Zero Visibility Shuts Everything Down

My car rocked back and forth as the wind-blasted snow in front of me. I slowed to almost a standstill. There wasn’t anything in front of me, at least not anything I could see. It was a whiteout, and I had to crawl home just to make sure I didn’t collide with anything or anybody. Schools were closed, the gym was closed and the police put out a “do not travel” order just south of Buffalo. Today we are experiencing the worst blizzard since 1993 in Buffalo. So what does this have to do with marketing?

Traveling in zero visibility is dangerous, possibly life-threatening. Making business decisions without the ability to see clearly ahead of you is just as hazardous to your career. When we are driving in white-out conditions we slow down because we don’t want to try and guess what is ahead of us. Why should it be any different in our business?

Metrics and measuring have been buzzwords in legal marketing for some time, but are the right metrics getting to the decision-makers, or is everybody driving blind? In the digital space, we have a mountain of data coming our way, there is no lack of metrics, so that challenge is picking out the metrics that are important and making actionable decisions with those metrics.

A few metrics that are critical, but that in my opinion don’t get nearly as much attention as they should are:

-Which attorney bio’s get the most traffic on the firm website?

-Which email updates have higher than normal open rates?

-Which articles are the most read on the blog, website, and on sites like JD Supra and Lexology?

This data tells a story, and if we ignore that narrative then we might as well be driving blindfolded. Following the bread crumbs left by these analytics provide us with the information to pivot in directions that are far more likely to lead to success for us.

If you are stuck in a real or metaphorical blizzard, proceed with caution. Driving without the ability to see can be deadly.