Consider a variation on the old tree-falling-in-the-forest puzzle: If a lawyer posts a blog entry and no one reads it, does her law firm have an effective content marketing strategy?

The answer is no, according to the authors of a new report on the state of legal marketing released this week.

First conducted in 2010, the State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey this year included responses from 114 in-house lawyers and 53 law firm marketing professionals.

Public relations firm Greentarget and law firm management consultancy Zeughauser Group sponsored the polling, which was conducted in the first quarter of 2017.

“We wanted to learn whether—and the extent to which—in-house counsel feel overwhelmed by the content and information coming at them each day. And we hoped to better understand the degree to which law firms might be contributing to the problem,” John Corey, Greentarget's president, wrote in the report's introduction.

The researchers found that information overload is indeed a problem for in-house lawyers, but law firms have nevertheless increased the amount of content they produce—and they plan to increase it even further this year.

The vast majority of law firms have failed to develop and articulate effective strategies for ensuring that their targeted audience consume their content, the study concluded.

According to the report:

• -Ninety-six percent of in-house counsel said information overload about business, industry and legal topics is a problem, and 76 percent said it is a big or somewhat of a problem.
• -Some 81 percent of law firm marketers, however, said they will produce more content in 2017 than in 2016. “None say they will produce less—just as in our 2015 survey. Further, 98 percent say their content budgets for 2017 remained the same or increased from 2016, also tracking our 2015 findings,” the authors stated.
• -Law firms are behind the curve when it comes to having a concrete marketing strategy. The Content Marketing Institute found that 37 percent of business-to-business organizations have a documented strategy. That compares with only 26 percent of law firm marketing representatives included in Wednesday's survey.

What can law firms do to make sure the increasing amount of content they produce gets consumed by the targeted audiences?

Firms should set “distinct and measurable goals,” Corey said. That starts with determining the purpose of their content, devising where and how to present it, and then designating actions for all stakeholders at the firm to take, he said.

But even then, the marketing teams need to recognize a simple truth about their firm's clients, Corey said: “They are not going to be able to consume everything you are sending them.”

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