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What Are the High-Impact Marketing Hacks Every Lawyer Needs to Know Right Now? with Eric Eden

Eric Eden

Founder & Chief Marketer at Workverse

Eric has worked as Chief Marketing Officer leading marketing teams at tech companies for over 20 years. Eric has always been in the marketing leader seat and been held accountable for driving growth at VC and PE backed companies. Eric is the Chief Marketing Officer and co-founder of Workverse – a next generation social media platform for business networking. Eric often speaks on how we all deserve the next generation of social media that has no ads, no bots, no fake accounts and no spam.

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The consensus is the game has completely changed.

Eric Eden

Episode 147

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Brief summary of show:

In this conversation, Eric Eden and Karin Conroy discuss high-impact marketing strategies for lawyers, emphasizing the importance of viewing marketing as an investment. They explore the ICE scoring model for evaluating marketing tactics, the challenges of social media, and the shift towards podcasting and YouTube as effective channels. The discussion also highlights the role of AI in marketing and the significance of building a personal brand to enhance credibility and authority in the legal field. 

In this conversation, Eric Eden and Karin Conroy discuss the evolving landscape of marketing, emphasizing the importance of high-quality content, refining existing strategies, and adapting to changes in advertising effectiveness. They explore the significance of personal branding and the need for businesses to evaluate their marketing investments critically. The discussion also highlights the value of in-person events and the potential of evergreen content in building a lasting presence in the market.

Don’t just listen—take action!

Apply these strategies to see real results

Show Notes

In this episode of Counsel Cast, “What Are the High-Impact Marketing Hacks Every Lawyer Needs to Know Right Now? with Eric Eden”, we explore game-changing strategies to transform your law firm’s online presence and client acquisition. Join marketing expert Eric Eden as we uncover the secrets to high-impact, remarkable marketing for law firms.

🔍 Episode Highlights:

  • Discover the must-know marketing hacks for law firms to stay ahead in 2024.
  • Learn how to leverage AI search and local SEO to attract more clients.
  • Find out what makes a law firm website truly high-converting.
  • Gain actionable insights on building a remarkable brand that clients trust.
  • Explore the metrics that really matter for your law firm’s marketing success.

🎙️ In This Episode:

  • Eric Eden shares insider tips for creating a high-impact marketing plan.
  • We dive into the power of local SEO and AI trends for lawyers.
  • Uncover strategies to turn your website into a lead-generating powerhouse.
  • Learn how to create content that outshines AI for better SEO rankings.
  • Get expert advice on how law firms can measure and maximize their ROI.

⚖️ Perfect For:

  • Lawyers who want to attract more clients and stand out from competitors.
  • Law firms seeking to optimize their marketing strategies for measurable results.
  • Legal marketing professionals looking to master the latest tools and trends.

Eric Eden gives listeners actionable tips on:

00:00 Introduction to Growth Marketing
03:00 Investment in Marketing Strategies
05:58 Evaluating Marketing Tactics with ICE Model
09:09 Challenges of Social Media Marketing
12:12 The Shift in Marketing Channels
14:54 The Rise of Podcasting and YouTube
17:58 Navigating AI in Marketing
20:58 Building Personal Brand and Authority
26:41 Elevating Content Quality
29:10 Refining Existing Marketing Strategies
32:49 The Changing Landscape of Advertising
35:18 Rethinking In-Person Events
37:53 Evaluating Marketing Investments
39:05 Building Personal Brands for Longevity

Take Action: Your Next Steps

This episode provides practical takeaways that you can implement immediately to enhance your approach to communication and public speaking. Dive into the full episode for more details. Here’s a quick look at the first step:

  • Evergreen content can provide lasting value and continue to attract viewers over time. Investing in the right channels requires a thoughtful approach based on data and results.
Founders Podcast by David Senra

Eric Eden's Book

In this week’s Thought Leaders Library, we’re switching things up! Instead of our usual book selection, Eric Eden, guest of our latest Counsel Cast episode, has chosen something truly unique: the Founders Podcast by David Senra.

The Founders Podcast is a treasure trove of insights, diving deep into the lives, struggles, and triumphs of some of history’s greatest business minds. Each episode is packed with lessons and inspiration, perfect for lawyers and professionals looking to bring entrepreneurial thinking and innovation to their work.

Whether you’re a seasoned book lover or new to the Thought Leaders Library, this podcast is a refreshing and powerful addition to your personal development routine. Tune in to discover why Eric Eden considers it a must-listen!

🎙️ Episode Highlights of Counsel Cast:
Eric Eden shares high-impact marketing hacks that every lawyer needs to know. And with Founders Podcast, he adds another layer of inspiration to help you elevate your practice.

💡 Explore the Founders Podcast and let us know which episode resonates with you most!

From the publisher:

Learn from history’s greatest entrepreneurs. Every week I read a biography of an entrepreneur and find ideas you can use in your work. This quote explains why: “There are thousands of years of history in which lots and lots of very smart people worked very hard and ran all types of experiments on how to create new businesses, invent new technology, new ways to manage etc. They ran these experiments throughout their entire lives. At some point, somebody put these lessons down in a book. 

Founders Podcast by David Senra

Show Transcript

Here, you’ll find a detailed, word-for-word account of the insightful conversation from this episode. Whether you’re revisiting key takeaways or catching up on what you missed, this transcript is a valuable resource for diving deeper into the expert advice shared by our guest. Enjoy exploring strategies, tips, and actionable insights tailored to help lawyers and law firms grow their practice through effective marketing!

Eric Eden (00:01.568)
I’m Eric Eden. I’m a chief marketing officer. I’ve been working for growth companies and tech companies for the last 25 years, helping drive growth, build brands, and helping companies succeed and increase their value. I’m excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Karin Conroy (00:21.22)
Thank you so much, Eric. Thank you for being here. This is going to be a great conversation. We’re going to be talking about, you mentioned growth a few times. So obviously we’re going to be talking about that. That’s usually goes hand in hand with marketing and, but the title for today’s show is what are the high impact marketing hacks every lawyer needs to know right now. So I, right now, when this episode is released, we will be headed into 2025 and typically at this

point in the year, a lot of firms are sitting down and kind of like imagining that you’re coming forward. And so I don’t want to spend too much time kind of in terms of like making out a plan for the year, because that’s really a different kind of conversation is how to make a plan. We have an episode on that and laying that all out. And maybe we can kind of touch on that a little bit, but mainly it’s how to make

get really good results from that plan, how to do these high impact things that are going to show results and as I said, have high impact. So let’s start with figuring out how to define that. How do we kind of first figuring out, how do you know when you look at, we basically have a program where we’ll have a bench of ideas that we could.

do and sort of tactics and marketing things that we could do. And I know we have a system for figuring out what comes next. How do you do that,

Eric Eden (01:57.218)
think about it as marketing is an investment. So if you don’t invest anything, you’re not going to get any growth. It you’re not really guaranteed anything just because you’ve been around. You have customers and you’ve been doing it. There’s always a little bit of I guess momentum from referrals and things like that. But generally speaking, when you’re thinking about growth, anything about what should we do for marketing, it’s a question of investment. And so how I prioritize

investments is what thesis do I have that this will get the best return? So a lot of times marketers are thinking about like, if I invest

$1,000 and I get $1,000 in revenue, it paid for itself. But that’s the wrong way to think about it. It should be more like, if you invest $1,000, you should get $10,000 in revenue, because marketing should be like 10 % of the mix, right? So how good can you get that ratio is how I answer that question, because everything has a cost. And then the question is, what do we think we can get out of this?

Karin Conroy (03:00.248)
Yeah. So how do you figure that out? Is there a calculation there?

Eric Eden (03:05.996)
So I think that marketing again should be like for most companies, something around 10 to 20 % of new revenue. And so when you have that ratio and you make an estimate or a guess based on this program, this tactic, this channel, you’re basically putting some chips down on the table and saying, I’m investing in this and I believe that I can get 10X.

what for every dollar I put in. And a lot of times it is just a guess because you don’t know. And so the key is to do small tests and then step function.

Karin Conroy (03:41.859)
Yeah.

Right. Okay, so have you heard of this thing called the ICE Scoring Model? Okay, so let me just tell you, because this is somewhat new to me, but I just want to spend a minute on it, and then we can kind of dig into, it’s sort of what you’re talking about, you know, this guy’s, and I can’t remember the name of the author, but if you Google ICE Scoring Model, so it’s Impact Confidence and Ease. And so,

Eric Eden (03:49.144)
I have not.

Karin Conroy (04:10.006)
you take a look at, let’s say we have launched your website and we’re now thinking, okay, what is the goal, what’s the next thing that we want to see happen? And most obviously it would be, we want some traffic to that website, right? And so there’s a lot of different ways that you could just, off the top of your head, think to do that. It could be social media, it could be a SEO, it could be an email campaign, it could be that you go and do,

offline things like networking and whatever. So let’s say we got this handful of potential campaign ideas or methods, however you want to phrase that. Then we’re going to take and evaluate on a scale of, and this is not like a perfect science. This is not like measuring out, you know, a square meter or whatever. So you’re going to measure and evaluate

the overall impact, the confidence and ease, the IC and E. So on a scale of one to five, what do you think the impact of social media is going to be? And by impact, like we also mean the quickness and how effective that’s gonna be, let’s just say over the next quarter. So is that impact gonna take a year? Well, then the score is gonna be lower.

Is that impact, are you gonna see that right away? And are you gonna get a return on that investment within the next quarter where, you know, let’s say you’re spending $1,000, are you gonna get at least a couple thousand worth of business out of that? Okay, maybe. And then what’s your confidence with that? So how confident are you that you can get at least a couple thousand dollars worth of business out of social media? Probably not very high, right?

but maybe SEO and maybe variations of different types of SEO work. And then how easy is this gonna be? Are you gonna be able to do this with one person on your team, maybe one person on your marketing team, or are you gonna need to bring in like eight to 10 different people? So you take this score on a scale of one to five for each of those, and then you can rank each of these. And obviously, like I said, not a perfect science, but within your head, you’re now comparing each of these features.

Karin Conroy (06:27.278)
So I just wanted to mention it as a way to kind of evaluate the things that you’re already sort of guessing at when you’re thinking about what to do next and put some numbers behind it. And I felt like when I found this ICE method that now all of a sudden that was a game changer because now we can sit down and have this conversation and put some numbers around it.

Eric Eden (06:51.244)
I like that formula a lot. think one way that you can get more confidence is by not only doing tests and looking at your own data, but also talk to other marketers that are in your similar industry or vertical and see if they’re doing particular programs or tactics. What is the benchmarks of what they’re getting back for things? So that way you’ll know if it’s going to be

Karin Conroy (07:07.138)
Yeah.

Eric Eden (07:21.218)
conservative or aggressive what you’re estimating you can get out of it, right?

Karin Conroy (07:24.768)
Yes. So then I wanted to kind of flip over and focus more and I briefly talked about social media. And I know you have some strong feelings about the overall impact and results that a person can expect from social media. So let’s dig into that a little bit. Talk about your feelings about social media. And I know you have this amazing platform where it’s kind of going, you know, kind of a fresh new

perspective on some of the challenges people typically have with social media. let’s just say we’re looking at this, know, we’re trying to think about what to do next. And we’re thinking about social media. Let’s talk about some of those typical challenges and where you think we can all do better.

Eric Eden (08:13.538)
Yeah, so I think we deserve the next generation of social media after the last 20 years because the platforms that are there today are overrun by bots, fraud, spam, fake accounts, and that generates into a pretty terrible user experience and definitely makes getting results from spending time on those platforms

Karin Conroy (08:19.928)
Yeah.

Eric Eden (08:40.438)
harder. think the core root of the problem, which there’s been quite a lot of lawsuits about is it all comes from advertising and privacy issues. It’s because the approach, the business approach to all these platforms has been advertising, which leads people down to we need to get big numbers of accounts so that we can sell a lot of advertising against it. And that just generates all of this weird behavior with bots and fake accounts. I met a guy

last week who has a thousand different LinkedIn accounts just for himself. And I mean, I mean, and I mean, people have weird reasons and shady reasons for doing these things. I think if you post something on X or LinkedIn these days, a lot of the posts just get.

Karin Conroy (09:13.614)
Gosh, that sounds a little shady.

Eric Eden (09:29.081)
commented on only by bots, which is just very weird, right? And so when I say we deserve a better social media experience, I think we deserve something that is free of these problems, where people can actually know that everyone else on the platform is a real person, a real company, and you can do real business with them. And I think we deserve something more like that, instead of just more of the same of like,

Karin Conroy (09:31.362)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Eden (09:55.7)
advertising, know, driving it and like, you know, the whole thing with the US government still trying to ban TikTok because the privacy violations are trying to catch every keystroke on our phone. mean, this is crazy.

Karin Conroy (10:06.636)
Yeah. Right. It is. It is. And it just feels like, why would I want to put my business there and rely on what seems so, what’s the word I’m looking for? Just unstable. And, and I have so little control over it, and, to dump tens of thousands of dollars into something like that, where I don’t have control. I don’t know.

how their algorithm is going to change. It just seems like a really super risky investment at the very least.

Eric Eden (10:45.228)
Yeah, I think we deserve the next generation. And one of my other main thesis related to that is I do think that people should be looking at building their professional and their executive brand. And there’s a lot of ways that you can do that. You can be a keynote speaker. You can be write a book.

Karin Conroy (11:01.71)
Yeah.

Eric Eden (11:10.55)
You can guest on podcasts, you can have your own podcast, you can be a guest on YouTube channels. There’s so many things that people can do to position themselves as a thought leader in their industry and really get a lot of credibility that generates more referrals for their firm, for example, and that is not advertising related. And so I think that that is a better

Karin Conroy (11:10.904)
Yep. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (11:32.781)
Yeah.

Eric Eden (11:36.706)
Direction overall for people to be thinking in rather than the advertising direction because it has all those problems

Karin Conroy (11:43.148)
Yes, yeah. I mean, we could do a whole show just on all of the how problematic social media is. typically when we go to work with firms, when social media is a piece of that work, we are extremely conservative about which platforms we choose. We have a very specific strategy for that. And we go in with a very realistic expectation of that.

We are not going to assume that this is really gonna be that major driver of leads and business unless there’s some major, you know, unique exception, but typically it just isn’t. And so when you go back to that whole ice score, impact, confidence, ease, the impact and confidence are usually very low. And so, yeah, maybe we…

need to have some kind of presence, especially I will say for lawyers on LinkedIn. Like that is a place where lawyers still do show up and have a decent amount of activity there. But the confidence of the return on that investment is pretty low. So it is really just showing up as a presence. so keeping that reality in mind as you’re investing in that, I think is really important.

Eric Eden (13:06.282)
Absolutely. think one of the big, go ahead. No.

Karin Conroy (13:07.99)
What would you… Sorry, go ahead. No, sorry, it’s jumping over you. What were you gonna say?

Eric Eden (13:14.158)
I was just gonna say is that I think that the reality is, is we’re coming into a new year. I think there’s a big shift happening in what marketing channels people should be prioritizing. If I think back, because I’m very old, about what worked five or 10 years ago, I did lots of things like.

Karin Conroy (13:27.638)
Yes.

Eric Eden (13:34.818)
blog posts for SEO that worked great, but work a lot less today. I used to do a lot of email marketing where people hadn’t opted in yet. That worked great 15 years ago, but not so much today. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (13:39.8)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (13:48.258)
Yeah, so let’s, we talked about this real briefly before we started recording. I think this is what people are kind of sitting back and trying to figure out right now. Let’s talk about what, you know, all those changes mean and what is working. Where are, where can people really find those impacts? So we’re kind of pushing social media over to the side, right? And you were describing the things that you used to do five years ago that were working. So where, what is working?

Eric Eden (14:19.33)
So I think that interestingly, podcasting and YouTube are two channels that are really growing and standing out in terms of people being able to position themselves as thought leaders using those channels and also people wanting to get information via those channels because YouTube is the number two website on the internet.

Karin Conroy (14:30.916)
100%.

Karin Conroy (14:42.819)
Yes.

Eric Eden (14:46.634)
I think people want to watch things on video versus reading a long document if they can. I think I listen to about 40 to 50 podcasts to get information every week. Usually while I’m walking my dog or on my way to work or whatnot. you know, I think that it’s just these channels are a way of getting information that people prefer.

Karin Conroy (14:54.466)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Eric Eden (15:13.524)
And so figuring out how to work in these channels, whether it’s having your own podcast or being a guest, having your own YouTube channel or being a guest on other people’s YouTube channels. Those are two channels as an example, I would say that’s really standing out. Another one is, is that I think that how fast AI is moving, the new SEO is really, how can you get things included in the AI summaries?

Karin Conroy (15:40.554)
Yes. Okay, all right. So I just wanna underscore the YouTube podcast comment for sure, because I really think that YouTube is, it’s kind of this cool anomaly. It is, I think people sort of feel like it’s a social media platform because there’s so much visual appeal to it and there’s the shorts and whatever.

Eric Eden (15:42.05)
That’s the new SEO.

Karin Conroy (16:07.682)
But at the same time, we all recognize that it’s a full search engine at the same time. And the amount of content there is mind blowing and the resources. And with those podcasts and the kind of content you’re talking about, you can really get extremely narrow and find exactly a place for whatever weird thing you’re searching for. So I just wanted to underscore that because it’s such a unique

place and it is in exponential growth. But now let’s talk about the AI. How do you get into those search, AI search results? So what we’re talking about is when you do the Google search now at the top, oftentimes you get that AI result and it looks a little different. It’s kind of sits there for a second and then, you know, blurbs out a thing.

answering the actual question that you’re asking. And it’s not necessarily going to give you a link. The links are all down below. So how do you game that whole system?

Eric Eden (17:15.234)
Well, I don’t think that there is a black and white answer yet. However, there’s some directional things that are interesting to be thinking about because early movers often get an unfair advantage, so to say. So I think that one of the things is just released was OpenAI’s search GPT. And I don’t know if you’ve used this yet, but it’s…

Karin Conroy (17:29.71)
Sure. Yeah.

Eric Eden (17:44.288)
a search engine within chat GPT. So you don’t have to go to Google. And I’ve been using it for like the last week. And I think that generally if you start using that, you won’t go back to Google. It’s like 10 times better. So that’s sort of just like one of the many AI tools out there. think perplexity has summaries that they’ve been pushing for the last year. Anthropic and Claude also are

Karin Conroy (17:48.737)
Nice.

Karin Conroy (17:58.551)
Amazing.

Eric Eden (18:13.356)
you know, moving into this space. I think Google has been a dominant, almost monopoly, the Justice Department would say, for the last 25 years. And I would say there are signs that’s coming to an end. And the question is, how quickly does traffic move to these other platforms? And it could move a lot faster than some people are imagining based on how good some of these new experiences are. And so I think that that’s worth closely looking at.

Karin Conroy (18:23.043)
Yeah.

Eric Eden (18:43.126)
and testing in 2025.

Karin Conroy (18:46.048)
I think we’ve all been shocked at how quick the OpenAI chat GPT thing just took over like wildfire. Like it feels like it’s only been, it feels like it’s been less than a year. I feel like I was having very, it felt like early conversations about chat GPT about this time last year. And I think it was probably around maybe a little bit longer than that, but not much.

Eric Eden (19:12.524)
Yeah. mean, last month, chat GPT had 3 billion sessions. So that tells you how much people are using it. It’s a lot. I don’t know about the percentages of search volume it’s taking from Google, but I think part of the answer to the question is you want to get indexed in Google. That’s been at the SEO game for years. I still think what websites you have and what content you have there is going to matter.

Karin Conroy (19:18.263)
Amazing.

Yeah.

Eric Eden (19:39.95)
I do think there’s going to be some checks on what content is AI generated and what is partially AI generated, what’s human generated. And so I don’t know that you can just go out and create a gazillion pages of content with AI to get indexed in AI. But there’s definitely going to be some strategies where you can train the AI models on

Karin Conroy (19:46.564)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Karin Conroy (19:59.363)
Right.

Eric Eden (20:09.398)
certain topics. Right.

Karin Conroy (20:10.732)
on your content. Yeah, that’s super interesting. Any tips for kind of, do you think that people should just be in there searching for themselves within the chat GPT search section or do you have any thoughts? It sounds like you’re kind of just dipping your toe into that whole thing. Do you have any thoughts about how, because there are entire industries in terms of how to

work around the SEO system and people whose entire careers are built on that. And we do a lot of that, obviously. But are there, is that going to be a similar system in process for working your rankings through AI? Or how is that going to work?

Eric Eden (20:58.124)
I think similar to SEO, there’s probably going to be a hundred different variables that drive, you know, if you get included in the large language models, like historically SEO, it’s like all kinds of variables, like how fast does your website load and all kinds of these things. So I think there’s going to be like, I don’t know, like a hundred variables, like there has been for, for Google. And over the years, Google didn’t do a really good job of saying what they were. sort of had to guess. And I think we’re going to have to guess a little bit.

Karin Conroy (21:02.231)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (21:07.565)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (21:14.413)
Right, right.

Eric Eden (21:27.638)
you know, with AI and there’ll be some things that are more certain and some things that are less certain. like one of the things that I think people are noticing is in SEO, there was always this thing about domain authority. If a lot of people linked to your website and you have a high domain authority, you’re more likely to get indexed by the AI. That is probably still going to be true.

Karin Conroy (21:41.56)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (21:48.322)
Yeah, yeah. It used to be called clout at one point. You had kind of this clout rating. But it’s the same as your domain authority. Basically, how long have you been around, and are you active, and you appear to be human, and are people paying attention to you? Are people seeking you out for whatever the thing is that you’re talking about? so that actually was a perfect segue kind of into my next question is,

Eric Eden (21:53.911)
Right.

Karin Conroy (22:16.054)
So what other kind of high impact things? Let’s bring it sort of over to the website area. Looking forward, and obviously we’ve got kind of a overlay of AI, an overlay of the changes in the social media world. What other high impact things do you think will continue to matter kind of along the lines of that domain authority or things that might change going forward?

Eric Eden (22:42.306)
I think coming back to sort of the personal branding, there’s a lot of cornerstone content or featured content that law firms and attorneys can work on that would increase their reputation, increase their credibility.

and ultimately help them win more business if they’re seen as an expert on something that’s very specific that they’ve had a lot of success in. So that can include anything from, you know, creating written content to being guest on podcasts and talking about those topics to doing YouTube videos to being a keynote speaker to writing a book. think being a thought leader and building your personal brand around that.

Karin Conroy (23:31.502)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Eden (23:31.598)
There’s no better tactic for 2025 because the one thing that AI does is it just white washes everything. just like, it beige-ifies, I like to call it everything. Whereas being a thought leader is sort of a little bit the opposite of that, which is you are bringing your perspective, your stories, your background. And people I think are going to crave that. You know how the AI

Karin Conroy (23:51.108)
bringing some color to it. Yeah. Yes.

Eric Eden (24:01.558)
relies on these hyperbole words, you know, that it likes to use all the time. Like, Karen is a maestro of podcasting.

Karin Conroy (24:08.686)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (24:13.06)
And where they start, it’s always like in today’s world or in a world that, you know, it’s kind of like, I always picture those movie previews when you’re sitting in the theater and it’s like in a world, they always start, you know, and it could be a movie about Moana or, you know, in some princess thing, or it could be, you know, a murder mystery or whatever, but it’s always in a world and it’s the most generic, non-useful

non-necessary phrase. Like obviously there’s a world somewhere that’s and we’re telling this story. But I think that’s really valid. The other example that I was just going to add in terms of like you were talking about podcast appearances being on YouTube, but a lot of firms, depending on your practice area, they also find this in PR. So appearing on news programs or in the newspaper and that really helps boost your trust indicator.

So I think the two things I’m gonna keep coming back to are your domain authority and trust indicators. And these are the things that people look to that they really quickly set that person aside. So if you have a high domain authority and you’ve got a recent appearance on CNN or something like that, all of a sudden, they’re gonna think differently. And you’ve got that CNN video right on the front of your website.

they’re gonna think differently about whatever it is you’re talking about versus if you don’t. So what other things are super high impact like that?

Eric Eden (25:51.662)
I think that it’s a matter of taking things that worked in the past, like blog posts. Like a lot of law firms that I’ve seen in the past have written great blog posts on very specific topics and gotten it indexed SEO. And that’s really worked for a lot of people. So it’s not that I’m saying don’t do that, but what I’m saying is you have to take that content to the next level.

Karin Conroy (26:10.007)
Yeah.

Eric Eden (26:15.083)
and part of it is making it multimedia, but also how do you make it more impactful to your formula? And so sometimes that can include having some research in it, like for example, doing a survey or bringing in some other data points. I think that that is, what can you make into cornerstone content that when people see it, it feels more meaningful to them?

It doesn’t quite have to be a full book because that’s a year long project for a lot of people. But, you know, can you bring something that is when people finish consuming it, they say, wow, that was really great. Like a Ted talk that’s 17 minutes long. But when you’re done with it, you feel like I really got something from that. And so my biggest steer is, that it’s great if if your company or firm has done.

Karin Conroy (26:45.922)
Right. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (26:55.236)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (26:58.913)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (27:03.575)
Yes.

Eric Eden (27:11.02)
you know, some good marketing and you’ve done some blog posts. The challenge, think, for the next year is like, how do you take it up a notch and build the credibility of an awareness of your firm with sort of next level content that is multimedia, that people come away with it with some really big takeaways?

Karin Conroy (27:30.67)
think that is so valuable. once again, I just want to underscore my takeaway of what you’re saying because this is conversations I keep having over and over. Five, seven years ago, if we were having a new client come in, we would almost always take a look at whatever they had and start over, especially with a website. And we would, you know,

wipe it clean because things were moving so fast that whatever they had, if it was a few years old, it was outdated, it looked bad, whatever. That’s not really the case anymore. Usually there’s a lot that can be salvaged and there’s things that need to be updated, you know, with a big asterisk, obviously, you know, depending. And so what we keep seeing over and over is fine tuning and fine tuning the stuff that you already know is solid, good things that are working.

but probably needs a fresh perspective and maybe like you’re describing, adding some more pieces or research or content in some way, taking it over to the multimedia version, doing a video on that, but taking, know, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water is kind of what I’m saying. Like taking what you already have that’s working and doing some real good refinement and making it much better versus

You’re not necessarily like, we’re not going to promote this idea of a whole new marketing campaign based on, you know, all new research. That’s probably not what you need. What you need is a refinement.

Eric Eden (29:10.38)
And the good news is, that the tools that are available to help do these things are much better. So I think one of the differences around, you know, five years ago, there wasn’t great tools like Riverside FM or.

Karin Conroy (29:18.23)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (29:24.482)
Yeah.

Eric Eden (29:27.118)
Descript is one of the tools I use for editing audio and video is $30 a month. And if even if you’re not a professional video person, you can record and edit a video. That’s pretty amazing, right? That’s it’s really game changing the video used to cost thousands of dollars per minute to produce and took a long time, a long time.

Karin Conroy (29:29.506)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (29:37.528)
Yep, it is.

Karin Conroy (29:44.461)
Yes.

Forever. Yeah. I did a podcast with a couple of my friends from business school and we started in late 2009 and at the time just recording. First of all, we all had to physically be in the same location. So you and I are not in the same location right now. You are on the other side of the country and the level of recording that we get, and I use Riverside that you mentioned a minute ago. And do you use Riverside for your podcast also?

Eric Eden (30:17.228)
I used a script, but it’s very similar to Riverside, yeah.

Karin Conroy (30:18.53)
okay. Yeah. And the quality is amazing. And first of all, there wasn’t fast enough bandwidth at the time to possibly do this. And so the quality is amazing. We are recording both audio and video. That was never an option before. We had to use different platforms for all that stuff. And so it is amazing to see this technology, how far it has come in just a few, relatively few years. And the stuff that we can do now,

just speaking about podcasts, nothing else. Like the stuff we can do in all different other platforms is seriously, it’s amazing what we can do that we could never do before.

Eric Eden (30:57.472)
I can produce a podcast episode in two hours, everything I need to do soup to nuts instead of what used to take without these tools, 10 hours, 10 hours. So the thing is, that like, when you go to someone and say, why don’t you start a podcast or wanting to be a guest on a podcast, it seems a little scary, but it’s really not that scary when you consider these tools. It’s not zero time. I’m not representing that, but to your point about

Karin Conroy (31:02.616)
Same. Yep. Days. Yeah, seriously, it was amazing.

Karin Conroy (31:19.246)
Yeah.

Eric Eden (31:26.434)
you know, how much effort is it, right? It’s not as much effort as it used to be. And that’s why I think the channels are also changing. And the channels are also changing because one of the reasons that, you know, blogs and SEO, for example, don’t perform as well as they used to is because Google has gotten very saturated, right? There’s so much…

Karin Conroy (31:27.991)
Yeah, yeah.

Karin Conroy (31:34.104)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (31:47.81)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Eden (31:49.996)
competition. And one thing I just have to say related to this, because I think it’s one of the biggest things in marketing is over the last 25 years, the Google advertising has been one of the main channels in advertising. But anybody you talk to today would say because of inflation, it’s so expensive. It doesn’t work for almost anybody except for people selling like million dollar solutions. Because when I started

20 years ago with Google advertising, it was a dollar a click. Today it’s $40 a click. I’m like $40 a click. That’s not even a lead. You might need 10 clicks to get a lead. And then you might need multiple leads to get a sale. You’re talking about thousands of dollars per lead and sometimes like, you know, a lot more to get to a sale. And it’s just like, it’s just too expensive. And so some of the channels have the unit economics and Google advertising being one of the biggest ones.

Karin Conroy (32:23.394)
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Right.

Karin Conroy (32:39.274)
It’s not worth it. Right. Yeah.

Eric Eden (32:49.9)
have priced themselves out.

Karin Conroy (32:52.076)
Yeah, that’s a really good point. so people are looking elsewhere. so not only our advertisers, but so our consumers, they’re all looking elsewhere. So it does feel like there’s a bit of an open market starting to open up where that wasn’t the case a few years ago. It was so locked in that you really just, it was what it was, you know?

Eric Eden (33:17.74)
I was in an event with 100 chief marketing officers recently and the consensus is the game has completely changed. so that’s how big of a point I’m making here is we’re going into a new year to think about the plan is take a fresh look, take a step back and take a fresh look.

Karin Conroy (33:27.34)
that’s fascinating.

Karin Conroy (33:31.79)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (33:37.89)
Yep. what, absolutely. And so what was, what were they saying at this chief marketing officer event that you were at? The game has completely changed to what?

Eric Eden (33:50.382)
Well, a lot of the historical marketing channels are broken. And I gave that example of how Google advertising is broken. They were then saying, well, LinkedIn advertising is even more expensive than Google advertising. And, you know, they were just looking across the 20 or 30 channels and they were like, wow, like a lot of these just don’t work anymore. So how do we meet our numbers? Because we’re the head of the company is like, hey, you need to grow by 30%.

Karin Conroy (33:58.2)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (34:03.684)
Yeah.

Eric Eden (34:20.128)
And that they don’t really care that half of the marketing channels don’t work anymore. And then you can’t just necessarily pour money into every other channel to make up for that. You have to be very thoughtful about, you know, how you invest in each channel because they all don’t scale on the same way and they have different unit economics and it’s different a little bit by industry. So they were saying in a lot of ways, B2B marketing has gotten

Karin Conroy (34:31.096)
Right.

Eric Eden (34:49.272)
Broken and the question is how do you fix it? And I think the answer to how you fix it is you need to be looking at the ways that you invest like we’re talking about at start of the episode and looking at impact and looking at confidence and looking at the efficiency around it like how hard is this to do and thinking through those sorts of things to choose which channels to invest in in the next year one of the other examples is

in-person events. I worked in the in-person conferences and trade show business for a decade, and I’m a big believer in that. think like a quarter to a third of business gets done at those sorts of events, but you have to be smart about how you invest in those events. It’s not necessarily about buying a lot of signage. It’s about, can you be a keynote speaker? You know, can you run your own little reception or dinner and get

Karin Conroy (35:20.205)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (35:40.194)
Yes. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (35:46.531)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Eden (35:47.456)
high quality prospects to come to that. And so sometimes it’s not just the channels using the event channel. It’s what tactics you use in that channel are evolving as well to be successful.

Karin Conroy (35:58.49)
that’s so good. I think that’s so good. And I love that you use the idea of in-person events because I think that the offline marketing elements of a marketing strategy are so overlooked. Everybody tends to come back to all this online stuff and I’m not going to belabor the social media thing only to say that, you know, it’s so overplayed and it’s so under, under, what’s the word I’m looking for? It has so much.

lower results and value than what people are giving it, that let’s just take a really realistic data-driven look at where your results are coming from and be honest about, you really need to be on Instagram? I mean, really? What has happened there? Look at your account. Have you got a single lead off of that? And if the answer is no, then fine, leave the account there, but let’s not like…

overemphasize it and put too much time and thought and effort there when you know this other thing is totally working and maybe the other thing is in-person events or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Eden (37:06.764)
Yeah. So I’d say the best advice for 2025 is take a hard look at how you’re investing in channels and the tactics within those channels and almost just take a fresh look at it. Don’t assume what’s worked in previous years will work going forward. It’s okay to have a thesis that it would, but really I think it’s healthy to sort of challenge it.

Karin Conroy (37:31.852)
Yes.

Eric Eden (37:32.042)
and look at the numbers and say, do we need to make some changes here? Like you still may go to a certain event that you’ve gone to every year, but you may say, how can we invest differently with this event to get a better return? And I use that example because I don’t think you need to completely upend the apple cart and do all different things, but I do think you need to really look at everything.

Karin Conroy (37:44.171)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (37:53.88)
That’s so good. I typically around this time ask for that action item that, you know, after someone has listened to this episode, what can, what should they do next? And I feel like that’s it. Like that, you know, take a look at a hard numbers based look at what’s working and you know, everything that you just said, I’m not going to repeat everything you just said, but I feel like, you know, is there anything else that you would want to say in terms of like that action item or does that kind of cover what you would suggest? You know, I,

just finished listening to this episode. And, you know, this is the thing that Eric Eden is telling me that I need to do next, you know, today or tomorrow as a result of listening to this episode.

Eric Eden (38:35.468)
Yeah, it’s absolutely review your channels, the programs and the tactics in those channels. Look at it with an investment point of view with the people on your leadership team and get everyone bought into the fact that things are evolving and it’s worth it. You would look at it for any other part of the business where you’re investing to just look at what the return is and, you know, make joint decisions about it that everyone is going to row in the same direction on. All investments don’t

Karin Conroy (38:57.304)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Eden (39:05.462)
work out, right? Some investments get better results than others. So I think that’s why it’s important to do that and to have a collaborative approach with, you know, CEOs, CFOs, partners at the firm, you know, so that everyone understands what the investment is, because then people get behind it, right?

Karin Conroy (39:06.486)
Right!

Karin Conroy (39:23.394)
Yes, exactly. Okay, so it’s time for normally what is the book review section of the show, but this episode is going to be slightly different. So, Eric, what’s the not book that you were going to recommend to us today for this episode?

Eric Eden (39:39.693)
So I’m a big fan of podcasts and one of my favorite podcasts is the Founders podcast with David Sendra and he’s reviewing a thousand books by founders and

Karin Conroy (39:48.227)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (39:54.838)
I love this. excited to check. I have not heard of this. And so I’m excited to check this out after we stop talking.

Eric Eden (40:03.702)
And he keeps track of all the insights that founders give in their books. Everyone from, you know, the guys who founded Walmart and Costco to, you know, Elon Musk and SpaceX. And, you know, he comes out with themes from reading these thousand books about founders. Like, one of the themes is always be frugal, which I think is great.

Karin Conroy (40:29.91)
Nice. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And to kind of tie that always be frugal into what you were saying a minute ago, be frugal, but I am constantly, especially this time of year, going into the next year, constantly looking over all of my budgets and where I spent and where can I be more frugal? What was really did not pay off? And so not just necessarily in my own marketing efforts, but everything.

you know, where did I spend a bunch of money and that made sense and I’m going to keep that as is, but where can I kind of cut back going into next year that would make sense? Not like, you know, cutting down to the bone, but cutting in a way that went as I look over the past year, there’s things here that like, you know, I don’t know why I was paying for that. That was not, you know, that didn’t really do a thing. And so let’s get rid of that. And, look at, just, you know, found some money that was, you know, that’s amazing.

But I think that’s, you know, it’s important as, you know, to be aware and keep going back and keep refining and keep reviewing and not just assume that everything is great from year to year. You need to keep looking at it.

Eric Eden (41:41.864)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Karin Conroy (41:43.168)
Awesome. All right, so what is one thing that you know that really works?

Eric Eden (41:50.508)
I think it’s really around what I mentioned earlier, personal branding, building up your credibility. And I wanted to make an offer for the listeners, is for my startup, which is Workverse. If you’re looking for a way to pull all the aspects of your personal brand together, I can give you a complimentary subscription and it helps you bring together the things that help build your reputation and your credibility. Everything from podcasting, YouTube,

participation, keynote speaking, having a book, all of these key things about being a thought leader. So if you go to Workverse.com, I’ve created a promo code called Council Cast and people can use that to sign up for an annual subscription and complimentary, no credit card required. And it can really help you build your personal brand for yourself and or your firm.

Karin Conroy (42:39.779)
Nice.

Karin Conroy (42:44.588)
Yeah, I think that’s really important in terms for lawyers. Their marketing approach is typically a little different. And this whole idea of being a thought leader, that’s not just like signing up for SEO and Google ads. It’s a lot more complicated and nuanced. so typically that’s not something you necessarily learned in law school. And you’re going to need some help with that. You’re going to be busy being a lawyer and doing your thing over there.

and you need some experts that are going to help you rise to the top in a way that really speaks to what your clients are looking for.

Eric Eden (43:24.054)
I was a fan of that show Better Call Saul, but I think there are better ways to build your personal brand than putting your photo on bus benches or billboards. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just saying there’s a more modern way to do it these days to build awareness and credibility. And ultimately, I think part of personal branding and being a thought leader is it gets you referrals.

Karin Conroy (43:27.428)
Yeah

Karin Conroy (43:34.849)
Yes.

yet.

Karin Conroy (43:53.09)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Eden (43:53.772)
which are key for firms. And it also gets you the credibility that allows you to charge a premium, right? And so I think that those are two very important dynamics to look at.

Karin Conroy (44:03.565)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (44:08.738)
Yeah. And those referrals, those are really just a measure of longevity. So if you are looking to have this career for longer than, you know, the next 12 months, we need to think long term. And if you’re not thinking about your marketing, you know, we keep talking about this year, but if you’re not really thinking, yeah, this is this year, but this fits into the five year plan, and this is the long term thing, and you start

taking that step back in terms of I’m not just looking for a result this quarter, I’m looking for a result that is going to play out long term this year and then over the next five years. Then we’re talking about much more nuanced, subtle branding, messaging kind of things that are a lot more complex than just like I said, like setting up an ad campaign.

Eric Eden (45:03.852)
Yeah, I think I’ll just call out that with podcasts and YouTube videos, for example, and these new channels, a lot of the content that you spend time and effort and money to create is evergreen. So people watch videos on YouTube that are a year old all the time. They search for something, they find a video. It doesn’t really matter that it was three months, six months or 12 months ago. If it answers a question, they’ll watch it.

Karin Conroy (45:17.901)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (45:22.798)
all the time.

Karin Conroy (45:28.6)
Yep. Yep.

Eric Eden (45:30.868)
And so I think that that’s like a very interesting way to also think about the investment is like you said, it’s not necessarily like immediate payback, but look at it over time. And I’ve even seen this historically, like when you do webinars, you get so many people who will watch it live. But then if you put the recording on your website and you look at how many people watch it on your website, it’s like 10 times number of people watch it on the website.

Karin Conroy (45:45.326)
Mm-hmm.

Karin Conroy (45:52.526)
huge spike. Yes. Yep. Yeah.

Eric Eden (45:55.458)
versus that watched it live. And so I think it’s that same sort of way of thinking about the marketing with some of these new channels is that, you know, if you’re out there and creating content, creates like a legacy evergreen effect.

Karin Conroy (46:08.854)
Yes, that’s really important to make a point of that too, because as you’re creating the content, you should be thinking about that. And so even as we’re talking right now about going into 2025, I didn’t want to emphasize too much about this exact moment, because this is now starting the fourth year of this podcast. And I have episodes from the first year that are still…

showing up and ranking and increasing in views because the topics are evergreen. It’s not just like, hey, we’re talking about this thing that’s only relevant for the next two weeks. I wanna talk about topics that have meaning over a long time. So it’s something to consider as you’re building out that plan for the content too.

Eric Eden (46:56.906)
Absolutely. We’re coming to you from in the past.

Karin Conroy (46:57.966)
Yeah. Yes, exactly. I love.

That’s so good, but it’s so true. Awesome. feel like it’s a great place to kind of wrap it up. Eric Eden is the founder and chief marketer at Workverse. please note, we will note it on the show page as well, his offer for the awesome offer that, you know, for his services and everything. And thank you so much for being here. This was a great conversation.

Eric Eden (47:28.952)
Thanks for having me, really appreciate it.

Karin Conroy (47:34.353)
It always takes a second for it to kind of stop and then give me like a green. Okay, hold on, it’s saying.

Eric Eden (47:36.556)
Yep, stop and then make sure it uploads, yeah.

 

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