If the marketing strategy for your law company is based on online marketing, niche marketing to particular industries, traditional advertising, or just retaining and growing a share of your stable of clients, you will need to create content.
Content is the lifeblood of legal marketing, without it you may as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. However, producing content requires hard work, and you need to make the most of the material that you manage to produce. Here are some quick suggestions to help you use two of the most reliably produced types of legal marketing content as effectively as you can.
Law Firm Marketing – Written material (blogs, email alerts, brochures, guides, information sheets)
If you have written some worthwhile, interesting material of any of the formats above, you don’t need to just send it out once or print it and leave it to stagnate in your reception area. You should distribute the content as broadly as is possible. For every item of written material you produce, consider:
- Have I distributed it to as many, relevant, clients as possible?
- Is it loaded to our website?
- Have I emailed it directly to people who have referred me, associates and other professionals?
- Have I linked to it with a post on Facebook and a tweet on Twitter?
- Has it been sent to media contacts?
- Is everyone in my company aware of it and can they explain it in detail if a client asks about it?
- Can I transform it into a different kind of content and distribute in a different format?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally prepared with a particular reception in mind, or because of a particular request. As a result they tend to be presented once and then left to stagnate. All of that effort and time required to prepare them results in only a one time presentation. If you want to get far more benefit from your presentation consider:
- What other companies can I present it to?
- How could I let the greatest number of people know about it?
- Have I mentioned it on my website, Facebook, Twitter, or offered to present it to others?
- Can I send the presentation in hard copy to people who were unable to attend the seminar?
- Could I record an audio or video of the presentation and distribute it electronically online or directly?
- Can I write an article or blog discussing questions that arose from the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people who attended the presentation?
Although some of these ideas might feel like more work at a time when you’ve probably created a dent in your monthly billings with the amount of time you spent preparing the first lot of material, it’s essential to consider that it’s much easier to add a tiny amount of time at the end to really maximise on the impression you’ve already produced than to produce a whole new piece of legal marketing material.
Maximise the benefits of the time and effort you put into law firm marketing and you’ll find that the next time you need to create content you’ll feel more confident about how effective that content will be.
John Gray is a practising lawyer and the Senior Marketer at John Gray Marketing, an Australian specialist law firm and legal marketing consultancy. If you are interested in law marketing, legal marketing and marketing for lawyers, contact John Gray today.