Ukraine, SEO Debate Club, and Questions from Techshow!

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Conrad Saam: Before we get started today, we want to thank our sponsors: Clio, Alert Communications, Lawyaw and Posh Virtual Receptionist.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Conrad, where in the world have you been recently?

Conrad Saam: I have been 100 miles south of the Alaskan border in the middle of nowhere skiing with a group of friends, and it also required me to not have my phone, my laptop, Wi-Fi. I did not know what was going on in the world and it was absolutely delightful.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Amazing. Well, yeah do that every so often. Probably a good people detox after Tech Show or actually, you were up there with a big group of people weren’t you?

Conrad Saam: Yeah. Well, it was a small group of business school friends but you know, what, one of the problems with hanging out with business school friends is you end up talking about business, right? And so, I tried to avoid that to many extent, but I think a couple things came for me. One is, when I came back, and this happened once when I came back from Australia, I was assuming I was going to be really busy and I sat down and I wasn’t quite sure what my job was anymore, right? Because things had just kept moving smoothly which was a really good feeling. And the other thing is being away, really far away, it helps you zoom out and have a bigger picture perspective on things which means you end up coming back with a bunch of really big ideas. I think the key is to write the big ideas down. Let them percolate but don’t come back throwing ideas around because that’s just super disruptive. But it was good. It’s really good.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Great tips for lawyer entrepreneurs: Get away from the office — test your people and processes. Unplug, relax, step back, reflect, write your big ideas down. And I think from a marketing relationship standpoint, even though you’re probably doing it socially, keeping those relationships active like after all businesses, relationships, your net worth is your network or something like that.

Conrad Saam: Something like that. And if there are any really avid advance skiers who would like to join me next year, find me, right.

Gyi Tsakalakis: There you go, invitation.

Conrad Saam: Cat skiing in D.C. for four days. This is as good as it gets.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Cat skiing in D.C. Send Conrad video of your skiing to see if your –.

Conrad Saam: Yeah. So what are we talking about today?

Gyi Tsakalakis: All right. So beyond skiing, we’ve got live from Tech Show questions coming at us live from Tech show. We’re also going to be talking about Ukraine and how trite support actually comes across from a marketing perspective. And finally, and I’ve been looking forward to having this fight for a long time, should you hire an SEO agency? An agency that only focuses on SEO. Is SEO dead? We have a debate between whether or not we should be hiring as lawyers a firm that specializes in SEO. And I will give you a sneak peek on that. My answer surprisingly is no. That’s crazy.

But first, hold on, there’s something in my ear. Breaking news, Gyi.

[Music]

This just in well at least at the time of recording. When you get this, it might be old news. But mark your calendars everybody, July 1, 2023 for most of you, Google Analytics properties, the universal analytics properties that is, will stop processing new hits. What does that mean? Your Google Analytics will stop working on July 1, 2023 unless you migrate over to GA4.

So I’m telling you right now, we’re recording this on March 16, 2022 and I know for a fact on July 2, 2023, there are people that are listening to this that are not going to have GA4 updated and their web analytics for their website is going to stop. I bet your coffee will get –. No one will admit it though unless we get an email. “Oh hey, I listened to your Lunch Hour Legal Marketing and I need help migrating to GA4. So if you need help migrating GA4, contact Conrad.

Conrad Saam: All right, what else is going on?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Other breaking news, LawPay launches a new integration with Nota. And you know, we talk a lot about — should back up: LawPay payment processing for lawyers, Nota banking specifically built for lawyers, new integration. We talk a lot about efficiencies and automations. I think we’re going to see more innovation in this area of payments and processes in the financial business of law coming down the pipe. So if you’re spending a lot of time trying to collect payments, you’re spending a lot of time reconciling your bank account, check out this LawPay Nota integration might be a solution for you.

(00:05:00)

Again, the news of Legal Tech, I think this is some interesting stuff that is starting to develop. All right, that’s it. Short news day.

[Music]

Intro: 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. Today we’ve got something a little bit different. Gyi and I are fresh back from Tech Show in Chicago. It was fantastic and we got to talk to some law students and some lawyers for some marketing tips and questions. So with that, we’re going to start with law student no. 1. As a law student, what is your number one question about technology in the practice of law?

Law Student 1: There’s so many technology options out there so my concern is where do I start, what are the maybe first, second, third set of technologies that I need to be starting to look into to implement my process for intake in doing the job really? There’s just so many options. It’s like where do I begin? With what?

Conrad Saam: So Gyi, where do you start? You’re in lawsuit and you’re getting out, what is the foundational piece for doing the job?

Gyi Tsakalakis: For practicing law?

Conrad Saam: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Probably a Word processor. No, but I think seriously though, and you know again, Tech Show, a part of the ecosystem of Tech Show is legal technology consultants. And one of the things that the best consultants always talk about is, what are you trying to achieve? So many people whether you go to Tech Show or you start searching online for technology for practicing law, it’s overwhelming. There’s a lot just like in technology in other context. And I think you’ve got to — same thing we talk about from a marketing standpoint. What are your objectives? What are you trying to do? He made the kind of sarcastic comment about Word processing but yeah, guess what, a lot of what you do is the written word.

So, how are you going to do that? But that kind of thinking where it’s like, “Hey, I need to do x. What technology options are available is better than being like, “Hey, I’m going to go survey all of this different technology” and find that a lot of the technology does a lot of the same things, just in slightly different ways. And so, understanding what works best for you, understanding your workflows, understanding things like are you working on a team, are you working by yourself, I think integrations are a big question to be asking about but it’s got to be objective focus. That’s the thing.

What do you think is the first legal technology you should get?

Conrad Saam: I’m going to slightly hijack this and put a marketing spin on it and an easy marketing –.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, I hope you say CRM because it’s totally wrong.

Conrad Saam: I was going to say CRM which is totally wrong by the way but no, I’m going to say LinkedIn.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Okay.

Conrad Saam: I’m thinking about the law student coming out of school. If you’re an established lawyer, your body of work can speak for itself. If you’re coming out of law school, your body of work is on LinkedIn, period.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Love it.

Conrad Saam: I have not spent a lot of time. I’ve not spent any time recruiting lawyers to work at law firms. Having said that, I imagine a very, very well-written unique LinkedIn profile both for getting a job and it certainly cuts both ways. One, it’s for getting the job. But two, if you’re going to go out on your own even if you end up working for a firm especially consumer-facing from, you’re going to get vetted on LinkedIn more than anything else. And so, that’s really, really important.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And back to your ski trip, guess what? That’s where your initial core connections are going to happen, right? Professional connections. Because the people you went to law school with, the people that you might — if you’ve done any kind of work with friends and family also like it’s where people are connected. I think it’s good one, Conrad. Good tip there.

Conrad Saam: All right. Next from Tech Show, the number one marketing tip for lawyers.

Female: My best legal marketing tips is be a human lawyer.

Conrad Saam: Be a human lawyer?

Female: Be a human lawyer. Stop posing in front of law books and putting scales or justice on your website and talk about who you really are and what you really believe and stand for and why you do what you do and let potential clients see that you’re approachable and that you want to help them and you know how to help them and that will bring many, many more people to your doorstep.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I have nothing to add. I think that’s the perfect answer.

Conrad Saam: We’ve been preaching this forever and yet we still see these kind of lawyers branding themselves as lawyers as opposed to people.

(00:10:05)

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I think the other thing that happens is because, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard that advice before, right? The challenge is, how do you translate it in consistent messaging? I think that’s where the ball gets dropped and you know, look, indictment on the marketing people like so many of them start guiding the lawyers down the wrong path, right? They start guiding him down whether it’s the law books or the branded videos or whatever it is, they lose sight of the human part of it, the why you do what you do, the who you help, the why you’re uniquely qualified to help.

And again, the other thing too that comes through this is like, it’s the authenticity of being you. Lawyers are so afraid to just share like who they are whether it’s sharing like personal stuff. For years, we had this debate about like should I have a personal Facebook profile or a professional Facebook profile? It’s like you are who you are. Yeah, sure. Go ahead. You can separate them all you want but the Avatar you create for yourself on Facebook, that’s not really you. It’s totally valueless. Be you.

Conrad Saam: I feel like we’re trying to get like six-year-olds to feel good about themselves, right? There’s a good you in you.

Gyi Tsakalakis: You’re good enough. (00:11:25) just smart enough.

Conrad Saam: Yeah, we’ve had this conversation over and over again. Be yourself and don’t be afraid to let that shine through. Okay.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Be yourself. There you go.

Conrad Saam: The follow-up question to this, I wasn’t sure where this was going to go but I asked it anyway. Why is the blindfolded lady of justice always so nakey? Why is she always, you know, just about to fall out of that dress?

Female: Oh my goodness. Do you know what? I used Lady Justice image for Law Day 2021 last year and I had someone on social media kind of like come at me with like, why are we still using this depiction of women that is honestly like sexually explicit and harassment and so antiquated? And honestly, I never looked at it that way or seen it that way but once it was pointed out to me, I had this new eye-opening experience and I will probably never use a Lady Justice image again because I see what that individual was pointing out.

But prior to that, I really hadn’t seen it. It’s just this image in the way that so many things in law and legal are that is pervasive and out there and the tradition and we follow along. And then when somebody gives us, hopefully, when someone gives us a different perspective, we can see it in a new light and approach it differently in the future and I definitely will.

Conrad Saam: I loved her answer on that, right? It’s something that’s kind of always stood out to me as being out of place and I really liked her answer on that.

Gyi Tsakalakis: One more reason not to use Lady Justice in your marketing materials.

Conrad Saam: And now it’s time to pay some bills.

[Music]

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Conrad Saam: You know what time it is? That’s right. It’s time for the Legal Trends Report minute brought to you by Clio.

What trait are clients looking for the most in a lawyer? Well, according to 86% of surveyed clients from Legal Trends Report, it’s being responsive to questions. Research shows that the quicker a lawyer is in providing information to clients, the more positive the client experience will be.

(00:14:59)

It’s no surprise firms with growing revenue are 41% more likely to use client portals to quickly communicate with clients. These secure portals ensure clients always know the status of their case resulting in a more transparent and client-centered experience.

Yeah. I mean, that’s the thing. We spend a lot of time and money marketing, how competent we are, how hard we fight, how much experience we have and you know, what clients really want? They just want an answer. They just want you to respond to them. They just want you to follow up, keep them informed. We see the same thing in during the intake process even before they become clients. Get your autoresponders right. Stop their search. Acknowledge that they’re there. Makes a world of difference.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. It’s a no-brainer. And you’re right, it does have an impact on prospects, right? It has a huge impact and they take your lack of responsiveness or your front desk’s lack of responsiveness in those initial conversations as an indicator of how responsive or otherwise you’ll be as their lawyer.

Conrad Saam: Bingo. To learn more about what today’s clients expect from their lawyers and how firms can meet these expectations, download Clio’s Legal Trends Report for free at clio.com/trends. That’s Clio spelled C-L-I-O.com/trends.

All right Gyi, I want to talk to you about Ukraine and I don’t think we’re going to solve that. I don’t want to get into the politics. Actually, the politics of this are actually easy. We can get into politics.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Easy for you.

Conrad Saam: Bleeding heart, West Coast liberal. Okay. But you know, I’ve seen a bunch of people. I’ve seen a couple responses to Ukraine. One of those responses has been like, “Hey I wish I could go do something and do more for them.” And frankly, it’s a bit of a cop-out. There’s a lot that you can do for the people in Ukraine right now if you would like to. The other has been what I will call this kind of trite blue and yellow flag or that indicator of support that is nothing more than an indicator of support. And I’m wondering Gyi, your perspective on whether or not you should fly that flag or not.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I have no idea. Everybody’s got their own — just got to make their own personal decision. But here’s the thing that gets into the cringiness aspect is, when it’s obvious that you’re leveraging the suffering that’s going on over there to bring attention to your business, your brand or whatever it is. And there are instances where it’s just frankly obviously. It’s not a marketing opportunity. It’s not a PR opportunity for your firm or your business. But on the other hand, you’re sympathetic. People do feel they want to do something to show support. And so, it’s like, do you want to be coming down on people because they’re like making some kind of effort? I mean, is some effort better than no effort? I don’t know. I have no idea.

Conrad Saam: I mean, and I’m using Ukraine. This is just an example of kind of cause marketing or cause support, right? Is that appropriate? Is it inappropriate? I mean, frankly, the practice of law in the United States has very little 99.9% of the time with what’s going on in Ukraine. Supporting a cause like that where the United States is fairly for once mostly united around this. It’s not really a debatable one side or others, it’s just support, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. I mean again, for me I’m not here to police how people show their support and we regularly talk — I mean we just were talking about it earlier how you got to stand for something, be who you are, be your authentic self. And so, in one way, it’s like a no-brainer that we should be rallying and supporting and trying to deploy resources and making whatever contributions we can make. Whatever you could do, right? On the other hand though, I see some of these posts on social media and you’re just like that’s just coming across the wrong way. And so, I don’t know what the right answer here is but I think it’s something that you’ve mentioned. It’s not just a Ukraine thing.

We’ve talked about this in the past in other moments, in other causes and I’m certainly not — I hope I don’t come across to saying, don’t show your support, don’t stand up for what you believe in. I think that’s critically important to one, just being able to sleep at night with yourself. And we haven’t talked about this. This is a Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. It’s marketing for lawyers. Is this the place for us to even have this conversation? And so, in the context of marketing, it’s just like this cause marketing stuff like I think you got to be really, really mindful about how you’re implementing. And you see businesses called out for it all the time.

(00:20:06)

Conrad Saam: You’re saying don’t just beat, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. And again, what does that mean? I don’t know. Do you have to say I donated money? Do you have to say — is it not right if you’re like we donated and you should donate too? Do you have to show actual pictures of your team members like crossing into Ukraine with guns because there are fighting Russians? What’s right and not right? I’m not here to judge that.

Conrad Saam: You’re very non-judgmental today.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I don’t know. As we talked about in the preparation for the show, it’s like, I’m sympathetic to the — I think we should. I believe in the support. I mean, I stand for the support but then I see some of these posts and I’m just like, you’re like literally trying to leverage this crisis to gain eyeballs and clicks and shares. And so, what’s the right answer there, I don’t know. You can just go look and you can even just search for things like Ukraine and PR and stuff like that and you’ll see that — and again, as you mentioned, this isn’t just Ukraine specific instance but this cause marketing stuff, it can cut both ways.

Okay. I will tell you this. I have not taken the step of putting the flag on my socials. Why do you hate Ukrainians?

Conrad Saam: Case in point. Tread carefully because people like Gyi will ask you why you hate Ukrainians. No. The reason I haven’t is because it felt right. It felt like yes, I care but it doesn’t seem like I’m doing much, right? And I have no connection to Ukraine.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, you have connection to fellow human beings.

Conrad Saam: Connection of all human beings, yeah. All right, well with that musing on Gyi and Conrad deciding not to get political and not to get too cause related or at least the request to do so very carefully and with deliberate action so you’re not –.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Glory to Ukraine.

Conrad Saam: Don’t leverage the suffering of people for your marketing I think is the key point, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. I think it’s part of it. I mean again, part of this is like trying to give some kind of — it’s a marketing podcast. What kind of tactical advice can you give folks? I mean, yeah, I think it’s tread carefully, you select your causes and whatever you’re going to do from a social media branding messaging position, just make sure it’s done intentionally and that you’re not just like flippant about some of the stuff because it can come back to bite you. But at the same time, I’m going to contradict myself. I think it’s even worse just to be vanilla, right? If you just don’t stand for anything, nobody knows what you stand for. Guess what? That’s a great way not to attract anybody to your firm.

Conrad Saam: Yeah. That’s kind of where I fall.

Gyi Tsakalakis: That’s probably a bigger problem. Yeah.

Conrad Saam: Yeah. If you’re too afraid to stand for anything, no one will notice you at all.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right. And even forget causes, right? Some lawyers I know and other business owners, they don’t even want to put images of lawyers on the website. It’s a service. People hire lawyers to an emotional decision. You’re like, “Oh, you think you’re going to hire because of your scales of justice background on your website?”

Conrad Saam: Scales of justice. She comes up again. All right, we’re going to take a break and when we return, Gyi and I are going to talk about whether or not you should hire an agency that focuses exclusively on SEO. But first, some advertising and then a review delivered via Apple Podcast.

[Music]

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Christopher T. Anderson: The Un-Billable Hour Podcast is proud to announce the launch of a second episode each month called The Un-Billable Hour Community Table. I am Christopher T. Anderson, I’m a lawyer, a law firm management consultant and the host of the show. In these episodes, I meet virtually with lawyers across the country to help answer their questions. These are unscripted conversations that center around real issues lawyers are facing in their firms today. We’ll discuss best practices for marketing, time management, client acquisition, hiring and firing and much more. Join our conversation each month on the Community Table, part of the Un-Billable Hour Podcast on the Legal Talk Network.

(00:24:59)

Gyi Tsakalakis: And we are back. And now the quick moment of gratitude for a listener who left us a very nice review. “Incredible resource as a solo navigating the post COVID legal world, this podcast has helped my small firm punch above its weight class with the technology discussions had here. Thankful for this podcast and highly recommend” from Apple podcast. And thank you Go Vols(ph) for listening and for the review. As always, if you’ve enjoyed or hated what you’ve heard here, please do head over to your favorite podcasting platform and leave a review.

And by the way, new breaking news: Spotify now allows you to rate podcast episodes with stars. And so, if you’ve been a Spotify listener to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, you’ve been so front, you’ve been so pent up, you just wanted to leave a review but you just refuse to go to Apple podcast to leave that review, now you can do it on Spotify.

All right. Is SEO dead? Conrad, we’re going to debate. The question is, should you hire an SEO agency? Gyi, that’s me, is going to be take the pro SEO argument. Conrad, anti SEO argument. Ready, set, go. You want to go first?

Conrad Saam: I’ll go first.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I don’t know what the rules of debate are. I never debated.

Conrad Saam: You never debated?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, you know not formally. Not like competitively.

Conrad Saam: That surprises me.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I got to call up my friend Joe Patrice for some tips.

Conrad Saam: All right. So here’s why I’m very — so this by the way, this is very antithetical to who I am. I am an SEO guy. I started doing SEO back in 2006 like this is my thing. I wish that my answer was hire an SEO agency but the reality is, the SERPs have changed so much. And before we go any further, when I say SERP, it is an acronym for Search Engine Results Page which is what you get after you type in and click enter. They have changed so much that if you are eager in growing your practice, and by SEO I mean organic search. I’m not talking about local. I’m not talking about anything is paid. It’s organic search. They have been so deprecated down to the bottom of the page that you are dealing with at best 30 or 40% of the market at the most optimistic and best in the legal world. And so, I really feel like if you are thinking about the market and cutting it, at the best case scenario in half, you’re missing a huge potential, right? It’s just not there. There’s just too much else on those pages to ignore.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Conrad Saam: Wow.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Everybody that’s listening, go open your Google Analytics right now. Conrad you do the same and you open up all your client account and guess where the overwhelming majority of traffic is coming from.

Conrad Saam: Uh-huh.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Organic search. Now you segment, you pulled local out of there which was a –. That’s organic, bro. I hate to tell you.

Conrad Saam: Different tactics.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Different tactics but the question is, should you hire an SEO agency?

Conrad Saam: How many SEO agencies are really good at local? Actually, how many SEO agencies are really good at SEO?

Gyi Tsakalakis: How many SEO agencies have you know about the distinction between local and traditional?

Conrad Saam: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: All right, here’s why you should hire an SEO agency. First of all, I have no idea if you should hire an SEO agency, but I have to tell you that. Here’s what you should be asking yourself. Number one, are your clients using search engines to research answers to their questions that relate to a problem that you help them solve? If so, you should care about SEO. There are still a ton of queries that are entered into Google every single day that don’t have any ads being run at all. They’re either — at worst they have featured snippets and so we can talk about 0 click and yada, yada, yada. But that’s still visibility, it’s still eyeballs.

Fifteen percent of the searches every single day are brand-new. That is blue sky, blue ocean, whatever. Uncharted territory, blue water, whatever. A lot of blue. And guess what? You are a lawyer, you are not an SEO expert. Now, if you want your role to be SEO expert, then go out there and become an SEO expert and do that for your firm.

(00:30:02)

I think that’s great. You don’t need to hire an agency. You don’t need to hire a consultant. But anyway, I think the other thing that comes out with the SEO agency pro argument is yeah, they’re singularly focused on that one specific channel. They’re experts in the channel. Hopefully, they’ve been doing a long time. They can demonstrate results. They’ve seen data across multiple clients to know what’s working consistently.

Conrad Saam: But this is where I take exception to this. And this is the problem I think when you are talking about someone who is a very specialized SEO person. They see the world. They are a hammer and they see the world of nails, right? And there are many law firms for whom SEO is not the right answer or it’s part of the answer, right? And so, and this can be true for pay-per-click people or SEO people or advertising people.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Or lawyers.

Conrad Saam: Or lawyers, right? You know, I’ve had five knee surgeries because every time I’ve had a major knee accident, I’ve gone to see an orthopedist. And every time, they’ve decided that what you need is surgery, right? Possible I’ve been over surgery because of that, right? And I think one of the biggest failings of any specialist is that they tend to not see the bigger picture. They tend to not understand the appropriate — I’m talking about the marketing channel mix. What is the appropriate marketing channel mix for an individual firm? It’s rarely one marketing channel. And if it is one marketing channel, it’s few and far between where that one marketing channel is searched, right? And so, I really think that you end up talking to people who already know the answer when you step into that conversation.

And then finally, we talked about this the other day. A lot of this is synergistic. These things work together. It is an overriding system of effectiveness where you get 1+1+1 = 5, right? And if you are just thinking about one of those channels, you’re missing the opportunity to drive synergy between the channels which is going to make things more effective. And so, you know, I’m an SEO person. I wish I was still doing SEO work on the daily but it’s just one piece of a puzzle that we need to be thinking about as law firms in growing our practice.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, totally. I mean, you’re certainly not going to get any argument from me about cross channel. I mean, there’s so much value in whether it’s through retargeting or whether it’s through getting email subscribers, video, these things all work together to drive an outcome so can’t argue with that one. I think the other one that comes up in this context in the question about hiring an agency but there’s an SEO agency, do marketing agency we hear this all the time is, I’m just going to build my team in house, right? And there’s lots of stuff. I know you laugh at that.

Conrad Saam: No, it’s great because we monitor our prospects and we talked to his really hot prospect that went dark on us about six weeks ago and they’ve just put up a job posting for an SEO PPC, Google Analytics website manager.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Unicorn.

Conrad Saam: Good luck, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis: So that’s my point is that, if you go search for should I build it in a team in house, should I hire an agency, lot of good stuffs been written on this and the too long didn’t read answer is, is make sure you’re comparing apples to apples. Right? So, if you’re going to build a team of experts that are going to do cross channel digital marketing, you’re going to get a CRM person, a paid social person, a content person, a technical SEO person, all the other things that you need in order to actually pull this stuff off, just don’t think that’s going to be one person and we’d make the cost compare because that’s the big thing. That’s cheaper for me to build the team in house. Is it? Because it’s not.

Conrad Saam: It’s not.

Gyi Tsakalakis: But you know, we’re bias. We run SEO agencies so what do we know?

Conrad Saam: Let me ask you this Gyi. If you were hiring a skill set, if you’re going to make an in-house hire, what skill set are you looking for? I’ve got a really strong bias on this.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Probably a public relations person.

Conrad Saam: I like that.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Again, the basic blocking and tackling of like the table stakes SEO stuff, making sure you got Rank Math installed on your WordPress install. If your site’s like, if you’re on Flash or something, you might need a technical person to migrate but I think that can be outsourced. The in-person thing from a marketing standpoint for me is somebody who can get people talking about your practice because it’s back to the stuff we talked about at the beginning. It’s someone that can help you really stand out. It’s competitive out there and so, I guess I clump that all into PR.

(00:35:00)

So if I’m going to hire somebody, it’s going to be somebody who can help — I always say marshal the evidence of your great reputation. Show the world all the remarkable stuff you’re doing for clients, all the remarkable stuff you’re doing in your community. That’s the person that is so key. And I think that’s very hard to outsource because you got to — it’s the week in week out like, “Hey, what are you doing this week? What are you working on?” They got to be able to prompt you on what’s something interesting that came out of your casework or what’s a remarkable thing you did on behalf of a client? To me, I clump in the PR stuff.

Conrad Saam: I love it. So that like community outreach, you said community outreach. That’s a very hard to outsource but it’s also a massive competitive advantage if you can be really, really present in the community. My answer to my question was, I would hire someone analytical, really who can get solid accurate data and focus on the business. This is why my early answer was CRM, right? But like understand how, what the flow is, what the data is, how things are working from the business perspective and use that to just beat up on your agencies who weren’t delivering where they need to be delivering, right?

Gyi Tsakalakis: I think that’s super important. I wonder if you can outsource it though.

Conrad Saam: No, that’s what I’m saying my answer to it. A) You can outsource it. B) You can also insource that. That can be that one employee.

Gyi Tsakalakis: You need that.

Conrad Saam: I do think you need that and I do think –.

Gyi Tsakalakis: You need a business intelligence person.

Conrad Saam: Business intelligence. And I don’t think that has to be the principal of the firm. I don’t think that has to be the firm leader.

Gyi Tsakalakis: No, it doesn’t. It can be a fractional CFO. It can be some of the accounting firms or the more sophisticated accounting firm but definitely someone that can create a dashboard for your gauges for whatever those metrics are that you need to be tracking week in week out like critically important.

Conrad Saam: All right, with that, you spent another 40 minutes with Gyi and Conrad at Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. Please, I hope you enjoyed your cheeseburgers, fly that Ukrainian flag if you feel like it. And we will be back in two weeks from now for Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.

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