Whether the marketing strategy for your law firm depends on online marketing, niche marketing to particular industries, traditional advertising, or just retaining and growing wallet share of your stable of clients, you will need to create content.
Content is the lifeblood of legal marketing, without it you might just as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. However, producing content means hard work, and you need to make the best of the material that you can produce. Here are some quick ideas 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’ve written some worthwhile, interesting material of any of the types mentioned, don’t only send it out once or print it and let it stagnate in your reception. Distribute that content as much as possible. For each piece of written material you produce, consider:
- Have I sent it to as many, relevant, clients as possible?
- Is it loaded onto our website?
- Have I sent it direct to people who have referred me, 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 my firm aware of it and could they explain it in detail if a client asks about it?
- Can I transform it into a different style of content and distribute in a different forum?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally written with a particular reception in mind, or because of a particular request. As a result they tend to be presented only once then left to become stale. The large amount of time involved in preparing them results in just one presentation. To get more benefit from your presentation consider:
- What other companies may I show it to?
- How could I let the greatest number of people know about it?
- Have I discussed it on my website, Facebook, Twitter, or suggested that I present it to others?
- Is it relevant to send the presentation in hard copy 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?
- Is it viable to write an article or blog discussing questions that arose during the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people that were at the presentation?
While these suggestions might seem like additional work just when you’ve possibly 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’s far easier to use a tiny amount of time at the end to really impact on what you’ve already produced than to produce a completely new piece of legal marketing material.
Increase 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 will 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.