“ We increased our attendance rate by 20-40% …and brought in high quality leads that we wouldn’t have the chance of exposure to via our traditional marketing channels…”
Sheenika Gandhi, Director of Marketing & Business Development, Payne & Fears
When she started her new role as director of marketing and business development at California-based law firm Payne & Fears in 2017, Sheenika Gandhi put a strategy in place to utilize content marketing and establish thought leadership for each of the firm’s practice areas.
Within this strategy, she identified webinars as a channel for major growth potential. At the time, Payne & Fears only hosted one webinar a year, but there was consensus at the firm that this should be increased to at least one per quarter. The firm also wanted to increase attendance numbers and turn attendees into qualified leads.
Sheenika knew that to increase attendance and generate leads, she’d have to look beyond their current contacts for targeted registrants.
“Our biggest challenge in promoting webinars was bringing in new leads,” said Gandhi. “We believed that could be done if we showcased our expertise beyond our current mailing lists.”
Thanks to a successful relationship at her previous firm, Sheenika had already partnered with JD Supra to help with content visibility for Payne & Fears. She upgraded to include the platform’s webinar promotion service to expand awareness and reach new targets.
Sheenika immediately saw a considerable increase in webinar attendance.
“For our annual employment law reviews, in 2015 there were 35 registrants, in 2016 there were 54 registrants, and in 2017, after adding JD Supra’s webinar promotion, there were 144.” Many of these new attendees became leads, with additional exposure and opportunities for reach through other channels
“ We have increased our attendance rate by 20-40% depending on the webinar and brought in high quality leads that we wouldn’t have the chance of exposure to via our traditional marketing channels. We add these attendees to our mailing lists and are happy to see they are attending future webinars and reading our alerts.”
Sheenika reports that her internal stakeholders were thrilled: the firm was executing on its goal to host more webinars and there was a strategy in place to generate more interest, and ultimately more leads.
The positive results also encouraged other attorneys and practice groups to think of topics they would like to present in webinar format. And because the firm was already partnering with JD Supra to increase content visibility, Sheenika was able to focus the firm’s efforts by leveraging written content and webinar promotion, hand in hand, to highlight the firm’s subject matter expertise.
One of these opportunities came when JD Supra put out a “Call to Writers” for topics relating to startups. In response, Jared De Jong, an attorney at Payne & Fears, wrote an article titled “Insurance Questions that Every Startup and Emerging Growth Company Should Be Asking Themselves.”
Because the post did so well on JD Supra, Sheenika turned it into the first webinar that Jared and the firm’s Insurance Law Group hosted.
Now, “the attorneys are motivated to host more webinars, re-purpose thought leadership, and get the firm’s name out there via JD Supra. It’s a huge confidence booster and the analytics provided engage our attorneys to think deeper about business development.”
