Articles Written by the Edge Marketing Team

We are facing a new time in the history of our country – and the world – and learning to adapt can be challenging. We are all adjusting to either working from home or working differently, social distancing and doing our best to keep our family and friends healthy and safe.

Marketing and sharing information about your organization is also challenging. You need to continue to showcase your offerings, but what is the best way given everything else people are dealing with today? It is important for all organizations to continue to communicate with their customers and clients about what they are doing as companies. Are you open? Are your products available? Do you have tech support lines open? But what about talking about new offerings and carrying on with the marketing plan you had laid out for the rest of the year? Here are a few tips:

• Be considerate. Everyone is experiencing an overload of information right now given what is happening with COVID-19. Make sure the information you are bringing is relevant and interesting to your audience. Be thoughtful and considerate to only share information that will be interesting to them at this time.
• Know your audience. You may have to change the way you market. Take a look at the medium you normally use to reach your audience. For example, if your company has advertised on billboards in the past, this is not a good option right now. People are spending more time on digital media. Get information on the publications your audience reads and consider online ads. You should also be working with a public relations professional who can help you in reaching out to editorial staff to get your message to your audience.
• Modify your message. If you planned to launch a new offering in April and it’s still ready for launch, take another look at the offering and think about what aspect of that product is important for what organizations are facing today. While you may have had a key message identified before, is it still relevant or is there a better way to showcase what this offering does based on what people need now? Think about what people are facing today and make sure your message is on target to help them in the current crisis. If it doesn’t, consider putting a hold on releasing the product. Make sure you don’t miss the mark with your messaging and that what you are talking about is relevant today.
• Be creative. With trade shows and conferences being canceled in all industries, organizations need to get more creative with their messaging and outreach. There is competition for engagement and leads, and for the most part, everyone is distracted with the health crisis we are all facing. Your marketing and messaging need to be on target, professional and creative to get the attention you want.
• Look at the future. Plan now for what you will want to do after the country starts to return to “business as usual,” even if it is in stages. Get your team together and look at the 2020 plan that you had in place prior to the coronavirus. What modifications do you need to make? Look at the product offerings, timelines, budget and staffing. Make a new plan.

Remember, now is not the time to stay quiet. Your customers, and the industry, want to know what you are doing. If you are making efforts for the community to help get through this pandemic, talk about it! Let people know how your team is and what changes the organization has made to keep your employees safe. Show that you have empathy for what is happening and are not just focused on the bottom line. Now is the time to share the human side of your organization.

 

About the Author

Nicolle Martin is a senior account manager for Edge Marketing. She has more than 18 years of experience doing public relations and marketing in the legal industry.

At Edge, she works with clients to market their companies through many different avenues to corporate legal departments and law firms.

As a business owner, you are acutely aware of the fundamental risks and benefits of thinking outside the box. You know the pros and cons of taking that leap of faith and you have done it, successfully. You have carefully crafted your company and everything that entails, and you are, justifiably, proud of everything you and your team have accomplished.

So, then what?

With so many factors to consider (your company’s reputation and longevity, and employees who depend on you for their livelihoods, to name just two), it’s no wonder successful entrepreneurs can find themselves in a tug-of-war between contentedly trucking along the same safe, well-worn road as always, or forging into uncharted territory.

Here are three ways to nurture an innovative mindset, as you consider your firm’s “then what”:

Challenge the status quo.

There is a time and place for tradition, and business is not it. Take a step back and ask, “Why do we do this, this way?” If the answer is, “It is just the way it’s always been,” then it could be time to change things up.

Remember Blockbuster Video? In 2000, they rejected the opportunity to acquire a scrappy little startup called Netflix for $50 million. Instead, Blockbuster teamed up with Enron (Yes, that Enron) to start their own video-on-demand service; however, focusing so myopically on their brick and mortar stores, Blockbuster walked away from the first major iteration of widescale VOD.

It did not take long for Netflix to start chipping away at Blockbuster’s customer base; not by undercutting them, but by reimagining movie rental in the digital age with its mail-order DVD rental service. In five years, when Blockbuster finally hopped on the bandwagon and started its own similar service, Netflix already had 3 million customers, none of the overhead incurred in physical retail, and was well on its way to launching the streaming service we know today.

According to this study by PwC, 81 percent of homes in the United States used Netflix in 2019, versus 68 percent who are pay-TV subscribers. As for Blockbuster, they’ve gone from almost 9,100 stores worldwide at their peak in the early 2000s, to one single location left in the world.

Just because it’s the way it has always been, does not mean it’s the right way, or the only way.

Don’t compete: Create.

Keeping an eye on the competition can be a necessary evil for a business owner. It can trigger innovative ideas and strategies for your own brand; however, you can set yourself apart by reframing your thinking: You are not competing with another product/service: You are creating a new solution in the existing marketplace.

What do Play-Doh, Post-Its, and the Slinky all have in common? They were all created unintentionally, by inventors who were intending to create entirely different products. Play-Doh was intended to clean coal residue from wallpaper. The inventors of Post-Its wanted to create a super-adhesive and ended up with the opposite. The Slinky was invented by a naval mechanical engineer who was developing springs to support and stabilize sensitive instruments aboard battleships.

When these innovators took a step back, they saw that their product served an entirely different purpose than they’d originally intended, and they rolled with it.

Though you likely have no intention of changing your company’s commodity from wallpaper cleaner to a children’s toy, recognizing a different need you could fulfill may help unlock your imagination.

Be a brave, lifelong learner.

Trends, laws, and technologies are changing continually, and you can use that to your advantage. Stay current by taking formal and informal opportunities to learn. Expand your opportunities for growth, both personally and professionally, by taking a class or joining a society or club (or creating one, if one doesn’t exist!). Check out inspiring or informative podcasts and YouTube channels. Don’t know any? Ask around: Everyone loves recommending their favorites. Skip the Seinfeld rerun one night a week in favor of doing some reading, or even just going for a walk. Get out there, and allow yourself to dream big!

As a business owner, you already embody the frequently-used quote with variations attributed to everyone from Nelson Mandela to Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Being brave does not mean you’re not scared: Being brave means you are scared and you do it anyway.” Commit before you know all the answers, and take that leap.

 

About the Author

Tanya Amyote is Marketing Assistant, database and Excel guru, and token Canadian at Edge. Tanya possesses a strong work ethic, impeccable communication skills, and a can-do attitude. In addition to their son, James, Tanya and her husband, Brian, have three rescue dogs: Luna, Gary, and Gus.

It’s the middle of fall with the holidays quickly approaching. It’s also the season for finalizing strategic plans and budgets for 2020, prompting many legal vendors to wonder … what’s new?

Not much, it turns out – at least not with some core tenets of sales and marketing.

Legaltech News published an article on November 15, 2019, by Frank Ready, a reporter on the tech desk at ALM Media, titled “For Legal Tech Vendors, the First Impression is Everything.” The piece acknowledges the difficulty of marketing to and maintaining relationships in the legal industry and includes insight from three different perspectives: a law firm director of e-discovery, a law firm attorney and a corporate general counsel.

What I found most interesting is that I probably could have read the same article back when I started working in this space in 1996, perhaps without the reference to email. Because it turns out that with all the technology and advancements in the channels used to reach this market over the past 20+ years, nothing has really changed with respect to basic principles of sales and marketing.

Ready highlights several insights from his subjects that, as marketing consultants in this industry, we’ve been telling clients for years …

• Know your audience. Every organization is structured differently, so the decision-maker or influencer at one firm won’t have the same title as the decision-maker at another firm. Salespeople and marketers must do their homework to ensure they’re targeting the right individual at each firm with any direct outreach.
• Having a message that resonates is the best way to get someone’s attention.
• Ongoing marketing and relationship management is critical to keeping the clients you have.
• A multi-pronged approach is necessary to reach various people in the legal market because everyone wants something different –
  • One wants relevant content she can share with her clients about something new and how/why it impacts them, but then she goes on to admit she also gets this info from conferences/panels.
  • One prefers a more direct approach but admits that even if your message is compelling enough to get him to open a marketing email out of curiosity, he’s probably not going to buy from you anyway.
  • Another wants to see evidence that your solution is uniquely able to address a specific pain point or a case study sharing how a similar organization found success with it. She wants succinct messaging but acknowledges that is hard to achieve in a crowded marketplace.

All in all, Ready’s article doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know but rather serves as a reminder of why reaching the legal audience requires a thoughtful approach. His timing is perfect, though, as vendors are revisiting their strategies and actively working to map out their marketing plans for 2020.

The real takeaway is this: Unless you have a money tree and can truly afford to market to all these segments in all the different ways they want to be reached simultaneously, the best things you can do are to prioritize your audience and messaging, be strategic and get focused.

1. Prioritize your audiences. Know exactly who your primary targets are and tailor your outreach accordingly.
2. Revisit your messaging. Know exactly what your differentiators and value proposition are to ensure your key messages are accurate and impactful enough to resonate with your primary audiences.
3. Have a strategy. Outline a PR and marketing plan that leverages the available channels to reach your primary audience with the right messaging or content at every touchpoint.
4. Stay focused. Don’t get distracted with the latest opportunity or channel that becomes available. Rather, be purposeful and make sure every activity in your 2020 plan actively works toward your goals and objectives.

Need help refining your message, developing a strategy or getting focused? Call the experts at Edge today.

About the Author

With Edge since 2007, Jennifer Marsnik specializes in helping clients develop and implement strategic plans that support their overall business goals. She lives in the Twin Cities area with her husband and two daughters and enjoys golf and cheering on the Twins, Vikings and U of M Gophers.

Try catching a mosquito from the bed of a pickup truck that’s bumping over soccer ball-size rocks. To many, nailing this is easier than addressing today’s cybersecurity challenges.

Law firms and accounting firms are target-rich environments for cybercriminals. A firm’s systems can provide everything from Social Security numbers to privileged corporate data – all items that can fetch big dollars on the black market.

How can organizations defend against or even stave off digital threats?

In honor of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, I (virtually) sat down with the following five technology experts:

• Matthew Brothers-McGrew, CISO and EVP of technology of Reveal Data
• Randy Johnston, EVP of K2 Enterprises and chairman and CEO of Network Management Group, Inc.
• Mike Paul, CTO of Innovative Computing Systems, Inc.
• Steve Salkin, managing editor of ALM’s Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
• Tomas Suros, chief solutions architect at AbacusNext

Together, they shared the following advice on how best to protect organizations.

Bolster your strongest lines of defense

Firms have a built-in line of protection from digital threats: their employees. But to activate that level of vigilance, they should concentrate on security education and awareness.

“No matter the type of technology deployed, the users share responsibility for securing the system,” said Mike Paul, CTO of Innovative Computing Systems, Inc. “It is not only IT’s job to handle security. The end user is key in helping keep threats at bay, and security education should be an ongoing quarterly/annual process.”

Steve Salkin, the managing editor of ALM’s Cybersecurity Law & Strategy and a legal technology veteran for more than 20 years, echoed this sentiment in the context of current threats.

“One of the biggest cybersecurity challenges facing law firms is from within with attorneys and support staff falling for phishing schemes,” Salkin explained. “Let’s face it, many attorneys and law firm staff are still not very tech-savvy, and a well-constructed email asking them to update account information or change a password can elicit a response. I think progress is being made here. Firms are issuing warnings, telling lawyers and staff to contact IT before responding to emails asking for such information and conducting tests to see who within the organization responds to phishing emails. But the old saying about leading a horse to water applies. I think that the best way to combat this threat – and many firms are now doing so – is to send phishing tests and follow up with a training session.”

Takeaway: Invest in security awareness training so that users on the front line can identify trouble before it starts. Likewise, ensure that users know where to turn to in case they spot potential threats.

“Next-generation phishers are taking the time to research their targets – monitoring company news, identifying employees and gathering the information that will help them craft convincing, custom phishing campaigns. Criminals may pose as a company administrator or business partner and make requests like the ones you receive every day,” said Tomas Suros, chief solutions architect at AbacusNext. “When in doubt, contact your company or business partner’s support line to find out if the email is legitimate.”

Embrace agility

“It’s not a matter of if you’ll be attacked, but when. Even if your internal or external IT team does everything correctly, you can still be attacked,” said Randy Johnston, executive vice president of K2 Enterprises, a leading technology CPE provider to CPA professionals, and chairman and CEO of Network Management Group, Inc., a managed IT consulting and services company. “While firms are spending time, money and effort to address cybersecurity, they are not advancing as fast as the attackers. For bad actors, breaking into systems is a full-time job. For most system administrators, cybersecurity is only part of the job.”

Always evolving cyberthreats demand accelerated responsiveness from firms.

“Security is never set it and forget it,” said Paul. “Threats are constantly evolving and require a nimble company to navigate the changes.”

While the pace of cyberattacks may seem relentless, the innovation of the threats may be lacking – which is good news for firms and IT professionals.

“There is nothing terribly novel about cybersecurity threat actors as they are in many ways just con men, criminals and tyrants of yore with updated tactics,” said Matthew Brothers-McGrew, CISO and EVP of technology, Reveal Data, who began work in the security industry as a testifying expert focused on cases that intersected with complex computer science, software, breaches and cybersecurity issues. “With each new year, I read a lot of ‘emerging threat’ lists, and lately these have all been new takes on old cons. This is good news because it means many of the basic tools of a strong risk-based security program remain surprisingly relevant and effective even in this world of emerging threats.”

Takeaway: Johnston said a straightforward act could help protect your organization.

“Backup is the most important part of cybersecurity preparation with user training being second,” he comments. “In 2019, I’ve seen about two attacks per week. Both a CPA firm and law firm in New York City wound up paying $1 million ransoms because they were attacked with crypto-viruses and didn’t have sufficient backup.”

Brothers-McGrew endorsed revisiting security tools.

“Security teams must constantly tweak these basic tools to match the adversary’s evolving tactics. These tweaks are akin to moving to hybrid cars from traditional fuel cars. Nobody who drove a ’70s Impala is totally flummoxed when getting behind the wheel of a Prius.”

Establish holistic security programs

Sometimes, weaknesses result from incomplete visions and plans or measures that have engrained themselves into processes over time.

Suros cautioned against settings that provide convenience at the expense of security. “The default [of some firms] is to give everyone access to everything. Access to sensitive information and software tools should be limited to protect client information and company information.”

Paul agreed and stated: “The biggest challenge [organizations] face relates to an evolution of their current processes and practices as it pertains to security. A company may have had a certain way to carry out adding new users, securing the desktop/server or evaluating a vendor. However, this may have been set up several years ago, or ad hoc, with little consideration given to security.”

Firms should also avoid ranking compliance over security.

“Most firms struggle with implementing meaningful security programs rather than merely being compliant in this environment of ever-increasing regulatory regimes and breach litigation. In my experience, many law firms are naturally focused on compliance as a means to security rather than implementing a security program with a strong foundation that is built on the fundamentals,” explained Brothers-McGrew. “To understand why security and compliance are not always in alignment, one must accept that regulation is often created as a means to shift liability away from a regulating body onto their members. I’m not saying that regulations are inherently bad, but that the goals of regulation can be at odds with a security professional’s primary mission to manage and reduce real, recognized risk for their organization. I have seen firsthand the devastating consequences when companies that hold multiple compliance certificates are breached because they were prescriptive and focused on compliance.”

Takeaway: Revisit the firm’s security program and processes to enforce a holistic approach.

“The most successful security professionals are steering the conversation away from a compliance-first mentality with its endless regulation, questionnaires and auditor checklists,” said Brothers-McGrew. “With the right strategy, it can have an effective security program while being compliant by building a culture that is focused on security first.”

Many thanks to the experts that contributed their time and expertise to this article!

About the Author

Melanie joined Edge Marketing in 2010 after an in-house career focused on marketing, public relations, and communications for private and publicly traded technology companies. Since then, she’s helped close to 50 technology companies make lasting and beneficial impressions in the legal and accounting communities. Her guiding mantra: “It’s not about results. It’s about the RIGHT results.”

As senior account manager for Edge, she creates cohesive PR and marketing plans formulated to help businesses reach their goals. A typical day includes anything from strategic planning, brainstorming and writing content, and delivering new ways to engage the media and target markets.

Known for her “helium hand” (but she likes to call it leadership), Melanie is a past president of the Austin chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA) and a former board member for the Houston chapters of AMA and the Public Relations Society of America. She lives in Austin, Texas, and actively spoils her two dogs every day.

Creating good content is hard. Not only is it difficult to set aside time from your busy day to write, but it can also be a struggle to come up with topics that are interesting, compelling and appealing to your target audience.

Great content can drive more traffic to your website, enhance your company’s reputation and convert more website visitors into prospects. Good content can help move prospects through the marketing funnel and turn them into leads for your sales team.

That’s why, when you strike upon a good piece of content, you should try to recreate it in several different formats so it can get in the hands of more prospects – in the format in which they prefer to receive information. Here are 10 ideas to get you started:

1. Webinars – Make sure the “record” button has been hit at the start of your next webinar. Once the webinar is complete, send that recording to a company that will transcribe the discussion. (Good news! GoToWebinar now offers transcription services.) Spend a few minutes writing an intro and a conclusion, then present the transcribed webinar content as an article available for download on your website. You can also take large sections of dialogue, edit them for readability and add a title for instant blog posts. Remember that the webinar recording and the associated slides can be two separate pieces of downloadable content on your site as well.
2. Articles in the press – Did you recently contribute an article to an industry publication? Take the topic you covered, but expand on what you wrote to meet the publication’s length limits. Most likely, you were restricted to 1,500 words, but don’t you have so much more to say? You have just created a new article for download on your website.
3. Articles on your website – So that article you just created? It can also become a series of blog posts. Break the content up into logical and shorter sections. Add a title, introduction, conclusion – being sure to say this is post one in a series on the topic! – and a call to action and you have several weeks of new blog posts.
4. Blog posts – Review your past blog posts for evergreen content. Is a topic still relevant and fresh? Simply repost the blog. At the end of every year, look at your website analytics and create a “Top 5 Blog Posts of the Past Year” blog post, which includes links to and a sentence about the topics of the best of your blog posts.
5. Presentations – Did you recently create a presentation for a client that uses industry statistics and information to help explain your company’s products or services? Gather those facts and now put them into an infographic using one of the many online creative tools like Piktochart.
6. Graphics – Take those stats from your presentation and infographic above, then use a tool like Canva to create a single graphic for each stat. Eye-catching and informative graphics can be coupled with hashtags on social media to generate awareness for your content.
7. E-books – Have you written several articles and blog posts on the various aspects of a single topic? Organize them logically into a larger piece and you have just created an e-book that can be downloaded from your site.
8. Emails – The copy from your highest-performing blog posts can be copied and pasted directly into your email tool – for instance, MailChimp – and blasted out to your prospect database with a call to action to download a related piece of content.
9. White papers – An extended white paper can be edited to remove information specific to your product or service and turned into a much shorter article that can be pitched to industry publications. It can also be broken down into shorter blog posts that include a call to action to download the entire white paper.
10. Never stop promoting your best content. Track your website analytics to verify your most-used pieces of content and continue to promote them via social media, email, calls to action on your website and blog posts.

Repurposing exceptional content gives you a way to quickly and painlessly reinforce your message and strengthen your thought leadership position on a topic. You’ve already created great content… now go forth and repurpose!