Law firm marketing directors – does this problem sound familiar? You’re tasked with creating compelling content for your firm’s website and other marketing collateral. You, however, are not a subject-matter expert like the attorneys for whom you’re working. How can you “extract” what they know and generate measurable results? In this article you’ll learn how to easily create great content to attract clients to your law firm.
Estimated reading time – 4 minutes
The problem: subject-matter experts (the attorneys) aren’t helping you
Depending on how long you’ve been at your current job, you may have experienced this for a while…maybe years. You’ve read enough about content marketing and been to enough seminars on inbound marketing to know your website and other marketing material could bring more clients to your firm. You may have even read my book about Growing Your Law Practice Through Teaching-Based Marketing.
Your current website probably has information regarding your practice areas, history of the firm, attorney & staff bios, etc. You may have added some blog articles detailing the latest news at your firm or your firm’s involvement with the community. You know your website could be so much more, though. Specifically, your website needs to start answering the questions your potential clients are researching on the web. If you don’t have these answers on your website, Google and the other search engines have no way of finding what you know. This is a really important point. Google isn’t sitting down to interview the attorneys to determine who knows what. You’ve heard the quote, “If it’s not written down it didn’t happen?” In this case it’s, “If it’s not written on your website, Google doesn’t know it exists.”
Use dictation to create great content for your law firm’s website
In your marketing meetings, you’ve told the attorneys about the importance of great, relevant content. One of two things happen, though –
- The articles don’t get written or
- The articles you get from them are too complex because the attorneys are either writing for their peer group or a legal journal. This is not their fault at all. Since starting law school, it’s been their job to decipher really complex topics, and that’s the level on which they operate. As a result, though, instead of articles that attract clients, the articles are too tough for non-lawyers to understand.
I’ve been in enough meetings as a consultant to know it’s really, really hard to get the attorneys to write for the layperson. So how can we make this process easy through using something familiar to them? Use the method attorneys have been using for decades – dictation.
After a client consult, attorneys will usually dictate their notes, right? In these notes, they’ll detail the concerns of the client, the proposed solutions, and the outcome. Here’s the best way to get all the material you’ll ever need for your content marketing efforts – have each attorney dictate the general answers to the questions they hear all the time. This is most effective after an initial consult, where the attorney has spent time educating the client on very high-level topics. Instead of a digital dictator, software, or dictation machine, you can use Google Voice for free dictation transcription. Google Voice transcribes surprisingly well, and the price (free) is tough to beat.
Your source for law firm Web and social media marketing
Once the dictated notes are transcribed, they will provide the basis for an array of articles. It’s your job as the marketing director, then, to make them friendly for both readers and search engines (SEO) by creating compelling titles. When these articles are prepared and published to your website, guess what happens? No longer do you wonder what to share on social media. Simply use these articles to educate the followers you’ve gathered as well as those you’re targeting. Need content for your newsletter? Look no further than these well-crafted articles that were written so non-lawyers (i.e. your clients) can readily understand them. Want to earn the email address of potential clients? Use these articles as the material to create your firm’s first eBook.
Creating great content for law firm marketing directors – our offer to help
All of us are more educated consumers than ever before, and your prospective clients are no exception. Are you the one answering their general questions or is someone else? We call this approach Teaching-Based Marketing. If you would like help getting started please download our free eBook, “How to Grow Your Law Practice Through Teaching-Based Marketing.”