A lot of people are on spring break this week – but you shouldn’t take a break from marketing. In fact, there is so much opportunity to stand out as others sit on the beach or during any kind of vacation during the year.

Whenever you take some time off – or business is slow – here are some things you can do with your downtime to continue to develop your marketing and business development efforts.

Even if you have enough clients now, don’t pull back on marketing when things are going well, as anything can happen.

Because legal services are not an impulse purchase and companies retain outside legal counsel when they need legal representation, you should always be marketing yourself and your firm to stay top of mind with prospective clients and referral sources.

Strong marketing is about building relationships by providing value.

Also, marketing is not just for client or business development.

It can help you stay top of mind with the media, help you build your personal brand, obtain speaking engagements, board appointments, article writing opportunities – and so much more.

Here are some ideas on how law firms and B2B companies and their employees can reignite their marketing and business development efforts when they have downtime.

If you’re ready to start doing more marketing but you aren’t sure where to start or exactly where you should focus, here are some ideas for things you can do

Your professional biography is one of the most important pieces of copy you’ll ever write about yourself. It’s your opportunity to showcase your work, capabilities, and areas of expertise, and what makes you stand out from your competitors.

Your bio can serve as an important business development tool if it is well-crafted…

Many in-house counsel cite lawyer bios as one of the most important sources of information regarding researching outside lawyers (yes, everyone is Googling you and your bio is usually the number one search result of your name). In addition, lawyer bios are among the most trafficked pages on law firm web sites.

Your bio can serve as an important business development tool if it is well-crafted. Yet within the legal industry, so many bios are still lackluster, outdated, not client-focused or just poorly written.  

Given the power of bios, it has always baffled me that many lawyers do not update theirs at least several times a year or write them with a client focus. The new year is a great reason to take a fresh look at your bio and make enhancements to it. Now let’s get to work!

Do you want to know the real keys to success on LinkedIn?

It’s about shifting to a client-centric mindset in all you do.

It’s about making your posts about your

This is not the year to take a break from social media during the summer. Instead this is the time to focus on your business development and branding efforts.

I don’t know anyone right now especially (or ever) who would say they have enough clients or work. I think everyone is nervous about the economy, the ability to maintain their current volume of work, bring in future clients and support their people.

That being said, it’s incredibly important to ensure your current clients are happy and that you are consistently generating new sources of leads and referrals.

Here are 25 ideas on how to do that, which now involves shifting your strategy from in-person networking and client entertaining to having a strong online presence and thought leadership platform. If you have never used LinkedIn, written an article or blog post or spoken at a webinar, now is the time to pivot to doing all of these. It is never too early or late to start marketing yourself or your firm.