Missed Opportunities – Squeezing More Value Out of Your Marketing Activities

In our daily travels through the marketing and communications outputs and activities of leading law, accounting and consulting firms we often see missed opportunities.  Take the following example that we stumbled upon earlier this week (names and places have been changed to protect the innocent – e-mail me, paulATmuzeviewDOTcom if you’d like me to point you to the specific example).

An AmLaw 100 Firm had organized a breakfast seminar in its offices discussing a range of employment law developments.  A potentially valuable business development activity. Furthermore, the firm also had the excellent idea to record the seminar so it could make the recording available on its website as a podcast for clients and prospects that were unable to attend.  The firm also announced the availability of the podcast in the Firm News section of its webcast (and hopefully also via e-mail to carefully targeted clients and prospects).

However, here’s where the missed opportunities begin to arise.  When you arrive at the page featuring the podcast recording of the seminar, there is a brief 115 word description naming the presenters and the four or five topics that will be addressed and then an embedded player showing the running time of 1:43:54.  And that’s all.

Now I might (just) watch a 1hr 43 minute movie based on not much more than the names of the leading actors (if they’re really good) and a 115 word description of the plot (if it sounds really exciting) but even the most dedicated of in-house counsel or HR directors might struggle to commit to 103 minutes of employment law discussion without a few more teasers and incentives.

I did actually start to listen to this podcast (for the purposes of research) and it was 4 minutes in before the introductions were completed and they began to start exploring the issues. Four minutes of introductions might be fine when you’re settling down to your coffee and pain au chocolat in a swanky law office meeting room, but not when you’re hunched over your laptop.

So how could this firm have got better return out of the idea of making the seminar recording available online? Here’s a few ideas for starters:

• Provide a “track” listing that shows what topics were discussed when (e.g. 17:28 Fred discusses the newly enacted Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act)
• Provide a checklist document (to download) of the key takeaways and or a summary of the Q&A that took place during the seminar
• If there were slides or other handouts available to the attendees, make those available for download also
• Add an “Ask A Question” box below the podcast, where visitors can submit a question (and their incredibly valuable e-mail address) to the presenters requesting a follow up response

Discussion and Action Points

Now that I’ve started the ball rolling, I’m sure you can think of more ideas for maximizing the potential for clients and prospects to engage with this podcast.  And now that you’ve hopped on board this particular train of thought, what opportunities do you have to better describe, package and guide clients and prospects to the insights and value tucked away in the briefing papers, newsletters, seminars, and webcasts that your firm produces on a regular basis?

What’s more valuable?

• 10 items read by 1 person each
• or 1 item read by a 100

And which has the bigger ROI?

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