March 7, 2025 • 34 mins
Did you like this episode? Dislike it?
💰 Are digital ads the secret weapon for law firm growth, or just a money pit? The truth lies somewhere in between. In this episode, Mike, Eddie, and special guest Danny Decker break down the biggest misconceptions about digital ads, how they actually work, and why they should be part of a bigger strategy—not a magic bullet. Plus, they reveal the one ad strategy every law firm should be using right now (and it’s more affordable than you think!).
📌 Key Takeaways:
- 🚀 Why digital ads aren’t an instant fix—but can fuel serious growth
- 💡 How to combine ads with content marketing for maximum impact
- 📊 The biggest mistakes law firms make with digital ads (and how to avoid them!)
📆 Schedule Your Strategy Session
📱You can check out the video component by following us here on
Instagram or TikTok
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Many law firms can hit their growth goals just by
doing a good job of that,because you are going to get
more referrals, you're going toget more repeat business
opportunities, right?
That that is sort of stage one,and then stage two is when
you're ready to go beyond thatWelcome to the law firm
marketing minute, the go-topodcast for solo and small law
(00:23):
firms who want to level up.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I'm your host, smike, and I'm excited for you to join
me this episode.
All right, without further ado,let's dive in.
Hello everyone, welcome back tothe Law Firm Marketing Minute.
As always, I'm your host, smike, and I have Eddie.
I brought him back for anotherepisode.
Two for two, baby yeah.
And this week we have a greatguest, danny Decker.
(00:48):
Many of you may recognize Dannyfrom Spotlight back in the day.
He has returned.
He is the what is it the?
Prodigal son.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I don't know.
I thought you were going to dothe Return of the King reference
.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I mean, you really let me down here on the you know
I've done a lot of lord of therings references too much, some
might say this in this podcastso I think I just had to give it
a little bit of a break, but uh, danny, welcome to the the
podcast yeah, hey, it's, it's,uh, it's gonna be here, mike, uh
, once you uh give the audience,uh, the ones that don't know
you, um, a little bit of aintroduction, um, also for the
(01:22):
ones who do know you but maybeweren't sure where you went.
You know, just kind of fillthem in on what's been going on
the past few years with you.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure thing.
So, yeah, this is kind of a funfull circle moment, right, and
I'll kind of keep it briefbecause I know we want to get to
the action right.
That's why people listen tothis stuff.
But, yeah, so I co-foundedSpotlight with Mark back in I
think it was probably 2011.
We built it together for sevenyears, had a great time doing it
.
I kind of felt the need, as alot of entrepreneurs do from
(01:54):
time to time, to scratch someother itches and do some other
things.
So I sold my ownership to Markin 2018 and spent the next six
years or so really deep divinginto more of the marketing
strategy side of things.
So I wrote a couple of books,did a lot of coaching,
consulting workshops, reallyworking with law firm owners and
other small businesses as wellKind of teaching them marketing
(02:15):
strategy more from a strategicstandpoint and less of an
execution standpoint.
As an agency, we help law firmowners and small business owners
execute Absolutely, and Iwanted to spend some time on the
strategy and so I did that forseveral years.
And then, what's funny isaround 2022 or so you know more
and more of my consultingclients and the folks that I was
(02:37):
helping with strategy reallyneeded execution help, and I
frankly got tired of ofreferring that work out and so I
decided to launch an agency toto help with the execution right
so it's like great, we got thestrategy figured out, but we
still need execution.
So I launched an agency in 2022.
Meanwhile, mark and I havestayed really close friends.
(03:00):
My agency grew really fast.
Spotlight has continued to kindof do their thing and do great
work, and as we really got totalking about our services and
sort of the lead gen and theFacebook ads and the landing
pages and email marketing thatmy agency specialized in, along
with the content marketing thatSpotlight has always been so
(03:21):
good at, we just felt there wasa ton of natural synergy.
And so towards the end of lastyear, we really got serious
about these conversations and Ithink it was early February.
We made this merger official.
So we're now SpotlightMarketing and Branding and we
now offer kind of a completemarketing solution the content
that Spotlight's always been sogood at, combined with paid
(03:41):
advertising, retargeting, allthat stuff that my team is
really good at.
And that brings us to today.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Let's start there because,since this podcast episode will
be mainly focused on the digitalads aspect of it right, I mean,
we have countless episodesabout content and we will
continue to in the future, but Ithink this is a really great
opportunity to start off thedigital ads in the Law Firm
(04:08):
Marketing Minute space.
So let's start there, first andforemost.
With anything comes some kindof misconception right,
especially from people whoaren't necessarily totally
immersed in a certain world.
Right, for example, a law firmowner isn't, for the most part,
isn't totally immersed within acertain world.
Right, for example, a law firmowner isn't, for the most part,
isn't totally immersed within amarketing world, so there's some
(04:30):
misconceptions that they canhave regarding that.
What are some of the biggestmisconceptions that you believe
law firm owners might have aboutdigital ads over the years?
What have you seen?
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, great question ads Over the years.
What have you seen?
Yeah, great question and reallya very true premise, right,
obviously true to us in themarketing world.
But you know, it is very naturalwhen you are immersed in one
thing, when you're immersed inrunning a law firm, to have
misconceptions about the way taxstrategy works or the way
accounting works or the waysales should work, or the way
(05:04):
marketing works, and so likehundred percent, true, um, you
know, the biggest misconception,I would say and this isn't just
limited to digital ads,although I will talk about it as
it relates to digital ads thatmost law firm owners and really
most small business owners havewhen it comes to marketing, is
they're always looking for amagic bullet right.
(05:26):
Like this one thing, that if Ijust start doing it like all of
my marketing and sales problemsare going to be solved.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Everyone I've talked to says this.
Everyone who owns a businesstells me this.
I mean, so I, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Tells you that they're looking for that magic
bullet, or they said theirclients are looking for it from
them.
I mean, either they're lookingfor it or they're getting
clients saying yeah, I meanespecially financial advisors,
and the reality is in life ingeneral, there's very few of
those magic bullets.
And if you think about it foryou as a law firm owner, as
you're listening to this podcast, you probably have a version of
(05:58):
this conversation with yourclients too, right?
They think they're gonna justgo hire you, make one payment to
you and you're going to fixeverything, and then they are
frustrated when it turns into.
Well, no, it's a little morecomplicated than that.
It's maybe going to cost alittle bit more than that first
payment they made.
Right?
Like, whether you're in familylaw or state planning or
(06:18):
immigration or criminal like,you're not, generally speaking,
a silver bullet for your clientseither, and so you know what
that turns into in the marketingworld is you have to be
comfortable with trial and error, like you have to be.
Marketing is an inexact science.
I always tell people it's apart art and it's part science,
right, and we're dealing withhuman beings who are inherently
(06:43):
irrational.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
And so you don't say, of course it's going to take
some trial and error to figureout how to get those people to
take action.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
And when you figure something out and it works for a
while, it's not going to workforever, and so even if your
marketing system right now iskilling it, it's not going to.
You can't just leave it alonefor 10 years.
You probably can't leave italone for 10 months.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Let alone 10 years right.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
And so part of building a marketing system that
really works is you've got toconstantly be testing, and even
when you have things that areworking, you need to be testing
new channels, new campaigns.
You need to continually findnew things that work so that
when the old thing stops working, you're not screwed.
Yeah, so now to kind of reallyanswer the question that you
originally asked with digitalads, you know, I think, that the
(07:32):
biggest misconception is thatfrom day one, as soon as you
turn an ad campaign on, you'reimmediately going to get exactly
the right phone calls fromexactly the right potential
clients and 100% of them aregoing to hire you.
Right phone calls from exactlythe right potential clients and
100% of them are going to hireyou.
And that's just not accurate.
I will tell you, from time totime we launch an ad campaign
(07:55):
and on day one it starts workingand it doesn't need much
modification.
But that's not the norm, andany marketing company that tries
to tell you that is the norm isfull of crap.
Um, it takes testing, it takesrefining.
There are so many elements to adigital ad campaign.
What is your messaging?
What are your headlines?
What is your landing page looklike?
(08:15):
What is your call to action,like all of that stuff needs to
be tested and refined.
Um and, once you do that andyou start getting phone calls,
then sometimes you realize, okay, the people who are calling me
aren't quite the right fit orhave this expectation when they
should really have thisexpectation, and so you got to
(08:37):
make some changes and so, yeah,biggest single misconception is
that it's just going to workfrom day one and there's no need
for testing and iteration.
The reality is there's alwaysneed for testing and iteration.
The beautiful thing aboutdigital ads is they give you the
ability to scale really fast.
So I know you guys talk a lotabout referrals and how great of
(08:58):
a way to grow your businessthat is, and I fully agree, and
maybe we can talk in a fewminutes about how digital ads
help you do that for sure.
The truth is, generallyspeaking, if I get to just
choose one lead that I'm goingto get today and I can choose if
it's going to come from areferral or come from a digital
ad, guess what?
I'm going to choose thereferral absolutely because,
generally speaking, referralsclose at a higher rate.
They come in, they'repreconditioned to trust you,
(09:20):
they're not necessarily shoppingaround.
So what I usually see isreferrals close at like 60 to
70% for a lot of law firms,versus digital ad clients maybe
close more like 25 to 30%.
The beauty, though?
So if you're listening to thisand you're like, well, then, why
wouldn't I just always rely onreferrals?
Well, you should start withreferrals.
But the problem is, eventuallyyou kind of reach that ceiling
(09:40):
of referrals and you're kind ofdependent on other people to
make those referrals.
Digital ads allow you to takeit into your own hands and scale
things up a lot faster.
So, even though there isprobably almost always going to
be a lower conversion rate, youalso have a lot more control
over your volume, and you canscale faster.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
If you own a small law firm, then you must know how
necessary marketing is to thegrowth of your law firm.
Even if you were to just getall of your business, or most of
your business, from word ofmouth or referrals, that's still
a form of marketing, right.
You're talking to your audiencein some sort of way.
It could be indirect or direct.
What is not necessary, though,is you having to do everything
(10:21):
yourself.
Even if you have somebody inthe firm who helps you out, you
still have to take carefulconsideration of all those
minute, those fine details thatcould affect the overall
marketing plan, whetherpositively or negatively.
So here's what we want to do wehave a strategy team who wants
to sit down with you.
(10:41):
They want to talk about whereyou are, where you want to be,
what you've done, what you havedone, what you're doing right
now, what you haven't evenconsidered doing, and they want
to flesh out everything right.
We want to talk about all thesolutions that we know have
helped small law firms grow, andwe want to do it very
strategically, very specificallyfor your law firm.
So check the podcastdescription.
(11:03):
There's a link there.
You can pick the date thatworks for you.
Schedule a call with ourstrategy team and we'd be happy
to help.
All right, let's get right backto the episode.
So here's a quick slap in theface from reality.
You mentioned before how, withmarketing, you have to be
willing to fail at things.
In the marketing world, weliterally have the term A-B
(11:24):
testing, right, and that meansthat we're testing something
against the other and we areexpecting the one thing to fail
and the other thing to succeedso that we can see what to
continue with.
That's literally a 50-50, hey,50% of the time you're going to
fail kind of thing.
Like if you're worried aboutfailure.
Marketing is is a very grimworld.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yeah, yeah, you gotta be.
You gotta be willing to testthings, and I would look at it
more.
As you know, if I'm running anAB test, I'm what I'm really
looking for is which one worksbetter, right, like, I'm hoping
that that option A doesn't havea 0% success rate.
Sure, I'm hoping that it has youknow, maybe a, a, a 0% success
rate?
Sure, sure, I'm hoping that ithas, you know, maybe a 12%
success rate, but then option Bhas a 16% success rate, and then
(12:09):
you move all your resourcesinto option B and then you
create option C and you'rehoping to get to a 17% or an 18%
success rate.
But, like your point is exactlyright, you're typically going
to start, you know, whatever youput out there first you're
typically going to start.
Whatever you put out there first, you're only going to improve
from there, and so you have tobe willing to realize hey,
(12:31):
iteration number one of thisisn't going to be the best
version, but guess what, if youdon't ever take that step, well
then you're never going to getto the end result.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Nothing changes.
If nothing changes, exactly, Iknow.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I'm Mr Negativity but to put a positive spin on
testing.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I mean, that's why we keep them around.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
I mean testing is amazing in the sense that it
takes the decision off of you,right?
I mean, whether you want a bluecall to action button, I want a
yellow call to action button.
I mean the testing is going todictate which one of these is
performing better.
I mean it is even to the styleof fonts.
I mean it's.
Oh, the testing is there foryou.
It's a huge tool in a positiveway.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yeah, no, that's a.
That's a great point, eddie,and and um you know, opinions
don't matter when it comes tomarketing, and it is.
It's funny that you say thatbecause, um, you know, there are
so many different elements of a, of an ad campaign that you
want to test.
You mentioned several of themheadlines.
What's the color of the button?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
what's the.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
What font are you using?
Um, and you know we can allhave our opinions in terms of
what looks nicest, but I've justseen too many examples of like
what I would consider to be anugly ad or an ugly landing page.
yeah, that does great, and theand the nicer looking one
doesn't convert as well.
And that's like a great exampleof why it is so important to be
(13:47):
tracking data and be runningdata-oriented campaigns.
And the truth is, mostmarketing agencies, most
marketing people, most businessowners, most law firm owners
like, if they're really beinghonest, they're not A-B testing
every element of their marketingand they are making a lot of
(14:09):
decisions based on what theythink looks nice.
And certainly when it comes todigital ad campaigns landing
pages, ads it's just pretty easyif you have the tools to do
that type of testing.
And you know we talk about A Btesting.
Really it should be A, b, c, dtesting right, because typically
(14:31):
we're actually testing multiple, you know beyond, just two
variants.
But the bottom line is, if thatis not happening, I promise you
you are leaving dollars on thetable.
It's just a reality.
Like you don't know, you can'toptimize without testing.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, so I know we're about like at almost the
halfway point through theepisode, but I think this is a
great part, a great point toactually define what is digital
ads, because I've heard justover the years I've been with
Spotlight, I've heard people inthe legal space refer to say
(15:09):
they put up a social media postand they boost it and they say,
oh, that's digital ads.
Or even, like those digitalbillboards, they consider those
digital ads.
What are we talking about veryspecifically?
And then we can get specificexamples of what digital ads are
.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, I mean, I think I would say, at its simplest,
it's any time you are putting anactual spend behind content,
then it's a digital ad, rightposting.
(15:45):
You know, if you're postingsome updates on your Facebook
page or you're posting a pictureon Instagram organically but
you're not spending any money onit, that's organic content.
As soon as you boost thatcontent and actually spend
dollars to me, now, now it's anad.
Um, you know, on the searchengine side of things, if you
are posting blogs and writingarticles and optimizing your
(16:07):
website for the organic rankings, that's not a paid ad.
But as soon as you start alocal service ad or as soon as
you run a Google pay-per-clickad, now you're in the ad space
and so roughly speaking.
There's organic, which is callit free, and then there's ads,
which which you're paying forSure.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So okay, so now that we have defined what we're what
we're classifying as digital adshere, let's move on to budget,
right?
What's a like a good, at leasta starting budget, um, for a
small law firm in terms ofdigital ads?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah, Um, great question, and and I actually,
before I answer that, I want todive a little further into the
question you just asked rightAbout how exactly do we define
digital ads.
Because the interesting thingis, yes, you know everything we
do from like an ad standpoint,you know could fall under that
(17:04):
category of digital ads, butthere's different strategies
that you can use in thatuniverse, and it directly speaks
to budget, among other things.
So let's go there for a second.
So one of the most effectiveways that a law firm can use
paid ads is actually targetingthem at the people that are
(17:29):
already on their list or thatare already in their universe in
some way, for example, pastclients, past leads, who didn't
end up becoming clients,referral sources, like all of
those people on your email list.
Those are people that alreadyhave at least some level of
familiarity with your law firm.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Talk about the stages of awareness.
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, so there's some level of familiarity.
Well, you can create adcampaigns targeting those people
.
So this is not about going andfinding entirely new potential
clients.
This is targeting your currentclients, your past clients, your
referral sources, yourcolleagues, right, people who
already have a level offamiliarity with you, and you do
(18:13):
that.
I won't get technical here, butit's basically a campaign where
you take your email list, youtake your contact list, you load
it into the Facebook ad manager, the LinkedIn ad manager and
you build an ad campaign that'stargeting the people that are
already on your list.
And the awesome thing about thatand, in my opinion, literally
(18:34):
every law firm should be doingthis it is an absolute
no-brainer.
By the way, this is somethingwe can do for you.
If you're listening to thispodcast and you're like I need
help doing that, hey, guess what?
We can help you do that.
But whether we do it for you oryou do it for yourself, it is
an absolute no-brainer becausefor just a couple hundred
dollars a month literally likethree, four, maybe $500 a month
(18:56):
if you have a huge list, you canabsolutely saturate that list.
You can show ads to thosepeople just about every single
time they're logging intoFacebook or Instagram or
LinkedIn or whatever platformswe choose, and that's just super
powerful because, again, theseare people who already know you.
They're already getting youremail marketing.
They're already, if you're aspotlight client, they're
getting your email newsletter.
(19:17):
But also, then, every time theyhop onto Facebook or Instagram,
they're seeing your stuff.
We call it cross-channelmarketing and it means they're
seeing you.
You we call it cross-channelmarketing and it means they're
seeing you in their email inbox,they're seeing you on Instagram
, they're seeing you on Facebook.
They start saying things likewow, these guys are everywhere
and assuming that the contentthat you're creating or that
we're creating for you isquality content, it's really,
(19:40):
really, really, really powerful.
So, that type of advertising,very small budget.
But then when you decide, okay,now I want to scale and grow
beyond that and then, whetheryou're using Google or LinkedIn
or Facebook ads to do that which, by the way, there are pros and
cons to each and you shouldschedule a discovery call with
(20:00):
us if you want to talk aboutwhich one makes the most sense
for your firm.
But when you are ready to dothat, yeah, you're going to want
to spend more right, dependingon your goals, depending on the
size of your list, depending on.
You know the size of yourmarket.
You know anywhere from.
You know, I don't know $1,200,$1,500 a month, like.
(20:20):
If you're not willing to investat least that much, I probably
wouldn't launch that type of adcampaign until you're
comfortable.
You know investing at leastthat much.
But we have clients that arespending, you know, over $10,000
a month on ads as well.
So the idea is you start kindof going for proof of concept,
you start getting results, youstart increasing your spend.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yeah, you know, I was going to actually ask you what
you recommended for a small lawfirm where to start in terms of
their ads, but it seems likeit's very strategic based.
It's very much goal based andand, hey, maybe you should start
with, you know, meta ads.
Maybe you should start withGoogle ads.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah, Well you should start by doing is getting clear
on what your actual goals are.
I have had conversations withhundreds of law firms over the
years and there are law firmsthat are like, hey, our goal
this year is, honestly, we justwant to go 5%, we're happy with
our revenue, we're focusing onimproving our internal systems,
(21:26):
we're moving offices, we havesome big priority this year and
so adding a whole ton of newclients is in our top goal and
it's like, okay, a marketingplan for a firm that is looking
to grow 5% is very different.
You know, I just had aconversation yesterday with a
law firm that's looking to grow50%.
All right, like that is a verydifferent conversation, for sure
, and you know, now I thinkabout it.
(21:50):
I had a conversation earlierthis week with somebody that
wants to double this year.
So 100% growth again, verydifferent goals.
And so that's actually thefirst thing is to make sure
you're clear on what those goalsare and, by the way, it can be,
it's not like a percentagegrowth goal or a revenue target
is a great place to start, butyou also can have some
conversation about well, wheredo we want that growth to come
from?
Are we looking to launch a newpractice area?
(22:12):
Do we want all of our growth tocome from that new practice
area?
I also had a conversation with alaw firm last week that did
have, like, I want to say, theywanted to grow like 15%, 20
percent, so, you know,reasonably like reasonably
ambitious growth, but they werereally determined to do it only
by deepening relationships withtheir current clients.
(22:32):
This is a law firm that hasmultiple practice areas and they
recognize that they have a lotof opportunity to like, do more
for their current base ofclients.
So, even though they're lookingto grow um, you know, somewhat
ambitiously, um, they're alsoeven though they're looking to
grow, you know, somewhatambitiously they're also clear
that they're actually notlooking for brand new clients.
Instead, they want to market totheir current clients and just
(22:54):
help them understand thedifferent ways in which they can
serve them right.
So all of these questions haveto be answered before you really
dive into, like, thenitty-gritty of where should I
start?
Facebook, instagram, whatshould my budget be?
And, in all honesty and this iswhy I'm really glad we're
talking about this many agencies, many marketing managers, many
(23:20):
people just jump straight to thetools and this is what the
campaign should be withouthaving these strategic
conversations up front.
Well, you know that's likegetting into an airplane and
taking off that, but literallyyou haven't yet even decided
where you're trying to go.
Right, it doesn't.
It doesn't make any sense.
Again another shameless plugI'll throw out here.
This is why the first thingthat we do when we have a
(23:42):
conversation with a potentialnew client is it's all about
getting to know them and theirgoals.
Like where do you want to go?
Where do you want to take thisairplane?
Mr Law Firm, once you tell uswhere you want to take this
airplane, then we can help youcreate a flight plan.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, we had a webinar a couple of weeks ago
that you were hosting, or lastweek that you were hosting, and
one of the things that you saidand it makes so much sense to
what you're saying right now isthat the hammer is a great tool,
but if you need to, if you needto put a screw in the wall, you
wouldn't use a hammer.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Right like it's all about the what are you trying to
build this?
Yeah, what you're trying tobuild.
Maybe you don't need nails andscrews.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
I mean yeah, and our long-time listeners will.
They'll hopefully.
At this point, they see therecurring theme that, hey, you
need to set your goals first,you need to know where you're
going before you try to getthere.
We said that, amongst allthings and it still rings true
here for digital ads.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah, 100%.
Hammer is a great tool when youhave a nail and it's useless if
you've got a screw.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah, absolutely Absolutely.
So we touched on it a littleearlier and I kind of want to,
you know, really show theaudience the power of the
content side and how contentworks well to you know.
We've said multiple times thatcontent makes all of your
marketing work better, right?
(25:00):
So how does content veryspecific specifically, how does
content make digital ads workbetter?
What are some examples?
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yeah.
So I kind of think it starts bysaying well, like, what is
ultimately the purpose ofcontent marketing?
Like, why are you creatingcontent marketing?
And you know my answer of thatis because you know we live in a
day and age where it's not goodenough just to tell a potential
client that you know whatyou're doing.
You really need to show themthat you know what you're doing,
and you do that by creatingcontent.
(25:29):
You do that by writing blogs,articles, white papers, podcasts
.
You know youtube videos, right,you, you, you create content to
kind of number one, just showpeople, potential clients, that
you know what you're doing.
And number two, as a way toconnect with them and help them
understand, um, how you can helpthem, uh, demonstrate some
(25:51):
empathy, show them that, like,you get it right, and so content
does that stuff, and andcontent done right, um does that
.
And so if you're running an adcampaign, for example, let's say
you're running a google adcampaign and and on a google ad,
you know you got limited realestate to work with.
(26:12):
You don't typically have animage associated with a google
ad.
There's not like you, just youjust have like 200 characters or
something like that, so youdon't necessarily have the
ability to, like you know, sayeverything you want to say in a
Google ad, and so cool, you'rerunning a Google ad and
hopefully you're getting somephone calls directly from that.
But what is also oftenhappening is those people will
see your ad.
They might be like this lawfirm looks interesting.
(26:33):
Let me research them a littlebit before I actually call them.
And so what do they do?
Probably they can go to yourwebsite, in which case I hope
you've got some video and someblogs and some really good
content that is effective.
Or maybe they're going to lookyou up on social media Same
thing.
Hopefully you've got somecontent there, right.
And so your content is going tomake your ad campaign work
(26:55):
better because it's going toreinforce, like that, this
person.
They're not just running an ad,they actually know what the
heck they're talking about,right?
But there's a part two of thistoo, which is ads also make your
content work much, much better.
If you were posting social mediacontent organically on Facebook
, as an example, on average,only about 5% of your page
(27:19):
followers are actually going tosee your content, which is crazy
10 years ago, maybe more like15 years ago, in the heyday of
Facebook marketing at this point.
The goal is just to get peopleto like your page, because if
they liked your page, they wereautomatically going to see the
majority of the content that youposted.
But Facebook know Facebook is abusiness and they're trying to
(27:39):
make money, and so that's nothow it works anymore.
If you really want to reach alarge you know an audience more
than just 5% of whoever happensto follow your Facebook page you
really need to put some adspend behind it Boosting posts,
retargeting with content, and soa small ad spend this is kind
(28:00):
of the strategy we talked abouta little bit ago like literally
a couple hundred dollars a month.
Like you can 10x or 20x orprobably 50x the exposure and
the reach you're getting withyour content, and it's like man,
you're putting effort intocreating this content.
You're doing it yourself, oryour team is doing it, or you're
paying somebody to do it.
Why wouldn't you also put avery small, almost insignificant
(28:26):
, ad spend behind it in order toreach a whole heck of a lot
more people?
To me, again, it's just ano-brainer If you're creating
content, you should have an adbudget to make sure that you're
getting the most out of thatcontent.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, no, I mean, I think, I think that you you hit
it on the on the head there,especially since, you know, I've
been in the social media worldmyself for, you know, 10, 10 ish
years now and and yeah, it's,it's.
It's so much more powerful when, when you're able to actually
connect with the people thatwant to connect with you.
You know they've already madethey've already made that effort
(28:59):
or effort, I say, but thataction to uh, you know, uh
follow your journey, basically,like don't just leave them aside
.
You know like we talk aboutnurturing all the time.
You know like focus on, have,have a level of focus on the
ones that are already, um, knowwho you are or have an idea of
who you are, and really kind ofnail them on the head.
(29:23):
Because, at the end of the day,you know, if you bring them
into your system and they don'ttake an action right away, it
doesn't mean that they don'tneed what you have.
They might just be not at thatlevel where they trust you just
yet, or maybe they don't exactlyneed what you have just yet,
but they will down the line.
(29:44):
So it's almost like wasting,you know, your audience in a
sense to not, you know try toget out in front of them.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Yeah, and that's why we talk about strategically.
There are stages of how youshould think about this, and the
first thing that every law firmshould be doing is nurturing
those relationships that youjust talked about, the people
that have already done businesswith you, the people that you
met, networking, and the way youdo that is with an email
(30:13):
newsletter and is with socialmedia content.
That is is with an emailnewsletter and is with social
media content.
Uh, and then when yousupercharge that by adding some
you know, some paid ads to makesure that those people are not
just getting your newsletteronce a month but they're
actually seeing your contentevery time they log into
facebook or instagram, like now,you can feel really good that
you are reaching those peoplelike meaningfully.
(30:33):
Yeah, and many law firms can hittheir growth goals just by
doing a good job of that,because you are going to get
more referrals, you're going toget more repeat business
opportunities, right.
That that is sort of stage one.
And then stage two is whenyou're ready to go beyond that
um, and you're ready to tocreate ad campaigns that take
(30:54):
you beyond that circle.
That already know, like andtrust you, but 100%, you know if
somebody comes to me with nomarketing in place, I'm going to
say listen, let's start by,let's nurture and let's create
real relationships with thepeople that already know, like
and trust you, because there's alot of business to be had there
through repeat engagements,through referrals, a lot of
(31:16):
business to be had there.
So, like, don't skip that step.
It comes back to what we saidat the beginning the like, you
know everybody looking for amagic bullet and it's like oh
yeah, I just want to run someads and you know, let's spend
$10,000 a month and let's justblast my stuff everywhere.
It's like no, let's build thisthing strategically.
Let's start with the peoplethat already know I can trust
you, let's get some return fromthat.
(31:37):
Let's prove that this stuffworks and then let's scale from
there.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
So Eddie's biggest takeaway from this episode is
going to be that you can go onmany, many dates, but if you
don't nurture thoserelationships, it does not
become fruitful.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
That's what I've been missing.
I need a magic bullet.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah, that's what I've been missing.
I need a magic bullet, yeah.
So, uh, I mean, I know thatwe're going to have future
episodes where we dive deeperinto very specifics about, about
digital ads.
I think this was a greatepisode to really kind of, uh,
give a general you know senseabout, hey, why you, you should
have or consider digital ads tobegin with your law firm and
(32:16):
Danny, any other final wordsabout the general idea of
digital ads or do you think thatwe covered pretty much
everything?
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Yeah, no, I think this was a really good
conversation.
I definitely am excited aboutsome future episodes, right.
We can go a little deeper intalking about the specifics of
how to use Facebook ads, how touse LinkedIn ads, when to use
social ads versus Google ads.
There's a lot of conversationto be had there, for sure, and
it'll be fun, yeah.
(32:44):
But for anybody who's listeningto this and is like, yeah, I
think this is resonating, Ithink I need some help growing,
definitely, myself and my teamwould be glad to have a
conversation with you.
So hit us upspotlightbrandingcom, let's
schedule a discovery call.
Like I said at the beginning,here's what you should expect
from that call.
(33:04):
We're not just going to launchinto a sales pitch.
We're going to spend a goodamount of time getting to know
you, getting to know your growthgoals, getting to know what
your ideal clients look like.
And only after we've had thatconversation and really
understand you and your law firmand where you want to go, only
then are we going to tell youabout how our tools can help you
get there.
If our tools can help you getthere, because I'll be the first
(33:26):
one to tell you, we're not.
You know, not every single lawfirm, not every single small
business needs exactly what wedo.
And when we have a conversationand it turns out that, for
whatever reason like this isn'twhat you need right now, or
maybe it's it's what you need in12 months, but it's not what
you need today.
We'll tell you that too.
So for anybody listening tothis, love to have a
conversation and kind of talkyou through how this all works.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Cool, Love it and I'll put in the description of
the podcast a easily click on toget to that page.
Danny, I appreciate you beingon the episode.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, man, yeah, it was fun guys, thanks, always
Alright everyone listening.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Thank you for listening.
If you could leave a review,please do.
It helps grow the podcast.
And have a great weekend.
We will see you next week.
Bye-bye.
Many law firms can hit their growth goals just by
doing a good job of that,because you are going to get
more referrals, you're going toget more repeat business
opportunities, right?
That that is sort of stage one,and then stage two is when
you're ready to go beyond thatWelcome to the law firm
marketing minute, the go-topodcast for solo and small law
(00:23):
firms who want to level up.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I'm your host, smike, and I'm excited for you to join
me this episode.
All right, without further ado,let's dive in.
Hello everyone, welcome back tothe Law Firm Marketing Minute.
As always, I'm your host, smike, and I have Eddie.
I brought him back for anotherepisode.
Two for two, baby yeah.
And this week we have a greatguest, danny Decker.
(00:48):
Many of you may recognize Dannyfrom Spotlight back in the day.
He has returned.
He is the what is it the?
Prodigal son.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I don't know.
I thought you were going to dothe Return of the King reference
.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I mean, you really let me down here on the you know
I've done a lot of lord of therings references too much, some
might say this in this podcastso I think I just had to give it
a little bit of a break, but uh, danny, welcome to the the
podcast yeah, hey, it's, it's,uh, it's gonna be here, mike, uh
, once you uh give the audience,uh, the ones that don't know
you, um, a little bit of aintroduction, um, also for the
(01:22):
ones who do know you but maybeweren't sure where you went.
You know, just kind of fillthem in on what's been going on
the past few years with you.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure thing.
So, yeah, this is kind of a funfull circle moment, right, and
I'll kind of keep it briefbecause I know we want to get to
the action right.
That's why people listen tothis stuff.
But, yeah, so I co-foundedSpotlight with Mark back in I
think it was probably 2011.
We built it together for sevenyears, had a great time doing it
.
I kind of felt the need, as alot of entrepreneurs do from
(01:54):
time to time, to scratch someother itches and do some other
things.
So I sold my ownership to Markin 2018 and spent the next six
years or so really deep divinginto more of the marketing
strategy side of things.
So I wrote a couple of books,did a lot of coaching,
consulting workshops, reallyworking with law firm owners and
other small businesses as wellKind of teaching them marketing
(02:15):
strategy more from a strategicstandpoint and less of an
execution standpoint.
As an agency, we help law firmowners and small business owners
execute Absolutely, and Iwanted to spend some time on the
strategy and so I did that forseveral years.
And then, what's funny isaround 2022 or so you know more
and more of my consultingclients and the folks that I was
(02:37):
helping with strategy reallyneeded execution help, and I
frankly got tired of ofreferring that work out and so I
decided to launch an agency toto help with the execution right
so it's like great, we got thestrategy figured out, but we
still need execution.
So I launched an agency in 2022.
Meanwhile, mark and I havestayed really close friends.
(03:00):
My agency grew really fast.
Spotlight has continued to kindof do their thing and do great
work, and as we really got totalking about our services and
sort of the lead gen and theFacebook ads and the landing
pages and email marketing thatmy agency specialized in, along
with the content marketing thatSpotlight has always been so
(03:21):
good at, we just felt there wasa ton of natural synergy.
And so towards the end of lastyear, we really got serious
about these conversations and Ithink it was early February.
We made this merger official.
So we're now SpotlightMarketing and Branding and we
now offer kind of a completemarketing solution the content
that Spotlight's always been sogood at, combined with paid
(03:41):
advertising, retargeting, allthat stuff that my team is
really good at.
And that brings us to today.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Let's start there because,since this podcast episode will
be mainly focused on the digitalads aspect of it right, I mean,
we have countless episodesabout content and we will
continue to in the future, but Ithink this is a really great
opportunity to start off thedigital ads in the Law Firm
(04:08):
Marketing Minute space.
So let's start there, first andforemost.
With anything comes some kindof misconception right,
especially from people whoaren't necessarily totally
immersed in a certain world.
Right, for example, a law firmowner isn't, for the most part,
isn't totally immersed within acertain world.
Right, for example, a law firmowner isn't, for the most part,
isn't totally immersed within amarketing world, so there's some
(04:30):
misconceptions that they canhave regarding that.
What are some of the biggestmisconceptions that you believe
law firm owners might have aboutdigital ads over the years?
What have you seen?
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, great question ads Over the years.
What have you seen?
Yeah, great question and reallya very true premise, right,
obviously true to us in themarketing world.
But you know, it is very naturalwhen you are immersed in one
thing, when you're immersed inrunning a law firm, to have
misconceptions about the way taxstrategy works or the way
accounting works or the waysales should work, or the way
(05:04):
marketing works, and so likehundred percent, true, um, you
know, the biggest misconception,I would say and this isn't just
limited to digital ads,although I will talk about it as
it relates to digital ads thatmost law firm owners and really
most small business owners havewhen it comes to marketing, is
they're always looking for amagic bullet right.
(05:26):
Like this one thing, that if Ijust start doing it like all of
my marketing and sales problemsare going to be solved.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Everyone I've talked to says this.
Everyone who owns a businesstells me this.
I mean, so I, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Tells you that they're looking for that magic
bullet, or they said theirclients are looking for it from
them.
I mean, either they're lookingfor it or they're getting
clients saying yeah, I meanespecially financial advisors,
and the reality is in life ingeneral, there's very few of
those magic bullets.
And if you think about it foryou as a law firm owner, as
you're listening to this podcast, you probably have a version of
(05:58):
this conversation with yourclients too, right?
They think they're gonna justgo hire you, make one payment to
you and you're going to fixeverything, and then they are
frustrated when it turns into.
Well, no, it's a little morecomplicated than that.
It's maybe going to cost alittle bit more than that first
payment they made.
Right?
Like, whether you're in familylaw or state planning or
(06:18):
immigration or criminal like,you're not, generally speaking,
a silver bullet for your clientseither, and so you know what
that turns into in the marketingworld is you have to be
comfortable with trial and error, like you have to be.
Marketing is an inexact science.
I always tell people it's apart art and it's part science,
right, and we're dealing withhuman beings who are inherently
(06:43):
irrational.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
And so you don't say, of course it's going to take
some trial and error to figureout how to get those people to
take action.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
And when you figure something out and it works for a
while, it's not going to workforever, and so even if your
marketing system right now iskilling it, it's not going to.
You can't just leave it alonefor 10 years.
You probably can't leave italone for 10 months.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Let alone 10 years right.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
And so part of building a marketing system that
really works is you've got toconstantly be testing, and even
when you have things that areworking, you need to be testing
new channels, new campaigns.
You need to continually findnew things that work so that
when the old thing stops working, you're not screwed.
Yeah, so now to kind of reallyanswer the question that you
originally asked with digitalads, you know, I think, that the
(07:32):
biggest misconception is thatfrom day one, as soon as you
turn an ad campaign on, you'reimmediately going to get exactly
the right phone calls fromexactly the right potential
clients and 100% of them aregoing to hire you.
Right phone calls from exactlythe right potential clients and
100% of them are going to hireyou.
And that's just not accurate.
I will tell you, from time totime we launch an ad campaign
(07:55):
and on day one it starts workingand it doesn't need much
modification.
But that's not the norm, andany marketing company that tries
to tell you that is the norm isfull of crap.
Um, it takes testing, it takesrefining.
There are so many elements to adigital ad campaign.
What is your messaging?
What are your headlines?
What is your landing page looklike?
(08:15):
What is your call to action,like all of that stuff needs to
be tested and refined.
Um and, once you do that andyou start getting phone calls,
then sometimes you realize, okay, the people who are calling me
aren't quite the right fit orhave this expectation when they
should really have thisexpectation, and so you got to
(08:37):
make some changes and so, yeah,biggest single misconception is
that it's just going to workfrom day one and there's no need
for testing and iteration.
The reality is there's alwaysneed for testing and iteration.
The beautiful thing aboutdigital ads is they give you the
ability to scale really fast.
So I know you guys talk a lotabout referrals and how great of
(08:58):
a way to grow your businessthat is, and I fully agree, and
maybe we can talk in a fewminutes about how digital ads
help you do that for sure.
The truth is, generallyspeaking, if I get to just
choose one lead that I'm goingto get today and I can choose if
it's going to come from areferral or come from a digital
ad, guess what?
I'm going to choose thereferral absolutely because,
generally speaking, referralsclose at a higher rate.
They come in, they'repreconditioned to trust you,
(09:20):
they're not necessarily shoppingaround.
So what I usually see isreferrals close at like 60 to
70% for a lot of law firms,versus digital ad clients maybe
close more like 25 to 30%.
The beauty, though?
So if you're listening to thisand you're like, well, then, why
wouldn't I just always rely onreferrals?
Well, you should start withreferrals.
But the problem is, eventuallyyou kind of reach that ceiling
(09:40):
of referrals and you're kind ofdependent on other people to
make those referrals.
Digital ads allow you to takeit into your own hands and scale
things up a lot faster.
So, even though there isprobably almost always going to
be a lower conversion rate, youalso have a lot more control
over your volume, and you canscale faster.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
If you own a small law firm, then you must know how
necessary marketing is to thegrowth of your law firm.
Even if you were to just getall of your business, or most of
your business, from word ofmouth or referrals, that's still
a form of marketing, right.
You're talking to your audiencein some sort of way.
It could be indirect or direct.
What is not necessary, though,is you having to do everything
(10:21):
yourself.
Even if you have somebody inthe firm who helps you out, you
still have to take carefulconsideration of all those
minute, those fine details thatcould affect the overall
marketing plan, whetherpositively or negatively.
So here's what we want to do wehave a strategy team who wants
to sit down with you.
(10:41):
They want to talk about whereyou are, where you want to be,
what you've done, what you havedone, what you're doing right
now, what you haven't evenconsidered doing, and they want
to flesh out everything right.
We want to talk about all thesolutions that we know have
helped small law firms grow, andwe want to do it very
strategically, very specificallyfor your law firm.
So check the podcastdescription.
(11:03):
There's a link there.
You can pick the date thatworks for you.
Schedule a call with ourstrategy team and we'd be happy
to help.
All right, let's get right backto the episode.
So here's a quick slap in theface from reality.
You mentioned before how, withmarketing, you have to be
willing to fail at things.
In the marketing world, weliterally have the term A-B
(11:24):
testing, right, and that meansthat we're testing something
against the other and we areexpecting the one thing to fail
and the other thing to succeedso that we can see what to
continue with.
That's literally a 50-50, hey,50% of the time you're going to
fail kind of thing.
Like if you're worried aboutfailure.
Marketing is is a very grimworld.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yeah, yeah, you gotta be.
You gotta be willing to testthings, and I would look at it
more.
As you know, if I'm running anAB test, I'm what I'm really
looking for is which one worksbetter, right, like, I'm hoping
that that option A doesn't havea 0% success rate.
Sure, I'm hoping that it has youknow, maybe a, a, a 0% success
rate?
Sure, sure, I'm hoping that ithas, you know, maybe a 12%
success rate, but then option Bhas a 16% success rate, and then
(12:09):
you move all your resourcesinto option B and then you
create option C and you'rehoping to get to a 17% or an 18%
success rate.
But, like your point is exactlyright, you're typically going
to start, you know, whatever youput out there first you're
typically going to start.
Whatever you put out there first, you're only going to improve
from there, and so you have tobe willing to realize hey,
(12:31):
iteration number one of thisisn't going to be the best
version, but guess what, if youdon't ever take that step, well
then you're never going to getto the end result.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Nothing changes.
If nothing changes, exactly, Iknow.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I'm Mr Negativity but to put a positive spin on
testing.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I mean, that's why we keep them around.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
I mean testing is amazing in the sense that it
takes the decision off of you,right?
I mean, whether you want a bluecall to action button, I want a
yellow call to action button.
I mean the testing is going todictate which one of these is
performing better.
I mean it is even to the styleof fonts.
I mean it's.
Oh, the testing is there foryou.
It's a huge tool in a positiveway.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yeah, no, that's a.
That's a great point, eddie,and and um you know, opinions
don't matter when it comes tomarketing, and it is.
It's funny that you say thatbecause, um, you know, there are
so many different elements of a, of an ad campaign that you
want to test.
You mentioned several of themheadlines.
What's the color of the button?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
what's the.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
What font are you using?
Um, and you know we can allhave our opinions in terms of
what looks nicest, but I've justseen too many examples of like
what I would consider to be anugly ad or an ugly landing page.
yeah, that does great, and theand the nicer looking one
doesn't convert as well.
And that's like a great exampleof why it is so important to be
(13:47):
tracking data and be runningdata-oriented campaigns.
And the truth is, mostmarketing agencies, most
marketing people, most businessowners, most law firm owners
like, if they're really beinghonest, they're not A-B testing
every element of their marketingand they are making a lot of
(14:09):
decisions based on what theythink looks nice.
And certainly when it comes todigital ad campaigns landing
pages, ads it's just pretty easyif you have the tools to do
that type of testing.
And you know we talk about A Btesting.
Really it should be A, b, c, dtesting right, because typically
(14:31):
we're actually testing multiple, you know beyond, just two
variants.
But the bottom line is, if thatis not happening, I promise you
you are leaving dollars on thetable.
It's just a reality.
Like you don't know, you can'toptimize without testing.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, so I know we're about like at almost the
halfway point through theepisode, but I think this is a
great part, a great point toactually define what is digital
ads, because I've heard justover the years I've been with
Spotlight, I've heard people inthe legal space refer to say
(15:09):
they put up a social media postand they boost it and they say,
oh, that's digital ads.
Or even, like those digitalbillboards, they consider those
digital ads.
What are we talking about veryspecifically?
And then we can get specificexamples of what digital ads are
.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, I mean, I think I would say, at its simplest,
it's any time you are putting anactual spend behind content,
then it's a digital ad, rightposting.
(15:45):
You know, if you're postingsome updates on your Facebook
page or you're posting a pictureon Instagram organically but
you're not spending any money onit, that's organic content.
As soon as you boost thatcontent and actually spend
dollars to me, now, now it's anad.
Um, you know, on the searchengine side of things, if you
are posting blogs and writingarticles and optimizing your
(16:07):
website for the organic rankings, that's not a paid ad.
But as soon as you start alocal service ad or as soon as
you run a Google pay-per-clickad, now you're in the ad space
and so roughly speaking.
There's organic, which is callit free, and then there's ads,
which which you're paying forSure.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So okay, so now that we have defined what we're what
we're classifying as digital adshere, let's move on to budget,
right?
What's a like a good, at leasta starting budget, um, for a
small law firm in terms ofdigital ads?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah, Um, great question, and and I actually,
before I answer that, I want todive a little further into the
question you just asked rightAbout how exactly do we define
digital ads.
Because the interesting thingis, yes, you know everything we
do from like an ad standpoint,you know could fall under that
(17:04):
category of digital ads, butthere's different strategies
that you can use in thatuniverse, and it directly speaks
to budget, among other things.
So let's go there for a second.
So one of the most effectiveways that a law firm can use
paid ads is actually targetingthem at the people that are
(17:29):
already on their list or thatare already in their universe in
some way, for example, pastclients, past leads, who didn't
end up becoming clients,referral sources, like all of
those people on your email list.
Those are people that alreadyhave at least some level of
familiarity with your law firm.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Talk about the stages of awareness.
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, so there's some level of familiarity.
Well, you can create adcampaigns targeting those people
.
So this is not about going andfinding entirely new potential
clients.
This is targeting your currentclients, your past clients, your
referral sources, yourcolleagues, right, people who
already have a level offamiliarity with you, and you do
(18:13):
that.
I won't get technical here, butit's basically a campaign where
you take your email list, youtake your contact list, you load
it into the Facebook ad manager, the LinkedIn ad manager and
you build an ad campaign that'stargeting the people that are
already on your list.
And the awesome thing about thatand, in my opinion, literally
(18:34):
every law firm should be doingthis it is an absolute
no-brainer.
By the way, this is somethingwe can do for you.
If you're listening to thispodcast and you're like I need
help doing that, hey, guess what?
We can help you do that.
But whether we do it for you oryou do it for yourself, it is
an absolute no-brainer becausefor just a couple hundred
dollars a month literally likethree, four, maybe $500 a month
(18:56):
if you have a huge list, you canabsolutely saturate that list.
You can show ads to thosepeople just about every single
time they're logging intoFacebook or Instagram or
LinkedIn or whatever platformswe choose, and that's just super
powerful because, again, theseare people who already know you.
They're already getting youremail marketing.
They're already, if you're aspotlight client, they're
getting your email newsletter.
(19:17):
But also, then, every time theyhop onto Facebook or Instagram,
they're seeing your stuff.
We call it cross-channelmarketing and it means they're
seeing you.
You we call it cross-channelmarketing and it means they're
seeing you in their email inbox,they're seeing you on Instagram
, they're seeing you on Facebook.
They start saying things likewow, these guys are everywhere
and assuming that the contentthat you're creating or that
we're creating for you isquality content, it's really,
(19:40):
really, really, really powerful.
So, that type of advertising,very small budget.
But then when you decide, okay,now I want to scale and grow
beyond that and then, whetheryou're using Google or LinkedIn
or Facebook ads to do that which, by the way, there are pros and
cons to each and you shouldschedule a discovery call with
(20:00):
us if you want to talk aboutwhich one makes the most sense
for your firm.
But when you are ready to dothat, yeah, you're going to want
to spend more right, dependingon your goals, depending on the
size of your list, depending on.
You know the size of yourmarket.
You know anywhere from.
You know, I don't know $1,200,$1,500 a month, like.
(20:20):
If you're not willing to investat least that much, I probably
wouldn't launch that type of adcampaign until you're
comfortable.
You know investing at leastthat much.
But we have clients that arespending, you know, over $10,000
a month on ads as well.
So the idea is you start kindof going for proof of concept,
you start getting results, youstart increasing your spend.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yeah, you know, I was going to actually ask you what
you recommended for a small lawfirm where to start in terms of
their ads, but it seems likeit's very strategic based.
It's very much goal based andand, hey, maybe you should start
with, you know, meta ads.
Maybe you should start withGoogle ads.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah, Well you should start by doing is getting clear
on what your actual goals are.
I have had conversations withhundreds of law firms over the
years and there are law firmsthat are like, hey, our goal
this year is, honestly, we justwant to go 5%, we're happy with
our revenue, we're focusing onimproving our internal systems,
(21:26):
we're moving offices, we havesome big priority this year and
so adding a whole ton of newclients is in our top goal and
it's like, okay, a marketingplan for a firm that is looking
to grow 5% is very different.
You know, I just had aconversation yesterday with a
law firm that's looking to grow50%.
All right, like that is a verydifferent conversation, for sure
, and you know, now I thinkabout it.
(21:50):
I had a conversation earlierthis week with somebody that
wants to double this year.
So 100% growth again, verydifferent goals.
And so that's actually thefirst thing is to make sure
you're clear on what those goalsare and, by the way, it can be,
it's not like a percentagegrowth goal or a revenue target
is a great place to start, butyou also can have some
conversation about well, wheredo we want that growth to come
from?
Are we looking to launch a newpractice area?
(22:12):
Do we want all of our growth tocome from that new practice
area?
I also had a conversation with alaw firm last week that did
have, like, I want to say, theywanted to grow like 15%, 20
percent, so, you know,reasonably like reasonably
ambitious growth, but they werereally determined to do it only
by deepening relationships withtheir current clients.
(22:32):
This is a law firm that hasmultiple practice areas and they
recognize that they have a lotof opportunity to like, do more
for their current base ofclients.
So, even though they're lookingto grow um, you know, somewhat
ambitiously, um, they're alsoeven though they're looking to
grow, you know, somewhatambitiously they're also clear
that they're actually notlooking for brand new clients.
Instead, they want to market totheir current clients and just
(22:54):
help them understand thedifferent ways in which they can
serve them right.
So all of these questions haveto be answered before you really
dive into, like, thenitty-gritty of where should I
start?
Facebook, instagram, whatshould my budget be?
And, in all honesty and this iswhy I'm really glad we're
talking about this many agencies, many marketing managers, many
(23:20):
people just jump straight to thetools and this is what the
campaign should be withouthaving these strategic
conversations up front.
Well, you know that's likegetting into an airplane and
taking off that, but literallyyou haven't yet even decided
where you're trying to go.
Right, it doesn't.
It doesn't make any sense.
Again another shameless plugI'll throw out here.
This is why the first thingthat we do when we have a
(23:42):
conversation with a potentialnew client is it's all about
getting to know them and theirgoals.
Like where do you want to go?
Where do you want to take thisairplane?
Mr Law Firm, once you tell uswhere you want to take this
airplane, then we can help youcreate a flight plan.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, we had a webinar a couple of weeks ago
that you were hosting, or lastweek that you were hosting, and
one of the things that you saidand it makes so much sense to
what you're saying right now isthat the hammer is a great tool,
but if you need to, if you needto put a screw in the wall, you
wouldn't use a hammer.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Right like it's all about the what are you trying to
build this?
Yeah, what you're trying tobuild.
Maybe you don't need nails andscrews.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
I mean yeah, and our long-time listeners will.
They'll hopefully.
At this point, they see therecurring theme that, hey, you
need to set your goals first,you need to know where you're
going before you try to getthere.
We said that, amongst allthings and it still rings true
here for digital ads.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah, 100%.
Hammer is a great tool when youhave a nail and it's useless if
you've got a screw.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah, absolutely Absolutely.
So we touched on it a littleearlier and I kind of want to,
you know, really show theaudience the power of the
content side and how contentworks well to you know.
We've said multiple times thatcontent makes all of your
marketing work better, right?
(25:00):
So how does content veryspecific specifically, how does
content make digital ads workbetter?
What are some examples?
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yeah.
So I kind of think it starts bysaying well, like, what is
ultimately the purpose ofcontent marketing?
Like, why are you creatingcontent marketing?
And you know my answer of thatis because you know we live in a
day and age where it's not goodenough just to tell a potential
client that you know whatyou're doing.
You really need to show themthat you know what you're doing,
and you do that by creatingcontent.
(25:29):
You do that by writing blogs,articles, white papers, podcasts
.
You know youtube videos, right,you, you, you create content to
kind of number one, just showpeople, potential clients, that
you know what you're doing.
And number two, as a way toconnect with them and help them
understand, um, how you can helpthem, uh, demonstrate some
(25:51):
empathy, show them that, like,you get it right, and so content
does that stuff, and andcontent done right, um does that
.
And so if you're running an adcampaign, for example, let's say
you're running a google adcampaign and and on a google ad,
you know you got limited realestate to work with.
(26:12):
You don't typically have animage associated with a google
ad.
There's not like you, just youjust have like 200 characters or
something like that, so youdon't necessarily have the
ability to, like you know, sayeverything you want to say in a
Google ad, and so cool, you'rerunning a Google ad and
hopefully you're getting somephone calls directly from that.
But what is also oftenhappening is those people will
see your ad.
They might be like this lawfirm looks interesting.
(26:33):
Let me research them a littlebit before I actually call them.
And so what do they do?
Probably they can go to yourwebsite, in which case I hope
you've got some video and someblogs and some really good
content that is effective.
Or maybe they're going to lookyou up on social media Same
thing.
Hopefully you've got somecontent there, right.
And so your content is going tomake your ad campaign work
(26:55):
better because it's going toreinforce, like that, this
person.
They're not just running an ad,they actually know what the
heck they're talking about,right?
But there's a part two of thistoo, which is ads also make your
content work much, much better.
If you were posting social mediacontent organically on Facebook
, as an example, on average,only about 5% of your page
(27:19):
followers are actually going tosee your content, which is crazy
10 years ago, maybe more like15 years ago, in the heyday of
Facebook marketing at this point.
The goal is just to get peopleto like your page, because if
they liked your page, they wereautomatically going to see the
majority of the content that youposted.
But Facebook know Facebook is abusiness and they're trying to
(27:39):
make money, and so that's nothow it works anymore.
If you really want to reach alarge you know an audience more
than just 5% of whoever happensto follow your Facebook page you
really need to put some adspend behind it Boosting posts,
retargeting with content, and soa small ad spend this is kind
(28:00):
of the strategy we talked abouta little bit ago like literally
a couple hundred dollars a month.
Like you can 10x or 20x orprobably 50x the exposure and
the reach you're getting withyour content, and it's like man,
you're putting effort intocreating this content.
You're doing it yourself, oryour team is doing it, or you're
paying somebody to do it.
Why wouldn't you also put avery small, almost insignificant
(28:26):
, ad spend behind it in order toreach a whole heck of a lot
more people?
To me, again, it's just ano-brainer If you're creating
content, you should have an adbudget to make sure that you're
getting the most out of thatcontent.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, no, I mean, I think, I think that you you hit
it on the on the head there,especially since, you know, I've
been in the social media worldmyself for, you know, 10, 10 ish
years now and and yeah, it's,it's.
It's so much more powerful when, when you're able to actually
connect with the people thatwant to connect with you.
You know they've already madethey've already made that effort
(28:59):
or effort, I say, but thataction to uh, you know, uh
follow your journey, basically,like don't just leave them aside
.
You know like we talk aboutnurturing all the time.
You know like focus on, have,have a level of focus on the
ones that are already, um, knowwho you are or have an idea of
who you are, and really kind ofnail them on the head.
(29:23):
Because, at the end of the day,you know, if you bring them
into your system and they don'ttake an action right away, it
doesn't mean that they don'tneed what you have.
They might just be not at thatlevel where they trust you just
yet, or maybe they don't exactlyneed what you have just yet,
but they will down the line.
(29:44):
So it's almost like wasting,you know, your audience in a
sense to not, you know try toget out in front of them.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Yeah, and that's why we talk about strategically.
There are stages of how youshould think about this, and the
first thing that every law firmshould be doing is nurturing
those relationships that youjust talked about, the people
that have already done businesswith you, the people that you
met, networking, and the way youdo that is with an email
(30:13):
newsletter and is with socialmedia content.
That is is with an emailnewsletter and is with social
media content.
Uh, and then when yousupercharge that by adding some
you know, some paid ads to makesure that those people are not
just getting your newsletteronce a month but they're
actually seeing your contentevery time they log into
facebook or instagram, like now,you can feel really good that
you are reaching those peoplelike meaningfully.
(30:33):
Yeah, and many law firms can hittheir growth goals just by
doing a good job of that,because you are going to get
more referrals, you're going toget more repeat business
opportunities, right.
That that is sort of stage one.
And then stage two is whenyou're ready to go beyond that
um, and you're ready to tocreate ad campaigns that take
(30:54):
you beyond that circle.
That already know, like andtrust you, but 100%, you know if
somebody comes to me with nomarketing in place, I'm going to
say listen, let's start by,let's nurture and let's create
real relationships with thepeople that already know, like
and trust you, because there's alot of business to be had there
through repeat engagements,through referrals, a lot of
(31:16):
business to be had there.
So, like, don't skip that step.
It comes back to what we saidat the beginning the like, you
know everybody looking for amagic bullet and it's like oh
yeah, I just want to run someads and you know, let's spend
$10,000 a month and let's justblast my stuff everywhere.
It's like no, let's build thisthing strategically.
Let's start with the peoplethat already know I can trust
you, let's get some return fromthat.
(31:37):
Let's prove that this stuffworks and then let's scale from
there.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
So Eddie's biggest takeaway from this episode is
going to be that you can go onmany, many dates, but if you
don't nurture thoserelationships, it does not
become fruitful.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
That's what I've been missing.
I need a magic bullet.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah, that's what I've been missing.
I need a magic bullet, yeah.
So, uh, I mean, I know thatwe're going to have future
episodes where we dive deeperinto very specifics about, about
digital ads.
I think this was a greatepisode to really kind of, uh,
give a general you know senseabout, hey, why you, you should
have or consider digital ads tobegin with your law firm and
(32:16):
Danny, any other final wordsabout the general idea of
digital ads or do you think thatwe covered pretty much
everything?
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Yeah, no, I think this was a really good
conversation.
I definitely am excited aboutsome future episodes, right.
We can go a little deeper intalking about the specifics of
how to use Facebook ads, how touse LinkedIn ads, when to use
social ads versus Google ads.
There's a lot of conversationto be had there, for sure, and
it'll be fun, yeah.
(32:44):
But for anybody who's listeningto this and is like, yeah, I
think this is resonating, Ithink I need some help growing,
definitely, myself and my teamwould be glad to have a
conversation with you.
So hit us upspotlightbrandingcom, let's
schedule a discovery call.
Like I said at the beginning,here's what you should expect
from that call.
(33:04):
We're not just going to launchinto a sales pitch.
We're going to spend a goodamount of time getting to know
you, getting to know your growthgoals, getting to know what
your ideal clients look like.
And only after we've had thatconversation and really
understand you and your law firmand where you want to go, only
then are we going to tell youabout how our tools can help you
get there.
If our tools can help you getthere, because I'll be the first
(33:26):
one to tell you, we're not.
You know, not every single lawfirm, not every single small
business needs exactly what wedo.
And when we have a conversationand it turns out that, for
whatever reason like this isn'twhat you need right now, or
maybe it's it's what you need in12 months, but it's not what
you need today.
We'll tell you that too.
So for anybody listening tothis, love to have a
conversation and kind of talkyou through how this all works.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Cool, Love it and I'll put in the description of
the podcast a easily click on toget to that page.
Danny, I appreciate you beingon the episode.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, man, yeah, it was fun guys, thanks, always
Alright everyone listening.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Thank you for listening.
If you could leave a review,please do.
It helps grow the podcast.
And have a great weekend.
We will see you next week.
Bye-bye.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
True Crime Tonight
If you eat, sleep, and breathe true crime, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT is serving up your nightly fix. Five nights a week, KT STUDIOS & iHEART RADIO invite listeners to pull up a seat for an unfiltered look at the biggest cases making headlines, celebrity scandals, and the trials everyone is watching. With a mix of expert analysis, hot takes, and listener call-ins, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT goes beyond the headlines to uncover the twists, turns, and unanswered questions that keep us all obsessed—because, at TRUE CRIME TONIGHT, there’s a seat for everyone. Whether breaking down crime scene forensics, scrutinizing serial killers, or debating the most binge-worthy true crime docs, True Crime Tonight is the fresh, fast-paced, and slightly addictive home for true crime lovers.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com