Transcript
00:00:00:07 – 00:00:23:27
Unknown
Repetition builds trust. We’ve seen it in dozens of market research studies with third party partners, with the creative. We serve out there. Hi, I’m Al Ludwig, host of the law firm Brand Builders podcast and CEO of Practice Made Perfect, where we’ve managed more than half $1 billion in marketing for law firms across the country. Happy to be here and provide value however we can.
00:00:24:00 – 00:00:41:21
Unknown
Now back to the episode. Today I have our VP of Web Services, Mark Riley, on the call, and Mark is the guy that I talk to whenever I think I know what I’m talking about, but I want someone to bring me down a peg or two when it comes to SEO. So Mark, thanks for joining.
00:00:41:21 – 00:01:12:06
Unknown
Oh, Al, I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks so much.
Unknown
So you’ve been talking to me a lot about search intelligence, and that’s not a phrase that’s probably referenced a lot outside of PMP. And so tell me a little bit what is search intelligence. Yeah I love it. Search intelligence is understanding that today people discover, evaluate and trust businesses on more platforms than just from Google search.
00:01:12:09 – 00:01:36:16
Unknown
And so from our perspective, it’s assembling a cohesive strategy that works across all those platforms in a cohesive way. And how much of that would you say is, you know, your standard, like when it comes to SEO, right, as people typically understand it, would you say that that’s part of it? Oh, absolutely. And I think, you know, we’ve had conversations about this before.
00:01:36:19 – 00:02:07:27
Unknown
It’s the the website is to represent the depth of knowledge of your business and that you’re capable of doing and providing a high level of service that people are looking to ideally hire you for. And so then it just it grows from that perspective. And then begins getting validated in the real world from Google reviews. And that brings in the whole ecosystem of local SEO and Google Business and that platform, and then that canons into some of the paid offerings, micro services, that which are all intertwined with the reviews that are coming in for Google Business.
00:02:07:27 – 00:02:29:21
Unknown
So yeah, it’s kind of concentric circles and the the content core of it still remains. But keeping in mind content can be different things. It doesn’t always just have to be written content as well. I think video content. And then from, you know, I think from the, from an AI perspective of how it is watching and reading video content.
00:02:29:21 – 00:02:46:18
Unknown
And part of that is in structured data and, and transcription. So when you think about embedding that in a website, then that also is included in optimizing your website. So yeah, definitely still a part of that. My you system. Yeah. And I like, you know, what we’re doing with some of our clients. I’m thinking of one in particular.
00:02:46:24 – 00:03:16:26
Unknown
They have weekly podcast and they sit down to talk shop for 30, 30 to 60 minutes on the topics that are important to them. And, and we consult with them on some of those topics as well. And then we take that podcast and we distribute it across all platforms YouTube, Spotify, Apple and the whole RSS feeds as well as well as cut everything down and post them across all their socials and YouTube shorts, which obviously Google loves pulling from its own properties, so it’s very important for us to have it there as well.
00:03:16:28 – 00:03:37:14
Unknown
But I think of like mentions as well, and social listening and all those other components that go into that, you know, like so it’s sort of expanding the footprint where it kind of the website is still the, the castle, but it’s just expanding the moat and, you know, and using these different platforms to to increase the awareness of your brand.
00:03:37:14 – 00:03:55:08
Unknown
And then at each time that someone sharing it or, you know, it’s a cumulative effect as well, I think of YouTube shorts and how much more the engagement is on those and the user rates on those, compared to just a longer form videos that you do. Ten some might hit, most of them will get a few, but either way it’s more views and awareness of your brand.
00:03:55:08 – 00:04:16:12
Unknown
So I really strongly believe, you know, just it’s it’s a worthwhile, expensive time to be doing a video piece of it. Yeah. And I think people get annoyed with me because I constantly I don’t talk about any one specific channel or one specific product or service, even as it relates to PMP and all the ones that we provide.
00:04:16:12 – 00:04:36:17
Unknown
I’m always talking about the strategy across the entire marketing ecosystem because ultimately, when it comes to SEO and AoE, I ogo you know all the acronyms, right? There’s the best practices, and all of us have been in this space long, long enough. We know what to do, right? Whether it’s us, whether it’s, another agency that’s been doing it for a long time, seeing a lot of success.
00:04:36:22 – 00:05:01:10
Unknown
We know the basics. We know the blocking and tackling. We know we need to make great hub and spoke content on the websites, particularly for the local areas that that the law firms service, whether they’re a PR law firm, a criminal defense law firm or any other type, bankruptcy. Yeah. Family law. And having that that hub and spoke content which are money pages in the in the spokes to support that is the basic you need it right.
00:05:01:10 – 00:05:31:04
Unknown
And the interlinking and site structure, the technical aspects of the site are very important. And anybody who’s been this way, as long as we know all it’s in our checklist. And then implementing new things that we’re seeing in the market, like the digestible content up front, right, answering the question up front and then going deeper into it. And I know you’ve worked on all of our sites to to retool some of the content so that it’s doing those best practices for the lumps.
00:05:31:04 – 00:05:58:02
Unknown
Right? It’s more findable and readable. Think of, you know, answer boxes, entity boxes, all those different things at all markets. You know, the game of SEO, it’s it’s prohibited, but it’s still just doing lots of little things. What’s really. Well, yeah. And so it’s sort of it’s like death by a thousand cuts, you know, where you just basically just doing every little detail with, magnifying glass and then making it more discoverable for.
00:05:58:05 – 00:06:14:24
Unknown
Yeah. And then off site, you know, you go, you’re going to the premium listings. You know, you’re just is you’re avos, you’re lawyers.com. You’re super lawyers making sure that’s all taken care of to the best of its ability for, for your law firm, the attorneys at your law firm. And then, you know, continue to go down from there.
00:06:15:01 – 00:06:37:20
Unknown
You’re very you’re very similar citations and your link building and so on and so forth. Right. So I don’t think it’s, you know, it’s not a if you’ve been in it long enough, just like if you’ve been a lawyer long enough. Right? It’s tough being really a complicated game. It’s just second nature. You know it. And you’re keeping up to date with, the new things that are coming out, the new ways in which they’re going to help create efficiency and results for for your business.
00:06:37:23 – 00:07:05:28
Unknown
And adjusting that and applying it to, to your clients. Right. Well, I think new technology wise, just real quickly, I think of the conversation we had yesterday about video delivery. And do we go on YouTube and use their compression and things like that, or there’s other yeah, my forms that are available now where they optimizing for the bandwidth of the user and automatically delivering the video at the scale that it can actually the, the browser the device can actually handle.
00:07:05:28 – 00:07:26:20
Unknown
So yeah, I align with you 100%. It’s a matter of the there’s that sort of core fundamental knowledge. And then there’s just the it’s almost like a, a claim, you know, where we’re sort of this content and learning and there’s always new things, and we just need to be afraid. Well, and I love that you brought that up, because that speaks a good bit to the personalization, right?
00:07:26:20 – 00:07:54:08
Unknown
Of, everything. And it just moving more and more and more in that direction down to the way it’s serving the video on the user’s browser on their device based off of their bandwidth and all that, right? That you don’t think about that as personalization. But it is it’s personalize it based off of the capabilities of of how you’re accessing the information so that it works better for you so that it retains you on on the website and in the video, whether that’s on a third party platform or on your website.
00:07:54:08 – 00:08:14:15
Unknown
But same thing with the LMS, right? There’s the there’s no agency out there that I can truly say, like, oh yeah, we got we got search for, for for I figured out. Right. Because it’s so different and it’s so based on these long extensive queries and it’s known that as the user journey, you know, like just in.
00:08:14:15 – 00:08:33:12
Unknown
Yeah. When you look at some of the converting times through, you know, and I max campaign or something and it’s like, man, is that really relevant. But the intent at some point in that users journey, they would looking for exactly what we’re, we’re hoping to help them with. And yeah. And a lot of it boils down to just best marketing practices.
00:08:33:12 – 00:09:04:27
Unknown
Right. Let’s let’s get out of AI and SEO and websites and think about best marketing practices. And this is what I did when I was in house for a long time. It was, how can I get people to talk about my brand as often as possible, as possible, as positively as possible? And now that the of the law firm is reaping the fruits of that right now, because they had more brand mentions everywhere than anybody else, whether it was a link to mention or not, there was just more brand mentions across the state than any other personal injury law firm.
00:09:04:29 – 00:09:22:20
Unknown
And now that’s a big factor when it comes to the LMS. But we didn’t do that for the LMS. We did that because I’m a personal injury law firm. My services are pretty broad. I can serve anybody who’s been injured in a car wreck. So that’s pretty much anybody, right. And so how do I stay top of mind as often as possible?
00:09:22:26 – 00:09:41:03
Unknown
How do I take up as much real estate whenever they are searching for a solution? And by the way, a lot of them aren’t searching for solution. A lot of them already have their solution chosen before they ever make it there, but that’s also intelligence out, you know, all those different platforms. So that’s why we’re talking about search intelligence.
00:09:41:03 – 00:10:19:06
Unknown
And and I loop it together, search and social intelligence a lot. And we’ve been talking about that a lot internally because well what’s another way your your brand can benefit from mentions and, and being pulled, into the LMS, into your regular search. Well, if you’re creating content at scale, especially if that’s video content and social media style content, well, now you have if you’re just distributing it every day, you have a piece of video content about what you do being distributed across seven platforms every single day, with the ability to be pulled into the search results.
00:10:19:08 – 00:10:40:23
Unknown
Also, any given, any given piece of content, even if it’s a low performing piece of content, it’s likely going to get you across those platforms. Thousands of views, thousands of touch points for your your your brand that you know, just the written content your website’s not going to get because that has to be found right. And it also helping drive some of that written content.
00:10:40:23 – 00:11:06:04
Unknown
So one of the the firms that we’re working with doing that podcast or what our team is then taking that obviously doing the best practices with having the transcript available and everything, but then finessing it into a long form, written piece of content that cannot be replicated by anybody else, that is highly relevant to the topic, and it can’t be replicated by anybody else because it’s directly from the mouths on the podcast.
00:11:06:04 – 00:11:28:14
Unknown
It’s the people in their experience. Yeah, it’s a subject matter expert. They’re just talking about what they do every day in a professionalized way. And yeah, again, it sort of ties back into that. It’s just doing lots of little things, and some of those little things are going to be publishing video on multiple platforms. And obviously all of you know, the descriptions and all that, things are all optimized and all those good things that are best practices.
00:11:28:20 – 00:11:51:14
Unknown
But you know, it’s interesting and just how much content can be created and leveraged for ultimately just being when, you know, there’s deciding what you want to have for me with which is, you know, we can’t make the accident happened, but we can be memorable when it does happen. And that is accomplished by brand reinforcement, which we aligned on a oh, that’s immediately.
00:11:51:14 – 00:12:14:07
Unknown
So my favorite firms to work with are the ones that want to be super aggressive, understand that every incremental gain costs a little bit more once, once they reach a certain point. And these are the firms that are generating thousands of MBA cases per year, and they’re already top of mind through there, through broadcast TV and through billboards and through their social media presence.
00:12:14:07 – 00:12:32:24
Unknown
And then when someone searches on a high intent phrase for the firm, they’re being served that firm in the LSA because, oh, yeah, by the way, that firms doing doing good SEO, they’re doing good customer service. So they have a lot they have a lot of good reviews, a lot of good, a lot of good reviews, a lot of local intent.
00:12:32:24 – 00:12:51:27
Unknown
Oh, they’re also smart enough to make sure that they have a local office in a highly dense, high density area in the area that they’re serving. Right? So you’re showing up on long days, and then they’re showing up in the Google ads right below the losses. And then they’re showing up in the map pack organically, which is for me, that’s the money spot to be when it comes to to SEO.
00:12:51:29 – 00:13:15:18
Unknown
Most of my efforts historically have been in local SEO, trying to get the high into geo specific phrases and landing in that map pack organically. But hey, by the way, we’re also being very aggressive on Google Ads, and so we’re also popping up as a sponsor result within the map pack. And then you go further down. Right. And we and when you’re at the links and then we built this search intelligence system that now we’re also in the Blue links.
00:13:15:18 – 00:13:51:17
Unknown
And recognition build user who whether he’s even trying to like, you know brand. Right. Because we see on the billboards the how the view on TV presents themselves or not, the more repetitive you are in a market, the more trust you build in the market. And as we’ve seen it in dozens of market research studies with third party partners, with the creative we serve out there, and so when that person starts doing their search and all of a sudden they see my law firm and it has a thousand reviews and a 4.9 rating, they see us and LSA and Google ads and the map pack and the blue links.
00:13:51:17 – 00:14:11:06
Unknown
And out of the the ten things that they saw on that page, we were five of them. Repetition builds trust. This firm is showing up everywhere for everything I search for in on this topic. They must really specialize in it. And this is all happening subconsciously. You’re not, you’re not you’re not piecing this together individually in your head as you’re going through the journey.
00:14:11:08 – 00:14:28:22
Unknown
Think of the layers as well. If they’re in the community and they’re doing some sponsorship efforts and there’s this, there’s a commitment to it that comes in as well, you know, and then and it just ties back to what you mentioned earlier, you know, which is it’s just being a good business, doing good business things. And, you know, the reviews.
00:14:28:22 – 00:14:53:17
Unknown
That’s why reviews are so important because it validates from the real world in a digital manner that that’s true. Yeah. And it’s you know, it’s. Yeah. So and that’s and that’s the the search intelligence aspect of it is I’m highly on board with. Right. Because with baked within that are the best practices that get you 85, 90% of the way for SEO.
00:14:53:20 – 00:15:21:03
Unknown
And in this AI world, right. If you’re doing those things, you have 90% of it done, right. And now you got to continuously stay on top of it. But you’re pretty much there. And you’re and you’re taking those, those, those inputs, and changes and making sure you’re implementing those. And they’re just like ten years ago for SEO when we noticed something created improvements are that we had to optimize a little bit differently towards than we did the previous year.
00:15:21:09 – 00:15:53:24
Unknown
We just implement it and those well, that’s why I’m structures now. And you know what we talked about like it’s a system. It isn’t just piecemeal. We’re going to do some to and we’re going to do a little bit of link building it. It’s it’s a more synchronized, deliberate approach that brings in all of the different platforms. And so when someone is ready to make a decision, you’ve just got lots of it makes it easier for someone to make a decision and do and act on that decision.
00:15:53:24 – 00:16:29:10
Unknown
And ultimately from yeah, I think of all the, the, the user testing experiments we’ve done and all those different things, it ultimately comes down to friction points. And by being visible and available on all of these different platforms, it’s just one less click that they have to do to get in contact with. So it it’s it’s very interesting for me to see even more integration of the organic real world and the digital space continuing the merger reminds me of when, you know, sort of TV started doing streaming and I weren’t sure what was going to happen with that, you know, how that was going to play out.
00:16:29:12 – 00:16:52:10
Unknown
And it’s just an interesting evolution. And and again, like I think of people are just searching different these days. Like, you know, before we had, you know, air videos and ChatGPT, you had to choose which one was, you think is the best one. Now that was great that you had options and that were curated. But now I was just telling you, this is who you need to talk to.
00:16:52:10 – 00:17:10:06
Unknown
And there’s, you know, options to contact them through that, through that overview and what and what does it and what does it tell you in those AI overviews? More often than not, where is it pulling that from? All the things that we just talked about and, and a lot of the local SEO and all those component Google. Right.
00:17:10:06 – 00:17:32:26
Unknown
Because it dimensions still a it’s still a Google product and more often than not as pulling from the guys who are winning at local SEO or typically winning. And the AI overviews. Yeah, I’m not always right but but typically and it’s a it’s a game of odds. Right. And if I’m doing all the right things often enough, the odds are going to be in my favor in the long run.
00:17:32:26 – 00:17:59:00
Unknown
Now it gets tricky because I mentioned the law of my favorite law from the work with is the one that wants to be super aggressive, the one that that looks at Google Ads as a place to to put a lot of dollars in at a lower ROI, right where it’s their their global brand might be bringing in an ROI of their marketing spend of 4 or 5 x, and Google ads might be bringing in 1.5 x, right.
00:17:59:00 – 00:18:20:11
Unknown
But they also looking at as a place to play defense to make sure that this customer is going to be more expensive for for me. And I recognize that. And so I’m going to go ahead and I’m just going to pay more of a premium so that I’m getting them more often now that that works for the law firms that over the years focused on volume.
00:18:20:11 – 00:18:43:09
Unknown
Right, getting that volume up. Because once you get that volume up, you have more resources, you have more ways to that. You can have a lower ROI per per case because you have more cases. Right? I’d rather have I’d rather have 2500 cases at a $5,000 cost per case, than 800 cases at a $3,000 cost per case. Well, it’s like that Bell curve, you know what I mean.
00:18:43:09 – 00:19:04:10
Unknown
Like you, everyone index is on the apex of the bell curve. And this is where my maximum ROI is. But it’s still on the other side of that though, and it’s still profitable now. And not not be ten x or whatever the number is, but you’re still very profitable. And then it comes into just volume. So yeah, I, I agree with you 100%.
00:19:04:13 – 00:19:37:02
Unknown
And you know, the, the execution of it when we’re talking about for someone maybe who doesn’t have those resources like, yeah, but where do I start? Alex. Right. How do I get found. So like, okay, well, first it depends on where in the journey or how much resources you have. And I think some people, they don’t realize how much resources they have if, if they’re running a business in a manner that allows them to spend their marketing, if they’re if they’re a $3 million firm, which I know a lot of firms that are 3 million, and it didn’t take them too long to get there.
00:19:37:05 – 00:19:57:12
Unknown
If you’re doing 25% of your of your gross fees and marketing, and that’s $750,000 and a small to midsize market that that can go a long way. It’s man that can that can build your brand while also be in direct response. And so when we talk about, kind of where to go with it, it’s always so difficult for me to to kind of talk about it globally like, oh, well, let me start here.
00:19:57:12 – 00:20:14:23
Unknown
Let me, let me layer that because I have to know about your market. I have to know about how you operate internally. Like are you turning away cases that are mid tier cases because you only want the top case as well? I got a plan for that. And you know, ultimately like we’re working with one law firm that they do have a small budget.
00:20:14:25 – 00:20:39:27
Unknown
And they came to us because they were already doing SEO. And I mean, they were already doing, social ads and, and a minor social, organic presence. And just like this isn’t working, but we still have faith in that product. And they came to us and asked how we would revamp it. We did. I did a live audit with them to kind of show them, you know what I what goes through my mind in real time as we’re auditing this so that they also it helps to show like you’re not BSing, right.
00:20:39:27 – 00:21:06:29
Unknown
You’re kind of rambling in the moment and I’m remember when we first met you mentioned something about referrals as well. And what you mentioned was really I thought was very interesting in that, you know, a lot of clients, we don’t want that case. We’re going to just refer it out. But like there’s so much extra value in taking that case, even though the, you know, the return may not be as significant as something else, but there’s a other value to it.
00:21:07:01 – 00:21:33:03
Unknown
A lot of personal injury law firms, especially those that primarily focus on the in the NVA space, that get to that 5 to $15 million revenue place, which is a fantastic place to be, right? You’re making good money, you’ve got a strong team. You have a real operation, but what I find with a lot of them is they start hitting up that plateau and getting stuck in this little purgatory because they built it off of.
00:21:33:05 – 00:21:51:00
Unknown
We take the cases that are going to be worth more on average. Right. We’re not taking the the minimum policy limits. We’re not taking the cases that might be a little bit harder to work up. Yeah we are. They might take them and refer them off to someone else. And at that point they’re someone else’s client and they’re never going to hire you for for that, for that service.
00:21:51:02 – 00:22:13:25
Unknown
More often than not, what I find in the law firms that are in that space is exactly that, right? They could be taking, you know, just to make up numbers. So they could be taking 500 cases, but they’re choosing to take 200 cases. So now there’s a 300 case gap. That would have been referrals sending people to you in the future.
00:22:13:27 – 00:22:34:12
Unknown
And those referrals are better vetted typically worth more. And you could you can talk to any law firm out there. It’s like is the average case is the average case fee on your case client referrals more than average than your average case nine times out of ten. Yes. Do you take them at a higher rate because they’re more relevant nine times out of ten?
00:22:34:12 – 00:22:54:28
Unknown
Yes. Right. So it’s everything works works together so that the marketing dollars that you spent last year or at work for you, this year and the next year, because the lifetime value of the client from two years ago is now 25% higher because they sent they sent someone to you and you’re getting the case fee for that for that person too.
00:22:55:00 – 00:23:20:21
Unknown
And think of all the Google reviews you’re missing out on as well. Yeah, from all of those, it’s hard to get expert in what Google’s doing, right? Google’s making it harder and harder to get a large number of review reviews. If you don’t have a large number of clients, right, they are finding ways to to pick reviews off that when they all came from the same IP, they’re all mentioning the same employee.
00:23:20:23 – 00:23:50:24
Unknown
There was a blast of them over the course of a few days. Oh, we’re seeing it like we’re seeing there was, the, the system that, that I helped put in place at the law firm where I was head of marketing was trying to, like, we had volume. Right? So I’m like, well, if we can get a system in place where 5050 something attorneys are doing a okay job of getting reviews, that’s going to do better than anybody that, like any one person, can get on their own.
00:23:50:24 – 00:24:07:24
Unknown
Right. And that’s going to do better than doing these big review pushes. And yeah, it’s going to be also they’re going to be they’re also going to be real reviews. So I know they’re going to be more likely to stick. Right. And we had one location where one firm got ahead of us by like 4 or 5 hundreds.
00:24:07:26 – 00:24:31:04
Unknown
You know, it was really pissing me off. And then over time, they’ve lost like 3 to 400 reviews. And now to kind of back even because they did more of the review push and incentivizing of employees and, and things like that. And so it it really becomes a, an infrastructure thing at your firm. How do you get the most reviews possible from the clients that are actually coming in the door?
00:24:31:04 – 00:24:49:24
Unknown
And guess what? If you’re if if you got 300 cases a year coming in the door, there’s systems you can put in place to get at least 50% of those clients to leave you a review. Right. It’s it’s good business. You can get you just you just being a good bit again. No, we’ll talk about points. It’s just you’re operating is a good business.
00:24:49:28 – 00:25:10:28
Unknown
Now let me ask you this out. What do you think the value of a review is? If someone deliver the, you know, satisfied client and the check’s disbursed and they’re in a good mood, like, what does that net out to? So it obviously depends on the practice area. Right. But I like to put a $1,000 value on every five star review that you receive.
00:25:10:28 – 00:25:32:21
Unknown
And it’s a complicated process to get there. And it was easier just to round it to about $1,000, but it was trying to factor in all of the the inputs. And so it’s still it’s still a little arbitrary. Right. But it is. What is the the value of it towards someone more likely to hire you because you’re having more validation.
00:25:32:21 – 00:25:55:24
Unknown
Right. So if you if you have if it’s 1000 for five star reviews and you get 100 reviews as 100, that’s $100,000 in value. Well, you know, some people are more likely to hire you because you have more reviews. It’s also the impact it has on your presence on Google and your local search that’s actively bringing in more clients for you is the SBA, effect size?
00:25:55:26 – 00:26:14:12
Unknown
Is Google on Google LSA, and you’re going to be more likely to show on Google. It says, hey, it’s now also pulling dynamically into like, we put the right things in place, where it’s pulling dynamically into some of the organic search listings and into some of the the Google ads. And so is that that effect of like three, 4 or 5 different things.
00:26:14:12 – 00:26:37:08
Unknown
Five star review can be worth $1,000 for you if you’re in the pie space. And if you look at it like that, right, you now going like I have this person, then I’m dispersing a $50,000 check to they’re happy about my services. And if I let them walk out that door or get off of the phone, and I don’t actively try to get them to leave me review, I’m going.
00:26:37:10 – 00:26:54:11
Unknown
I don’t care about $1,000, right? And I don’t know about you, but like if if I can get if I can get $1,000 by going to someone who’s happy with me and going, hey, would you leave me a review? And they’re like, yeah, sure. Right. And that that’s what it takes for me to get $1,000. I’m taking it every day.
00:26:54:13 – 00:27:14:27
Unknown
And it reminds me again, it just all that happens just for making a more informed decision to just not refer a case that that you thought, oh, maybe there’s not enough made on the back. Yeah. You know, it’s just again, it’s, it’s just and it just for me, the review component of things, it’s it’s a very, very, very important part on just so many levels.
00:27:14:27 – 00:27:33:25
Unknown
And there’s benefits to it in so many ways. And having a system in place is is critical. And the, the tough part that a lot of law firms run into is they just want to hire someone to like, you’re going to be the person that that does my reviews. Right. And it’s like, we can we can we can do reputation management service for you.
00:27:33:25 – 00:27:58:08
Unknown
Right? Especially if you have multi locations and you really need a track and you need the responses, and you need some certain systems in place and you need some consultation. But ultimately like you have to get the people to want to leave a review for you. We can send out as many emails and text messages to your client database, but it’s coming kind of cold, right?
00:27:58:08 – 00:28:16:25
Unknown
It’s not coming from the attorney I worked with. Yeah, the power from the PR legal team is known as coming from a random text. Yeah, and don’t get me wrong, it works. And it has a high conversion rate, but it has a higher conversion rate is when I’m dispersing that check and I’m I’m the attorney and I go, you know, it was lovely working with you.
00:28:16:25 – 00:28:35:11
Unknown
I’m so glad we were able to really help you along in this journey and get you the compensation you deserve, you know? But right now, I need to put you in a position of power because I haven’t asked for you. Right. I it’s very important to the owner of the law firm that we treat our clients to the gold standard.
00:28:35:13 – 00:28:53:15
Unknown
And the way he monitors that, honestly, is this is by the reviews that the clients are leaving for us. And if you could just do me a favor, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna input I’m and put your name to a form real quick. You’re going to get a text, and then that text would be a link that would bring you straight to a Google or a Google review.
00:28:53:17 – 00:29:19:03
Unknown
Say whatever you want, right. But would love for you to talk a little bit about your experience or whatever you’re comfortable with saying, right, that client at the end of that quick engagement, number one, they’re now in a position of power, right? The attorney needs something from me. That’s that’s a lot. Right? It’s tangible. It’s meaning. And and and also it’s a human experience.
00:29:19:05 – 00:29:38:23
Unknown
Like I really hope I treated you well and you felt that. And I really hope that you’ll treat me well for this one second. And when you do that, the conversion rate skyrockets because they’re also receiving it. They’re in that moment. Or maybe they leave and you go, you’ll get it in five minutes. Because you do want to be careful about location based and all that.
00:29:38:23 – 00:29:55:01
Unknown
If they’re coming to the office and too many people are doing that and they’re on on your wife, family in the same location, you’re you’re thinking about some of those things. I know a lot of people gonna ask you, but but, Alex, what about the the recent news from Google where they’re referring to an employee time after time.
00:29:55:04 – 00:30:17:04
Unknown
Right. And and they’re taking those off. Well, we did encourage our attorneys to go have them mention you in there. But because of that, there were 50 attorneys being mentioned throughout the reviews. It wasn’t one specific person mentioned 50 times, 50 times in a row. Right. Which shows like, oh, they probably got an incentive. Let me take that off.
00:30:17:06 – 00:30:39:17
Unknown
And so and I’ve been tracking I’ve been tracking it and I’ve yet to see a negative. I’ve yet to see removals of those that were still just real honest and real reviews from from that strategy. Think about it from, from just over a period of time though as well. Like let’s using Google as an example that they’re saying just a nice trajectory consistent of those reviews coming in.
00:30:39:17 – 00:31:00:20
Unknown
So it’s very easy to see when you’ve got a larger perspective. Oh, they added 150 and three. Google is not going to do much. They’re much less likely to penalize you if you’re getting 15 and reviews a month, month after month, then 45 reviews one month and then five reviews the next month, and then 45 reviews again. Right?
00:31:00:20 – 00:31:20:25
Unknown
And, you know, ideally the larger you’re getting, the more reviews you get. You get, you know, at the end of where I when I was in house, we were getting 150, 200 per month. Right. That was fantastic to see. Reviews. Yeah. But it’s it’s important no matter what size you are right. Because customer service is you’re in the customer service business.
00:31:20:25 – 00:31:41:17
Unknown
And one of the things that the attorneys hate it, hearing me say for a long time when I was talking, I was building out the review process as well. I want the reviews to be generated by the customer service representatives. So I ordered a customer service representative. I was like, well, who does? Who takes care of the customer like the lawyers, right?
00:31:41:20 – 00:32:00:22
Unknown
Who does the customer ask for when they call in the lawyers? It’s like whether the lawyers like it or not. They’re the customer service representatives, right? They’re the person that is being held responsible for everything. And time and time again, no matter how good the relationship was with the paralegal or the legal assistant, they still wanted to talk to the lawyer more often than not.
00:32:00:22 – 00:32:26:08
Unknown
Right. And it’s a period of time as well. The cases don’t turn in the day, so it e it’s becomes part of a longer process. So the more comfortable in entrusting that person. So yeah, it’s and you know, we’ve talked before about incentivizing D. There’s different ways that you can effect that into a business. But yeah but Google’s you know they’re trying to police it now and more and more and again more aggressive with.
00:32:26:08 – 00:33:01:01
Unknown
And so now it’s just having that just like I was talking about earlier with with SEO and brand building and good marketing. Right. We were doing the things that made the firm better. And those things get rewarded over time. And same thing. You’re doing good customer service. You’re having great communication. You’re doing the ask, right. You’re going to win over the long time, especially as the platforms get more knowledgeable and are trying to tease out the the bad stuff and provide a better experience for the users of that platform.
00:33:01:04 – 00:33:24:09
Unknown
I do want to loop back real quick to, back to the search and search intelligence part, which obviously the the reputation management and reviews are a part of that. And, and I think it’s important that that we have we have that conversations with, with our clients and with the people that want to work with us. Oh, I’m look, I want all of this as part of the services we’re providing for you because it doesn’t live in a silo.
00:33:24:09 – 00:33:47:26
Unknown
I don’t want to just build content for you. I don’t want to just build links for you. I don’t want to just do reputation management for you. It all works together and can be. It can ebb and flow based off of the real results in the market. But kind of going back to a court like a little bit like a little infinity wheel where I do search intelligence, social intelligence, search intelligence, social intelligence, and how we have so many firms out there.
00:33:47:26 – 00:34:07:17
Unknown
That’s how do I create content at scale, how do I do good on social media? And there’s a million ways you can do it. I’ve done it a ton of different ways, but for most firms that don’t want the heavy lift, that don’t want to hire a social media person in-house and don’t want to try to figure out, should I do trends, should I do this?
00:34:07:17 – 00:34:33:18
Unknown
Should I do that right? Find a it’s all about finding a system that works for you and podcast or that, right? A weekly, biweekly monthly podcast is an easy way for you to create content at scale. Talk about things that are relevant to the legal space you serve, relevant to the location you serve. And also it can be entertaining, right?
00:34:33:18 – 00:35:03:12
Unknown
Because you’re going to in these conversations, the more you do with them, the more kind of off pattern you’ll get. Sometimes the more you’ll randomly talk about that burger joint down the road when you ran into one of your clients. And then now you talk about your that client story. That was very interesting. And next thing you know, you have a podcast that’s being informational, it’s being entertaining, and you’re distributing it at scale because that one, our podcast can now turn into 15, 30 or more pieces of content that can be scheduled out.
00:35:03:16 – 00:35:28:21
Unknown
Right, and can drive a lot of, of more content for your website and just have so many, so many law firms that kind of have the SEO part figured out, right? They’re doing good. They’re ranking good locally, but they don’t have the content scale figure and they feel like they should be doing it. And I do think they should be doing it because that that podcast, it’s not just a podcast, right?
00:35:28:22 – 00:35:50:24
Unknown
It’s it’s a production day is a production day where we’re getting a podcast, but we’re also going to get you to, to create content that we think is going to be important to search, that we can then repurpose in different ways. We’re also taking a bunch of swings and pushing out content. Some of it’s going to do great.
00:35:51:00 – 00:36:14:06
Unknown
Someone’s going to do okay. And some of us, for whatever reason, is not going to get much viewership. But if you’re distributing across seven, five, 5 or 7 platforms, each one of those is going to get probably at least 3000 views, typically in your local area. If you’re if you’re pulling the right strings and then you’re going to find the winners, the one that, hey, okay, we got 3000 views collectively, but this last one got 10,000 views.
00:36:14:12 – 00:36:42:13
Unknown
All right. Now let’s take that. Let’s edit it up a little bit. Make it a little bit more direct response focused and run it as an add layer on top. Now we got it. We got the Infinity wheel right. We got we got social intelligence. We got search intelligence, social intelligence search. And so using it to do that now we have now we have the, the paid media, social media on top of it where we’re pushing out content that is direct response relevant.
00:36:42:13 – 00:37:07:04
Unknown
We’re also supplementing that with some tried and true static ads that just work. I think people lose sight that when they think social media, like sometimes some of the basics really do work very well. You’re layering that on top and then on the bottom side as my other layer of paid media with, you know, Google that we talked about earlier, Google ads and, and YouTube ads and things like that.
00:37:07:06 – 00:37:26:12
Unknown
And now you have this, this whole ecosystem. And for the firms out there that don’t want to touch broadcast, that don’t want to touch billboards, that circle with the infinity in it, like that’s going to work for you. If you do it for a long enough time, you’re going to build brand, you’re going to generate leads. Ideally, you know, over time, you’re supplementing it.
00:37:26:12 – 00:37:57:16
Unknown
You’re doing you’re doing broadcast, doing billboards if you’re a P.I. law firm. But so to me, social is such a no brainer. Think of what most people do when they’re just spending time. They’re on their phones, you know, and it’s just be visible where people are and they it’s their phones a lot, you know? So the concept and it just again with the notion of search intelligence, it it all matters to I think especially from the AI perspective of just mentions.
00:37:57:16 – 00:38:17:20
Unknown
And it’s, it’s listening to all of those different conversations that are going on. And yeah, I think it’s the, the co-mingling of the social and search intelligence is definitely an important part of the equation for sure. And, you know, and that’s the long time brand scaling. Right. And you’re doing direct response. You’re building brand. You’re doing a lot.
00:38:17:25 – 00:38:59:18
Unknown
But I also you know there’s there’s the little mini campaigns like we’re running one right now on social media for one of our clients. It has spent 200 I think this morning was like $221 total so far and has 51 leads because it’s amazing. Ten things pop up right now that’s not MVA. So to be clear, right. But things pop up for these law firms that are relevant to them locally, whether it’s a plant explosion, whether it’s litigation that’s or like some some fraud or abuse that happened in a local area of a market, those you put together a quick ad campaign with very direct response messaging about that.
00:38:59:21 – 00:39:21:24
Unknown
Typically these are things that are in the news people are aware of. It finds the audience based off of the creative. And next thing you know what’s happening, what’s happening right now 50 leads, 215 or 20 or $21, whatever, whatever it was. And you now have these potential claimants for this larger litigation, but now they’re you’re referral based.
00:39:21:25 – 00:39:41:16
Unknown
Right. And you can you got you got it really cheap. And now when one of those 50 is in a car wreck and injured, guess who their lawyer is. They already have their lawyer. They’re not searching anymore. They’re already in the pipeline. So and ideally signing up and giving you a review that’s going to help with your Google business, your size.
00:39:41:19 – 00:40:02:08
Unknown
So if there’s any anything you want someone to know about. Well, kind of last names, just like Mark. Tell me just the biggest thing I know right now when it comes to to SEO from a for and I know we talked a lot about search intelligence, but I figured you have like a concise little consistency. That consistency is key.
00:40:02:08 – 00:40:27:22
Unknown
And just being detail oriented and doing the right things repeatedly pressure testing everything, monitoring what’s going on. And sometimes you need to pivot just because platforms are changing. But for the most part, it’s just, again, like we’ve been talking about, it’s just doing the right things and a lot of them consistently. And that includes website content, generating the video content to support all those different pieces.
00:40:27:22 – 00:40:44:23
Unknown
And it’s just it’s just the commitment of time ultimately is what it boils down to. Yeah. Oh Mark. Love it. Next time we get on I’m probably going to like pull up, a case study and it’s kind of dive deep into it. So that I like I like analyzing those, listening to those and diving deep into them.
00:40:44:25 – 00:41:06:08
Unknown
I find people find them very helpful. So be thinking about some, some case studies. You want to you want to jump into. But now I appreciate everything, Mark. It’s been fun being at PMP and, having someone who’s just been in the trenches for so long that you’re, you’re you talk about things that I haven’t even thought about, right.
00:41:06:10 – 00:41:22:16
Unknown
And that and that says a lot because I like to think I’m good at what I do, but, some people are more specialized in certain things. And so it’s always fun to, to to go down the rabbit holes with you, match the buyers. I really appreciate the opportunity. Come on. And. Yeah, just. Hey, you got my number.
00:41:22:16 – 00:41:26:07
Unknown
You know, I’ll answer the call. Song. All right. Well. Thanks, Mark.