Al Ludwig (00:00)
I always laughed about email marketing because I would call it the cockroach of of marketing. No matter what you do, it just won’t die. Right. And it proved it just time and time and time again. When I 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 a billion dollars in marketing for law firms across the country. Happy to be here and provide value however we can. Now back to the episode. And today I have Ron Latz on the line with me.
Ron’s the founder of Legal Phoenix, a marketing advisory firm helping law firms make smarter growth decisions. And if anybody knows him, they also know he’s very active on LinkedIn. And that’s how I know him because he posts a lot of stuff that I usually just completely agree with. So it was the perfect guest for me to have on so we can talk shop. Ron, I appreciate it, man.
Ron Latz (00:50)
for extending the invite. I told you, I believe, after you had reacted or commented on one of my posts, I’m like, who’s this guy? Like now sharing fresh perspectives on LinkedIn. It’s so refreshing to not have the usual suspects always dominating the feed. So love love the background. We’ve connected and I’m looking forward to the conversation, man.
Al Ludwig (01:08)
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it was it was fun whenever I, you know, I was in house, right? And then I was starting to go back out of house. I’m like, I gotta start posting on LinkedIn more. And a lot of people started reaching out to me. It was amazing because I never had been that active on LinkedIn. So it’s really it’s really an interesting place if you’re if you’re posting things that you truly believe in that are tried and true, ⁓ and that you have the experience in. And so I I’ve found a a handful of people I love to follow and and you’re certainly one of them. But I want to jump into
one of your posts. You sent me a few things that that that you wanted to talk about, but I always like looking at everybody’s posts and jumping into what they talk about most. And one of the ones that popped up to me was legal marketing myths. And you had listed five different legal marketing myths and you wanted to set the record straight on them. Do you remember what those were?
Ron Latz (01:59)
I mean, well there’s no no what what lawyers get cases online or are on social is probably gotta be one of the top ones on there. I have a a few different variations of that post. Yeah.
Al Ludwig (02:10)
Yeah,
you had your first one was myth one. If you’re a good lawyer, you don’t need marketing.
Ron Latz (02:17)
Yeah,
right. You get all your business from referrals. There’s no other way to grow the firm, acquire new cases. It’s just we do good work, which is great marketing. And people tell their friends, their family, their colleagues, you create this awareness and this loyalty, right? People are advocates for your brand and they want to shout your name from the rooftops. That’s great, right? But those other firms that are giving your name out, right, they’re probably sharing two or three other names along with it.
And more sophisticated buyers, they do their due diligence, they dot I’s, they cross their T’s, and they go and check you out online. So if you don’t have a professional or just polished representation of yourself that is complete, has a headshot, a link where they can find you or call you, you’re probably gonna miss out on a few opportunities, I would think.
Al Ludwig (03:05)
Yeah, I I would say one place where I think ⁓ it’s not a myth, and you you’ll probably see this as well, is the older guys, right? I I it’s something I I’ve I’ve done forever, right? I just relied on referrals, I did no marketing, and now I’m 60 something years old. I’ve had a good career. I’m definitely not gonna do marketing now, right? I’m just gonna continue with the referrals. And typically when I find someone who who who mentions they don’t need to do marketing, it’s because
They’re either further along in their career and they’re not worried about growing anymore, or they’ve done so well over, say a 25 year career. So they they’re still young in that instance, or in their early fifties, maybe, that you’re just like, I don’t, I don’t feel like building anymore. Right. And in that for that person, I’d say it’s probably a wise choice.
Ron Latz (03:53)
There’s nothing wrong with maintaining the status quo. Like if you if you don’t have growth aspirations and you don’t want to continue to new employees or hold on to different locations or maybe even diversify practice area services, right? Like it’s quite all right to continue to invest in the client experience, right? But some of the firms that you kind of alluded to and mentioned there, even if they wanna hang it up.
Right. Even if they had a basic newsletter in place where they could drip or nurture on someone on a weekly basis just to have that recall and maintain top of mind awareness, I just think that you’d be able to I’m sure they wouldn’t turn down a couple more cases.
Al Ludwig (04:35)
No,
and and I agree. They they certainly should be doing something like that. ‘Cause I when I think of of marketing, right, I I’m thinking from their lens of well, I’m not gonna get on a billboard or do T V spots or do so traditional style social media. Okay, well Ron Latts legal marketing myth number two, my clients aren’t on social media.
Ron Latz (04:53)
Yeah, no one gets business from LinkedIn or Facebook or social. Those are some of my favorites because what I try to do, and I used to have a swipe file where I just would take the screenshots of lawyers asking for other lawyer referrals to kind of prove the point. But then as more and more people, you know, we start to have conversations, then my clients or people that I’m connected with will just they’ll shoot me a text message of like, Hey, just got this case from wherever it was, Facebook, met LinkedIn.
And I just show the proofs in the pudding there. They might not have started that way. And I can tell you from my own experience, that is not how I define success on LinkedIn. I don’t look at lead generation as like my North Star. I just said, hey, if I can help one lawyer avoid heartbreak, frustration, save a couple bucks so that they don’t get into a bad relationship where they’re gouged on pricing or relinquish like literally all access to every tool or system known to man.
That’s my goal. And over six years it’s eventually produced opportunities and open doors that would have remained closed if I hadn’t, you know, put myself out there and hit publish.
Al Ludwig (06:02)
Yeah. And, you know, ultimately it does a lot of the same things that a a good billboard or broadcast TV does, right? It most people aren’t going to interact with your ads. It’s it’s as simple as that. I the the only place where I really interact with or with any type of posts is on LinkedIn. And that’s because I feel guilty at this point because if people are interacting with my stuff and I’m actively posting, I feel like I need to also do the same thing. But when I wasn’t posting, I was one of those guys. I was on it all the time, LinkedIn, Facebook, and
I always took in the information and always found who I respected and what people I wanted to talk to. Should that need s need arise in the future for me, when I was in-house, I knew who I was going to. Right. And I think the the lawyer should be looking at it in that same manner. It doesn’t matter if if if you get a ton of engagement, but if you’re doing it consistently, I find that if you push out one video across five to seven platforms, even if it’s not the best video ever.
You’re probably gonna get at least 5,000 views on that. Try to bring 5,000 people to to your website through p publishing one blog post but doing nothing to try to get them there. And but those people seeing it within a few days, right? It’s it’s almost impossible, right? It’s not fully impossible, but it’s almost impossible. And do you think that people are mixing up or when they say my clients aren’t on social media, what they mean is I don’t think social media works.
Ron Latz (07:30)
Some of them, some of them have that misguided approach or like they believe the myth that that’s not where people find lawyers. Right. And I would agree that I don’t think people are just doom scrolling looking to hire their next law firm because they got into an accident. But right, depending upon like we work with a lot of personal injury firms. Let’s take something with a longer life cycle or or buying journey like divorce, where you’re going out there, you’re doing research, you’re trying to understand what options you have at your disposal.
Right. And if there is a very well timely placed ad that’s talking about the considerations or what you need to do financially or some support sources that you do engage with, they’re probably gonna maintain top of mind for you. And then when you go and do additional searches, now you’re going deeper and just validating that they might be the option for you. But I can tell you like no one’s engaging with that postal. Right. The person that wants they’re not
Al Ludwig (08:24)
I I call them the the self selection post, right? You’re putting it out there to get in front of the right person at the right time for them to realize this is something for them to self select into. Now they’re doing all of this almost subconsciously, but if it’s an use mass tort, for example, right? If it’s a a mass tort for for the roundup, right? So I’ve used roundup at my form for a decade, right? Let me f see what this is about, right? And it’s fine, it’s finding that.
There’s no better platform that finds people in that manner than social media, if the creative is done correctly. Like w we just took over a a meta ad campaign for a for a law firm who had been running meta ads for quite some time and just like, what what are the results? Like it’s zero. We’re we’re just getting nothing. Right. And I went and I did a a live audit of it. And within sixty seconds I said, Well, here’s the things that concern me. Here’s the things I’d be worried about from the creative to the
the frequency and reach of it, to the types of campaigns that are being run. I was like, let us test out running something different and see what happens. And sure enough, with the right creative, with the right targeting b based on your budget. And if it’s PI, when I say targeting, it’s probably going to be more just zip code targeting, rec data targeting, because you might not have the full budget to target an entire top 50 DMA. It works, right? And and even those people, people who’ve been in core wrecks, they’ll self-select in because
It’s just that their window of decision is always so much shorter. Four days or less typically for some to to get that client. So yeah, you and I are on the same page on that one. Myth number three, legal marketing myth by Ron Latz. more website traffic equals more clients.
Ron Latz (10:05)
Not always the case. It’s gotta be relevant traffic, Alan, right? Like we’ve run into situations where we had a very heavy hitting. It was a birth injury firm, and there was a university, a school out in the APAC region that was just using their website as basically part of their syllabus. Right. There was so much information. It was viewed as more of a medical resource than a legal services website. Right. So while everything was going up and to the right.
It didn’t necessarily drive the qualified or wanted opportunities and signed cases. So sure, there are a lot of things that some firms have done over the past couple of years. Now with AI, they just spun up, right? Thousands of pages of content wasn’t helpful, very spammy. They cannibalized their own efforts. And maybe they rode that increase for a short time, but then they fell off the crater. Right. So I I I think it’s gotta be it’s gotta be right traffic, relevant traffic within your eyes.
Al Ludwig (11:01)
And and I used to love seeing even those ones that like I knew I I got 10,000 visits from, and I’m like, I’m not gonna get one damn lead from this. It was fun to see, but it was fun for me to see because I knew all the other like money pages and things like that were working well. I was ranking in the map pack for all my bottom of the funnel, local intent phrases, personal injury lawyer near me, car accident lawyer, insert city, work injury lawyer, things like that where when I saw myself
Ron Latz (11:10)
But
Al Ludwig (11:29)
ranking in the map pack, I was like, all right, check. That one’s done. Next one, right? Because I would rather get a few thousand visits and it’s all when I look at that ranking profile, it is, I’m in the map pack for all these bottom of the funnel phrases, as opposed to getting a hundred thousand visits and it’s all informational blogs. And it’s the same thing. We’re we’re losing most law firms are losing all that right now anyway. You know, they’ve seen that trickle down for the a lot of those informational based ⁓
Content because it was either low quality or there was better resources. And when Google did their algorithm updates, if it was something medical, right, they were more likely to go to a medical place now. So I we I think we have to like always find myself balancing the line a little bit whereas because some clients are so programmed into the traffic that I know like I we had a great month, we had more leads, but for some reason they’re looking at the traffic and they’re like, Well, why didn’t the traffic grow?
It’s like, Well d do we do we care about the traffic that much? And when they won’t get off of it at some point you get a little demoralized, like, Okay, I gotta do something to get the to get the traffic moving in the right direction, even though everything else is
Ron Latz (12:39)
Well, that’s that’s when we pull work hard with the CRM and we look at cases signed and what the one or declose rate was. But it’s the same thing as some of the social impressions, Al, where, you know, to your point, try to accumulate a certain number of impressions across a handful of social platforms. Quite frankly, if one of my LinkedIn posts got fifty thousand, a hundred thousand impressions, like all that comment, all those comments and engagement, like that would almost give me anxiety at this point because that I want to go and reciprocate like you talked about and respond to all day.
Al Ludwig (13:08)
And
you and you know it’s probably like most of that probably is is starting to hit too broad for you and no question. And and you know it’s is waste it’s wasting a good bit of the impressions for you and and creating just a time suck. And with the social media impressions related related to that, like that campaign I talked about that we took over, and when you look at the nuts and bolts of impressions, w we’re getting four impressions than what that campaign was getting, but the impressions we’re getting count a lot more.
And that was a a deliberate decision. I told the client, like, we’re gonna we’re gonna get less impressions, and that’s not a bad thing. Cause I wanna get the the reach and frequency at a right level and ultimately focus on the leads coming in and then ultimately focus on the on the cases that you’re converting thereafter. All right. So Ron Latt’s legal marketing myth number four, probably my favorite one, email marketing is outdated.
Ron Latz (14:00)
Yeah, or it doesn’t work, or nobody opens email, or it’s all gonna go to spam. I mean, maybe if the content isn’t exciting or entertaining, or your subject lines are weak, or you’re not testing certain things out, your your timing, your shipments. Listen, I do think you’re sitting on a gold mine of data and information from years and years of clients that you have helped, right? They were going some of the most difficult moments of their life. They came to you, you got them the recovery, and then they just
Sit on top of the shelf collecting dust, never to hear from you again. So I believe that if you just keep the lines of communication open, have a weekly drop of information that will be helpful, your involvement within the community, like not braggadocious. Hey, look at me, we’ve got job openings, we want super lawyers. But here’s a couple of things that are going to help you through your day to day if you are ever injured due to somebody else’s negligence, right? Or
This is what we’re doing in the community. Here’s how we’re involved. Hey, come over to the carnival or to the fair. Like we’re going to be talking to people. Like we actually live in this town. Right. Those are things that people want to be updated on. And then again, even if they just see your name, open it and skim it, your firm name, that recall is just what you’re looking for over and over and over again. So when the time does come.
Al Ludwig (15:18)
I o ⁓ I always laughed about email marketing ’cause I would call it the cockroach of of marketing. No matter what you do, it just won’t die. Right. And it proved it just time and time and time again. Whenever ⁓ whenever I was in house, we built out our our list quite substantially. We had tons of of past clients, tens of thousands, and that list got quite big, then we started utilizing it more and more and we did exactly what you said. We would do more in interest based stuff.
One email that went out every week was for Gordon’s Five Good Things. And we found like five good things to talk about, right? Good news stories, good a good win for our clients, something in the community, a giveaway we’re doing. And we just positioned it like that. But then every now and then, you know, once a month, a reminder, you know, hey, you or someone you know has been injured. Remember remember, we’re here. We’re your lawyers for life. It’s free consultation. Don’t hesitate to re reach out. And I would hear from our intake director when we would send that one out. She goes, The email’s working.
Someone just called and said that that it reminded them to finally call us, right? ⁓ and so very important for in my eyes. And one thing that always proved it for me was some some people are gonna love this, some people are gonna hate hate it. When we did giveaways, right? The first thing we’d ever do right when we launched, we’d send out our to our email marketing list this giveaway, a community giveaway, a bike giveaway, a big event. And that would give us hundreds of entries.
In the matter of an hour. And if people didn’t read your emails, they’re certainly not gonna click through to it and they’re certainly not gonna spend a minute filling out a really long form because we we would make the forms long, so that they would definitely we knew that they were engaged. And it would end up being always a a top three ⁓ conversion tactic for giveaways for us. So it’s just everybody should be using it. I think the hardest part is ⁓ it’s something that’s that I liked doing in-house.
It’s hard to yeah, you can outsource it, but it’s just a little harder than than in house.
Ron Latz (17:20)
It it is. And I the giveaway to build and basically support the growth of newsletter is one of the plays that we love doing because instead of just going out there, right? Like we have clients that will do brand sponsorship with like minor league baseball teams, or we have a client that does a a sponsorship and a partnership with like a professional ultimate frisbee team, right? And those giveaways for field experience upgrades, better tickets, custom professional jerseys, all that stuff. It’s not
Call for your free consultation in the middle of the ballpark. Like they that’s not what like, but if they’re like, get a free jersey, sign up.
Al Ludwig (17:57)
Another easy way to do it when you’re kind of when you’re doing some type of sign up that you’re tracking on a landing page that I I used extensively is again if we would do more than just like enter these four things. It would be a little more extensive. And one of the last questions would be, have you or loved one been injured in a wreck in the past year? Yes or no? If they hit no, then it’s just it it submits and that’s it. If it hits yet, if they say yes, it’s a conditional form. And then ask another qualifying question.
If answer that correctly, it asked another qualifying question. If they answer that correctly, it asked them to opt in for us to contact them about it. And that the last giveaway I did, we got over 50 intakes that followed that conditional correctly. And we ended up getting five to 10 cases or so from it. From from we spent money on this giveaway, right? So we’re hoping it was it was our attempt to go like we know it’s doing good for us, but man, it would be nice if we can have a
few bits that we could just objectively track back. And that was the the ⁓ attempt to do that. And that alone made it go, okay, yeah, this is hands down worth the money we spent on.
Ron Latz (19:08)
Yeah, and that’s a nice conversion there of just a newsletter, right? Five to ten out of fifty. That’s
Al Ludwig (19:14)
But solid. So Ron Latz, legal marketing myth number five. Last one. Legal marketing can’t be creative. I also love this one because creative is just my my place to be.
Ron Latz (19:26)
Tide of what I I think like messaging and positioning within law firm. I don’t know what it is. It’s just like creativeness is just outside. It’s in another arena. No one wants to. I understand that they want to, again, ensure that they come off as professional, right? This is a a very right. They they they’re gonna take themselves seriously, but we can also have some fun with it. Right. And I think that’s the thing. The entertainment value, right? Like when I went out to Detroit and I was just driving around doing an on-site with a client, yeah, obviously, you know, like.
A lot of markets, tons of billboards. Here’s another LinkedIn post that I had out there. And they call out Top Dog and Morse for a Morse had his mom and everything. And Top Dog, they’re like his videos. They’re incredibly entertaining. I feel like he’s talking to me. There’s a lot of other boards out there, right? But those are the two again, it wasn’t there wasn’t statistical significance here in the data set. I only had like six or seven Uber.
Al Ludwig (20:21)
Some
some things are just common sense, right? W when I get off if I’m if I’m one of those attorneys and I get off of a plane in my hometown and and I go name the first BI lawyer and they say me, then I’m you I’m really I’m really happy by that, right? You know, and it what’s funny about ⁓ you say you still want to come a c be professional and the this and that. What what the trap I think some people fall into because they wanna be more creative than others and do some crazy outlandish things is for the most part
Many of these firms have built up into it. And many of these firms have slowly integrated in more creativity year after year. They slowly got more tongue in cheek, self-deprecating. And then so when when you see that ad out there that you’re like, what the hell? Like makes you scratch your head. You’re you’re missing the nuance of, yeah, but that was built off of five years of ubiquity for that firm and a perception of.
that has already been built there that now when he does that, it’s l it’s looked at differently when he does it versus when this law firm down the road that’s never built up that equity tries to do it. And that’s that’s something I we would do a lot of. I mean my my favorite, I always I tell the story a lot, my favorite law firm commercial ever worked on, it was one that I think I was being tested on too, was not much of a law firm commercial. It was about our 20 foot inflatable Santa that got stolen from the front of the office on the interstate.
in the middle of the night. and we ran right before Christmas, ran a whole like 10 day campaign about this thing that just happened that we decided, hey, let’s go ahead and just run with it, have fun, make people laugh, get people scratching their heads of this this is an inside job. They’re just doing this as a marketing ploy, right? It’s like, no, we just we just th we just had the foresight to think people are going to talk about this if we do it. And they already talk about us some. So it’s not too off the wall for us to kinda
Go down this route. Sure. Sure.
Ron Latz (22:17)
Listen, I mean, as far as like going out of bounds there, and yes, this was more of an inside job, but like when Morgan went out and gra and graffited all of his boards, like Yeah, that was a I thought that was a great way. He was talking about it. Everybody.
Al Ludwig (22:28)
We we did that too.
We we did that too and and p everybody talked about it, right? And sometimes like once one law firm does something and it works, other law firms are going to copy it in their markets and and it’s gonna work. That’s that’s the funny thing. And there’ll be people out there to go, ⁓ they just copied that law firm. So yeah, but ninety-nine point nine percent of people don’t know that because that law firm’s not in those markets. So it doesn’t doesn’t really matter. Well, so your next LinkedIn post that I I enjoyed was
Legal marketing agencies that don’t have your best interests in mind insist that your law firm must do X or your law firm must do Y. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Ron Latz (23:08)
Yeah, I mean, if you’re a hammer and everything is a nail, right, you’re always gonna keep hammering that nail down. I I think that listen, there are plenty of agencies that will disclaim information like you don’t have access to these tools or you’re not gonna be delegated ownership to certain profiles, or this is how our reporting works. I think if you let the individual know up front what they are getting into, it’s very different than pulling the wool over their eyes and then saying,
We’re not going to break out our fee from any channel spend. You’re not going to be able to go into the tool to access the data. Right. I do think also if you’re going to CEO only agency and they come to you and say, SEO will solve all of your problems, it’s probably just a little bit of a red flag. Right. If they’re not making any recommendations outside their, you know, lane of subject matter expertise, I would just question whether or not.
A, do they see all the pieces on the chessboard? B, do you know how they all compliment each other and C, are they looking at for my best interests? That’s all. So when you have the Facebook shop, say you only should do Facebook and the ad shop that says only do Google Ads. That’s where, you know, the spidey senses start going off. And I would encourage firms to ask some more questions.
Al Ludwig (24:25)
Yeah, and and you and I come come from a unique background where, you know, you’ve been so involved in more of the whole marketing ecosystem for so many law firms. And then I was in house for a very for nine figure law firm doing a a large marketing budget where we did everything, right? You kind of see how it all works together. I see when I whenever I pull back something, nothing really changed because I have so many things supporting it. And I live in that world, right? I I like with PMP, we live in the I wanna talk about the strategy, the goals and how to get there.
And yes, we could do most of that at PMP, but every now and then there’s something where it’s, you know, I probably need to get some outside partners to to help work on this this particular project. But I believe in it so much, I’d rather you trust that we go in that direction than, hey, let me just run some more Google ads for you because it’s easy. We make a general commission off of that. One thing I did I did hear you say though, agencies that
don’t give you visibility into your ad spend versus your versus their fees? Do you do you run do you run into some agencies like that?
Ron Latz (25:29)
My God, yes. It’s still happening.
Al Ludwig (25:32)
Yeah, I I have I don’t I must have just been so insulated. Because I worked at I worked in a couple agencies prior to being in-house. When I worked in-house, I had the foresight to go. Like I just I wanted to see everything. I wanted to own everything. And I was like, i i if I don’t have ownership of something, I’m not working with you, which had it changed some of the relationships and they did things for us that they didn’t do for other clients. Yeah. But it it blows my mind that there’s
Like ’cause as a client, if I went to an agency said, break this down for me, they didn’t do it, I’d like, I d I don’t I don’t understand. I don’t
Ron Latz (26:07)
Either. And I’ve been active on LinkedIn for as long as I have. And I read I repurpose that post. I could probably do it daily, and people will still get into the trap. But where it becomes even more challenging is that there is an agency out there that has this rollover policy with LSAs. And the challenge that we were having was on the accounting side is like, well, we don’t know what wasn’t spent to know what should be rolling over into the next month. So then when we finally had all the exported reports over a six-month period, there was one month out of those six in which
All months were underspent and none of them carried over.
Al Ludwig (26:41)
That’s that’s insane because you know, most most things in the marketing in any any area for that matter are usually an evolution of something before it. And when you looked at what was before digital marketing, you know, you had TV, you had radio, you you still have those things today. But the systems that were in place for that, they didn’t have a way to really hide it. You always knew how much of a commission you were paying on things. You always had access to the audits.
And what was rolling over and what wasn’t. And so the fact that it’s like implemented in this world and and didn’t kind of follow that remnant ⁓ from the previous run, of course, there’s some of it just blows my mind. Like I like I said, I I think I just like I live in a bubble and I just feel like there’s no agency out there that actually does this and I it’s just like a ghost story to me. But apparently there are.
Ron Latz (27:30)
If I don’t know if it started here, but within the agency world, I would have to assume that one of the first things that clients didn’t have access to would be any sort of like pri proprietary CMS that they couldn’t take with them. Now, again, as long as that is disclosed, you should know that if you do tet untether, that you’re likely going to need a developer to redevelop that site. And I’m telling you, that there are some agencies out there that still have a proprietary CMS. Beautiful design work.
It’s it’s incredible and it’s just the conversation because just like
Al Ludwig (28:03)
Or I I think I think I know those agencies that you’re talking about.
Ron Latz (28:07)
Yeah. And and that’s just, hey, listen, if you do part ways, just know that A, the other agency might not be able to replicate that design exactly how you see it today. And B, you’ve got to pay a developer to take all those files that they send you in the zip to recreate a functioning website. So as long as you know that going in, right? Like, just disclaim it so that there’s no surprises in the future. And even still, Al, like I’ve I’ve given that exact spiel.
two firms and they’re like, I still want to go with that one. I’m like, all right.
Al Ludwig (28:40)
No,
you can. No problem. There’s people out I I’ve I I know some really substantial law firms that use agencies like that, like working with agencies like that, because for them it becomes out of sight, out of mind. And as long as my numbers are good, I’m good. Right. And and God bless because like as a guy that I was in house for so long, like I I I couldn’t. Like I cannot operate in this system because ⁓ like even if
even if the the founder owner of the eight of the firm I worked at wanted to work with one one one of them, we would have had a fight. Like, no, no, I like to I like visibility. I like to get into things. I like to check things. I like to hold people accountable. And and I I just I probab I probably wouldn’t have been able to stay there if if we worked with one of those those agencies.
Ron Latz (29:30)
Yeah. And some of do great work. It’s just you gotta know what you’re getting into.
Al Ludwig (29:34)
All right, well yeah, I saw another post where you talked about legal directories. You know, here’s how law firms should think about paid legal directory profiles and guaranteed placement listings. And that one caught my eye because I had a actually a couple of clients recently that just forwarded some things over to me, like, Hey, hey, what do you think about this? And I and I know what I think about it, but I always love hearing different takes and and so tell me a little bit about the legal directories from your point of view.
Ron Latz (29:57)
Well, everyone will reach out when there’s the nomination or selection period for super lawyers and they’re like, should I buy this profile? So I think you’ve got to separate the difference between what the profile is versus the premium or guaranteed placement listings on all of these legal directories. Another thing that everybody should also realize with the recent internet brands acquisition over a fine law that all basically of the major directories are now owned by one company. So they’ve
release some of their new products. I don’t know if you’ve gotten wind of their authority suite where they’re now bolting on the fine law, law info directories into the package, but you can now get all of those on top of Avo, Martindale, Lawyers.com as well. So, you know, I think for the profiles, they are a great protective measure on branded search, especially if you have been nominated to something like Super Lawyers or Best Lawyers, because they do show up very frequently and prominently.
On the search page results. Okay. You’ve got to do your own searches to see whether or not that profile is visible to know if you should be investing the hundred to 200 bucks per month for that profile. But my take is if someone searches Ron Latts Lawyer New York, and if super lawyers and Avo are showing up, I’m probably going to pay the Piper, pay for super lawyers, and I’m probably going to pay Avo as well. One being I get an enhanced profile.
Aesthetically, it looks a lot better. And then secondly, once you pay the Piper, they miraculously drop off all the competitors that are being advertised on your profile as well. There’s some other benefits, but we’ll keep it pretty high level here.
Al Ludwig (31:36)
What’s it what’s your your general thoughts about like you mentioned doing your your brand search and they’re popping up for it and so you you’re gonna go ahead and pay the piper. ⁓ and do you do you recommend playing the brand game when when someone searches your brand and all these other brands are showing up? Or do you would you rather put that money into more direct case acquisition, hoping that the person that searches for your brand still knows how to find you through all the clutter?
Ron Latz (32:04)
Yeah, it I mean that that’s that’s gonna depend upon like what your goal and objective is in the maturation of of your firm. If you are much more sophisticated and you’ve been investing in brand for a while, you don’t need cases tomorrow to keep the lights on, and you can sustain a long term investment and know that through data and your CRM, that the majority of business comes through direct or grand search.
Then sure, I would make an argument that we would continue to bolster on those types of investments so we can protect ourselves from branded queries, right? We want someone showing up looking for us to find us every single time, you know.
Al Ludwig (32:46)
In interestingly, I I was listening to something recently and and and it got me thinking about like more trade name law firms, you know, your your top dogs and trade names like that versus founder owner name law firms. And it ’cause I I never loved doing brand, always spent some money there. Granted, I I had the pleasure of working with a brand that we built out quite substantially and was built out substantially before I even got there. But I always I looked at a lot of times as waste for a couple of reasons. One
Anytime we did a test, and especially when Google decided to turn on everybody’s brand LSAs and you had to go and turn it off. Yeah. Yeah. One inadvertent thing that Google taught us with that was that ninety percent of the people that are searching for our brand are our clients, right? Already our clients. And so I’m like, okay, well, if my client accidentally makes their way to another law firm.
Ron Latz (33:25)
Default.
Al Ludwig (33:43)
Well, they’re already already signed on retainer to me. Chances of me lose losing it’s so so tiny, right? And if anything, there’s an ethical issue there. So it’s like, okay, well, maybe I don’t wanna do the brand. But then also it just pisses you off and you’re like, but what if I am losing something by not not bidding on my brand? So I created like certain thresholds and throttles in place where I didn’t want it to go over a certain amount. And so I I I always I’ve I’ve fought that battle for a long time and I still am
Ron Latz (34:05)
Yeah.
Al Ludwig (34:13)
undecided exactly where I want to be with it, unfortunately. I lean I I lean more towards just if I have less money, I I don’t bid much on my brand or do much quote unquote brand protection. Because I I my hope is as the people search for my brand or my my former clients, like also if even if you’re a larger brand, you’re doing giveaways. So people are searching for your name. You got
Ron Latz (34:17)
Well you can
Al Ludwig (34:41)
Every vendor in the world is searching for you and trying to sell you something. You know, they you’re getting so many branded searches that have nothing to do with your w what you do. Yeah. And always fought that battle. So I I guess I still fight it to this day and and see the pros and cons. Yeah.
Ron Latz (35:02)
I mean, you know, depending upon our clients’ marketing mix, how much at a home and billboard like do they have, is that driving up the cost of those clicks? I want to compare to Google Ads branded clicks to see, you know, how much above or or below we are on LSA, direct search, right? So there are some levers that you might be able to pull or at least data sources that you could check to see if this is still within reason.
Al Ludwig (35:26)
Yeah. I I I like I I was talking to a friend who works for a substantial law firm and she w and she was mentioning that. They were spending six figures a month on their brand. I was like, I no, no, no, no. I was like, redu like on Google, reduce your bids by seventy five percent. You’re still gonna get them the majority of them and
Ron Latz (35:46)
You’re giving Google a lot of extra money.
Al Ludwig (35:48)
Yeah. And and she th they ultimately did. It in at the the the owners didn’t want to do it because they didn’t you know they could see the tit for tat between ⁓ w with the track through. Yeah. And sure enough, you know, just it this is what makes me lean towards not doing too much brand is Google Search Console, guess what goes up? The brand it clicks to their web organic brand that clicks to their website goes up substantially. What happens to their caseload? Nothing. Stays the same. And when that happens, I’m just like, well
Ultimately the the thing that is driving my final decisions are the long term trends in my my case data. Right. And and and what it and what that’s telling me. And if I’m continuing to maintain or grow, well then it’s telling me that collectively things are working pretty well for me.
Ron Latz (36:36)
Yeah, agreed.
Al Ludwig (36:37)
All right, what else we got, Ron? We got ⁓ which marketing channels are producing signed cases and at what cost? Do you remember that one?
Ron Latz (36:46)
I don’t, but is it about how all is it about how all marketing works and don’t listen to your buddies at happy hours and conferences ’cause you’re missing all of the context?
Al Ludwig (36:54)
Yeah, that’s the basic question that a lot of a lot of firms initially approaching us are unclear on. They think they know how many or at what cost and what percentage qualified opportunities are closed, but in reality, they don’t. And so I think it was speaking more along the lines of trusting basically their last touch attribution. Ryan, you there? Testing, testing.
Ron Latz (37:17)
Are you still there, Al?
Al Ludwig (37:19)
I I’m here. Can you hear me?
Ron Latz (37:21)
Okay. I lost your video, but I can hear you. We’ll just have to cut it out in post production. ⁓
Al Ludwig (37:26)
Hey, sorry
about that. I don’t know what happened.
Ron Latz (37:30)
Technology man. We just we’re live.
We keep it rolling. We’re live.
Al Ludwig (37:34)
We keep going. Yeah. So w what what do you think about Last Dutch attribution?
Ron Latz (37:38)
I think there’s a there’s an obsession over it and instead of looking at all the signals that you can pick up throughout the life cycle, they get tunnel vision on this last click and forget all the qualitative data.
Al Ludwig (37:52)
Yeah. And luckily, I think the tide is is turning on that. Enough people are talking about the BS tracking. And I think it’s just over the years, people getting more and more pissed off with Google and real and realizing like, okay, I shouldn’t hang my hat on what Google’s saying because they’re trying to take credit for everything. And for me, a prime example of that, done when I was in house, did so many things on with P Max, just testing and testing and testing.
And it was always, man, PMAX is amazing. It is killing it. Low cost per cases, low ⁓ low cost per clicks, all of that. But we would then put in, and one of the other posts I liked was qualitative versus quantitative data. We put in the the qualitative data. You know, how’d you hear about us? Why’d you hire us? Where are you located? Right. And we find out that, okay, well, this PMA, this PMAX case that came from market A that tracked back to PMAX said.
They hired us because of the T V spot and they’re actually in market B somehow.
Ron Latz (38:56)
It’s like the same prospects out that go and tell the firm, I saw your TV and your your billboards. And it’s like, we don’t have TV or billboards. Right. So it’s a conversation. I’m not saying that I think I say something along in that post that you don’t go and ask them like a dozen times, how’d you find me or where’d you hear about me? Right. But you’ve got to be thoughtful, you’ve got to be empathetic. You you weave those questions in during an intake or a console to pick up more signals because your tech attribution is gonna
likely pick up your first or last touch, however you have configured it. Meanwhile, they heard about you from John Doe. You were at the podcast, you sponsored the 5K, you’ve been involved with the turkey trot. And it’s like, well, this is just what captured your demand, right? So we look at it from a blended perspective, right? All the dollars up top over the cases, there’s our blended cost per. And now we know how healthy we are.
And then we look at the CRM for channel by channel metrics to understand return and acquisition costs on search or LSA so that we can look at it from a either an agency account or just general marketing performance.
Al Ludwig (40:06)
And I wish more firms did that. The global blended average across everything they’re doing. And then that gives you the ability to ebb and flow, test and do these different things and look at the long term ramifications of them and see if it continues go going the right direction. Because ultimately, a lot of these decisions, yes, a lot of them are going to be based on tried and true, things working historically, but a lot of it’s also going to be based on gut. And that’s that’s one thing I could tell you from running a
Eight-figure marketing budget for a personality law law firm for so much, for so long, that the things that made us the best in our markets usually start it with just our guts. We’ve been doing this for so long and we’re so entrenched in it. What do we think the real story is? No matter what the data data is telling us, and and no matter what even sometimes the market research tells us, because it could be saying one thing, but it really meant to say something else. And and so
You know, ul ultimately and for PI law firms, man, it’s just so it’s it’s such a a crazy world. A little different when you start going into some of the other practice areas. ⁓ I love doing mass start marketing and and just pounding social media and just going like, look, like this is a direct connection. Like this is the only thing that’s happening. And now you got a thousand ⁓ claimants, right? That’s a l a lot easier to to to justify because you could justify it in the short term and not just the long term.
Ron Latz (41:35)
W I think a lot of firms struggle with that. And I wish that they had that type of outlook on marketing because there is a lot of experimentation here. And most firms are quick to jump to say that that campaign failed, but they forget like the lessons that they learn going through that process is only going to help the setup for the next initiative and then the improved results on that. It all came from what you cons considered like a non success or a failure. It’s just
And then, you know, internal resources are evaluated based off of that. And then that’s where the whole mess comes into play. And it’s like, ⁓ man, we’re we’re missing it, guys. We’re missing it.
Al Ludwig (42:13)
One
thing I want to loop back to that that you said that it made me think of something was, yeah, we saw you you saw your TV spots, your billboard, so your radio, right? And it’s like we we’ve either never run that or we haven’t run it in years. And this is a conversation I have with with many law firms when they get scared about the competition. I’m like, the funny thing about more competition in in your market is there’s a higher percentage of the population that is going to hire a personal injury lawyer because it’s more visible.
Than in a low saturated market. Don’t get me wrong, I love marketing in a in a low a lower saturated market. And there’s still plenty of them out there that you can do that, do it successfully and own it for pretty cheap. Amazingly, there’s still some you can do that with. But, you know, I I was in some of the most saturated markets in the country. And the claimant rate out there was double, triple some of these other places. And that it goes back to it’s like there, it’s because there was an old head back in 1982.
That started marketing for personal injury. And the money started flowing. People started understanding what personal injury lawyers do, when you should contact them, why you should contact them. And it became more part of the process in certain areas, where in other areas it’s it’s not that yet. And so when people get worried about certain law firms coming into their market, I go, well, just remember, people are gonna be more educated than ever and are gonna change their habits to be more likely to contact a personal injury lawyer.
And there’s still going to be those that don’t want to contact those guys. And so you need to insert yourself in there and and make sure you’re you’re not you’re not losing it to them. And yes, your cost per acquisition is going to go up. I’m sorry. It’s just so does so does the cost of your groceries, so does the cost of a new car, so does the cost of a house. Everything goes up over time.
Ron Latz (44:01)
Yeah. It does. It will continue. And it’s just it’s very conf the that’s something else where if you are in a market where there are more entrants and more competitors and they are informing that audience, making them more educated consumers about legal services, like that is gonna that it’s gonna increase the amount of individuals that if they want to hire a lawyer, they’re gonna give the lawyer a call and it’s good for everyone.
Al Ludwig (44:25)
Well, Ron, when should a ⁓ a law firm contact you in legal phoenix? What where where on their journey sh does that usually happen?
Ron Latz (44:34)
I mean, most firms come to us when they’re feeling a little lost. They don’t have a a stronghold on their strategy. They feel like maybe their vendor makeup or their mix of partners that they are working might not be, you know, producing the results that they initially had expected. They’re trying to expand or build an in-house function. So there’s a lot of reasons why some firms will, you know, reach out to us, including our our neutrality, right? They do want an unbiased perspective to say, hey, I know you’re not going to sell me this stuff, but I I need help.
being pointed in the right direction. So there’s there’s a lot of different entry points as to why they would start the conversations with us. But at the end of the day, a lot of the firms just they want to sit in the the legal seat. They want somebody else to be responsible for developing strategy, managing and collaborating with vendors. Being a resource and like actually talking marketing shop with in-house marketers and give them the time and attention that they
Al Ludwig (45:29)
Yeah,
I I I was wondering about that. Like if it was a law firms of certain sizes or e did do law firms that even have people in house also have y’all come in and consult with them?
Ron Latz (45:40)
Yeah, that would be a preference, Al. Like I want to have someone else in-house internally. Be like the feet on the ground when we’re talking about sponsorships, community involvement. Cause it’s not the lawyers that are going out there for the most part, right? They might be the face on social to promote the event, but you know, I want to make sure that we do have other people that can help support the efforts because when you get called to trial, you got to go to depths, you’re in consults, you’re running the business.
Marketing and all the other things is what unfortunately hits the wayside. So we would prefer that they have some level of marketing resource internally.
Al Ludwig (46:16)
Okay,
perfect. Well, if there’s one thing you can leave an an attorney, a law firm own owner with today, what would that be?
Ron Latz (46:24)
Watch out for all this AEO, GEO, snake salesman stuff that’s out there right now. I would follow some of the, you know, even non-legal voices out there, like a Lily Ray, Kevin Indig, like the there’s great resources and people that aren’t just tied to legal, that are talking about what is going on right now, looking at data that is significantly larger than probably any firm out there, because they’re talking about enterprises and commercial organizations, just to see like.
how all this stuff is changing. So just like do your research, do your due diligence. Make sure you’re collecting context from people when you’re asking them about the next greatest thing because I bet you there were a lot of other complimentary efforts that were helping support that initiative that you’re like, well I’m gonna start from scratch here and go and launch it and expect. So just ⁓
Al Ludwig (47:13)
Yeah. No,
those those those are wise, wise words. And and ultimately I think it it leads to something we’ve been talking about. And that’s your whole marketing ecosystem that’s building your brand, that’s counting on your brand and growing that over time. Because a AEO, GEO, AIO, whatever the acronym of the day is, one thing I have found that I like about Google is they continue trying to improve the experience for the user and the the firms that have just tried to
you know, invest it well, built brand and tried to do the things that are just inherently good marketing, being talked about, having mentions, right? Those firms are benefiting right now from a lot of the the AI search and all that because now all of a sudden there’s more credit linked to just general mentions of your brand, even if it’s unlinked, right? And good marketers, that that’s what they do. Their goal is to be talked about as much as possible, to get as much attention as possible.
And turn that attention into relevance and turn that relevance into cases. So no, I I like that you brought that up. And Ron, I appreciate you jumping on with me today. ⁓ if anybody needs fractional CMO work, Ron runs a great shop over there at Legal Phoenix and should certainly consider him for for that help and that guidance where ⁓ they may feel a little ill equipped or unprepared for. So Ron, I appreciate everything and and thanks for joining today.
Ron Latz (48:40)
Well, thanks. I appreciate the invite and and keep active. I I I like seeing you in the feed out there.
Al Ludwig (48:45)
Appreciate it.