Whether the marketing strategy for your law firm is based 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 an essential dynamic of legal marketing, and without it you may as well not have a law firm marketing plan. However, producing content is hard work, and you should make the most of the writing you can produce. Following are several ideas 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 any worthwhile, interesting material of any of the types mentioned, don’t just send it off once or print it and let it sit in your reception area. Distribute the content as broadly as is possible. For each item of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I distributed it to as many, relevant, clients as I can?
- 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 company aware of it and can they explain it in detail if a client questions them about it?
- Can I transform it into another type of content and distribute in a different form?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally written with a particular reception in mind, or because of a particular request. Therefore they tend to be presented once and then left to become stale. All of the time involved in preparing it results in only a one time presentation. If you want to get much more benefit from your presentation consider:
- What other companies could I show it to?
- How can I let the most people know about it?
- Have I discussed it on my website, Facebook, Twitter, and offered to present it to others?
- Is it relevant to send the presentation in hard copy to people who couldn’t 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 to discuss questions that arose from the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people who attended the presentation?
Although a lot of these ideas might feel like additional work at a time 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 essential to remember that it is much easier to add a small amount of time now to really maximise on the impression you’ve already produced than it is to produced a whole new piece of legal marketing material.
Maximise 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.