Why is data important for marketing in the legal sector?

Data is marketing. So, in my opinion, it is illogical to market without data. You need to know your customers to be able to effectively market to them. How can you make critical decisions if you’re not looking at your available data?

It’s crucial for firms to consider:

Where are customers coming from?
Which channel converts the best?
Are audiences more likely to convert with a specific channel?
Which pages are customers landing on on the website?
What are customers doing on the website once they get there? Which pages are they visiting?
Is the data telling you some pages are preventing conversion via bad UX?

Finding the right data sources

Many firms don’t realise that they have a goldmine of data in-house, which they can use to make informed marketing decisions. You don’t have to invest in expensive data research companies. At Patient Claim Line, we don’t use personal customer data - we only use what’s available through our web analytics and marketing channels.

Reliable data sources to investigate are:

Direct
Pay Per Click
Social Media
Analytics software

Wherever it comes from, it’s important to remember that data resembles real human interaction. There’s a person behind each number.

Once you’ve sourced the data, you can then look at building a customer journey.

Remember where your data has come from, as this offers insight into where the customer is on their journey.

PPC traffic for example, is often a shorter conversion journey as customers have already shown search intent online and are much more likely to convert once on the site.

However, display traffic will often lead to multiple visits to the site as these ads are targeted by interest but do not rely on search intent from the customer.

Using data to enhance marketing campaigns

Data is crucial for mapping out customer intent.

For example, heatmaps can help you see what users are doing on your website and where they’re spending most time. If a user spends a lot of time on a page, they could be in the research phase, so it’s worth exploring these pages to see if there are any CTA signals that could be added to the page to encourage the customer down the next stage of the journey.

User behaviour data – such as which pages have a high bounce rate and where customers are exiting the website – can highlight where more attention and focus is needed in your marketing.

By using this data, you can identify any obstacles that are preventing a lead from converting and then remove that obstruction. For example, if users leave the home page to read FAQ’s, then test-running FAQ sections on landing pages can help you collect useful data to improve user experience. Testing can also help you identify clear and simple Call to Action (CTA’s) to improve conversions.

Ultimately, firms can use data to simplify the customer journey to create the best user experience. We want to tailor a page and convert users sooner by removing obstacles i.e.

Data and the customer journey: a slow-burning relationship

Using data in this way to enhance the customer journey isn’t an overnight success. It’s an investment. It’s a repetitive process of analyse, test, tweak in order to find the best outcome. In our own marketing efforts, we’ve not seen an overnight revolution, but more a continuous improvement as we enhance our campaigns with each phase of research, analysis and testing we complete. It may be a slower approach, but it is 100% worth it.

Gathering and using the right data in the right way is invaluable in so many ways, whether that be knowing you’re targeting the right customer to improving website and campaign performance.

It’s also incredibly valuable for measuring success. By analysing data and making decisions based on actual tangible evidence, you’ll be able to prove exactly what has made your ROI/ROAS improve – and it will improve! – and this is something that is invaluable when reporting back to the board.

Written by Owen Simpson.

Owen Simpson is Head of Performance & Digital Marketing at Patient Claim Line, a medical negligence specialist brand owned and operated by Fletchers Solicitors. In this piece, Owen explains why data is so important and how firms can use customer data to revolutionise the customer journey to create better, high quality leads.