Clienting: Digital Legal Marketing

Gyi Tsakalakis and Kelly Street have the pleasure of speaking with Patrick Palace about how his firm, Palace Law, uses data to have better client development and marketing. 

What are they doing? 

• Created a custom PNC (Potential New Client) sheet to identify good potential clients. They partnered with Suffolk Law School and David Calaruso to figure out who their ideal client and cases are
• Using PatBot to give clients access to their case potential
• How you can increase access to justice (and get more clients) by offering information and breaking down barriers
• What watching your data can do- hint: increase the bottom line
• Building out a team of non-lawyers to help the business grow
• Marketing and business development must be a priority, in addition to practicing law

Try Patrick's wine! Sunken Cellars

SEO: We know it stands for Search Engine Optimization, but what does it mean and how do you do it successfully? This episode has a little bit for legal SEO beginners, intermediates and beyond.

• What is SEO?
• Do you need to know how to code for SEO?
• Why does link-building matter/what are links?
• Local SEO vs. Traditional SEO
  • How to do local SEO w/multiple offices
• Should you buy links?
• How many keywords should I use on my pages?
• Why do you need ALT tags on images?
• SEO Goals
• Should you hire someone to help with SEO?
• How much does SEO cost?

References:

• How To Use HTML
• How much does SEO cost? - see slides on post
• Do you need to hire an SEO?

Gyi & Kelly talk with Jordan Couch of Palace Law about how values inform their marketing and client development. 

Jordan L. Couch is an attorney and Cultural Ambassador at Palace Law where his practice focuses on plaintiff's side workers’ compensation and personal injury litigation. Outside of his practice Jordan is heavily involved in state, local, and national bar associations, advocating for a better, more client-centric future to the legal profession. Find him on social media @jordanlcouch or email [email protected].

This episode covers: 

- How to integrate core values in work life so they become part of your firm's client interactions. 

- How to talk to clients about your values.

- Using your company values on social media. Palace Law's Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for examples.

- Thinking creatively to provide benefits to your clients, like Palace Law's case calculator.

- Value of the month to ingrain each one in daily work life.

- Encouraging and recognizing when a firm employee displays the firm values.

- Transparency and teamwork to benefit the entire team AND clients.

- Advertising as your authentic self, which gives potential clients the opportunity to see who you are and connect with you. 

Gyi & Kelly were joined by Marshall Lichty to discuss how his role at a text messaging startup can work for lawyers and how he has learned to market law firms through trial and error.

We covered:

• expectation setting
• developing guidelines
• cautionary tales for lawyer texting
• onboarding for communication
• how law firms need to focus more on sales and marketing

To learn more about Marshall and Lawyerist, go to http://go.lawyerist.com/clienting14. Connect with Marshall on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Marshall is the Editor in Chief at Lawyerist.com, the Chief Growth Officer and General Counsel at GroundSource.co, and a former owner, lawyer, and COO of a boutique business law firm in Minneapolis.

He helps Lawyerist build its tribe of small-firm and solo lawyers building sustainable law practices focused on client-centric services, future-oriented technology, profit-oriented business models, and access to justice.

He focuses on growing clients, revenue, and systems for GroundSource, helping deliver its mobile-messaging platform to brands looking for intimate, two-way discussions with their communities, clients, and stakeholders.

On this episode of Clienting, hosts Gyi Tsakalakis and Kelly Street were joined by attorney Jason Beahm. 

We discussed how Jason is carving out a niche within his practice based on his own personal passion for music festivals. Jason co-hosts The Festival Lawyer podcast, practices criminal defense, personal injury, and DUI law in California. In addition to podcasting and content marketing tips, Jason shared his views on getting positive online reviews.

Jason's bio:

Out on bail. Out of jail. Music is the holy grail. 

On episode 12 of Clienting, Gyi Tsakalakis and Kelly Street were joined by Alex Barthet, a Miami Construction Lawyer with a growing practice that focuses on marketing via content and referrals to get clients. Alex shares his 9 tips for legal marketing based on 10 years of marketing mistakes his firm made before they got things right. 

Here are Alex's 9 tips:

1. Claim your online profiles

Claim and complete profiles on Google, Yelp, and Avvo. (All of these platforms have the potential to be highly visible when people search your firm.) Don’t forget the pictures.

 2. Get online reviews

Work hard to get online reviews on all of these platforms from friends, clients, and colleagues. Having reviews will immediately separate you from 98% of your competition who probably have no reviews. Think about it, when you Google a service you need, which of the businesses that pop up are you going to use: the one with no reviews, or the one with good reviews?  Google "Miami construction lawyer" and see how we stack up. 

3. Do not move on before completing steps one and two

Only when you finish the above, work on the rest.

4. Start blogging and create resource sites

Either on your site or on a separate site, start blogging to your potential clients. Make sure your site is mobile-first.  You don’t need anything complicated—simple is better.  You need to blog at least once a week to even be in the game. If you are not going to be consistent, don’t waste your time. We blog weekly at www.TheLienZone.com and www.ContractorConflicts.com. 

Not interested in blogging, then maybe a resource site is your thing. We created two resource sites, www.MiamiConstructionForum.com, and www.ConstructionLawyersAlliance.org.  These are hubs for other marketing and networking we do.  They are not as good as the blogs, but they help support our overall marketing strategy.

5. Use video and keep it short

You can get fancy by shooting videos that you then transcribe for blog posts (we use www.rev.com). You can also use the audio for podcasts (https://www.thelienzone.com/podcast/). That’s three uses for the same content—not bad.

We shoot videos with a camera, mic, lighting, and background setup that cost, in total, about $800 from Amazon. Your face and the content sells, not the fancy graphics in post-production that cost a fortune.  And keep it short.  Our videos range from 3 to 7 minutes. And they are very actionable – they ask and answer a very specific question.  Can you say long-tail keywords?

6. Focus on solving the client’s problems

No one cares about you, so don’t talk about you.  All they care about is how to solve their problem, so talk about that.  We keep track of the questions clients ask and answer them weekly on our videos.  How easy – we don’t even come up with the questions we answer!

7. Use pay-per-click (PPC) carefully

PPC is okay and we have used it. If you do use it, keep it hyper-focused on your area of law in your county. Use lots of negative keywords to exclude results you don’t want and avoid wasted clicks. For example, we don’t do anything with "accidents" or "injuries", so we blocked those words. 

8. Claim your social profiles

Claim all the available social profiles for you and your business even if you won’t use them right away. We use LinkedIn primarily (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbarthet/), then Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/thelienzone/) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/thelienzone).

We don’t do much on Facebook or other platforms. Only use networks you are going to check daily. Linking these networks to my phone has made them easier to keep track of.

Actively post on each network (we post two to three times a day) and engage folks online by calling them out by their profile names. We use a service called Buffer (https://bufferapp.com/) to make posting to multiple networks easier: We queue up about two or three weeks of posts and it drips them out on each network three times a day.

9. Be very careful with paid profiles

In my opinion, paid profiles are a waste. Claim what they have that is free, but divert what you’d spend on paid profiles to PPC on Google.

On this episode of Clienting, Gyi Tsakalakis and Kelly Street talk with Julie Tolek about how you can create a memorable and unique brand for your law firm. 

We talked about: 

• Using different cards for different clients, based on your practice area or the type of client.
• Examples of good branding: Think Pink Law, Bye-Bye DWI
• Upwork or 99 Designs for logo and branding work on a budget
  • Make sure you discuss expectations and have clear guidelines for any designer.
• How to think of and do branding? (the total experience of having a relationship with you):
  • Crafting your logo and colors
  • Identify yourself/your firm/your practice areas/etc
  • Creating a tagline
  • Feedback from people outside your firm
  • What qualities do you want to exude
• Based branding on:
  • Passion
  • Personality 
  • Persuasion

https://www.amazon.com/Talk-Like-TED-Public-Speaking-Secrets/dp/1250041120

Connect with Julie: https://twitter.com/legallyblondbos, https://www.instagram.com/ketolawyer.thinkpinklaw/, https://www.thinkpinklaw.com/

On this episode of Clienting, Gyi and Kelly are joined by Nicole Abboud, a new-age content marketing expert, and owner of Abboud Media. She hosts her own great podcast as well, Leaders Love Company, where you can learn more about leading a company and creating a great work life. 

We talked about:

• How videos are not advertisements. The new way to think about a video is in the form of problem-solving. Video is no longer about you, it's about the client. 
• Tips: be in a place where you feel comfortable and won't be interrupted, share 1-2 tips, have a plan for what you'll say, share a story or statistics, ask people to share your video, create compelling content that is shareable
• What to use for videos: tripod, have a plan, schedule the videos, use your smartphone, make sure you consider lighting (try to be near a window for natural light or buy a selfie light)
• Where to put videos: Go where your audience is, which has become everywhere! Also, Youtube, the 2nd largest search engine. Consider the place you prefer to be, which one do you like: Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook?

Mentions:

• Jim Hacking - immigration attorney, uses video and photos for great client testimonials. 
• Mitch Jackson- streaming.lawyer, a lawyer using social media and video to its' fullest potential and is seeing the results in the form of clients.
• Bryan Wilson- the Texas Law Hawk, created viral videos to get more clients and brand himself. He's not afraid of mocking himself or law in order to break barriers between lawyer/clients.
• BombBomb email video to send videos as emails and make more of a connection.

Find Nicole on Instagram: nic_abboud or [email protected]

For this episode of Clienting, Gyi and Kelly talk about how you can reach a new set of potential clients by expanding your network and building new opportunities. The conversation is broken down into new lawyer marketing and tips for more established practices. 

They discuss how you can use LinkedIn and their Slideshares, creating Youtube videos where you discuss legal changes, and building out your network with professional groups.

For specifics, the conversation includes: creating a 90-day plan to focus on, account-based marketing tips, how to utilize a co-working space, and making sure you follow-up with leads by organizing them into a CRM (Customer Relationship Management System).  

In this episode, Gyi and Kelly talk with Jared Correia of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting about Using Technology to Build Your Client Journey. We had a great time and got into some really great discussions on how to improve your intake process and use social media in a more effective and time efficient way. 

We discussed: 

• What is the Client Journey (or Quest)? 
• Optimizing your intake process and make sure to create multiple contact opportunities with potential and current clients.
• Stay in touch with your clients, follow up every 6 weeks, even after the case is closed. 
• Develop and use templates or follow-up strategy. Write it down and perfect it before you set up automation in your CRM or practice management software. 
• An email drip campaign can be very effective in maintaining a connection to potential clients. 
• Automate your social media posts using Hootsuite, Raven tools, Tweet deck or others.
• Look into Zapier plugins that can connect your CRM or practice management software with your website intake forms or chatbots.