September 16, 2024 • 39 mins
Ron Latz is the Founder of LegalFenix.
During his 14-year career in legal marketing, Ron has worked for the country's biggest legal marketing agency, helped rebuild a boutique legal marketing agency, sold marketing to law firms, and invested in marketing on behalf of law firms.
LegalFenix is a consulting and fractional CMO firm exclusively helping law firms invest in marketing that actually works. The firm is 100% agency-neutral. They don't and won't ever sell SEO or advertising products or services. Their model will strive to restore trust in agency relationships with partners who provide quality services at market-competitive rates.
Connect with Ron on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlatz/
Visit LegalFenix: https://legalfenix.com/
On This Episode, We Discuss…
During his 14-year career in legal marketing, Ron has worked for the country's biggest legal marketing agency, helped rebuild a boutique legal marketing agency, sold marketing to law firms, and invested in marketing on behalf of law firms.
LegalFenix is a consulting and fractional CMO firm exclusively helping law firms invest in marketing that actually works. The firm is 100% agency-neutral. They don't and won't ever sell SEO or advertising products or services. Their model will strive to restore trust in agency relationships with partners who provide quality services at market-competitive rates.
Connect with Ron on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlatz/
Visit LegalFenix: https://legalfenix.com/
On This Episode, We Discuss…
- The Role of a Fractional CMO
- Effective Ways Law Firms Can Generate Leads
- How Law Firms Should Invest in Marketing Strategies
- Why Law Firms Struggle with Tracking Where Their Leads Come From
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So if everyone is looking back at the previous six months,
what goals did we hit, what goals did we miss
and fall short on? And one of the other things
that we need to potentially do in the second half
to get to that revenue number or that location expansion
or adding additional attorneys or maybe move into a new
gl you have to understand what is it that we
are setting out to achieve in order to go and
(00:21):
put the pieces in place to get that outcome.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
You're listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by Market
My Market with your hosts Eric Bersono, Ryan Klein, and
Chase Williams, the go to podcast for learning from the
experts and the legal community about effective ways to grow
and manage your law firm.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast.
Today I have with me Ron Latz was the founder
of Legal Phoenix and Phoenix has spelled with an Femis Flenix. Ron,
Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Eric, Thanks so much, appreciate you inviting me on. It's
going to be a great discussion. And don't worry, I
have the correct spelling lockdown as well. I just have
to set up the redirect so if anyone does hit
the fbnix. You could also spell a phoenix in like
a day or two.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Great, all right, I like that doing the proofing of
your own legal name so no one can make a
mistake there. So you know, before we jump into things,
you know, this is going to be a legal marketing conversation,
which I think is going to be really fun. This
is a necessary function that every law firm has. Can
(01:35):
you give the audience a little bit on your background
and you know where you are now? As is really
a fractional CMO in the space.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Sure, about a dozen years ago or so, maybe even
a little bit more. At this point, I started off
with Thompson Reuters within their legal division, working for Fine Law.
That's how I got into the legal space, and I
was a client development consultant. I was a sales rep
an account executive, and that's where I was selling all
of these marketing and advertising services and products to lawyers.
(02:08):
And then once I had left Fine Law, I went
on to another predominantly sales driven role. But you know,
a year or two even after my departure, I still
had some of my flagship clients come out and reach
out to me and say, hey, Ron you're gone, like,
do I renew, do I buy this product? Should I
try this out? Should I switch agencies or vendors? And
(02:29):
that was probably seven or eight years ago at this point.
So I spun up my LC and I started taking
on just select consulting clients, and then over the next
handful of years or so, I had joined a boutique
legal marketing agency, Mockingbird Marketing, where I was pretty much
responsible for rebuilding their customer success, sales and their digital
strategist function. So I was overseeing, you know, the account
(02:52):
manager role. The digital strategists were the subject matter experts
given their individual expertise and chan specialty, and then handling
you know what was predominantly an inbound sales function as well.
And from that point I had, you know, always had
the other business on the side, working with you know,
(03:13):
firms that were you know, different, different ideal client profiles.
Given what I was doing, and I just got the
itch again, right, I wanted more of that autonomy, more ownership,
and just build my own thing. So I had gone
back out, I rebranded, renamed the entire organization. I publicly
announced that about five or six weeks ago, maybe a
(03:34):
little bit longer at this point, and that's now where
I am offering fully fractional CMO services. But on the
front end, I do a lot of consulting and advisory work.
There's some firms that might not be ready. They just
put up their shingle or if they already have resources
in place, but they want to have someone that's got,
you know, fifteen years of experience underneath their belt to
help them navigate some of the complexities or the vendor landscape.
(03:58):
So they bring me on to kind of help with
those efforts. So that's what I've been doing now for
the past six to nine months.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, and I you and I have a similar path
through I worked for Fine Law as well as in
that same position. And the one thing that I think
has changed for both of us since that initial introduction
too legal marketing is there's just so many more options.
And I don't just mean like more people doing the
same thing, but I mean more places where you can
(04:25):
market your law firm. You know, social media when I started,
wasn't even a thing back then, and now you've got
social media, you've got digital TV and all those other things.
So I think what you do is really necessary now
because if you've you've had experience with a lot of
different companies, and you've had you talked to a lot
of different law firms and different practice areas and different
(04:46):
parts of the country, so you're able to kind of accumulate,
you know, this hive mentality of things that you've seen work,
and maybe even vendors who who you trust more. I'd
like to kind of start at the beginning and if
you could frame things, because I really feel like there's
two different types of law firms out there. There's we'll
(05:07):
just call it, you know, small firm, medium firm. So
the smaller medium are people who do their own marketing
or they are they're going to outsource their marketing. Big firm,
let's just say those are people who have in house
marketing teams, you know. And I think it's really important
thing because on a small firm and we just use
you know, somebody who might be one or two partners,
(05:27):
they have a marketing budget, but every single dime matters
to them. They need to create business right away. They
can't spend you know, tens of thousands of dollars over six,
you know, to eight months with nothing coming in. And
then I would consider, say the medium size, where these
are people who have a lot of referrals coming in,
(05:47):
they're established, they're doing some marketing. You know, some of
it's sufficient, some of it's not working at all, and
they just don't know. So i'd appreciate it if you
would like kind of frame it to both audiences. I
think we get both of those audiences here and your
insights could be very valuable. So I will shut up
now and let you kind of chat about what the
(06:09):
first step is in working with the law firm, whether
it be that smaller medium size is what you're looking
to find out and put in place.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, we can throw out some hypotheticals here. If you're
just let's just say you're a solo attorney, you just
put up your shingle, right, You're probably going to be
handling the majority of those efforts, whether it's speaking to agencies,
figuring out what your strategy is going to be. Maybe
you have a VA that you can offload some of
(06:39):
the administrative tasks and burdens too. But for the most part,
the challenging instance here is that you don't really know
what you don't know. Right, you're taking the vendors and
the marketing agencies word pretty much as gospel. They are
the subject matter experts, so you're going to lean on
their advice and recommendations to help them put you in
(07:01):
a better position to achieve your goals. It depends upon
like how much time you actually have right to go
out and whether it's a traditional type of marketing effort.
You know, normal business development, shaking hands, going to networking events, nurturing,
having networking phone calls, going to conferences, joining mastermind groups,
(07:21):
so you can build up that referral book of business
and leverage the profit and the revenue that you've generated
from there to reinvest into maybe an outsource marketing solution. Right,
that's that's going to be an option. I think if
you're limited by budget, doing those types of grassroots marketing
is where your time is best spent. Having that newsletter,
(07:44):
making sure that you're staying top of mind with your
current and previous clients, ensuring that your service professional network
is constantly like you have to maintain top of mindness
with them unless they're probably going to forget about you, Right,
that's just the nature of the business. If someone's going
to recommend a client, they probably give them two or
three names and if you're one of them, like you
(08:06):
want to make sure that you've got your best foot
forward in order to kind of capture that lead. Moving
into a more sophisticated firm, maybe the medium size, like
the options really do open up. And I think the
firms that I work with that have the most success
really do have a hybrid type of approach. They've got
someone internally that can help kind of keep vendors accountable,
(08:27):
keep the lines of communication open with them, kind of
pester the firm when they need to get approvals on
things like design or website content so that the agency
can do the job that they were hired to do.
In other instances, maybe you've joined a mastermind or you've
got a coach to bring you, you know, a little
bit further along in that life cycle, to bring you
(08:51):
to the next level. Right, you might need to hire
additional attorneys because now through the marketing, right, you've got
bandwidth constraints. You're bringing in all these leads. You got
to be able to continue to service those those prospects
and ensure that you're giving them a good client experience. So,
depending upon where you are, what the bandwidth of those
individual resources continues to be what, you know, what your
(09:13):
budget is, right, There's a lot of different ways that
you can have this hybrid type of approach where you're
working with a consultant, you've got an agency or a
vendor handling some of your marketing, and then even an
internal resource that can keep the ball rolling and ensure
that the lines of communication amongst all parties is always
kept open.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, you mentioned one thing that I think is a
great idea, which is having an internal marketing person. And
I'd love to hear your advice on if someone's looking
to hire someone internally, what skill set do they want
to look for, because, you know, marketing these days, as
I mentioned before, there's so many different avenues. You know,
do you want someone who's a good copywriter? Do you
(09:52):
want someone who has good acumen with Google Analytics? You know,
what would you say as a skill set to be
on the lookout for if you're going to have somebody
internally to deal with the other vendors that you might
be outsourcing.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, if we keep going with this hypothetical scenario on
the smaller side of the house, you're probably going to
need someone that's got more of a generalist type of
skill based because you need them to do a lot
of different things, right. You need them to talk to
your vendors. You might need them to you post on
social media on your behalf, or maybe even make some
you know, quick and dirty website updates like to bio
(10:26):
pages or practice area pages. The trouble that those firms
kind of run into is that they're they're literally adding
every single marketing responsibility to that job requisition. It's like,
you look at it, they're the marketing manager, the coordinator,
the social media manager, and coordinator. You want them to
do SEO posting and maintenance, reach out to do PR.
(10:48):
It's like they're they're they're leading communications. There's just only
so many hours in the day, and you don't want
to set those individuals up to fail. So that's that's
a delicate balance in the beginning when you're going from
gens and now as you continue to expand, maybe you
do need more of a specialist because you've allocated and
invested some dollars towards specific channels, and maybe that is
(11:11):
you need someone that's got more copywriting skills or someone
that has been in the SEO space because you want
to bring that function in halse right. Depending upon your
stage of growth and where you are, those individual resources
are going to have to carry different responsibilities in order
to bring you to that next level.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
So if we could step forward to maybe like paid campaigns,
and when I say paid, that could be SEO, it
could be bad words, it could be social media. What
type of advice do you give law firms? Like I said,
there's the law firm that says, hey, I know I'm
at a place where I need to grow. I've got
a little bit of a budget. What your advice says
(11:52):
to here's my list in order, And the way I
look at it is like you want to use that
budget very selectly in the beginning, because it's got to
have the best chance to bring in new clients, and
then you can start expanding into other areas more, a
little bit more branding, other things that might not be
as consistent as another form. So what type of advice
(12:15):
do you give a law firm when they're getting ready
to spend money on SEO or paid campaigns?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
First of all, I want to understand what the overall
goals and objectives are for the firm at a base
level we've already which I can't believe we've already finished
the first half of the year. So if everyone is
looking back at the previous six months, what goals did
we hit, what goals did we miss and fall short on?
And one are the other things that we need to
potentially do in the second half to get to that
revenue number or that location expansion or adding additional attorneys
(12:46):
or maybe move into a new GM. Right, like, you
have to understand what is it that we are setting
out to achieve in order to go and put the
pieces in place to get that outcome. I think that
there's also a disservice when you're okay, I'm you to
invest some dollars, right, and now you have these conversations
with agencies, One of the first steps that's typically missed
(13:06):
that sets firms up and the agency up for failure
is that you are not defining what success means for
both sides. Right, If the agency believes that they are
responsible for producing X amount of pages of content and
capturing X amount of backlinks and maybe writing exit or
y amount of blogs, if they hit those criteria and
(13:27):
check off all those boxes, they might deem that as
a successful campaign. Whereas if the law firm is looking
more for a financial or revenue based outcome. They're looking
for signups and retainers and case volume benchmarks to increase
or lowering of acquisition costs. Right, you're going to look
at the end of three or six months and there's
going to be a disconnect. Both sides are going to
(13:49):
likely be frustrated or disappointed because one believes are doing
a great job and the other things that they're entirely
missing the mark. So even before you outlay and put
those chips into play, I think you've got to a
You've got to come prepared to that vendor conversation knowing
what your goals and objectives are, and then you have
to be prepared to tell the agency what you believe
(14:11):
and how you define success. Then it is incumbent upon
the agency to manage or reset those expectations because admittedly
some of the law firms expectations are unrealistic. Right, So
we need to make sure that we're having those conversations
at the forefront so that when we're halfway through a
relationship or through the term of an agreement, we're just
(14:34):
not pointing fingers at each side blaming each other, because
then no one is going to be successful. So once
you get past that point again, now we've got to
look at other factors. If you've got x amount of
dollars that you can put into a particular channel, okay,
let's think again about the goal. If we've got short
term goals and we need to start generating revenue in
(14:57):
the short term, almost immediately, we're going to consider more
of the paid ad channels or paid search through Google
Ads or Microsoft being in order to start generating some
of that traction up front. If you've got the investment
dollars and you can make more of a long term
investment and you don't need to get the revenue into
the door today, we can consider a more organic or
(15:21):
SEO type of investment so we can build that foundation
and then start growing out from you know, maybe one
location to another city, or maybe an entire county, and
so on and so forth. So you've got to balance
all of these things when you're having these conversations with
the vendors. So they've got the context, they know the
target they're trying to hit. They can then set the
(15:42):
proper expectations with you, and then a decision can be
made about whether or not a partnership make makes sense
for both parties.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, and the these those are all great points. And
you know, one thing I've seen firsthand is most law firms,
and this is just anecdotal, most law firms don't do
an amazing job of tracking. Meaning they they're busy doing
legal things, you know, the stuff that they want to do,
and they might not necessarily know where these leads are
(16:10):
coming from. How is that something that you have advice
on as far as you know, if you're I always
help people. Look, if you're spending money on something, if
it's working, you need to know it. If it's not working,
you need to know that too. Is are there certain
tools out there or advice or how do you work
with a law firm to make sure that they're tracking
(16:31):
those marketing dollars or just any case that comes in,
whether that be a referral or a lead through a
Google app.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Sure, I'll share them. I just want everybody to know
go on record that no one is paying me to
save these things. So these products are just products that
I also believe in, but then my clients use as well.
So you know, when you're looking at tracking all of
your leads and where that revenue is coming I do
think that it makes sense in order for any firm
that is putting any amount of dollars into their marketing
(17:00):
to have some sort of dynamic call tracking software on
their website. Right, the majority of my clients use call Rail.
You can use call tracking metrics or what converts. There's
other options out there. But what this allows you to
do is at least get a better idea as to
where some of these individuals might be coming from, like
what is capturing the demand. Essentially, many clients will then
(17:24):
try to push that data into a front end lead
intake management software. Right. A lot of them have legal
focus like lawmatics. They'll have Cleo Grow, you might have
lead docket. Some non legal players work with a lot
of firms that also are a leveraging HubSpot because of
its flexibility. But essentially, what they're able to do is
then input some automation so that when individual potential new
(17:47):
clients are calling that tracking phone number, that contact record
is automatically created in the tool or in that system,
so intake can really focus on servicing that client, getting
all the cases criteria and details, and scheduling a console
because at the end of the day, we want to
stop their shopping experience and get them through the door
to speak with someone at our firm. So you know,
(18:10):
there's many different ways that you can do that. You
can then take that lead intake management software and push
that data into your case management software to get full
life cycle visibility into where these people are coming from,
what captured the demand versus what created the demand. But
I think at a basic setup there, if you just
have call tracking in place, right, you can cross reference
(18:32):
that with those clients that have been retained, so you
can know which channels are likely performing the best for
you and then make more database decisions instead of just
relying on your gut.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah, and I always tell a law firm you know
it's you can you can track it in reverse, meaning
if you just look at your signed cases, if you're
doing robust tracking, you can find out where those came from.
It was like, oh that was referral, that was a referral,
Oh that came in for more, I don't recognize it.
You know, that could have been a Google local or
(19:04):
it could have been an organic. And one step beyond
that is as I really say, you want to track
every lead that you wanted or if it at least
had solid legal intent. So someone got into a car accident,
they had minor injuries, they didn't go to the hospital.
It's not a case that you would take, but that
was the exact type of search that you wanted. That's,
(19:24):
in my mind, a success. I know it's not a
million dollar case. You're probably not going to sign them up,
but it was very very close, and knowing when something
like that is working means that you're around the target.
Was it a bulls eye, but it was very very close,
So it becomes really important. I understand that these are
all extra things that you have to dedicate time to
(19:46):
or hire a person to help with, but without understanding
what's working, you have no way to manipulate bigger growth
because you're just kind of shooting in the dark.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
I couldn't agree more. This has to be put into
place before you start putting significant dollars into any of
these channels, because if not, an intake is not a
well oiled machine, or even worse, if the attorneys at
the firm don't have capacity or bandwidth, and then you
go out because you think you have a lead problem
(20:19):
and you want to spend ten twenty thirty thousand dollars
more on Google ads, and then you turn those on
and the agency gets those going. The only thing you're
doing is investing in poor first impressions at scale because
the customer experience that they're going to have because intake
can't handle it or there's not overflow or after hours coverage,
these individuals not only are they going to go and
(20:40):
call the firm's next door, but you might rub some
people the wrong way and inadvertently starts sending people to
leave you those bad reviews. They didn't answer my call,
they didn't return my phone call, No one got back
to me. I left the voicemail. Firms are like, oh,
they'll call me back. No they're not. They're not going
to call you back. They went and they picked up
the phone and they talked to the person and likely
retained the first firm that had a lawyer talk to them. Right, So,
(21:02):
like you see it in like the CLEO trends report
constantly and I'm hoping that they get more updated data
on this. I forget what year, but they've talked about
how how poor response rates were for lawyers and how
many days individuals had to wait before they even got
a callback. Right, Like this is table stakes type of stuff,
and there's such an advantage to those fast movers who
(21:26):
really do move their move their prospects through their funnel quickly.
I mean, that's the speed to lead is going to
win the game there.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yeah, I'm actually amazed even at hyper successful firms. I
mean firms that you know, you tends, if not hundreds
of millions of dollars in you know, verdicts and settlements.
You know, when I call their law office, I either
get put on hold or there's some crazy chain of
events that happens and I've got to push two or
three numbers before I get somewhere. And I understand it,
(21:57):
you know, I understand some of these larger firms. You know,
you can't have a whole bank of humans to answer
every call. But if you think that every one hundredth
call could be your biggest case of the year, or
you know, have an enormous value to it and you're
not treating it that way, you could lose it. So again,
going back to the smaller, medium sized firm, what do
(22:19):
you suggest as far as intake, you know, do you
suggest third party? You know you mentioned before after ours calls,
you know, good calls come at all times to day.
Not if you've got someone who has an injury and
they're calling on behalf of their wife and they have
a nine to five, You're not going to get that
call at two pm. You're probably going to get at
seven pm. So what advice do you have on intake?
(22:40):
So now we're we've already talked about generating leads. Now
you've got to handle those properly.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, I mean if if the financials allow it. I
do think if you can't best cases you have in
house right because that person is completely dedicated to you.
You know that they're not like going to a mispronounce
your name. They know the practice area and the cases
that you're willing to take. There's a lot of opportunity
(23:06):
for training and mentoring and ensuring that they're doing a
good job. Why I'm always a proponent of Paul recording
so you can audit the calls, audit their performance, identify
areas needed for improvement. I know that that is not
possible for every single law firm. So I believe that
the next best is going to be a dedicated VA
(23:26):
where again they're going to be the ones you might
not get them in the middle of the day, but
if you can get them for your after hours and
weekend coverage, that's great. You know, that's another instance where
they don't have fifteen twenty thirty other firms that they're
answering the phone for. They don't have to monitor a
handful of different scripts or remember which practice area or
(23:46):
areas that you serve. Right, having them dedicated to you,
I think is going to put you in a better
position to ensure a smoother customer experience. Now there are
other great like I have a ton of clients that
also use outfits like smith AI. Right, the only I
would even say it's a downside, but you just have
(24:07):
to know when you are working within an outfit like that,
you've got to put the time and effort into training
those individuals multiple times because unfortunately, in those roles, churn
just like at a law firm or just like at
your marketing agency, is inevitable. So if you had a
rock star and then now you've got more of a
(24:28):
B or C player, you've got to put the hours
in to coach them to get them up and running
so that they're not dropping the ball, because that one
of one hundred that could be a massive case, like
you don't want to miss that opportunity. So ultimately, at
the end of the day, if you've got someone in
house er dedicated, that's always my recommendation. If not, there
are other solutions where you can fill the gaps just
(24:49):
to make sure that you're not missing that seven PM call,
which could be a monster.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
When you say a VA, do you mean you know
one of these third party companies that has, you know,
an intake center, or you mean you're you know, a
couple of vas that are outsourced as a one on
one relationship.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah, the latter not necessarily a call center. I mean
those options do exist, again, very similar. It's going to
be more of a round robin approach. You might have
someone that's dedicated, but you could be one of a
dozen or two dozen different firms that they're responsible for
answering the phone for So I think when you have
the VA and again you got to play the time
(25:26):
zone game here to ensure that they are available. But
I do think that there's options out there right now
offshore that allow you to fill those gaps so that
you're not missing that Saturday call in the middle of
the afternoon because you're out with your family. Someone else
is out there stopping the shopping experience, scheduling that consult
while you're not available, so they just don't go back
(25:47):
to Google and find the next firm that answers their ring.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Well, how much emphasis do you put on social media
for a law firm? And I'll talk about both sides
of the coin. You know, there's social media, which is
like your personal branding that you update and you know,
here's our party and here's a great review we got,
and then social media advertising we're actually paying to advertise
on it. How much emphasis do you put at this
(26:13):
point on a law firm embracing that.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Well, I'm a huge proponent of the personal branding side
of the house, just because that's literally what I do
to create demand, you know, for my services. I try
to post almost daily on LinkedIn. And when I look
at the success of that, or how I define success
of that, I don't look at it as a lead
gen type of program. I do it to continue to
(26:37):
develop my like my own thoughts and share ideas and
test them with the market, develop thought leadership, show my
expertise in this area of subject matter, nurture relationships, learn
new things, rekindle relationships, you know, just like us or
with other organizations where I might get speaking opportunities to
(26:58):
go on a podcast, but I'm not there waiting for
the DM every single day to say, hey, I want
to work with you. Does it happen as a byproduct
of those efforts on occasion, but like that's not what
I'm relying on every single month to continue to drive
to drive revenue. I do think that social advertising does
have its place, depending upon the practice area. There's a
(27:20):
couple of different approaches that I would take. I'm a
big proponent of leveraging paid distribution to put like a
very high value asset in front of the right individuals. So,
for example, like with an employment law, that's a very
heavy researched prospect, right they they're not really sure if
it was discrimination. They don't know if it's if they
(27:42):
have a case right there. So like putting like the
top ten things that you should consider if you believe
that you are a victim of any sort of discrimination,
and then targeting you know, on a platform like LinkedIn
by job title just to get that guide or that
white paper or infographic in front of them, I think
could be incredibly successful. You could do that in other
practice areas as well, family law, state planning, just because
(28:05):
the life cycle or the research phase is a little
bit longer outside of those two arenas. I do look
at you know a little bit differently than you would
your normal paid search, just because typically what you're trying
to do on a social program paid is to create awareness,
drive engagement, and then go for the conversion. So you
(28:25):
need that at pretty much show up seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven times before someone has finally got that no, like
in trust to take the next step to click on
the link or download your resource or subscribe whatever it
is the conversion action that you're looking for them to
take at the bottom end of the funnel.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Yeah, I think everything is said makes perfect sense. And
I always say, whether it's the personal branding or you're
running ads, as long as it's a high quality, you
want to be proud of what it is, you know.
I see some social media things that I'm like, you know,
you wouldn't post that on your personal one, you know,
let alone. You know, this is this is how someone's
(29:04):
gonna judge you. And I learned a lesson last year
because we did a ton of focus groups and just
because I personally would never go to Facebook or Instagram
to find a service, whether that be a dentist or
a lawyer. I heard time and time again in these
focus groups this generation behind me they will And I
was just such a light bulb moment. I'm like, oh
(29:25):
my god, someone's like I need not that they would
go onto Google search inside personal injury lawyer, but they'll
find you and then they'll go check your social media.
And if you don't have something that you're proud of
that represents you really well, you could have just lost
that potential case because you didn't speak to that person,
you know. I use the analogy all the time, you
know as a law As a lawyer, you'd never have,
(29:47):
you know, a twenty five year old couch with holes
in it, you know, and a ratty rug and a
dirty table when someone comes into your office. That's what
your social media It needs to be pristine, it needs
to really represent you. Uh So, I I wanted to
shift gears just to because there's been so many changes
that just in the last couple of years. But what
(30:07):
do you see coming down the pipe now? What what's
what do you think's next? What are you talking to
your law firms about you know, to either be ready
for or starting to prep them for right now. As
far as technology and other ways to drive.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Business well specifically with Google, the hottest topics right now
are LSA is being incorporated into the local pack. Before that,
it was the fact that you could message multiple lawyers
after you've submitted your initial inquiry and then the auto
and rolling everybody into the branded LSA ruffled a bunch
of feathers there, which I get. So that's been a
(30:43):
topic of discussion. You know, I think around and you.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Just before you go, can you explain the LSA because
I think most people now are familiar with the LSAs,
but you know, the top three boxes. But this brand
new program, fairly new program that Google has where that
LSA is incorporated in the as, I think that that's
very timely for right now.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah, that is brand that is literally within the past
couple of days here. So after they announced the fact
that they were going to start doing branded LSAs, they
also announced that they are going to be adding one
of the LSA AD units into the map pack right now.
We've seen other paid search Google ADS units in the
map pack are ready, but I think This is just
(31:24):
another opportunity where Google, who is in the business of
maximizing revenue per impression, to find another little sliver of
space to add a unit that someone would have to
pay for. Now, the only way that you could get
rid of it is if you turn your LSA ads
completely off. Right, kind of a crummy thing, right, It's like,
(31:47):
you know, you're not even giving me the option not
to play in that space where you could turn branded
off if you wanted to, right and then ab test it.
I turned them on. How does that impact my unit economics?
I turn it off? How does that impact my ex economics? Like?
What is this shift in my acquisition costs? Here? In
my pay per lead? With maps? They don't even give
you that option, So I think, you know, that's just
(32:08):
like you've got loyal advertisers spending hundreds of thousands of
dollars on these units. LSA platform, the bat, the UI
is terrible to begin with, but the amount of the
lack of data that they share with you, Like, you
can't really make decisions based off of data because the
only thing you can, the only lever you can really
pull is give Google more money by increasing my average cost.
(32:31):
I'm only to pay per leader, give Google more money,
increase my budget. So you know, right now, it's just
I haven't seen them in the wild yet. It's it's
it's that fresh. So we'll we will, we will see.
So we're gonna, we're gonna, we're right now, right now,
We're just gonna see what's gonna happen and see if
we get more and more action. I guess if you
(32:52):
will from the map pack.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yeah, and my guess is they will. You know, you know,
we do heat map tests all the time, and when
the maps show up up in a Google search, they
get interacted with more than anything else. They take up
a bigger footprint, they're in color, they include your reviews,
everything about them is more attractive. They show where your
location is compared to where the searcher is, so everything
about them is more attractive. We've seen anywhere from forty
(33:16):
to sixty percent of the clicks when LSA's PPC maps
and organic show up, forty to sixty percent of the
clicks will go to maps. So to your point, these
things could get hammered. People could be getting hit with
a lot of charges that they that they shouldn't be.
So my guess is There will be a lot of
pushback on that from the LSA people.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
But Google, they just also announced that they're automating the
credit process, the dispute process. They're taking the human element
out of that now because the amount of disputes from
law firms that were getting leads that were out of
the practice area or out of their geo. There are
firms that were getting thousands of dollars in disputes credited
(33:57):
back to their account. Now the lag that that took,
like it was taken sixty ninety plus days for those
funds to come back. But even still, they're trying to
optimize it and make it as efficient as possible. Throw
another AD unit, make more AD dollars. Great, and now
we're just going to automate the credit process for disputes. No, no,
no labor costs, There more shareholder value.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah. I have a client I've been working with on
that and he's told me, you know, he'll get his
dispute back in four seconds. So I was trying to
see if there's a way to gain the system, like
is there a keyword that you can use in your
dispute that will give you a higher percentage chance, But
you know, he says it's it's it's hit and miss.
You know. Some of them may just credit back right away,
(34:40):
and others that are just complete garbage, no one looking
for his services, and they still leave that charge on there. Yeah.
The other thing I interrupted you you would mentioned that
you know this new the LSA's in the maps, but
you were also talking about some of the other trends
that you see, and I wanting to make sure the
audience got the benefit of some of this foresight that
they well.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
I was gonna you know. You then talked about how
engaging it was within the MAT pack. What I liked
the best, the best part of the so before they
renamed it to AIO reviews and people were part of
the search gener of Experience or search labs like experiment
is the beta version of it. I thought that one
of the most useful additions to the MAT pack. Not
(35:21):
only did they branch it out from A three, then
they had a five. They were testing like seven plus packs,
you know, back to ten packs. But when you interacted
with that GBP pen within the pack and clicked it,
it would open up like the firm's knowledge panel on
the side, and then you could see their social profiles,
or you could see like their GBP posts or like
(35:43):
get links to other information. Like I thought that as
as a user of search seeing that information where I
don't have to click into and open up you know,
six tabs for different websites, like, I thought that that
was cool. I literally haven't seen it, like in the
past four four to five weeks since I've been searching,
but know the AI overview coming into play, which is
(36:04):
continuing to increase zero click results, meaning Google is scraping
or leveraging the responses to the queries or questions that
users are putting into the search engine directly on the
search engine results page. Now, I think that's great from
a branding perspective. They're trying to find more information and
cite these resources, which some of them are correct, some
(36:25):
of them are completely inaccurate. But another conversation for another time. Right, Like,
if you continue to see that and you have a
lot of content, you have a content heavy website, right,
you might see some decreases in the overall traffic to
your website because now they don't have to click to
your website anymore. So you know you should be doing
(36:46):
with any agency if you have an SEO investment or
retainer on the table, refreshing that content, going back to
it and ensuring that the ones that don't get any
visibility or don't get any conversions, like do we need
to rewrite it, do we need to refresh it, or
we need to redirect it? Like what are you going
to do? And that's an exercise that you bring to
your SEO agency and they should be doing that frequently
(37:08):
enough so that you can look at the results, make
your tweaks, go back, see what levers you pulled, what
did it do? And if you want to do more
of that now you can take those lessons learned and
apply that to some of the other pages. But I
think AI overviews is still going to be a big
wait and see in legal just because it's you know,
part of that your money in your Life category. Google's
(37:30):
got to be really careful with not giving like financial, medical,
or legal advice. So like that's another delicate balance that
we have to sit back and see how it's going
to hit the industry. But you know, those are the
questions that many people are continuing to ask on these
calls outside of the traditional you know, normal questions about
what do I do here, do I buy this or
that profile that have been coming across my desk pretty frequently.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yeah, Well, the one thing that remains true is there's
a lot of options and a lot of confusions out
there that makes a person like you very valuable, I
think to a law firm. So, Ron, if someone wants
to chat with you, what's the best place for them
to find you? And you know, if you've got anything,
you'll obviously include it in the show notes, But any
(38:15):
other ways to either see you, if there's conferences coming
up that you're going to or the like.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Yeah, I think LinkedIn is going to be the best
place to find me. Feel free to just DM me,
or you could just go to the profile and follow
if you're looking for any legal marketing tips or insights
and tricks if you will, other than that legal Phoenix
dot com at the nix for the time being, but
you can check out the website. And my phone number's
out there somewhere like I'm old, Like you ever want
(38:41):
to call and just talk on the phone, like I
do that stuff too, So feel free to reach out
and I'm happy to talk shout great.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
Ron, really appreciate your time here, and I think anybody
who's got any marketing questions at all would learn something
by scheduling with you, so thanks again.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Appreciate it. Eric, thanks so much. It was a blast.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Thanks for listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by
market My market if you can check out additional episodes
and recaps at Legalmastermind podcast dot com.
So if everyone is looking back at the previous six months,
what goals did we hit, what goals did we miss
and fall short on? And one of the other things
that we need to potentially do in the second half
to get to that revenue number or that location expansion
or adding additional attorneys or maybe move into a new
gl you have to understand what is it that we
are setting out to achieve in order to go and
(00:21):
put the pieces in place to get that outcome.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
You're listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by Market
My Market with your hosts Eric Bersono, Ryan Klein, and
Chase Williams, the go to podcast for learning from the
experts and the legal community about effective ways to grow
and manage your law firm.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast.
Today I have with me Ron Latz was the founder
of Legal Phoenix and Phoenix has spelled with an Femis Flenix. Ron,
Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Eric, Thanks so much, appreciate you inviting me on. It's
going to be a great discussion. And don't worry, I
have the correct spelling lockdown as well. I just have
to set up the redirect so if anyone does hit
the fbnix. You could also spell a phoenix in like
a day or two.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Great, all right, I like that doing the proofing of
your own legal name so no one can make a
mistake there. So you know, before we jump into things,
you know, this is going to be a legal marketing conversation,
which I think is going to be really fun. This
is a necessary function that every law firm has. Can
(01:35):
you give the audience a little bit on your background
and you know where you are now? As is really
a fractional CMO in the space.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Sure, about a dozen years ago or so, maybe even
a little bit more. At this point, I started off
with Thompson Reuters within their legal division, working for Fine Law.
That's how I got into the legal space, and I
was a client development consultant. I was a sales rep
an account executive, and that's where I was selling all
of these marketing and advertising services and products to lawyers.
(02:08):
And then once I had left Fine Law, I went
on to another predominantly sales driven role. But you know,
a year or two even after my departure, I still
had some of my flagship clients come out and reach
out to me and say, hey, Ron you're gone, like,
do I renew, do I buy this product? Should I
try this out? Should I switch agencies or vendors? And
(02:29):
that was probably seven or eight years ago at this point.
So I spun up my LC and I started taking
on just select consulting clients, and then over the next
handful of years or so, I had joined a boutique
legal marketing agency, Mockingbird Marketing, where I was pretty much
responsible for rebuilding their customer success, sales and their digital
strategist function. So I was overseeing, you know, the account
(02:52):
manager role. The digital strategists were the subject matter experts
given their individual expertise and chan specialty, and then handling
you know what was predominantly an inbound sales function as well.
And from that point I had, you know, always had
the other business on the side, working with you know,
(03:13):
firms that were you know, different, different ideal client profiles.
Given what I was doing, and I just got the
itch again, right, I wanted more of that autonomy, more ownership,
and just build my own thing. So I had gone
back out, I rebranded, renamed the entire organization. I publicly
announced that about five or six weeks ago, maybe a
(03:34):
little bit longer at this point, and that's now where
I am offering fully fractional CMO services. But on the
front end, I do a lot of consulting and advisory work.
There's some firms that might not be ready. They just
put up their shingle or if they already have resources
in place, but they want to have someone that's got,
you know, fifteen years of experience underneath their belt to
help them navigate some of the complexities or the vendor landscape.
(03:58):
So they bring me on to kind of help with
those efforts. So that's what I've been doing now for
the past six to nine months.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, and I you and I have a similar path
through I worked for Fine Law as well as in
that same position. And the one thing that I think
has changed for both of us since that initial introduction
too legal marketing is there's just so many more options.
And I don't just mean like more people doing the
same thing, but I mean more places where you can
(04:25):
market your law firm. You know, social media when I started,
wasn't even a thing back then, and now you've got
social media, you've got digital TV and all those other things.
So I think what you do is really necessary now
because if you've you've had experience with a lot of
different companies, and you've had you talked to a lot
of different law firms and different practice areas and different
(04:46):
parts of the country, so you're able to kind of accumulate,
you know, this hive mentality of things that you've seen work,
and maybe even vendors who who you trust more. I'd
like to kind of start at the beginning and if
you could frame things, because I really feel like there's
two different types of law firms out there. There's we'll
(05:07):
just call it, you know, small firm, medium firm. So
the smaller medium are people who do their own marketing
or they are they're going to outsource their marketing. Big firm,
let's just say those are people who have in house
marketing teams, you know. And I think it's really important
thing because on a small firm and we just use
you know, somebody who might be one or two partners,
(05:27):
they have a marketing budget, but every single dime matters
to them. They need to create business right away. They
can't spend you know, tens of thousands of dollars over six,
you know, to eight months with nothing coming in. And
then I would consider, say the medium size, where these
are people who have a lot of referrals coming in,
(05:47):
they're established, they're doing some marketing. You know, some of
it's sufficient, some of it's not working at all, and
they just don't know. So i'd appreciate it if you
would like kind of frame it to both audiences. I
think we get both of those audiences here and your
insights could be very valuable. So I will shut up
now and let you kind of chat about what the
(06:09):
first step is in working with the law firm, whether
it be that smaller medium size is what you're looking
to find out and put in place.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, we can throw out some hypotheticals here. If you're
just let's just say you're a solo attorney, you just
put up your shingle, right, You're probably going to be
handling the majority of those efforts, whether it's speaking to agencies,
figuring out what your strategy is going to be. Maybe
you have a VA that you can offload some of
(06:39):
the administrative tasks and burdens too. But for the most part,
the challenging instance here is that you don't really know
what you don't know. Right, you're taking the vendors and
the marketing agencies word pretty much as gospel. They are
the subject matter experts, so you're going to lean on
their advice and recommendations to help them put you in
(07:01):
a better position to achieve your goals. It depends upon
like how much time you actually have right to go
out and whether it's a traditional type of marketing effort.
You know, normal business development, shaking hands, going to networking events, nurturing,
having networking phone calls, going to conferences, joining mastermind groups,
(07:21):
so you can build up that referral book of business
and leverage the profit and the revenue that you've generated
from there to reinvest into maybe an outsource marketing solution. Right,
that's that's going to be an option. I think if
you're limited by budget, doing those types of grassroots marketing
is where your time is best spent. Having that newsletter,
(07:44):
making sure that you're staying top of mind with your
current and previous clients, ensuring that your service professional network
is constantly like you have to maintain top of mindness
with them unless they're probably going to forget about you, Right,
that's just the nature of the business. If someone's going
to recommend a client, they probably give them two or
three names and if you're one of them, like you
(08:06):
want to make sure that you've got your best foot
forward in order to kind of capture that lead. Moving
into a more sophisticated firm, maybe the medium size, like
the options really do open up. And I think the
firms that I work with that have the most success
really do have a hybrid type of approach. They've got
someone internally that can help kind of keep vendors accountable,
(08:27):
keep the lines of communication open with them, kind of
pester the firm when they need to get approvals on
things like design or website content so that the agency
can do the job that they were hired to do.
In other instances, maybe you've joined a mastermind or you've
got a coach to bring you, you know, a little
bit further along in that life cycle, to bring you
(08:51):
to the next level. Right, you might need to hire
additional attorneys because now through the marketing, right, you've got
bandwidth constraints. You're bringing in all these leads. You got
to be able to continue to service those those prospects
and ensure that you're giving them a good client experience. So,
depending upon where you are, what the bandwidth of those
individual resources continues to be what, you know, what your
(09:13):
budget is, right, There's a lot of different ways that
you can have this hybrid type of approach where you're
working with a consultant, you've got an agency or a
vendor handling some of your marketing, and then even an
internal resource that can keep the ball rolling and ensure
that the lines of communication amongst all parties is always
kept open.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, you mentioned one thing that I think is a
great idea, which is having an internal marketing person. And
I'd love to hear your advice on if someone's looking
to hire someone internally, what skill set do they want
to look for, because, you know, marketing these days, as
I mentioned before, there's so many different avenues. You know,
do you want someone who's a good copywriter? Do you
(09:52):
want someone who has good acumen with Google Analytics? You know,
what would you say as a skill set to be
on the lookout for if you're going to have somebody
internally to deal with the other vendors that you might
be outsourcing.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, if we keep going with this hypothetical scenario on
the smaller side of the house, you're probably going to
need someone that's got more of a generalist type of
skill based because you need them to do a lot
of different things, right. You need them to talk to
your vendors. You might need them to you post on
social media on your behalf, or maybe even make some
you know, quick and dirty website updates like to bio
(10:26):
pages or practice area pages. The trouble that those firms
kind of run into is that they're they're literally adding
every single marketing responsibility to that job requisition. It's like,
you look at it, they're the marketing manager, the coordinator,
the social media manager, and coordinator. You want them to
do SEO posting and maintenance, reach out to do PR.
(10:48):
It's like they're they're they're leading communications. There's just only
so many hours in the day, and you don't want
to set those individuals up to fail. So that's that's
a delicate balance in the beginning when you're going from
gens and now as you continue to expand, maybe you
do need more of a specialist because you've allocated and
invested some dollars towards specific channels, and maybe that is
(11:11):
you need someone that's got more copywriting skills or someone
that has been in the SEO space because you want
to bring that function in halse right. Depending upon your
stage of growth and where you are, those individual resources
are going to have to carry different responsibilities in order
to bring you to that next level.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
So if we could step forward to maybe like paid campaigns,
and when I say paid, that could be SEO, it
could be bad words, it could be social media. What
type of advice do you give law firms? Like I said,
there's the law firm that says, hey, I know I'm
at a place where I need to grow. I've got
a little bit of a budget. What your advice says
(11:52):
to here's my list in order, And the way I
look at it is like you want to use that
budget very selectly in the beginning, because it's got to
have the best chance to bring in new clients, and
then you can start expanding into other areas more, a
little bit more branding, other things that might not be
as consistent as another form. So what type of advice
(12:15):
do you give a law firm when they're getting ready
to spend money on SEO or paid campaigns?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
First of all, I want to understand what the overall
goals and objectives are for the firm at a base
level we've already which I can't believe we've already finished
the first half of the year. So if everyone is
looking back at the previous six months, what goals did
we hit, what goals did we miss and fall short on?
And one are the other things that we need to
potentially do in the second half to get to that
revenue number or that location expansion or adding additional attorneys
(12:46):
or maybe move into a new GM. Right, like, you
have to understand what is it that we are setting
out to achieve in order to go and put the
pieces in place to get that outcome. I think that
there's also a disservice when you're okay, I'm you to
invest some dollars, right, and now you have these conversations
with agencies, One of the first steps that's typically missed
(13:06):
that sets firms up and the agency up for failure
is that you are not defining what success means for
both sides. Right, If the agency believes that they are
responsible for producing X amount of pages of content and
capturing X amount of backlinks and maybe writing exit or
y amount of blogs, if they hit those criteria and
(13:27):
check off all those boxes, they might deem that as
a successful campaign. Whereas if the law firm is looking
more for a financial or revenue based outcome. They're looking
for signups and retainers and case volume benchmarks to increase
or lowering of acquisition costs. Right, you're going to look
at the end of three or six months and there's
going to be a disconnect. Both sides are going to
(13:49):
likely be frustrated or disappointed because one believes are doing
a great job and the other things that they're entirely
missing the mark. So even before you outlay and put
those chips into play, I think you've got to a
You've got to come prepared to that vendor conversation knowing
what your goals and objectives are, and then you have
to be prepared to tell the agency what you believe
(14:11):
and how you define success. Then it is incumbent upon
the agency to manage or reset those expectations because admittedly
some of the law firms expectations are unrealistic. Right, So
we need to make sure that we're having those conversations
at the forefront so that when we're halfway through a
relationship or through the term of an agreement, we're just
(14:34):
not pointing fingers at each side blaming each other, because
then no one is going to be successful. So once
you get past that point again, now we've got to
look at other factors. If you've got x amount of
dollars that you can put into a particular channel, okay,
let's think again about the goal. If we've got short
term goals and we need to start generating revenue in
(14:57):
the short term, almost immediately, we're going to consider more
of the paid ad channels or paid search through Google
Ads or Microsoft being in order to start generating some
of that traction up front. If you've got the investment
dollars and you can make more of a long term
investment and you don't need to get the revenue into
the door today, we can consider a more organic or
(15:21):
SEO type of investment so we can build that foundation
and then start growing out from you know, maybe one
location to another city, or maybe an entire county, and
so on and so forth. So you've got to balance
all of these things when you're having these conversations with
the vendors. So they've got the context, they know the
target they're trying to hit. They can then set the
(15:42):
proper expectations with you, and then a decision can be
made about whether or not a partnership make makes sense
for both parties.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, and the these those are all great points. And
you know, one thing I've seen firsthand is most law firms,
and this is just anecdotal, most law firms don't do
an amazing job of tracking. Meaning they they're busy doing
legal things, you know, the stuff that they want to do,
and they might not necessarily know where these leads are
(16:10):
coming from. How is that something that you have advice
on as far as you know, if you're I always
help people. Look, if you're spending money on something, if
it's working, you need to know it. If it's not working,
you need to know that too. Is are there certain
tools out there or advice or how do you work
with a law firm to make sure that they're tracking
(16:31):
those marketing dollars or just any case that comes in,
whether that be a referral or a lead through a
Google app.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Sure, I'll share them. I just want everybody to know
go on record that no one is paying me to
save these things. So these products are just products that
I also believe in, but then my clients use as well.
So you know, when you're looking at tracking all of
your leads and where that revenue is coming I do
think that it makes sense in order for any firm
that is putting any amount of dollars into their marketing
(17:00):
to have some sort of dynamic call tracking software on
their website. Right, the majority of my clients use call Rail.
You can use call tracking metrics or what converts. There's
other options out there. But what this allows you to
do is at least get a better idea as to
where some of these individuals might be coming from, like
what is capturing the demand. Essentially, many clients will then
(17:24):
try to push that data into a front end lead
intake management software. Right. A lot of them have legal
focus like lawmatics. They'll have Cleo Grow, you might have
lead docket. Some non legal players work with a lot
of firms that also are a leveraging HubSpot because of
its flexibility. But essentially, what they're able to do is
then input some automation so that when individual potential new
(17:47):
clients are calling that tracking phone number, that contact record
is automatically created in the tool or in that system,
so intake can really focus on servicing that client, getting
all the cases criteria and details, and scheduling a console
because at the end of the day, we want to
stop their shopping experience and get them through the door
to speak with someone at our firm. So you know,
(18:10):
there's many different ways that you can do that. You
can then take that lead intake management software and push
that data into your case management software to get full
life cycle visibility into where these people are coming from,
what captured the demand versus what created the demand. But
I think at a basic setup there, if you just
have call tracking in place, right, you can cross reference
(18:32):
that with those clients that have been retained, so you
can know which channels are likely performing the best for
you and then make more database decisions instead of just
relying on your gut.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah, and I always tell a law firm you know
it's you can you can track it in reverse, meaning
if you just look at your signed cases, if you're
doing robust tracking, you can find out where those came from.
It was like, oh that was referral, that was a referral,
Oh that came in for more, I don't recognize it.
You know, that could have been a Google local or
(19:04):
it could have been an organic. And one step beyond
that is as I really say, you want to track
every lead that you wanted or if it at least
had solid legal intent. So someone got into a car accident,
they had minor injuries, they didn't go to the hospital.
It's not a case that you would take, but that
was the exact type of search that you wanted. That's,
(19:24):
in my mind, a success. I know it's not a
million dollar case. You're probably not going to sign them up,
but it was very very close, and knowing when something
like that is working means that you're around the target.
Was it a bulls eye, but it was very very close,
So it becomes really important. I understand that these are
all extra things that you have to dedicate time to
(19:46):
or hire a person to help with, but without understanding
what's working, you have no way to manipulate bigger growth
because you're just kind of shooting in the dark.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
I couldn't agree more. This has to be put into
place before you start putting significant dollars into any of
these channels, because if not, an intake is not a
well oiled machine, or even worse, if the attorneys at
the firm don't have capacity or bandwidth, and then you
go out because you think you have a lead problem
(20:19):
and you want to spend ten twenty thirty thousand dollars
more on Google ads, and then you turn those on
and the agency gets those going. The only thing you're
doing is investing in poor first impressions at scale because
the customer experience that they're going to have because intake
can't handle it or there's not overflow or after hours coverage,
these individuals not only are they going to go and
(20:40):
call the firm's next door, but you might rub some
people the wrong way and inadvertently starts sending people to
leave you those bad reviews. They didn't answer my call,
they didn't return my phone call, No one got back
to me. I left the voicemail. Firms are like, oh,
they'll call me back. No they're not. They're not going
to call you back. They went and they picked up
the phone and they talked to the person and likely
retained the first firm that had a lawyer talk to them. Right, So,
(21:02):
like you see it in like the CLEO trends report
constantly and I'm hoping that they get more updated data
on this. I forget what year, but they've talked about
how how poor response rates were for lawyers and how
many days individuals had to wait before they even got
a callback. Right, Like this is table stakes type of stuff,
and there's such an advantage to those fast movers who
(21:26):
really do move their move their prospects through their funnel quickly.
I mean, that's the speed to lead is going to
win the game there.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yeah, I'm actually amazed even at hyper successful firms. I
mean firms that you know, you tends, if not hundreds
of millions of dollars in you know, verdicts and settlements.
You know, when I call their law office, I either
get put on hold or there's some crazy chain of
events that happens and I've got to push two or
three numbers before I get somewhere. And I understand it,
(21:57):
you know, I understand some of these larger firms. You know,
you can't have a whole bank of humans to answer
every call. But if you think that every one hundredth
call could be your biggest case of the year, or
you know, have an enormous value to it and you're
not treating it that way, you could lose it. So again,
going back to the smaller, medium sized firm, what do
(22:19):
you suggest as far as intake, you know, do you
suggest third party? You know you mentioned before after ours calls,
you know, good calls come at all times to day.
Not if you've got someone who has an injury and
they're calling on behalf of their wife and they have
a nine to five, You're not going to get that
call at two pm. You're probably going to get at
seven pm. So what advice do you have on intake?
(22:40):
So now we're we've already talked about generating leads. Now
you've got to handle those properly.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, I mean if if the financials allow it. I
do think if you can't best cases you have in
house right because that person is completely dedicated to you.
You know that they're not like going to a mispronounce
your name. They know the practice area and the cases
that you're willing to take. There's a lot of opportunity
(23:06):
for training and mentoring and ensuring that they're doing a
good job. Why I'm always a proponent of Paul recording
so you can audit the calls, audit their performance, identify
areas needed for improvement. I know that that is not
possible for every single law firm. So I believe that
the next best is going to be a dedicated VA
(23:26):
where again they're going to be the ones you might
not get them in the middle of the day, but
if you can get them for your after hours and
weekend coverage, that's great. You know, that's another instance where
they don't have fifteen twenty thirty other firms that they're
answering the phone for. They don't have to monitor a
handful of different scripts or remember which practice area or
(23:46):
areas that you serve. Right, having them dedicated to you,
I think is going to put you in a better
position to ensure a smoother customer experience. Now there are
other great like I have a ton of clients that
also use outfits like smith AI. Right, the only I
would even say it's a downside, but you just have
(24:07):
to know when you are working within an outfit like that,
you've got to put the time and effort into training
those individuals multiple times because unfortunately, in those roles, churn
just like at a law firm or just like at
your marketing agency, is inevitable. So if you had a
rock star and then now you've got more of a
(24:28):
B or C player, you've got to put the hours
in to coach them to get them up and running
so that they're not dropping the ball, because that one
of one hundred that could be a massive case, like
you don't want to miss that opportunity. So ultimately, at
the end of the day, if you've got someone in
house er dedicated, that's always my recommendation. If not, there
are other solutions where you can fill the gaps just
(24:49):
to make sure that you're not missing that seven PM call,
which could be a monster.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
When you say a VA, do you mean you know
one of these third party companies that has, you know,
an intake center, or you mean you're you know, a
couple of vas that are outsourced as a one on
one relationship.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah, the latter not necessarily a call center. I mean
those options do exist, again, very similar. It's going to
be more of a round robin approach. You might have
someone that's dedicated, but you could be one of a
dozen or two dozen different firms that they're responsible for
answering the phone for So I think when you have
the VA and again you got to play the time
(25:26):
zone game here to ensure that they are available. But
I do think that there's options out there right now
offshore that allow you to fill those gaps so that
you're not missing that Saturday call in the middle of
the afternoon because you're out with your family. Someone else
is out there stopping the shopping experience, scheduling that consult
while you're not available, so they just don't go back
(25:47):
to Google and find the next firm that answers their ring.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Well, how much emphasis do you put on social media
for a law firm? And I'll talk about both sides
of the coin. You know, there's social media, which is
like your personal branding that you update and you know,
here's our party and here's a great review we got,
and then social media advertising we're actually paying to advertise
on it. How much emphasis do you put at this
(26:13):
point on a law firm embracing that.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Well, I'm a huge proponent of the personal branding side
of the house, just because that's literally what I do
to create demand, you know, for my services. I try
to post almost daily on LinkedIn. And when I look
at the success of that, or how I define success
of that, I don't look at it as a lead
gen type of program. I do it to continue to
(26:37):
develop my like my own thoughts and share ideas and
test them with the market, develop thought leadership, show my
expertise in this area of subject matter, nurture relationships, learn
new things, rekindle relationships, you know, just like us or
with other organizations where I might get speaking opportunities to
(26:58):
go on a podcast, but I'm not there waiting for
the DM every single day to say, hey, I want
to work with you. Does it happen as a byproduct
of those efforts on occasion, but like that's not what
I'm relying on every single month to continue to drive
to drive revenue. I do think that social advertising does
have its place, depending upon the practice area. There's a
(27:20):
couple of different approaches that I would take. I'm a
big proponent of leveraging paid distribution to put like a
very high value asset in front of the right individuals. So,
for example, like with an employment law, that's a very
heavy researched prospect, right they they're not really sure if
it was discrimination. They don't know if it's if they
(27:42):
have a case right there. So like putting like the
top ten things that you should consider if you believe
that you are a victim of any sort of discrimination,
and then targeting you know, on a platform like LinkedIn
by job title just to get that guide or that
white paper or infographic in front of them, I think
could be incredibly successful. You could do that in other
practice areas as well, family law, state planning, just because
(28:05):
the life cycle or the research phase is a little
bit longer outside of those two arenas. I do look
at you know a little bit differently than you would
your normal paid search, just because typically what you're trying
to do on a social program paid is to create awareness,
drive engagement, and then go for the conversion. So you
(28:25):
need that at pretty much show up seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven times before someone has finally got that no, like
in trust to take the next step to click on
the link or download your resource or subscribe whatever it
is the conversion action that you're looking for them to
take at the bottom end of the funnel.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Yeah, I think everything is said makes perfect sense. And
I always say, whether it's the personal branding or you're
running ads, as long as it's a high quality, you
want to be proud of what it is, you know.
I see some social media things that I'm like, you know,
you wouldn't post that on your personal one, you know,
let alone. You know, this is this is how someone's
(29:04):
gonna judge you. And I learned a lesson last year
because we did a ton of focus groups and just
because I personally would never go to Facebook or Instagram
to find a service, whether that be a dentist or
a lawyer. I heard time and time again in these
focus groups this generation behind me they will And I
was just such a light bulb moment. I'm like, oh
(29:25):
my god, someone's like I need not that they would
go onto Google search inside personal injury lawyer, but they'll
find you and then they'll go check your social media.
And if you don't have something that you're proud of
that represents you really well, you could have just lost
that potential case because you didn't speak to that person,
you know. I use the analogy all the time, you
know as a law As a lawyer, you'd never have,
(29:47):
you know, a twenty five year old couch with holes
in it, you know, and a ratty rug and a
dirty table when someone comes into your office. That's what
your social media It needs to be pristine, it needs
to really represent you. Uh So, I I wanted to
shift gears just to because there's been so many changes
that just in the last couple of years. But what
(30:07):
do you see coming down the pipe now? What what's
what do you think's next? What are you talking to
your law firms about you know, to either be ready
for or starting to prep them for right now. As
far as technology and other ways to drive.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Business well specifically with Google, the hottest topics right now
are LSA is being incorporated into the local pack. Before that,
it was the fact that you could message multiple lawyers
after you've submitted your initial inquiry and then the auto
and rolling everybody into the branded LSA ruffled a bunch
of feathers there, which I get. So that's been a
(30:43):
topic of discussion. You know, I think around and you.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Just before you go, can you explain the LSA because
I think most people now are familiar with the LSAs,
but you know, the top three boxes. But this brand
new program, fairly new program that Google has where that
LSA is incorporated in the as, I think that that's
very timely for right now.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah, that is brand that is literally within the past
couple of days here. So after they announced the fact
that they were going to start doing branded LSAs, they
also announced that they are going to be adding one
of the LSA AD units into the map pack right now.
We've seen other paid search Google ADS units in the
map pack are ready, but I think This is just
(31:24):
another opportunity where Google, who is in the business of
maximizing revenue per impression, to find another little sliver of
space to add a unit that someone would have to
pay for. Now, the only way that you could get
rid of it is if you turn your LSA ads
completely off. Right, kind of a crummy thing, right, It's like,
(31:47):
you know, you're not even giving me the option not
to play in that space where you could turn branded
off if you wanted to, right and then ab test it.
I turned them on. How does that impact my unit economics?
I turn it off? How does that impact my ex economics? Like?
What is this shift in my acquisition costs? Here? In
my pay per lead? With maps? They don't even give
you that option, So I think, you know, that's just
(32:08):
like you've got loyal advertisers spending hundreds of thousands of
dollars on these units. LSA platform, the bat, the UI
is terrible to begin with, but the amount of the
lack of data that they share with you, Like, you
can't really make decisions based off of data because the
only thing you can, the only lever you can really
pull is give Google more money by increasing my average cost.
(32:31):
I'm only to pay per leader, give Google more money,
increase my budget. So you know, right now, it's just
I haven't seen them in the wild yet. It's it's
it's that fresh. So we'll we will, we will see.
So we're gonna, we're gonna, we're right now, right now,
We're just gonna see what's gonna happen and see if
we get more and more action. I guess if you
(32:52):
will from the map pack.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yeah, and my guess is they will. You know, you know,
we do heat map tests all the time, and when
the maps show up up in a Google search, they
get interacted with more than anything else. They take up
a bigger footprint, they're in color, they include your reviews,
everything about them is more attractive. They show where your
location is compared to where the searcher is, so everything
about them is more attractive. We've seen anywhere from forty
(33:16):
to sixty percent of the clicks when LSA's PPC maps
and organic show up, forty to sixty percent of the
clicks will go to maps. So to your point, these
things could get hammered. People could be getting hit with
a lot of charges that they that they shouldn't be.
So my guess is There will be a lot of
pushback on that from the LSA people.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
But Google, they just also announced that they're automating the
credit process, the dispute process. They're taking the human element
out of that now because the amount of disputes from
law firms that were getting leads that were out of
the practice area or out of their geo. There are
firms that were getting thousands of dollars in disputes credited
(33:57):
back to their account. Now the lag that that took,
like it was taken sixty ninety plus days for those
funds to come back. But even still, they're trying to
optimize it and make it as efficient as possible. Throw
another AD unit, make more AD dollars. Great, and now
we're just going to automate the credit process for disputes. No, no,
no labor costs, There more shareholder value.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah. I have a client I've been working with on
that and he's told me, you know, he'll get his
dispute back in four seconds. So I was trying to
see if there's a way to gain the system, like
is there a keyword that you can use in your
dispute that will give you a higher percentage chance, But
you know, he says it's it's it's hit and miss.
You know. Some of them may just credit back right away,
(34:40):
and others that are just complete garbage, no one looking
for his services, and they still leave that charge on there. Yeah.
The other thing I interrupted you you would mentioned that
you know this new the LSA's in the maps, but
you were also talking about some of the other trends
that you see, and I wanting to make sure the
audience got the benefit of some of this foresight that
they well.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
I was gonna you know. You then talked about how
engaging it was within the MAT pack. What I liked
the best, the best part of the so before they
renamed it to AIO reviews and people were part of
the search gener of Experience or search labs like experiment
is the beta version of it. I thought that one
of the most useful additions to the MAT pack. Not
(35:21):
only did they branch it out from A three, then
they had a five. They were testing like seven plus packs,
you know, back to ten packs. But when you interacted
with that GBP pen within the pack and clicked it,
it would open up like the firm's knowledge panel on
the side, and then you could see their social profiles,
or you could see like their GBP posts or like
(35:43):
get links to other information. Like I thought that as
as a user of search seeing that information where I
don't have to click into and open up you know,
six tabs for different websites, like, I thought that that
was cool. I literally haven't seen it, like in the
past four four to five weeks since I've been searching,
but know the AI overview coming into play, which is
(36:04):
continuing to increase zero click results, meaning Google is scraping
or leveraging the responses to the queries or questions that
users are putting into the search engine directly on the
search engine results page. Now, I think that's great from
a branding perspective. They're trying to find more information and
cite these resources, which some of them are correct, some
(36:25):
of them are completely inaccurate. But another conversation for another time. Right, Like,
if you continue to see that and you have a
lot of content, you have a content heavy website, right,
you might see some decreases in the overall traffic to
your website because now they don't have to click to
your website anymore. So you know you should be doing
(36:46):
with any agency if you have an SEO investment or
retainer on the table, refreshing that content, going back to
it and ensuring that the ones that don't get any
visibility or don't get any conversions, like do we need
to rewrite it, do we need to refresh it, or
we need to redirect it? Like what are you going
to do? And that's an exercise that you bring to
your SEO agency and they should be doing that frequently
(37:08):
enough so that you can look at the results, make
your tweaks, go back, see what levers you pulled, what
did it do? And if you want to do more
of that now you can take those lessons learned and
apply that to some of the other pages. But I
think AI overviews is still going to be a big
wait and see in legal just because it's you know,
part of that your money in your Life category. Google's
(37:30):
got to be really careful with not giving like financial, medical,
or legal advice. So like that's another delicate balance that
we have to sit back and see how it's going
to hit the industry. But you know, those are the
questions that many people are continuing to ask on these
calls outside of the traditional you know, normal questions about
what do I do here, do I buy this or
that profile that have been coming across my desk pretty frequently.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yeah, Well, the one thing that remains true is there's
a lot of options and a lot of confusions out
there that makes a person like you very valuable, I
think to a law firm. So, Ron, if someone wants
to chat with you, what's the best place for them
to find you? And you know, if you've got anything,
you'll obviously include it in the show notes, But any
(38:15):
other ways to either see you, if there's conferences coming
up that you're going to or the like.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Yeah, I think LinkedIn is going to be the best
place to find me. Feel free to just DM me,
or you could just go to the profile and follow
if you're looking for any legal marketing tips or insights
and tricks if you will, other than that legal Phoenix
dot com at the nix for the time being, but
you can check out the website. And my phone number's
out there somewhere like I'm old, Like you ever want
(38:41):
to call and just talk on the phone, like I
do that stuff too, So feel free to reach out
and I'm happy to talk shout great.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
Ron, really appreciate your time here, and I think anybody
who's got any marketing questions at all would learn something
by scheduling with you, so thanks again.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Appreciate it. Eric, thanks so much. It was a blast.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Thanks for listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by
market My market if you can check out additional episodes
and recaps at Legalmastermind podcast dot com.
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