If 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 is hard work, and you must make the most of the writing that you can produce. Here are just a few 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 created any worthwhile, interesting material in any of the types mentioned, don’t just send it off once or print it and let it sit in your reception. You should distribute the content as much as is possible. For each piece of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I distributed it to as many, relevant, clients as possible?
- Is it loaded to my website?
- Have I sent it direct 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 my firm aware of it and can they explain it further if a client questions them about it?
- Can I turn it into a different kind of content and distribute in a different form?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally created with a specific audience in mind, or because of a particular request. Therefore they are often presented once then left to stagnate. The large amount of effort and time involved in preparing it results in only a one time showing. To get more benefit from your presentation consider:
- What other companies could I show it to?
- How can I let the most people know about it?
- Have I mentioned 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?
- 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 from the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people who attended the presentation?
While a lot of these ideas may feel like additional 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 consider that it is much easier to add a small amount of time now to really maximise on the impression you’ve already produced than to produce a completely new piece of legal marketing material.
Improve the benefits of the time and effort 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.