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 a solid growth of clients, you will need to generate content.
Content is an essential part of legal marketing, and without it you might just as well not have a law firm marketing plan. However, producing content requires hard work, and you must make the best of the writing that you can produce. Here are several ideas for making sure you use the two most popularly 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 created some worthwhile, interesting material of any of the formats mentioned, don’t only send it out once or print it and let it stagnate in your reception. Distribute the content as broadly as possible. For each piece of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I sent it to as many, relevant, clients as possible?
- Is it loaded onto 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 turn it into a different kind of content and distribute in a different forum?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally prepared with a particular audience in mind, or because of a particular request. As a result they tend to be presented only once and then left to stagnate. The large amount of time required to prepare them results in only a one time showing. If you want to get far more benefit from your presentation consider:
- What other companies could I present it to?
- How could I let the greatest number of people know about it?
- Have I discussed it on my website, Facebook, Twitter, or offered to present it to others?
- Can I send the presentation in hard copy to those who couldn’t attend the seminar?
- Can I record an audio or video of the presentation and distribute it electronically online or directly?
- Can I write an article or blog to discuss questions that arose from the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people that were at the presentation?
While these suggestions might feel 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’s necessary to consider that it’s much easier to use a small amount of time at the end to really impact on what you’ve already produced than to produce a whole new piece of legal marketing material.
Maximise the results of the time and effort you put into law firm marketing and you’ll find that the next time you need to 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.