Podcast Episode 178: Exploring New Marketing Channels

In this episode of the Legal Marketing 2.0 Podcast, Guy is joined by Emily Rogers, the US Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at Norton Rose Fulbright, based in their New York office. Joining Norton Rose Fulbright during its combination with Chadbourne & Parke in 2017, Emily has led several special projects for the firm, including serving as the producer of the project finance podcast, Currents, which has more than 2.8 million downloads and has led the marketing efforts for the firm’s innovation-focused subsidiary, LX Studio and privacy compliance tool suite, NT Analyzer. In addition to her core role, Emily is the firm’s global strategic lead for podcasts, the chair of the firm’s Wellness Committee, and a local leader of WiN (Women in Norton Rose Fulbright).

1. Why did your firm decide to follow a podcast strategy? Why do you think it’s become such a success, with almost three million downloads?

Our project finance team had a lot of thought leadership that they were putting out. They have a newsletter that they’ve been producing for about twenty-five years and has a huge following. We were trying to figure out how to reach that kind of next-generation audience, and it was 2016. So, as before, podcasts weren’t as popular as they are now. One thing that made us lucky is that we just hit it very early, and we knew it was going to be something, so we went with it. We started off by just doing interviews with our lawyers in-house because we weren’t sure if any clients or industry experts were going to be interested. I still remember the first time we reached one hundred downloads. We were so excited. From there we started taking it out to clients and other people we had heard of in the industry and asked if they wanted to be on. 

Now we put an episode out, and within a few hours it has five thousand downloads, and it’s pretty exciting to see that. I think it’s a combination of different things that makes it successful. We never really wanted this to be solely self-promotional so it is definitely having other people on it. We don’t talk about the firm at all. But I will say it is one of the top items that clients bring up to our partners. So, even though we are not using it as just a sole advertising channel for us, we still are getting advertising out of it. We just want to really make sure we’re having timely content with people that others want to hear from.

2. What do you think has been the biggest challenge in producing and promoting the podcast to date?

Keeping up with the need for content, I would say. As my role has changed within the firm, it’s been a challenge. One thing that has been great for this particular podcast is that we have a partner that’s very invested in it. So I think that something that makes any piece of marketing really successful is having partners that are invested in the actual product. That goes for not just podcasts, but events, webinars, etc. You need to make sure you have someone that’s willing to do the follow-through and the work, because yes, they do have the billable hour requirement. But we still need them to invest their time in marketing.

3. Why do you think podcasting is an important avenue for legal marketers to get savvy with?

I think for everyone it’s important to try to reach your clients where they’re at. Don’t ask them to come to find you. We try to make sure we’re putting out a good balance of content because not everyone wants to read a legal update or log into a webinar. By striking a good balance we can cater to these different personas. One thing that is also something to highlight is making sure you can use a piece of marketing more than once a lot of the time. We’ll have a webinar, where we have five thousand people registered and signed in, and then we’ll reproduce that content as a podcast episode because it is relevant for that specific audience and channel. Then we get another twenty thousand downloads there. So I think that it’s important to make sure that people have easy access to your content. It’s also been important to us to make sure that we don’t use one podcast channel for the entire firm, because you’re kind of diluting your message at that point. We have ten different podcasts at the firm at this moment, and they all have different audiences, so we wouldn’t want to put that content out, and just kind of be spamming our listeners.

Takeaway: 

For all the legal marketers out there, I would say to make sure you’re open to new opportunities and make sure you keep learning. Build your fan base with your firm and grow with the firm. That is what has definitely benefited me over my career.

You can find Emily Rogers on LinkedIn, as well as the Norton Rose Fulbright Website.

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