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 a share of a solid growth of clients, you will need to generate content.
Content is the lifeblood of legal marketing, without it you may as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. But producing content is hard work, and you need to make the best of the writing that you can produce. Following are some suggestions to help you use the two most commonly 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 created any worthwhile, interesting material in any of the forms above, don’t only send it out once or print it and let it sit in your reception area. Distribute that content as much as possible. For every item of written material you produce, consider:
- Have I sent it to as many, relevant, clients as I can?
- Is it loaded onto our website?
- Have I emailed 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 my company aware of it and could they explain it in detail if a client asks?
- Can I turn it into another type of content and distribute in a different forum?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally 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 stagnate. The large amount of effort and time required to prepare them gets just one presentation. To get more benefit from your presentation consider:
- Who else may I show it to?
- How can 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?
- Can I send the presentation in hard copy to people who couldn’t attend the seminar?
- Can 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 discussing questions that arose from the presentation?
- Have I sent additional content to all the people that attended the presentation?
While some of these suggestions might feel like more 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 is necessary to remember that it’s far easier to add a tiny amount of time now to really impact on what you’ve already produced than it is to produced a completely new piece of legal marketing material.
Maximise the results of all the time you put into law firm marketing and you’ll see that the next time you create some 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.