If the legal marketing strategy for your law firm revolves around 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 the lifeblood of legal marketing, and without it you might just as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. However, producing content is hard work, and you want to make the best of the material that you manage to produce. Here are some quick suggestions for making sure you use two of the most reliably produced types of legal marketing content as best you can.
Law Firm Marketing – Written material (blogs, email alerts, brochures, guides, information sheets)
If you’ve written some worthwhile, interesting material of any of the forms mentioned, don’t just send it out once or print it and let it stagnate in your reception. You ought to distribute that content as broadly as is possible. For every item of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I distributed it to as many, relevant, clients as I can?
- Is it loaded to our website?
- Have I sent it direct to people who have referred me, associates and other professionals?
- Have I linked to it with a post on Facebook and a tweet on Twitter?
- Has it been sent to media contacts?
- Are others in the firm aware of it and could they explain it further if a client questions them about it?
- Can I turn 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 only once and then left to become stale. The large amount of effort and time involved in preparing them results in just one showing. To get more benefit from your presentation consider:
- What other companies could I show it to?
- How could I let the greatest number of people know about it?
- Have I discussed it on our website, Facebook, Twitter, or offered to present it to others?
- Is it relevant to send a hard copy of the presentation to people who were unable to attend the seminar?
- Can I record an audio or video of the presentation and distribute it electronically online or directly?
- Can I write an article or blog to discuss questions that arose during the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people that attended the presentation?
Although a lot 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’s much easier to add a small amount of time at the end to really maximise on what you’ve already produced than it is to produced a completely new piece of legal marketing material.
Improve the results of the time you put into law firm marketing and you’ll find that the next time you create content you’ll feel more confident 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.