F.O.P.s and Fundamentals

Episode Notes

Transcript

Lunch Hour Legal Marketing

F.O.P.s and Fundamentals

11/14/2020

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Conrad, you’ve been on Facebook recently?

Conrad Saam:  A little bit, Gyi. It’s one of the things about Facebook, is that anyone can publish anything they want.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  That’s why it’s my go-to source for political information.

Conrad Saam:  Or for a great legal marketing insight.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but tell me about that.

Conrad Saam:  Well, I definitely wouldn’t go that far. Let me go back and kind of lay a little story for the listeners. Gyi and I have known each other for a very, very long time. He is someone that I refer our clients to, he refers his perspective clients to when we have a conflict. I’ve known his work as well as who he is. When he asked me to come on the pod, I was super, super excited. Partly because of the friendship and partly because he knows his stuff.

Anyway, I ran into Gyi on Facebook this week, after posting a post about a lawyer who approached me to look at their SEO problems. They’ve basically gone from summer between 700 and 800 session a day, down to about three. The lawyer told me that their agency told them that they basically just need to continue blogging, more content. So I asked them — well, I didn’t ask them. I showed them how many pages of content they have, which is somewhere between 800 and 900 pages if content. I was like, “What is the additional content going to be?” Anyway, I was exasperated about this, I get annoyed with the agency kind of voicing out this really, really poor advice that’s really just a cap out frankly.

I posted the Google Analytics shot of this firm’s traffic to Let’s Talk Legal Marketing, which is a Facebook group. I said, “Hey, the agency that these guys are working with just tells them that they need to blog more and they will get better.” The key for me was, there was 42 comments on this thread, 41 of them had no idea what they were talking about. They really basically said in a, what I would call an aggressively, obnoxious fashion that I didn’t know what I was talking about because these guys really should continue blogging, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Would you call it assertively ignorant?

Conrad Saam:  I would call it assertively, obnoxiously ignorant. The key here is, and you guys don’t need to understand how this works. But basically, you can take a Google Analytics search picture, overlay it with Google core updates and you can identify immediately when you have a massive drop in traffic. This is like the basic 101 of doing SEO, like absolutely bare bones basic. The only person who knew the answer to this right away was Gyi. Right?

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Well, that’s very nice if you. I think the moral of the story here is. Don’t get your political news or SEO for lawyers’ news from Facebook groups alone. Know your source.

Conrad Saam:  Because everyone’s an expert in politics and in SEO.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  What we got on tap today, Conrad?

Conrad Saam:  So today, we’re going back to by the numbers. That is one of the segments that you introduced; I love it so we’re going back to by the numbers. We’re going to do a quick recap of what you and I have decided to do with market that podcast. Then we have a special guest, Gyi. Would you like to intro our special guest?

Gyi Tsakalakis:  I would love to intro our special guest but I’m going to keep it a surprise.

Conrad Saam:  You’re going to make people listen? That is a cheap podcast hook, dude.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yup. I’ve been reading Podcast for Dummies.

Conrad Saam:  Yeah, leave them to something that’s going to be great, but just don’t open the curtain just yet.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Mr. Lockwood, hit it.

[Music]

Advertiser:  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.

Conrad Saam:  Welcome to lunch hour legal marketing. Before we get started, we wanted to say a special thanks to our new sponsor, Lawyaw. 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, and over and over again. Learn more at lawyaw.com.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Thanks also 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, let’s get to the numbers. All right, Gyi. We’re going to talk about a really important number that both of us have access to for all of our clients and many of you guys don’t even look at. That number is 91% and it represents, Gyi?

(00:05:01)

Gyi Tsakalakis:  The percentage of phone calls that are answered by our clients.

Conrad Saam:  So Gyi and I looked at all of our clients across the board, and there’s an interesting grouping of how this works. But basically, this means, on average, you guys miss

9% of the calls that come into your firm. Another way to think about that is, you could improve your marketing by 5% just by answering more phone calls, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Right. My hunch is that our number is actually high in terms of response because we do — I know you and out folks spend a lot of time educating and really laying that foundation of how important it is to have a rapid response. My hunch is for the folks that are listening at home if you’re tracking phone calls, that your response rate might even be lawyer. We actually know also from the Clio Legal Trends Report that that’s a big source of issue right there. If you know, if you’re struggling with answering the phone, you might check out an answering service, whether Alert Communications or you just search for a call answering services. There are lots out there, but speed is really, really important in terms of stopping that potential client search for the next lawyer.

Conrad Saam:  I mean, this is a great example of where you can use Math to make your practice imminently better. When we look at the distribution of where this people fell, where the firms feel, there is a whole cluster that was answering 97%, 98%, 99% of the calls and there were a bunch that were below 80, right? If you’re below 80% or 85% of your calls getting answered, you need to fix that problem.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Stop spending money.

Conrad Saam:  Stop spending money on people like us and fix that first.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  You’re pouring gasoline into a gas tank that has a hole in the bottom.

Conrad Saam:  So just stop doing that. I wasn’t sure where you’re going with your pouring. If you keep pouring gas usually goes onto the fire. That’s where the metaphor goes.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Well, obviously in the car.

Conrad Saam:  You’re mixing your metaphors, Gyi.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  You’re putting more gas in the car, but the car is not running out of gas. Yeah, terrible.

Conrad Saam:  And it’s on fire.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  It’s a tough day.

Conrad Saam:  Okay.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  It is a tough day.

Conrad Saam:  But that is really, really important. Hey Gyi, where can I find this number for my own firm?

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Well, if you’re working with an agency, you should be asking them, but if you’re using — I like CallRail. CallRail has that — I think most of the call answering services will report on call answers, missed calls. I think to me, I like the technological solution. I like CallRail, Invoca, there are couple other call tracking services I might take a look at.

Conrad Saam:  So get just dialed in, and I’ll give you another thing, and this is important. Just because you have an answering service, it doesn’t mean they’re answering the phone.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Right. It’s good to have an independent check on that, for sure.

Conrad Saam:  Check that, because —

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Shop your firm.

Conrad Saam:  Shop your firm and be very, very careful with that, because it can be very, very valuable. But if they’re missing that one part, which is their only job, that can be a problem, so purchase that carefully.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Right. So if you’re listening, please go review us, good, bad or otherwise, preferably on Apple Podcast. Otherwise, you can tweet at us #lhlm, but let us know. We got to know, that’s the only way we get better and that’s the only way we can look at ourselves in the mirror and feel good about ourselves.

Conrad Saam:  While we’re talking about marketing ourselves, which we were just marketing the podcast by asking for a review, which by the way, you should all be doing for your law firm. You know this but you need to be told again, and again because it’s an awkward thing to do. We’re going to go back to talking about marketing that podcast.

[Music]

So we’re going to do kind of marketer-to-marketer, marketer versus marketer for marketing this marketing podcast.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Marketing the marketing marketing?

Conrad Saam:  We’re going to market the market market. So Gyi, can you talk about what we’re going to do to share how we market the podcast and how that may actually apply to a law firm.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Sure. Folks that’s been listening, we went through the rebranding kind of concept and decided that we’re going to do this contest. Conrad and I are going to compete to try to drive more subscribers, more listeners to the podcast. That’s a metric that we would use to measure the effectiveness of the podcast. In the context of your firm or if you have your own podcast, this would be extremely, contextually relevant for you. But in the context of a law firm that’s trying to market themselves online, it all starts with identifying those key performance business metrics. If it’s going to be a target cost per client, if it’s going to be your return on investment or return add spend for a campaign, a target cost per qualified lead. That’s really the starting point and figuring out the business metrics behind that. How much can you spend to get a new client essentially?

(00:10:03)

Conrad Saam:  Yeah. Our new client is basically someone listening. We’re working within the construct of what we can actually track, so this becomes important. I would say — Gyi, do you have any clients who don’t — who run a lot of advertising without really good tracking.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  We have someone that I wish that they would improve it, but yeah, to Conrad’s point, it’s really, really important that you have that tracking infrastructure in place, you have attribution in place or else, back to my awesome example of pouring gas into a holly gas tank. You’re not going to be able to really know how effective your dollars are spent and what it’s producing for you in terms of the business metric. This is the issue and back to that healthy skepticism that Conrad has in calling out other agencies and other marketing people. You better ask these questions and set those success metrics, business success metrics up in advance before you start spending money, or else you’re going to be chasing your tail.

Conrad Saam:  And you also need to know the limitations of your conversion tracking, right? The legal industry as a whole is getting better to being able to track a client back to its specific marketing tactic. In many cases, it’s many marketing tactics because it’s a multitype situation. I would encourage you as firms to go as far down that path as you possible can. And if it means that you spend a bunch of time with Excel spreadsheets that you pulled out of needles, and try to match those up to your CallRail data, take the time to do that. Because many of you are still burning half of your money. If you don’t know which half you’re burning, you’re powerless, right? We’re at a point where we can answer some of these questions.

For us, we’re going to be running completely blind test. Gyi is going to do bunch of things by marketing channel and creative. I’m going to do bunch of things by marketing channel and creative. One of the benefits of doing that is we’re going to come up with very, very different way. Hopefully, we’ll come up with very, very different ways to market the podcast. The value in doing things that are very, very different, both in terms of the channels that you utilize, as well as the creative that you put in those channels is, you can have a matrix of marketing creative, marketing channel and find out if we try four or five different things on both of those axis, you have 25 different combinations where you can cherry pick the ones that are working the best and iterate from there. As opposed to doing things that are fundamentally similar or only doing one thing at a time, which is crazy. Because then you’re not learning anything, you’re just doing a thing.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Right. And we’ll take you through, we’ll walk you through what we do and what the results are as the contest develops. But just to give a sense for those that are already starting to think how about they might implement some of the stuff at their own firm. It’s going to be things like using UTM parameters to track clicks from Facebook, from paid ads, from email signatures. Just as one example. Again, by using those UTM parameters online, you can test things down to the ad copy, the creative imagery that you’re using. And of course, we will also be tagging it from attribution standpoint with our names, so that we know that X campaign generated, Gyi did this awesome stuff and Conrad did this another awesome stuff.

Conrad Saam:  Right. Conrad found his face.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yeah, right.

Conrad Saam:  While we’re talking about competition, we ended the last podcast with a preview to an argument that we need to have. The argument was, should a law firm’s intake ask, “How did you find us?” I have hated this question for a very, very long time and Gyi wants to defend it. The reason I hate this is very simple and it’s two-fold. One, it’s massively inaccurate. It usually sounds something like the Internet. If you rely on Bill, your front desk guy to fill in a square somewhere that says, “The Internet.” Gyi just explained to you in terms of testing and understanding, and have a UTM code, you lose all of that because you think the answer is the internet.

The other reason I hate it is it’s super invasive. I just walked in on my spouse with the pool boy and I call a divorce lawyer, and the first thing that they asked me is, “Were you on Avo when you found us? Was that an ad on Avo? Whose profile –” Like, don’t have that conversation. It’s obnoxious. And I want to go back, and there is one question. Let me caveat, we’ll come back to the one question that I do think you should ask. But Gyi, why do you think you should continue to ask that very obnoxious, super inaccurate question?

Gyi Tsakalakis:  That was very loaded. We’re actually not going to fight about this as much as you might have hoped. My thing is, yeah, it is completely unreliable. And when you ask, it makes a big difference, but if you do it the right time, and you don’t rely in it, it’s an addition to your attribution systems, it’s very valuable. Because as you mentioned, Conrad, there are limitations with your attribution, so I think a lot of businesses, advertisers and lawyers get into this attribution into a box.

(00:15:08)

Let me give you the most obvious example. Someone in someone’s family dealing with some legal issue, they do a search, they see your ad, they search your name, they see a TV ad, there’s some offline. Then they refer that to the person in their family. And it comes in and your attribution is totally broken. There is no attribution because they literally just came in, or maybe they end up searching your name and clicked your add, and you’re giving credit to your paid search ad, when really it was your TV creative.

By asking the question, you can fill in some of those gaps. All things you said I think are legit, so I’m not a don’t do attribution, just ask. I’m certainly, the timing and the art, and the when, and the how you ask the question is really important. But at the end of the day, I think it’s still useful to have it on your intake form.

Conrad Saam:  Before we go to break, I want to make one point. Ask about referrals, did someone refer you to us? Because that’s something that know amount of marketing awesomeness can capture, and it’s super important and you should put a bottle of wine in the mail to whomever just sent you that referral. With that, we’re going to take a break.

[Music]

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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/lunchhour.

[Music]

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Welcome back, and now I am very excited and honored to welcome a great friend, friend of the podcast, friend to Conrad and I, Jared Correia. Jared, welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.

Jared Correia:  Wow! Thank you. I don’t know what I could do with that introduction. Very kind of you. I’m glad to be here.

Conrad Saam:  This is very relaxing.

Jared Correia:  I know. I’m in a very romantic mood right now.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  We haven’t had a guest, a friend. We’re not even calling you a guest, we’re your friends.

Conrad Saam:  He’s not a guest. No. I think we have to go with friend of the pod, right?

Jared Correia:  Friend of the pod, I like that.

Conrad Saam:  You’re a FOP, because we want you to come back.

Jared Correia:  I’ll come back. You played me that Barry White intro, which I wasn’t expecting. I’ll come on the pod again, definitely.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  So Jared, you’re here to talk about hats.

Jared Correia:  Yes. I have a large hat collection. Can we talk about that?

Gyi Tsakalakis:  We will, but also, what’s going on in your world of legal tech.

Jared Correia:  Right. Yes. Happy to talk about any and all hats, any and all legal tech.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  And I recently had the honor of being a FOP on your podcast.

Jared Correia:  A long time FOP of the podcast.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Huge FOP.

Conrad Saam:  Huge Fopper.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Of Legal Tool Kit, which is being retooled.

Jared Correia:  Yes, yes, as we speak.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  We’ve been talking about retooling. Well, we call it rebranding over here.

Jared Correia:  Oh, that’s better. I should call it that too.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  No, I think retool for you for Tool Kit.

Conrad Saam:  Wow, I feel like — I feel like backhanded right there.

Jared Correia:  Yeah. That’s all right, though. I’m already over it. Don’t worry.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Tell us about Legal Tool Kit for the five people who don’t know about it.

Jared Correia:  The five, yeah. My mom isn’t our listener. So Legal Took Kit is a show on Legal Talk Network, much like this show on Legal Talk Network. I simply have a little bid different focus. We’ve got — talk about like practice management generally. We cover a lot of ground, and I’ve actually been doing the show for almost 15 years, believe it or not.

Conrad Saam:  Fifteen years? It’s dedication.

Jared Correia:  It is dedication. Yeah, I didn’t give up on the podcast format yet, still going strong.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  That’s a daily show. You do that every day, right?

Jared Correia:  Twice a day.

Conrad Saam:  Twice a day.

Jared Correia:  That’s a lot of effort frankly. There’s a lot of episodes. I’m running out of guest friends. I’m running out of FOPs.

Conrad Saam:  You see what just happened, he said, “I’m running out of guest and you were the last person on the — you were the last on the list, Gyi.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Oh, I kne that.

Jared Correia:  Now I’m fresh out, like I don’t know where to go from here.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  I knew that. It took 15 years.

Jared Correia:  Right. But I will tell you, like we’re talking a new territory. I’m not going to talk about legal tech and legal process management. I’m going to talk about some random stuff too.

(00:20:02)

I’m talking about Tom Petty on my late podcast. I can talk about music and I talk about popular culture. It’s going to be a whole different direction. So, I hope people listen to —

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yeah, you have some games, some games on there. We’re going to try to —

Jared Correia:  Games. Yes, I played a game with you last time. I feel like revenge might be coming my way shortly, but I totally deserve it.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  With you here, we figured we would do a game as well. You’re such a big games person.

Jared Correia:  I love games.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Huge games guy.

Jared Correia:  Yes.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  One of the other things that you — you do a lot of education of lawyers for lawyers, of them, for them, by them, with them. And we came a topic that we wanted to talk today is I received a — because I’m one of your webinar mailing list, which I encourage people to check out. You put a lot of good stuff. And it was a webinar. I don’t know if you actually have — because I’ve given my dates crossed here. Who knows when.

Jared Correia:  It’s next week.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  I can’t tell what date — it’s next week? Thank you. I don’t know what day it is. You’re talking digital client journeys and I thought maybe we give a little teaser of what that’s all about.

Jared Correia:  Yeah. Digital client journeys which I know you gentlemen know about very well is what do you do when a new lead comes into your law firm? Like most lawyers fall flat on their face into a pile of mud. It’s very ugly. And they do a bad job converting leads, right? But if you actually cuddle that lead a little bit, “Hey! They might actually become a client or more people might become clients than you’re getting right now.”

So, when we’re talking about a client journey, that essentially means like how does someone travel from a lead to a client and there’s tons of tools out there that can help you to manage that and tons of processes you could implement, but the problem that most lawyers have is they start it with like nothing as I’m sure you know.

Conrad Saam:  And I think a lot of the time, Jared, we tend to substitute tools with like, “Okay, I’ve now got this thing and it will do it for me.” And it’s that it never works that way because you’re dealing with people, right? It would be fine if you are building slippers or Coca-Cola, but when you’re actually dealing with people, it doesn’t work that way, right?

Jared Correia:  Right. No, I think that’s a good point. Like I think on my experience and I’ve consulted with a bunch of lawyers at this point is that, they want like these problem solving tools that are going to fix everything for them, right? So, they’re like, “Hey! I want this thing to fix everything.” And it never works that way because they need to put some kind of effort into it. Like there’s no technology that you can use without thinking about it, right? If you want to leverage it effectively, you actually have to do a little bit of work on the front end. Now, the idea is that you’re going to have to do less work on the back end, but there’s no point in time where you’re going to get into a legal technology especially because legal tech is less mature than other sectors of technology and just have something be set and then forget it. And I think lawyers like worry heavily about productivity and they know if they spend time on a new technology tool, they’re going to have a little productivity dip before they get the bump back and that’s the biggest challenge for them because they’re so hyperfocused on revenue all the time. But you’re right, like you got to work at this a little bit.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yeah, and I would even add one more thing to that. I think the part of that whole thinking, that whole mindset about you do this stuff for productivity, like productivity is like a side benefit, but if you don’t do it for the clients, right? If you don’t do it to make things better for your potential clients and you’re just focused on your productivity, you run into these things where you’ve got this kafkaesque.

Jared Correia:  Oh, wow! Wow!

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yes, I said it. I put it out there.

Jared Correia:  I did not know we’re going to be talking about kafkaesque. I am not prepared.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  A kafkaesque digital client journey where they’re stuck in an infinite loop of automations and can’t get out and can’t talk to anybody and can’t — I think that’s part of, for me, what I see is that it’s a mindset shift to say, “Look, these tools are here to support providing better service to the client to help them through their journey, but where you need to step in and where you’re designing, it’s got to be with them in mind or else you really create a monster.

Jared Correia:  Right. There’s that chapter in the trial about like online intake which was really interesting. Sorry, Conrad.

Conrad Saam:  No, no. So, let me walk right into that. We’ve been talking to lawyers dealing with COVID, trying to do — last episode, Gyi and I talked about Zoom intakes and stuff like that. One of the complaints I’m getting from lawyers right now is the established rainmaker in the firm who is so accustomed to closing the deal in person because she is so amazingly enigmatic and interesting. And some clients want that in person, right? And so, how do you feel sometimes where we always apply a digital lens to how we are handling intake when for some clients or for some attorneys, it’s actually less effective, right?

Jared Correia:  No, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think attorneys think it’s like an all or nothing proposition, right?

(00:25:01)

Conrad Saam:  Right.

Jared Correia:  And I get this a lot from lawyers. They’re like, “Okay. I’m using technology and I’ve lost face to face now which is how I run my business.” But you can do two things at once, right?

Conrad Saam:  Right.

Jared Correia:  And the question is like, “When do you engage that personal interaction?” So, like that attorney who’s a really good rainmaker, she’s not going to want to pick up the phone for like everybody who calls into the law firm, right?

Conrad Saam:  Right.

Jared Correia:  You can’t be like the airline pilot and also going back and handing out the peanuts, right? Somebody has got to be able to do that intake component and get the right people in front of that lawyer or send that lawyer to the right events, right? And depending on how large your firm is. You may have a marketing coordinator that could help you with that. You may have admin people that could help you with that, but you could also use technology. So, the idea is talk to the right people so that you can bring your effervescent personality to closing people who are more likely to close. So, I think you get people to a point where they have that personal touch point, but you do both. You use technology to shepherd them to that point so that you’re not talking to everybody wasting your time and you’re having conversations with the right people, frankly. Don’t waste your ammo.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Right. And speaking of effervescent personalities, I know that you are a tech founder in the chatbot space and I think this is one of those areas where to your point — and I’ll let you talk about it, but kind of set it up for you is chatbots can do some heavy lifting on the front end, right? So, some basic information collection start routing you on a path, identify that you’re going to be a good client, but talk to us about kind of how you move from someone that lands on your website, wants to engage with the chatbot to the effervescent personality part.

Jared Correia:  When you’re talking about effervescent personalities, I thought you were referring to Conrad.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  I was talking about you, but I —

Jared Correia:  That set me back a bit, but thank you. Yeah. So, in terms of chatbots, we have a software company that sells chatbots to law firms. It’s called, “Gideon”, and we’re like — over the last couple of years, we’ve looked into this issue quite a bit. So, I think there’s a couple things that you want to do. One is engagement and two is getting people to a next step. And this is where attorneys fall down a lot because I think they assume that legal consumers know more about what lawyers do than they actually know. Like by and large, legal consumers know very little about what lawyers do. And so, there’s got to be some kind of education process.

So, when somebody is coming to you as a lead, they want to know what do you do, can you help me, and what do I do next because I’m clueless as to all of these things. Like when I buy a subscription to Disney Plus, I know I’m paying like seven bucks a month and I’m getting Disney’s entire content library, right? When I go to hire a lawyer, I have no clue what I’m getting. So, the way you use a chatbot is you essentially build like a script out of common questions the clients have. They answer those questions and then you tag each of the answers, right? So, what you do is you create these labels, you aggregate those labels into classifications, and then you are looking for people to provide the right responses to get them to a person or to a meeting.

So, for example, if you’re like an estate planning attorney, you might want to know whether somebody owns their own home. You may want to know whether or not they’re married. You may want to know whether or not they have kids. You may want to know what their income level is. If you find that out ahead of time and you don’t have a conversation with everybody, you can have a conversation with the 20% of people that you should be having conversations with. And so, you can get a notification that says, “Hey! You’ve got a good lead in this chatbot right now. So, now it’s on you to follow up.” And we’ve also actually put in automatic calendaring tool. So, somebody who hits the right criteria, they can just schedule a meeting with an attorney.

And so, Conrad was talking about the personal touch stuff before. Exactly. So, get those initial consultations scheduled with only the people who are more likely to sign up as a client and use those conversations to get more conversion. So, that’s kind of my position on how this all works or should work.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  No, I love that. The other side of that coin is that, it’s also more efficient for the client, right? So, the client doesn’t have to go back and forth with you on email. The client — a lot of people too it’s just their preference is to engage with something that they could even text, right? So, whether it’s a chatbot or a text to chat, they don’t want to get on the phone if they can avoid it. Or, to put it your way, they want to get on the phone with the right person at the right time. And so, for them, even the chatbot is a more — it’s a better experience for them, can be a better experience for them too. So, it’s one of those things that works hand in hand.

Jared Correia:  Especially for younger clients who prefer messaging. So, that’s totally true.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Awesome! Well, Jared, thanks for sharing that. And now, we need to take a quick break before we get into our super awesome game segment.

[Music]

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(00:30:03)

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Gyi Tsakalakis:  And now, it’s time for that moment we’ve all been waiting for. Our game segment, Becoming the Archetype.

[Music]

So, we’re not talking about the post-grunge Christian rock band from the early aughts here, which I had to learn about. We’re talking brand archetypes specifically the 12 brand archetypes. I believe that psychologist, Carl Jung, but essentially it’s a profile or, lack of a better word, an archetype that appeals to the listener through a certain profile. And so, we got 12 of them. We’ve divvied them up. Our producers divvied them up. And so, we don’t know which of us has which and we’ve each crafted a couple lawyer commercials like little elevator pitches. I don’t know if mine is going to be 30 seconds or not. Maybe these guys went longer than I did. And then, the other two of us are going to guess which archetype.

So, the goal here for you as a listener like, “Why the heck are they doing this?”, is to be thinking about archetypes in general. So, go google archetypes, brand archetypes, and see which ones resonate with you. And then, to give you some examples of how that exercise might play out taking what we know about archetypes and trying to apply it to an actual lawyer commercial. So, good, bad, and ugly, here we go. I’m going to turn it over to Conrad. If you’re following along on Twitter, please do #lhlm to let us know what kind of brand archetypes you’re into and if you get happen to be listening in real time and want to tweet your answers like we’d love for you to play along. Conrad, lead us up.

Conrad Saam:  I’ll say like the key here is most of you guys — Gyi and I have talked about this in different facets, but most of you guys and women are so engaged in convincing people that you’re a lawyer, that you’re missing the who behind that, and brand archetypes are a great guide to thinking beyond the fact that I have leather-bound books, JD, maybe some scales of justice with a blindfold on, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis:  You just read my commercial.

Conrad Saam:  Sorry about that. But this is the whole point of this and it’s a great exercise to think about if your law firm were a brand, would you be Harley Davidson or would you be IBM? Would you be coke or would you be Red Bull, right? And so, thinking about your positioning and messaging outside of, “I have a law degree. It’s super, super important.”

So, with no further ado, I’m going to go into Archetype No. 1 and you can guess what this might be. So, what I would do is go google brand archetypes and press pause. Go google brand archetypes because you probably don’t know what they are. And then, listen to the next four minutes of Conrad and Gyi doing a radio commercials and understand what that looks like.

You’ve already heard of Correia and Tsakalakis because our reputation precedes us. We’ve recovered more money than the rest of Michigan’s PI lawyers combined. We’re 6’7”, 210 pounds of lien lawyer muscle backed by 198 years of combined experience. Harvard educated? Check. Million dollar verdicts? We’ve had plenty. We don’t settle, we fight for even more money than you actually deserve. Why hire DeVito when you can go with Arnold? Metallica instead of Kenny G. The Checkers Club geek when you could have not just a quarterback, but the entire team. At Correia and Tsakalakis, you get the best and that’s the least you deserve.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  That was great.

Jared Correia:  Damn! That was really good.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Jared, which brand archetype do you think it is?

Jared Correia:  I was going to go with homicidal maniac, but —

Gyi Tsakalakis:  That’s right.

Jared Correia:  This is tough. I’m going to do The Regular Guy.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  And I’m going to choose The Hero.

Conrad Saam:  It is The Hero.

Jared Correia:  Damn! That’s my second guess.

Conrad Saam:  And the key here — and this is the hard thing. And I chose PI with The Hero specifically because everyone in PI tries to be the hero. You all talk about your combined years of experience, the amount of money you’ve recovered, you all have this marketing-focused pissing contest with each other about who’s bigger and better, and you’re missing — and so, you all have the same exact message in the market. We work really hard with some of our clients to back off of this.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  And I think that’s also the point here, is that if everybody is speaking through the same archetype, you’re not going to stand out as well. Also, I think another misalignment is that, if that’s not you, then you might rethink your archetype, right?

Jared Correia:  Right.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  All right. Jared, you’re up.

(00:35:00)

Start with your first jingle.

Jared Correia:  Conrad was so good.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  He really was. I’m a failure too, so no worries.

Jared Correia:  It’s really tough to follow that. All right. I got two, one I like and one I don’t like. So, I’m going to go with the one I like better first. All right, ready?

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yup.

Jared Correia:  I’m dirk the hammer steel and I’m the criminal attorney you need. Guess what? The pigs hate me too. Why? Because I get more guys off than Jenna Jameson. When you need a lawyer and your ass is on the line, forget Saul. Call me. I know the criminal justice system from the inside. I understand that Shawshank doesn’t always get a redemption. Call today. Just dial thunder on your keypad.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  So, I know this one because this is actually probably like who you are as the archetype as well in real life.

Jared Correia:  Me?

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yeah.

Jared Correia:  Oh, wow! Okay.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  And at first, I was thinking The Lover, but it’s not The Lover.

Jared Correia:  Well, thank you.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  I don’t think Jenna Jameson —

Conrad Saam:  Just because he said Jenna Jameson, it doesn’t go with Lover.

Jared Correia:  Dated porn star reference so you know —

Conrad Saam:  You are using a very, very liberal use of the word love.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  The thoughts and views of this podcast are not Legal Talk Networks.

Jared Correia:  Can we put Jenna Jameson in the write up?

Conrad Saam:  I think we need to.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  I’m not getting involved in this conversation, but I will say that I’m choosing The Jester archetype. Don’t say it, Jared. Conrad, who do you like?

Conrad Saam:  I’m going with Jester as well. And by the way, this is a great archetype because it is very, very anti-typical lawyer messaging.

Jared Correia:  Better Call Saul.

Conrad Saam:  Better Call Saul. Anyone heard of the Texas Law Hawk? He is the jester in spades.

Jared Correia:  Oh, I thought he was the hero. Just kidding.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Okay.

Conrad Saam:  He’s the hero to like 12-year-old boys, I think, maybe.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  All right. Now, I’m really going because mine are not nearly as good or creative as you guys are, but I’ll flip it straightforward.

Jared Correia:  He’s frantically rewriting.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  No, I’m not even — I’m just going to do it. It’s (00:36:58). Imagine a transformative legal service experience. We’re not only are your legal need served, but your life is forever changed through innovation, experience, and knowledge. We help our clients design the future of their dreams. Come experience an entirely new way of working with your lawyer. All right, guesses.

Jared Correia:  Conrad, you want to go first or do you want me to go first?

Conrad Saam:  Well, I was going to go Caregiver, but it’s kind of also The Innocent especially because like I felt like I wanted to cuddle up to Gyi with the tone of his voice.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  I probably shouldn’t have used that.

Conrad Saam:  I always feel that way.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  I probably shouldn’t have used that tone of voice, but whatever.

Jared Correia:  Well, it’s very (00:37:40).

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yeah, we’re not re-recording that one. It was kind of nice.

Jared Correia:  I’m going to go with The Magician because that sounded to me like a little Disney Imagineering type of pitch.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  All right. What do you got, Conrad?

Conrad Saam:  I’m going with The Innocent. So, safety, looking to the future.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  It was intended to be The Magician.

Jared Correia:  Yes!

Conrad Saam:  Okay.

Jared Correia:  Yes, back on the board.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Who’s keeping the score by the way?

Jared Correia:  No one?

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Hopefully, Adam is. All right. Conrad, your turn.

Conrad Saam:  They’re out to get you. Greedy insurance industry lawyers protecting their profit at your cost. It’s a money game for them and the game of life for you. Big corporate lawyers from the insurance industry know every dirty trick in the book because that’s how they maximize their profit. At (00:38:21), we used to be those dirty underhanded lawyers screwing our own clients every day until we couldn’t live with ourselves anymore. Bring a gun to the insurance industry, knife fight with lawyers who exploit every loophole to make you whole.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Interesting one. Jared, thoughts?

Jared Correia:  Damn, Conrad. You are so good at this stuff, like I feel like you need a second career in voice over work.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  I agree.

Conrad Saam:  Is this voice over or? Yeah.

Jared Correia:  You could voice over every law firm in the world. I would buy their services.

Conrad Saam:  Wow! A product service extension, bad voice overs from Conrad.

Jared Correia:  There you go. There you go. I got a guess here and I think it’s The Rebel and I’ll let Gyi go.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  So, I had it down to two. It was either The Rebel or The Every Man. I’m guessing Every Man.

Conrad Saam:  That was Rebel.

Jared Correia:  Rebel. I’m on fire.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Nice job.

Conrad Saam:  You are on fire. I think you win. So, that’s actually the brand archetype that we fill in for my agency. Actually, we’re going to redesign right now to lien closer to The Rebel. You’ll remember at the very beginning of this show, we talked about some horrible internet marketing people and that kind of goes right into my brand archetype of being kind of The Rebel and pointing out stuff where people are getting screwed by their agencies.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  You are The Rebel.

Conrad Saam:  A little bit.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Break the rules. Break the rules. All right, Jared, your second one.

Jared Correia:  All right. This one is not as good. All right, ready?

Conrad Saam:  Well, you can’t start. That’s terrible marketing. Let me re-intro you.

Jared Correia:  This is not from my business.

Conrad Saam:  This is Jared’s best.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Jared can’t help, but do the jester toys.

Jared Correia:  Yeah, I know. I know. It’s actually the worse, but I’m going to — yeah, I think I’m out of my element. So, you guys can be the judge. I’m even going to do a female lawyer, so ready?

(00:40:02)

I’m the mother of invention. My name is Diana Prince and I’m here to help you turn your best ideas into protected intellectual property. You’ve carefully brought forth the means to change the world for the better and I’ll enrapture that notion with the cuddling it needs. Ideas are fragile. They require molding. I hope you navigate the pathway to protecting what you built and joy will spark around you.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Very good. Conrad, what do you like?

Conrad Saam:  I’m trying to decide whether or not I’m being impacted by both the mellifluent tone of Jared’s voice and the former Jenna Jameson reference and I’m going to go with The Lover.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Okay. I am going to go — I had it down to two. I had it down to The Creator and The Caregiver, but I’m going with The Caregiver.

Jared Correia:  The Lover.

Conrad Saam:  The Lover!

Jared Correia:  That’s the best I could do.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  That was good.

Jared Correia:  Not super smooth.

Conrad Saam:  That was Jared giving you the lover voice. That was his lover voice.

Jared Correia:  That’s right. That’s right.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  That’s how you knew. That’s how you knew it. All right, my turn and last one. Our clients rely on us to bring order to the chaos. They bestow us with a sacred trust to lead them to resolution. With us at the helm, they sleep soundly knowing that they are in solid hands with best in class security and a reputation as the preeminent leaders in our field. We deliver prosperity and stability in an uncertain world. And by the way, I think this is my archetype in real life, but go ahead.

Jared Correia:  Yeah.

Conrad Saam:  This is The Ruler. This is control and order and you are in good — this is

the all state version. Well, the all state is kind of Caregiver. This is The Ruler, right? You’re in control and you don’t have things to worry about anymore.

Jared Correia:  I’m going in a different direction.

Conrad Saam:  Really?

Jared Correia:  Gyi’s love for documentaries about gurus. I’m going to say this is The Sage.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Well, I could see that, but it was actually Conrad nailed it. It was The Ruler.

Jared Correia:  I’m thinking too much about that one.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Actually, I’d maybe identify it more as The Sage, but in any event. Well, that was a lot of fun. Tallying up the votes, nobody wins.

Jared Correia:  Everyone loses.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Except for our listeners.

Conrad Saam:  Wait. Are we still talking about the game or last night’s election?

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Oh, too soon.

Conrad Saam:  It’s not last night for our listeners by the way.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  It’s literally too soon because we’re recording this the morning after. So, anyway, that was too soon. We may have to edit that out. Well, that was a lot of fun. Jared, thank you again so much for your effervescent personality and deep knowledge, and just.

Jared Correia:  Yes, just. Also, just.

Conrad Saam:  And mirth.

Jared Correia:  And lots of mirths.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  Yeah, so much mirth. Mirth should be its own archetype.

Jared Correia:  Yes, thank you guys. I appreciate it. That sounds like a backhanded compliment, but I’m taking it well.

Gyi Tsakalakis:  That was a forehand. Well, thanks again to Jared and thank you listeners. We really appreciate you indulging us through that fun little exercise. As always, if you just stumbled on Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, please do hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or where else you might be casting your pods. Thanks again. Until next time. Conrad, Gyi, and Jared are out.

[Music]

Advertiser:  Thank you for listening to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. If you would like more information about what you heard today, please visit legaltalknetwork.com. Subscribe via Apple Podcast 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.

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, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, or subsidiaries, none of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.

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