Whether the 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 will need to create content.
Content is the lifeblood of legal marketing, and without it you might just as well not bother with a law firm marketing plan. But producing content requires hard work, and you must make the best of the material that you can produce. Here are several ideas for making sure you use the two most popularly 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 have written some quality, interesting material in any of the formats mentioned, don’t only send it out once or print it and let it sit in your reception area. Distribute the content as widely as possible. For each 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 sent 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 my firm aware of it and can they explain it further if a client asks?
- Can I turn it into a different kind of content and distribute in a different forum?
Law Firm Marketing – Presentations
Presentations are generally created with a specific reception in mind, or because of a particular request. Therefore they are often presented only once then left to become stale. All of the time required to prepare it results in only a one time showing. To get more benefit from your presentation consider:
- What other companies may I present it to?
- How could I let the most people know about it?
- Have I discussed it on my website, Facebook, Twitter, or offered to present it to others?
- Can I send the presentation in hard copy to those who couldn’t 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 discussing questions that arose from the presentation?
- Have I followed up with additional content to all the people who were at the presentation?
While a lot of these suggestions may feel like more work just 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 essential to consider that it is far easier to add 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 all the time you put into law firm marketing and you’ll see 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.