If the marketing strategy for your law firm is based on online marketing, niche marketing to particular industries, traditional advertising, or just retaining and growing wallet share of a solid growth of clients, you will need to create content.
Content is the lifeblood of legal marketing, without it you might just as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. However, producing content requires hard work, and you want to make the most of the writing that you can produce. Here are some ideas for making sure you use the two most commonly produced types of legal marketing content as best you can.
Law Firm Marketing – Written material (blogs, email alerts, brochures, guides, information sheets)
If you’ve written any worthwhile, interesting material in any of the types mentioned, you don’t need to just send it out once or print it and leave it to sit in your reception area. You ought to distribute the content as broadly as is possible. For every piece of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I distributed it to as many, relevant, clients as I can?
- Has it been loaded onto our website?
- Have I emailed it direct to referrers, 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 firm aware of it and could they explain it further if a client questions them?
- Can I transform it into another style of content and distribute in a different form?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally written with a specific reception in mind, or because of a particular request. As a result they are often presented only once and then left to stagnate. All of that effort and time involved in preparing them results in only a one time presentation. To get more benefit from your presentation consider:
- What other companies could I show 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?
- Is it relevant to send the presentation in hard copy to those who couldn’t attend the seminar?
- Could I record an audio or video of the presentation and distribute it via email or directly?
- Can I write an article or blog discussing topics that arose during the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people that were at the presentation?
Although some of these suggestions might seem like additional work just 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 crucial to remember that it is much easier to add a tiny amount of time at the end to really impact on the impression you’ve already produced than it is to produced a whole new piece of legal marketing material.
Increase the benefits of the time you put into law firm marketing and you’ll find that the next time you create some content you will 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.