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 wallet share of a solid growth of clients, you’ll need to create content.
Content is the lifeblood of legal marketing, and without it you may as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. However, producing content is hard work, and you need to make the most of the writing you manage to produce. Here are several 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 written some worthwhile, interesting material of any of the types mentioned, don’t just send it out once or print it and let it sit in your office. You can distribute that content as widely as possible. For every piece of written material you produce, consider:
- Have I distributed it to as many, relevant, clients as I can?
- Is it loaded onto my website?
- Have I sent it direct to referrers, 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?
- Is everyone in the company aware of it and can they explain it further if a client questions them about it?
- Can I turn it into another kind of content and distribute in a different form?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are usually created with a specific reception in mind, or because of a particular request. As a result they are often presented only once and then left to stagnate. All of the time involved in preparing them results in just one showing. If you want to get more out of your presentation consider:
- What other companies may I present it to?
- How could I let the greatest number of people know about it?
- Have I mentioned it on my website, Facebook, Twitter, or suggested that I 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 via email or directly?
- Can I write an article or blog to discuss questions that arose from the presentation?
- Have I sent additional content to all the people who attended the presentation?
Although these suggestions 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 important to remember that it is far easier to add a small amount of time now to really impact on what you’ve already produced than to produce a completely new piece of legal marketing material.
Increase the benefits 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.