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 an essential part of legal marketing, and without it you may as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. But producing content is hard work, and you want to make the most of the writing that you can produce. Following are some quick suggestions for making sure 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 produced some worthwhile, interesting material in any of the forms mentioned, don’t just send it off once or print it and leave it to sit in your reception. Distribute the content as broadly as possible. For each item 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 referrers, 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?
- Is everyone in my firm aware of it and can they explain it further if a client questions them?
- Can I turn it into another kind of content and distribute in a different form?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally prepared with a specific reception in mind, or because of a particular request. As a result they tend to be presented once then left to become stale. All of that effort and time required to prepare it results in just one showing. To get far more out of 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 our website, Facebook, Twitter, and 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?
- Is it viable to write an article or blog to discuss questions that arose from the presentation?
- Have I sent additional content to all the people that attended the presentation?
Although a lot of these suggestions may seem like more work just when you’ve probably damaged your monthly billings with the amount of time you spent preparing the first lot of material, it is important to consider that it’s far easier to add a tiny amount of time at the end to really maximise on what you’ve already produced than to produce a whole 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.