If the legal marketing strategy for your law firm depends on online marketing, niche marketing to particular industries, traditional advertising, or just retaining and growing wallet share of your stable of clients, you will need to generate content.
Content is an essential part of legal marketing, without it you may as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. But producing content is hard work, and you need to make the most of the writing that you manage to produce. Here are several suggestions to help you use the two most commonly 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 created some quality, interesting material in any of the formats above, don’t only send it out once or print it and let it sit in your reception. Distribute that content as widely as possible. For every piece of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I sent it to as many, relevant, clients as I can?
- Has it been loaded to my website?
- Have I sent it direct to people who have referred me, associates and other professionals?
- Have I linked it with a post on Facebook and a tweet on Twitter?
- Has it been sent to media contacts?
- Are others in my firm aware of it and could they explain it further if a client asks about it?
- Can I turn it into a different style of content and distribute in a different form?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally created with a particular reception in mind, or because of a particular request. As a result they tend to be presented once then left to stagnate. All of that effort and time involved in preparing it results in just one showing. If you want to get much more out of your presentation consider:
- What other companies can I present it to?
- How can I let the greatest number of people know about it?
- Have I discussed it on our website, Facebook, Twitter, or suggested that I present it to others?
- Is it relevant to send the presentation in hard copy to those who were unable to attend the seminar?
- Could I record an audio or video of the presentation and distribute it electronically online or directly?
- Is it viable to write an article or blog discussing topics that arose during the presentation?
- Have I sent additional content to all the people that were at the presentation?
Although some of these suggestions might feel 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 is essential to remember that it is far easier to use a small amount of time at the end to really maximise on the impression you’ve already produced than to produce a completely new piece of legal marketing material.
Increase the results of the time and effort you put into law firm marketing and you’ll see that the next time you create content you’ll feel more positive about how effective the results 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.