If the legal 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 your stable of clients, you’ll need to create content.
Content is an essential part of legal marketing, and without it you might just as well not have a law firm marketing plan. But producing content requires hard work, and you must make the best of the material you can produce. Following are some quick ideas for making sure you use two of the 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 produced any worthwhile, interesting material in any of the types above, you don’t need to just send it out once or print it and leave it to stagnate in your reception. Distribute that content as much as is possible. For every 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 sent it direct to referrers, 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 the company aware of it and could they explain it further if a client asks?
- Can I turn it into a different kind of content and distribute in a different form?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally prepared with a particular reception in mind, or because of a particular request. Therefore they are often presented only once and then left to stagnate. All of the effort and time involved in preparing them gets only a one time showing. If you want to get far more out of your presentation consider:
- What other companies may I present it to?
- How can I let the greatest number of people know about it?
- Have I discussed it on our website, Facebook, Twitter, or suggested that I present it to others?
- Can I 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 electronically online or directly?
- Can I write an article or blog discussing topics that arose during the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people that attended the presentation?
While some of these suggestions might feel like additional work at a time when you’ve possibly damaged your monthly billings with the amount of time you spent preparing the first lot of material, it’s essential to remember that it is much easier to use a small amount of time now to really maximise on the impression you’ve already produced than to produce a whole new piece of legal marketing material.
Increase the benefits of all 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.