In an industry where clients value the expertise of your professionals, content is a powerful tool to engage, nurture, and convert clients and prospects.
In this episode of the CMO Series Digital Masterclass, Sam Page sits down with Scott Rubenstein, Chief Client Officer of RubyLaw, to explore the critical role of content in law firm marketing, how it drives success, and where firms can enhance their strategies for better results.
Scott and Sam discuss:
- Why content is so important in legal marketing
- What the RubyLaw platform is and how it supports law firms
- The role content plays in the online presence of today's law firms
- Key statistics and usage data that demonstrate the importance of content
- The biggest challenges with succeeding with content
- The biggest wins on the table right now for law firms
- Advice for legal marketers looking to take a more effective approach to content
Transcription:
Welcome to the Passle CMO Series Podcast. I'm Sam, and today we've got a very special guest. We're talking about content. In an industry where clients buy the knowledge of your experts, content is one of the best ways to engage, nurture, and convert clients and prospects. Today, we're jumping right into the topic of content, its role in your firm's marketing success, and where firms can look to improve. Who better to tackle this topic than Scott Rubenstein, Chief Client Officer of RubyLaw, a fantastic and powerful content management system for law firms. Scott, welcome on to the Passle CMO Series podcast.
Scott: Thanks, Sam. Great to be here.
Sam: It's lovely to have you on. To set the stage, Scott, could you give us an overview of just how important content is to legal marketing?
Scott: Absolutely. In real estate, so it's location, location, location. And with legal marketing, it's content content content right so content drives that marketing and business development machine and you know there's a phrase the legs feed the wolf by coach Brooks 1980 U.S. hockey team and you know the legs feed the wolf for me directly relates to content right feeding that business development life cycle you know wolves run up to 10 miles for lunch so every step relates to every new piece of content or content update or you know high value content activity and so over time that'll build and we'll get to eat you know that's true whether it's a website or social or pitches and proposals and. Our clients at RubyLaw which consists mostly of marketers and business developers at law firms are either constantly managing an influx of content from the lawyers who post all the time or they're asking for an influx of content from the lawyers who never post and and that's usually, two different problems at the same firm right and some lawyers are just more prolific than others And I know that hassle, your product is a great job for folks who need a little help posting more. But anyway, so lawyers are producing content because the law is always changing, right? And they need to stay relevant. And so they need fresh content about trending topics to stay relevant. And that shows clients or prospective clients that you know about their practices and industries and the changes and trends going on. And most importantly, that you understand their business. And if they see that you understand their business, it'll help you either keep a client or win new client business. So content is a crucial part of that equation.
Sam: That's a great summary. You mentioned a couple of things. I never thought we would be talking about the Miracle on Ice when we came on to do a podcast on content. That's wonderful. You mentioned also RubyLaw there. So could you give us a bit of background on RubyLaw and the journey so far with the firm?
Scott: Yeah, absolutely. So RubyLaw is a legal marketing technology platform for law firms of all sizes. It powers websites, which I think we're most known for. But RubyLaw Experience also manages experience and matters data. And RubyLaw Proposals generates Word, PowerPoint, PDF, documents for pitches and presentations. And we also have RubyLaw Integrity, which is a content checker for broken links and spell checking. If you have forbidden terms that shouldn't be on a website or a proposal, we'll flag those as well, things like that. And it works with websites, experience, and proposals. And the thing about RubyLaw is we've always been innovators in the legal marketing space. So in 2010, we launched the first mobile app for law firms MoFo To-Go and in 2013 we launched the first mobile responsive website which is winston.com and that took home best in show at LMA that year and proud to say that Winston & Strawn is a long-term client and we've relaunched that site last year in 2016 we. We launched the first AI search for a law firm website which is way ahead of its time and that was for bryancave.com which is now of course BCLP and we've been adding personalization and AI features ever since so on the front end of the website we built out lawyer bio cross-selling and so if you're a buyer on a bio that doesn't quite match your needs it'll route you to another lawyer bio that better fits your industry or practice preferences. Another cool feature is content recommendations engine, and that'll display content recommendations based on pages that you visited on the site. And that's all automated, so it doesn't require anybody to do anything manually on the backend. And in the same vein, trending insights is another module that leverages analytics to recommend the most engaging pages. And that's all automated and other modules like that. And at the same time, we've been building out features for RubyLaw CMS backend. So one of the things I'm most proud of is our continuous upgrades. And that's where clients are always on the latest version of the software as part of our regular hosting and maintenance plan and so you're always getting the newest features security updates and performance optimization.
Sam: Wow a storied history of innovation in the digital space it sounds like we've got the right people on and to talk about content and talk about thought leadership and in this episode of the Digital Masterclass if we bring it back, Scott, to that topic of content. And you mentioned a little bit in that first question about how important content is. Can we just come back to that and discuss a little bit the role that content plays across the online presence at a high level?
Scott: Yeah, well, you know, the role is multifaceted for sure, right? So on the one hand, the website plays a crucial role in buyer verification process, where if I'm a prospective client of a law firm and I go to a website and it feels dated, the content hasn't been updated in a while, it's difficult to work with, that sets the tone for the buyer. If the website feels dated and difficult to work with, maybe your legal insights are dated and maybe your lawyers are difficult to work with. On the other hand, if it's got a modern look and feel, content is inviting and fresh and topical, it's easy to navigate. I mean, those are feelings that are then synonymous with your firm. And that's stated out of all the content. Our clients far and away spend most of their time adding news items to the site so things like client alerts media mentions blog posts and news makes up the most content on the site. In terms of just sheer number of pages and news pages are the highest traffic pages on the site along with bios but news is the driving force for content definitely and news is a leading entry page for the website. So there's a real opportunity for folks entering the site to engage in some high-value activities for the firm. So I think the biggest one is, or definitely one of the bigger ones, is to subscribe to a mailing list or sign up for an event. You've got them on the site, they're on a news page, and it's about converting a website visitor to a client. So they sign up for the mailing list, that creates a business development lead, you send them newsletters, invite them to events. You can prep the lawyers with details about the leads before the event.
And that all increases the likelihood of winning new business, right? So you turn a cold lead into a warm lead. And with the technology these days, we can tell where they're coming from, what company they are, and even who they are. And that's good for new clients. And it's great for client retention. Another high value activity is to download a PDF. So a lot of our clients produce these annual reports or other high-value downloads, right? They're spending a lot of time, a lot of energy putting these things together. And, you know, when they're on the website and you're downloading them, that could all be tracked and reported on. And that's a great way to assess ROI. You could even present those with a gated contact form.
So if you hit download, a form comes up and you have to fill out all your information. So that's another way to build your contact list and get some warm leads. Social media is another big one, right? So you want folks to share that content on social media because it'll reach a broader audience. And… Content amplification is the name of the game right so that's old news but essentially you have an event you have a news post you share it on social you share it here round and round right and someone shares a post with a comment and other folks who haven't even been to your site are seeing it on social and they're going there now and then they repost it and it's just amplifying the audience and and the nice thing about that about social media in general is Google's tracking those social media shares and those social media entrances and referrals. And so that helps boost your SEO because they see that as a direct connection between social media followers. But even something as simple as emailing a lawyer. So on all of our websites, on most websites, and if you've got related lawyers on the news pages, authors, et cetera, you can navigate to the bio page, learn more about the lawyer and email them. And that can be all tracked. And the goal here is to get them off the website and into your office. And this all sort of combines into the larger idea where some of our more savvy clients are tying revenue to these high-value activities.
And this allows you to track how marketing contributes to the overall sales cycle. And at the end of the day, it removes the stigma of the marketing department as a cost center and rebrands it as a revenue generator. And that's a point I really want to hit home because it's a total paradigm shift, I think, into the way a lot of firms see marketing and see content and even some business development activities. So, again, it behooves you to tie some form of revenue generation to those marketing activities.
Sam: I'm not sure we've left out any part of the online presence there I think we went we went from social to email back to the website we covered off seo we then went to the one-to-one direct then we've done revenue tracking and gated content along the way yeah multifaceted was a word you used.
Scott: Absolutely.
Sam: You touched on there and you answered a little bit, a couple of statistics just around news being one of the biggest cards for the website and, making up a large number of pages on the site. Are there any other key insights or usage statistics that you can share with us from across the RubyLaw network that can help us understand that and maybe quantify a little bit the value and the importance of content to that online mix?
Scott: Absolutely so you know total page views is the big one and probably the most the most basic but you know news typically captures about a third of all website traffic wow and bios will capture the yeah it's so it's it's incredibly strong in terms of the metrics and you know most folks think that bios are the main pages and buyers are up there right bios capture the other third. Again, both of them in aggregate. The homepage is still about 10%.
And then the remaining 25% or so is a mix of practices, offices, and careers. But engagement rates are really what you should be looking at. And engagement rate is something that was a recent term. I mean, it's always been a term. But in GA4, they've really established it as front and center, because it identifies someone actually looking at the site for a prolonged amount of time and presumably reading what's on the page. And when you compare engagement rates of news to other pages, what's most striking is that things like bios and practices and pretty much every other page typically get around 15 to 30 seconds of engagement time, maybe a minute for those the stronger pages but news is typically at least a minute and in many cases upwards of two minutes or more depending on the piece and that means, somebody's on a news page for at least twice as long at least twice as long as any other page. So there's a tremendous opportunity to keep that engagement going, right, to either one of those high-value activities that I mentioned, so signups, downloads, emails, or just simply easy access to the other content on the site to kind of keep things going. And using Google Tag Manager, we can track those events and gauge the conversion rate. So 1,000 people go to a news page, 100 people subscribe. That's a 10% conversion rate. 1,000 people go to the news page, 100 people download the PDF, and that's a 10% conversion rate. And that can all be tracked and analyzed. And you can even go deeper with a data layer, which kind of goes between your website and Google Tag Manager. And that really gets cooking on the metrics where, let's say you started a new office in a new market with new practices and new lawyers you can tag all that content related to this new initiative in the data layer so new practices, new lawyers news about the new office and even like about us pages that might be talking about the new office and you can report on all of that and that gives you an even greater sense of the ROI.
Sam: Wow, I've never heard of that concept of the data layer. That's really impressive. You mentioned a couple of things there that seem like quite big wins that maybe a lot of firms aren't already looking at. What would you say are the biggest potential wins that are on the table that firms could look to with their content to give themselves an advantage?
Scott: In terms of wins on the table right now, I mean, I would say SEO, right? SEO casts a wide net, but I'd argue the best bang for your buck SEO-wise is to write a great article with keywords that you want to be known for. And I think everybody's probably already doing that. But so a big win and ranking factor for SEO that a lot of firms should be doing is adding links.
And again, we're talking about bang for your buck. there's a lot of different things in areas of SEO, technical SEO and SEO content. But when it comes to bang for your buck and getting most of the way there, it's writing strong articles with keywords, but adding those links, which I think a lot of firms can be doing more of. So that's internal links to other pages on your site, but also external links to other reputable websites. and most news pages talk about some other thing other than their firm, right? It's their firm doing something for some outside entity.
So having a link there and then trying to get backlinks from other sites to your sites. And this is probably easier for things like media mentions, right? So if a publication is mentioning your people or your firm, just kind of request that they throw a link to your site in there too. I think Jenner and Block, another one of our clients, does a great job of this. And SEO is important for news pages because those are the most likely to be picked up by a Google search, right?
If someone's looking for your lawyer, they're going to type in their name and they're going to get directly to your site, right? But if people are searching for topical trending news and you're not ranking, you're missing the boat. And once they're on your site, hopefully get them to do one of those high-value activities, subscribe, download, email. And get them off the website and into your office stemming from seo is a new concept a relatively new concept known as GEO or generative engine optimization and geo is all about optimizing your content for generative AI. It structures your content to be picked up by the AI models right which in turn ensures your website is included in AI search results so and in case you didn't know Google and Bing and everybody else is they're already AI search engines now and so that big search result at the top of google that gives you all the answers that you're looking for so that's Gemini and that's their AI search tool and we can have a whole podcast episode on GEO alone but essentially geo and seo have a lot of overlap but geo includes some additional things like citing sources using quotes and including stats, because the AI models can segment those in the engine but you also want to be sure you're not preventing ai bots from scanning your site right so over the last few years firms have gone from not wanting AI at all. To wanting everything AI. And as a relic of a few years ago, we found that some firms are still actually blocking ChatGPT and other AI bots from their site. And blocking bots isn't a bad thing, but if you're blocking ChatGPT or other AI bots, you should have a good reason for it because it's removing you from that AI search, essentially.
Another big win, and I mentioned this earlier, is looking at those high-value activities. I'm going to keep repeating that because it's so important, right? Subscribe, download, event registration, and tying that to revenue generation and how that's a real sea change for how firms look at marketing as a call center instead of a revenue generator. But we're seeing this more and more across our client firms because it makes sense for these things to be tied to revenue. And the key there is finding the right KPIs. So you want to establish a baseline where you're at now, set up tracking and reporting, find time to analyze that reporting, make adjustments, analyze, adjust, wash, rinse, repeat. And ideally, your KPIs are based off of those firm initiatives, right? Whatever organizational goals you're trying to do. So some examples of those are, maybe you're trying to grow from a regional to a national firm or national to global or maybe you have a DEI or pro bono initiative or, as I mentioned before, maybe you're opening up a new office or new offices. And we used that example before. That new office is probably tied to a set of practices or a new group of lawyers or both. I mean, there's tons of ways to set up KPIs on bios and practices to track engagement, conversion rates, signups, emails, or even just kind of plain old page views and see how things have changed. The last big one I'll mention that I think everybody can do today is log into your Google Analytics and set it up so that you get automatic reporting emails. And you could set that up so that every week or month or whatever, you get an email from Google Analytics that tells you how you're doing. And this doesn't require you really to do anything other than check your email, which we're all kind of doing anyway. And there's pretty substantial out-of-the-box reports with things like, you know, page views, engagement rates, and even more detailed items. And, you know, there's just like kind of the share icon on top in Google Analytics. It lets you set up the automated emails and you set it how often you want. And it's the quickest way to track ROI on your content. And it's already there. Most folks have that. I would say 99% of our clients have that. And you set it and forget it. And as I mentioned, from there, establish a baseline, set goals, meet regularly, set how things are going, you know, the biggest thing is, is starting, you know, sort of like, you know, exercising, right? The hardest part is just getting on that treadmill. So, you want to list out all the things you want to do, prioritize them, build a baseline, track, report, adjust, wash, rinse, repeat.
Sam: That's wonderful. There's quite a lot to unpack there, Scott. I'm sure we should have you back on for the second part of this, where we go into geo a bit further and unpack some of those reporting practices. They sound really, really key, especially if you're getting that kind of buy-in and making that shift across the business of repositioning marketing as a way from a cost center. Scott, if we come now to some of the challenges you've seen firms deal with when it comes to content, what are you seeing coming back time and again? What are the biggest challenges that firms are facing?
Scott: Well, the first one is time to market. So you want to get the topical trending content written, edited, approved, published. And Passle is an awesome tool for helping lawyers create that content which is certainly one of the benefits of the product and we have a Passle integration with RubyLaw which makes it super easy for clients to get that content on the website and all the other places that Passle gets distributed, number two is ensuring it gets seen and read so sharing it on social media ties into that sending it to your subscriber ties into that SEO is super important for that you know so whereas someone is searching for one of your lawyers is definitely going to see your your site as a top spot sending news articles have a lot more competition so there's there's other law firms there's content distributors and and other news outlets right like USA today etc. Another challenge is providing next steps after it's been seen and keeping things going, right? So talked a lot about those high-value activities, right? Subscribing, sharing, downloading. Some RubyLaw features that we've rolled out to help increase engagement are trending insights, right? So that integrates with analytics and displays content with high-page views, social shares, engagement rates, other metrics like that. And you can even customize the type of news you want to show or even override the trending insights by including or excluding specific news that you want to promote or hide content recommendations engine provides recommendations based on user behavior and so if they go to a lawyer bio and then a practice page and then even like an office we'll show the news related to that person and practice and location and by highlighting that related content the idea is that it's more relevant and interesting to users you know The alternative is simply showing them the most recent news, which may not be helpful. And then another challenge is tracking and measuring all of it. So Google Analytics, which we've spoken about, but for privacy-prone firms, RubyLaw Analytics is another option. So with RubyLaw Analytics, there's no cookies.
We're not tracking any personal identifiable information right so PII, there's no privacy concerns and no Google selling your information and so clients are using RubyLaw analytics as a supplement to Google or as an alternative to Google altogether and I think the last challenge to succeeding with content is ongoing maintenance and measurement right so it can be challenging to stay on top of it but I think the ability to track ROI along with the value add for that content and then again tying it to revenue generation plays for itself.
Sam: It's been wonderful having you on the podcast Scott, we're coming to a close now and I suppose apart from the fact that the legs feed the wolf we're looking for one piece of advice, one takeaway as we close out this Digital Masterclass podcast, what would be your one piece of advice for those legal marketers who are looking to take a more effective approach to their content?
Scott: We've mentioned a lot of things as part of the session today. And I think that whatever your high-value activities are on the site and what your conversion rates are, whatever your KPIs are, because they're going to be different for every firm. And hopefully that does tie into those organizational initiatives. But you've really got to tie those marketing activities whether that's signups, downloads to revenue generation and a report on that. And if you're not doing that, you really ought to consider it for 2025 because this is where the industry is going and something you want to be part of. And that bonus is around GEO for AI search. You definitely want to get ahead of that and have your website and that big search result on top of google.com. GEO and SEO have overlaps, so make sure your SEO is solid. And again, use quotes, site sources and stats and things like that. And number one is just really making sure that you're set up for success and making sure you're not blocking any AI bots that you shouldn't be. But yeah, I hope, Sam, I hope you and our audience has found value in our discussion today. and please reach out at rubylaw.com for any questions on anything we went over and I really want to thank you and Passle for having me. We have a lot of clients using Passle and it's awesome. It integrates with RubyLaw and people love it. And yeah, thanks so much.
Sam: That's wonderful, Scott. It's been great to have you on. We really appreciate your time and I'm sure that we'll be talking to you soon.