Whether the legal marketing strategy for your law firm depends on online marketing, niche marketing to particular industries, traditional advertising, or just retaining and growing a share of a solid growth of clients, you’ll need to generate content.
Content is the lifeblood of legal marketing, without it you may as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. But producing content is hard work, and you should make the most of the writing that you manage to produce. Here are just a few ideas to help you use two of the most reliably 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 just send it out once or print it and let it sit in your reception. You should distribute that content as widely as is possible. For every item of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I sent it to as many, relevant, clients as I can?
- Is it loaded onto my website?
- Have I emailed 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?
- Are others in the firm aware of it and can they explain it further if a client questions them about it?
- Can I turn it into a different style of content and distribute in a different form?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are usually written with a specific audience in mind, or because of a particular request. As a result they tend to be presented only once and then left to become stale. The large amount of effort and time involved in preparing it results in only a one time showing. If you want to get more benefit from your presentation consider:
- What other companies may I show it to?
- How can I let the greatest number of people know about it?
- Have I mentioned it on our website, Facebook, Twitter, or suggested that I present it to others?
- Can I send a hard copy of the presentation to those 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 topics that arose from the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people that were at the presentation?
While a lot of these ideas might feel like additional 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 necessary to remember that it’s far easier to add a small amount of time at the end to really maximise on the impression you’ve already produced than to produce a whole new piece of legal marketing material.
Increase the results of the time you put into law firm marketing and you’ll discover 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.