Welcome to Episode 3 of the CMO Series Digital Masterclass, a new sub-series of the CMO Series Podcast where we delve into the tips and tricks from professional services marketers on how to build a world-class digital presence. 

I'm Charlie Knight and today we're looking at how thought leadership can determine digital success and position firms front of mind with their clients and prospects. We've collated some of the best digital advice from the CMO Series Podcast, and you can find all of the links to the full episodes in the podcast description. So the role of thought leadership in legal marketing is changing, and the rise of digital is enabling smaller firms to compete more effectively. Our recent research on legal thought leadership found that marketing priorities are changing, with ranking and sponsorships taking a back seat and thought leadership and digital media rising to the top.

You can find a link to the report in the podcast description. We're going to kick off this episode with John Neidecker, Director of Business Development and Marketing at Norris McLaughlin. John joined episode 145 of the CMO Series podcast to share his insights from 25 years in the industry and he reflects on the changing role of thought leadership in legal marketing. 

John: Back then, it wasn't just thought leadership. Everything was harder. And just staying connected to your contacts, your network, was so much more difficult. I mean, you look back on it now, and I think, you know, if you met someone, just for example, say you met someone at an event, you got their business card, and, you know, the next morning, you're reading a Wall Street Journal, and of course, the physical Wall Street Journal, because the digital version didn't exist. And, you know, say you ran across an article that you knew that individual would be interested in, back then, you had to go to your copier, you had to cut the article out or fold it just right so that you could make a copy of it. Go to your physical Rolodex, find his card, hope that he had a fax number listed, go to the fax machine and fax it to him or her. I hope that there was fax paper in the machine on their end and then call him to let him know that you'd sent it. Where today, if you're reading an article anywhere, chances are there's a button that says share this article when you can just do it with one click. There's one question I always wanted to ask, I always have asked in-house counsel, whether it's an in-house council panel or I was just speaking with them individually, it's what value, if any, do you put on rankings and selecting a law firm? And the answer for 25 years has been zero. You really can't afford to not pay a lot of attention to the social media, the new digital media channels, and how you're using that to position your firm and partners as thought leaders. The value for the dollar is really high. I mean, it doesn't cost that much to get really top-quality podcasts and audio and video equipment. And then the education partner and so on, the use of that. And that, I think, can make a big difference and allow you to play a lot larger than you are. 

Charlie: Alison Janzen, Director of Marketing and Business Development at Torkin Manes, joined episode 109 of the CMO Series podcast to delve into her firm's integrated approach to marketing and how switching to a content-led strategy has helped differentiate their lawyers and grow their business. 

Alison: While I'd been preaching for years that we needed to write articles so we could be seen as thought leaders and so that we could raise a profile for our lawyers and for our firm, we hadn't really tied all the aspects of content marketing into a specific strategy. So when I started at Torkin Mane's 10 years ago, content marketing was a key priority. You know, it was sort of perfect timing for me to come in with a clean slate and be able to focus on this. And we started with making sure that we had all the building blocks that we needed. We built a new website. We put in a CRM system. We signed on with several content aggregators. And we spent a lot of time talking to the lawyers about the importance of writing. We set up internal seminars to sort of train people on it and how important it was for them to be generating content so that they could be seen as subject experts. So we generated that content not only through client alerts and newsletters, but also through videos. And we pushed all of it out through our email distribution lists, our website, social media. And we found that the extensive LinkedIn networks of our lawyers was extremely valuable when it comes to getting the word out. And we've continued to encourage our lawyers to build those networks. Whenever I go to work on a new website, the agency, you know, I've been in this business for 25 years, so I've worked on a few. And the first thing the agency says, you know, the number one place people go is lawyer bios. That's the most important thing that you need to focus on. Because that's true, you need to look at, so what's bringing people back? And what is making one lawyer look like a better option than a lawyer on another law firm site? So I really do think that showing information about what they think and showing that they are up to date on what is going on. So if they're sharing news items that are coming out, like if they're making sure, because, you know, a key priority is to ensure that their clients are kept informed of anything that they need to know to make sure that their business stays successful and anything, you know, from a legal aspect that they need to be keeping in mind. 

Charlie: Ashley Horne, Chief Marketing Officer at 1.1 Dickinson in the US, featured on episode 112 of the CMO Series podcast. And she talks about how an attorney-led editorial board, who are passionate about the process, really helped embed thought leadership into the heart of their strategy.

Ashley: I came with a kind of PR communications background and was always drawn to content from a very kind of early start in my career. Year, went into professional services marketing and spent a number of years at KPMG and a smaller consulting firm and found, you know, the art of content marketing and really serving up value to clients through meaningful, relevant, timely content was, you know, that was kind of a product for us. That brought me to Womble. Womble was looking for a CMO four years ago. Honestly, I led with my vision and point of view on campaigns and how they can bring groups like attorneys together to collaborate and to go to market together. And so that's what landed me the CMO role at Womble. Our COVID task force evolved into a firm-wide editorial board.

So we realized the gold that we found with this cross-practice team of attorneys, and we said, gosh, why don't we do this for all campaigns, if you will? They, of course, didn't call it that at the time, but for the content we go to market with. So we developed this editorial board, we have a terrific chair in Mark Enriquez, with a main objective of saying, what are the major topics that we want to go to market with that we want to kind of expand on when it comes to really interesting thought leadership? This team of attorneys, the editorial board, then really thinks through who are all the attorneys who could talk about this. And they kind of do a lot of the legwork and thinking, hey, you know, I think this attorney has the perfect experience. They worked on this kind of client. And that peer-to-peer ask is so much more valuable than marketing saying, hey, can you write, you know, a white paper on this? I mean, we just, the buy-in was at such a rapid pace versus marketing trying to shove a campaign at, you know, a ton of very busy lawyers. I think the one piece of advice, and not to sound duplicative of what I've said before, but is really kind of rally and inspire the early adopters. And that goes for anything we do in marketing. But we found the most success in having an attorney-led editorial board that were passionate about the process. Again, that takes that uphill right out of it. And you're just skating. Once you can find kind of a group that are as passionate about what you are doing as you are. So that's just, I think, been the golden ticket for us is not trying to be marketing-led campaigns, but really firm-led, and it's a team sport. And so that would be my biggest advice.

Charlie: In episode 95, Angela Pandolfo-Roy, Chief Marketing Officer at Gibbons Law, shared their approach to content management and how firms can make the most of their thought leadership in their marketing efforts. 

Angela: Well, content management to me, it's always meant getting the most bang for your buck out of the words you use to describe your services and your service distinctions and your successes. And it's getting the most bang for your buck out of the words you use to show thought leadership and inform and educate your different audiences. So it means like, for example, seizing on a topic and then utilizing that for a blog and then maybe a client alert and then an article in a business publication and then sharing links to the blog and the alert and the article on your social media platforms and posting them on your website and using them as handouts for seminars and for fleshing out proposals and pitches and making the topic the theme of a presentation or a webinar or a podcast and then building an expert positioning or media outreach effort around your mastery of that topic and then making sure mention of that topic works its way into the practice descriptions of the relevant practice areas and your bio and et cetera. It means drafting, polishing, and saving marketing content like practice descriptions and representative matter write-ups and general firm info, and then categorizing it all so that you can use it over and over and mix and match copy in custom ways. But like I said, just creating something, a wonderful piece of content, and getting 36 different things out of it. To me, that's what content management is, but even more broadly, it's also about clarity, consistency, and creativity in the content you use throughout your business development and client service initiatives. It means understanding, for example, that, say, the greatest three-year strategic plan will fall flat if you don't communicate its components and its implementation in a way that engages your constituencies, and it's in a voice that sounds like your firm, and it clearly conveys your message. It means recognizing that words, they're really the best tool we have to market professional services. I mean, the product we're selling is a bunch of lawyers. So before someone purchases our product, they can't really try it out. You know, they can't pick it up and shake it and see if it's sturdy. We don't have teams of product designers like Apple does to make, you know, to make everything sleek and attractive to consumers, you know, but with selling legal services and marketing legal services, there's no money back guarantee. There's no coupons and things like that. They literally have to take our word for it, that we are who we say we are, that we are the product, the stellar product that we say we are. In episode 82 of the CMO Series podcast, Judith McKay, Chief Client and Innovation Officer at Canadian firm McCarthy Tétrault discussed the importance of effective content marketing and shared her unique perspectives on the role of thought leadership as a former General Counsel.

Judith: The pandemic really accelerated, I think, a direction that legal content marketing was already going, which is that our clients not only make their buy decisions on the basis of face-to-face encounters with our lawyers, but also through interacting with our content, which can build the credibility of our partners in those areas where clients need help. And also build the brand of the firm. And what we noticed during the pandemic is we continuously collected data to understand what was happening. Because of course, during the pandemic, there was very little or almost no face-to-face contact. And people were just adapting to connecting over Teams and Zoom. So written content on our website and social media and our blogs and articles, and webinars became, you know, an extremely important outlet. And so, you know, looking at the data, the engagement with our website went up orders of magnitude, engagement with our content went up orders of magnitude. And we had, you know, huge participation at our webinars. And we noted a similar effect for our competitors too. And so, you know, we looked at but how do we capitalize on that? So we went and talked to a bunch of clients. They, you know, how can we better serve you during this unprecedented time? And they all said, look, we're just, we're interacting a lot with content, but we're also inundated with content. And we really need it to be easier to digest. Having been a General Counsel, it's a very demanding role. You're an executive. You're also a leader of the team. But you also kind of have to stay ahead of the legal developments to kind of guide your team. And you don't have a lot of time to sit around and read the case law and all the complexities relating to that. And so you are reliant on law firm content to say, here's the things you should be worried about. Here's what you should be thinking. and a lot of clients tell us that it's really helpful to them if the relationship partner that they work with a lot sends them articles and says hey you if you haven't seen this you should be aware of this and here's how I think it may impact your business and how about we sit down and talk about it that is you know very much appreciated when she sees you're trying to cut through the noise of a huge volume of content out there.

Charlie: That's all for this episode of CMO Series Digital Masterclass. You can find links to the full episode featured today in the podcast description. Subscribe to the CMO Series podcast in all of the usual places or visit passle.net/digitalmasterclass for all of the latest content and how to create a world-class digital presence. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.