A lot of people are on spring break this week – but you shouldn’t take a break from marketing. In fact, there is so much opportunity to stand out as others sit on the beach during any kind of vacation during the year.
And whenever you take some time off – or business is slow – here are some things you can do with your downtime to continue to develop your marketing and business development efforts.
Even if you have enough clients now, don’t pull back on marketing when things are going well, as anything can happen.
Also, marketing is not just for client or business development.
It can help you stay top of mind with the media, help you build your brand, obtain speaking engagements, board appointments, article writing opportunities – and so much more.
Here are some ideas on how B2B companies and their employees can reignite their marketing and business development efforts when they have downtime:
Create a personal marketing plan with only three to five actionable to-do’s so that you can actually accomplish them!
Reconnect with former clients and top referral sources
Research industry conferences and sponsorships
Write a client alert, a blog post or an article – co-author with a colleague, referral source or a client if it seems too daunting to do it alone
Set up Google Alerts for top clients and prospects – info is always power. Make sure to set one up for yourself too.
Update your web site bio using keywords for SEO – if you don’t say you do it – people think you don’t.
Create a LinkedIn strategic plan, which includes updating your LinkedIn profile with keywords and all of the sections, sending 5 connection requests per week, commenting on VIP connections’ posts, sharing a post and writing a post yourself, learning how the LinkedIn algorithm works and learning how to use hashtags. If you’re looking for tips on how to grow your network and presence on Linkedin, here are some ideas.
Research your competitors’ marketing activities – what inspiration can you get from them and what can you do better than them?
Update practice area/industry descriptions and matter lists – people are googling your firm every day – if you don’t say you do it, they may not think you do.
Look at the analytics of past blogs, emails and client alerts – this will help you create stronger content
Clean up and add new contacts to your email list and create a plan for a client-focused email newsletter. Here’s how to create a stronger email strategy.
Do an SEO audit on your web site – look at the content on each of the pages and see where you add add backlinks and crosslinks to bolster your searchability. Also ensure that keywords are used strategically on each page and that you have more than 300 words on each page so that Google can find your content in the first place.
Repurpose past content. Remember that a lot of people won’t see your content because of social media algorithms and the time of day they are online. Repurposing and reusing content enables you to cast a wider net with it and increase the likliehood that it will be seen by others. It also saves you time so you don’t have to keep creating new content. It’s an essential tool to have in your content strategy. You don’t need to create new content from scratch every day – instead go through your past articles, social media posts and web content and look at the high and low performing content to see what you can reuse again. You may want to change the image or edit the text a bit – or not. Repurposing content should be integrated into your content strategy and will save you time and effort. Evergreen content is particularly great content to repurpose because of its timeless nature.
Research volunteer opportunities for an industry or bar association committee, social cause and alumni associations – this is a great way to network and meet potential referrals, collaborators and clients.
Claim the social media handles on all of the major channels even if you aren’t planning to use them. You don’t want anyone else to take yours. At a minimum, put up your logo, a brief about section and a link to your website or your linktree/link in bio tool. You may even find that people will start following you and you should be on one of those platforms as a result.
Bonus tip -I have an idea on how to make your client alerts work harder and smarter for you.
Do an analysis through email marketing and your social media analytics to see which client alerts did well since January of this year. Then run the results in a social media and email campaign. So your top five client alerts from the first half of the year.
This is a great way to give those alerts extra visibility as well as give the lawyers who wrote them additional publicity.
This is how you make your client alerts stand out more.
Remember that email marketing when done right (meaning your lists are updated, segmented and your lawyers are strategically contributing content) is the most direct way to reach your clients and prospects. So don’t underestimate the power of using it in conjunction with social media.
Remember, it’s great time to focus on your business development and branding efforts especially since many of your competitors may not be – use that to your advantage!
About this Author
Stefanie Marrone advises law firms of all sizes, professional service firms, B2C and B2B companies, professional associations and individuals on the full range of marketing and business development consulting services designed to enhance revenue, retain current clients, attract new clients and achieve greater brand recognition and market share. Stefanie has worked with a broad range of law firms of all sizes over her nearly 20-year legal marketing career from Big Law, to mid-size firms, to boutique firms to solo practitioners. She also works with accounting firms,…
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