Hi podcast listeners. It’s Robyn Addis, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at LISI, here for this week’s episode of LISI’s All The Things Podcast, One More Thing. This week I’m joined by our guest, Gina Furia Rubel, CEO and General Counsel of Furia Rubel Communications, and my good friend in Philadelphia L.M.A. for some time Now.
Gina and I were both recently at the Marketing Partner Forum in Southern California, and we got together to talk about our one key takeaway from the conference and our look ahead to the year of 2023 as far as legal marketing is concerned.
This is a special episode as we’re doing it in conjunction with Gina’s team and their podcast, On Record PR. Listen in as Gina and I talk about all things Marketing Partner Forum, legal marketing, public relations, marketing operations, and pretty much everything in between. Hope you enjoy.
Robyn:
Hi everyone, it’s Robyn Addis, chief marketing and business development officer and chief operating officer at Legal Internet Solutions Incorporated, one of the hosts of LISI’s All The Things Podcasts, trying something fun today with one of our industry friends, we’re doing a collaborative effort with my co-host who I’m going to let introduce herself.
Gina:
And hello everyone. This is Gina Rubel. I’m the CEO and General Counsel of Furia Rubel Communications and the host of On Record PR.
Robyn:
I’m so glad that we are doing this together, Gina. We have so many fun conversations, insightful, nerdy conversations, and I think it’s going to be a good conversation for our audience. So I’m excited to be doing this together.
Gina:
Right back at you, Robyn, we do a lot of collaboration, so this is just another way that industry professionals get together and have a great conversation and hopefully provide some great content for our listeners.
Robyn:
Yep, a hundred percent. So we both attended Thompson Reuters’ 30th annual Marketing Partner Forum this past week in Southern California, in sunny southern California. And for today’s episode, our podcast for LISI, our podcast exclusive One More Thing episode is our chance to talk about the one more thing that we took away from the conference. Gina and I actually both happened to co-present with several other panelists at MPF on social media for small to mid-size firms, and so we might get into that a little bit. But really Gina, I’m just interested to hear your big takeaway from the conference, maybe that one thing that really stuck out at you.
Gina:
Thanks, Robyn. I just want to tell our listeners, if you want to look at any of the coverage on Twitter from the conference, they used the hashtag #MPFDiamond, since it was their anniversary, so it was their diamond anniversary, so that was MPF Diamond. And with regard to one takeaway, of course just when my phone rings, you all have to ignore that. No need to edit that out, Robyn, right?
Robyn:
No, we’re just going with it.
Gina:
[inaudible 00:03:52] broadcasting. One of the things I noticed is, Thompson Reuters has this fabulous survey with data, the Marketing Partner Survey, and in a lot of the data that they shared, they segmented all of the different types of marketing that we talked about. Everything from client visits and social media to training, marketing, web sponsorships, and public relations. And what’s so interesting is Furia Rubel, we are a public relations agency. And a lot of what we do, like reputation management, incident response, and PR fits within almost all of the marketing MBD silos. So it supports all of those things. And I think our industry tends to spend a lot of time separating out all of the various types of communications as opposed to making them more collaborative.
So like you at LISI, when you look at web, you’re not just looking at the infrastructure of a website, you’re looking at content, you’re looking at S.E.O. Well, with PR, PR has to support all those things as well, right? Because PR is a form of content. Well, sometimes on the incident response side, it’s a form of not putting content out there. So I really want to start looking at, as we do here at Furia Rubel, public relations more holistically. So think of it more as the holistic practitioner of legal marketing.
Robyn:
Yeah. So it’s interesting because as you know, we as an agency do not do PR intentionally, and it’s something that I have gotten a lot more exposure to, especially in recent years. Obviously, it’s always been something that’s been involved in the legal marketing departments I’ve been a member of but really haven’t had to touch it or go anywhere close to it. But the PR ecosystem I guess is just something I stayed far away from out of fear.
So your point about it being an integrated component of legal marketing, especially more and more on the content side of things, on the messaging and distribution or whatnot, what to say, not to say, the incident response, it is something that I think people like myself can’t bury their heads in the sand about anymore. Because exactly to your point, it is critical to legal marketing, to marketing, to business communications, and it is just something that we can’t be blind to anymore. Do you feel like you have to educate people about that a little bit sometimes, Gina, or is it just…
Gina:
I really do, and what’s interesting is oftentimes when we’re working with a law firm, for example, and they have a web and digital partner such as your company, we’ll ask them if we can collaborate so that even the PR content, the messaging, the positioning supports the messaging and positioning that you’ve counseled them on as well as the S.E.O. because you can’t ignore those things. They have to work hand in hand. And yet so many law firms are ignoring the importance of marrying those two together.
Robyn:
So when they ignore that, what do you see? What’s sort of the risk for them? What’s happening if they’re ignoring the marriage of those sides of the function?
Gina:
You beat me to the question. I was going to ask you the same thing. But for me, it’s the lost opportunity. It’s less risk and more opportunity cost. So I want to throw that same question back to you. If you see a law firm putting out PR content and you’re in the middle of an S.E.O. campaign, where do you see the risk or lost opportunity?
Robyn:
Yeah, it is a good question, there’s lots of answers. I think it could go a few ways. So in terms of brand messaging and staying on message overall, if there’s a disconnect between the PR message and the branding, the marketing messaging, it just creates a discord in people’s minds that they might not even be conscious of. And it just creates a conflict that feels uneasy. And to your point about S.E.O., there’s so much opportunity in messaging to the media, as I’m learning more and more, to really highlight links and create traffic back to various components of a website, for example, or digital marketing elements. And if those aren’t aligned, I mean, it comes down to, as you say, it is a huge lost opportunity, but that lost opportunity is leaving money on the table. So the risk, I can’t quantify that necessarily, but what is the lost opportunity cost that you’re just walking away from because people aren’t understanding the full client acquisition process in order to become connected with the firm. Do you know what I’m saying?
Gina:
I do, Robyn, and one of the things that I’m not as savvy on web website technology speak so to say, but one of the things I’ve noticed, for example, so a lot of the times we will actually post content to a client website because we have control to post their press releases, for example. But we have to make sure that we’re not messing up their keyword strategy in naming a page, for example. And I know that sounds like a minutiae, but that’s the minutiae you deal with every day, that a lot of legal marketers and marketers in general who haven’t gotten into the minutia of how a webpage is developed, how it supports strategy, they don’t realize that there’s an opportunity just in the way you name a page in the metadata.
Robyn:
Yep, yep. Well, and it’s funny, we just met with a good client of ours yesterday, and they are looking to expand their engagement with us to include S.E.O. And so we do a cursory review of their site. We could do a very exhaustive audit. We would, and we’ll do an exhaustive audit once they add that as a service, but like a light S.E.O. review. And of the 640 pages on their website, 527 of them have no meta descriptions. So you’re talking about naming the page, but even then the meta description and pulling through that key messaging and the keywords, and again that alignment between the PR and the content through into that meta description is so critical. And I’m going to tell you 97% of the time the story I just told could be repeated for a lot of firms. And that’s not to point a finger at those firms. It’s just because often firms haven’t realized that they have to prioritize somebody who’s truly focusing on that.
Gina:
Well, you make a great point. And one of the things I’ve noticed, and this even happened here I want to say five or six years ago, we were launching a new website, and someone internally… We had a change in management and someone internally was uploading content and none of the pages got named.
Robyn:
Oh my gosh.
Gina:
And I had a near heart attack. So here I am for days and weeks going back through and updating all the metadata. So these are things that… and I want our listeners to know this too, because having worked in the website space, just managing our own site, this is the reason why you hire a firm like yours. There is so much detail that goes into it. And oftentimes, and I say this as a former litigator when I first started and I met Jason Lisi, the founder of your firm, I really didn’t understand the technicalities of what went into developing a website, because lawyers aren’t taught that obviously. And when you sit down, all lawyers think a website is just written content that’s somehow uploaded magically, and it just looks perfect and there you go. So it’s like writing a book. Oh, I write the copy, now upload it. And so it’s really fascinating to me, and that plays out even in the PR realm. I wrote a press release and it’s going to land in every newspaper across the country. I can visualize you laughing.
Robyn:
Yeah, I’m laughing pretty hard.
Gina:
So it’s really understanding that there’s so much more that goes into all of these things that we do. But more importantly, going back to that one more thing that you brought up that it’s the integration and the collaboration, just like we’re doing here today, we’re collaborating on our podcasts because it’s a great opportunity for us to share messages across our audiences.
Robyn:
Yep, I agree.
Gina:
So out of curiosity, what was your biggest takeaway from Marketing Partner Forum?
Robyn:
Yeah, so I spent a lot of time with Jennifer Carr on your team, who is my peer in the industry and my friend. And we were chatting a lot about the digital transformation, the digital disruption that is happening. And it is a natural sort of add-on from the conversation we were just having about bringing together and fully integrating the key components of a marketing and public relations and communication strategy.
But the ultimate wave in marketing, the next big wave is that digital shift. We’ve all been doing digital for a number of years, but my sort of soapbox speech is that we are doing it in spits and spats. We have independent technologies that may or may not speak to each other, so on and so forth. And it was an interesting conversation that Jennifer and I were having about just prognosticating about what does the C.M.O. look like in a firm in 10 years?
What do they need to know? What talent do they have on their team? How are they using resources? What do those resources look like? Because we’re in a time, another time of uncertainty and doubt a little bit in the industry and across the business community, not just law firms. And so there was a lot of conversation about that, which prompted Jennifer and I to talk about how could we position our client firms for success to bounce out of this or to use the opportunity to leverage their digital skills and their digital footprint to stand out above the rest.
And ultimately the point being that those firms that are able to use that digital footprint, that can streamline processes with technologies and automations and integrations and can be more nimble and flexible and sort of turning the tide, turning the ship towards more nimble technologies are really going to be the top firms, the top leaders at those firms and the top firms in the next five to 10 years. And I feel like sometimes when I say this I’m repeating a fact that we all know, but also I don’t know that everybody knows this. Or if they know it, they don’t know how to do it. Do you know what I’m saying?
Gina:
I do know what you’re saying. And there is going to be a huge sea change in my opinion like Nothing we’ve ever seen in terms of the speed with which it’s going to change. And what I mean by that is over the course of our lifetimes, Robyn, we have seen technology change very quickly. However, that speed is speeding up exponentially. And so with things like ChatGPT coming out and all of this new AI, and for listeners, if you don’t know what AI means, I’m talking about it’s automated technology, basically, it’s machine learning and it’s taking in for all…
ChatGPT is going to be such an interesting game-changer in content. Yet anyone who thinks they can write content using it isn’t thinking about the fact that the Googles of the world are probably writing something if they don’t already have it to look for AI-written content and knock it down in terms of search. But yet I needed an answer to a question yesterday and I did not have time to type it, and I went to ChatGPT and I asked it the question and it answered it in two paragraphs. There was my answer and I edited it and I had it ready to go to send to a teammate. And I thought, wow, that’s ridiculous.
Because it takes the search out of search, right? Which obviously Google doesn’t like. But it’s just fascinating the speed with which the industry is changing. Our jobs are going to become less tacticians and more strategists, more so than ever. The implementation is going to become fully automated.
Robyn:
Well, and so two things very specifically to the ChatGPT point. So one, you’re right, nobody knows what the algorithm is for Google specifically, but there are a lot of really smart people who study it as much as they can. And all reports point to AI-generated content really being, I’m going to say downgraded, but that’s not the word I want to use, but just not promoted, not value-driven content that’s really going to show up on the first page of Google. And I’m sure the algorithm or the bots somewhere are able to understand and be able to tell that.
And two, we are advising clients when they ask about ChatGPT, should we use it for content generation? Actually, I have been using an online tool called jasper.ai. It’s an artificial intelligence content generation tool. I have been using it for a long time, for maybe a year to get the ball rolling on my content. I watched some YouTuber talk about it and they were going on and on YouTube about how it could generate their entire blog post. I tried it once, I knew right off the bat that it would never work because it’s not my tone of voice and it’s not exactly actually what I would be saying. But it has been such a valuable partner aid in my process to just help me think of a topic sentence for X, Y, and Z.
So to your point, these AI tools and the independence and the self-reliance that in our industry lawyers and executives will be able to employ is going to take away a lot of what they rely on their marketing departments for in terms of tactical activity. And I had not truly thought about that so much until you just said it, but you’re a hundred percent correct. Strategizing just more broadly than our conversation even really thoughtful competitive intelligence, really thoughtful business development targeting, there is a lot of opportunity there, but they have to be able to understand how to leverage the technology and the tools that also have to be well implemented in firms. So it all comes back.
Gina:
Right, and that’s exactly it. And I don’t disagree with you. I believe that things like Jasper AI and ChatGPT and many others, there’s so many of them now, they’re all useful tools to take a blank page and add something that becomes a starting point. And for many of us, that starting point is the biggest challenge. Just starting somewhere.
Robyn:
Exactly.
Gina:
Great tool for lawyers to think about. And since we’ve mentioned it, I feel strongly that I have to say this, you must edit it. There is no guarantee that it’s not a copyright violation coming from some other website. So it’s a starting point only, it’s an idea generator. It is not meant to be the content itself.
Robyn:
Yeah. I can actually guarantee you that it’s a copyright violation. I’ve seen content that comes through and I go, that has to be verbatim from some website somewhere because…
Gina:
Oh, always. Yeah, I agree. And that’s where it just can’t be relied upon in that way. But that is going to be a game changer across the board because the strategy is going to be much more important. And I want listeners, this is funny, I think you’ll get a kick out of this. We were doing a ChatGPT demo at our company retreat, just showing people how it can be used, how it shouldn’t be used, what they need to know about it if clients ask. And I said to my teammate, I said, “Put in write a bio for Gina Rubel.”
Robyn:
Oh really?
Gina:
It was god awful.
Robyn:
Oh.
Gina:
It was really awful. What’s interesting, it was pulling from really old information, and it’s not supposed to, it’s only supposed to be pulling from things from 2021 and thereafter, but it pulled information I have no idea from where. I mean, I know it’s not on our website unless perhaps maybe it’s a very old press release somewhere on our website that… I don’t know. But it was really interesting. So that’s the other thing, fact check if you’re going to use it because you cannot guarantee that the facts are accurate.
Robyn:
Yeah, a hundred percent. And that’s why we still need humans.
Gina:
Oh, thank goodness. Right?
Robyn:
Yes.
Gina:
So question, what are you seeing moving forward, it’s early 2023, what do you see some of the big trends being this coming year?
Robyn:
Trend? I don’t know if I have an answer on-trend. I can tell you what I’d like to see the trend be. Can I answer the question a little bit differently?
Gina:
Absolutely.
Robyn:
Number one thing I would like to, and I’ve actually been saying this for a while, but I do think that now is the time to truly take this approach. I would like to see more B2B firms employ B2C firm-style strategies or commercial-type strategies. We’ve talked about this separately before, that B2C firms are again very nimble, very flexible. They are willing to try strategies that some of the larger B2B firms kind of shy away from, like for example paid social. More firms are getting into that. B2B firms are getting into that. But that’s been something B2C firms have done for a long time, for example. And what I would like to see specifically B2B firms do is rather than reactively share content, something happens in the industry, lawyers write a legal alert, lawyers firm posted on website, social media or marketing department shares it out, so on and so forth. It’s like what every firm does. Right?
Those things still need to happen because there’s certainly value to the client when lawyers create that content. But I think the gap that’s missing is more of a campaign strategy that really reinforces core messaging, core values, and has that commercial flare to it that B2B firms, I just don’t see it. I think sometimes a firm might have a tagline, but really taking two or three core messages, making them the fundamental component of a content pillar and a campaign strategy or multiple campaign strategies related on that content pillar, that would be, I mean chef’s kiss, that would be just the most amazing thing to see firms start to do. And I think that actually really goes, in support of the point that you just made a couple minutes ago about there’s still the tactics to a certain degree, but less tactical and more strategy. And that is where marketing leaders can, I think, start to differentiate themselves from some of their peers.
Gina:
I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, we have some clients where we have created content strategy around their PR campaigns, in particular very proactive campaigns that are either industry-focused or practice group focused and very, very similar to a B2C campaign. So drip marketing, really getting that thought leadership top of mind, a lot of data-driven information, a lot of information that’s very visual as opposed to just the written word. Because as we know, we are in a world where we have a smaller attention span than we ever have. So I agree. I think it would be great to see that happening and hopefully the data will support the effectiveness and the ROI of those types of initiatives.
Robyn:
Yeah, I mean I think it will. I have yet to see a large enough sample to have any sort of tangible thoughts on this, but I think there’s a reason it works for other industries, other professional services. So it’s not even just products or consumer products that this works for. Other professional services industries do it. So why not legal? It’s coming. What do you think though, Gina? What do you think either the big trend or what would you like to see happening this year?
Gina:
I’d like to see more collaboration and really more niche focus, because that’s where the world is going to stand out. And I know a lot of our big firm clients are not going to want to hear that, but it is what it is. So if you don’t niche focus some of the messaging and outreach and in particular… So I know your firm does a lot with small and mid-size as well as larger firms, and we’re more mid-size. But really focusing on key messages, whether it be an industry, this idea of practice group went away a long time ago, but we’re still marketing practice groups as opposed to focusing on the key industries.
We both know that lawyers always say that thing like, “Well, what if I don’t say this? Then I won’t get that.” Which is completely not true, proven not true. So more focus, more attention to the numbers. And what I mean by that is looking at the profitability analysis of various industries and geographies and focusing in that space, not trying to be everything to everyone is going to help. And we see great return on investment when we focus with an industry group. It’s what it is. And it’s the same reason why Legal Internet Solutions Incorporated and Furia Rubel Communications niche in legal marketing.
Robyn:
Exactly.
Gina:
It doesn’t mean we don’t serve any other clients, both of our companies do, but those are ancillary to our primary target audience, and where we focus probably 80 plus percent of our marketing dollars and our messaging. Would you agree with that?
Robyn:
I a hundred percent agree with that. And I’ll actually tell you more of a retrospective trend that I’ve seen over the past 12 to 18 months once Covid really started to lift and the world started feeling normal again. And we all witnessed the war for talent, both business professionals and lawyers in firms. And to your point about collaboration and niche focus, from a talent perspective, which LISI has nothing to do with necessarily the talent if a lawyer moves or anything like that other than supporting it, supporting making sure the bio’s up on the website, and so on and so forth. But what I was witnessing time and time again is incredible talent from AmLaw 100 and 200 firms that coming out of the pandemic or for whatever reason, and I do think that a lack of niche focus is one reason for it, they were leaving those big firms and seeking out smaller to mid-size firms that were a better fit for their practice, more support for their industry focus or their specific clients.
And ultimately the reason that came to us is because, as you noted, small to mid-size firms are our kind of ideal target market. And then they were coming to us with desperate need to support how do we support them in supporting that new attorney who’s joined their firm and their marketing needs. It was very interesting to me because I think, exactly to your point, witnessing this, understanding that again it goes back to the larger firms. It just takes so long to make a sea change, to make a shift, move that ship or whatever the euphemism is, I don’t know what exactly. It takes so long and so much effort that lawyers and real talent are moving to smaller firms that can rise to the occasion better. All of these points that we’re making I think all marry together. They sort of weave in and out, but all have a unifying thread.
Gina:
I agree. I saw it more than ever during the pandemic, but it’s been the case for as long as I’ve been running my company, which is 20 years, that exodus of big firm talent to smaller firms where they can have that very unique focus. That’s not to say that there isn’t great reasons to stay at big firms. There are. And so it’s not disparaging at all. And I want to make sure that our listeners know that.
Robyn:
Oh, a hundred percent.
Gina:
They’re all personal preferences obviously, but there is value, and I do believe moving forward the more focused a firm is, the more likely they will get the business. It’s just going to continue to change. But Robyn, before I keep chatting on, I know that all of our listeners probably have only so much of an attention span themselves. I wasn’t sure how long you wanted to go, but I thought perhaps we should have some parting tips for our listeners. So if you had one thing that you’d say you have to be thinking about in 2023, what would it be?
Robyn:
Marketing operations. And two seconds, because I do want to take a step back, I’m not trying to put down the big firms, and it is a fair point. The big firms, there’s a lot of reason to be there too. So just for the record, on record. So yeah, marketing operations I think is the unifying theme of everything that I’ve been saying. I am, full disclosure, my background is in marketing operations, so it is a particular interest to me, but I really do believe both business professionals and law firms in particular on the marketing side, the more that you can understand that marketing ecosystem, how you can support your firm’s shift and digital transformation, the more invaluable you’ll make yourself. And I think the more that firms can open up to making the changes to more fully integrated systems and automations and processes, I know in my heart and I know from evidence that that is where firms need to be. So I would like to see that be a main focus jointly for our listeners in the next year. And what do you think, Gina?
Gina:
I agree with you a hundred percent and would add that that includes really leveraging technology and doing everything we can to get attorneys to understand both the importance, the value, and the return on investment of leveraging technologies, whether they be CRM systems, whether they be their websites or social media or any other technology that helps us do our jobs and market. And when I say market, I’m talking about both client and talent retention and acquisition. There are so many technologies, and when you talk about marketing automation, they go hand in hand. It’s really imperative for lawyers to learn and embrace these things. We are not walking backwards. Pandora’s box has been opened and it’s time to really embrace to be more effective and efficient and to still be able to develop business.
Robyn:
Agree as always, love our chats and I love how passionate you and I both are about this industry and about the advancement of this industry. So I’m going to say for the LISI podcast, thank you for joining me, and we should do this again sometime.
Gina:
I would love that. And for the listeners of On Record PR, in the show notes you’ll have contact information for both Robyn and me, so please feel free to look there, be sure to follow along with the LISI podcast as well. Great perspectives, great people, and great fun.
Robyn:
Awesome. Thank you so much Gina, and I’m sure I will be talking to you soon.
Gina:
Absolutely.
You have been listening to All The Things, the podcast from Legal Internet Solutions Incorporated, where we bring you all the things, whether it’s three things we learned hearing from a legal marketing insider and ask me anything session, or that one more thing we’ve been dying to tell you all month long, but couldn’t. That’s all the things. Our next episode will be out in a week, wherever you get your podcasts. And you can join us for the live events every Friday at 12:30 Eastern on our LinkedIn channel for our livestream.
Robyn Addis
COO + CMBDO
LISI
Gina F. Rubel, Esq.
CEO & General Counsel
Furia Rubel Communications, Inc.
On Record PR podcast
