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 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 might just as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. However, producing content means hard work, and you want to make the most of the material that you manage to produce. Following are just a few ideas to help 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 quality, interesting material of any of the formats above, don’t only send it off once or print it and leave it to sit in your office. Distribute the content as much as is possible. For every piece 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 it with a post on Facebook and a tweet on Twitter?
- Has it been sent to media contacts?
- Is everyone in the firm aware of it and could they explain it further if a client questions them?
- Can I transform it into another kind of content and distribute in a different forum?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally written with a specific audience in mind, or because of a particular request. As a result they tend to be presented only once and then left to stagnate. All of the effort and time involved in preparing them results in just one showing. To get far more out of your presentation consider:
- What other companies can I present 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?
- Is it relevant to send a hard copy of the presentation 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?
- Can I write an article or blog discussing topics that arose during the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people that were at the presentation?
While some of these ideas might feel 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 essential to remember that it is far easier to add a small 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 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 the results 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.