April 2022: Tying Content to the Sales Funnel

We ask our lead gen and custom content customers to answer one question first: What stage of the sales funnel (top, middle or late) is your focus?

At Law.com, our ABM/Activate products offer the ability to find firms/companies based on their interest level in your product/service, indicating their position in a sales funnel. And our lead gen programs track to different stages in the sales funnel. So you can choose broad programs to drive awareness leads, and more targeted programs to drive later-funnel leads.

What content aligns best with the stages of the sales funnel? Here are some guidelines from our audience marketing and custom content teams. Also check out the key trends legal marketers need to know that follows these tips.

Content Types Aligned to Sales Funnel

Top of the Funnel – Awareness. Define the Challenge/Opportunity

• Educational: Informative content that answers a question. Think of content around regulations, compliance, and improving efficiency.
• Thought leadership: Forward-thinking and macro industry trends.
• Research: Collecting data that supports a challenge/opportunity and puts it into context.
• Premium programmatic units that grab attention but can be dialed up or down at a moment’s notice.
• Immediate gratification: Solves a pain point, improves efficiency right away. These may come in various types but think along the lines of forms to modernize your contracts, quick reference infographics for compliance, or excel sheets to easily calculate some industry formula.

Mid-Funnel – Consideration: What types of solutions are available?

• Tip-based content: Quick tips or deep-dive tactics to improve your business, team, or solve problems.
• Buyers Guides: Step-by-step content that outlines options available to solve a problem or enhance your capabilities.
• Checklists: Short-hand version/summary of buyers guide.
• Evaluations: Tools to assess what your team needs, where it’s at, and what to consider.

Bottom of the Funnel – Justification: What are proof points that show the solution works?

• Case studies/testimonials: How you solved a customer problem.
• Use cases: When the product is new and you don’t have a case study.
• ROI Calculators: Prospects can input high-level data from their business and see potential outcomes.

Here are some examples of content our Custom Solutions team has created along these lines. Click here to see our Custom Solutions Showcase.

If you’d like more information about our ability to target leads and content that is aligned with your sales funnel strategies, please contact me at [email protected].

Trends Legal Industry Marketers Need to Know

• The metaverse beckons: Arent Fox became the first major law firm to buy property in the metaverse along with other firms following clients into this space.
• Firm pay raises/rate hike and its effect on legal departments: We had a story on a study that showed how financial institutions are paying the highest hourly rates for outside counsel, while also doing a better job than many other industries when it comes to tamping down big rate hikes from their law firms.
• The pay war: With all the coverage of the pay war, we even produced an article rounding up our coverage. The salary increases now appear to be slowing. It’s not over, not at all. But sentiment has definitely changed.
• The Big Four as Law Firm Competitors: Let’s see what’s happening outside the U.S.