Thought leadership can be the key in your business development strategy, but there are some key principles in ensuring that content is effective in turning prospects into clients.

We've worked with top business development teams across the world and conducted our own research into what works best when it comes to reaching and engaging prospective clients.

It's led us to believe that while most business development involves content, a large proportion of content is not helpful for BD.

Here's the best practice we've learned into what firms need to turn content into BD success. We also take a look at how we've built that best practice into the Passle platform to make it easy for lawyers and importantly BD teams to build valuable relationships with clients and prospects.

Content for BD must be relevant

It goes without saying, but generic content that isn't tailored to your clients and prospects is unlikely to turn them towards your firm. That goes double for the delivery of that content. Whether that is a newsletter, a social post, a 1-2-1 email or publication to Lexology, Mondaq or JD Supra, it must be tailored to the prospective clients you are trying to win.

77% of GCs surveyed reported spending 5 hours or more per week staying up to date. There's an opportunity to be the firm that helps them do that, but only helpful, specific content will hit the mark.

In a system where content is ad hoc or centralised through an inefficient system, it's hard to get tailored content written. Passle makes it easy through Self Service Publication, making it simple for Lawyers and their BD teams to publish about the things that are relevant to those clients that are most important.

Broad, untailored content isn't business development. Relevant, tailored content that is helpful to your clients is a powerful business development tool.

Content for BD must be sent quickly, while it's still relevant

Just like sending broad content is not business development, sending content that was relevant 2 weeks ago is also not going to help turn prospects into clients.

That white paper that summarised all the developments of 2024 might be better sent as two or three shorter posts as soon as the developments happen.

With Passle, ad hoc processes and convoluted email chains are replaced by simple workflows. As your lawyers write content, it's routed for approval to the right people automatically. Content within Passle also benefits from reminders to help BD teams and content approvers keep to turnaround time targets.

Content that's hidden deep in approval email chains is no good for BD.
 

Content for BD must reach clients where they are

The most popular channel General Counsel use to stay up to date (podcasts) managed just a 14% share of the audience. Even if your content is in that most popular format, you'll miss 86% of the audience if you stick to just a single format.

For content to be useful for business development, it must reach the audience, and do so in a format that they are likely to pay attention to. 

Good content for business development is multi-format and published in multiple channels.

At Passle, we've built into our platform a “Create Once, Publish Everywhere” philosophy, where a single piece of content can be easily routed to other publication channels. We've also made it easy for podcasts, videos and white papers to be published on the firm's website, putting expertise at the heart of your website where clients expect to see it.

Content for BD must be regular

48% of General Counsel won't work with a firm unless they show relevant expertise. But that doesn't mean that they will fall over themselves to work with your firm after the first piece of content you write. You need to be front of mind when it matters. Regular content is key.

Think of a shop window with customers walking by, content is the fresh, delicious looking produce that can bring that customer through the door. You want to be regularly showing them time after time that your firm is the best choice, rather than offering something stale. 86% of General Counsel are coming to your firm's website monthly or more often, have something helpful for them.

We realise it's not a good use of business development or marketing resource to chase your lawyers for content. That's why within the Passle platform, each lawyer writing content gets tailored feedback on what companies are reading their content, showing the value of content and giving that push to create that next piece of content.

Using content for business development

Being relevant, timely, multi-format and regular is what separates ineffective content from a key tool for business development. By showing the true capability of your firm, what you really bring to the table, your clients and prospects are more likely to turn to your firm when the need arises.

Content done right not only keeps your firm top-of-mind but also builds valuable relationships with clients and prospects.