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25 Tips From the Best in Legal Marketing
More than 1200 legal marketing professionals gathered in Las Vegas for the industry’s largest conference earlier this month. This where marketers with a shared obsession for business development and client retention, sharpen their skills.
Here are the best nuggets from the sessions I attended:
- Client focus simply defined: always doing what’s best for the client.
- Understanding the client’s business means being responsive because you understand (and share) in the urgency, follow client directions and never, ever, undermine general counsel.
- Business strategy knowledge includes understanding the products, competitors and their geographic market.
- Law firm client relationships are stickier than first thought previously, especially where the client engages the firm in three or more areas of law.
- Top three factors influencing very large clients: results, reputation and prior relations with their law firm.
- A firm’s reputation is discovered by the client’s personal knowledge, conversations with colleagues and other people in their company, and lastly, public sources of information.
- Talent or human capital is an absolute imperative in law firm strategy, even in a downward economy.
- After drafting your bio, lawyers should read it out loud to another lawyer to test effectiveness of content. Then start editing.
- Content marketing defined: the art of communication without selling.
- 75% of (U.S.) General Counsel are on LinkedIn.
- Google + is the most effective social media application you’re not using.
- Article or blog titles should tell us why we should click on your link and read your content.
- Your content should discuss how changes in the law affect the people you serve.
- Consider how far you are going to open the social media door, then, just don’t be stupid [with your conduct].
- To keep a client focus ask yourself (and your lawyers): “Let’s look at that from someone else’s perspective for a moment.”
- For legal marketers: consider not how high to jump, by why you should jump at all.
- Blogs should be available from your site’s homepage.
- Good blogs need a minimum of four posts per month (250 – 400 words is ideal)
- Cross link your blog post to past blog posts, media releases, bios, etc.
- Duplicate content gets penalized by Google, so paraphrase or summarize content instead. Write like a journalist [ahem … not like a lawyer].
- If your firm doesn’t have a mobile website, you could be invisible to your clients in just a few years.
- Videos are becoming more common and do bring in work.
- Optimal video length: two minutes, but do analyze at what point your viewers drop off.
- Video distribution can be achieved using: YouTube, your website, e-mail, blogs, Facebook, JD Supra, LinkedIn, twitter, Constant Contact and the media.
- YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. Start or continue to develop great videos to showcase your success, community spirit or pro bono work.
Special thanks to all the Legal Marketing Association 2013 conference speakers from whom the above tips were gleaned.
Thanks for the share! I think the biggest and most important tip would be to stay current and active. I don’t know how many lawyer blogs I see out there with one blog post a month and almost zero activity. Do they really think this is going to cut it? If you are trying to develop a online presence you are first going to have to stay active. I’m talking about at least one engaging blog post a week that will stimulate a conversation between users and yourself. Next you are going to want to keep it update to date with new information. Don’t have an analysis of a law or court case that happened two years ago. Stay current!