Law firms must have clear buyer personas to market their services. However, the best marketing strategies will focus on those who spot changes and adapt accordingly.

Digital marketing has taken a significant step forward with the concept of the buyer individual. It is a great tool for planning and delivering a marketing campaign.

What are the elements that go into creating a persona?

To create a persona, a variety of elements are combined.

• Age
• Gender
• Profession
• Income
• Education level
• Geographical location
• Ethnicity or nationality

These are only a few of the many elements that make up a persona. The relevance of any one of these could depend on the purpose of the legal services and the specific need they address.

Why is it important to buy personas

Personas in Miami’s digital marketing are especially important. A digital campaign can be more effective than any other marketing campaign. It can connect with people’s values, attitudes, and common concerns.

It can target people who fit the persona more effectively than traditional marketing. This could be done through well-planned email campaigns, content posted to certain websites, or campaigns that use the type of social media platforms people use the persona most.

For example, LinkedIn could target older male professionals, while Instagram is more suitable for a younger, predominantly female persona.

How buyer personas can change gradually

So far, so good. What happens when someone does something to make a persona better? This can be affected by major events, social change, and new technology.

Take, for instance, the generation known simply as ‘Millennials. They are younger than those of the same age 20 years ago.

• Homeowners are less likely to be in the minority

• Higher education is more likely

• Higher levels of financial debt (especially student debt)

• People tend to get married later and have children later.

• Socially liberal attitudes are more common

• Technology makes life easier

This has implications for marketing. Marketing is affected by this. For instance, Millennials are less likely to be homeowners than other generations. However, the increased use of technology means that it makes sense for marketers to target them via online channels.

How personas can change swiftly

These types of generational changes can take a while to make. Sometimes, however, things can change very quickly.

One example of this is the persona of people who will be using immigration services as a result of Brexit.

This has created confusion about the margins for residency rights. Not so much for EU citizens currently living in Britain who can apply for stay up to late 2020 but grey areas like the status of their dependents. A no-deal scenario may create deeper confusion.

There are many changes that immigration lawyers may face.

Brexit could also be a major game-changer in immigration policy. The end of the freedom to move will make it more difficult for EU citizens to migrate to Britain, but it could also provide better opportunities for people from other countries.

This could be especially true if the preferred model of Prime Minister Boris Johnson – which is based on the Australian point system – gets implemented. This could lead to immigration lawyers facing a variety of changes.

• Working with skilled migrants from around the globe

• Low-skilled Europeans: Less is more

• However, as with any piece of legislation, there may be some gray areas, such as decisions about how many points someone receives. This could lead to new legal cases.

• Fluency in English may be a key factor in earning points. This could reduce the need for services in other languages.

Why planning will help keep personas relevant

Brexit may bring about many changes and uncertainty, but law firms can be fully aware of its upcoming effects.

Many law firms and marketers work together and need to do some planning in order to see how their personalities may change over the coming years.

New legislation, for example, is another possible political change that could have a significant impact. New employment laws, for example, could give certain workers new rights. An employment law firm may want to target this persona to protect clients who will be affected by the change.

Buyer persona research

Good research and investigation into trends can lead to data that can be used to shape people’s lives more gradually.

Slow change can be seen in the legal sector. Traditionally a male-dominated profession, the gender gap between men and women has slowly been eroded. In recent years, 48% of the Solicitors Regulatory Authority’s 2017 figures revealed that female lawyers accounted for 48% of the total number of lawyers.

This figure hasn’t changed much since 2014, and women still hold around a third partner position. However, the 2017-18 intake of law degrees in the UK contained 68% females.

Therefore, while the persona of an average lawyer was once male, in the future it will be a female.

Why it’s important to filter out irrelevant changes

Marketers should analyze the data they receive from campaigns to shape and update personas. They may be able to see which messages, channels, or types of content were most successful, as well as who was most likely to respond positively, thus becoming a lead or a potential customer.

Big data has opened up new avenues for gathering information about individuals. Although privacy concerns have been raised about how much information people want to know about them, this can add depth to a persona.

As social media enables us to see how people interact and communicate, we can now add new information to our personas using a variety of sources.

It is not a good idea to give too many details to a buyer persona. It is possible to add irrelevant information, which could confuse the matter.

Key questions

It is important to ask key questions about any information that could change your persona.

• Is the data relevant? Is there a specific characteristic that is genuinely affecting the demand for the service offered?

• Are other research data used to back up the information? 

• Are you able to link the sudden change with a specific development? If so, is it likely to have a lasting impact?

• Are changes part of a longer-term trend?

Marketers can determine if personas are changing by asking these questions and then applying those answers to future campaigns. It is possible to see which changes are significant by further analyzing the data from these campaigns.

It is difficult to create buyer personas. Each person is a unique individual with many experiences, beliefs, and attitudes. This means that many people won’t fit into the buyer persona description. This is an excellent reason to not add too many elements to your persona.

Instead, it is all about focusing on key factors that will influence buyer demand and decision-making when targeting buyer personas. While many things may change over time, some will happen quickly, all marketing efforts must be focused on the things that matter.