Podcast Ep. 160: How You Can Raise Your Law Firm’s Brand Awareness with Podcasts and Videos

In this episode of the Legal Marketing 2.0 Podcast, Guy is joined by Rosa Colón to discuss how law firms can use video and podcasting to reach their marketing goals. Rosa is the marketing technology manager at Lowenstein Sandler LLP where she manages the firm’s day-to-day digital marketing needs. This includes their website, website development, maintenance, optimization, analytics, email marketing, experience management CRM, and multimedia production. She also works both in-house and as a vendor helping professional services firms garner and streamline their technologies. Lastly, she is also the vice chair of the New York Local Steering Committee.

1. From your perspective, how has the pandemic affected the world of law firm marketing?

At Lowenstein pre-pandemic, we already had attorneys who were prolific in generating news and insights and I think during the pandemic and even today the circumstances surrounding the pandemic created even more opportunities for this and there was so much changing day to day week to week. The attorneys at Lowenstein really rose to that challenge. Our CMO, who is a friend of yours, has anecdotally stated this in the past and it’s actually really true, it was like he had a crystal ball in many ways. Many of the initiatives we had already set out to accomplish in Q1 of 2020 couldn’t have been a more perfect time for the pandemic. For example, we had implemented our partnership with content aggregators such as JD Supra and we had just kicked off the implementation of our experience management database. Just as an example and from a marketing technology perspective, for instance, our site visitor traffic doubled in 2020 from the previous year. And again in 2021, we saw 100% increase in site visitor traffic, and even now, two years later, our site visitor traffic and page views remain very strong.

2. What prompted the firm to consider podcasts and videos as part of your marketing and business development strategy?

Our journey into creating podcasts began In 2019 when our attorneys were already generating so much of what’s considered traditional offer marketing, written content, client alerts, articles, publications, speaking engagements, media mentions, etc. With the pandemic in 2020 and in-person networking opportunities still limited, attorneys felt increased pressure to extend and maximize their business development outreach. For us because many of our firm’s clients are entrepreneurial and tech savvy we thought it was very important to demonstrate a comfort level on the platforms our clients and their customers use. We also wanted to reach law school graduates through the media that they frequent. Our CMO felt strongly about this and it’s been verified through various surveys that new media like podcasts and videos are alternatives that are highly effective in communicating thought leadership, as well as core values such as innovation and diversity. So through our work with experts like Good2bSocial and Living Group, which for those who are unfamiliar is a global branding agency, we learned that both videos and podcasts offer time and cost-efficient ways to reach those business development targets with improved SEO.

3. Tell us a little bit about your podcast production process and then, once you have the podcast completed, how do you actually promote them?

So in the beginning, naturally, it was a lot of legwork and making sure we trained the team. We purchased and distributed high-quality microphones, especially because you know, everybody was remote so figuring out where they would be was difficult for scheduling and sound checks, those sorts of logistics. Now that we’re like I said, a little bit more than a year into producing our various podcasts, we have our Insurance Recoveries podcasts, the Lowenstein Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation podcast, Women’s Initiative, Trusts and Estates series, and finally our Regulatory Matters podcast. Today our production process is as straightforward as humanly possible. That has been really important for me personally.  It’s truly a collaborative effort with the attorneys and their guests along with the business development marketing communications team, branding and social media team, and, of course, our vendors. We each play an important role in becoming this well oiled machine. At any given week Lowenstein as a firm is releasing 123 podcast episodes across six different series. In terms of promotion, we do all the traditional avenues of posting across a firm’s social media posting on our website, promoting on our homepage, asking our attorneys and their guests to share with their network, whether that be again on social media or distributing it with an alert.

4. How are you measuring success, how do you know what you’re doing is working?

We are continuously working on developing and reporting persuasive metrics that measure the effectiveness of these initiatives and how they complement all of our other marketing and business development efforts being performed by the firm. When one of our attorneys has a podcast we’re always encouraging them to repurpose the content by creating articles and publications, sharing within their networks and their various organizations, depending on the practice group area. And now that we have so many different series under our belt there’s some friendly competition amongst the groups as well. Some of the top questions I get whenever I deliver reports is which series is performing the best in comparison with the others, which is great. I welcome that. But what has really been so rewarding to see is how well each of these series has performed within its area. Each series is so unique and they all offer practical and actionable advice, so our challenge now is creating new avenues for sharing all of this information and making sure that we’re targeting the right audiences.

Takeaway: 

If a law firm wants to appear modern and up to date, they need to utilize video and podcast content. In this mostly digital age, creating unique video and podcasting content is a great way to show your firm’s expertise, along with attracting new clients and talent. 

You can find Rosa Colón on LinkedIn. 

Check out our newest ebook The Law Firm Guide to Podcasting here.

Read more about Lowenstein Sandler’s podcast and video success with this article, Multimedia for Maximum Impact: Raising Law Firms’ Brand Awareness With Videos and Podcasts.