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 create content.
Content is an essential part of legal marketing, and without it you might just as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. However, producing content means hard work, and you should make the most of the material you manage to produce. Here are some ideas for making sure you use the two most commonly produced types of legal marketing content as effectively as you can.
Law Firm Marketing – Written material (blogs, email alerts, brochures, guides, information sheets)
If you’ve written some worthwhile, interesting material in any of the types above, don’t just send it out once or print it and let it stagnate in your reception area. Distribute the content as much as is possible. For each item of writing you produce, consider:
- Have I sent it to as many, relevant, clients as possible?
- Is it loaded to my website?
- Have I emailed it directly 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 the firm aware of it and can they explain it further if a client asks?
- Can I turn it into a different style 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 tend to be presented once and then left to stagnate. All of that time required to prepare it results in just one presentation. To get far more out of your presentation consider:
- What other companies may I present it to?
- How can I let the most 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 people who couldn’t attend the seminar?
- Could I record an audio or video of the presentation and distribute it electronically online or directly?
- Is it viable to write an article or blog discussing topics that arose from the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people that attended the presentation?
While these suggestions may feel like additional work at a time 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’s crucial to remember that it is much easier to use a tiny amount of time now 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 you put into law firm marketing and you’ll find that the next time you need to create some 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.