If the marketing strategy for your law firm depends 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 might just as well not have a law firm marketing plan. However, producing content requires hard work, and you should make the most of the material you can produce. Here are just a few suggestions to help you use two of the most popularly produced types of legal marketing content as best you can.
Law Firm Marketing – Written material (blogs, email alerts, brochures, guides, information sheets)
If you have created any quality, interesting material in any of the forms mentioned, don’t just send it out once or print it and let it stagnate in your reception area. You should distribute the content as broadly as is possible. For each item of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I sent it to as many, relevant, clients as possible?
- Has it been loaded onto our website?
- Have I sent 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 company aware of it and could they explain it in detail if a client has queries about it?
- Can I turn it into another style of content and distribute in a different forum?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally written with a specific reception in mind, or because of a particular request. Therefore they tend to be presented once then left to become stale. All of the effort and time required to prepare them gets only a one time presentation. If you want to get much more benefit from your presentation consider:
- What other companies can I show it to?
- How can 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 a hard copy of the presentation to those who couldn’t attend the seminar?
- Can I record an audio or video of the presentation and distribute it via email or directly?
- Is it viable to write an article or blog discussing questions that arose from the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people that attended the presentation?
While some of these suggestions might feel like more work at a time when you’ve probably damaged your monthly billings with the amount of time you spent preparing the first lot of material, it is necessary to remember that it’s far easier to add a small amount of time at the end to really maximise on what you’ve already produced than to produce a completely new piece of legal marketing material.
Maximise the benefits of the time you put into law firm marketing and you’ll discover that the next time you need to create content you’ll feel more positive 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.