7 Juicy Marketing Tips ala Techshow

Episode Notes

Transcript

Lunch Hour Legal Marketing

7 Juicy Marketing Tips ala Techshow

March 8, 2021

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Conrad, have I got a deal for you.

 

Conrad Saam: Is it going to make me rich?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: I don’t know, but maybe.

 

Conrad Saam: Is it going to be easy?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: It’s going to be so easy, it’s going to be so fast.

 

Conrad Saam: Do you have a secret for me Gyi?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: I’ve got a secret for you.

 

Conrad Saam: Okay, I want to hear it.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Eight-minute abs.

 

Conrad Saam: So, I’ve heard about eight-minute abs. I want seven-minute abs, but only that like professional athletes know about.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: You can’t do abs in seven minutes, but you know, you can do a seven-million dollar law firm.

 

Conrad Saam: A seven-million dollar firm in three simple steps Gyi? Are other lawyers doing this right now and I’m missing out?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Seven minutes a day.

 

Conrad Saam: Okay. I want to hear all about it. Do I have to send it for newsletter to hear about this?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: You need to click on some internet ads.

 

Conrad Saam: Okay. I’m all in.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Conrad, what are we going to talk about today?

 

Conrad Saam: For the news today, we’re going to be talking about zooming from the operating room into the courtroom. We’ve got some Google updates and some more awesome reporting coming from our friends  at Clio. We’re going to cover by the numbers and what you may have got from our casual banter at the beginning. We’re going to be talking about FOMO marketing on Facebook and finally, we’re going to be covering what’s happening right now which is Techshow. We’ve got five tips from five of the marketing presenters. We’re going to talk about those right now. Roll the music

 

[Music]

 

Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, teaching you how to promote, market and make fat stacks for your legal practice, here on Legal Talk Network.

 

[Music]

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. Before we get started, we want to thank our sponsors. Clio’s cloud-based practice management software makes it easy to manage your law firm from intake to invoice. Try it for free at clio.com. That’s c-l-i-o dot com.

 

Conrad Saam: Lawyaw provides end-to-end document automation for solo, small and mid-sized practices. Save time and avoid mistakes with documents that you draft over and over again. Learn more at lawyaw.com. That’s l-a-w-y-a-w dot com.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Thanks to Alert Communications for sponsoring this episode. If any law firm is looking for call intake or retainer services available 24/7, 365, just call (866)-827-5568.

 

Conrad Saam: And also LexisNexis Interaction, the leading client relationship management  solution purpose built for the way law firms  engage with their clients. Learn more at interaction.com All right Gyi, let’s talk about the news.

 

[Music]

 

Conrad Saam: So, there’s a lot of great news coming out right now and we’re going to start  with a report from our friends at Clio. The Clio legal trends for solo law firms  just came out. This was covered by our favorite writer, actually my original favorite legal writer, Bob Ambrogi, is focused on the solo law firm market and is really talking about harnessing modern technology to bring in and the data point out of this was that law firms that are really harnessing technology at this small level are bringing in 50 grand more on average.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, I can’t encourage people enough to go check out all the legal trends reports really, but this most recent one that’s pulling out some data for solos I think is extremely valuable.

 

Conrad Saam: Where can we find Ambrogi’s article?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: On law sites, his blog.

 

Conrad Saam: Okay, so go there, read it, let Bob know that we sent you there and yeah, spend  some time checking out the Clio trends report especially if you’re solo because there’s — I think one of the things that you guys miss so frequently is understanding how other people are actually doing and Clio has done a better job than anyone at bringing that data together so you can start benchmarking yourselves against other people. Super important. The biggest thing that’s come out  in the last, I want to say 10 days was Clubhouse. Everyone is trying to get into the club. Can you give a quick overview of why do we care and any concerns that we have with Clubhouse?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Clubhouse is hot right now, you know, my thing it’s just another way for us to communicate. For those who don’t know, it’s an app apparently it only works on iPhones right now. I think they’re coming out with an android version. I don’t know if that’s already out, maybe that’s — they move fast, so who knows what’s going on over there, but it’s audio only. It’s like an audio only social network where you can create these rooms, have conversations. A couple  issues though, you might want to look this up in your newsfeeds.

 

00:05:00

 

Apparently, someone’s accusing, I don’t know if it’s the Chinese government or some company or something, of listening and recording to these Clubhouse things. I saw that, maybe it’s a rumor, so don’t quote me on that. But I did–

 

Conrad Saam: Come here for authoritative news and occasionally rumors.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, one issue that I did see and this was covered by most — some of the major publications is that once you’re on Clubhouse, you can never leave because apparently, it gives you permission to everybody’s contacts. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some privacy litigation that comes out of this, but to deactivate your account and have them delete it, you have to email them and then who knows when they respond and then there’s been all sorts of issues and I’m sure it’s all in the terms, but that’s just something to keep your eye on if you’re a Clubhouse person, if you’re club housing. Club housing, if you’re in the club, in their club house.

 

Conrad Saam: All right, while we’re talking about everything virtual, for those of you who did not get this run across your screen, you know, last time we had the lawyer who showed up in court as a cat, brought to you this month, we had the doctor who showed up to court while he was doing surgery. So, if you want to go kill  some brain cells and some of your time, go look up doctor doing surgery during his traffic ticket trial.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Now my question is was the lawyer his patient? So maybe his lawyer — he was there with his lawyer. His lawyer just happened to be the patient.

 

Conrad Saam: This feels like we should have a much better like ending side to this this joke, but, yeah, zoom is everywhere, zoom fatigue. It’s a video worth watching if you want to feel a little better about how much zooming you’re doing.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Think about the confidence level of doing surgery while you’re on a zoom traffic ticket hearing.

 

Conrad Saam: I think it just has to go to the extent of like I can think of something more like I hate traffic ticket lawyers and this entire system, then I’m going to continue doing my job which happens to be taking someone’s appendix out while we do this. This is so mind-numbingly nauseating for me, I think it’s hysterical.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: And I could barely respond to emails while I’m doing this podcast and so I can imagine how hard it would be for someone to do surgery and then deal with the judge, but all right. I’m not a surgeon, so we’ll never know.

 

Conrad Saam: Let’s move to something a little bit slightly more serious. Two things that you should be aware of. Google’s core web vitals update comes out in May. If you care about SEO, you should be all over this and the other thing that came out very recently is iOS 14 which it’s tightening up privacy which is going to make our job of doing things like retargeting advertising a little bit more difficult. And that is legal marketing news from Gyi and Conrad. Let’s take a break.

 

[Music]

 

Conrad Saam: The right client relationship management solution enables and empowers firm growth. LexisNexis Interaction is designed specifically for law firms and embeds  client intelligence at the heart of every interaction, providing valuable insights into client relationships so you can make strategic decisions about how to focus your resources to gain more business. Learn more and request your free demo at interaction.com/lunch hour.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: No one cites routine drafting as the  reason they chose to become a lawyer, but that’s where a lot of time goes for solo practitioners and small firms. Lawyaw can help you transform your existing word documents into reusable templates with no coding required. Save time and avoid errors with intuitive features like conditional logic. Use a tool that empowers your experience and expertise. Learn more at lawyaw.com. That’s l-a-w-y-a-w dot com.

 

[Music]

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: And we’re back and as we love to do, because we are so grateful for those that listen to this podcast, we’d like to thank you for leaving reviews and call out Michael Primus via Apple podcast who says about Lunch Hour Legal Marketing fresh usable content. They offer realistic ideas for lawyers to start from. Thank you so much Michael, we really appreciate that. You must be listening to Conrad.

 

Conrad Saam: And you must not be on Facebook. I’m probably smart.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Mm-hmm.

 

Conrad Saam: Let’s hit some numbers. So the reason I said Michael must not be on Facebook is we’re going to talk about the number two million, two million dollars Gyi, in three easy steps. That’s the number that we want to talk about that we’re seeing all over Facebook. Tell me more about this Gyi.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: I mean, I don’t know what to say. There’s a lot of advertising about  zero to two million in six months.

 

00:10:00

 

Conrad Saam: Three simple steps.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: See, a couple of simple steps or a simple system or a secret system or some kind of multi-dimensional advertising or–

 

Conrad Saam: Are you calling someone else specifically with multi-dimensional advertising?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Funnel hacking.

 

Conrad Saam: So, this is a very old psychological principle that works and Gyi’s right. We started this podcast talking about weight loss. This is the same exact thing that people get hooked on in January when they make their New Year’s resolutions for weight loss. Drink this shake, eat this diet, these six minutes to get abs of steel. We’re seeing this hit the legal marketing world really aggressively right now. This is FOMO marketing, fear of missing out, and the system is very, very basic. It basically says, other people are doing this, it’s very easy, we have a secret and in the legal world, the secret is to usually a seven-figure practice. Gyi, you’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve been doing this for a long time. How many of your clients, of which I imagine there have been hundreds, how many of them found riches in three simple steps?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: None that i can think of, but in fairness, I never really asked them, “Have you only done three things to become successful?”

 

Conrad Saam: That is fair. And the reason is you didn’t ask them because it’s stupid. There are hundreds of things you need to get right and we’re seeing these advertisements and these promises and they’re targeting specifically small solo and I hate to be, I hate to offend our audience, but naive lawyers into thinking that there is an easy way to be successful. This is not easy. This is not an easy game, it never has been, it never will be. It’s getting harder, not easier. And so this stuff really ticks me off. I’m tired, I’m tired of it and I want you guys to learn how to spot this when it hits your Facebook feed or if you hear it at a conference, right? There’s a lot of BS that is being propagated by people in the legal marketing world and it seems to just have proliferated in the last three months.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah and sadly I think a lot of this has to do with — it’s a sign of the times. People that might be in bad shape for whatever reasons, a lot of factors, going into that are desperate for some quick fix and I guess this is our reminder that there really aren’t any quick fixes and it’s, you know, it’s sad that this happens, but  it’s really been. It has seemed like it’s been. I think we’ve even talked about this on a previous episode that there’s been an uptake in these ads.

 

Conrad Saam: And it’s not just the ads. I mean, you and I sat in on a conference, virtual conference the other day. Gyi, if I remember correctly, there were 4,000 people signed up for this conference. So, like it was marketed very heavily and some of the speakers are spewing nonsense. I heard Bill Hauser stand there and say, “Marketing is not profitable, right?” Marketing is not profitable, so that made me sit up and I’m like, uh-oh because I’ve kind of built my career on marketing, I should probably listen. And the answer to marketing is not profitable was until you sell something, right? That’s like saying having a store is not profitable until you sell something. Having a pizza restaurant is not profitable until you sell a pizza, like of course, it’s –this stuff sounds like —

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: True.

 

Conrad Saam: It is true, but it honestly sounds like Ton Robbins took a bowling(ph) hit and gave you some like bad advice. It’s just — it’s  insane. So, like just move away from the idea that this is so easy and just be aware that a lot of what you’re hearing is garbage and there’s a lot of garbage that’s being fed to people because it makes — in the same way that I think I can get abs of steel in six minutes, it makes me feel good and optimistic.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right, it’s a problem.

 

Conrad Saam: It’s a big problem. Do you believe Gyi that the key to local search, one of the  easy step for local search is to send your staff out to take selfies at local landmarks and that’s what’s going to guarantee you those top three results?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Um, no, but trying to put a positive spin on it like maybe you get some brand awareness from people seeing your–

 

Conrad Saam: Come on.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis:  –landmark.

 

Conrad Saam: Come on.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: I’m trying man, I’m trying.

 

Conrad Saam: Trying to be the shepherd.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: You’re trying to be — you’re being kind.

 

Conrad Saam: Yes, that will not help you rank in the local pack, I do not believe.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Okay.

 

Conrad Saam: And have you seen this advice on the web Gyi?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: I have seen it.

 

Conrad Saam: From people who spends lots of money advertising to lawyers?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yup, I’ve seen it.

 

Conrad Saam: Well, this really annoys me and this is why I can’t let this go.

 

00:15:00

 

So, speaking of Clubhouse, we were sitting at that conference and a young aspiring, starting out PI lawyer asked one of the hosts what they should do and the answer was to just get on Clubhouse and get lots of followers and that’s going to drive car accident cases. Can you explain to me Gyi how that would work?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, you know, if people are on Clubhouse driving around and you say something into the app and distract them, then they get an accident, then just conveniently you’re there.

 

Conrad Saam: Okay.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: I didn’t think of that angle, silly me.

 

Conrad Saam: Trying to be the shepherd.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Okay.

 

Conrad Saam: But the worst part of this, is you’re going to get lawyers who listen to this crap and try to build  their careers on this.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: I’m trying to get people in the car accidents on Clubhouse.

 

Conrad Saam: This seems like a bad idea.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, I mean, look, the points there, you know, my whole thing about all this is like you said at the outset, it’s a combination of hundreds of things. Like could Clubhouse be great for building some new relationships, maybe getting some referral relationships or, you know, if you’re in a group in a room, I guess they call them, that has a topic that’s related to your  practice and you can share some knowledge and experience and meet some new people and get people to subscribe to email list and nurture those relationships, then yeah, it’s great. But this idea that you’re going to go download an app and go jump into a room and all these people are going to be on there, just waiting for you to come in, “thank goodness you arrived in our room so we can hire you.” That’s the part that’s like, come on, and again, their part of this for me is because I’m certainly sympathetic to lawyers that might be in, you know, one, they don’t have time to learn all this stuff that’s why they turn to the experts like us included. Two, some of them are getting desperate, you know, some of them have shiny object syndrome, but, you know, it’s the same thing we talk about when we talk about like reading your vendor agreements and all this other stuff. It’s like, you’re a lawyer, like you know better than this. You know that that’s overnight success thing is not great, not all it’s cracked up to be. You can’t do abs in seven minutes, you can’t. It’s from something about Mary by the way.

 

Conrad Saam: Yeah.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: You don’t watch movies.

 

Conrad Saam: I’m not a movie guy.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Too athletic? Anyway, is that a good place for us to take a break?

 

Conrad Saam: We should take a break. I feel like we’ve –

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Go decompress.

 

Conrad Saam: Either, yeah, I’m going to go have a glass of  water and we’ll — I was going to say scotch. I’m going to go have a glass — except it’s 11:43 where I am right now.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh, you got 15 minutes.

 

Conrad Saam: We’re going to go chill out while you guys listen to a soothing ad from one of our sponsors.

 

[Music]

 

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[Music]

 

Conrad Saam: Welcome back to lunch hour scotch and cynicism. I mean, Lunch Hour legal marketing.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Maybe we should change this to like the scotch and secrets. Seriously though, transitioning into our next segment which I’m really excited about, but I’m also very biased because I’m a chair member of the ABA Techshow which is coming up next week or this week, depending—

 

Conrad Saam: It’s coming up this week if you’re listening to us right now.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: This week and we’re very excited, I’m the  marketing track chair and I’m very proud of this group that has agreed  to participate and very grateful for their volunteering and so we want to do a little teaser because we’re hoping that this airs around the same time as Techshow is going on. And so, some of our marketing track speakers have been gracious enough to send us some quick blurbs of their sessions, some key takeaways. So, we’re going to play some of those talk Techshow, hopefully persuade you to check it out. First up, Ticora Davis.

 

Ticora Davis: Great day. This is Attorney Ticora Davis, founder and CEO of the Creator’s Law Firm. I am really excited to lead the session for the ABA Techshow on the online communities workshop and I wanted to share with you guys some really juicy takeaways from my session.

 

00:20:09

 

So, I’m speaking about building online communities and why you should do it like yesterday. One of the benefits of building an online community is that rather than waiting for your prospective clients to come to you, you can actually immerse yourself into their lives and their businesses by being a go-to resource for what they need. I love being an early adopter of new technology because early adopters are able to really grow platforms very quickly and leverage those new things. I love Clubhouse, it’s a great new platform and being an early adopter of that has allowed me to gain recognition, connect with people I never would have connected with before and get new clients, new speaking engagements and new opportunities. It’s a great way to turn your brand’s reputation and that will help ripen your brand’s reputation and bear fruit of serving as a trusted resource. It’s going to yield endless referrals of new clients, rich relationships to strengthen your brand, opportunities and partnership with your chosen platform and a supportive community that will stay and pay you. You have to know where your people are, but not only where they are, but where are your people going? Getting very clear about your client avatar, your ideal customer, your ideal client type, who they are. Make sure you know them like the back of your hand. Don’t make assumptions or categorize people. You need to know who these people are, consider even doing case studies or client interviews to get that information from them, to help develop your client avatar. I hope these takeaways from me have really piqued your interest in my particular session with the ABA Techshow. I’m looking forward to seeing you at my particular session for online communities and I look forward to helping you and sharing my smarts with you.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: So, thank you Ticora. Really looking forward to this session. So for me, a couple of things that, you know, I hear in there and I can see this stuff going on. I mean, forget about the platform for a second. There are people asking for lawyer referrals online, on social networks. I see it with my own two eyes. If you don’t believe me, you can email me or tweet at me and I will show you screenshots. But it’s worked, right? You got to go in there, you’ve got to invest in the community, you’ve got to invest in the relationships. So, that’s one where I do see that there’s been, in my opinion, there’s been this shift especially during the times of COVID. The people are online and because we can’t meet in person, it’s filling some of that vacuum face to face with these online communities. Conrad?

 

Conrad Saam: Yeah, I mean, we were dumping on Clubhouse and then we started with our first example of being Clubhouse, but the key that she said, what I wrote down is, know where your people are. I think one of the reasons that Clubhouse got so much hype among tech nerds is because a bunch of tech nerds got together and talked to tech nerds  and you know, the tech nerds who are lawyers like, you’re all talking and you’re sharing information, it’s great, but you need to know where your people are, right? And you’re right. Gyi is absolutely correct. Platform agnostic, but think about where your people are and that’s the key. She said two things, know where your people are and she also said know who your people are. And that’s the key for any social — and the other thing Gyi, you’re totally right. This is work. This is time, this is dedication, this is building relationships and that is not a three simple steps.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Awesome! Next up, we have Attorney sync’s(ph) own Meghan Boyd.

 

Meghan Boyd: Hello, I’m Meghan Boyd and I presented at the ABA Techshow on website Teardowns, what not to do when it comes to your website. Some of the main takeaways from my presentation was you really want a website that is user friendly. You don’t want to use flashy text. You want to have prominent calls to action. You want it easy for the user to read your website and to contact you. So, that means making it easy for them to call you which means putting your phone number in the header prominently so that it’s easy to see and easy to click on when you are browsing your website on a mobile device. Also, you want to use professional images on your site. If you’re going to spend the time and money to invest in a website design, then you need to invest in professional photography. That means, having a professional logo done and taking professional portraits of you and your team for the website. Also, you need to track your results. Make sure that you have Google Analytics on your website and that you are tracking to see where traffic comes from, where traffic is leaving from, what people are doing when they land on your website, whether that’s filling out a form or calling you. Track those results.

 

00:25:00

 

Google Analytics provides a free class on how to use it. I suggest you take it, you make sure that you have Analytics installed and that you’re looking at it at least once a month to determine what you may or may not need to do to increase the amount of phone calls you have and the amount of contact forms that are coming into your website. My name is Meghan Boyd and you can follow me on Twitter mgnbyd, that’s my name with no vowels, mgnbyd.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Thank you Meghan and so the reason I’m excited for this one is because Meghan presented some very good useful tips, but it’s going to be a tear down, right? So, she’s going to, we know—

 

Conrad Saam: That they’re a lot nice, but she’s taking something apart.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, we know that a lot of the examples that she’s going to show are law firm websites that don’t do any of the things that she just talked about, so you’re going to get a lot of stock imagery and lack of user experience and I  think that she’s going to probably — my hunch is that it’ll tie into the core web vitals thing coming up too which again, you said at the outset, even beyond SEO, regardless of whether how much  weight Google gives it in terms of ranking factor, guess what? It’s a user factor. It kills conversions. I mean, how many times you open up Analytics and see up page load speed and you’re wondering why conversion rate’s low. So, another great session at Techshow.

 

Conrad Saam: I mean, my favorite thing she mentioned which seems to be pathetically overlooked is the importance of professional photography. I feel like you can give  your website a 2x wow factor with professional photography right and  there are plenty of starving wedding photographers right now, very happy to come in and do some amazing work for you and so, we really encourage our clients whenever you’re doing a website redesign, to bring someone and take a shot because it does make a huge difference.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: And our next Techshow marketing track expert that we are very grateful to be welcoming back to Techshow by popular demand is Joy Hawkins. Joy Hawkins.

 

Joy Hawkins: Hi, my name is Joy Hawkins. I’m the owner and founder of Sterling Sky which is a marketing agency that does local SEO for all kinds of different small businesses including lawyers. My session at the ABA Techshow this year is going to be specifically about Google, how you can get more leads from Google, how you can rank better and just some general trends that we are seeing amongst various lawyers that we work with. So in particular, I’m first going to be talking about local services ads which are a new type of ad that launched with Google last year and made quite an impact in what we’re seeing with what performs and what works well for lawyers. So, we’re going to looking at, you know how, they impacted regular Google ads so the ads that you’re normally running on Google that you’re paying per click for, how they impacted Google my business listings which are the free listings that you have like in the organic section and just some general kind of observations that we’re seeing. The next thing I’ll be looking at is just kind of dispelling some myths when it comes to ranking on Google. What strategies work and what does not work, so kind of covering a few of those. Then, I’ll also be diving into some trends and patterns that we’re noticing  when it comes to reviews, so some interesting stuff that we’re seeing, things that you should be aware of as a business owner when it comes to tracking your reviews online. And then finally at the end, I’m going to be kind of wrapping up with some tips and strategies for you to use to better track your online marketing efforts. So, if you’re spending some time and effort trying to get your law firm ranked better on Google, how you can kind of track the results of that. So, I hope to see you guys at my session and look forward to any questions.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: So obviously Joy, the queen of local, so grateful to have her. Conrad, what stands out from you? I mean, she’s hammering the local, she’s hammering Google.

 

Conrad Saam: Yeah, so I think the most interesting piece of data and again, we’re recording this before we actually see the data. I believe what Joy is going to share and the results of this are surprising from what we’ve seen in the past with local service ads, is how and where local service ads, the presence of local service ads impacts click to rates on other segments of the SERP pages. So, where does local steal from is it PDC, is it the Map Pack or is it organic at the bottom and I won’t give it away here, but the previous studies that have been done on this, the results are very counter-intuitive.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Awesome! Thanks again to Joy and be sure to get your tickets to hear that full session live-ish. We’re going to go into a speed round for these next two, so up next is Clio’s George Psiharis.

 

George Psiharis: Hi there, my name is George Psiharis and I’ll be presenting next week at ABA Techshow on the topic of creating client-centered marketing. In my presentation, it’ll be my pleasure to walk everybody in the crowd through a few different key concepts–

 

00:30:05

 

–including understanding law for marketing KPIs, optimizing conversion rate through your funnel as it’s called in marketing through creating better client experiences  and iterating through client feedback loops. In particular, I’ll be diving into a few key insights over several years of research that I’ve conducted as part of Clio’s annual legal trends report  and I’ll be identifying what I think to be key points of your client journey are in which you can optimize and use marketing to create better conversion and overall client experiences. So, if that sounds interesting, I hope to see you at the session and I’m very much looking forward to next week.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Next up, we have Stephanie Everett from Lawyerist.

 

Stephanie Everett: Hey everybody, it’s Stephanie from Lawyerist and I’m so excited to be joining the ABA Techshow this year to talk about creating a marketing blueprint. So, how many lawyers out there are guilty of what we call random acts of marketing? Yeah, you can raise your hands, it’s okay. We know what you do. You see everything everybody else is doing and you think I need to be on that tool, I need to be on Twitter or how many people have joined Clubhouse, thinking, “Oh, that’s the next big thing and I need to be there.” You know, that’s what we do. We get ourselves kind of caught up and seeing what everybody else is doing and we forget and we waste some of our most valuable resources, right, our time and our money. And so, we can avoid that trap if we have a strategic marketing plan, one that’s tailored to our practice and the type of clients that we actually want to attract into our firm. And so, it starts with the basics, right? A solid foundation including mission vision values. Know these words aren’t just consultants speak, I’m going to show you in this session how these fundamental pieces of your practice and the foundation of what you’re going to build are really the starting places for our marketing strategy. Then, we’re going to quickly cover client personas, what are they and why they then build the next steps, right? And of course because it’s COVID, we’re going to talk about some COVID specific issues and how you might need to adjust your marketing messages during these uncertain times. So, I hope you’ll join me, it’s going to be a lot of fun.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Thanks again to everybody for contributing to this. Really looking forward to Techshow, really grateful for all of your participation and contributions. Conrad, you’re on the Techshow marketing track. No? What are you talking about?

 

Conrad Saam: And what may not surprise you Gyi, I’m talking about how marketing agencies lie to their clients and–

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: What?

 

Conrad Saam: It’s true! Maybe not all agencies, but what I’m really talking about is how does a law firm take control of their reporting so you don’t trust, you don’t have to  trust and rely on your agency to tell you how well they’re doing. Because Gyi, as I’ve gone through this world since 2006, I have yet to find an agency that doesn’t go out of its way to inflate how well they look to their clients. And so, what I want to do is I want to flip the narrative and I want attorneys specifically to have ownership and control of this very important data point that none of you have ever thought about. This is what we call the intake qualified  lead. An intake qualifi — so typically, an agency will say, “Hey we sent you 25 phone calls and 7 form fills and three chats.” and you’ll go back to the agency and you’ll say, ”Yes, and they’re all garbage” and the agency will come back to you and say, “They’re all garbage” and then you guys can fight about that. That has been the pattern that’s happened for years. What you should do instead is actually have a process to do an intake qualified lead which means when Bill who answers your front desk  answers the phone, a couple of things happen and we know where that phone call originated from. Was it Google ads, was it Google local, was it AVA, was it — whatever it may have been. Be in the process of doing that intake. We can determine whether or not that person was intake qualified and having a system in place where you control that information instead of listening to me tell you how amazing I am, is the key that aggressive and — this is where I go back to, it’s not easy, it’s hard to do this, but it is a key for aggressive law firms to actually grow their firm correctly using really kind of MBA level insight as opposed to listening to your agency tell you that like, “Hey, we counted the same phone call  from the same person 12 times and that’s 12 new leads. Merry Christmas.” Right? That’s the dynamic that has to change.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right and you know, I know you take the angle on holding agencies accountable which I think is valuable, but even if you don’t even have an agency, a lot of these same points actually are extremely valid for, you know, if you’re running your own marketing or if you’re in charge of the marketing at a law firm.

 

00:35:00

 

Conrad Saam: I would say especially if you’re running your own marketing because the likelihood that you have the experience to know what’s actually working and what’s not working is close to zero. No offense. I keep insulting the audience, sorry. Sorry audience, but get to a point where  you have where this is a math conversation and not and I think conversation.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Awesome! Looking forward to that one.

 

Conrad Saam: Gyi, I think  you have a nugget of awesomeness to share as well.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: I’m going to do some quick nuggets. I’m doing client relationship management workshop. I’m so big on CRM right now, I just, you know, this is one thing we’ve been talking about forever, but this idea that you have all of these — if you’ve been practicing for a while, you’ve got all these professional contacts and that you don’t do them anything with them. They just sit somewhere and there’s no nurturing, there’s no staying in touch, there’s no, you know, wishing them happy birthday, and so we’re going to talk about, you know, I’m going to try to this platform agnostic as I can. Some CRMs are a little bit better than others, we’ll talk about that, we’ll talk about building CRM, maps and automations and even beyond  just email, right? Because now, you can work in texts into your automation map and  that kind of stuff, but just the value of nurturing the relation, you know, you talk about, it’s funny because it’s like it’s one of those things that’s like really old, but you know, because CRM has been around for forever, but it hasn’t really been adopted and there seems to be an uptick in people paying attention to this because, and again, frankly it’s because it works so well. So, that’s one session. We’ll be on CRM and then I’m also talking on, I got the shiny object track one session, so I’ll be talking about marketing technology tool trends. So, if you want a sneak peek of the future as I see it and the stuff that’s hot even beyond practical, come to my  marketing technology dual trends session. I know you’ll be there for that one, Conrad.

 

Conrad Saam: I will be there. I am the shiny object.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: What do you think about CRM Conrad? So, I mean, you again as typical, you are much nicer than I am.

 

Conrad Saam: There’s some really horrible CRMs out there.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Mmm.

 

Conrad Saam: There’s some really great CRMs out there. My bias is that law firms really are handcuffed in evaluating with CRM to work with. I don’t think you fully understand the potential and again, here I go insulting the audience again. There’s so much more potential than you — than most of you are aware of and there’s so many more problems than most of you are aware of. The demos all look awesome and some of them don’t work well together. Some of them are insular, some of them have limited functionality, some of them are an absolute pain in the neck to work with. We have gone through three CRMs ourselves. We finally landed for us on HubSpot which we’re working with our clients on. There are some great legal specific. CRMs out there, there are some turbulence. This selecting what you work with is really important because as you know Gyi, getting in and out of these things is painful.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh yeah.

 

Conrad Saam: I’s really hard. The other thing is, this is a tool and it changes the way your firm operates and so don’t look at CRM  as like, “Oh, I’m going to buy whatever it may be” right and all of a sudden, we’re going to start sending birthday cards to our clients and the phone is going to start ringing more. Like these are tools that need to be  used and they have an impact on the way you actually operate the firm  and so, probably more of your effort in CRM needs to be on the people who use the product as opposed to the project itself.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Come to Techshow to learn more. Well, that brings us to the conclusion of another optimistic high energy episode of Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.

 

Conrad Saam: I think we need some like really happy music to end this with because this was — this was dark and grumpy. Maybe I’m just in a bad mood, but I don’t know.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: As always, thank you dear listeners for listening and subscribers for subscribing. If you haven’t subscribed, please do find us on Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher. Thank you so much and as always, if you have topic ideas, feedback, questions or are willing to leave us a review, we really do appreciate and oftentimes enjoy your feedback. Thank you so much. Until next time, Conrad  and Gyi, saying so long for Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.

 

[Music]

 

Outro: Thank you for listening to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. If you’d like more information about what you heard today, please visit legaltalknetwork.com. Subscribe via Apple podcasts and RSS. Follow Legal Talk Network on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram and/or download the free app from Legal Talk Network in Google Play and iTunes.

 

00:40:08

 

The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, it’s officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.

 

[Music]

 

<a href=”https://www.tech-synergy.com/podcast-transcription” target=”_blank”>Podcast transcription</a> by <a href=”https://www.tech-synergy.com” target=”_blank”>Tech-Synergy.com</a>

 

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