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’ll need to generate content.
Content is an essential part of legal marketing, and without it you might just as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. However, producing content requires hard work, and you should make the most of the writing you can produce. Following are just a few suggestions for making sure you use the two most popularly 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 quality, interesting material in any of the forms mentioned, you don’t need to only send it out once or print it and let it sit in your reception. You ought to distribute the content as broadly as is possible. For every piece of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I distributed it to as many, relevant, clients as I can?
- Is it loaded onto my website?
- Have I sent it directly 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?
- Are others in the company aware of it and could they explain it in detail if a client asks about it?
- Can I transform it into a different style of content and distribute in a different forum?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are usually written 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 the time required to prepare it gets just one showing. To get much more out of your presentation consider:
- Who else could 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, 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?
- Can 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 topics that arose from the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people who were at the presentation?
While some of these suggestions may feel like more work at a time when you’ve possibly created a dent in your monthly billings with the amount of time you spent preparing the first lot of material, it’s important to remember that it is 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 whole new piece of legal marketing material.
Maximise the benefits of the time and effort you put into law firm marketing and you’ll see that the next time you need to 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.