What is top of funnel content? It is informative, valuable content written to raise awareness and attract new clients.

Top of funnel (TOFU) content serves as the first point of contact that people have with you and your law firm to help establish a relationship of trust that will eventually lead to potential clients moving further down the marketing funnel.

Although you want to market your firm and explain why a prospective should hire your law firm, don’t focus too much on such content. Instead, focus on helping your target audience find solutions to their problems.

But how exactly should you approach top of funnel content for personal injury law firms? Read on to find out!

Answer Questions and Solve Problems

For your TOFU content to meet all these demands, you must understand your target audience’s problems and craft content that helps them find a solution.

When someone conducts a Google search for answers, they often skim through the top search results without looking at the websites. They leave the sites once they find their answer.

So, how can this kind of content be effective marketing? It comes down to raising awareness.

People hardly enter a relationship with an attorney – even when they need legal representation.

That is particularly true for personal injury attorneys, who struggle with conversion rates more than any other group of attorneys in the legal industry.

Choosing an attorney is a deliberate decision and not something an individual does on the spur of the moment.

Before making a choice, many clients need information about their situation, options, and the best course of action. That often involves comparing law firms and looking for referrals offline.

Start at the Top

Use the content marketing funnel as a guide. You must have plenty of information on your website that speaks to each step a potential lead takes before deciding what law firm to hire.

Content that meets users’ needs at every stage is called a content marketing funnel. It has four stages.

• Awareness – People do not know your firm. They could have recently been injured or members of your community who may be involved in an accident later.
• Evaluation – People who are injured (or have a loved one who is) are evaluating whether they need a personal injury attorney. This stage also includes those who know they need a lawyer but are unsure who to hire.
• Conversion – People who want to speak to you or seek consultation and possibly hire you for representation.
• Advocacy – Your current or former clients who can refer others.

Any person who looks for information online is on a journey. Your content should lead them in the right direction. Content at each funnel stage should nurture the relationship without using aggressive sales techniques.

That is where top of funnel content comes in.

Imagine this – someone who has just been involved in an accident is trying to know what to do. Here are some of the questions they ask Google:

• What to do after getting in a car accident
• How to prove you are not at fault in an accident
• Can I get compensation after a car accident?

These questions allow you to introduce yourself to a prospect by becoming the page that ranks and provides answers.

It is also an opportunity for you to educate them about their legal options and persuade them to find a lawyer to represent them.

These people may not decide immediately, but you aim for the touchpoint, not the lead.

As the same person continues searching online for more answers, you get a better chance to persuade them to hire you if you keep appearing because you are the name they repeatedly see at every step.

That is why you must build trust with every content you post and avoid being intrusive with your pitches, such as having a website chatbot interrupt visitors with pings and popups when they only want to get answers.

Put Your Audience First

Your audience is the jury, judge, and executioner.

You may be impressed by the huge settlements you have won for your clients. While you think that is a valuable insight, it does not center on your audience’s needs.

So, lower your ego and concentrate on your audience’s problems and pain points. Address their issues and answer their queries.

Make them the centerpiece of this journey. That’s the only way to win people over and earn their trust.

You probably are already skilled at understanding other people’s needs. After all, you try to win over your opponent in court.

So, write your content like you want to reassure the jury. Craft your content such that it can withstand a judge’s examination.

Eventually, if you begin speaking about your firm, your audience will lose interest since they are concerned about their needs, not the law firm.

Content Diversity

A typical internet user interacts with three to five content pieces before engaging the business. If you have sufficiently created content for each funnel stage, your ideal prospect will read more than one of your articles.

This especially applies to the top of the funnel content since it is naturally broader than the bottom.

That said, avoid confusing diversity with quantity. Have a good diversity of TOFU content but avoid overdoing it on your website.

Usually, two to three pieces of high-ranking TOFU content are enough to raise awareness of your brand.

By diversifying your content, you may reach a wider audience, but it should still be relevant to individuals who have suffered personal injuries.

Some of the diverse content for personal injury lawyers include:

· Long-form blogs

For complex questions with high search volume, long-form TOFU content is a simple way to draw in new visitors who could need your services.

Craft well-researched and comprehensive articles. Keep the chapters decent, and use original graphics to make your content engaging.

· Social media posts

You can create informative infographics for your Twitter for Lawyers account that appeal to a broader audience but are still relevant to personal injury.

· Videos

If you have a YouTube channel, use it to supplement your blog content and reach new audiences with engaging relevant topics.

· Podcasts

You can create a podcast series detailing a person’s battle for justice after a car accident injury. You can hold interviews with the man and craft well-written summaries on your website to create engaging top of funnel content for personal injury law firms.

· Original research

Another idea would be to analyze numerous crash reports and develop a unique Danger Score using your formula. You can then visualize the results in a custom map.

Stay Top of Mind

After introducing yourself to your audience using your TOFU content, you must strive to remain top of mind.

If any of your prospects are ever involved in an accident, they will not need to think about who can assist them because your name is the first they will remember.

To achieve this:

· Post regularly

Your TOFU content is ideal for regularly posting the information your audience or neighborhood may find interesting.

You don’t necessarily have to relate things to personal injury (mainly when publishing on social media) – content that highlights your neighborhood is a fantastic way to gain local awareness and diffusion.

· Create an email newsletter

Keep past clients and prospects engaged by sharing periodic roundups of valuable insights. Most firms find it challenging to do this effectively because many people get blasted with emails. That means you must have something interesting to stand out and not upset people.

· Engage users on social media

When you post a blog on your website, share it on social media and invite people to comment. Wrap up your post with a question or something that can spark a discussion among them.

Distribution Channels

Top of funnel content for personal injury law firms can drive visitors from other places, not just Google.

Apart from organic search traffic, TOFU content can pull visits from blogs, news articles, social media, and YouTube. These channels are the best for lawyers.

Not every content should go to every channel. Personalize your content approach for each distribution channel.

Visual content on social media gets 2.3 times the engagement that text-only posts get. So, use your long-form posts and original research for your site.

Visual statistics, infographics, and related shareable visual snippets work better for social media.

Go for long-form content for your blog pages, but not so long that it looks like an eBook. Create news, helpful guides, and original research.

Not every article needs to be long, especially if your firm has compiled original data that news agencies may use. Make sure your content is the appropriate length.

If you have an eBook, create a landing page for it to work as a lead magnet for prospects. Ask for their email addresses in exchange for gated content, and you might be able to nurture the relationship.

Note: If you intend to gate your content behind a form, ensure it is something important that people would want to download. Doing this for the consumer market can be tricky, but it can help build your network of journalists, reporters, and fellow lawyers.

For video content, you can upload pertinent clips to your blog. But you should also optimize your YouTube account for organic search.

YouTube follows closely behind Google as the most popular search engine, so avoid posting there carelessly.

Set the Bar

Ordinary content will make your audience forget about you. Your audience will skim and move on.

Whatever content you want to share has probably already been shared by many other personal injury lawyers. Each of them can provide a free consultation.

So, your TOFU content must uphold a higher standard. What can you do to stand out?

• Avoid the dry tone often found on attorneys’ websites by using your flair for storytelling.
• Skip vague generalities and get into the specifics.
• Distinguish how you address similar issues.

If you do this, your top of funnel content for personal injury law firms will have a higher chance of attracting your audience’s attention.

Gauge Success and Repeat

The goal of your TOFU content is not to convert immediately. So, you cannot identify your success strategies right away.

But that is not to say you cannot try. Use the following metrics to know which content is more successful and repeat the content tactics that seem to work.

• Traffic – A software like Google Analytics can track how many people have read your post.
• Time on Page – When using Google Analytics, determine how long visitors stay on your TOFU content. You can tell whether visitors leave immediately by looking at the time on the page.
• Bounce rate – Visitors may land on your website and exit without reading anything else. Your bounce rate shows how frequently your TOFU content attracts visitors to browse other pages on your site.
• Shares and likes – Track your social media content to know what gets the most likes, comments, and shares. Identify patterns. For instance, do they like infographics? Are they more inclined to share exciting statistics? Identifying such patterns can help grow your audience.

Final Thoughts

Winning a case without presenting compelling evidence is virtually impossible. Similarly, you cannot win clients without informing them about your services.

You must craft valuable, diversified top of funnel content for personal injury law firms. Craft a marketing strategy that aims to convert a visitor to a lead once they enter the top of the funnel, one step at a time.

At PALO, we understand the importance of crafting and publishing high quality content that speaks to your target audience.

Since we specialize in attorney lead generation, we understand what must be done at every content marketing funnel stage. We take pride in helping attorneys generate highly qualified leads ready to convert.

Contact us today to learn  more about our pay-per-call campaigns and how we can help your law firm grow.