A rebrand is a chance to elevate every element of your firm’s content marketing operation. Everything can be upgraded: website, attorney bios, practice descriptions, experience lists, brochures, and so much more.
But what if you’re strapped for time and low on resources and a wholesale rewrite just isn’t in the cards?
Here are five hacks for elevating your firm’s materials when you can’t do a complete overhaul.
1. If you can only rewrite one type of content,
focus on attorney bios.
Content overhauls in conjunction with a rebrand are often exercises in triage. In doing as much as possible with severely limited resources, time, and attorney availability.
As you consider your priorities, attorney bios should be far and away at the top of your list. They are the most used, most read, most relied-upon marketing content you have. If you can do nothing else for your content during a rebrand, give your attorney bios some love.
Focus on rewriting just your partner bios. Or maybe just your practice leaders. Even if that’s all you have at launch, these rewritten bios can serve as models for all your other attorneys and you can pursue a firm-wide rewrite after launch.
If you have the budget to hire outside writers, this is where you should spend it. Outside writers will be able to produce quality and consistency at volume better than any in-house team. Ideally, they can even conduct interviews with your attorneys to collect fresh information and perspectives rather than recycle your old versions.
2. Write short intro paragraphs to spruce up
practice and industry descriptions.
Practice and industry descriptions are likely your second-most read materials. And my guess is you repurpose them constantly—and more or less unchanged—for pitch materials and RFP responses.
But let’s be real.
Most of the people you hand these descriptions to or who find them on your website don’t read the whole thing. Not really.
They may skim and scan, but my guess is they get a hundred or two hundred words in at most. Most likely, they’re looking for client names or quotes, case studies, or specific niche experience so they can confirm that your firm can help them with their problem.
So if time is short and resources are limited, consider developing a good intro paragraph to add to the top of your practice descriptions. Make it client focused and conversational. Drop in a compelling proof point or two. Maybe a quote from Chambers if it’s a really good one. Limit your intro to 150 words max. Ideally, give it a bigger font and maybe an eye-catching color so it’s the first thing your reader looks at.
By focusing on writing some kickass intros for your key materials, you’ll make them feel fresh and vibrant and deliver key information to impatient readers who may not read any further anyway.
Remember, you can always conduct a full rewrite after the rebrand has launched (and without the tight time constraints).
3. Add statistics and infographics to make proof
points jump out.
One way to spruce up your materials is to call attention to the proof points that support your rebrand messaging. You may even have a lot of this information in your materials already. But working with your graphic designer, you could format this information in ways that pop and breathe new life into tired brochures, webpages, and pitch materials.
I’d recommend focusing on numbers. Here’s a few options:
Want to convey the strength of your practices?
- Transaction sizes.
- Litigation wins or damages collected.
- Number of former government or regulatory officials.
- Numbers of Chambers-ranked attorneys.
The tricky part is you have to have good numbers if you want to go in this direction. If your numbers are ho-hum, then you can try quantifying them as a way to salvage the proof points. Narrow your focus by geography or industry.
If you don’t have the numbers to create strong proof points, the next hack may be a better fit.
4. Add quotes from clients and publications
to reinforce key messages.
Most rebrand processes involve interviews with clients, alumni, and internal stakeholders. These can be treasure troves for quotes, talking points, and conversational ways of saying what you want to say in your materials. As you embark on refreshing your materials, this should be the first place you look.
Embedding quotes in your intro paragraphs is a great way to add persuasive messages and proof points in one fell swoop. But quotes can be useful on their own as pullouts, stand-alone graphics, or sidebars in your brochures, pitch materials, and webpages.
One word of warning: permission to name the clients may be tough to come by. I’d recommend using generic identifiers rather than client names. Even if you get permission to use them for launch, all it takes is a personnel change or policy shift for you to lose that permission and possibly damage the client relationship. Better to use attributions such as “a Fortune 100 client” or “a global pharmaceutical client.”
Publications such as Chambers or U.S. News Best Law Firms can also be a great source of valuable quotes (including from clients). You’ll need to attribute them to the publication in some way.
Pro tip: when you include the quote and attribute to the publication, be sure to leave out the edition or the date. That’ll make the quotes you pull evergreen and more persuasive, even if they’re a few years old.
5. Develop a handful of compelling, client-focused
case studies.
Clients and potential clients don’t want to read generic descriptions of your attorneys’ work or wade through gobs of platitudes and self-serving marketing fluff.
They want concrete information to demonstrate that you can handle their work. They want to know you can help with the problems that keep them up at night. And they want to know that you understand their business, their industry, and their strategies for success.
One powerful way to do this is through case studies.
One short, direct, and most importantly, concrete example of your attorneys’ work will do more for business development than a thousand pages of generic descriptive language.
If you want to add valuable content as part of your rebrand, consider developing a handful of case studies. Don’t worry too much about volume at this point. Even three good case studies can jazz up your website, print materials, and pitches and make your whole collateral suite feel fresh and new.
My go-to approach for case studies is to use a rigid format that encourages skimming and conveys key information at a glance. And most importantly, I write them with a client focus. No lengthy discussions of the legal principles at play or the regulatory nuances of the case.
Instead, take a simple, business-centered approach:
- What was at stake for the client?
- How did your attorneys approach the problem? What skill or insight did they provide that no one else could have?
- What were the results? How did the client benefit from the firm’s work?
That’s it. That’s your case study. Writing these, if you keep them short and focused, is the easy part.
The challenge can be obtaining client permissions. You may have to adjust how specific you get in your case studies in order to secure permission to use them. And you should have clear documentation of approvals and sign-offs for each case study. Those will come in handy down the road.
You may not be able to rewrite everything.
But these simple steps will move you in the right direction.
We all start a rebrand process with lofty goals and ambitious plans. But sometimes reality intrudes and makes a full rewrite of all your materials impossible. By making relatively small changes across your collateral suite, you can breathe new life into old materials and strengthen the impact of your rebrand.
More importantly, they set new standards for content development and give you a great foundation for content in your new rebrand world.