Digital Media Outreach for Law Firms

If there is something that a lot of entrepreneurs and businesses in the legal sector get confused with is the concept of media outreach. It is not clear what strategy it should follow, which are the benefits of a media outreach campaign and why should law firms implement it.

We are going to tackle the main aspects and help you understand that it is a very efficient advertisement tool to bring in new leads.
A long time ago common advertisement tools were print publications from daily newspapers to high-circulation magazines. But law firms have reduced traditional advertising on television, radio and in the newspaper. They are discovering that a well-designed media outreach campaign combined with a first-class website, SEO and effective social media has a higher ROI and brings better-qualified leads to the firm. So we are going to guide you through five tips that will help you become really good at media outreach:

1. Identify your audience.

By identifying your potential customer you can understand where your target audience mostly consumes news, what websites they check for insight, advice and entertainment. With this information, you can target those publications, social networks or blogs in your media outreach.

2. Build media lists

Let’s say you have already the list prepared, but this is not enough you need to know:
If they allow third-party content
Do they allow posts on your topic of interest
How many viewers their content has and where it is promoted?
Which is the engagement rate of their posts?
Do their values align with your law firm’s values?
Once you have checked the questions we just mentioned you narrowed down a specific list of platforms you can target and the next step is to contact the journalists that work for those media platforms.

3. Prepare your pitch

Journalists receive dozens of requests on a daily basis to publish articles and to differentiate yourself from other companies trying to reach them you need to create a compelling pitch that grabs your contact’s attention especially in the pre-header and the subject line. Media outreach subject lines need to be personal, upfront newsworthy and precise. Make sure you are creating that first good impression.

4. Be selective and persistent.

Before preparing a case study, article or post you should take time to check who is most likely to read that story. From our experience is better to select a platform that can give you more coverage than just sending emails to everyone and hope that someone is going to post your story.

5. Develop your story.

Since pitches should be short and straight to the point (about 100-300 words), there should be the use of data visualizations and other visual media to link to your pitch which will further support your story with fewer blocks of text. Publishers or the media would like to see content that has more visual content such as photos, graphs and videos. Such types of content are the highest in demand, while the other generic press releases with heavy texts and white papers tend to fall off to the bottom of the media inboxes.
Unfortunately developing a good PR strategy is not an easy task for a law firm and PR professionals and marketers do not get always the right approach. Getting attention from the media can be quite difficult because of the huge competition. Nevertheless, with the right approach and a lot of effort, you will be surprised how successful your law firm can become. If you are looking for journalists specialized in legal matters we have prepared a list of curated journalists and influencers in Europe, US and Canada. Follow the link below and you will be able to access it.