Transcript
Richard (00:00)
I get caught up in the numbers all the time, like this is how many clicks we have. But at the end of the day, if we’re not getting cases, like and and they’re not valuable, then it really doesn’t matter to your point. Like the partnership’s not gonna work if we’re just gonna talk impressions and clicks.
AL (00:11)
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. In today’s episode, I’m joined by senior manager of paid media for us, Richard Levine. He’s the guy behind the strategy optimization and performance across Google, Meta, our LSAs, and more.
really anything on the paid digital side for our clients. He’s in the trenches every day, figuring out what’s working, what’s not, and where firms are either winning big or quietly wasting money. ⁓ we’re gonna get into a lot of stuff today, ⁓ especially ⁓ a few things like impression shares and the different types and what that really means to your accounts, what’s working right now and an LSA for law law firms, and how to approach paid media when the goal is simple, just to generate cases and not
just clicks. so if your firm trying to scale or even just get more efficient with your spin, this one’s going to give you some very practical takeaways. Welcome Richard.
Richard (01:18)
Hey Al, good to see you as always. Thanks for having me on this podcast to talk about this stuff. ⁓ you know, bread and butter of what we do here every single day.
AL (01:27)
Yeah, ⁓ anything interesting happening right now coming off of any call.
Richard (01:30)
Yeah, I mean ⁓ client calls this week have been pretty good. ⁓ we’ve got some new campaigns that we’re gonna launching ⁓ in the Nevada. In Nevada. ⁓ focus in on some Roblox things and some items around people who have been wronged without using some of those social platforms.
AL (01:51)
Interesting. Well I I know y you had mentioned to me wanted to kind of just jump in generally first to some of the Google side of things and the paid digital ads. So I’ll kind of let you set the stage there and then I plan on diving deeper into a few
Richard (02:07)
Yeah, so I just wanted to say that, you know, when it comes to law and and advertising, specifically with Google, it’s just super niche, right? Like even when we talk to our Google reps, like they sometimes don’t understand what law firms have to battle to get not only leads, but then sign cases. And so it’s
AL (02:25)
Are you you’re saying Google saying Google reps ⁓ don’t understand exactly what we do and that their their goal isn’t always in the best interest of of our clients and sometimes potentially in the best interest of
Richard (02:37)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s what I’m saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and and and applying their broad strokes of w how things work for selling a t-shirt, ⁓ for how it’s gonna work for us to drive leads and cases in the law space. ⁓ You know, so we welcome those calls, they’re great. Sometimes we get some good nuggets out of there, but you know, even this week it was just like you should turn on some more broad and you should turn on AI Max because you’re gonna get more traffic and and it’s gonna do better and you’re gonna get more leads. And and then when I challenge them to say
Well, how many cases do you think we’ll get? What’s the quality of our leads gonna be? And it’s like, Well, we’re gonna hit the number and you’re gonna get leads and I’m like, Well, I don’t know if we can really do that right now, so I appreciate the feedback.
AL (03:18)
And and your experience when when we follow if you follow that instinct from Google or that recommendation, ⁓ do numbers go
Richard (03:28)
No, not always. I mean their numbers go up, right? Leads do go up, right? Yeah. I mean leads do go up, like they hit their targets, like cost per lead is fine. ⁓ but not al the quality’s not always there, ⁓ and certainly not the cases. So it’s like a balance of hey, let me see that shiny new toy you have, Google, and let me see how I can apply it to some of our accounts, strategically enough to say like, yeah, we’ve getting some more, you know, chances at a signed case, but certainly not
like broad stroke it the way they they really want us to do it.
AL (04:02)
And I th I think you’re saying something important there. ⁓ especially regarding the various products and hey, what should I most of the law firms that we talk to asking, well, what what should I be doing? What’s working for your clients? What’s this, what’s that, right? ⁓ without the full context of well, here’s my current situation, here’s my current intake data, here’s my budget that I can spend, here’s my market, here’s what I’m going after, right? ⁓ and so
Testing certain things out that are available to us from Google and from other platforms, those tests look different client by client and market by market, case type by case type, even if it’s two law firms going after the exact same thing, because there’s other parameters in which we need to take into account as we’re optimizing for for these accounts. And so that’s one thing I I feel like we’re
constantly having to to teach clients is that there are no broad stroke answers. And if someone’s given a broad stroke answer, chances are it’s it’s not a good call. There, yes, there’s going to be some things that just generally work from ⁓ market to market, channel by channel. And I and you know, and I take some of those best practices and institutional knowledge and develop out campaigns, both from the traditional and brand side to the to the digital and and paid media side.
With that in mind, ⁓ and I think it’s also important to note for the firms that are trying to maybe they’re earlier on and trying to do a lot of this themselves, and they don’t quite understand that Google, even if they they have your best interests at heart, they don’t understand even their own products and services specifically for what you do.
Richard (05:42)
Output
No, you’re totally right. I think you know, what they try to do is just be like, it’ll work, it’s working in this DMA, it’ll work in that DMA. And it’s like, that’s not necessarily gonna be the case. So I think internally what we do is try to take that data and say, all right, it’s working in, let’s say, the Florida market. How can I try to test it in the Georgia market? I don’t anticipate going in, it’s just gonna work. There’s gonna be nuances, there’s gonna be other things that we’re gonna have to change in the campaigns and monitor to make sure they act the same.
It’s good that we had those initial learnings in Florida, but it doesn’t just automatically translate to the next market that we want to go after. and Google just doesn’t always seem to understand that. ⁓ so a quick live example, they’re like, what do you mean you don’t want to be on Denver lawyer? Why would you exclude that? And it’s like, well, that’s super broad if I’m trying to go in for something specific like MVA or divorce or anything else that’s has a specific practice area attached to it.
In this specific campaign, we’re talking about MBA. So no, I do not want just a really super general term to be eating the budget ⁓ where I know that either A, I’m not gonna get any leads, or the leads that I’m gonna get are not gonna fall within what the goals of the campaigns and the clients need. So it’s a constant, you know, battle and in in
AL (07:16)
Yeah, it i it would be like going to to Rolex and telling them, you just need a bid for, you know, watches. And it’s like, yeah, yeah, well, that’s not my target with a Rolex, right? There’s a lot more nuance to it. ⁓ so if you I just want to I want to give you a scenario, ⁓ and just see how you come come at it. You know, if you’re if get we have a law firm that comes a law firm that comes to us, they have ⁓
They’re earlier on in their their marketing journey. They have about $10,000 a month in budget. And their main goal right now is yes, they want to build brand and stuff like that, but they need cases in the door so that they can fund those things in the future. So right now, I don’t care about building brand. I just need cases. Now, how are you deploying that across Google, LSAs, and Meta for this law firm? And let’s say that this law firm is a ⁓ is a
Richard (08:09)
I mean, well the good news is it’s workers comp, so we don’t have as high CPCs as we do in MBA. So we can stretch those ten thousand dollars out a little bit more. ⁓ but I think it’s a good combination of let’s assume they don’t have any like real history or maybe their campaigns have been run differently. So we have nothing to really go on. So I would create some campaigns in paid surge, all around workers comp, exact in phrase, right, on our keyword match types. Like we wanna s we wanna keep it tight. We don’t want Google stealing that money from us.
and then on the LSA side, again, assuming new account or very limited data, ⁓ we would just want to see how it perform, right? So it’s gonna take a little bit of time for LSA to start to serve specifically for just workers comp. And so maybe after 30 days, we’ll have some data on both, and then we can decide: is paid search the next step that we want to you know continue to push? Or how did those LSA leads? Maybe we should shift back to LSA. So I think
That would be the initial approach as far as just like keeping it tight and just making sure that that ten thousand dollar investment is spent as perfectly as possible. ⁓ you know, daily, ⁓ I don’t know how you say it, but daily like look back at yesterday and the in the set last seven days, what’d we do? Like what is is Google stealing? Is is are we getting the click throughs? Are we getting the lead? So there’s a lot of moving parts, but structurally that’s how we’d start.
AL (09:31)
And I I think going back to the institutional knowledge and just having that in the initial setup is huge. And also some of just some of the weird nuances on some of these platforms. So when you talked about LSAs, it reminded me of some things I worked on in the past for a couple of law firms. And if you’re trying to get workers’ comp leads on Google LSA, you know there’s a couple ways that you can select into it because there isn’t a job ⁓ a a
Broad category for workers comp lawyer. There isn’t there’s personal injury and there’s employment. And then under personal injury, there is a workers’ comp job type that you can turn on. Under employment, there’s also a workers’ comp job type you can turn on. And the difference between them is if you have it on personal injury, if someone work searches for work injury lawyer, you have the chance of showing up there, right? But a lot of people search more often than not, search workers comp lawyer.
That’s how you that and the only way to get the LSA to show up for that is by turning it on under employment law. The problem is it could be the only thing you turn on under employment law, but now nine out of ten of your LSA leaves are still going to be general employment law. There’s just no way around it. ⁓ but you will be the probably one of the only ones showing up for workers’ comp lawyer in the LSAs, which is a win. And so then you’re balancing out the operational aspect of can my intake
get these junk leads I’m know I’m gonna get for employment without getting being bogged down. Do have someone I can refer these out to in order to get that that one workers comp lead that becomes a case for me because the dollars do make sense. It’s it’s cheap enough for me to do it. And you know I I I’ve done that for a law firm and unintentionally had us showing up ⁓ like eight times as the option in LSAs. And then we got in trouble for that. This was at a a a prior ⁓ job we got in trouble for that and had to turn it
Richard (11:28)
that why that we have to do all these verifications now? Because you were over there getting us in trouble. You started that madness.
AL (11:37)
Well, the only people that were showing up for workers comp because I figured that out were in at least in the markets that I was doing it in for this particular firm, were ones that I did. It was ⁓ a couple firms that I consulted with prior to working for this other firm and then the firm that I worked for. ⁓ we were the only ones showing up and it was like no one had kind of figured it out. but again, it also you gotta make sure that it works from an operational and intake standpoint.
for the firm. And so I guess that that’s that segues me to ⁓ something else that you had mentioned to me earlier and that we talk about in depth a lot. And obviously Google LSAs and general inquiries. Most firms turn it off. I generally recommend most firms have it off. because if it if it comes in under general inquiry, it is likely to be a a waste. And if someone’s searching for just
lawyer, someone’s searching for ⁓ just general lawyer terms and they don’t need a personal injury lawyer or MVA lawyer, which we that’s the majority of the people that we work with. ⁓ but we do test it out for various law firms based off of their their situations. I know we have it on for a couple right now and they’re seeing success with it. ⁓ but the disclaimer and so for anybody out there that’s that’s
Wondering how do I get my LSAs to generate more? Sometimes in order to do that, it is by creating more waste for yourself, unfortunately. And by turning on general law leads, sometimes it helps influence the non-general aspect of it, the ones that you have turned on for personal injury law, because you’re willing to spend more money and you’re s you’re giving more signals of of intent to Google. But also if you can handle twenty five general law leads leads coming in.
And one of those being an auto case, those 25 general law leads are coming in at an astronomically cheaper price than the vetted personal injury MVA leads from the regular LSA side of it. And so when I consult with firms, I I turned it on a lot when I worked in-house because we had really tight operations, we had really tight intake. And whenever whenever we did our mash backs on it, it was like, yeah, you know, we got
125 leads that were general that we we had to deal with, but we got five MVA cases from it that give us anywhere between ten and twenty thousand dollar average cost per case, and we spent up to two thousand dollars per on it because and so the the math made sense. so it kind of explained it all out there, but do you have anything to to add to the general law side?
Richard (14:28)
Like if that’s you I do hate having it on, right? I mean like but I just want to put the disclaimer out there that this is not for everybody, like that scenario you just did is for people who like, you know, have a little bit more
AL (14:28)
You hate having it on, but
Yeah.
if your receptionist is your intake, then d don’t do it. Definitely don’t do it.
Richard (14:49)
That’s one part, but the other part is just like dollars, right? Like I was just thinking through like, you know, law firms that are like maybe looking to stretch that dollar a little bit further, this would not be the way to do it. Now, yeah, there is a scenario where I could say, turn it on for three, five, maybe seven days, right? And and get it like kick started and get that volume flowing and give, you know, the LSA platform some feedback and then try taking it off. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes you go right back to not serving, but it can work as far as just like
Giving it a kick in the butt, right? And getting it moving.
AL (15:21)
You you hit up on an important part that I didn’t I didn’t mention within all that. And that’s very much where you at in your marketing journey. Where are you at with your spend and the level of cases you’re coming in that are coming in? That recommendation for me is typically number one, again, you got to have your intake and your operations down pat. If you don’t, then you’re just gonna piss people off. You’re going to create a hectic workload for a bunch of people that aren’t prepared for it. ⁓ but the other aspect of it is an
most instances where I used it, we were at a point where we were looking for incremental gains. We had already established our brand pretty ⁓ cohesively across the markets we were doing it in. We had broadcast TV, we had billboards, we had meta, we had goo bottom of the funnel, Google Google ads, we had LSAs work. Everything was firing on all cylinders. And it was what’s something we’re not doing that can potentially bring in some
You know, some more cases that we’re not thinking of right now. Okay, well let’s just here’s something we can test. And we tested it and it just worked from a monetary standpoint. ⁓ and so
Richard (16:27)
I think I think t internally that’s what’s working best for the clients we have it on for is the same thing. Like it is giving them like incremental gains. It is, you know, helping them to control the DMA that they’re targeting and that they’re trying to dominate. Absolutely. ⁓
But man, if you like there’s so many one minute calls, like just again, disclaimer alert, like there’s so many one minute calls ⁓ that come in that cannot be disputed that even if you give them the feedback and you go like, ⁓ LSA will fix it and it’ll learn from it. No, it doesn’t learn from it. It just continues to give you these like general inquiries that are like a minute or two minutes long. ⁓
AL (17:04)
So again, and ideally you have a referral, like a referral network built up for that when you do get a general inquiry that that does fall into a category that can be helped, but you don’t want to do or you don’t do, you can refer to someone and maybe make a a a fee split or something like that off of it. But more often than not, it’s a lot of people that are in situations that like it’s a very general legal situation that they want legal advice on, and there’s not a case for anybody, for any law firm, no matter what they do.
and so balancing that out. But if you do have a referral network, some of those can also potentially turn into something.
Richard (17:38)
What
I’m seeing now in the date yeah, what I’m seeing now in the data is some of that. Sure, I’m sure that some of them could be referred out. But then there’s also a handful, I mean, weekly, of like civil stuff. There’s people mad at somebody and they’re like, I’m just you know, and that’s the inquiry that Google served, and it’s like, ⁓ that’s where it gets frustrating because like can we just take it a step up from like the people who are just mad at somebody? Because like we’re paying, you know, hard earned dollars against that and with no l way of like
further proofing, you know, that strategy by having that general inquiry on. So
AL (18:11)
Yeah. All right. Well, talk to me a little bit about impression share, top of page rate, impression share, you know, ⁓ absolute top, all of that. ⁓ I I have a lot of firms that like to ask about hey, hey, what’s my share of voice in the market? What how am I doing against the competitors in the market? And we have certain invisibilities in that. It’s not always perfectly clear because everybody’s Google Ad setup is different. ⁓ but
The impression share is is one place where we’re able to speak a little bit to it. ⁓ can you talk a little bit about those? What matters to you, what you’re looking at whenever you’re looking at it? Yeah.
Richard (18:49)
So many things we could talk about here because, like, Google has theories on impression share too, because they like to tell us that our impression share looks really strong. ⁓ but when we look at our other metrics, absolute top and top of page, they’re not as strong. And unfortunately, what they still don’t understand, and in as an industry where this makes paid search difficult, because law is so niche, is that you really need to be, you know, one of the first clicks or first calls for a case. Like, if you’re an MBA and
And you are not in absolute top or top of page consistently, then by the time they call you, regardless of what your impression share is, by the time they call you, ⁓ it’s either really crappy lead or they’ve already signed with somebody else and they’re still making calls to see if they can get a better deal. So to me, that’s where the disconnect is when we talk to like Google and even partners, you know, in and out of the building. It’s just like the the impression share itself.
⁓ I mean I’ll look at it. Like I obviously want to have an impression share that’s better than our competitors. But at the end of the day, like if we’re not on top of page, ⁓ and specifically, I love when we’re absolute top of page. ⁓ but if we’re not at least top of page, then most likely if I track it all the way back to lead quality, we are going to see a you know lower quality lead than in the the same campaign, same targeting, same DMA for someone who had an absolute top that was higher than.
AL (20:15)
Yeah, and and there’s a couple of ways to look at it. Obviously, one thing that we’re doing across our clients anytime we have the ability to do so based off of transparency with our clients is feeding back, intake data, case data, all that to give Google the signals of you know who’s who’s more likely to become ⁓ be in a situation that is something that would convert into a case because Google has tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of data points on every single person that’s out there.
And so all these little data points work together to understand is like this exact type of person is ten ten times more likely to be in a wreck than this other type of person. So we’re gonna it’ll adjust accordingly to it. But at the same time, we also live when it comes to PI and MVA in a world that someone can be completely out of that that particular set that is being identified.
And end up having a million dollar case because their situation ended up being the right type of situation that needed the the the help of of a law firm. and and I’ve seen this at scale, and there’s there’s two ways that I feel like or probably three, but that many law firms look at it. One, many of them just want to be as efficient as possible and they want to try to to to find or stay under a certain cost.
There’s there’s other law firms that use it as a continued market dominance play. If you’re a law firm that’s out there and you have one of the largest broadcast budgets in the market and you’ve had it for a decade, you have the most billboards in the market, you have the highest brand awareness, brand affinity, you know, all these things that we look at when understanding a someone’s positioning in the market, chances are you created a
Pretty good operation. You optimize for for case fees and how to increase those internally. You optimize your intake for your want rates and your conversion rate. Chances are those bottom of the funnel when people are actually searching for the law firm, which by the way, the majority of people, in my experience, are finding their law firms before they’re searching for them. Whether that’s through they pick them through just general top-of-mind brand awareness or they’ll be referred to.
From a a friend, family member, former client, or even word of mouth, which I think people ⁓ people forget many times that when you advertise a lot in the market, you’re gonna get word of mouth referrals from people who have never worked with you. It’s just, yeah, I see that guy every or or I like their brand. And so they just refer people to us, a family member when they’re in that situation. You know, make sure to get this this particular lawyer. and so they’ll t they’ll take the
The strategy of going, I want to have the highest absolute top-of-page impression share possible for a very tight set of exact matching, exact match close variant phrases that are going to cover the highest intent, 90% plus of people out there that are searching. The people that are searching for that personal injury lawyer in Insert City, the people searching for
For best car accident lawyer near me. Things like that that have the highest intent to them. They’re gonna be the most expensive, but because of everything they built, they can have this channel where they don’t have to have a three, a 3X return on ad spend, right? They are okay with spending $10,000 on a ⁓ on a case from the channel.
That only pays out fifteen thousand dollars, right? Not much of an ROI there. But when they’re doing thousands of cases, they can take five thousand dollars on on a case just to get it in the door and then add on 25 to 50% on top of that for the lifetime value of the client if you’re doing a good job and and getting referrals from from your client set your client base. ⁓ and that’s one thing that I think a lot of firm it gets lost on a lot of firms and and finally gets lost on on two types of firms.
One is one that is just they’re smaller, they’re not used to the game at as as much. And they they do have to be ⁓ very present and aware of their aspend and their return with and rightfully so. And the other ones that are are so corporatized that there’s just a certain leading standards that are like, we don’t care about all that. It’s just these are the numbers and that’s it. And they don’t want to pivot based off of you know certain
maneuverabilities like that, but if they do, sometimes it opens them up to that one two million dollar case that year that they otherwise wouldn’t have got in the U
Richard (25:15)
spot on. And you know what’s what’s like not funny but kind of funny is like that there are a lot of firms that
Just focus on the numbers. That’s it. They just want to know. They can go into Google, they can see it. They know exactly how much they spent, what they got for a leads, they can track it back, and they’re like locked in on it. And they never look past the fact that like there could be so much more. You could have loss leaders, you could have word of mouth, everything that you just said. And so like it’s a blessing to be able for me for to be able to go in and say, We spent ten thousand dollars and this is all the metrics we got for that, right? And I can we can speak to until the cows come home. But at the end of the day
They could have been miss they could have missed out on a whole bunch of other opportunities because they were just so locked in on it has to be this exact return for this exact dollar. And that’s exactly what you’re saying.
AL (26:04)
Yeah. And and it’s not it’s not a bad thing. It’s just different it’s different mindsets, different strategies, different risk tolerances for different law firms, right? And I I’ve worked with lots of different ones that have d different risk risk tolerant tolerance and strategies. and we work for some where it is very much we’re judging you based off of this. One hundred percent heard. I’m not gonna personally be
Changing your operations, right? You hired me to do a specific thing. And now I’m gonna go and try to do that specific thing. Now, if there’s reasons why I shouldn’t optimize for that, I’m gonna bring it up to you up front. Like if you’re running a good operation, you’re not gonna run into that. Like what they want you to optimize for makes sense. And so I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna still try to have the conversations about as we evolve over time, maybe we should consider X, Y, and Z, but
Richard (26:44)
Yeah or or
AL (27:01)
For me, I’m being judged off of off of this one thing. I’m gonna make sure that it and this one thing needs to be some type of internal law firm metric. The cost per acquisition, the case fees, something like that, not a I’m judging you based off of the traffic or I’m judging you based off of the the click through rate, right? Things like that. If that’s what we’re being judged off of, then I’m I I think it’s it’s safe to say that there’s probably gonna be an issue with the park partnership at some point.
Richard (27:30)
A little bit, a little bit of an issue. I mean, look, and I I I’m with you a hundred percent. I mean, like, you know, we can as part of what we do here is like to say, All right, this is your goal, this is your budget, like absolutely we can do the goals, we can hit the goals that you’re looking for, we can strategize towards that. But it’s also our job to say, Hey, there’s this new thing we can test, there’s this new opportunity. What did you think about this? Did you think about your messaging or your branding or the campaign structure, any of those
different types of things along the way to then make not only the core metrics that they’re most worried about, which is what their, you know, signed case value is, but also like future, you know, opportunities to grow and expand, you know, and not just focus in on those data ’cause I look I get caught up in the numbers all the time. Like, this is how many clicks we have, this is many but at the end of the day, if we’re not getting cases, like and and they’re not valuable, then it really doesn’t matter to your point. Like
The partnership’s not gonna work if we’re just gonna talk impressions and clicks. I mean I can give impressions and clicks all day.
AL (28:27)
Yeah, but the ideal client obviously is someone that we can act as a a consultant for as well across the the the entire marketing ecosystem in which the paid digital media plays an important piece of. But w we have an example recently where we were working with a client and their objectives changed over time because the the market changed for the particular practice areas they were going for. They they did huge in a mesothelioma and asbestos, stuff like that in the past. ⁓ but things
Changed things pivoted and then they pivoted again. And so we came to them with a whole new strategy that involved a lot of social media marketing, something that they hadn’t done a lot in the past. But because of their new internal directives and goals, it just started becoming very clear that we needed to have a it it felt right, right? Especially based again, based off of previous experiences doing similar things for PI law firms, NBA law firms, Mass Tort law firms, MedMat law firms.
So on and so forth. And it they just got if what they needed really fit the mold of a marketing campaign that the creative does the ⁓ the optimizations for you. It finds the right people and has the people self-select in. And after one week of that running, they told us, wow, what what we changed is working, right? And and that made my week because I wasn’t I wasn’t expecting to hear it so soon. I was I was confident. Yeah. But
Richard (29:49)
Me too.
AL (29:55)
you know, I think it’s important that you don’t get stuck in the same thing day in and day out, which is also why I like, you know, I I can’t get the CMO mindset out of my head because I was internal, I was ahead of marketing, and I was doing every aspect of marketing and building a team to do the entire marketing ecosystem from community to traditional to to social, and you know it was it’s a lot. Yeah. But when you have that lens and you have the capabilities, you’re able to do
pivot based off of the client needs rather than off of the but this is the just off of the things that we do. ⁓ and I find that extremely valuable ⁓ for law firm owners. ⁓
Richard (30:38)
Yeah, for sure. I just want to piggyback on before you do that, I just want to piggyback on the social that we just that you know you just brought up. Like I think like, you know, prior lives, I’ve been doing law for a while, but prior lives, I think, you know, people get caught up in like I need to have, you know, a a call to action and I need to have as much text in the ad as I possibly can because that’s what Facebook recommends. And I think like what we’ve what we’re starting to prove and what you’ve you know proved in the past as well is just to say like let the creative do it.
Like the creative had visuals that like was like drew you in. It had a quick call to action that was like, wow, that’s eye-catching. I should probably focus on that for a minute, right? And that’s why I think we got off to such a good start. I was also surprised, made my week, all those things. But I was surprised as well just at how quick it was. that they were happy with it. Obviously, again, I just want to say like not every lead that we’ve gotten has been so amazing, but the majority of the
AL (31:33)
No.
Richard (31:34)
No,
but I just feel like I just feel like, you know, i to be real, like some of are really weird. Like they’re not like they’re kinda in market for something, but I don’t think they’re in market for a lawyer. ⁓ and other ones have been like really, really spot on and I just think it’s that creative where it just gets them. So less text in our ads right now, more focused in on just that creative imagery with a quick call to action and a brand logo and boom it seems to be hitting. So
AL (32:02)
In paid law campaigns, you know, I I I’m wondering if you have a a real example of a campaign that unexpectedly crushed it for you, for a client and and what you kind of just generally learn from it. Does anything come to mind?
Richard (32:16)
That’s a you know, that’s a loaded question here. No, I think like recent like recently, yeah, we’ve been doing some of that stuff around Roblox and Discord and things like that that we’ve been really trying to help a client with. And I think like the feedback we actually got this morning was like they’ve already got a couple of cases in on that. And to me, like it’s it’s a big win because it’s like super niche, right? That’s something where someone came to us and said, Hey, can you help me find figure out if I have something here? This is what I’m trying to go to.
we helped navigate that. We launched some campaigns around it. But honestly, like going into it, I’m like, I don’t know if this is gonna work. Like I don’t have any like I don’t know. Like I have no historics, I have no idea if this is even gonna be searched. ⁓ so getting that feedback so quickly, like three weeks in, ⁓ just proves that like being on the right set of keywords, being in those core themes that we can take from MBA and apply to different niches like this, and and that structure.
can then get us in front of people and then they can actually turn in the cases. So I mean that’s the most recent one, but I mean there’s so many. I mean we could talk about that for like a long time.
AL (33:22)
Yeah, I and the example you brought up there, that’s some of my funnest ones. ⁓ I was very confident that it like this was gonna work just because I’ve seen it on the kind of timely event based marketing that requires people to self select in whenever they’re served an ad that happens to resonate with their situation or a situation of someone they that they know. one of mine was and I talked about it ⁓ internally before.
I live in Louisiana and there are all of these ⁓ industrial plants everywhere. And there was a big plant explosion in a small town of Louisiana. And it happened overnight. Woke up at 6 a.m. talked talked with the firm and it’s like, yeah, we want to run something. We gotta run it now. We gotta be the first ones out there. We gotta start getting claim potential claimants in. We don’t know what this is gonna turn into, but we want people to contact us first. And so
Within an hour, just put together base and basic creative, put together a meta ad campaign, did the ⁓ the on on meta form fills just because we’re just trying to get it off the ⁓ very quickly. Launched it in a fifteen mile radius around the plant. And I mean this is a big news story out there. ⁓ let it run. I’m expecting okay.
It’ll it’ll learn a little bit. Thanks for touching. I turned it on and within five minutes, there was already a over a dozen leads. And by the time we shut it off, I was expecting to run $10,000 plus dollars on this thing. By the time we shut it off, it had spent less than I believe $700. And we had signed up 300 something people from it. So it was less it was around $2 per potential client sign up.
That that we did and we shut it off. Number one, intake had we had a really great intake system, but intake had to bring people in because it was overloading intake with with the calls that were coming in. Thank goodness it was actually on a weekend ⁓ because we weren’t getting as high of a call volume as as you normally would. but that was one that really stuck with me and and helped inform me about a lot of this event ⁓ this event based marketing.
to our a particular situation for potential litigation around it. It’s the same situation around a lot of mass torts. ⁓ because I’ve done an I did another one where it was the other one was was hyperlocal that I just said, but another one where a firm was looking to target a a specific ⁓ illness that people were getting from contaminated water systems, from cruises, hotels, things like that. ⁓
But it it had to run as national because it could it could have been anywhere nationally. ⁓ and the budget, we weren’t putting a lot behind it. It was about twenty-five thousand dollars. And when you think a national campaign, it’s you’re not gonna get the the reach and amount of people you need. But again, it’s a perfect example of make the right creative. That’s very obvious of what this is and why people should act on it. And over time it optimizes towards the people that are more likely.
To be in that situation based off of the millions of data points that that Meta has, based off of their engagement cues as they’re seeing content around it, so on and so forth. And next thing you know, we’re getting five to fifteen leads every single day from across the country for this campaign that’s running on a pretty minimal national scale budget. ⁓ So that type of marketing is always always really fun for me. ⁓ and you also don’t know what it’s going to turn into in the end, but it’s it’s interesting.
Richard (37:10)
It’s always a little nerve wracking at the start. I’m like, I think like I said, I think it’s gonna work. It looks good, everything’s acting right, but then like you really don’t know until you get that actual feedback. So I mean it’s been exciting to be able to to do it. And you know, obviously, like we don’t want timely things to happen, but when they do, we want to be there. ⁓ I feel like you know, maybe we could start saying that we can get cases as low as like five bucks, you know, each, maybe down the road. We should work that in somewhere.
AL (37:36)
⁓
well I I talked to one of our one of our clients, needed to do something like that. Event based marketing around it’s is an is a new it’s on the news, is very topical, all that. And I I gave them the examples that I just just talked to you about. I like, but don’t expect them to come in at at a dollar a piece. But it’s just an example of how how how it happened before. Your situation’s not this exact situation. But I I was like, I do expect it to work.
Richard (38:01)
Yeah no but
AL (38:05)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know what one of the funny aspects around that and and you had you had touched on, you know, letting letting the the creative tell you what’s what’s work letting the data from the creative and the campaign that’s running tell you what’s working and continue to double down or optimize towards that more inputs and more creative. ⁓ how much does it get to you when you have one ad that you’re just like, I love this ad. This is gonna kill it.
Richard (38:22)
Get as much as you can.
AL (38:34)
And you put it into an ad group with five other ads and the one ad that you’re like, That ad sucks. I don’t want like that’s gonna do hor is the one that just wins.
Richard (38:43)
So it’s funny that you bring that up because I’ll be like, man, there’s something wrong in this data. Like we should retest because I love that thing. So we should probably retest it somehow. and then after you get past that and you you know you let your ego go a little bit, then you decide that it’s like, well, the data is the data. Let’s just keep feeding the beast. But that initial shock every time, it doesn’t get old. I’m just like, nah, it’s gotta be wrong. It’s gotta be, it’s gotta be the data’s wrong.
AL (39:05)
I’ve bet I’ve been humbled by Meta and some of the platforms regarding the some of the creative because I I’m always gonna go like if whichever one’s performing the best, we’re gonna we’re gonna learn from that and continue to to optimize towards it. But I’ve been humble humbled a time or two where I was like, I I I I always put a bet on what I think’s gonna kinda happen. And a lot of times it’s not ex it’s not what I think is gonna happen, but we optimize towards the reality of it and not towards the subjective preference of of anyone
Richard (39:35)
The same way when you build a campaign, you’re like, I nailed that. The structure’s good, the targeting’s good, and then you’re like and then the one over there that you didn’t feel as confident is the one that’s bringing in all the cases. It’s like, Well, all right, back to the drawing board. So it’s the same feeling where it’s like your ego, you know, takes a little bit of a hit. ⁓ but at the end of the day, like I’m happy that it’s working and then I’m just gonna pivot and just go where the data tells us to go. So but yeah, always, man. It never gets old. All these years it still bothers me every time. So
AL (40:02)
So I got one last thing I want to talk about, then we’ll hop off. ⁓ you know, particularly for PI, MBA, where do you see Meta actually fitting in for law firms today? ⁓ especially if the they have a a dual goal of I need cases, but I also need a ⁓ I want to build my brand, I want to build my moat, ⁓ and not just re rely on lead gen, which most law firms out there, that’s their ultimate goal.
⁓ and so I’m curious where you where you think meta kind of fits into that, especially because I think we’re getting more inquiries from law firms around ⁓ can you do meta ads for me? Right. And a lot of times that’ll just generally be the question. But we like to I I like to dig deeper and go, well, let’s talk about everything you’re doing right now, where your cases are coming from, what’s working, should you be doubling down somewhere else right now versus meta? But let’s say they’re kind of across most things. Where do you where do you see meta fitting in now and into the future for a lot of these PIs?
Richard (41:01)
I think you’re gonna have to b accept the fact that you’re gonna have to go out with some broad targeting, right? Like I think it can work. We’ve proven that it can work. we have ads that work. But I think like when you go into the settings, a lot of people are like, Well, what can I target? What can I do? What demographics do they have? Well, for the law space, ⁓ pretty much none. so we have to like just go in with we have to go in with like the best creative we have with
Some safeguards, of course. Like we obviously don’t wanna target, you know, maybe under eighteen for whatever reason, for you know, w really all reasons. But the point of it is is like there’s just not a lot. So I think you’ve got to look at it as longer term play, getting your brand out there, supporting some other tactic like T V. ⁓ and that’s where you’re gonna start to see it. And and I’ll just end with this, like our phones, you know, can hear us. ⁓ so like eventually, right, like Facebook’s gonna pick up that you need a lawyer.
Or that someone needs a lawyer, I should say. And then it’s gonna serve them that ad, right? Based off of the data points that it has and the and how that user is, you know, flowing in on a on a daily ⁓ scroll on their phone. So I think there’s just not safeguards and I think people just need to as firms need to come to terms with that. Like, hey, put some money against it and support those other channels.
AL (42:16)
Yeah, and and I I look at Meta as well as a dual purpose channel, which I look at most channels, like even broadcast TV, daytime broadcast TV with a TV spot that is heavy direct response call to action is lead-gen. Yeah. It is direct response. I’ve seen it happen. Like when I do it, calls calls pick up, right? People don’t like the they don’t think of that of it in the the the general sense because it’s not as trackable as, you know
A Google ad sending you a lead. But you know, Meta’s advantage is you’re also building your brand. If you’re running, if you’re making good creative, good videos, good statics, all of that, you’re also it’s serving the purpose of being another TV commercial for you, done in a different way, right? Continuing to build your brand while also asking for the sale, right? Or asking them to become a client if their situation fits. ⁓ and so it does a little extra.
for these law firms. And I think the the other aspect that I think a lot of law firms need to come to terms with is we do want we do need to be broad generally in the targeting, but what gets lost on some of them is hey, I have this budget I want to deploy on Meta. And usually that budget is nowhere near what they’re doing with the rest of their marketing strategy. Let’s say if they’re if they’re doing broadcast, billboard, streaming, so on and so forth. And they still want to target it like
their broadcast TV campaign. I want to target an entire DMA. But we also know for that budget, you’re going to get 10 times less reach, 10 times less frequency, so on and so forth. And I’d rather not target an entire state and then get one impression to w less than 1% of the population because my budget doesn’t allow it. ⁓ and typically, not always, but typically I I want to run
Lead campaigns if my goal is to generate leads, especially for the the the static ads, or engagement campaigns if I have good creative, as opposed to brand awareness campaigns. But if I do run brand brand awareness campaigns, being specific about the placements, because meta will try to waste your dollars on the the low quality, high volume placements on its advantage network and its marketplace.
Richard (44:33)
It will never waste any money. Ever, ever. yeah, and I think that that might be something that we can unpack in a future episode. It’s just like we have some some new clients coming in where we’re, you know, running meta ⁓ at the zip code level for that exact reason to just not try to over target the DMA, but instead bring that in a little bit tighter.
And, you know, be able to build that brand awareness and be able to hit that same user a couple of times and not be too thin. ⁓ you know, with what I’ll call relatively limited budget for the DMA that I’m thinking of right now, but all in I think it’s gonna work you know, as we launch that ⁓ in the coming weeks.
AL (45:12)
All right. Well, I appreciate it, Richard. our senior manager, digital media over here at PMP Marketing Group. ⁓ if anybody has any questions on anything we talked about, just definitely feel free to reach out ⁓ to us on our socials for PMP or or myself. I’m heavy on LinkedIn and at Al Ludwig X across all platforms. you know, my goal is that anybody who hears this gets some great value out of it, no matter if we ever work together or not. ⁓ so appreciate you listening if you made it this far.
Richard (45:41)
Yeah, thank you Al. Yeah, if you made it this far, we appreciate it for sure.
AL (45:45)
See ya. See ya.