Achieving Big Results on a Small Budget: Guide to Recruiting Your Ideal Law Firm Digital Marketing Dream Team

The concept is simple enough.

If you want to?build an all-star digital marketing team, then you look for the most talented individuals, convince them that your firm is exactly where they should be, and bring them on board.

After that, it’s just a matter of keeping them happy.

Right?

If it were that simple, every startup would be flourishing with a?dream team powering their marketing efforts.

Not that long ago, a single person or two could handle the bulk of a law firm's marketing efforts.

All that is changing.

No matter how skilled an individual is, they don’t have enough arms – or hours in the day – to get everything done.

Why a Jack-Of-All-Trades Won’t Always Cut It

If you're a small firm, you can probably get by for a brief period with one person wearing multiple hats.

Sometimes that’s you, but more than likely a?full-stack marketer?has been brought on to handle all the marketing magic.

They work in virtually every area of marketing and is your firm's "marketing" guy/gal.

They focus on "digital" rather than specializing in a single domain.

They have a wide skill set, making them highly versatile.

The full-stack marketer is a jack-of-all-trades, and often includes key skills such as:

• Marketing planning
• Content strategy development
• Media buying
• Social media management
• Email marketing
• PPC
• Conversion optimization
• Storytelling
• Analytics and metrics

It may be tempting to try to search for a couple of full-stack marketers that can handle everything.

But keep in mind that while these individuals may have a wide skill set, they aren’t always the ideal solution for a few reasons.

Let’s consider these reasons.

1. Personal Limitations

An individual?can only be so productive?on any given day.

It doesn’t matter how skilled they are, they only have two hands and only so much focus.

Plus, multitasking is bad and they gotta handle the constant micromanaging.

2. Unequal Skill Sets

A full-stack marketer might be able to function in a variety of areas, but that doesn’t mean they carry equal skills in every area. Take this research from Smart Insights:

This image shows the top 20 digital marketing skills and how marketers rated their proficiency in various areas.

Their research reveals just how much of a challenge it is for someone to develop their skills equally across such a wide range of specializations.

The full-stack marketer fits best is ideal for smaller law firms. In that environment, they can use their entrepreneurial spirit and skill set to drive growth.

As the firm grows, it’s best for this kind of individual to move into a leadership position where they can develop your all-star team to include specialists with targeted skill sets.

Who You Need on Your Digital Marketing Team

As you build out your digital marketing team, there are three key roles you should focus on.

1. Acquisition
2. Monetization
3. Content

There’s no rule about the number of people you need for your team, so build out your?marketing team?based on your business needs and the strategy you’ve developed.

If you have no marketing team, your first goal should be to hire at least one person for each of the above areas. This gives you someone accountable for each of the core responsibilities.

1) The Content Team

This is the individual or team responsible for creating, sourcing, and managing all of your content.

Your content team will handle blogs, podcasts, videos, infographics, social content, content curation, white papers, etc.

This includes content that is both client-facing and internal (case studies, ebooks, etc) and at all levels of the sales funnel.

Your content team will use research to determine the best strategy for developing content including:

• The type of content to develop
• The most appropriate topics
• At what stage to present that content
• The best marketing channels to promote that content

2. The Acquisition Team

This team is directly responsible for the initial acquisition of clients including the lead generation strategy and acquisition strategy.

Aside from overseeing the organic and paid traffic campaigns, these are your go-to people for monitoring analytics and?tracking key performance indicators?(KPIs).

Analytics need their own focus.

Why?

Because, for your marketing strategies to be effective, your teams need to know which channels work and which channels are junk as quickly as possible.

Paying attention to metrics and your KPIs will keep you from wasting a ton of money.

Lead generation is also critical. While your teams should work on building relationships with existing clients, you still have to create a constant flow of new ones.

That’s where your acquisition team steps up to the plate.

Your acquisition team should also have a primary handle on graphic design for ads, paid and organic campaigns, and any original images used in your content marketing.

3. The Monetization Team

The purpose of everything?you do is to make money, so having someone devoted to this ensures that everything you’re doing moves you toward that goal.

This team doesn’t just focus on generating money. Their goal is to maximize the revenue your teams and assets are generating.

This is where your team comes together to?optimize conversions through split testing, improving email marketing strategies for better open and click through rates, etc.

Your monetization team will develop the plan to help you?measure success over time.

Early on, you’re likely to have just one person in charge of each of these areas. As your business grows, the goal is to pad out each of these teams, so the work becomes more granular.

Hire great marketers who specialize in things like analytics, blog content, video marketing, email marketing, etc.

Where to Find Your Digital Marketing Dream Team

Business would be so much simpler if you could hire a marketing A-Team at one fell swoop.

If only.

You’ll have to piece your team together, and it won’t happen overnight.

But knowing how to find and attract talent can simplify the process.

1. Attract the talent you want

Hunting for candidates is a start, but you should also focus on improving your culture and creating a better workplace to attract talent.

That starts with a shift in perspective.

Instead of trying to take candidates from application to hiring in a simple linear approach, treat it like you treat your client journey.

Grow relationships with employees the same way you cultivate customer relationships. This leads to loud and proud brand ambassadors.

It doesn’t matter how many recruiters you’ve got. They can’t hold a candle to the power of your employees boasting and operating as a true extension of your company.

2. Target your competition

We all have competitors.

Find the ones that are doing it right within your industry, then solicit the top candidates with similar titles and roles.

Use networks like LinkedIn to find these people.

3. Get referrals

You know?who knows exactly what it takes to do the job?

Your current employees.

Offer them a bonus of some kind for helping you find winning prospects that fit the bill for your open marketing positions.

Your employees will be motivated to find the right people, not only because of the reward involved but also because they want to bring people who will make the workload lighter.

4. Use social media

Social media isn’t just a way to connect to new clients.

There are job seekers out there as well.

Your social channels make it easy to connect with talent from around the globe. Not only does it help you find that talent, but it opens the curtain so candidates can see if you’re a good fit.

It’s more than just posting job openings to your Facebook page.

Think of every customer interaction as an interaction with a potential candidate.

5. Tap LinkedIn groups and online communities

If you want to reach and engage top talent for your marketing team, you need to go where those people are spending the bulk of their time.

For marketing talent, look for discussion groups, forums, and communities where people are providing tremendous insight.

Target the people providing authentic value in discussions.

6. Search specialized job boards

If you’re looking for candidates with a special skill set, then find those specific candidates based on their skills.

Here’s an example. If I wanted to hire a content writer, I might target the community at ProBlogger?with a specific job post.

This is a great way to connect with candidates, especially if you’re open to remote workers.

7. Use targeted paid ads

Paid ads may not necessarily reach the passive candidate, but everyone is on social media (especially Facebook).

You can use the targeting features of Facebook’s ad platform to get your job posts into the feeds of the people who most closely match the skills, interests, region, and even the hobbies you want.

It’s a clever way to try to establish culture fit during the candidate acquisition phase.

8. Screw tradition

Go against traditional hiring means, and chase down the people you know. You probably know someone with a creative streak and some marketing talent.

Pin them down, and see if they’re a good fit.

Traditional wisdom might tell you to avoid hiring friends and family, but in a growing business who else could be more committed to your success?

There’s risk with any employee, but hiring friends (and even family) means there is already an established trust.

9. Grab students

Paid internships are always a possibility, but don’t turn your nose up at unpaid apprenticeships.

Work with a local community or 4-year college to set up an apprenticeship or internship program.

I love the idea of getting someone that is hungry and impressionable.

You can benefit from ambitious marketing students who might need or want that internship before graduation.

A good candidate can grow with you and become an all-star on your digital marketing team.

And hiring someone younger can give you a nice glimpse into the younger generations that your company might not have thought about beforehand.

10. Look globally

There’s no reason why your digital marketing team needs to reside within the physical walls of your business.

Countless organizations hire talent from around the world, and you should as well.

Not only does this broaden the talent pool, but your overhead cost is greatly reduced.

You’re not paying to physically house the employee (desk, office space, hardware, software, supplies, utilities, etc.).

Conclusion

For a small firm, wearing all the hats or hiring a jack-of-all-trades might get the job done.

But as business ramps up with the desire to grow, you’ll need to put together a team of talented digital marketers with the specialized skills to help you scale your business.

Aim for acquisition, content, and monetization skill sets as you grow your team.

Leave no stone unturned when sourcing talent on a global level. Invest in your company culture to attract those talented marketers who are motivated by more than just a paycheck.

With the right cultural fit and a strong onboarding program, you can build that all-star marketing team that will hold their ground and grow with your business.

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