Whether the legal 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 bother with a law firm marketing plan. But producing content is hard work, and you must make the best of the material you can produce. Here are some quick ideas to help you use the two 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 written some worthwhile, interesting material in any of the forms mentioned, don’t just send it out once or print it and let it stagnate in your office. You should distribute that content as widely as possible. For each item of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I distributed it to as many, relevant, clients as possible?
- Has it been loaded onto my website?
- Have I emailed 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 can they explain it in detail if a client has queries about it?
- Can I transform it into a different kind of content and distribute in a different forum?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are usually prepared with a specific reception in mind, or because of a particular request. As a result they are often presented once then left to become stale. All of that effort and time involved in preparing it results in only a one time presentation. If you want to get far more out of your presentation consider:
- What other companies could I present it to?
- How can I let the most people know about it?
- Have I discussed it on our website, Facebook, Twitter, and suggested that I present it to others?
- Can I send a hard copy of the presentation 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?
- 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?
While a lot of these ideas may seem like additional work just when you’ve probably damaged your monthly billings with the amount of time you spent preparing the first lot of material, it’s necessary to consider that it is much easier to use a tiny 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.
Improve the benefits of the time and effort you put into law firm marketing and you’ll discover that the next time you create some content you will 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.