Podcast Ep. 161: Best Practices for Integrating Clients into Digital Marketing and Public Relations Efforts

In this episode of the Legal Marketing 2.0 Podcast, Guy is joined by Amanda Schneider to discuss the benefits of including clients in your digital marketing efforts. Amanda is the CMO of Epstein Becker Green where she oversees a team of business development, communications, and marketing operations professionals. She also staffs the Firm’s Board of Directors and has been with Epstein Becker Green for 14 years.

1. Tell us a little bit about the types of digital projects that Becker has been engaged in over the last year or so?

We have video programming and podcast programming, so we have our thought leaders in healthcare video series or diagnosing healthcare podcasts and our employment law podcast. We produced over 250 episodes of employment law, which I joke with my team, that’s more than Seinfeld and friends at this point. We’re always working with the packaging for these different vehicles, so we have a weekly E-COM called Workforce Wednesday that we use to package our content for employment law and other thought leadership. 

2. What would you say is the biggest challenge when a firm your size decides to engage in these types of projects?

You have to make sure you have the resources to take this on both from staff but also attorney resources because we’re at all of these projects, we have an editorial team made up of attorneys that have to be committed to a schedule. Especially if you’re putting out consistent programming and we really do strive to do that. So when you look at our weekly video series, that means you have to hit many deadlines. I know our clients have come to expect certain programming from us in that model where they know on Wednesday, they get this update and they mention it to me when I go to events how great that consistency is. So I think if you don’t have the staff resources in-house, you have to find the right combination of external resources and internal resources to really produce this type of programming.

3. How are you able to showcase your attorneys through your digital thought leadership?

I would venture to say 60% of our attorneys have some sort of this type of programming on their bio and I always tell our attorneys this is a great way for potential clients and our contacts to go to your bio and immediately see something of you, so they get a sense for who you are and the value that you provide. We also use this as a way to train our attorneys from the time they start at the firm. We include associates and counsel, really all levels of our attorneys in our thought leadership. It allows an environment where we can train our associates to start speaking in front of others and really become well versed even for other types of things like media interviews and speaking engagements at conferences. So it’s really a training platform for us as well and allows each of our attorneys to have a way to talk about the areas that they work in and the value they provide to clients.

4. How do you identify the clients that you will ask to be on a podcast or a video?

It goes back to those editorial team meetings for the different digital marketing groups that we have. We often solicit ideas there, but then we keep an eye out for what our clients are writing, for where they’re speaking and we’re looking at topics that might be of interest to a larger group. So part of that is my own team doing diligence, as well as our attorneys. We communicate with our attorneys to say, this is a really interesting topic, and this client spoke about it. Is there any way we could integrate them to be part of our effort?  We would research authors and all kinds of industry experts to be part of our content. There was a segment called tip of the week that featured someone every week, either a client or an industry expert who represented one of the industries that we serve, and that was really great many times, it was my own staff identifying people who might be good. 

Takeaway: 

Coming up with engaging and unique podcasting and video programming for a large firm can be a challenge. Utilizing your attorney’s expertise along with that of the clients is a great way to stand out as a firm in the thought leadership space. 

You can find Amanda Schneider on LinkedIn. 

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