If the legal marketing strategy for your law firm depends 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 generate content.
Content is the lifeblood of legal marketing, and without it you may as well not have a law firm marketing plan. But producing content is hard work, and you must make the most of the writing you can produce. Here are some quick suggestions to help you use two of the most reliably 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’ve produced any quality, interesting material in any of the types mentioned, don’t only send it out once or print it and let it stagnate in your office. You ought to 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?
- Has it been loaded to our website?
- Have I emailed 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 can they explain it in detail if a client has queries about it?
- Can I transform it into a different style of content and distribute in a different format?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally prepared with a specific reception in mind, or because of a particular request. As a result they are often presented once and then left to become stale. The large amount of effort and time involved in preparing it results in just one presentation. To get much more out of your presentation consider:
- What other companies can I present it to?
- How can I let the most people know about it?
- Have I discussed it on our website, Facebook, Twitter, and offered to present it to others?
- Is it relevant to send the presentation in hard copy 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?
- Is it viable to write an article or blog discussing questions that arose during the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people who attended the presentation?
While these ideas may seem like more work at a time when you’ve probably damaged 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 use a tiny amount of time at the end to really impact on the impression you’ve already produced than to produce a whole new piece of legal marketing material.
Maximise the benefits of all the time you put into law firm marketing and you’ll find that the next time you create content you will 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.