If the legal marketing strategy for your law company is based on online marketing, niche marketing to particular industries, traditional advertising, or just retaining and growing wallet share of your stable of clients, you’ll 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. But producing content is hard work, and you should make the most of the writing you can produce. Following are some ideas for making sure 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 produced some quality, interesting material of any of the formats above, don’t just send it out once or print it and leave it to stagnate in your reception area. You ought to distribute the content as much as is possible. For every piece of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I distributed it to as many, relevant, clients as I can?
- Is it loaded onto our website?
- Have I sent it direct to referrers, 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 company aware of it and can they explain it further if a client questions them about it?
- Can I turn it into another kind of content and distribute in a different format?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally created with a specific reception in mind, or because of a particular request. As a result they are often presented once and then left to stagnate. All of the time required to prepare it gets just one showing. If you want to get far more out of your presentation consider:
- What other companies could I present it to?
- How can I let the most people know about it?
- Have I mentioned it on my website, Facebook, Twitter, and offered to present it to others?
- Is it relevant to send a hard copy of the presentation to those who were unable to attend the seminar?
- Can I record an audio or video of the presentation and distribute it via email or directly?
- Can I write an article or blog to discuss topics that arose from the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people that were at the presentation?
While some of these ideas might feel like more work just when you’ve possibly damaged your monthly billings with the amount of time you spent preparing the first lot of material, it’s crucial to remember that it is much 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.
Maximise the results of all the time and effort you put into law firm marketing and you’ll find that the next time you create content you’ll 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.