There are many ways to effectively use your collateral materials

 
The primary purpose of all your marketing materials is to cost-effectively spread the word about your firm’s services. To do this, you want to put the materials in the hands of as many people as possible.

All the firm’s attorneys should have several copies of your marketing materials for distribution to clients and prospects. Staff members should be able to pass them along as well, in appropriate situations. It’s also beneficial to have them available at speaking engagements and available for the media, although you might want to develop a separate media kit.

Your collateral materials are an inexpensive and efficient way to multiply the contacts the employees of your firm can make. An attorney might talk to two or three prospective clients a week, but a well planned and executed marketing plan can distribute collateral to many times that number and greatly increase the opportunities for new business without cutting into billable hours.

Your collateral materials are an important element in promoting your firm. They are a tangible reminder that remains in the hands of your prospects long after your face-to-face contact with them is over. They should accurately reflect the values and image of your firm and should do so consistently from business cards to website.

What’s in your marketing plan: Developing your marketing materials

 
At a minimum, your marketing materials should include stationery and business cards. These should be consistent with your firm’s brand image, values and message.

If you go this low budget route, you’ll also need a high quality color laser printer to generate correspondence, proposals and a capabilities brochure for your firm.

Capabilities Brochure

Adding a capabilities brochure is the next step. It can be as simple as a folder with resumes of the partners or as complex as multi-page, full color booklets with inserts. It’s really up to you and your budget. It should present your core values, brand message and all the pertinent information about your firm a prospect will need.

Remember, most people don’t deal with attorneys on a regular basis and may feel threatened or intimidated by having to consult one. You should work to make the experience – from first contact to final invoice and customer satisfaction follow-up – as positive and reassuring as possible. Satisfied clients pay their bills and generate referrals.

With these materials, you’re ready to provide comprehensive information about your firm to anyone who asks. And, twenty years ago, you could have probably built a successful practice with these simple tools and referrals from satisfied clients.

But, times have changed and to be competitive, attorneys must do more. That brings us to the on-line extension of the promotional brochure: the website.

Website

As with your promotional brochure, your website can be as simple – or as complex – as you want it to be. At a minimum, it should provide all the information you have in your capabilities brochure: contact information, resumes of the partners, areas of law in which you practice, geographic areas you serve and as much information as you’re willing to share about your practice. And, of course, it should be consistent with your core brand values, your message and all your other marketing materials.

Much as prospects seeking legal advice once turned to the Yellow Pages – and still do – more and more of your potential clients are searching online for the right attorney to represent them. You need to be where your prospects are looking, if you want them to find you.

By the way, be sure you’re listed in the telephone directories for your area under the areas of law you practice, if that fits with your business and marketing strategies. If you can afford an ad, all the better. But don’t let the sales rep push you into something that stretches your budget. There are many ways to better spend your limited marketing funds

For creating your website, you have several options. If you’re technologically savvy and want to take a crack at it, you can design your own website using software such as Dreamweaver® from Adobe® – not for the faint of heart – or the software provided by the web hosting site you select – surprisingly easy to use, in most cases.

Keep in mind that time you spend developing your own website – or any other marketing materials – is time you won’t spend practicing law and, therefore an expense instead of revenue. My advice is to find someone who knows how to do all this stuff and has worked with attorneys before, then pay them to do it. You’ll save yourself a lot of headaches and be better off in the long run. Designers almost always charge less than attorneys do!

If you hire someone to develop your website, be sure to have them create it in such a way that you can easily add or change content – without having to own the software they used to create it. Otherwise, you may find yourself going back to them again and again for every little change you need to make.

 With stationery, business cards, an informative capabilities brochure and a website, you’ll be set with the basics to begin effectively marketing your practice. There a many more options, but like cars, your marketing plan can run the spectrum from small and affordable to large, luxurious – and expensive. It all depends on your business and marketing goals and which options will best help you achieve them.

Helpful hints on developing collateral materials

 

 There are several things to keep in mind as you develop your collateral materials.

First is the scope of the project – what do you want it to accomplish? Are you announcing the addition of a new partner or associate, creating a sales kit, proposal or presentation for a potential client?

Second is the audience – who’ll be receiving the materials. A press kit will be substantially different from a proposal created for a prospective client.

Third, is the message – which is integrally related to the intended audience. What do you want to tell them?

Some pitfalls to avoid are:

• • Legal jargon – Every industry has its own unique terminology. If your intended audience is not attorneys, they’re probably not familiar with most legal terms. Use them sparingly and explain them when you do.
• • No clearly defined audience – If you don’t know who you’re writing to, it’s difficult to include the appropriate information and to write a compelling message.
• • No management buy-in – Without solid support, it’s almost impossible to complete a capabilities brochure. Senior management must be fully committed to the time and expense required to complete the piece(s) or you’re doomed to failure.

A Few Words on Writing, Design and Production

Your best bet – unless you have a strong background in marketing and advertising as well as law – is to find qualified professionals to write, design and produce all your collateral materials, advertising and public relations.

There are several reasons for this.

• • First is cost. Even expensive agencies and design firms usually charge less per hour than attorneys. You’re much better off doing what you do well for $300 an hour while paying a writer $100 an hour to do what he does well. That way, the job’s done right and you won’t put it off to work on client matters. Everybody wins.
•   Of course, you’ll have to provide substantial background information, including all your branding and marketing materials, so that the finished piece is consistent with the image of your firm. You should be intimately involved in the planning, so the objectives are clear, but leave the details and execution to the professionals.
• • Second is the level of expertise – and talent – required to create first-class marketing and collateral materials. The image of your firm is at stake, don’t entrust it to someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
• • Third – and related to number two – is the level of expertise required to produce the final printed pieces after they’ve been written and designed. Here also, you either have to work with a printer you know and trust, know a lot about the process yourself, or – ideally – both.

So, shop around, ask for referrals and spend the time to find professionals you feel comfortable working with, give them all the information you can and let them do their jobs.

Why your firm needs collateral materials and what you should have

 
Brochures and other collateral materials are an easy and relatively inexpensive way to provide prospects, clients and the general public with consistent information about your firm. They can run the spectrum from a simple one page handout, designed for a specific situation or event, to a multi-page, full-color brochure that touches on every area of your practice. Whichever you choose – and you may want to have several –  it should be consistent with your business plan, branding and marketing plan and on specific objectives you wish to achieve.

Collateral materials can serve a variety of purposes, but don’t spend the time and money just because everyone else has them. As with every element of your marketing plan, your collateral materials should serve a specific purpose.

Some of those goals can be:

• • Develop or enhance the firm’s image
• • Provide information about the firm and its capabilities
• • Serve as a sales tool, both for prospects and to cross-sell other services to existing clients
• • Reinforce your brand by providing a consistent description of the firm

The Capabilities Brochure

The simplest way to address all these objectives is with a comprehensive, informative capabilities brochure that includes the firm’s areas of practice, history, biographies of the partners (and possibly associates and staff where these enhance the firm’s image), and overviews of some representative cases and matters the firm’s handled successfully.
While this is a good, “one-size-fits-all” approach, it can be difficult and expensive to update it as the firm evolves. However, if you don’t anticipate major changes to the firm’s organization or focus, this is a great way to communicate who you are.

Other Options

Whether because of cost or the evolving nature of your practice, the capabilities brochure may not be the best option. Fortunately, there are several other, more flexible ways to communicate important information about your firm without locking yourself into a single, expensive piece.

For maximum flexibility and low cost, a presentation folder may be your best choice. Spend the extra money to have them embossed or printed with the firm’s name and/or logo and make sure they have sturdy pockets and a cut-out for business cards.

The folder can then be used for almost any purpose from marketing and press kits to proposals and formal presentations. The specific requirements of each project will be covered by the materials you include, and the folder will provide a consistent, professional image.

By including a minimum of information on the folder itself, you’ll maximize your flexibility. All the information that you’d include in your capabilities brochure can be reproduced much less expensively on single 8 1/2 X 11 sheets and put in the folder. In a pinch, a high quality, color laser printer can meet most of your needs.

Flexibility is the biggest advantage to the folder approach. You’ll still have to write, design and print a variety of collateral pieces, but you can pick and choose the specific information you want to include based on requirements of the project. You can use the same folder for presentations, formal proposals, customized marketing information to specific prospects or market segments, press kits, and just about anything else you can think of.