Esquire Deposition Solutions, a legal services provider, came to Prose with some major content challenges. First, the team was having difficulty finding qualified writers with the exact blend of qualities it was looking for: a legal background, an understanding of Esquire’s products and services, and the ability to create strong editorial content that would be genuinely helpful and engaging to their discerning target audience of attorneys and legal firms. Esquire also wanted to more effectively reach their target audience and reduce the amount of time their team members were spending on content creation and marketing.
Before coming to Prose, Esquire tried a number of different content solutions, including agencies and individual freelancers, but none of them came close to meeting their needs. Marketing team members received negative feedback on their content from internal expert stakeholders, and their readers weren’t engaged. The content they did publish had to go through dozens of revision rounds, which was a time burden not just for the marketing team but also for other company subject matter experts.
“The amount of time we were spending on content was ridiculous,” says Joyce Ouellette, Esquire’s VP of Marketing. “Of all our marketing activities, we were probably spending at least 80-90% of our time trying to make our content better, and the solutions we tried just weren’t working. We needed to find a better way.”
The team’s other goals included improving SEO performance and developing a more robust editorial calendar that was fluid enough to adapt to emerging legal trends, breaking news, and world events.
After an initial consultation with Prose’s creative staff, we quickly identified senior writing talent that was a precise fit with the skills Esquire was looking for: for example, an attorney with content experience from Bloomberg Law whose writing samples had been thoroughly vetted by our reviewers for entry into our network. After completing a trial project to ensure it was a good fit, Esquire team members realized that Prose was different from the solutions they’d tried in the past.
“Rather than taking writers and applying a general purpose solution to a problem, Prose provided a pinpoint solution to address a specific problem,” explains Joyce. “And that's a huge difference from how other folks we’d worked with had approached the problem. This applies not just to Esquire, but to my entire marketing career: I’d never seen a centralized solution like Prose that could quickly find genuinely knowledgeable writers that don't write fluff.”
Once the right team was in place, Prose created an editorial calendar that addressed the legal issues and topics relevant to Esquire's target audience. Based on the calendar and associated content strategy, Prose crafted blog posts, white papers, CLEs (Continuing Legal Education programs), and other types of content for Esquire, including the company’s website copy. Prose also conducted research and analysis on the most popular legal keywords and phrases for SEO optimization to increase Esquire's online visibility and search engine rankings.
“It really came down to having an understanding of the business of litigation and what we're trying to accomplish in terms of SEO, brand relevance, and content engagement,” says Joyce. “This included when we started working with Prose in 2019, and then issues that came up with depositions during the pandemic, and then how standards have changed since then. We wanted to showcase the challenges and opportunities litigators and their staff were going through, and Prose helped us do that very well. The content has been and continues to be incredible.”
As a result of working with Prose, Esquire's content marketing and creation process was streamlined to save time and produce better results, leading to a 90% reduction in the amount of time and effort required to create content. Esquire's blogs became more engaging and relevant to their target audience, resulting in increased engagement and shares on social media platforms. Esquire also received positive feedback from their readership and other legal professionals, with many reposting and commenting on the blogs.
“The results have been huge,” says Joyce. “We have blogs that aren't going through tons of rewrites from the start to the finish, which was so time consuming. And now I don't have to involve attorneys that work for Esquire in reviewing the content for relevancy and accuracy. So even just on the content management front, it's made an enormous difference.”
Esquire's content also provided value to their sales department, which uses it to educate potential clients.
“We're not doing gimmicky marketing activities,” explains Joyce. “Our content strategy focuses on delivering value to our clients and to our sales organization because our sales organization can also leverage that content and share it with our clients.”
Prose's work resulted in increased online visibility and higher search engine rankings, leading to increased website traffic and lead generation.
“The engagement we're getting is really, really high. Where we syndicate our blogs, we do see the companies and titles and sometimes names of people who engage with our content. And we know we're 100% reaching the right audience. When attorneys and corporate executives repost, like, and comment on our content, that validates that the information is timely and relevant. That's exactly what we wanted to do, and we accomplished it. We couldn't have accomplished it without Prose.”
“Let me put it this way,” continues Joyce. “Our general counsel is an ex-litigating attorney, and he is really pleased with the content we get from Prose. I think that says it all. And on top of all that, they’re so easy to work with. We know we can go to Prose with an idea and work out the specifics together. Every day I wake up and am grateful that Prose is our content partner.”