After leading marketing efforts for Avvo, Conrad Saam left and founded Mockingbird Marketing, an online marketing agency...
Gyi Tsakalakis founded AttorneySync because lawyers deserve better from their marketing people. As a non-practicing lawyer, Gyi...
Published: | February 23, 2022 |
Podcast: | Lunch Hour Legal Marketing |
Category: | Legal Entertainment , Marketing for Law Firms |
The Super Bowl isn’t just about football and bean dip, it’s about the ads! Join Conrad and Gyi as they explore an increasing trend in the legal industry – ads during The Big Game.
But first, the guys challenge Kevin O’Keefe’s latest take on Advertising vs. Business Development. How do we distinguish between the two, which is better? Is there room for both reputation and relationship building? And what about old fashioned marketing and advertising?
But on to lawyer Super Bowl ads. The trend started with an absolutely “batsh*t crazy” 2014 ad by personal injury attorney Jamie Casino; a spot still getting views on YouTube. This year, we saw more law service ads airing in regional markets during the game. The lads highlight their favorites (and check out Friend-of-the-Podcast Joe Patrice’s own list).
How do these PR stunts, not necessarily a Super Bowl ad, fit your practice? Do you need a gimmick? And how would you track your results?
And of course, The News: Carolyn Elefant releases her third version of “Solo By Choice” and it’s worth your time. Bob and Ben Ambrogi launched their LawNext Directory. And don’t forget the upcoming ABA TechShow and your chance to hang out with Conrad and Gyi.
Special thanks to our sponsors Alert Communications, LawYaw,Posh Virtual Receptionists, and Clio.
“Solo By Choice,” by Carolyn Elefant, third edition
LawNext Directory by Bob and Ben Ambrogi
“Advertising vs. Business Development” By Kevin O’Keefe
Super Bowl Legal Ads:
“Super Bowl Brings Out Best In Lawyer Ads,” By Joe Patrice, Above the Law
Jamie Casino’s first “batsh*t crazy” personal injury legal ad, 2014
“The Best and Worst of Super Bowl Commercials,” NPR
“How lawyers’ TV ads became a billion-dollar industry,” CBS News
Conrad Saam: Before we get started today, we want to thank our sponsors. Clio Alert Communications, LawYaw, and Posh Virtual Receptionists.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Conrad, did you watch the Super Bowl?
Conrad Saam: I at the risk of alienating all of our viewers in the first 10 seconds, I did not watch the Super Bowl. I was actually doing my ski patrol work during the Super Bowl and there was no one on the slopes. Nothing happened, because everyone was — everyone like you I suspect was watching Super Bowl.
Gyi Tsakalakis: A much more nobler undertaking than the rest of us who are watching the Super Bowl, and I have to say that as a painfully long Detroit Lions fan, it was nice to see Matthew Stafford win the Super Bowl. Congratulations to Matthew Stafford. And as we’ll talk about today, some interesting Super Bowl commercials.
Conrad Saam: Interesting Super Bowl commercials coming out of the legal industry. First, brought to you by Jamie Casino back in 2016 or ’14, I think. 2014 was Jamie Casino’s first-ever is legal Super Bowl ad. But there are a lot this year and we’ve got a rundown on then. Later on, Gi and I are going to pick them apart and talk about our favorite legal Super Bowl ads. Before that, I want talk about the news. Really interesting friends of ours in the news and we’re going to go into a segment discussing the difference and importance between advertising versus business development as brought to you by a post from Kevin O’Keefe.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Mr. Lockwood, hit the money.
[Music]
Mr. Lockwood: 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]
Conrad Saam: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, everyone. We’ve got a great show today, but first, let’s hit the news.
[Music]
Hey Gyi, we have got two of our very close friends long-standing legal marketing pioneers in the news today, Carolyn Elefant yesterday unwrapped her third version of Solo by Choice which both of us are quoted in, which is quite cool. But if you are unfamiliar with Carolyn Elefant, she is — I call her the godmother of the solo practitioner. She has probably done more to help solo practitioners get started and be successful than anyone else I know. Her book Solo by Choice, I’ve gifted this 80 times, probably. (00:02:41) to people starting out their law firms or thinking about starting out their law firms or who have started their law firms and struggled. The third version of Solo by Choice came out two days ago, and I would thoroughly recommend reading it, not just because Gyi and I are mentioned, but because she’s fantastic.
Bob Ambrogi also, Gyi, is in the news. Bob had a huge announcement last night. What was his announcement?
Gyi Tsakalakis: Bob and Ben Ambrogi have launched Law Next Directory which you know, this has been an undertaking that others have tried much less successfully, I think than Bob and Ben will do. But basically, it’s going to be an aggregation of all — everything legal tech that you’d ever want to know. So, if you’re a lawyer, and you’re shopping for legal tech, head over to the Law Next Directory. You can just search for Law Next Directory if you know how to use the big Google machine.
Conrad Saam: All right. Now, TECHSHOW is coming up. We’ve mentioned TECHSHOW a couple times. Gyi, you were doing a session on 60 tech tips in 60 minutes, right? That’s on Saturday, is that right?
Gyi Tsakalakis: That’s right. Come to TECHSHOW in Chicago. We’ll be inside so, it’ll not be freezing out and come learn and come meet folks. It’s a great opportunity.
Conrad Saam: And if you were there, and you want to ask a legal marketing or technology question, or if you want to pitch your widget, we would love to talk to you. So, Gyi and I will be there interviewing people. We’ll be taking questions. We will probably have some form of podcast based on ABA TECHSHOW. If you would like to be a guest on our pod, wink, wink, nudge, nudge to both Bob and Carolyn Elefant. We would love to talk to you. So, find us. We’re just trying to work out the logistics of where we’re going to do the recording. Gyi feels it’s really, really awkward to invite people to a hotel room to do a recording.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Especially if it’s you in doing the invitation.
Conrad Saam: Jesus. I don’t know. Why me? I’m innocuous. Anyway, find us.
Gyi Tsakalakis: And you’re doing — you’re signing books, right? I will be signing your —
Conrad Saam: If you want — if you stop by, find me. I’m more than happy to sign the book.
Gyi Tsakalakis: You’re going to sign mine.
Conrad Saam: But if you would like to talk with us, find us at the LTN booth, right? We’ll be there and would love to do a recording. We’ve got all the recording equipment on Chicago. We’ll be happy to do it. So, come find us. Also, if you’re a Startup Alley participant, come elevator pitch us.
00:04:59
We are more than happy to give you some air to expand the minds of our listeners in terms of what can be done with technology and legal.
Gyi Tsakalakis: And in our usual, pat ourselves on the back segment, we got another review. All around great podcasts five stars, it does make you feel good to hear it. I listen to these as soon as they come out and they are always full of good info for law firm owners and they keep entertaining. I love the intro music, you know. Love to hear the feedback about the intro music. Thank you for listening Joanie triple R via Apple Podcasts. As always, like us, hate us, or indifferent and we love those indifferent reviews, by the way. Please do drop us a review on your favorite — or I guess, Apple Podcast. Do you leave reviews at other places? I don’t even know.
Conrad Saam: Let’s take a break.
[Music]
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Gyi Tsakalakis:
Conrad Saam:
Gyi Tsakalakis: And we’re back. And we are going to discuss this idea that was recently published by our friend, Kevin O’Keefe at LexBlog in his post Advertising versus Business Development. And I’m going to frame some of the points that Kevin makes and then Conrad has a lot to say. I have a few things to say, and we will take it from there.
So, to start, what Kevin’s really saying, he’s referring to some of the conference programs especially for solos and small firms. They really talk about advertising and marketing. And Conrad, you know this, we know this, everybody that gets up on stage at a conference, we’re talking advertising and marketing from a marketing standpoint. And Kevin breaks down some of the definitions advertising, action of calling something to attention to the public especially by paid announcements, marketing process of promoting, selling, distributing product or service. And then, he distinguishes business development, the act or process of growing or causing something to grow or become larger or more advanced in the case of law growing relationships and reputation.
And you know, essentially, he is TLDR is the best lawyers, get their work via word of mouth and relationships, conferences should be focusing more about like, “Hey, how do you do that?” versus all the advertising and marketing. What do you think Conrad? Should we dump this idea of advertising and marketing?
Conrad Saam: Yes. Just turn off your podcast.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Turn off your ads.
Conrad Saam: Turn off your ads. Turn of —
Gyi Tsakalakis: Tear down your billboards.
Conrad Saam: Take off your website. No, I mean, I think this is a long-standing debate between Kevin and a lot of legal internet marketers. Here’s the reality, Gyi, like I think you and I would agree that law firms that can generate business by referrals, great. It’s typical because you do great work. It’s typically because you’re recognized for doing great work. It’s typically a lot less expensive than running your business through Google ads, for example, with the local service ads or paying Gyi or Conrad like an absorbent amount to get you ranking in the SEO wars and, you know, fighting with local search and learning all the ins and outs of that stuff. Like it’s fine.
Okay, and it’s typically going to make up of the entire legal market something like depending on what type of practice you’re in. Something like 2% to 8%, 2% to 10%, right? The reality is, the vast majority of people use Google. I mean, if we need to quote a study to convince you of this, now, I really do mean turn off the podcast, right? And like it’s a small portion of the market. So, you know, I talk to people all the time, I’m like, “Listen, if you’re happy where you are, and you don’t need to spend money on people like us, and you have a great reputation, like great. How about it?”
00:10:00
But, where I take umbrage with this is, it is a false dichotomy to suggest that these two things don’t work hand in hand. It is absolutely an additive synergistic approach as opposed to like you should do one instead of the other. You can talk about things like, “Oh I’ll even take the comment of the best lawyers, get their work through referrals.” Well, you know what, the best lawyers also have really good review profiles, right? And Google is trying to showcase those lawyers for whom people like to work with, right? And they do that through reviews. And great reviews drives ranking and local and local drives a ton of business. And so, it’s a false dichotomy to kind of have this binary either or when the reality is a lot of these things work hand in hand. There’s plenty of examples of lawyers who use technology to communicate and be involved in their communities and that shows up in better SEO performance, right? So that’s my overall take as I don’t think it’s an either/or. I think all of them should be channels that you consider, right? And the reality is, some channels work better for some lawyers and others and it should — they should all be within the consideration set and you should work with what works for your law firm.
Gyi Tsakalakis: It is right. You know, I’ll agree with Kevin on the conferences do tend to focus. I mean, I think it’s more speaks to the nature of like how conferences are organized and some of the financial aspects of who speaks in some of these conferences and that kind of stuff.
Conrad Saam: Wow.
Gyi Tsakalakis: But — but —
Conrad Saam: That’s it, hold on. That was a huge indictment on a — and so, by the way —
Gyi Tsakalakis: Some conferences. Some conferences.
Conrad Saam: Yeah, Gyi is throwing bombs at conferences. ABA — I will say this and he’s on the board here so I can say this. ABA TECHSHOW does not play this, you know, pay to speak, pay to pitch kind of thing.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Do not do that.
Conrad Saam: They do not that. And that’s another reason to go to TECHSHOW because I’m going to be less polite than Gyi as usual. There is a bunch of pay to pitch bullshit conferences that are not worth your time and it’s frequently —
Gyi Tsakalakis: Most.
Conrad Saam: It’s frequently, frequented by people who do what we do and are paid to spout pitches for them. Sorry, I’ll stop. You get my point. Keep going. Go back to being nice.
Gyi Tsakalakis: So yes, a lot of conferences are pay-to-play, you should avoid them. But here in this, it goes back to my point, the complaint that Conrad made, which I agree with. It is a false choice, right? It’s not (00:12:27). And I don’t know, to Kevin’s defense, I don’t know that he’s really saying, “Just pick one.”
Conrad Saam: The title says versus.
Gyi Tsakalakis: You know, you got to get some clicks, right?
Conrad Saam: Come on.
Gyi Tsakalakis: You got to get some clicks. But I will say this, the best business development is interwoven with your advertising and marketing, right? So, if you put out something of value into the world on the internet, and you put paid promotion behind it. So, maybe you have like, I don’t know, I’m going to do it, dumb idea, a dumb idea, but maybe you do like things you should know after a car accident or things you should know if you’re considering divorce. And you do a search on Google and you download that guide and you start getting emails from somebody who is an expert on that subject and there’s paid media behind that. Is that advertising, is it marketing, or is it business development? You’re building a relationship. You’re getting to know someone but you spent money to acquire their attention. And that I think to me really sums up this idea of the false dichotomy.
And look, this isn’t the first time we hear this. I mean, as all the time, SEO versus PPC, referrals versus internet and I always say the same thing, why not both? It’s all of these things working in harmony, and guess what, the best marketing and advertising works when you take this concept of, “Let’s do things like grow relationships. Marshall the evidence of our excellent reputation,” but this idea that like somehow like SEO, I mean, SEO is people literally searching for the information and then your ability to build a relationship with them and demonstrate your expertise and your reputation like that’s the whole point.
Conrad Saam: 100%.
Gyi Tsakalakis: And I digress.
Conrad Saam: No, no, I mean, I’ll use the blog thing as an example, right? Our blogs, SEO, right? Well, the article suggests otherwise, right? But the reality is, blogs are a great SEO tool and this is a place where Kevin and I have diverted for a very, very long time. Blogs are great SEO tool period, end of story. To me, not debatable because they do a great job at driving links. Links are the hard things. You heard Gyi talk about links all the time. You put your blog on a different domain because you think you can build relationships better by doing that, you lose the SEO value. This weaves back into the interconnectedness of what Gyi is talking about, right? So, interweave your social media, interweave your community involvement, interweave your networking with the other channels and you get the synergy of one plus one equals three, right?
00:15:01
And why would you avoid that when you can do it? It’s really easy to — sorry, it’s not really easy to do, it is doable and it doesn’t make sense to bifurcate those tactics.
Gyi Tsakalakis: And hopefully, open invitation. I hope if Kevin is — happens to be listening, and is at TECHSHOW, we would love for him also to join us for an on-the-road chat on this topic.
Conrad Saam: So, by the way, Kevin and I actually live in the same little town outside of Seattle now.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh, so you can have this conversation at your house.
Conrad Saam: We can have it here. Yeah.
Gyi Tsakalakis: On your forum?
Conrad Saam: I’ll kill the on the forum.
Gyi Tsakalakis: With chickens?
Conrad Saam: With the chickens. Ziffy(ph) the chicken. Yeah. No, this is a debate Kevin and I had had for a very long time. But my take is, it is a kind of holistic comprehensive approach as opposed to this kind of either or. We will however put in the show notes a link to Kevin’s post so you can kind of read and think for yourself.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Let’s take a break.
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Christopher T. Anderson: This March, the Unbillable Hour podcast will be launching a second episode each month called The Community Table. I’m the host, Christopher T. Anderson. I’m a lawyer and a law firm management consultant. And each episode, I will gather virtually with other lawyers across the country to help answer their questions. These will be unscripted conversations that center around real issues lawyers are facing in their firms today. We’ll discuss best practices for marketing, for time management, apply acquisition, hiring, firing, and much more. Join our conversation each month on the community table part of the Unbillable Hour podcast on the Legal Talk Network.
Gyi Tsakalakis: And now, for the Legal Trends Report Minute brought to you by Clio. In 2018, only 23% of clients were open to working remotely with a lawyer. In 2021, 79% actively looked for a lawyer providing remote options. Huh, that’s weird, what happened between 2018 and 2021? Odd. This massive shift shows that remote communication has become a real expectation among clients, video conferencing in particular is becoming a popular format with over 58% of clients preferring video conferencing for their first meeting or consultation. Offering remote communication options along with phone and in-person services will give your firm a major advantage over others that don’t. You know, and just to take a quick second, if you’re not — what have you been doing? If you can’t offer virtual appointments to clients, I don’t know, in some places, I don’t know how you’ve been getting by.
Conrad Saam: I mean, I think this is written kindly with an optimistic glass-half-full. We’ll give your firm a major advantage over others that don’t. Let me put — let me put a different point on this. It’s a huge disadvantage if you can’t do this. Like period, end of story.
Gyi Tsakalakis: You might not have navigated the three years if you have not been able to do this.
Conrad Saam: Yeah.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Do it.
Conrad Saam: Listen, I’ll give — let me get one tactical level further. If you guys are — your setup. You should be set up to run video. And if you’re not, like yes, we’ll make fun of you. But if you are, the video email follow-up is an awesome follow-up that puts it — it shouldn’t be outstanding. It should be just standard. But what do I mean by this? You just had a video conference with a client, and instead of sending them into your, you know, drip campaign that everyone gets the same damn message on, you can very quickly shoot a quick video of yourself in your office talking about their specific matter that they can then pass around, right? But like boom, stand-out that let your personality come through. Lets them get to know you a little bit better. It shows that your technical adept and honestly, it’s not that bloody hard to set this up. But take it a step further, right? Do your follow-ups live video, personalized video. It’s amazing.
Gyi Tsakalakis: For more insights on changing expectations of legal consumers, download Clio’s Legal Trends Report for free at clio.com/trends. That’s clio.com/trends.
Conrad Saam: All right, Gyi, we talked about the Super Bowl. One of my favorite anecdotes about legal marketing, this time I was actually watching the Super Bowl. I want to say this was in 2014.
00:20:01
Halftime show, can’t remember anything about it.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh, you missed a tremendous halftime show this year, by the way.
Conrad Saam: I heard about this and I heard it depends if you’re between the ages of 30 and 50.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Right.
Conrad Saam: You thought it was tremendous? If you were over 50, the answer was, who on earth are these people? Or sorry, if you’re over 50, you were disgusted. If you’re under 30, the answer was, “I don’t know who these people are.”
Gyi Tsakalakis: And I’m 43. So, right in the wheelhouse.
Conrad Saam: There you go, basic, exactly fantastic halftime show. We didn’t even record the Super Bowl. I’m losing clients left and right as I keep talking, I just realized that. Like who is this person? I’m not ever going to want to work with this guy because he doesn’t even watch the Super Bowl. But going back to 2014, my phone bill was up during the halftime show about this crazy, batshit-crazy advertisement by Attorney Jamie Casino. It was a two-minute-long advertisement that showed up in his market and it was —
Gyi Tsakalakis: We got to put in the show notes for sure.
Conrad Saam: We will Jamie Casino’s and we can call it batshit crazy Super Bowl ad. The reason I cite this so regularly is, going back to this link building concept. Casino and it’s crazy. It is over the top. There’s religion and fire and hammers and like it’s like a parody of what we don’t want to think of the legal profession, but it was real. Anyway, it was so crazy, what — so many people like me wrote about it, right? Because it was so off the charts bananas. And the fact that a lawyer was advertising on the Super Bowl, it was also newsworthy back in the day. And so, what happened is, Casino put it up on YouTube where it’s received thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of places since then. But because he put it on YouTube, all of the people who wrote about this stuff links to YouTube as opposed to his own site and they completely missed and continued to miss for the next couple of years when they tried to outdo themselves with even more crazy creative. They missed the link building opportunity by having that video hosted on YouTube. They basically helped YouTube do better in the Google search results instead of Jamie Casino’s firm.
Gyi Tsakalakis: I got to correct you on something.
Conrad Saam: Go, hit me.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Almost 6 million views on YouTube.
Conrad Saam: Six million views. It is so — by the way, I’m probably responsible for like 1% of those reviews.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Four million. No, you’re probably 4 million.
Conrad Saam: Holy cow. So, go watch this with the sound turned down. But I use that regularly. The interesting thing is this year, there were a whole bunch more Super Bowl ads from law firms. Now, these ads, Gyi, they don’t show nationwide. They show in a regional market. We’ve watched all of them. Gyi, what was your favorite legal Super Bowl ad of this year?
Gyi Tsakalakis: I’m going with the DeLorean. The back to the future, you know, again aging myself, but if you’re putting Deloreans in your Super Bowl ad, I’m in.
Conrad Saam: Between the ages of 30 and 50 for all of you, this will resonate with you.
Gyi Tsakalakis: And you know, one of the things I wanted just because again, our commitment to not only being controversial, but also, being tactical is, I want you — the point of a timeout is not just as timely in a Super Bowl, and you can get to see some ridiculous lawyer ads. But this idea of PR stunts and their role in your firm marketing, it doesn’t have to be a Super Bowl ad, right?
Conrad Saam: Yeah.
Gyi Tsakalakis: And I think that one of the questions I think always comes up is, is like, is this what it takes to get attention? You know, do I have to be the Texas Law Hawk? Do I have to be — to I have to ever legend and fire?
Conrad Saam: You say what with the Texas Law Hawk?
Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, Texas Law Hawk. I was once karate-chopped by the Texas Law Hawk.
Conrad Saam: All right, let’s — I tried to talk Gyi — Gyi is pretty much gave that venue on this show. I tried to talk Gyi into having the Texas Law Hawk on the show to talk about his Taco Bell Super Bowl ad and Gyi like got really quiet.
Gyi Tsakalakis: I’m fine with having the Texas Law Hawk on the show.
Conrad Saam: You are? All right.
Gyi Tsakalakis: You know what, if he’s at the TECHSHOW, he won’t go to the — he’d probably be on the TECHSHOW, but if he was, we can have him on the road too.
Conrad Saam: I’m not sure ABA would let him then.
Gyi Tsakalakis: I think that’s where he karate-chopped me.
Conrad Saam: I want to have the Texas Law Hawk. It’s Ryan, what’s his name, Ryan? I want to see Ryan Wilson.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Ryan Wilson.
Conrad Saam: Wrong celebrity.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Ryan E. Wilson.
Conrad Saam: Okay. I want to have the Texas Law Hawk on the show to talk about. By the way, I think his —
Gyi Tsakalakis: Open invite.
Conrad Saam: Open invite. His branding positioning wild repugnant is actually super, super effect.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh, that works. He’ll tell you.
Conrad Saam: Hey, that is why I’m saying, it’s repugnant and effective, right?
Gyi Tsakalakis: Repugnant to you, yeah.
Conrad Saam: Yeah.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, legislate for taste.
Conrad Saam: No, no.
Gyi Tsakalakis: So, well, what was your favorite Super Bowl commercial?
Conrad Saam: Well, so it’s funny, we pick the same one.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Wow.
Conrad Saam: My favorite Super Bowl like hands down. Now, some of them were ridiculous. So, the Richard Schwartz & Associate look like a parody of a law firm making a parody of a Super Bowl ad.
00:24:59
The Nicolette Law that basically was a bunch of people playing in a band at the end. It said, “What does this have to do with law? Nothing.” What the hell was that? Like you said nothing with that. But the Maloney Alliance, they did this Back to the Future riff. And for me, it’s important for a couple reasons, one, they referenced To Kill a Mockingbird, which is why I named Mockingbird. Now, the other thing with To Kill a Mockingbird and this is why I named the firm Mockingbird for people — so many people, again, between the ages of 30 and 50, probably have read that book and it explains how we wish the legal profession was, right? And so, in this Back to the Future riff, the lawyer goes back and gives his younger self who is in an awesome old rush concert t-shirt. A copy of To Kill a Mockingbird in order to — and to don’t forget to read this, right? So, like that’s why I’m inspired to be a lawyer, that’s a type of lawyer that people want to hire. Like that was genius. The other thing that they kind of zipped in there was he said, “Oh, and return everyone’s call,” right?
So, they did a really good job of painting themselves as the Atticus Finch of the personal injury world and being responsive on a really good way without hitting you over the head with it. I loved it. I thought it was a great ad.
Gyi Tsakalakis: And we have to say thank you and we’ll also make sure this is in the show notes to Joe Patrice at Above the Law. You know, if Joe, if you’re listening, which you’re probably not, but if you were, and you’re at TECHSHOW, let’s talk Super Bowl commercials on our On the Road episode. But I think he make a lot of good points there. And it kind of comes back to this original concept of like trying to be tactical. You can do a PR stunt that still positions you the way you want to be positioned that still reflects your values, that still gets your marketing message out. You can be creative. You can have some fun. God forbid, lawyers try to have some fun and still hit those high notes of the things that you know are important to your potential clients. And if you’re going to do this kind of stuff, make sure you’re doing it on your own website so you can get those links.
Conrad Saam: 100%. 100%, yeah, we’ll put Above the Law in the show notes. If you want to watch, I think there are six or maybe even seven, some of them are really cringey. Some of them are inspirational, but at least make you think about what you can do with advertising branding and positioning.
Gyi Tsakalakis: And I think the other thing too to think in a bigger picture of just advertising and like, you know, whether it’s a Super Bowl ad or TV. Another big thing that we see all the time when we work with lawyers that have “offline media buys, TV buys, radio buys,” make sure that you’ve got tracking infrastructure in place whether it’s a call tracking number or maybe you have a dedicated URL, and maybe you’re monitoring this in your search console data, or you’re getting the post logs from your TV or radio spot. But remember, people are sitting there watching the Super Bowl, not Conrad, cause he’s on the slopes, but a lot of people are sitting there watching the Super Bowl and they’ve got their phone in their hand. And so, when they see the DeLorean, they’re going to search on this lawyer’s name whether or not they need the lawyer or not. And so, it’s a multi-screen world. It’s a multi-screen experience. Don’t just be like, “We’re going to measure our offline media buys solely by the people who call the phone number from the commercial.”
Conrad Saam: Yeah, I mean, you can play this. I mean, we talked about business development and advertising, all these things rapping in together. So, I suspect not many of our listeners are thinking about doing a Super Bowl commercial. But I want to use this as an example of how you could — how you can interweave all of your marketing channels together. Think about, “Okay. So, we’re going to hit a Super Bowl ad. That means that I can literally in Google analytics in real-time watch traffic to my site blow up or not when that ad airs — as that ad airs,” right? So, you do that. “Okay, great.” You can also put tracking, right? So, you can know that these people came. So, they were interested enough to go to your site. Okay, so now, we can talk about retargeting, right? And these things just kind of build on themselves. And this is my whole point of like this is an ecosystem of marketing channel. You said this at the very beginning, Gyi, like why not both? It’s an echo system of marketing channels that — I hate the word synergy because it makes me think of MBAs and it makes me want to just die. But —
Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, you’re the one with an MBA here. So, we don’t even know — who knows what synergy means.
Conrad Saam: Okay. That’s in MBA class 101.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, that’s nice of you to share that with us.
Conrad Saam: No, but there’s a synergy of having these things build on each other, right? And this is a one plus one plus one equals five. So, think about what you’re doing in your different marketing channels, have them work together, have the reporting work together, think about this comprehensively. And this is honestly one of the reasons why I — this is a self-centered bias. But like, if you just have an agency that does one part of the puzzle, they don’t ever really add the one plus one plus one into five. It’s like here’s a one and over here, so, here’s another one and here’s another one.
00:30:03
Being able to have — either having an agency that can look at it all together or making sure that you internally look at it all together from the big picture, super, super important.
Gyi Tsakalakis: So, it’s so important and you just made me think of one context. So, this comes up all the time. And this is the — well, we have a PPC expert and we have an SEO expert. No, you can’t talk to each other and you don’t even know each other exists and then you’re like, “Oh wait a minute so, the paid search team has no idea what queries you’re generating traffic for organically, and the SEO team has no idea what your highest converting paid queries are, and the opportunity that’s left on the table there is just astronomically mind-blowing. Don’t do that.
Conrad Saam: Yeah. Oh, and we have a bunch of hidden landing pages on the site that are basically orphan pages at Google’s index and I’ve got a ton of duplicate content, right?
Gyi Tsakalakis: Right.
Conrad Saam: You see that.
Gyi Tsakalakis: And we’ve been actually been buying tons of offline media, but we didn’t tell any of the digital people that and then we turned it off and then we wonder why our brand impressions have gone way down.
Conrad Saam: Don’t do that.
Gyi Tsakalakis: Get these people talking. Again, if you’ve got a specialist, I think that’s fine. But make sure that you’re integrating your marketing approaches. Well, sadly, just like the Super Bowl, we are now out of time and thank you so much for joining us for another episode. Please do join us in Chicago for Tech Show and as always, if you’re new to LHLM, please subscribe. Leave a review. Reach out on the hashtag LHLM and until next time, Conrad and Gyi Lunch Hour Legal Marketing signing off.
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Lunch Hour Legal Marketing |
Legal Marketing experts Gyi and Conrad dive into the biggest issues in legal marketing today.