If the 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 an essential dynamic of legal marketing, without it you might just as well not have a law firm marketing plan. However, producing content is hard work, and you should make the most of the writing you can 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 worthwhile, interesting material in any of the forms mentioned, don’t just send it out once or print it and leave it to stagnate in your reception area. You ought to distribute that content as much as possible. For every item of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I distributed it to as many, relevant, clients as I can?
- Has it been loaded onto my website?
- Have I sent 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?
- Are others in my firm aware of it and can they explain it in detail if a client questions them about it?
- Can I turn it into another type of content and distribute in a different forum?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are usually created with a specific audience in mind, or because of a particular request. Therefore they are often presented only once then left to stagnate. The large amount of time involved in preparing it gets only a one time presentation. If you want to get much more benefit from your presentation consider:
- Who else may I present it to?
- How can I let the greatest number of people know about it?
- Have I discussed it on my website, Facebook, Twitter, and 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 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 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 remember that it is far easier to use a small amount of time at the end to really maximise on the impression you’ve already produced than to produce a completely new piece of legal marketing material.
Increase the benefits of the time you put into law firm marketing and you’ll find that the next time you create some content you’ll feel more confident 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.