Whether 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, and without it you might just 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 writing you manage to produce. Here are some quick 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 have written some quality, interesting material of any of the types mentioned, you don’t need to just send it out once or print it and let it sit in your reception. You should distribute the content as much as possible. For every piece of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I distributed it to as many, relevant, clients as I can?
- Is it loaded to my website?
- Have I sent it directly 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 asks about it?
- Can I turn it into a different style of content and distribute in a different format?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are usually prepared with a specific audience in mind, or because of a particular request. As a result they are often presented once then left to stagnate. The large amount of effort and time involved in preparing it gets only a one time presentation. If you want to get far more benefit from your presentation consider:
- Who else may I show it to?
- How can I let the most people know about it?
- Have I discussed it on our website, Facebook, Twitter, and suggested that I present it to others?
- Is it relevant to send a hard copy of the presentation to those who couldn’t attend the seminar?
- Could I record an audio or video of the presentation and distribute it electronically online or directly?
- Can I write an article or blog discussing questions that arose during the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people that attended the presentation?
Although some of these ideas might seem 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 consider 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 completely new piece of legal marketing material.
Maximise the results of all the time and effort 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.