on your process and sets them up for success.
- Conduct regular collaboration sessions. Ensure there are opportunities for your professionals across practice groups and offices to interact and see where there may be potential to offer additional services. This keeps cross-marketing top of mind.
- Don’t do everything at once. If your team is new to this, pick two or three areas where you can make inroads and start there. You don’t want to overwhelm everyone and then they lose focus and interest.
Cross-marketing has many layers and there are numerous aspects to consider as you put together a strategic plan. Read more about overcoming barriers to cross-selling in law firms – and any professional services firm.
Multimedia and UGC
While what you say will always be important, how you display it is just as important today. Great content must incorporate multimedia – images, video, audio, infographics – to capture your audience’s attention. Multimedia content lets you showcase your firm’s personality and dynamically share information. But don’t start haphazardly posting videos and infographics; there should be a strategy behind what and how you’re publishing to drive better engagement – who is your target audience; what topics are they interested in; what format resonates best with them; and when are they online?
Another form of content – user-generated content (UGC) – has continued to gain traction among professional service firms. UGC can be defined as content that is created and shared by unpaid contributors. For professional service firms, this would typically be happy clients or other partners contributing content such as video testimonials, social media mentions and shares, a Q&A about their experience with the firm, and/or Google and Yelp reviews. UGC is effective because it’s someone else speaking positively on your behalf versus your firm saying, “Here’s why we’re the best.”
According to the Nielsen Consumer Trust Index, 92% of consumers trust organic, user-generated content more than traditional advertising, and a survey by Stackla reported 79% of people saying UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions. These statistics underscore UGC’s influence compared to advertising or other promotional content published by your firm.
With this in mind, incorporate ways to make it easier for clients to provide UGC and positive feedback on your firm. Include Google review links on your website and social media, in your newsletter and your email signature. When closing out a matter, provide links to your review sites or ask for a testimonial. Ask satisfied clients for a video testimonial and incentivize them by offering to donate to their favorite charity. If you participate in a client event, post photos on your social media channels and tag the client with the hopes they will share your content.
Partner with a Trusted Marketing and PR Agency
Berbay Marketing & Public Relations has nearly three decades of experience providing law, real estate and financial firms with strategic marketing and public relations services that propel your business forward. Berbay’s dedicated team has demonstrated success securing media placements, achieving nominations and rankings, revitalizing websites and social media, obtaining speaking engagements, and more.
Looking to grow your firm with a proven marketing and PR team? Contact Berbay at 310-499-2584 or info@berbay.com
