Seat At The Table: How To Avoid Wasting Money On Marketing

Episode Notes

Transcript

Christopher T. Anderson:

We’re going to be talking today about marketing. Now, in the first episode, we talked about branding and we spent a good long time talking about what it is, when you should use it, when you should be careful about it, but how it really does augment your efforts at speaking to the market. So today we’re going to talk about marketing and we’re going to learn about what marketing is, a little bit about what it isn’t, and how you can use marketing to introduce yourself, reintroduce yourself, and keep yourself front of mind in your marketplace, making yourself available to your potential clients to let them know that you might be the answer to their problems.

Announcer:

Unbillable Hour Seat at the Table, a monthly round table discussion between industry professionals about topics most relevant to law firm owners today.

Christopher T. Anderson:

All right. Hello, this is Christopher Anderson. Again, we are in the second episode and welcome to Your Seat at the Table. We have got a mostly excellent panel and a couple of late comers, but we’ve got a mostly excellent panel. You can figure out who’s who. They’re going to be sharing their thoughts, ideas, and quite honestly, they’re really seasoned expertise on marketing. You should be listening. If you are a law firm that is trying to get clients, in other words, everybody, this is information that you really will find usable. Returning to the table is Erik Alicea and Elliot Alicea. They are with Empirical 360. Rob Leitner is with us again as well. And Rob is a well-known consultant to many, many law firms, Kristen, David, upleveling your business. And if you want to hear all about them, you got to go listen to the first episode.

We gave you their full introductions. We’re not going to do it again because we’re here for business. But also joining us is John Reid. John Reed runs a business called Rain BDM. And you haven’t heard from John before unless you listened to the February episode, which you should have. And if you haven’t, after you listen to this one, go back and listen to The Unbillable Hour in February. It’s a great episode with John. But John, for those of the folks who are going to go back and listen, so they don’t know you yet. Why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about who you are, what you do, and why you’re here?

John Reed:

Certainly. Well, I’m happy to be here. I’m the founder of Rain BDM, as you indicated. And we work with law firms of all sizes across the United States on their business development and marketing projects and issues and gaps and strengths and skills. We help them do the things that they didn’t learn how to do in law school, whether that’s personal branding or marketing, content. But most importantly, relationship building, which I think is so pertinent to what we’re going to talk about, I’m sure today as well. And my background, I come from advertising, marketing, sales, and the practice of law. I guess some people call that an intersection. I sometimes think it’s the crash site, but I’m happy to be with this esteemed group. Thank you.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Thank you, John. And welcome to the table and having your seat at it. Kristen, I’m going to turn it to you first. I’m going to put you right there on the spot because you were here last week. We talked about branding and now we’re talking about marketing. Would you help our listeners just like … Let’s do a good distinguishing description of how they should think about those two things differently.

Kristen David:

Awesome. Let’s go. So branding is who you are, what you stand for. It sends an immediate message about who the company is, but marketing is about connecting with that ideal audience. It’s about entering the conversation already in their head and the potential client saying, “Bam, that’s who I want to work with. This is the right fit for me. ” So marketing is that intersection, as John kind of put of bringing people in and saying their issue connects with what you do and that they want to naturally navigate and come work with you. So marketing doing a good job makes it easy for sales to do its job. How’s that?

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, that’s amazing. So do anybody want to kind of either disagree with Christian? I really hope someone disagrees with her or augment or embellish that thought.

John Reed:

I’m a newbie. I’ll jump in here and say, I’ll augment. I often tell people a brand is a promise. So it’s what you represent yourself to be and you really do yourself a disservice when how you represent yourself doesn’t match up to how you deliver. And so if a brand is a promise, it’s a great opportunity to build trust because if you deliver on what you promise to do, that builds trust.

Christopher T. Anderson:

A lot of people, John, talk about brand promise, but I love how you’re actually just saying the brand is your promise. I think the natural flow here is that then marketing should be to borrow the cliche on brand. The marketing should both deliver on that promise, but also be in alignment with that promise all the time so that when people are encountering your brand through all the marketing that you do, they’re getting the same message and the same promise over and over and over again. And then in a future episode, we’ll talk about how delivery has got to also be there. Okay. So now that we’ve got the distinguishing factor, Erik, I’m going to put you on the spot. Define marketing. And the reason I ask you to do it, I mean, it just seems so basic and fundamental, but it always reminds me of the story that New Rockne used to start every season of football with this is a football.

And I think people confuse marketing and sales. They confuse what is marketing and what is other activity that they do. From your perspective, Erik, what is marketing? Everybody else be prepared to just attack what Erik says.

Erik Alicea:

The way I look at marketing is marketing is pretty much making people want what you have. So it is, like you all said, whatever the brand promises, whatever the brand you’ve identified is getting it out there, it’s promoting. But I think most people, when they expect to think about marketing or work on marketing or define it, they expect the creative side of marketing only. And so what I mean is most people expect to discuss colors, fonts, the way their customers feel, avatar. But a lot of times, most of our marketing discussions are around traffic, leads, because that’s how we actually build out our marketing pipeline. And so for me, marketing is just simply just making people want what we have and promoting the brand, but what it actually looks like in practice is for law firms, specifically lead generation.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Lead generation, yeah.

Elliot Alicea:

I would just say for me, it would be letting people know about what we do and then defining the goal later would be either lead gen and/or awareness and/or the goal would be something that you could decide at a different level of firm that you’re at, depending on where you’re at. But to me, I view it as the mechanism of disseminating your message so that people can come to the brand and do whatever they want to do, whatever your goal is for that particular marketing campaign. To me, it’s like a mechanism is how I would visualize it to get the message out.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, I like it. I think you went broader, which I think is the right thing to do. Marketing happens. Yes, it has all the metrics and the mechanical pieces of it, for sure. But marketing happens when you put on your brand or whatever and you just talk to people. Marketing happens when you are in front of a group of people telling them about your business. Marketing happens when you stumble across some colleagues at the bar and just talking to them. Yeah. So Kristen, I think you said something that sat really well with me. You were talking about entering into a conversation. Can you speak a little bit more about that?

Kristen David:

Yeah. Our clients already have problems. And the best way to map this, especially if you’re fresh into marketing, starting your firm or revamping, is essentially write down what do you think your ideal client is thinking about in the middle of the night? What is on their mind? What are they worried about? That’s the conversation mulling in their head when they’re driving, when they’re walking. And if you can have some messaging with what you do, solve some of that problem and you enter that conversation they’re already having in their head, you’ve just won, you’re five steps ahead of the game and you’re able to now, they’re like, “Oh, I was just thinking that. Ooh, I want to listen. I want to know how to solve this. ” To me, marketing, I’m with Erik and John, it’s the messaging. I think marketing vehicles, the delivery, how we get the word out there, that can be based on different learning styles, different things.

But the first part is let’s get clear on the message. What are our clients thinking about? What’s going on in their head? And let’s hone in on that, if that connects with what we solve, what

Elliot Alicea:

We do. I would love to chime in too. I think one of the best things I’ve heard to speak exactly to that is if you can articulate your client’s problems better than they can,

You’ve pretty much sold them at that point. And to me, when we witness this with law firms is if somebody has gone through the thing that they do, whether it’s probate or they need an estate plan or you’re a new parent, whatever firm it is, if you can articulate, because in your head it’s buzzing, especially if it’s an urgent practice area like, “Oh my gosh, I want to get a divorce,” for example. And they’ve never maybe said the words to anybody, but they just are feeling pain. But if you can describe how it’s walking on eggshells or you’re sitting in your driveway because you don’t want to come in the house because blah, blah, blah, right? That I think is exactly what Kristen said. If you can enter that conversation and say it better than they can, you’ve got them at that point.

Rob Leitner:

I would add last week, last episode, we spoke about value proposition and how important it is to create it and make it meaningful and come up with something that connects and that’s real. To me, marketing is more or less communicating your value proposition to your target audience. And one important aspect of this conversation is to define your target audience, your avatar before you start engaging in a lot of the marketing activities. Maybe it has to do with their problems, their income, their gender, their location, their language, whatever specifics relate to your practice, define that first so that you know exactly what target audience you’re looking for.

John Reed:

I’m going to add to this and say at the risk of offending, we often confuse business development and sales with marketing in terms of its actions, right? And in my world, at least I characterize marketing as setting the table for business development and sales. You are doing everything that’s been talked about. You are putting out there your brand, your messaging in the hopes that it speaks to and resonates with your next best client. But regardless of what practice area you’re in, as soon as you move from a one-way communication that is marketing, it doesn’t always have to be, but let’s just assume for the moment, and then it turns into a conversation, that’s when you’re in business development. So whether it’s a website or a billboard or an email, that’s marketing. But as soon as somebody picks up the phone or submits the web form or whatever, initiates that conversation, marketing did its job then, and now true relationship building starts.

Christopher T. Anderson:

That’s a great definition. So we’re going to do pop quiz around the table here. Can anybody name a business that does almost no sales? It’s all marketing. They transact business almost entirely through marketing with almost no sales motion at all.

Elliot Alicea:

I’m going to tee you up for your Wendy’s drive-through.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. So talk about that.

Erik Alicea:

I almost said Tesla just for fun.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Or Tesla. Yeah, I think that’s both? Yeah. Both, right? So Elliot, tell you what, Erik, you’ve talked about Tesla since I always talk about Wendy’s. What do you mean? How is that … And then by the way, everybody be thinking while Erik’s talking, I’m going to ask the other way around. What business do you know that is no marketing, all sales? But Erik, talk about Tesla’s all marketing, no sales.

Erik Alicea:

Tesla does not have car dealerships. Until recently, they have showcase little pop-ups in malls. But yeah, they don’t have the traditional sales model that car dealerships usually use. And so they grow through … Actually, what you were saying earlier about keeping promises and brand, that’s mainly how they grow is by delivering a car that people remark on and more people buy it and people don’t go to a salesperson, they buy directly online. I was actually at the Mall the other day. I tried to buy it in person and they wouldn’t let me. They said you have to go to the website and then I didn’t buy. But that’s their main way of selling is just through their marketing.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. And I’ve heard, for instance, also there’s this whole thing, if you walk into a Rolex store, they don’t have any watches to sell you. They just don’t have any watches to sell you. They won’t do it because the sale’s going to happen somewhere else. All right. So table, go the other way around. What business can you think of that almost has no marketing, but is all sales? It just doesn’t market at all.

Elliot Alicea:

So we came up in one of those and until Erik was their marketing guy, it was a call center, straight outbound sales,

Erik Alicea:

Car warranties, baby.

Elliot Alicea:

Yeah. Warranties, those calls that you get, we were a little bit responsible for those up for a time, but yeah, warranty sales.

Christopher T. Anderson:

And that’s the show everybody thinks.

Kristen David:

Well, I was going to say a criminal defense attorney who just shows up in court and drives results and the word goes all through the jail and he doesn’t do any marketing. He just gets lots of business and they just show up and hire and hire and hire. Not a great model, but it is an example.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. So that’s an interesting one because that’s almost no marketing and no sales. It’s just order taking,

Which one I think is the other thing that happens in businesses and people call it sales and we have to be careful that we’re to understand. It’s not a bad thing, but we have to be careful to understand where that’s happening in our business, where there’s order taking going on. It can be a very good thing. I just was working this week with a law firm whose marketing … They came to me. It was a brand new client and they came to me and they’re like, “Yo, yeah, our salespeople have a 90 something percent conversion rate.” I was like, “No, they don’t.” It’s just you just don’t understand where the sale’s taking place and it’s not with them and you’re overpaying them because they’re order takers. And so we’re talking about what they could be doing. Krista, I love that example. John, it looked like he had something

John Reed:

To add. I grew up in a real estate family and what’s funny is how the continuum starts. When you start out in real estate, you have to walk up and down the street. You have to hand out the calendar magnets and all that kind of stuff. My dad, after 30 odd years, did nothing. He had repeat business, he had second generation, third generation and whatever. It just came to him. A lot of hard work on the front end. But I think what was so interesting is he was affiliated with a couple different national companies. It didn’t make a difference what organization he was with and what marketing they were putting in because the real hard work was being done locally. So almost contrarian.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, no, indeed. I think one of the things that it would help our listeners to understand also, because we’ve kind of danced around this concept and it kind of colored how Erik’s answer was different than Elliot’s answer was different than Kristen’s answer was different than John’s answer was different than Rob’s answer. And that is the concept of a funnel and where people … And I’m not talking about a marketing funnel where we’re trying … We capture all these people who try to drop them out, but rather where people are in the buying process. And Kristen, you said you’re entering into a conversation, but then … And now I’m going to figure out, was it Elliot? I think you said you’re also talking to people who didn’t know. They just feel the pain, but they didn’t know they’re in the buying process at all because they don’t even know there is a solution to their problem.

They just know that they might know they have a problem or they might just think that pain is normal, like that just walking around with this pain is just part of life. So let me turn it to Rob first, if you will. Just can you just talk about your concept of what is a funnel from that perspective as far as where the buyer is in their journey to becoming a customer of a law firm, since we’re talking about law firms here? I

Rob Leitner:

Think I’m going to defer to Kristen on this one. She’s smiling.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Rob’s going to pass the baton.

Kristen David:

I’ll take it. I’ll take it. Okay. Listen, I start at the bottom, and so I think John and I are a little different and I’ve never kind of thought about that as that business development, but the bottom of my funnel of marketing’s job is a potential client who knows they have a problem and knows you are a solution. So they’re coming to you already kind of a little bit aware of what you do or what’s going on. They’re going to be that closest to the pin, that one foot away easy put, going to get it in there. Then you go up to like two to three feet away from the ball from the hole and it’s a little harder. They know they have a problem and they’re starting to seek their solutions and that’s where they’re starting to get out there and ask questions. The brain is starting to go, “Okay, I really probably need to solve this problem.” Above that is some marketing that’s really more of starting to educate and make people aware that they might have that problem.

We’re kind of getting into that education, learning. And above that is kind of the billboard example where they don’t even have the problem. They just become aware of you. They see the billboard day after day after day. They haven’t been in a car accident, they don’t need you, but that muscle memory when they are in a car accident, they’re like, “What’s the name of the attorney on that billboard?” You’ve preconditioned their brain even though they have no problem and no need. And that’s really at those one and a half to $5 million firms, that bigger level. So I kind of see it and I always work with people like, let’s tighten up that bottom part first because that’s closest to the pin money. And I think John- If

Christopher T. Anderson:

You need money tomorrow, that’s where you got to be,

Kristen David:

Right? Yeah.

Christopher T. Anderson:

And from my perspective, what you’re talking about is the higher you move up, you’re building … One of the ways I like to talk about it is down there at the bottom of the funnel, Kristen, if you need money,

Particularly if you need money now, that’s where you got to be. The higher you go by your description, I love that you started from the bottom went up. I was expecting everybody to go top to bottom. But the higher you go, the higher you ascend there, and there’s one level above what you talked about. I’m going to talk about it a second. You’re building wealth because the higher you go in that, you’re developing clients that might need you in the future and in the longer and longer and longer future, and you’re building yourself as an authority because like you said, you’re doing education, you’re talking about it. And so you’re building real wealth so that even if you stop paying attention to the bottom as much, those clients will still be attracted to you. I wanted to go one level higher. And the other thing that everybody should note about what Kristen was saying is the higher you go in her funnel, the higher ticket clients you tend to attract because they’ve got the luxury of thinking about it.

They want to be educated, they’re going to spend some time with this, but when they do buy, they’re generally going to buy at a higher price point. And the highest one above everything that Kristen said is the … And by the way, I want everybody also to note that wherever Kristen said problem, also put in the word opportunity because some folks listening are in firms, business law and others where we actually help people seize opportunities. But so you go to the highest one and that’s where you educate people so much that you help them find opportunity or a problem in their business, in their life that they aren’t particularly feeling the pain or they think the pain is normal. We’re looking for it, but you can provide them value, enormous value by first educating them about the problem or opportunity and then delivering it. An example I think of is a friend of mine who runs an intellectual property firm who offers to go into a business and find value in the business that they didn’t even know was there.

And it doesn’t on the come because he knows that if he does find it, they’re going to hire him to do that. So other thoughts on the funnel, how does that relate to marketing for law firms?

Elliot Alicea:

Well, and one thing that if you look at the unaware stage, it’s like estate planning is a really good example. You have a kid and you’re like, you don’t really think about, well, what happens if I die? But the minute that though enters your head, you’re now all of a sudden aware that there’s this problem and then opportunity, whatever. And so that’s a good way to think about it. And the other way I’ve thought about this in the past is Kristen made a good point that you can store away people eyeballs in the bank for later, but a lot of people sometimes think that this funnel takes a long time. But if you think about a car accident, they become aware of that problem really fast and then they need to solve it really, really fast. And so even though the awareness part, like the bigger firms that can do that, they have been planning this for years, but other firms can come in and capture that funnel a little bit easier because people move through it very quickly when the time comes.

So estate planning is a very long tail one, maybe divorces as well, other practice areas, but then you think about personal injury and it’s like, they go through that thing really quick and obviously you-

Erik Alicea:

DUI.

Elliot Alicea:

Yeah. DUI

Erik Alicea:

Could be like a one week cycle.

Elliot Alicea:

Yeah. Yep.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Absolutely. Or shorter. Yeah. Okay. So here’s what I want to do for our listeners. I want to give them something actionable. So I want to go around the table so everybody think of the answer to this and the question is going to be, how can people avoid wasting money on marketing? How could people avoid wasting money on marketing? Because I see a lot of money out there being spent on things in marketing that are a waste. And you could also, by the way, for each person, you can define what you mean by waste. So John, we’re going to start with you then. We’re going to go Erik, Elliot, Kristen, Rob. And how can our listeners avoid wasting money on marketing?

John Reed:

Avoid wasting money on marketing by thinking like your next best client and not how you as the lawyer think your next best client is going to think about you as their lawyer along those lines. I

Christopher T. Anderson:

Think you’re going to have to explain that one.

John Reed:

Yeah. I’ll give you another example, which is writing content. Lawyers the right content. They write for themselves instead of who their reader is. And I think you can extrapolate that to advertising as well. Well, I think who I really want is going to be a member of a country club, so I’m going to join a country club, or they’re going to be listening to the radio during drive time or whatever. And that may or may not be true, but we get caught up in the sales pitch, other people’s sales pitches, and we just don’t stop to think about the common sense of, who am I really going after? What’s important to them? Yes, they’ve got a problem, but there’s additional layers to that person. Let’s pay attention to them. And I would say the other thing that goes hand in hand with this is we have a smarter level of consumer than we’ve ever had with so many different options to get information.

It’s no longer that knee-jerk reaction of a billboard or TV commercial or whatever. And there’s this level of emotionality with every decision to hire a lawyer. So if you can speak to the emotion as well as the logic of your perspective, next best client, that’s how you avoid wasting money.

Christopher T. Anderson:

I love that, John. Let me just follow up on that thought because it’s so true, but I think it is going to be challenging for people to act on it without answering this question. How do the lawyers who are going to be doing the marketing get out of their own head and figure out what their clients want to hear?

John Reed:

Yeah. So here’s something actionable. Go talk to a former client or a current client and say, “I’m thinking about doing this. What do you think about it? ” I mean, it’s a built-in focus group and it’s free and actually it’s less than free because you get the opportunity to have a conversation with a past or current client that may lead to a referral or more business or certainly more top of mind awareness. So before you whip out the Visa card, call up some clients and they don’t have to know that they weren’t the first person you called, right? They’re not going to know. Don’t going to get on the room, but to me, it’s just that simple.

Christopher T. Anderson:

I like that, John, and I appreciate that. And I was just going to augment that with one thing. Make it a client that you liked working with. Absolutely.

John Reed:

A safe harbor. Yep. Absolutely.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Erik, how do our listeners avoid wasting money on marketing?

Erik Alicea:

This was actually something we talked about to all of our clients yesterday. And so I’m going to steal Elliot our call from yesterday. But before starting marketing or wanting more or less from your marketing, starting with getting to really know what your cost of acquisition can be and can be is a really important part of that because most people want to always drive their cost of acquisition down instead of focusing on how they can afford the highest cost of acquisition to dominate their market. And so whenever people ask us like, “I want my ROI to be better,” but they don’t know what their cost of acquisition should be, it seems like it’s not a fair request. It’s like, “What are we optimizing towards?” And so before, I think this applies to small and large businesses, before thinking about your marketing, intimately know what your cost of acquisition can be and then go apply it to your marketing.

Christopher T. Anderson:

I think that’s so important to be, and it’s the can be part that’s so important. Now, poor Elliot, you just stole probably what he was going to say, but- Something else. He’s got to think on his feet, Erik. I mean, Erik, thanks a lot. Elliot, how can our listeners avoid wasting money on marketing?

Elliot Alicea:

It’s a little bit of a two part, but I would say model the rise, not the peak. So when we talk to firms, they want to do billboards, TV, cool stuff, branding, because that’s what the big guy’s doing, but you’re witnessing them at the peak, right? We didn’t see the rise and the rise is generally very different. And so once you understand that concept, I would go find somebody and ask them what did they do to get there and then what would they do different to get there on the rise, specific to my size firm, because I think a lot of firms will get caught up in, “I need to go spend $50,000 on a focus group or on a website or on a logo when they just need clients today.” So that would be the way to not waste a ton of money because we did that unfortunately too in our business.

Erik Alicea:

It’s very similar to like millionaires have seven streams of income, but that’s not how they became a millionaire. And so people will start their seven streams when they don’t have any money.

Christopher T. Anderson:

I know it. I know it. It’s crazy, but I love that. And I want people to hear very, because it can pass by something what Elliot said, which is ask them how they would do it again, not how they did it because how they did it is they tried five things that didn’t work and you don’t want to model that, right? You want to model the things that were successful other than the fact that we do all have to fail forward, and that’s part of it. And so listening to that part that they did fail, but they’re still now at the peak is also a really important learning. Kristen, how can our listeners avoid wasting money on marketing?

Kristen David:

Awesome. I’ve got three quick ones. The first one is be clear on the result you want because are you trying to get any client or are you trying to get your ideal client? Because you could spend a bunch of money and get a ton of people, but then it’s a pain to work with and you haven’t really done yourself any favors and you spent a lot of money and not really succeeded. So being clear on your end result of what you want, number two, tire kickers. I think we waste a lot of money with the wrong messaging and we bring in a bunch of tire kickers instead of people motivated to hire. So get rid of some of that language that said, “Oh, come find out your questions and answers and talk to us to investigate if this is the right choice.” No, are you ready to move forward?

We’re ready to move you forward. Be very clear with your intentions, otherwise you can waste thousands of dollars and get dozens of tire kickers and no clients. That sucks. Number three is test. Don’t go put a thousand or $1,500 on an ad. Go do a YouTube ad with it or something that try out that messaging or call some of your past clients or best clients. Talk to people, test the messaging before you go full launch into something that fails miserably. And no judgment. We’ve tried many things, but it’s a quick way to not waste a ton of money. Find what works and then put money behind it.

Christopher T. Anderson:

I think that’s brilliant, Kristen. It’s something there’s a little bit of a theme between what John said, what you said, and it reminded me of years and years and years ago, I went and took a course from a business called Pragmatic Marketing. It’s about product marketing and product management. And one of the favorite things that I had, I don’t have it with me, so I’m just going to hold this bug, but it was a coffee mug that when you hold it in your right hand, on the letters facing me said, “Your opinion, while interesting, is not relevant.” Everybody, nobody at this table, nobody that’s listening knows what will resonate with your clients. You may have been doing this for 20 years, but your client’s problem is new to them and the world is new and you never walk through the same river twice and all that.

You got to test it. And the cheapest or maybe even negative cost way, like John said, is talk to your own favorite clients. And then, but to Kristen’s point too, sometimes you just got to get out in the market, but get out there cheap. Get out there with something that doesn’t cost very much at all. You can run a Facebook test, you can run a Google test, you can run a YouTube test for 50 bucks and get real results to know that what you really want to pour the gasoline on. So thanks for that. All right, Rob, bring it home. What can our listeners do to avoid wasting money on marketing?

Rob Leitner:

Great question. So two recommendations. First, I recommend we become humble. Well,

Christopher T. Anderson:

This group’s out.

Rob Leitner:

We put ourselves in the shoes of the PNC. Start there. Put yourselves in their shoes and then all decisions should flow from their vantage point. It’s about them. Number two, I would target the strongest leads. Basically focus on referral marketing, which is something we haven’t touched upon yet today. Referrals are a marketing channel like any other. Lower cost of acquisition, really high ROI, highest conversion rates. Whether you’re targeting attorney referrals, referrals from other professionals, referrals from current or former clients, nurturing that referral network is crucial and will help you avoid wasting your precious marketing dollars.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. And that’s another one that we were talking about before. Nurturing that referral network, Rob, that’s the gift that keeps on giving. If you keep them nurtured, they’re sending you those high value, usually to Kristen’s point, bottom of funnel, people ready to buy. That’ll be so valuable for your business. All right. We are reaching the top of the time that we’ve got. So I want to thank John for coming on being our guest this episode. Really appreciate you being here and sharing your insights. Again, folks, please, you will not regret, I promise you, the February episode of The Imbillable Hour is just John and me talking about stuff that is just really valuable and really great for you to listen to. By the way, if you check out the back catalog of the Imbillable Hour, you’ll find Erik and Elliot too, and you’ll find Kristen too.

They’ve all graced the airwaves with us in the past, and all those episodes are also great. Erik, Elliot, Kristen, Rob, thanks for being on at the table as our listeners came and had a seat at the table. One of the things that we thought about talking about today, listeners, was how AI plays with marketing. And we’re not ignoring the topic, but we wanted to talk about marketing writ large first. We’re going to be having some conversation later on in a future episode. So keep looking for your seat at the table here on the Legal Talk Network. And of course, don’t forget to catch every episode of the Unbillable Hour that comes every month as we continue to help you build a law firm business that works for you. Until next time, thank you all.

Announcer:

Thank you for listening. This has been Unbillable Hour Seat at the Table by the Legal Talk Network.

Continue Reading