New Year, Better PR?

Welcome to 2014, and to a fresh and exciting start. Here at LexRex Towers we're building up to an action packed January and we're excited about working with a number of new legal PR clients, and to developing some fantastic business opportunities sent our way recently by existing clients of the business.

This month, we'll also start implementing the 2014 PR plans we've created for our existing clients. For us, December is usually a busy month spent finalising strategies and agreeing targets and measurable ROI's with all of our clients.

But it isn't too late to start thinking about implementing a new PR campaign, as well as reviewing your successes and failures in 2013. Good legal PR is all about a number of different elements, including:

1. Understanding your strengths and USP's
2. Creating key messages that reflect these
3. Knowing your target audiences
4. Building campaigns around the key messages which reach the target audiences

It's also really important to plan and measure your activities. A PR plan should include not only your key messages and target audiences, but also a budget, a timeframe, a set of SMART targets and measurement criteria, and an over-reaching strategy with tactics to support this - such as media relations, social media, events, awards and legal directory entries. It's also imperative that the plan ties into and supports the firm's business objectives and targets, and is signed off and approved at the highest level.

It's relatively easy to create a PR plan in-house, but if you do decide to outsource your legal PR, or elements of it, an agency or freelancer worth their salt should always incorporate an element of planning into their brief. Ideally, this PR planning - or mapping as we call it here at LexRex - should happen right at the start of the campaign, and include a session with the management team as well as any in-house marketing support. Management support is fundamental to ensuring any strategy and plan is adhered to, and provides top level buy-in - which is a key driver to successful implementation.

So, here's to 2014 and to continued excellence in legal PR! The LexRex team wishes you all a fantastic new year.

Hopefully this post has provided a handy kick up the butt on the PR front, or at least given food for thought. As ever, comments and feedback are gratefully received.

By Victoria Moffatt

LexRex offers a wide range of PR and marketing services to law firms, including strategic brand and PR mapping, media relations, social media consultancy, awards entries, legal directory submissions and a range of PR and writing courses. If you would like more information about our services, please drop us a line via email: info@lexrexcommunications.com or tweet us: @LexRexComms or @vicmoffatt

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