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’ll need to create content.
Content is an essential dynamic of legal marketing, and without it you may as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. But producing content requires hard work, and you want to make the most of the material that you can produce. Here are just a few suggestions to help you use the two 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 have created any quality, interesting material of any of the types mentioned, you don’t need to just send it out once or print it and leave it to sit in your reception area. You should distribute that content as broadly as is possible. For every piece 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?
- Is everyone in the company aware of it and can they explain it further if a client has queries about it?
- Can I turn it into a different type of content and distribute in a different form?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally prepared with a particular audience in mind, or because of a particular request. Therefore they tend to be presented once and then left to stagnate. The large amount of effort and time involved in preparing it gets only a one time presentation. To get more out of your presentation consider:
- What other companies may I present it to?
- How can I let the most people know about it?
- Have I discussed it on my website, Facebook, Twitter, or offered to present it to others?
- Is it relevant to send a hard copy of the presentation to those who were unable to attend the seminar?
- Could I record an audio or video of the presentation and distribute it via email or directly?
- Can I write an article or blog to discuss topics that arose during the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people who were at the presentation?
While some of these ideas may seem like more work just 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 crucial to remember that it’s far easier to use a tiny amount of time at the end 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 discover that the next time you need to create 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.