CREATE Communications LLC

Our clients know founder and principal Meg Pritchard as one of the kick-ass writers, editors and marketing professionals who work with them to develop and deliver exceptional content of all kinds, from branded content, thought leadership, video scripts and presentation materials, to rankings and awards submissions, professional bios, practice descriptions and other marketing collateral. And if they spend any time with Meg, they'll also find out that she's an avid rock climber. While content marketing and rock climbing may seem unrelated, they actually have a lot in common. Rock climbers need to look ahead and plan their next sequence of hand and foot movements for maximum power and efficiency, with the goal of getting to the top of the climb. Both a physical and mental challenge, climbing requires focus, endurance and the ability to course-correct in the moment to handle challenges the climber may not have seen from the ground. And while she might not (yet) be as accomplished a climber as she would like to be, Meg knows that trying different approaches, not just the way “everyone does it,” is key to climbing—and content marketing—because there's always more than one way to get to the top. Want to know more about our team? Visit our website -- https://create-cmm.com

At CREATE, our clients tend to be larger law firms, but a lot of our day-to-day work is with the lawyers—whether it’s helping them plan and launch a new newsletter, video series or blog, or creating and fine-tuning content for firm channels and outside media. The value of content in marketing and business development is undeniable—for lawyers, practices and firms. But sometimes there’s a gap between strategy and implementation—or between “here’s what you should do” and “here’s how it actually works.” Lawyers we’ve worked with say the gap can feel overwhelming, especially when they are preoccupied with client work. In the most recent issue of For the Defense, the magazine of the?PACDL - Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, CREATE Principal Meg Pritchard discussed the real-life implementation of marketing strategy in “Real Life Lessons In Marketing and Business Development: A Case Study for Criminal Defense Lawyers.” The article features a case study highlighting solutions we developed with our strategic partners Pearl Consulting NYC and Humaniz Collective to address the unique challenges of marketing a white collar criminal defense practice. The real-life lessons in the article apply for lawyers, practice groups and firms across a variety of practice and industry focuses. You can read the article on our blog [https://lnkd.in/e52PrVJJ].

In legal services, exceptional client service isn’t just providing excellent work on client matters. It’s also providing value above and beyond what you’re being paid for. What are clients looking for from their legal counsel today? Authoritative insight and actionable guidance to navigate their industries and markets better, to anticipate changes and assess risks better, and to seize opportunities and achieve their goals better. In short, to help them do their jobs better. Without having to ask—or be billed—for it. Fortunately law firms already have a proven method for providing this value to their clients. ? Thought leadership. There’s no doubt that thought leadership is a great marketing tool. But it’s also essential client service. Exceptional thought leadership—proactive, targeted, relevant and knowledgeable—consistently served to clients, can transform your client relationships from legal service provider to trusted resource and ride-or-die business partner. It strengthens client loyalty, protects against client attrition, and enhances the likelihood that your clients will become your enthusiastic references and champion referral sources. Is your firm delivering this kind of thought leadership? If not, you’re putting your client relationships at risk. The 2024 Edelman LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report notes that 70% of C-suite executives say that they have experienced a piece of thought leadership?that has made them question whether they were working with the right service providers. More than half say the piece of content made them realize there might be other providers that were smarter, more visionary or understood better their challenges than their existing partners. Many of them took action as a result. Of the original 70% who questioned their existing service provider, 25% either significantly reduced or ended that relationship. Exceptional thought leadership is essential client service. Follow us for more insights on the power of exceptional content.

Thought Leadership That Drives Revenue Great thought leadership—whether a client alert, article, white paper or video—doesn’t just demonstrate expertise. It provides insight, offers solutions and inspires confident action. It speaks to the concerns, questions and challenges of the specific audience of clients you want to reach and engage. Mediocre thought leadership (if you can even call it that) regurgitates information and offers wishy-washy legal jargon for a generic audience. More than ever, clients overwhelmingly want and expect their lawyers and firms to act as a resource for forward-looking analysis and guidance. Not only that, clients in the B2B space are more willing to trust, be receptive to marketing from, and hire firms that regularly publish great thought leadership. In fact, B2B legal hiring decision-makers view thought leadership as a better indicator of competency and expertise than traditional marketing content. And clients are often willing to pay premium rates to firms that demonstrate authoritative expertise through great thought leadership. In other words, great thought leadership drives business development—and revenue. Does your firm consistently publish the kind of exceptional thought leadership it needs to engage with and market to clients? Get more insights on how your firm can develop thought leadership that drives revenue here https://lnkd.in/gmXFTUa3

Are you sending great marketing content out into the universe and hoping the right people pick up your signal? It’s time to fine-tune your transmitter to the right frequencies. At its most basic, professional services marketing is about establishing expertise (through your content), enhancing awareness (with the right audiences) and building trust (with those who make or influence the hiring decisions). If it feels like your marketing is falling on deaf ears — you’re putting out insightful content, but you’re not getting any leads, and certainly not clients or work — it might not be a messaging problem, it might be an audience mismatch.? The audiences for your marketing content fall into four basic categories: clients, prospects, referral sources and influencers of those first three. To home in on the right audiences for your marketing, you need to identify the specific clients you want to attract. ? Who are they?? ? How do your (or your target) clients typically find you?? ? How do they hire for legal work?? ? Who or what influences their hiring decisions? The answers to those questions will help you define and refine the audiences for your content. Then you need to get the right content in front of those audiences consistently – by delivering it to where they are looking for information, by bringing them to where you publish it, or (most likely) both. How you do that will depend on the channels, technology and marketing resources you have available to you. Audience-focused marketing is efficient and effective. It can help you deliver more of the right content to your clients, prospects and referral sources, boosting visibility and engagement, and ultimately bringing in more of the right clients and the right work. For more insights on audience-focused marketing, and how we’ve helped clients find and reach their target audiences, read our latest blog post "If Your Audience Doesn’t Hear You, Are You Really Marketing?" here: https://lnkd.in/euwqcvDD

It’s a classic content conundrum for law firm marketing departments. Lawyers are the subject matter experts who need to be front and center in marketing. But lawyers are busy people. Their priority is (and should be) client work, which often doesn’t leave much time for developing content. To make matters worse, the busiest lawyers are often the ones whose time and expertise you need to create the most compelling content. So how do you get the content you need for your marketing without stressing your already overloaded lawyers or complicating your content process? At CREATE Communications, we believe in a collaborative approach to content development. We ask: ? Where do you need support? Writing? Editing? Approvals? We fill in the gaps, so you – and your lawyers – don’t have to do everything. ? How do you like to work? Whether it’s through quick voice memos, phone calls or emails, or casual brainstorming sessions, rough outlines or fully developed first drafts, we adapt to your firm culture and work style. ? Where is your content getting stuck? If you have a content process, we can identify and solve the sticky spots. If you don’t, we can build one that works for you and your lawyers. ? What’s your most pressing content issue? Not enough quality content for existing campaigns? Content projects you want to get off your wish list and into reality? We can help you solve for that. A collaborative content approach can help you create insightful, market-ready content that positions your lawyers as the go-to experts clients are looking to hire—without pulling them away from the work that matters most. Want to know more about how collaborative content creation could work for your firm? Check out our blog, then let's chat. https://lnkd.in/emXsf2_u And to the firms we’ve collaborated with, thank you for trusting us to make your content creation easier.

Exceptional Content, Delivered. That’s our tag line. But what does exceptional content really mean? For your clients, exceptional content answers their most pressing questions with authoritative and insightful analysis and actionable guidance. It’s proactive and sometimes provocative. It’s what clients say they expect – and rarely get – from law firms. When you deliver exceptional content, instead of the same recycled information that everyone else is pushing, clients feel understood and informed. And they see you as a trusted resource. For law firms, exceptional content enables you to deliver value to your clients, demonstrate your indispensable knowledge and perspective, and stand out in a noisy and competitive marketplace. It aligns with your marketing and business development goals and helps you make the most of opportunities for business growth, whether that’s attracting new clients, breaking into new markets or deepening your relationship with current clients. For us, exceptional content is where we live. It’s our commitment and our passion. We’re writers, editors and marketing professionals who believe that exceptional content can be the rocket fuel that powers business growth. And we love working with law firms that know that too. Want to know more about the power of exceptional content and what it can do? Follow us here and check out our blog for more insights. https://lnkd.in/emXsf2_u

When we published our snazzy infographic/flow chart a couple of weeks back, a few people commented on what they saw as a missed selling opportunity. ? If you agreed with the statement “We don’t see the value in content marketing,” the arrows took you to “Got it! If that changes, keep us in mind.”? ? Some commenters on LinkedIn suggested that, rather than leaving folks at that dead end, we should have taken the opportunity to explain the value of content marketing. ? At Create Communications, we believe that exceptional content can be the rocket fuel that powers law firm business growth. (We literally say that on our website.) ? The law firms we work with believe that too. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be our clients. ? Our clients know that authoritative and insightful content is essential for building their brand awareness, attracting potential clients, enhancing their reputation and credibility as experts and thought leaders, and fostering client engagement and retention. ? But don’t take our word for it. ? Take it from the folks who make the legal hiring decisions. ? In its 2023 General Counsel Survey of 100 GCs in the U.S. and the U.K., thought leadership platform Passle found: ? ? GCs spend a lot of time trying to stay up to date with news and trends impacting their companies, industries and markets—more than three-quarters (77%) reported spending nine hours or more (a full business day!) a week consuming content. ? 100% of the GCs surveyed considered it the responsibility of law firms to keep their clients informed, but only 8% thought that law firms were providing enough timely and relevant content. ? The majority (61%) of GCs are looking to hire firms that demonstrate relevant subject matter knowledge and expertise; almost half (48%) wouldn’t hire a lawyer or firm that didn’t. ? In its 2025 Annual Market Outlook and Client Service Review, The BTI Consulting Group found that, now more than ever, clients are looking to their law firms to provide authoritative insights to help them anticipate, navigate, strategize and innovate around complex new and developing challenges. ? Law firms that do may be well positioned to take advantage of powerful upside trends in the legal services market. Firms that don’t may find themselves replaced. ? Clients are looking for insightful content of all kinds from the law firms they hire—and many aren’t finding it. ? That’s a business development opportunity you don’t want to miss. ? That’s the value of content.

Congratulations to all of the newly elevated partners announced this January! Partnership is a major milestone in your legal career. ? Pop the champagne! Celebrate with your family and friends! Post your news on LinkedIn! ? Update your bio! ? Your elevation in status and title is a great time to revise your firm bio (and other professional profiles such as LinkedIn)—and not just by changing your title. ? As you move through your career, the use-case for your bio changes.? As younger lawyer, your bio should be focused on giving readers—including partners in your firm making staffing, compensation and partnership decisions—as much detail about your work, skills and experience as possible. ? Later in your career the focus shifts more from internal uses to external marketing and business development. Your bio should change too, highlighting differentiators beyond your work experience, such as your style and approach to working with clients. ? At this point, your bio may also have gotten a bit stale and overgrown. Information from law school or your early career may no longer be relevant—and might be making your more important achievements harder to find. ? Not sure how to start revising your bio? ? Check out? “From Law School to Corner Office (and Beyond): Crafting an Effective Bio,” on the CREATE blog here: https://lnkd.in/e5GFpX38 You can get more tips on what makes a great bio in “Dos And Don’ts Of Bios,” also on our blog here: https://lnkd.in/efPmQG5B

Law firm CMO/CMBDOs, managing partners and marketing folks!?? ? Do you mind if we ask you a question (or two) about your content marketing?