Don’t Be Weird About Sponsorships (Just Be Honest)

Episode Notes

Transcript

Conrad Saam (00:00)

Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. This is Conrad Saam from Mockingbird and I have lived on three different continents, which is very, very cool. Today we’re going to talk to John Henson and we’re going over a question that I had for him regarding the pod’s new sponsored endorsement model in which we highlight more than just simple ads, a small cadre of very carefully curated vendors. And I wanted to

 

ask John how we should approach this from a regulatory perspective. So you’re going to hear John walk us through how we should be handling this just to make sure we don’t run afoul of any federal or state regulations, which will be really helpful for you guys understanding how this model changes, not just for the podcast, but for your firms as well. And then John asked me a great question. We always love doing user submitted questions.

 

So John asked me a great question regarding his very small practice with a very large national footprint. How does he actually go about attracting clients with a really, really big area to cover when he’s just one very small firm? Stay tuned for more from that after we talk about the regulatory environment.

 

Conrad Saam (01:45)

So the question I want to ask you, John, is we have moved the Lunch Hour Legal Marketing advertising model. It used to be like we run the podcast and there, these flagrant ads would come up like, like normal. There’s no disclaimer that’s needed for those ads. don’t think because they’re obviously ads. So we’ve moved to this sponsored endorsement model where basically we’re curating a small number of advertisers and

 

and giving them more airplay and deliberately giving them airplay, right? So like, CallRail is the most obvious example. We talk about CallRail probably once a month. ⁓ It’s not that we wouldn’t talk about them otherwise, ⁓ but like, we think they’re really great and we’re gonna go out of our way to promote CallRail and showcase some of their stuff. so, that’s one, on the podcast. Additionally, we’ve got a big social media.

 

following, right? Individually and like Mockingbird, Conrad has a big social media voice outside of Lunch Hour Legal Marketing ⁓ So like I want to be able to take again using CallRail. I want to be able to take a clip of something that CallRail launches. I can interview someone for 90 seconds and we send it out on the YouTube’s and the blah, blah. Right. But it’s a paid relationship. OK, it’s a paid relationship with Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. ⁓ And so what I’m trying to figure out is

 

In the podcast, how do we, how do we disclaim appropriately that like some of the things that you hear on this podcast are, are, are what we call this paid endorsement or paid influencer model. ⁓ the, the cute thing that we’ve thought about doing, ⁓ is to put like a little sound. like every time you hear the Mario sounds like that means it’s a paid endorsement and be kind of funny. And we just do it like that. We would then need a disclaimer about what that little noise means.

 

Right. Can that go at the end? Does it have to go at the beginning? Um, that’s kind of the podcast question. And then later on, if we’re sharing stuff out on social media, like in my personal account, how do we account for that? How do we, how do we disclaim that? Or do we need to disclaim that this is a part of it? We will have on the lunch hour legal and we already do on the Lunch Hour Legal Marketing website, a list of our sponsors. So we’re not trying to hide it, but it’ll be there.

 

So what I liked is like, what is the most minimally invasive way and maybe creative and fun way for us to make sure that we’re just claiming what we’re doing without every single time I say CallRail us needing to say, they’re a sponsor, they’re a sponsor, right? That becomes awkward.

 

John Henson (04:22)

Yeah, I think ⁓ some of that is format, right? Of like, are there gonna be ad breaks? Are there gonna be advertorials? Are you going to massage them into the flow of the conversation? ⁓ So context matters, right? And then I think from, let’s…

 

As you know, listened to your podcast if with assume current format, right? I think at the very beginning of each podcast, you’re like, Hey, you know, right after somebody tells Lockwood to play the music, Hey, this is on general legal marketing sponsored by this episode sponsored by CallRail, whatever, right? You could do that. And then now I know when you talk about car CallRail and you’ve got your little sound ⁓ then

 

I know that that’s going to be sponsored. Right. I think that like, depending on how you do that, I listen to a lot of podcasts and I know that like when they play this bail, the ads start, right. Play this bail again. The ads are over. Right. Yep. And I think that that’s, that’s a pretty good way to do that. ⁓ I don’t have to be told that those bills mean ads. I’ve just figured it out. Right. Yep. So that’s like how a way you could do it on the standard LHL inform.

 

Conrad Saam (05:41)

Okay. And if we did that, ⁓ we could have a little disclaimer at the beginning. And it’s not that an episode is sponsored by CallRail. It’s just like, we have this sponsor endorsement model. Every time you hear the chime, that means it’s an indoor endorsement. If we mentioned CallRail at minute two, and then we mentioned them again at minute eight, do we need to do that little chime both times?

 

John Henson (06:00)

No,

 

don’t. Okay. And then you could also.

 

You could also add that sponsors at the end as well, right? I’m just like, if there’s no reason you couldn’t do it in both places, right? Like LHLM was brought to you Bop Bop Bop this week, right? The other way to do it, which is probably gonna need a little bit more disclosure is ⁓ what I would call an audio advertorial, right? You’ll remember 10 years ago, advertorials were the big thing online.

 

And it was a big article on a content page that was clearly sponsored by, ⁓ CallRail that looked like everything else on that page. Right. way to do that is similar to how you would do if it was written, right? You would say this content is sponsored by CallRail, right? And that, in that scenario, like I could see a world in which, ⁓ I’m making this up, right?

 

but a world in which you guys come up with a case study about CallRail and like Mockingbird’s work with CallRail and a client and they saw X number of growth. Like that’s gonna sound like case studies that John Henson could get some information from, other people could get information from, but you still wanna disclose, you know that Conrad owns Mockingbird and CallRail’s affiliate, right? So again, it’s just contextual. ⁓ So those are…

 

the two ways that things that I think of immediately off the podcast for the social media, I think you’ve got a little bit more ⁓ leeway. ⁓ The FTC has been pretty clear that hashtag ad works, hashtag sponsor works. Okay. One way that I’ve seen it done too is, and I kind of like this,

 

Conrad Saam (07:42)

Okay.

 

like that. We just throw in like hashtag LHLM sponsor. Yep. And we throw that up on LinkedIn and Facebook. Like, well,

 

John Henson (08:15)

Yes, because that’s what I was going to say too. If you do that and then you go to fit link your LinkedIn page, right in the headline, it says, Hey, call rails. LHLM is proud to be sponsored by CallRail and this guy and this guy and this guy. So now I know I saw the ad, I see the sponsor tag, I go to learn more about LHLM and wait, I see there is a sponsorship there, right? No one is confused by that.

 

⁓ Should be

 

Conrad Saam (08:49)

Okay.

 

John Henson (08:51)

But yeah, I mean, think you’re like, you’re being the candidness of it is what’s important here. So like, what I don’t want you to run into is…

 

just like not mentioning it at all and hoping that like great example would be do the case study, never mentioned anything about CallRail sponsorship. And then only if I go to the LinkedIn page and I scroll down the bottom and would I see that CallRail sponsor. That seems like we’re kind of hiding it. And I will say this, not just because you’re on the phone, I on the call right now, but because I’ve listened to you for long enough, like you guys do a good job now saying, hey,

 

This is a sponsor, right? So like, I’m not overly worried.

 

Conrad Saam (09:40)

Well, it’s actually, mean, it’s, I wanted to, if we do this right, it’s an asset, right? It’s like, this isn’t just an ad for Skippy’s peanut butter because they’re paying us. It’s an ad for Skippy’s peanut butter because we love Skippy’s peanut butter. ⁓ Yeah. So if we do it right, it’s an asset, not a, not ⁓ a, just don’t want it to become like, you know, we have 17 breaks where we have to break up the pod or like it becomes ⁓ distracting. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

 

John Henson (10:09)

I think you guys are good.

 

Conrad Saam (10:11)

Okay, okay, that’s great. Anything else I’m not thinking about?

 

John Henson (10:15)

Hashtags should cover it, type back to the main page. Yeah, I think that’s basically it.

 

Conrad Saam (10:23)

Okay, that’s great. Thank you.

 

John Henson (10:25)

I mean, now,

 

if you came to me and said, hey, by the way, here’s some totally weird, unique situation, like that would change, but like, but for those use cases or use cases that rhyme with those use cases, I think that’s good.

 

Conrad Saam (10:41)

Okay. No, that’s helpful. That’s helpful. Cool.

 

John Henson (10:44)

also going to send in a question for LHLM at some point. Good. And I want an answer.

 

Conrad Saam (10:49)

Okay,

 

done.

 

John Henson (10:51)

I have a good one too. have a good one. That’s so like, how do you, I’ll ask you now. How do you…

 

I love Jay Ruane’s new thing about digital versus analog. I love it. think it’s smart. I like their podcast because they argue he and what’s his name argue a lot about it, Seth. And I think that there is real value about that.

 

My problem is I have a national firm. I have one client in my hometown. could not care less where I rank on Google Business page. How?

 

Conrad Saam (11:25)

Yeah.

 

John Henson (11:42)

So you get what I’m saying, right?

 

Conrad Saam (11:44)

So this is great. No, this is the, this is entirely the gist of my talk that I’m giving at GLM and also at PILMMA I literally finished it yesterday and I, I, and I’m talking about all the marketing channels that you can have. Right. And I basically put together a marketing budget and strategy and tactics for an eight figure law firm. like, imagine someone spending $350,000 a month. What does that breakdown look like? Half of it.

 

And the firm, the, the, the, the, the prototype that I’ve used is like a number six or seven firm in, in, their market. Right. So how do they compete with firms that are three times as big as them spend or Morgan and Morgan’s just blanketing the area. The reason, and most people start with analog, right? T I’m starting with TV, radio billboards, right? So I’m starting there and then I’m going to figure out the digital stuff. I think.

 

You should only do that if you are top one, two, three in the market because you have enough money to hit everyone. But you, you’re an extreme example of this, but this is why this is really important. You shouldn’t be thinking all that much about analog because the magic of digital is your ability. Like you have a very, very, very specific target and 99.9 % of your analog spend will not hit your target market. And so what you need to do is figure out like, okay, I’m going to start with

 

really, really good targeting. So I’m not gonna spend 99%. I’m not gonna blow 99 % of my money. I’m gonna spend 1 % of that budget that I would have needed to reach, but I’m gonna only reach the people that I wanna reach. So let me use a simplistic example in the PI world. You can put your ads during the summer in houses that have motorcycles and only in houses that have motorcycles. So why would you ever run motorcycle advertising for everyone?

 

Right. It’s massively inefficient. And why would you run that year round? It’s massively inefficient. And so you have, you’re, you’re at an extreme end of this. Like in my opinion, you should be using only digital and, your, I’m guessing here, but your audience is, on LinkedIn. Right. And you can really find out who those people are. Now, this doesn’t need to be a direct response vehicle. Like it shouldn’t be like hire John Henson today, but it should be, I’m going to identify.

 

a subset of people, a very, very small subset of people in that LinkedIn market, and I’m never going to let them forget who I am. They’re going to see me all the fucking time, right? And even if that means that you’re like, okay, I don’t have the budget to, if that pool is too big, which it might be, but if that pool is too big, I want you to constrain it by some other factor, whether it’s geography, industry, like you’ve gotta hit people over and over and over again if you’re doing a brand thing, and and.

 

depending on your budget, you need to shrink that pool. I would rather you hit 200 people a thousand times this year than 200,000 people twice. Right? And so that’s the key.

 

John Henson (14:54)

Okay, now that’s good. That feels like that’s where my gut was too.

 

Conrad Saam (15:00)

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. Like the analog stuff, unless you can just get in front of people at mass torts made perfect, right? Yeah. It’s got, it’s gotta be massively targeted. And that’s the downside of analog. Like it’s not that analog doesn’t work. It’s analog is frequently deployed in this catch everything that and with, ha, here’s my analogy. It’s a, it’s it’s a catch the whole ocean net, but the, the net is too wide to catch anyone. Right. And you’ve really got to constrain it. Yeah.

 

John Henson (15:28)

Yeah, that is a good analogy.

 

Conrad Saam (15:31)

Yeah, that is a good, there we go.

 

John Henson (15:34)

By the way, I have a tendency to be on calls with people and come up with something like, hang on, that’s a really good analogy. And they’re like, okay. perfect. Thank you, sir.

 

Conrad Saam (15:38)

you

 

Cool, thank

 

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