Webinar: CallRail’s State of the Legal Industry Report
January 11, 2023Join CallRail’s Legal Industry Specialist, Chris Nelson as we go over their State of the Legal Marketing report. I was lucky to get a sneak preview and there are a few big surprises in there. The report goes deep on the costs involved in PPC (no surprise) but also highlights a movement away from Google, which dropped below 50% of overall online advertising recently.
Among other interesting insights:
- Reporting infrastructure is surprisingly manual for many firms, who still rely on excel.
- The #1 underperforming marketing channel, might surprise you.
- Firms share their plans on marketing channel allocation for next year and there are some major changes in the wings.
- Most effective (from a perception perceptive) marketing channels.
Transcript of Webinar: CallRail’s State of the Legal Industry Report
Webinar. Callrail
Conrad Saam: [00:00:00] Let’s get started. So, thank you for joining us. For those of you who are, unfamiliar with CallRail. CallRail is a, and we’re going to do this quickly because most of you should be, especially if you work with me. Call Rail was the pioneer, I think I want to call you the pioneer, but certainly, the leading provider of dynamic call tracking services, and their products have gone kind of a little bit deeper than that.
In the, you know, last five years. We are big Call Rail fans. We’re also big call rail users unless a law firm has a pre-existing dynamic call tracking service, we will not work with them, with that client unless they do dynamic call tracking. primarily through Colorado. I think we have a couple of clients who are on, you know, legacy system and we didn’t pull that out.
But, um, we’ve been really good friends with Colorado for a long time. Christopher, um, I’m, I’m going to start, uh, Christopher, you, you are the lead for legal at Carrall. You also have another vertical, right? That’s correct. I’ve got home services now, also Home services and legal. And you, you are a lawyer, right?
By training? [00:01:00]
Christopher Nelson: I am, uh, I graduated law school in oh six, practiced for, uh, about five years, both with a mid-size firm and then a small firm, and then moved in-house with the very first original client that I had gotten on my own.
Conrad Saam: Really? That’s awesome. It’s funny how those things work out, right? And either I’m frozen or you’re frozen.
Christopher? Yeah. There we got you back. You’ve got, you’re muted now. I think we just dropped a second. You back? Uh, yes. All right. Awesome. Um, so I want to, Raise the the thing that stood out for me most was a bit of a kick in the teeth for an agency owner. This is, what came out of page 20. I think you’re right about this, but I’d be curious as to why what you think about the answer to this.
The report says it is apparent from the data that law firms often outsource tactical marketing activities rather than strategic ones. Right. And I agree with [00:02:00] that. I think, uh, that happens a lot. What’s your take on the way for why law firms don’t really see agencies as strategic? Because I was like, oh man, come on.
We are strategic. We think we’re not just a pair of hands.
Christopher Nelson: Well, I mean, I think it kind of it boils down to a couple of things. You know, one, one would be the definition of what is strategic and what is tactical. Right. I think that plays. Um, I mean, if you’re thinking strategic is, you know, call it brand identity or the areas that you are looking, to target as a firm, then I think that’s something that they’re probably not going to outsource in the same way that they might outsource brand expression.
Yeah. Or they might source the actual digital marketing tactics that are used. Sure. So, you know, in that sense, it, it could be some of that strategic tactical dichotomy. The other part of it may be, you know, that I am outsourcing my digital marketing strategy to my marketing [00:03:00] agency. It’s just looked at as being tactical in nature.
Right. So, I think that I think there’s a little bit of a sum, I don’t want to call them semantics, but a little bit of how the words are described that gets to that, that type of response.
Conrad Saam: So, my, my, when I read this, and the reason that I agree with you, I see this all the time. I, I think this is a function of two things.
Number one, and we’ll get into the meat of the report, uh, in a moment. But this, I thought this was a good starting point for us to chat. Um, I think a lot of agencies do a thing, right? They do pay per click or they do websites, or they do blogs, or they do social, and you think that everyone needs the thing that you do, right?
And my bias is that without being able to do multiple things, you can’t be strategic because you all, you’re, you know, there are so many discussions about like, what’s the most important marketing channel? Well, it depends, right? And if you don’t have, have expertise across them. The other thing I think is very real, and, and then we’re going to get into this on the reporting side of, um, your report [00:04:00] on, on, when, when you guys talked a lot about analytics in this report.
Um, I think agencies have been lying to law firms for so long that, why would you outsource your strategy to someone, to an industry that’s been lying to you for so long? Right. Um, and I think law firms want to have ownership and control of the data because they don’t believe us. I think that’s a, I’ve experienced that, like kind of my entire career.
Um, all right, let me get into this. Can you, can you talk a little bit about the profile of those who took the survey? I know you tried to make this a little bit more consumer-focused, but, um, can you just talk about like who was this, where they call rail clients? You know, uh, I think one of the points in there was like, one out of three respondents had more than 250 employees.
So, so who was, who was looking at this?
Christopher Nelson: So, it was a survey that was responded to by 600 individuals. So, of those 600 individuals, it skewed basically two-thirds, one-third between, um, [00:05:00] agencies and law firms themselves. Okay. So, and then amongst those in our survey last year, we had, had we, it skewed a little bit larger in the firm size.
Okay. With this survey, uh, what we did, and we purposely did that, was to try to get it so that it skewed much smaller. Okay. Um, to really get to the consumer-oriented firms that are doing most of the marketing, okay, so I would, yeah, go ahead. 50 in terms of employee size. Okay. But you also had a substantial amount that was below that in the sense that, you know, between, I would say about 65% had less than 250 employees.
And really the sweet spot and what we were really trying to hit as a sweet spot was that between 20 and 249 to really give us a good representation of either larger small firms or mid-size firms. Okay? Okay. [00:06:00]
Conrad Saam: Um, let’s get into the meat of some of this. Uh, one of the pieces of data that I found interesting that I, I, I, I’d love to get either clarity on or just explore further.
One of the points here was 36% of law firms are still manually reporting tracking metrics with Excel spreadsheets.
Do you see this as a replacement of kind of a sophisticated reporting infrastructure? Like a Call Rail or do you see them getting data out of Call Rail and putting it into Excel and using Excel just as the analytical tool?
Christopher Nelson: I see it as a replacement. Okay. I see it as if firms are not yet getting to the point where they are utilizing the more sophisticated data tools.
Conrad Saam: Okay. I read it that way too. Um, having said that, like we certainly have some, even some of our, and we fight with them about this, but some of our larger clients, um, Excel gives you a, a great sense of control, right? And I can go into a Colorado, for example, and I can get, [00:07:00] um, source tracking, right? You, so, the automatic source tracking.
Why did this phone call ring? Or I can go into and listen to them. And actually, pull out information like, how did you hear about us? And we can start getting some more information and then that kind of manually populates an Excel sheet. So, I, we’re seeing both, but um, I think there’s a lot of that manual going on, right?
Christopher Nelson: Yeah. I mean, I think it tracks because there’s the other statistic that is about, I think it’s 42% of people are using reporting tools. Okay. So those, those seem to track each other in, in the sense of, it’s not to the point where most firms have adopted any type of reporting metrics.
Conrad Saam: Okay. Um, by the way, those of you listening, if you have any questions like I, I’m, we literally, I’ve got a list of questions I wanted to ask Christopher.
It does not mean you have to listen to me. Um, if you have any questions, please use a q and a forum. Um, or I think there’s a. Raise your hand if you want. I’m happy to bring [00:08:00] people into this conversation and so it’s not just us chat chatting. So, feel free to, interject and if you have any technical Call Rail questions, Christopher, I’m sure you’d love to answer those in real time.
Right?
Christopher Nelson: I would do my best.
Conrad Saam: Okay. The next thing that I was most surprised at when I read the survey, um, it said, uh, legal marketers identified email marketing as the number one underperforming channel, right? That seems amazing to me. Email marketing. W did you guys get any deeper insight into that?
Christopher Nelson: Unfortunately, we, we really didn’t. Um, okay. I thought that was very surprising also. Yeah. Uh, from one side, my experience, um, you know, after I moved in-house, I eventually moved over and handled our strategy and then our marketing for the home service for, uh, building products, wholesalers, what I was working for.
Right. And we had quite a lot of success with email marketing. That was definitely our most successful channel, right? [00:09:00] So that to be an issue, um, really did surprise me. And, um, the other part of things would be, you know, are there areas that were just missing as law firms in terms of understanding what channels are performing and what aren’t?
Conrad Saam: Right. You know, I look at into 20 I looked at, into 2022 with these goggles. Um, I feel like building a relevant, current, accurate, large email database in your CRM system needs to be a. Focus for law firms as we move toward privacy issues. Um, and the ability of because that email address is, it’s not just an email, right?
It’s an opportunity to match someone on LinkedIn and, and do, do targeting ads, on stuff like that. And so, as I look into 2023, I still look at, I continue to believe that growing your database and specifically with that email piece, [00:10:00] opt-in email is, is really, really important. Um, I, I, I just, I can’t get past that.
The, you know, I’m assuming that with the form fills, you guys are, are, are capturing email for, for almost everyone, right? When you, when, when you’re, we’re time form fills in.
Christopher Nelson: Yeah, definitely. And I, I don’t think I, if you are putting together a form, a Contact us form that you’re utilizing for your site, you should be utilizing an opportunity to capture that email.
Conrad Saam: Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Okay. Um, this was. Not fully surprising, but I’m going to ask you anyway. 65% of marketers don’t know what metrics to track and measure. Right. Um, what is your perspective, on the key metrics that they should be tracking? Right. Because here’s the thing, my experience has been, there’s, there’s not a city of data.
There are numbers everywhere, right? If you want to get into, I mean, everyone’s talking about data-driven marketing, so there’s tons of [00:11:00] data. Why are, why do you think marketers don’t know what to track? and, and the, the more useful question to you is what do you think they should be tracking?
Christopher Nelson: I think that you’ve got, you do, you almost are overwhelmed by the amount of data that’s available to you now. Totally. I mean, it, it’s just, there’s so much of it. It can be sliced and diced so many ways that you can really, it, it’s very difficult, I think, to know, okay, amongst those different data sets that are available to you, this one’s important.
This one’s important. But these five other ones over here, they’re meaningless to you. They’re not driving anything in terms of what you’re trying to do. Right. So, you know, just go into your second question. If you’re looking at it, what’s important, I think it behooves marketers who have historically been a little bit removed from the revenue side to tie whatever activities they are doing [00:12:00] to revenue product.
Yeah. You know, the various amounts of revenue that are coming in. So, you know, leads are all well and good. If you get a bunch of leads, that’s great, but how many of those leads are producing, and paying clients for whatever firm you’re working with? And so I think it behoves you to get all the way down into, all right, you’ve got your clients, this is how many clients have been produced by these marketing activities.
Yeah. Not only this is how many clients, but what is the revenue that has actually come from those clients? And then basically the revenue per client, which I think is very important also.
Conrad Saam: Yep. Um, well, I mean, one of the, like you, you said, leads are good. All, all well and good. I think that was a dismissive comment.
I hate when people talk about leads because most of, many of them are really bad. Right. Many of the leads are garbage. Um, let me open the door for you to pitch a little bit. I, I, I, I love. The use of CallRail [00:13:00] as a rudimentary CRM system, but you can tag in CallRail how that lead turned into a consultation or a client.
Correct?
Christopher Nelson: Yeah, so we have basically four products that we. Provide, we have call tracking, which is our basic product, the, the foundation of everything, which can track whatever types of visitors come to your website, if you’re utilizing it at that level of visitor level tracking. Yep. Then you’ve got form tracking which tracks not only, you know, with call tracking, you’re tracking your calls with form tracking, your, tracking your form, so you get the full contact list.
Right. And then as you move into the other, the other products that we’ve added, conversation intelligence really allows you to dig into the conversations that are occurring during those phone calls and utilize what you have in the sense of everything that’s in those conversations, to then tag place keywords on, understand [00:14:00] where, um, how that relates to whatever marketing campaign that you have going on at any particular time.
Yeah. And really drive back and understand where all your leads are, being able to attribute them to. What you’re doing, what you’re not doing, and how you could potentially take that to another level and really drive new campaigns that you’re doing.
Conrad Saam: So, I don’t want to turn this into a Colorado pitch, but there’s a reason we’re tight and long-term partners because you guys are doing stuff like this.
Um, the, so I’m going to turn this into a Colorado pitch. Um, because I want to get into that, uh, insight, right? That, that, that, um,
Christopher Nelson: I’m certainly not going to stop you.
Conrad Saam: No, no, no. But I, so here’s the thing, like for those of you listening, there are, there are different tools that you can use for this. This is just for me, the tool that we love the most and they’re doing it the right way.
And that’s why I’m happy to kind of profile what you guys are doing because it is important. One of the pieces of data, let me see if I can find it on my sheet here, um, is the, listen, 48% of firms [00:15:00] say call recordings, help them populate intake information. You just talked about kind of that listening. How does that work?
Is it automated? Are people going back and listening manually? You talked about keywords and tracking and tagging, like this is one of the things I think is so amazingly important, and I mean into the whys of that, but how does that, how does that actively work?
Christopher Nelson: So, the call was automatically recorded and automatically transcribed.
Okay. And then based off what you have selected as the user, you can sit there and say, okay, now I want you to look through those transcriptions for these keywords. So, if you’re a personal injury firm and you work through motorcycle accidents, you can easily put that within a tag and be able to see every one of your phone calls and every one of the times within those phone calls that the phrase motorcycle accident was mentioned in a call.
Yeah. Which really allows you to, to get there in a much quicker fashion.
Conrad Saam: Ok. Okay. But [00:16:00] and, and, and, and the, the U, so people are doing this with keywords are. I’m asking you a question I know the answer to. So instead of me being Socratic, let me share, share. We have clients who spend a lot of time listening in on calls, like actively listening in on calls to validate, like just even look at the quality of intake, right?
Like how are we responding to people? It’s a trap, it’s a training technique. It’s a, it’s a source attribution technique. Like there’s all, there’s so much value in this and I do believe that, and we’re doing an intake webinar coming up, but one of the ways that law firms really fumble their marketing is they, they literally fumble the ball.
Not literally, they figuratively fumble the ball on the one-yard line by screwing up intake after they spend all this money on marketing. And the easiest way to ascertain how that is working for you is to listen in on the calls. And again, it doesn’t have to be CallRail, but it is really, I. Um, I’m going to ask a question from Megan, uh, because it came in, uh, was this study, this was, we were talking about, um, marketers [00:17:00] not understanding what data points to look at.
Was this all marketers or just legal marketers? The data out of here. This was only legal marketers, correct? Correct. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, Megan, I saw your answer come in and then I went off on a tangent, so I, I apologize. Um, but thank you for breaking the ice on questions. If we were in person, I would like to throw you a coffee cup or something because it’s so hard to get that first question asked, especially on Zoom.
It’s really, hard. Um, the, the other part of this, and you and I, Christopher haven’t talked about this, but I, I think this is so amazingly important, especially when you’re listening in, when you’re talking about attribution and call recording and listening in on calls. We’ve really started working with clients on what we’re calling a double source attribution model, which basically says with a CallRail, for example, with pay per click, for example, it’s very linear.
- Do the keyword search for motorcycle accident lawyer, I click on the ad for motorcycle accident lawyer. I go to the website, I call the dynamic call number from CallRail, and so they [00:18:00] know that that came from that motorcycle pay per click campaign. And then I hire, and then, and then we, we engage, or we don’t engage.
Right? And so that’s a very easy linear practice. The other part of this that is not linear is the stuff that’s not trackable like that. Or I was referred to you, I’m calling you because I know I’ve seen your billboard or because my son’s little league coach recommended you, or, um, because you’re really, you sponsored the 5k, you’re, you’re available in the community, or I like you on TikTok, right?
I still do a query for the firm name or your name as the lawyer. And I still, I might even still click on that ad, right? But I’m calling you because of the different reason. Right? And so that second source field that we’ve been using has been a freeform source field. and the, the purpose of that is to understand why they really called you.
And sometimes it’s Google or the internet, right? Which is not very helpful, in which case you use that kind of [00:19:00] primary attribution, like, okay, it was a pay per click add or as an last or is local, organic, whatever it might be. But those times when it is, it is not sourced, it is not generated by what’s happening on Google, for example.
That’s where you get that data about where your other marketing channels are performing, where your brand awareness campaigns are performing, right? And, and you can listen in on those calls. I just cannot let go of the notion that it’s so important to listen in on these calls and get really, good data about how the calls are, about what, what is generating your, your, you’re marketing for you.
So, sorry, long-winded pitch to use CallRail to listen in on the calls because it’s amazing, right? It’s amazing.
Christopher Nelson: I mean, in my previous, in my previous role with the building products wholesaler, I had our customer service team for about 12 months. Right. And to have the ability, we did not have that ability when I oversaw customer service, we could do, [00:20:00] it was very wonky in terms of what we were utilizing.
Uh, we utilized Mytel as, as the provider, and they, you could look at some things, but it was not easy at all. And to have that ability to listen in, to understand, okay, if we’re running a promo, you know, are they, are, is each customer service agent that we’re working with doing that? You know, same kind of thing.
If you have intake specialists, you know, you wanna be able to understand are they, you know, whatever script you have, are they following it? Are they working with them? How are they answering different kinds of questions that are coming up from the prospective clients? All that stuff. Having those call recordings is vital.
Conrad Saam: It’s vital, right? And it’s, and it’s so effective when you, when you do this, and I, and sorry, I’m, I’m kind of preaching here, but I believe that many law firms look at intake as being easy. And you might be right, you might be right, but a lot of you don’t put your best people on intake because you think it’s an easy [00:21:00] job.
And many of you, I will say most of you, don’t proactively manage your intake staff. And I think that is a big mess. Okay. Sorry, we, we kind of, I mean, I look at intake, you know, it just lasts thought. I look at intake as, you know, you’re walking into a hotel and you have the people at the front desk, that’s your intake team for the law firm.
And that’s the first impression that you are giving to whoever is the prospective client. A hundred percent. And if that first impression is not a good one, it doesn’t create any kind of trust, particularly if you are in a situation where you’ve got some type of real, deeply personal matter. Yeah, you’re not going to get them as a client.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I recommend to people go buy a pair of shoes at Nordstrom and then go listen in on a bunch of your CallRail calls and see which had a better experience. Right. And in many cases, it was buying a pair of shoes at Nordstrom. Um, I don’t really buy shoes at Nordstrom, but I can imagine what it, what that might be like.
Um, okay, [00:22:00] let me, let me get, uh, so we’ll, let’s move on from, from belabouring. The point about intake. Um, let me tell, let’s, let’s move into pay per click. This was, this was not surprising to me, although the extent of it was surprising to me. So, um, let me, let me give you this, uh, read out of the report.
Despite it being nearly a nearly universal tactic, law firm marketers are going sceptical of paper collective efficacy due to the continuously increasing costs yet. So, like that, I get totally, like, not, not surprised about that. But 76% of firms say they would spend more money on paid search if they had the budget, which I like.
Those two things are directly, like, if you think it’s too expensive, why? Why would you spend more if you had the budget? I don’t understand this. That w it seemed like a weird, very irrational, I didn’t go to business school 1 0 1 dichotomy. Right.
Christopher Nelson: Well, I mean, I think it’s partly [00:23:00] because Joe and John down the street are doing pay per click advertising and they feel like they’ve got to do it.
Conrad Saam: Yeah. Yeah. |I, you know, it, it is one of those games where the more people who do it, the more expensive it is for everyone. Right. Yeah.
Christopher Nelson: Wait, I think it’s interesting, I talk a little bit about this with our sales teams. Um, a lot of times, especially when you get outside of large metropolitan areas, you’re competing against firms where the attorneys, you’ve gone to school with them, right?
You know them personally. So, it’s not like this is faceless comp, you know, competition that you’re dealing with. You’re dealing with people that you’ll see during the year or that you’ll talk to during the year. And so there is a little bit of keeping up with the Joneses.
Conrad Saam: Yeah, I mean that’s the, I think the thing with pay per click is it is, you know, I remember when I, I remember, I’ve been [00:24:00] doing this for a long time. I remember explaining to lawyers how pay per click worked. Like, what is good? It was called Google Ads, not Google AdWords back then. Um, and now like everyone’s playing the game and what happens is it becomes increasingly expensive.
Um, and yet law firms feel like I, there was, there was certainly a tenant in the report where it was like, I feel like we can’t compete because we don’t have enough budget. Right? And, and if we had more budget, we would be do better at pay per click. Do you see it that way? I’m curious.
Christopher Nelson: I think there is, there’s a dynamic that’s going on where you have national firms that have entered smaller markets now. Yes. That is changing the way the competition is occurring. Okay. And, and so I think that that’s where the budgetary considerations become really large in the sense of, you know, you’ve got, you, you traditionally have had your personal injury practice, [00:25:00] it’s been very successful, and all of a sudden you have one of several national firms that pops in and they’re spending way more in terms of dollars on your PPP C ads than you can or have ever done.
Conrad Saam: And so, the key, like this is, I, I, it’s, I I think you’re 100% correct. Right? So, like, okay, these clicks are getting increasingly expensive because I’ve got Morgan and Morgan blowing a hundred thousand dollars in my little town. Right. And the key for pay per click and in, in those kinds of situations is you need to really lean on being the local person, right?
I am the local attorney, there’s value, this is where my office is. I’m not some big Walmart of law that’s going to, you know, treat you as, you know, take a ticket kind of thing. Like I am, I am the local attorney, and there’s value in that. Um, it does make it harder though, right? It really does make, make the paper click harder to, to play in.
And it also, I think it’s, it’s what’s driving [00:26:00] that perspective that like, I can’t compete because I don’t have enough budget. Right. Which I, I, I find unfortunate. Right. Again.
Christopher Nelson: Well, and, and yeah, go ahead. No, I mean, you don’t just have the large national guys. You’ve also got some of these, I would call them super regionals also that are in the area too, that are also spending, while they may not be at the same size as Morgan and Morgan, they’re spending countless amounts more than, you know, your typical personal injury firm is going to spend.
Conrad Saam: Right. I, I think I’m going to get pitchy on, in Colorado again here, so, excuse me. While I do that. Pay per click is one of those things that in many cases, it, it’s so direct response because you’re going to Google because you have a need for a thing and you click on the ad for the thing, and then you buy the thing.
Whether it’s a hairbrush, well hairbrush, um, whether it’s a hairbrush or a lawyer. And it is so very, very linear that, that the, the tracking on this becomes amazingly important. Right. And [00:27:00] this is where. A Call Rail becomes like, like, we will not run pay-per-click ads without using Call Rail, because otherwise you’re just blowing, you’re, I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re really lighting your money on fire.
Let me ask you a question, Michael Romano, you, I, I don’t think I’ve done a webinar, web webinar a webinar without Michael Romano joining for a long time and and asking a question. So let me ask, uh, let me ask a question from Romano. This is coming to you out of the greater Portland metropolitan area, are there still competitive deals defined on pay per click search call only ads?
I don’t know if you have the answer to that, Christopher. I think that’s a little bit out of my purview. It probably is more in your purview. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I, let me, let me give the background on this and, and Ramon and I have been talking for a long time. It, it used to be there was a time when call only PPC ads were uncommon.
they had been rolled [00:28:00] out and it was a really good way to make paper click work. Um, they were also great if your website was garbage. In fact, they were the only way we would run campaigns for you on paper click if your website was garbage. Um, my bias on paper per click, because everyone’s doing it now, it is increasingly difficult to find those diamonds in the rough that no one else is doing.
Um, I believe that to be the case. And so there’s probably opportunity out there, Michael, but it’s not like, like, and, and I’m, I’m not going to get this right, but when, when call only started out, you know, we were generating consultations, uh, compared to, um, your, your, uh, Typical Pay Cola campaign that were, that the cost per client was, you know, or cost per consultation was like 20% less, you know, 80% less than what you were paying.
That is kind of evened out. This is all one of those examples where there’s so many people spending so much money on marketing [00:29:00] where it all kind of levels out. My, my, my take here is that if you are running call only adds, you better be amazing at converting those calls into clients, right? You better be amazing at converting those calls into clients, which means, I mean, this is simplistic, but you answer the phone, right?
Like answer the phone. So don’t run those call only ads if you’re not there to answer the phone. It’s the same with local service ads, right? Don’t, don’t, don’t run those LSAs when you’re, when you’re shut down for the night because no one’s answering the phone because that’s going to kill you. Um, you also need to be amazingly good at your intake process, right?
So, you need to, as Christopher and I were talking about, That amazing first impression. And then I also think, um, you need to be good at and ha and ideally have data on how well you move people through the funnel. I call this funnel velocity, but, and which is really another fan, it’s an MBA way of saying responsiveness, but how [00:30:00] quickly can you turn someone from a interested party into a buyer?
Because the faster you turn someone into a buyer, the more likely the higher your overall conversion rate is. Think about looking at cars. Sorry, I’m going on a diatribe here, but think about looking at cars. Car salespeople are taught to not let you leave the lot, right? Because they want you to make that decision right now.
Hey, someone else is looking at this board Taurus in 15 minutes, right? Um, the more time you spend, the less like you are to buy that specific Ford Taurus. Um, and so you need to, you need to work on, on, on accelerating funnel velocity. And then finally, and this is just an unfortunate thing with paper click, in my opinion, um, because the economics are so tight.
You need to be a less picky firm. If you’re a really picky firm, you’re going to be turning away a lot of clients that other people that you’re going to spend money to acquire that consultation. But if you throw most of them out, your, your cost per client becomes really, high because you’re so picky. So, it tends to lend better towards those firms that are volume [00:31:00] focused.
All right. Surprisingly, Mr. Romano, Christopher has another question. Um, one more question. Can you spy here you go. Oh, beautiful. So, I did not, by the way to the rest of you, I did not set Romano up for this question. Um, but I appreciate the softball across the plate for Christopher. Can you speak to Call Rail and Smith AI integration and what data is available?
Christopher Nelson: I think that, you know, it goes back to what you were just saying in terms of you can’t run an LSA if you don’t have somebody to answer the. Don’t run it after hours. Yeah. You know, Smith AI allows you to have that type of service so that you can get those calls answered when you need them to be answered.
Um, we’ve been fortunate to have an integration with them and basically, you know, when, if you’re doing their virtual receptionist services, uh, you can get the information that they have coming in, um, and populate that into your CallRail dashboard so [00:32:00] that we can have you, you can really see the full spectrum of your calls.
Conrad Saam: Okay. And that, and that’s just kind of flip of the switch, right? Yes. Okay. Um, we are big Smith AI fans. Um, there’s some other, actually, I’m curious, do you have any in, in integrations with other third-party answering services or legal? We don’t, we don’t with answering services. Okay. Okay. Yeah, only Smith AI now.
Okay. Um, There. Make it easy for yourself. Smith doesn’t, Smith has a great product. They do a great job. Um, I do think one of the things, just as a side note, to just be aware of, and I think it’s because a lot of you think this is an easy job, it’s not an easy job doing intake for a law firm. Is it?
It’s hard to be good at it when you third party that it’s really hard because like I’ve, I’ve had, you know, oh, they don’t, they don’t pronounce my name correctly. Well, that’s right, because they only ever, that person [00:33:00] has only ever answered the, the, the phone for your law firm twice in their entire career.
Right. Um, they’re going to do a good, not great job. They will rarely do a job better than your front desk because your front desk knows you. They know all about you. They know who you are. They, they embody who you are. Hard to outsource that. Having said that, it is stupid to run a pay per click or call only campaign or local service ads if you’re not available to answer the phone.
Right. That’s just. That’s just torching money. But Mr. Romano, thank you for the question. And, uh, big fan of Smith and Colorado, those are two of our more common, commonly utilized partners.
Christopher Nelson: Okay. Intake specialists get more valuable over time. The more experience they have. Yes. The more experience they have, the more they’re able to get themselves into the situation, the more valuable they become over time.
It’s just, it’s a job that requires a significant ramp up time in terms of getting to where you [00:34:00] want them to be in your firm. And I would say intake specialist is a great place to overspend on salary. You get someone who’s awesome and most people like. No, no one grows up wanting to be an intake specialist for a law firm.
Conrad Saam: Right. So it takes the right, right type of person. Um, one of our favourite clients, I think, yes, Jason, you’re on the call. Um, he talks about finding his favourite intake specialists at, um, like an Applebee’s, like waiter waitress at an Applebee’s who’s amazing. They’re going to be amazing as an intake specialist.
But, um, it, it’s a great place for you to overspend on salary, um, because it is so vital. All right. And because there’s a lot of people who are not overspending. Yeah. Right. And talk about like, in a great way to, to differentiate and be amazing. Do it there, do it there with that first impression. Okay.
Moving entirely differently. This, I don’t, I don’t [00:35:00] believe this. I think this is a misperception among your audience. So, I’d be curious what, what you think firms say only 45% of new clients visit their website. That, that boggled my mind. Okay, good. Because I was boggled too. I’ve got a theory on this, but what I, I mean, do you agree, let me ask this, do you think that is an accurate data point or do you think that is a misperception among your survey takers?
Christopher Nelson: I think it is a misperception amongst the survey takers. Okay. I think there’s no doubt about it. Okay. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t use a lawyer without visiting their website first. Okay. I, I just, anecdotally I do not, your counterpoint would be like, hey, I, I found them on Google. They, they, I did my research by reading their reviews and I called them.
Conrad Saam: Right. There, I mean, Google could be a one-stop shop. It seems for an important purchase. A small visibility on this. Right. [00:36:00] I mean, I just think for a personal matter, you like to see the person who’s behind. Yeah, I agree. And the website gives you that opportunity. And I think people are going to the website even if the perception amongst law firms is that they are not.
Okay. I, I, I, I agree with that. I think this is also probably coloured by attribution, right? Website visit. Unless, unless you are using a genuinely sophisticated CRM system, you’re, you will not have insight into their website visits. Having said that, let me flip that over. If you do have a sophisticated CRM system, you mentioned HubSpot in your report a couple times, so I, I’ll, I’ll highlight HubSpot as well.
Um, when we get, because we use HubSpot when we get an inbound interest, whether it’s from pay per click or SEO or organic or whatever it might be, I know their website history on our site and I can go back and look at what they’ve been looking at. And that is [00:37:00] amazingly valuable for me, but it doesn’t show up.
It shows up in HubSpot on their, on their history, but it doesn’t necessarily show up on HubSpot in their source attribution. Right. And so, I, it, this is my pitch in the value, especially if you’re a larger firm doing volume of having a more sophisticated serum system that is actually going to track historical website visits.
Like I’ve got people who have called us after having visited our site 40 times over a three-year period, and I know every single page that they’ve ever looked at. Right. Um, that’s super, super helpful. All right. I’m not sure this is long. This is coming in on the question, so this is long. I’m not sure if it, I can’t find a question mark on here if it may just be a comment.
So I’m going to read this from Robert. None of this stuff is easy. Maybe why the tactics are likely to be outsourced. I’m wondering each of your thoughts on another possible reason why legal marketers think email marketing is the channel that that’s lacklustre [00:38:00] because it’s not being done well. Again, because it’s hard.
It takes a lot of time and effort and continued tweaking to do well. It’s not just a newsletter. Okay. So I, let me boil Robert’s, um, thoughts into a question. Um, why le why do, why do, why do legal marketers think email marketing is the channel that’s lacklustre? I mean, I would say, and one thing, and this is just my thoughts, is there may be expectations that it should be more successful than it actually is.
Christopher Nelson: Yeah. And so, if you’ve got an expectation that it should be more successful, then when it doesn’t perform to that expectation, your, your thoughts are more, Hey, it’s, it’s a lack less channel. It’s also from a per unit perspective, it’s cheap. It’s cheap to send an email, right, to create an email and a campaign and an email and automation around that.
Conrad Saam: That’s more difficult. But it’s not like you have these [00:39:00] massive unit costs, like pay per click, for example. Um, Robert, you, you, you left this with, you ended your comment with, it’s not just a newsletter. I do think that there are some firms that believe that like, Hey, I’m just going to send out my newsletter on the regular and, and, and, and that, and something will happen out of that, I, I don’t think that’s a bad option.
But I think email is a lot more, we, we kind of touched on this at the beginning. Email is a lot more than sending out a newsletter. Yes, you can have a nurture campaign, right? But you can also have like even one-on-one outreach via email, right? So, like individual stuff, continuing to stay in touch with people.
Like, I don’t want to say the birthday thing because it’s a little bit trite, but like as things become relevant to an, an individual sending that individual email, like it can work, right? And especially with like a referral source, keeping in touch with people via referral source. And then the final thing for me on email [00:40:00] marketing, and this is specifically not emailing marketing, but it enables the targeting is that email address can enable targeting.
It can enable, for example, I mentioned this before, a match on a LinkedIn, a match on a, on, on a bunch of Facebook profiles, right? And so, you can utilize that email address to put display ads in front of that person over time. And I think there’s a lot of value in that. And, you know, just going back to, if you look at the type of firm and what practice areas there, they’re in.
Christopher Nelson: Yeah. I think it could have some success. It has more success in certain practice areas than it might in others, be more important as a channel in certain practice areas than it might be in others. Totally. I, I totally agree with you in the sense that it, it is as a prior client kind of situation where you’re trying to generate those referral sources from prior clients Yeah.
To keep you top of mind with them. Yep. I think that’s an area that it lends itself to rarely Well, yep, [00:41:00] yep. With, I mean, if you’re a personal injury firm and you’re trying to get, you know, utilize email marketing, I don’t think that’s gonna be as successful. I think it’ll be very lacklustre. The other thing you might have an issue with is, um, even if you’re a B2B firm, where I think email marketing would be very successful and is very successful.
You would also have some attribution issues where, you know, is, is the email that you’re doing, how is that producing what you’re getting revenue wise? Right? I think that’s a salient point. Attribution on email is difficult because they’ve already given you your email, which means there’s some other market unless you’re purchasing lists, in which case there’s some other marketing channel that is definitionally contributing to that person.
Conrad Saam: So how do you handle the attribution on that? You know, email is the assist, it’s like retargeting, right? There’s, there’s a reason they’re already on your website. Retargeting has never generated a new client because definitionally it can’t, but [00:42:00] it can be that assist, an email can be that assist. Um, I would love to see firms use, you know what fu funny Giza talks about this quite a lot.
Uh, he’s a big believer in more email and more email marketing because it’s, it, it is a way, uh, to kind of. Extract value from an asset that you already have, but you must be building that asset. All right. Uh, next question. This was, this is important. We, we talked about intake a little bit. I should have brought this up while we were doing that.
This is off page 13 on your report. This, and I’m, I’m one, I mean, I want to ask the question and then we’ll, we’ll talk about the, the data point. On average, it takes nine hours for law firm to respond after a prospect reaches out. So, Christopher, was that self-reported or was that based on data? It was self-reported.
Christopher Nelson: Okay. So potentially based on data that the firm has. Okay. More likely not based on data, more likely gut, right? Yes. Okay. Got [00:43:00] an anecdote. Okay. All right. So, I have found that law firms are optimistic about how good they are at everything. Um, this is very lake Wogan. No one is, no one is, everyone is above average and.
Conrad Saam: Even there, you must have confidence to be a lawyer. Totally. But nine hours, like, I mean, and that’s on average, which means that there are a bunch of people who are super, super slow. That seems, I was surprised at how slow that was, especially if it’s self-reported. Uh, it, it does surprise me too. Okay. Um, you know, j just, and that, I think that’s an interesting one.
Christopher Nelson: You know, Mo most, not most, uh, yeah, probably most lawyers are introverted, so, you know, depending on if you are a solo or a small firm and maybe you don’t have an intake specialist who would be much more extroverted in how they handle things, you may not want phone calls. There’s been [00:44:00] plenty of times where I didn’t want phone calls when I was practicing.
Conrad Saam: Sure. Uh, and you know, the other thing is if you’re a solo or a small firm, you may be out practicing, you know, you’re in front of the court. You’ve got, you’re at motion hour that morning and you’ve got six motions that you’re handling. And so, you’re there for the, from nine to, you know, one o’clock in the afternoon, right?
Christopher Nelson: Somebody calls you at 9 0 5, even somebody who’s calling you at eight 30, you’re not taking that phone call. You’re preparing for the other motions that you’ve got. A hundred percent. So, I, I’m going to come back to the Smith AI thing on that point, if you’re not available, right? And you have a third-party service, my very strong bias, and we work with our clients and Smith to make this happen, um, their job is not to take a message and have you get back to that prospect.
Conrad Saam: Their job is to get that prospect on your calendar, right? And. That is a, that’s not a nine-hour response, that is an immediate response because you’ve [00:45:00] taken that person a step down the funnel. And you should be, if you’re working with Smith or any other third-party provider, you need to be working with them on that model.
And that means, this is where this, there, there’s a, there’s a, a, a back, a pushback on this, but that means that you’re going to have a third-party vendor assessing whether or not they’re going to take up someone’s time in your office on a calendar. And by the way, I get that some of those prospects are not going to turn into clients because you don’t want them.
But if you don’t do that, you’ll also miss the ones who are great prospects, right? And so I implore you to use that third party answering service, not as an answering service, but as a scheduling service. Wow. I sound like I’m writing copy for Smith ai, but, um, like it should be a scheduling service, not an answering service.
Christopher Nelson: I think it’s interesting. I mean, when I was practicing, we didn’t have nearly the tools that you’ve gotten out. Right. And all [00:46:00] the tools that are available, particularly for a solo or a small firm, can be utilized to really give you much better responsiveness then we would’ve had 15 years ago, five years ago.
Conrad Saam: This is what’s amazing, and it like, again, I’m sucking up to Call Rail right now, but the, the, the technology has that is available to the solo practitioner used to only be available to a large firm five years ago. Right. And so at this point in time, you can operate with the level of the efficiency and sophistication of a Nordstrom Right.
To, to take an example outside of legal. Or to take an example of, of the, of the big players in legal 10 years ago. And you can compete along that same level because there’s so much support and the technology are frankly, so easy to use. Um, I deeply believe this. Alright. Megan is back in the Q and A forum.
Megan, thank you for your question. Um, were most of these law firms in personal [00:47:00] injury? Do you have the data? Do you have the data on the verticals? Did you cut, I know it’s not in the report, but did you cut data by vertical? I don’t think so. Right. We did, we had, we have it by practice area. So, what I can tell you that most of the firms were not in personal injury.
Christopher Nelson: Okay. Okay. Um, there was a significant number who were, I mean, if you bear with me, I’ll, I’ll tell you exactly what they are. Bring it. Uh, there were a fair amount. I, I think family and estate planning was well represented. Okay. Uh, along with some others that I thought were a little bit unique in the sense, uh, the number one area of practice was labour and employment, which I thought was really interesting.
Conrad Saam: Yeah. Interesting. I wonder if that was on the, uh, employee side or the employer side. I think it was a combination of both. Yeah. Okay. So, the way we asked the question was, uh, what areas of practice do you cover? Yep. And so, there’s overlap [00:48:00] amongst a whole bunch of them. Sure. But personal injury wise, it was 22% injury.
Christopher Nelson: Okay. 23% practiced in criminal defence. Um, 27% did civil litigation. Okay. So, a pretty good cross section I’ve thought of, of different practice areas. Okay. You know, one of the things, um, I’ve covered on the podcast many times, uh, lunch hour. On the lunch hour, legal marketing podcast, the clear legal trends report minute, um, and one of the dings we’ve had on the Cleo Legal Trends report has been that they don’t cut it by vertical and they should, um, because, you know, some of these things are very different by vertical.
Conrad Saam: Right. Some of this data, it should look very different based on the vertical that you’re in. Right. The practice area that you’re doing. Okay. Um, it’s a, it’s an interesting comment that you’ve got because we went to Cleon and the, the group of lawyers who are at Cleon, uh, is very different from maybe some other, you know, [00:49:00] and it certainly is not PI focused.
Right. Right. It’s interestingly, it’s amazingly not. Its PI is conspicuously low represented at Cleon. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Um, this was another surprise. This was a, this number was a lot higher than I, I., I would’ve been off by about 300% on this budgeting, 15% of revenue is spent on advertising.
That seems, that is surprisingly high to me. Surprisingly high. Um, was that, was that a surprise to you? It was. Um, it’s interesting because I’ve seen statistics at other reports that were anywhere from five to 20, but with, with the higher, more consumer-oriented firms, skewing more towards that 15 to 20% range.
Christopher Nelson: Yeah. So, I did think 15 was on the high end, I was expecting more about [00:50:00] 10 to 12. I, it may be, um, self-select out because you’re interviewing people who are into legal marketing. Right. Which means they’re in, like, if you’re not interested in legal marketing, you’re probably not going to engage in a survey on legal marketing.
Right. And so that, that very well could be, you’re getting the people who are spending versus others. Okay. I have two more questions for you. Or two more points to bring up. I’m just going to read this out. Cause I think this is, it’s a salient point out of the, um, report, the channel specific approach to reporting silo silos data, and doesn’t allow for insights into how different channels affect each other, such as the impact of display ads on form conversions, for example, um, multi-touch, multi-channel attribution modelling, super difficult in all sorts of medium, um, including legal.
Conrad Saam: Right? And so I think within Call Rail, like you’re, you guys use a last touch attribution model, right? Correct. By [00:51:00] definition. And so, I think it does become important to continue that double source, right? So, like, okay, this is, this is my last touch attribution, but I also want to. from the user themselves or the prospect themselves, why they think they’re calling us.
And then ideally, if you have a sophisticated CRM system, you can look at the multiple touches. Like, did we hit them seven times with email? And they finally did a name search and clicked on a paper per click ad, right? Um, I think that was fascinating. And finally, this, this was interesting. I, I suspect this is the first time we’ve seen this, this comes out of page 18.
Uh, when you’re talking about marketing channels, by and large firms are decreasing their spend on seo, right? That, that I found surprising. Now, it wasn’t, it wasn’t a huge volume, right? Like it wasn’t a massive drop, but it didn’t, it, I think it was just like less than 50% were increasing their spend on seo.
Is that another way to spin that? Yeah. [00:52:00] Yeah. And I thought that was interesting too because, you know, if, if one of the things you’re looking at is budgetary concerns, uh, SEO to me would be something that would return some investment more so than maybe some of the other channels that you’re spending a whole lot more money in.
Right. Um, un unless you can’t, you feel like you can’t compete in seo. Right. And SEO’s been one of those things that always been talked about as being like a long game. And I also feel like in many markets, it’s just completely shut out to a new entrant. Right. So, like, if you want to start a PI firm in Chicago and you’re a solo, probably wouldn’t put SEO in the top a hundred things that you’re working on.
Right. Um, but it was interesting to see kind of a decrease what, was there anything else in here that surprised you that you want to call out? You know, I, I just think it’s interesting the sense that particularly when you have other industry. [00:53:00] Um, experience. Yeah. Just in the sense of how there’s a portion of the law firm industry, you know, if there’s a portion of law firms who see marketing and see it as something where they, they’re utilizing the various tools, that would just be normal.
Christopher Nelson: Yeah. In other industries. Yeah. But that there is such a, uh, group of firms who are not using that and that there is an opportunity for them to use things and really to grow their businesses based off using those types of tools that are really just normal other places. Yeah. I, so I wanted to, it’s, it’s a great question because you’ve got insight.
Conrad Saam: Well, outside of legal, I only live in legal. Right. How do you, and, and I think legal is often, and I think it’s incorrectly and, and you can, I’d love your perspective on this too. It’s, it’s, I think it is incorrectly viewed as, Not kind of technology [00:54:00] laggards and not that sophisticated when it comes to marketing.
I don’t necessarily agree with that. What, what are the, how, how is legal unique and how is it common with the other stuff that you’ve been, like, you work in home services, what are the major differences and what are the thing, one major commonalities between the two? Like where would you put them in terms of being aggressive and, and sophisticated as marketers for example?
Christopher Nelson: I think, you know, home services wise, you’re understanding that marketing is part of your business. Okay. So, you know that you have marketing, it is something that you need. You just do it. That’s how you, that’s. A fundamental part of the business. Okay. Right. So, I think that’s step one. Step two is just in terms of the tools.
You know, having a C R m, having your marketing attribution and reporting tools, understanding what analytics to look at, all of those falls into play. And they’re just normal and are normal across a broad spectrum of industries if [00:55:00] you’re trying to reach new customers or new clients. Yep. And that’s where I think that, uh, you, you have a little bit different mindset.
Yep. It’s also a great growth opportunity though. A hundred percent. You know. Okay. And, and you know, I think the other thing is the, the big difference, like when I was at building products wholesaler, uh, the lawyer is basically the product developer, right? They’re the person putting the product in place.
And as a lawyer, You’ve got to look at it and say, okay, what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? My strength is doing the product. Yep. My strength is not necessarily doing digital marketing tactics. Yep. Okay. My time is in doing the product, customers, clients come to me because I’m good at that product.
They don’t necessarily come to me because of my abilities in digital marketing tactics. Right. So, I need to look at and understand, okay, based off my [00:56:00] time and the resources that I’ve got, how can I look at all of these other tools that are available to me? Be it a marketing agency, be it, uh, software technology, be it different things like that.
How can I utilize that to really give myself, um, to, to almost like extrapolate what my abilities are as an individual or as a small firm? Right, right. Absolutely. Um, two more questions. One is from Brad. Before you close out, could you speak to quote, a movement away from Google, which drop low 50% of overall online advertising recently, so this was in my writeup.
Um, you, you guys talk about a, a, a, a movement, especially around away from pay per click, right? Like people want more budgets, but they’re looking elsewhere. I think that’s on the same page as kind of, uh, less spent on seo. So, it feels like people are law firm. It feels like law firms are mirroring [00:57:00] this study where they’re really looking for venues outside of Google.
Did, do you, did that come through in the data as well for you? Yeah. And, and I think that’s kind of a search for better return on your investment. Totally agree.
Conrad Saam: Yeah. I, I 100% agree. Like we, we talked a lot. So, Brad, my, my take on this, and by the way, that data, the 50%, uh, um, movement away from Google, like no longer the, the, the do, I mean it’s still dominant, but it is not eating up more than half the market.
Um, I believe that for 2022. My take honestly is everyone’s fishing in the Google Pond, right? And there’s still a ton of business to be had there. It’s just increasingly expensive to land those fish. And so there is this movement towards what else is out there. And so, I think what you’re seeing is there’s a consumer movement, um, where people are changing.
Like, I mean, you can use Facebook as an example. Kids aren’t on Facebook right now. Where are kids, right? They’re on [00:58:00] TikTok. So, everyone’s, you know, you know, people are talking about TikTok, people are talking about Instagram. Where are the other places? Mask it on, right? Where are the other places that people are spending their time that you can act that, that the other law firms have not gotten to yet to make the advertising so obnoxiously expensive.
Um, having being said that you cannot deny that if you’re clicking on a Google paper click ad, you’re probably, you have purchase intent, right? And so there’s value there. Um, I think it’s mirrored also, if I remember correctly, in Google’s ad revenue, which has declined. Yeah. And had declined for the first time, like in, in a decade.
Yeah. So that will be fascinating. And it’ll also be fascinating to see how like a chat G B T AI generated content. Like, I think there is a possibility that’s not even a possibility. I think people may start using a chat g p t like pro product to answer their question for them specifically. Right. And I’ve used this example, I’m not, I’m not, we, we live in this [00:59:00] world where, and I’ve been living in this one for way too long, where like you use Google to find the answer to something published elsewhere That should appeal to a lot of people.
What if you can use a bot to write an answer for yourself? Right. And so, in, so I I, the examples I’ve used was this like, I’m in Wisconsin, I’m getting a divorce. I have an autistic son. Can you help me write an outline to have a long conversation with my son about our impending divorce? Because he’s very upset, right?
Like you’re no longer landing on a law firm’s website to help you answer that question. You’re getting something directly for you. So, I I, I think that, sorry, I’m going kind of way off on a tangent. I think that’s, that’s certainly a possibility. All right. Let me ask, this is a less a very generic question, but I like it.
Based on your years of experience with marketing for various law firms, what have you found is the most effective channel to utilize for marketing, to get the most, the most [01:00:00] relevant leads? Christopher, your perspective on that and I’ll, and then I’ll, I’ll answer as well. I mean, I think that’s, we use a lot of different digital channels.
Christopher Nelson: Yeah. On our side. Um, paid search is really our primary. Yeah. And, you know, it has been very successful for us. So, I, I would tend to lead to that. And then, you know, I, I think the other thing, and really, I think that as a lawyer, it behooves you to within, and it kind of goes back to what you were saying in terms of the national firms and how do you compete with the national firm, where you compete with the national firm by becoming hyper-local.
Yep. It behoves you to utilize marketing on that hyper-local level. And I think you can move the needle with that maybe more so than you might be able to. Like when you were saying, you know, what do you do if you’re a solo who just started out and is trying to be a PI in [01:01:00] Chicago? Yeah. You know, how, how do you go about that?
What can you do SEO wise and stuff like that? Yep. Well, you go about it hyper-local. When you win in cases, that’s what, that’s how you are able to generate your clients. So that’s that. I was, so I’m going to answer using this similar example I think to the, this question, and I’m going to really, I’m going to repeat it cause it’s important.
Conrad Saam: What have you found to be the most effective channel to utilize for marketing to get the most relevant leads? Bluntly, it’s still Google. It’s intent. People have an intent to purchase something and there is a ton of volume there, but that is answering the most relevant leads, the most effective channel.
If I can throw cost effective in there, it’s the opposite of what I just said. The most effective channel you can do is to be a great lawyer and turn your clients into your referral source, right? That is the most effective thing that you can do. And that takes time. It takes doing a good job, right?
Not, [01:02:00] not actually. It takes doing a great job, not just a good job. You need to turn your clients into raving fans. And so, you know, this has nothing to do with, it has a very small amount of impact on what we can do for a law firm, but it’s really having brand affinity by doing great work. And re and, and, and staying in touch with people right now is Zach.
I talked to law firms on occasion. Were like, we’re referral based. We’re amazing. We don’t need your stinking seo. And it’s like, great. Um, you still do, because you know that data point of 46% of people don’t look at their website. Like, I think that’s wrong. So, you still do need to realize that you’re getting vetted online.
But if you’re a firm that generates all of your business from referrals, because you’re amazing, like game on, game on, um, it’s going to be hard to grow and your market is constrained to people who know people who you’ve worked [01:03:00] with. So, your market’s tiny, but. It’s a great way to, it’s, it’s, it’s a great business to have and I would love to see referred business as a focus marketing channel for all our clients, right?
Because if you’re doing great work and you’re staying in touch with clients, you will get more referred business. Well, it’s interesting because I, I think that ties back actually to what we started with, uh, the strategy that they’re not outsourcing to their marketing agency, uh, and, and understanding brand identity as a lawyer, I think there is a self-confidence that is really, it blinds you to what you need to be doing in terms of developing that brand identity in your firm and in your practice.
Christopher Nelson: Yep. And it’s with that brand identity that you can then work outward for all the other tactics that you’ve got and an understanding of who you want to be as a firm. [01:04:00] Where you want to go as a firm, you know what you’re going to do as a firm. What is it that makes you, what, what do you enjoy practicing?
You know, what types of areas of law do you enjoy practicing? And then build it from there so that you can then get into that kind of client loyalty, client retention, client turning over into referrals, which really allows you to, to take advantage of some network effects. A hundred percent. The, the, the final nuance to this that I will pass on, because I’ve seen this happen in some, what I will call kind of tertiary markets.
Conrad Saam: When you get that referral business, you’re often getting referral business for stuff that you don’t do, right? Cause you’re a lawyer, right? It’s like, you know, everyone, everyone thinks, all doctors know all things about all medical, right? And they don’t. And it’s, and, and it happens to you. You guys know this.
Many of you will say, Hey, I keep getting all these useful referrals, cuz we don’t do that. And [01:05:00] you’re missing the point if you’re getting referrals because people like you as a lawyer, that is a sign that you’re amazing, right? And, and that you’ve, you’ve, you’ve kind of nailed that really difficult part of doing great work and, and, and turning your clients into your fans.
And so my answer is, stop complaining about that. Maybe you can monetize that. Maybe you can buy a bunch of goodwill with that. But even if nothing happens, other than, Hey, I’m really sorry, uh, we don’t do divorce, but I suggest you call Fran, right? Like, you’ve got the hardest part nailed. Don’t complain about it.
Um, and the, it was your own network of referral partners. Bingo. Or, and I’m seeing this, we’ve got, this is we, this great client in, uh, Ohio, you know, who you, I know you’re listening in on this. Um, they’ve added criminal. Because they kept getting all these criminal defence queries. They’re a personal injury firm.
They keep getting all these criminal defence referrals and they’re [01:06:00] like, ah, let’s build it out. It also works for that. Like, um, we, we’ve got a bunch of clients that look like this. It’s, you’re in a secondary or tertiary market and you’ve got 12 lawyers and you do six different practice areas because you’ve been around for 120 years, right?
And everyone knows you as the firm. Well, great, keep that up because you can monetize those, those referrals even better. So that personal injury case that you did seven years ago, that turns into a referral for a divorce, you can actually monetize that and turn that into a client. All right. Anything you wanna leave with?
Yeah, go. I mean, just touching on what you are saying in terms of, I, I do see a lot of overlap with personal injury and criminal defense cause of the style of what you’re doing and the people you’re, you’re working with, the clients that you’re working with. Um, I also see a lot of overlap with family and estate planning because more and more the changes in family dynamics.
Are leading to estate planning issues that need to be handled. And they’re, they’re one and the same. Yep. And we saw the other thing, we saw that, [01:07:00] uh, this is my, I can’t let my bleeding-heart politics come into this criminal defense and immigration. Unfortunately, two years ago, those, those two started to grow closer together.
Alright, we’ve gone over. Thank you for joining us, everyone. Um, we’re doing a webinar on intake on the 25th of January. Uh, you can find that on the mocking website. Um, thank you for joining us, Christopher. Thank you for joining me. Um, I would love to do more with Carl this year and, uh, we will keep, you guys are awesome.
You, you’ve been like the vendor that I’ve like, I, I hope we’re good enough to be the great vendor. I hope people feel about us the way we feel about you, put it that way. Absolutely. No, I very much appreciate the opportunity to be on here, Conrad, and appreciate the opportunity to just talk to, to everybody that you have that’s been on here.
Awesome. All right, everyone, have an outstanding week. Happy Wednesday, and we will see you somewhere else on the internet. Thanks so much. Thank you all.[01:08:00]
Location: Zoom
Date: January 11, 2023
Time: 10:00 am - 11:00 am PDT
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