Episode 506: 9 Law Firm Marketing Tactics for Business Building in 2021 by Kristopher Jones #506

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, one of the owners of EWR Digital. And my name is Matt Bertram, your SEO strategist for today. For today. He'll be a strategist today. Tomorrow, he'll be something else. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of this podcast. Matt and I, we are broadcasting live from Houston, Texas. And Matt and I, we are your results. Or at least I am. I mean, I'm more enterprise SEO, so you're reveling it out there. Or maybe, have we figured, have we pulled the trigger on SEO de-mystifiers? No, no, no. Yes, we have made the decision. Is no, that's not happening. All right, we've got a great article that we're covering today. Nine ways to improve your law firm marketing with digital. You know, digital marketing, obviously. And we have a review that I've got to read first. The review is titled, Great SEO Podcast. This podcast has helped me prepping for my SEO interview this winter. Yes, I got the job. And it has been my go-to search news source ever since. Love the hosts and the impressive knowledge they are sharing. Thank you, SAV18052001. Nice. Yeah. Glad you got the job. Hopefully, you're sharing the podcast with people. Maybe it's a team of SEOers. And now you're sharing it with that team of SEOers. That would be really cool. And we appreciate you taking the time, leaving a review. If you want to leave a review, I'm going to throw this out right now. Just go to EWRdigital.com forward slash review. Yeah. And the reality is we probably need to move that to the podcast, right? Because, I mean, really, the podcast needs to have its own everything. Yeah. I mean, it's big. I mean, 55,000 downloads a month, Chris. Like, it's time we take it seriously. It's time we do that pod fest. You know, like, we need to take this to the next level. I've also been doing a lot of podcasting. I, you know, I started a podcast

on behest of the BBB, the Better Business Bureau. So, I've been doing a podcast over there. And with COVID, it's a great way for accredited members to interact with each other and a new team to do some marketing. So, it's been fantastic. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. And so, you've started your own podcast. I'm planning on starting another one, too. So, I know you've, well, you've asked me, and I'm, you know, when you're doing, you know, four interviews a day, you learn a lot of things. So, I'm getting everything figured out and building the team to be able to support more. I mean, a lot of people are starting to come to us, Chris, to talk about, like, I call it maybe, like, awareness PR or personal branding. Really, there's kind of been this integration now. Like, you know, I talked about personal branding, how it's so important to build a business, you know, the second book that we launched. And then, really, with these guidelines, right, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust, there's been this real merger here of, you know, who is the online voice that's communicating this messaging, and can you trust them, and are they authority, and, you know, are they an expert in what they say? And so, there's been a merger there, and there's been a lot of, I guess, you know, people that are the heads of companies coming to ask, hey, we need more kind of PR-related stuff, right? And so, we've started to do a lot of those sorts of things, and starting a podcast or having a book out there is an excellent way to do that. So, we're helping out in some different ways. That's not the meaning of this podcast, by any means. It's just kind of where everything's going, in my opinion. And I think you're doing the same thing in other areas with your other personas. Yeah, absolutely. No, like, you know, rise of the personal brand. Amazon best-selling. Hey, I've only got a copy of that. You need to, I don't know if

they've got me. Well, I don't see you, since we're all virtual. I mean, I did see you yesterday, but that doesn't care. All right. Here we go. Let's jump into this article, Nine Ways to Improve Your Law Firm Marketing with Digital. This is by Christopher. Chris, the sound is kind of muffled. Is it? So, it's not great sound? I know you have great mic abilities. So, you know, we were getting complaints a couple years ago about the quality of our sound. So, I just want to be cognizant. How is that? Oh, that's fantastic. That's much better. It was probably using the sound from the camera, the mic from the camera that's actually behind a... I almost feel like you were underwater, and now I can hear you. Yeah. I came up for air, and to share knowledge. That's what I'm doing. Oh, I like that. All right. Patif to Christopher Jones. Let's dive right in. So, number one, again, this is Nine Ways to Improve Your Law Firm Marketing with Digital. Solidify your brand. Wow. I mean... We learned a lot about it. Move on. Yeah, I feel like we were just leaning into this. Your brand is how you want your law firm to be represented in the public. He talks about, hey, it's not just a logo, right? Although a logo can be important. You got a really wrong, super kind of inappropriate logo. I remember I had a conversation with a law firm once, and we were working on a logo for them, and they were struggling. And I said, look, like, often these logos are something that, you know, you've, you know, a Celtic symbol that just spoke to you in a certain way since you were 13 and grew up. Dude writes a dollar sign on the piece of paper. And I was like, that's not a good lawyer logo. You know, the different law firms that we've worked in the past, I actually know which law firm you're talking about. It's kind of by team related. No, no, it

wasn't that one. No, it was actually, we ended up like, we're like, here, just here's your money back. We're not going to do this because it wasn't the right fit. Oh, well, you know, when we talk about solidify your brand, one of the things that I think super important is it goes back to the EAT guidelines and how you're building those sort of things and how you're putting out content and where you speak and, and all these things need to actually tie together. There's something with schema markup. I believe it's called like same as that you need to tag things together. So Google knows that you're all the same entity and, and we'll start measuring you in that way. And then, you know, of course, if you can get a Wikipedia page and there, there's different things that you can do to build your brand beyond just the logo, having a high-end website that is reflection of the quality of service, as well as your office is super important in today's world. I mean, I think that there's a lot, I mean, I think he kind of, you know, covers the top of it. You do need to solidify and build your brand, but I think that there's a lot of. Uh, ways if you go deeper that you can do that. And, um, it's just so important as our digital presence and our, uh, like brick and mortar presence, I get guests start to get integrated. So, yeah. And I think it, you know, it really is about what makes your law firm stand out and that can be hard, right? So they studied the same law books. Um, and it's hard to talk about success for a legal, from a, for legal reasons. Like you can't, you can't do any guarantees or anything. Well, you can do, you can do cases, right? Cases, big cases that you've won. Um, you can publish papers on different things, just any, um, you've won awards, like different things that can separate you from the pack. Um,

because there are lawyers that, um, got an A, right. And there are lawyers that got a D, you know, same thing with surgeons. You've got to really, uh, have the people, right. Yeah. And, and you want to see that track record. So I think that that's probably one of the most important things you need to look for. And then someone who you're going to connect with, I think having videos on your website, super important. Um, telling your story to go, uh, Hey, I want to work with that person. I know, like, and trust that person. And so again, for building the brand, there's, there's a lot we could talk about a lot, uh, that you can do. So. All right. Number two, optimize pages for all practice areas, right? So most lawyers don't just practice in one teeny tiny niche and do nothing else. Uh, so you really want to have pages that are optimized for each of the services that you're, that you're focused on, um, at your law firm, your clients again, have different areas. You want to cover all of those, ensure that every page on your website includes valuable information about these services. So, cause I can't just be like, Oh, we do immigration and we do, I don't know, finance law or real estate law or whatever, uh, you want to make sure that you're providing some value. Well, uh, Chris, uh, I remember a couple of years ago, we were doing a law firm that, um, basically was like 50 something lawyers. I don't remember the number, but it was quite big and they had a lot of different practice areas. It was actually five different WordPress sites strung together on the backend on subdomains. It was, it was real kind of mess, uh, uh, but we were able to, to, to, to, to help kind of patchwork optimize that. And we were going after actually the bankruptcy term in a specific area and we got them to the first position in Google and they actually couldn't handle all

the phone calls. And so, so, um, they had to go back and kind of, uh, process the, the, the phone system and the scalability of, of what we were doing, but really, yeah, you really want a page for each, um, area that's optimized, uh, location, uh, and, um, practice area. And, and, you know, that information needs to be relevant, uh, to, to both of those things. Uh, it needs to be well optimized and then, you know, to stay away from like doorway pages and that sort of thing, you just need to add like lead captures to that. So, um, Google does like big authoritative websites. And if you have a lot of different lawyers, you can publish a lot of different content and rank in a lot of different areas. So, yeah, yeah. That writing is time well spent for sure. Uh, number three, regularly published content. Most people will do a lot of research before they settle on the, on the law firm. Uh, they think is best. According to a 2020 study, 86% of study respondents said they would use Google as their resource for researching a lawyer online. Um, interestingly, 9% said that they would use Yelp. Oh, well, I think, uh, reviews are super important. So I can, I can understand that. I think there's like just, uh, and lawyers.com. There's a few other ones out there that are like, uh, web directories. I actually, I think this article talks about that later, but, um, you know, looking for reviews is super important. Um, I think a lot of people read reviews, but I also think a lot of people are searching for particular answers to a certain topic. Right. And, and, and I know, you know, I have a particular need for a lawyer right now. And, um, you know, like there's a lot of different, um, things that you need to search for, uh, when you're looking for it and you can read different articles and different people's opinions of different kinds of things. I mean, I think, you

know, right now, actually something I'm realizing is cybersecurity, um, insurance is, is super important. Right. And people working from home and, um, there's, there's a lot of, I mean, people go to Google to research information. Right. And, and so, uh, I think it's, I think it's incredibly important that if you're a lawyer to publish your viewpoints on it, uh, I know you got to look at what the different bars, um, say, but I think that putting out authoritative comp content and explaining maybe even different processes of how different things work is, uh, helpful. Right. And so, uh, that's how people initially get introduced to it. Or even people might be searching on YouTube, the second largest search engine. Right. And so putting videos together and putting out content in all different ways is, uh, important for sure. Yeah. And one of the points that he makes is, uh, you want to answer the question. Like, so you come into a situation where you might need an attorney, you've just got a myriad questions. And if you can find that source, that's answering those questions for you, as you type them in Google, then that's going to be a trusted source. That's going to be somebody that you're probably going to, you're at least going to consider engaging. So, uh, answer those questions. So Chris, one of the quick things, I know that you already threw one data point out there, but I think it's close to 86%. I think it's like 85% of people are already through their, their sales discovery process by the time they pick up the phone and call you. So think about that. You know, by the time someone picks up the phone to call you, um, they've already kind of decided who they're going to go with. They're really just on that like flat stretch between maybe this company and that company. So if you haven't presented yourself well, if, if, if they haven't found you, you there's those, uh, there's tons of opportunity that you're missing. And most lawyers

generate a lot of their business through referrals. Um, but I think that the internet and social media are a form of a referral system. And so if you can put your information out there better, you can have greater reach and greater influence, uh, to, uh, people that might need your services. Yeah. And, and, you know, when you're talking about testimonials and reviews, if only there were some easy way to do that. Yeah. Um, testimonial.com is a service we just actually launched. We're in beta right now. Uh, we're working with some of our clients on it, but it's Chris, I mean, you use the service. Can you, uh, maybe explain it real quick? Yeah. Well, I, so first off, I think it's phenomenal when you, as a business owner start thinking about, and this is true, like for any business, when you start thinking about, about collecting reviews, okay. I can get text reviews. Sometimes you've got to figure out they actually mail them in, uh, and you've got to like transcribe, figure out like how to get them online, getting people to write. And it can be a problem to get people to just write reviews. It's one of the reasons we mentioned reviews and almost every one of our podcasts, because there's a lot of you who are listening to this, who have not yet written a review. And what is it? One out of nine people respond. Well, out of nine responses that are typically like net, what is it? Negative people or nine, your nine times are 90% more likely to get a negative review than a positive review. Right. So when you, because they're unhappy, but, but happy people just are happy and they go about their, their, their, yeah, their business, the, the, the, the irritation, the drive of the irritation is significantly higher than the drive of satisfaction or even being, uh, you know, taking care of beyond the satisfaction you are expecting. Like that's like, it doesn't drive reviews. So here you are, you're trying to get them.

You're obviously only trying to get the positive ones. And if you think now, you know, as a, as a podcast, we're saying, Hey, you should have video reviews. We've been saying that for years. Um, but you think, okay, I got to hire a videographer. If I'm going to have them come to someplace, am I going to send them to my clients? If he's going there, that's expensive because he's got to travel there and get one review. And then it's difficult, right? And it's only a simple way to get somebody to just maybe pick up their phone, talk into it and leave a review. Wouldn't that be phenomenal? That would be phenomenal. And that's what pro testimonial is like. That's, it's pretty phenomenal. They get an email, they click a button. They don't have to download an app. It, you know, obviously give permission to the camera. They speak into the camera and ask the simple questions, boom, you get a review. And actually there's software built into it to add like intro, add music for the duration, add a call to action. Like we would insist that you have a call to action on your reviews, uh, as a, as a company that, that wants to deliver results. Um, and pro testimonial does all of that. Like there was a need in the marketplace and, um, we are trying to fulfill that need to help people, um, get those reviews. I mean, that was, that was actually something that I was looking for, for us. And I was like, why is there not an easy solution out there to do this? And boom, we're just going to, we're going to just, we're going to make, we're going to roll it out to everybody, you know? Yeah, absolutely. All right. So that's pro testimonial. Uh, Hey, so number four of nine ways to improve your law firms, uh, marketing with digital is start using email marketing. I always liked the statistic. Yeah. You brought one up. I'm going to bring up another, uh, in 90 days,

80% of the people who have worked with you, right? So you actually have a working relationship with in 90 days, they have forgotten who you are. Uh, so one of the things that you should do, cause people who get in trouble or need some sort of legal service often need it again, or no people who need that same service. You want to make sure that you're touching base with them at least once a month, like bare minimum once a month with email marketing. You never know when you're going to need something, right? And like, you want to, you want to be top of mind that you're the person that are going to call when they need your service. Right. And, and, um, if they're interested in a particular industry or topic or something like that, you want to be those, one of those names that people come to. Right. And so, um, I think that building a relationship with anybody, like think, think about it, like, uh, like how you interact with people. If you talk to them daily, right. They're probably like your close friends or your family. And you have that kind of relationship. Then if you talk to people monthly, like you, they're pretty, you know, that's somebody you keep in touch with, but if you talk to somebody quarterly or more, you know, they're really like an acquaintance. Right. And, um, you, you want to do business again with people, you know, I can trust. So, uh, you know, somebody that you talk to once a month is going to be somebody that's maybe in your phone or, you know, someone that you're going to quickly be able to find that email and give them a call because, you know, if you need this particular service, um, or, you know, you're dealing with this particular issue, that's who, you know, you're going to call because that's who you're familiar with. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that familiarity, I love the phrase. Um, and you should always be working to foster good relationships

with your customers because, uh, this phrase, all things being equal, people like to do business with their friends, right. And all things being slightly unequal, maybe even in the negative favor, people still like doing business with friends. So that relationship is really important to kind of that customer retention and that email may not build that friend relationship, but it maintains that contact. So make sure that you're doing that. And, and he gives the suggestion and I'm not sure it just depends on the size of your law firm. Um, and maybe, maybe it's a bad strategy just because, so the strategy is segment your list. So people who got immigration services, get immigration emails, people who got a different service, like real estate attorney, uh, they get real estate emails. And I think there's some logic to that, but you also want to kind of remind them that you do the other services in these emails. Well, I think you need to have a target persona. Um, and, and I also actually think lawyers should really specialize. I think maybe this article speaking to bigger practices or maybe marketing people at bigger practices, uh, because of course you do, you don't want to blast out an email that's meant for, I don't know, whatever that's like, unless there's some kind of correlation. Right. Um, so I do think that, um, you know, even if you're doing an email segmentation and you're building an email campaign, you might have, um, some if then, uh, statements, right. Of like how people respond, or if you have clicks in there, you can get pretty fancy. You can do lead scoring, but really having kind of a general maintenance drip. And then based upon, um, your segmentation, you can add in other drips to focus on those other areas. Maybe if you practice in two areas, uh, and you know, it's really about, uh, categorizing or even tagging data as it comes in. So it's like, you know, good data in, good data out, bad data in, bad data out.

Right. And so, um, really thinking about, um, how you're going to build that relationship and how you're going to communicate with those customers. The thing that I would say about email marketing in general is, um, think about how you would talk to somebody, um, if they were right in front of you, right. What would be the sales cycle or what would be the steps? And then how do you create that, um, maybe in an email drip or even get multi-channel of what are the different touch points that you want to find to get somebody through that 85% sales cycle. And then boom, you know, what have, you know, what to do at the last 15% when they call you on the phone, right. And, and you, you just got to kind of work backwards or work from the beginning and build it out. Um, but, but that, that, that image of a iceberg, right. Where there's this top of the iceberg is sticking out of the water, which is relevant for, I think a lot of different topics is absolutely relevant for internet marketing. And, and, and relevant for internet marketing with lawyers in general. So. Absolutely. All right. Number five, nine ways to improve your law firm marketing. Number five is get on social media. He starts, Christopher starts with every business needs a good social media presence. Uh, I think we would agree with that. You don't need to create accounts for every social media platform. I think we would also agree with that. Um, one study referenced already referenced, uh, showed that Google Yelp and Facebook were the most popular platforms for researching and engaging with law firms. How many times have you been on Facebook? And somebody was like, Hey, I'm looking for X, Y, Z. And, uh, does anybody have any recommendations? And there's even like a recommend feature. And yeah, no, I think that that feature works phenomenally. I think that social media, um, paying a company to maybe do, you know, some generic posts is not what we're

talking about, uh, of doing social media marketing. You know, if you hire a community manager, who's engaging with people and interacting with people, it's called social media for a reason because it's social. Okay. And so if, and if you're interacting, like if I'm like, Hey, Chris, um, who would you recommend for X, Y, Z, right? Or I need a good legal lawyer for whatever. And you know, um, that's funny. Legal lawyer. I don't know. As opposed to the illegal lawyers. Yeah, exactly. You know, I can tell you actually with COVID, I got a, uh, haircut, um, at my hairstylist house. Okay. And I was going to post that on social media. And he literally was like, do not post that. Like I could like lose my license or something. Um, you know, um, I never thought that haircuts were going to be like, um, you know, against law. It's like a speech. It's, it's, it's kind of hilarious that we're, we're doing this. Segment for lawyers. Uh, so I, please don't get me in trouble. More importantly, don't get the guy who did my hair in trouble. Like I can't, I can't, but, but I think that, um, social media is just a different people are people and people are going to communicate. Right. And so, um, whatever platform you're on, have it be something natural and be an extension of yourself. Right. So he talks about, don't be on too many platforms, whatever platform you're currently on, engage with people on that platform, be involved in that community. It doesn't help to just do a post or set up a profile on something that you're not part of the community. Right. And so figure out what's natural for you, but stay active, stay involved, just like you would with your, your friends, like, and engage with them. And, and I think that that's why Facebook and like Instagram and depending on the industry works so well. So it just depends, um, what, what, what you're trying to do and what, like, if you're in

real estate law, um, you're going to be, uh, in, in one area, engaging with one type of people. Like, it's kind of like fish where the fish are, right. Or fish. Um, and, and, and something that that's, that's natural for you. So I think really social media is hard to outsource. Um, uh, I think it ties into building your brand, but if there is somebody at your company or someone that's associated with your business that really understands it and they can be an active community manager and they can pull things together and they can bring news together and they can, and, and they can, um, take content and repurpose it. I think that that's really one of the keys is creating original content and then repurposing that content, um, is one of the most effective ways to use social media where people want to see behind the scenes. People want to see what's going on. People want to see who you are as a person behind the business, because again, people want to do business with their friends, like you mentioned. And so you have to communicate that in a professional way, but, but be genuine and, um, generic posts. Uh, you know, there's, there's gosh, we're throwing all these data points out there, but, um, just taking a picture with your camera versus like a professional stock photography gets, um, I think three times more engagement, um, now how you define engagement, like we could go into more details, but, um, it's, it's super important. So. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that goes back to that friend connection, right? You don't have that connection with, uh, that stock photo you do with that selfie image significantly more. All right. Number six, utilize PPC ads. Many digital marketing strategies will help you bring in more organic traffic, but you can do more than that with paid ads, you can expand your audience and reach even more people than you would otherwise. Well, PPC ads can be great for bringing new traffic. They're also a great choice

for any type of digital marketing budget. Um, I'm not sure I would agree with that, especially if you're outsourcing thoughts. Well, so I mean, PPC in general, um, used to be quite powerful, um, when the cost per click was lower. So in the law industry in particular, the cost per click is extremely high and you have to have really tight attribution and you need to be tracking everything properly. And you need to have, um, like something like call rail or something like that set up where you know, um, where the calls are coming from, what are the calls valuable and, and, and there needs to be a really tight loop, uh, with who's ever managing, uh, the AdWords to make sure that's correct. We've done some, you know, really interesting things with PPC. We're using it to, to, um, you know, drive up, uh, our, uh, click rate with, uh, SEO on for targeted keywords. Um, we've done, uh, some things with display ads. So you can actually run smart display ads in a way that mimics remarketing in some, um, restricted, uh, areas. Um, I know, uh, uh, some of the law, uh, verticals, uh, Google said you can't do some remarketing. So really you, you, you turn it into some low cost branding. Um, there's a lot of ways, uh, I think remarketing, um, and finding ways, uh, to build that brand are probably one of the most effective ways, uh, to use PPC because, you know, if you're paying $145 or $75 per click, that's not a conversion. That's just somebody coming to your website. And then the data points say 94% of people with mostly e-commerce sites, but 84 or 94% of people come to your website, leave and never come back again. So you're spending quite a lot of money. You need to work on CRO or conversion rate optimization on your website. If you're going to get into PPC, you need to really run it to a landing page. There's really a lot, um, when you're going to be

doing paid ads that you need to consider. Um, and that market is so saturated right now because, you know, like in maybe the PI industry, for example, they just throw money at it because you're making so much money on an ROI, um, from a deal. Um, and, and I think that in some of these industries where people are overusing PPC, um, they could be utilizing other areas that are, um, uh, not as competitive and, and, and, and have a lot more efficacy, uh, than just PPC. It's not, not a silver bullet anymore. Now, when everything was just a couple cents, um, you know, you could just throw money at it and convert, but you're talking about, you know, even a couple thousand dollar budget, it doesn't go very far and, and it depends on what type of customer. Like if you're, you know, if you're doing traffic tickets or immigration or something like that, it might not be, uh, as effective, right? It's, it's what your cost per customer is. And then you've got to basically run the math to see if it works. And then you need to make sure that you have a highly converted, uh, website or landing page, uh, do remarketing where you can, or, um, you know, do some kind of lead capture where you're capturing email addresses because, you know, trying to find somebody, again, man, we're throwing all this data out there. I won't even go to the data, but think about someone that's ready to buy immediately when they find your website. Like how, you know, how thin, uh, of, uh, of, uh, uh, bandwidth are you looking for a lot of times people maybe are going to buy in like a 90 day window. So you want to kind of get them involved, get them familiar with your brand. And then when they're ready to pull the trigger, do it. But to find somebody that, you know, I think that where, where PPC ads work the best is, um, you know, people that are, that need

somebody right now. So there are certain industries that it's like a three-day window that like, you got to catch them. They're needing some emergency plumbing. Yeah. Well, emergency plumbing or DWI. You know, so, so something like that, where you need somebody right now. Um, and then the other area of people that click on ads are coupon hunters, right? They want to deal. And, and if you're a lawyer, I'm not sure that, um, you want people that, um, are, are wanting to deal. You want, um, really good, well-researched clients that find you and want to work with you. And that's where I think, you know, SEO, um, has a much greater, um, value to them. Uh, but to get someone introduced to your brand, to start them in the funnel, uh, PPC is a great way to go. If you have, uh, that whole marketing system built built in on the backend. So. Yep. All right. Number seven, we mentioned this earlier, get into legal directories. Uh, they're huge digital marketing asset. Not just the fact that people visit those directories and make decisions off of those directories, but the SEO value in those directories is, uh, is very important. Um, being listed in directories is important because there's, they're a reputable source for information for potential clients. And I pulled up a list of some of the, uh, lawyer directories. You've got Avvo, FindLaw, SuperLawyers, Justia, and then Nololawyers.com, hg.org. Actually, I know one of the founders of hg.org. He's a, he's here in Houston. Uh, so you want to be, you want to have a lease at a minimum, you want to have a listing there and potentially you want to be spending some money there to kind of improve your position on those, uh, on those sites. Yeah. And when we do marketing for, for, for, for our law clients are really, there's a lot of these kind of web 2.0s that have popped up in all these different industries. Um, we evaluate the site in itself in the city and look at

the traffic. We do the same thing with like Yelp and a trust pilot and all, all, all the other web 2.0s that are out there. You, you want to look and evaluate, are they driving traffic? Are they visible in your area? If you're searching for the key terms and they keep popping up, um, you really need to consider it. Now, um, I can also tell you they are driving that traffic through mostly SEO, right? And then they're selling the leads off that to multiple people. But guess what? If you don't have the budget to spend on SEO, um, you can kind of piggyback on them and spend less. I mean, we do analysis for clients looking at straight PPC ads, um, versus, um, the positioning on some of these web 2.0s for different terms and, and what they're charging. And sometimes it makes sense. And so really, um, providing that kind of, uh, holistic outlook on marketing and looking at all different channels and figuring out what's going to produce the best ROI. Um, I think these directories can come incredibly important. I know that there was a recent Google algorithm change and there was a number of them that really popped up that are starting to take visibility. Um, and so I think that you, there are free listings where you can, um, what is it called? Like claim your listing, right? Which is super important. Um, but then in certain instances, depending on your area, your industry, et cetera, et cetera. Um, there are some of these web 2.0s that you should consider putting some marketing dollars towards. So, yeah, absolutely. Number eight is become mobile friendly. Um, I feel like this is 2020, uh, coming into 2021. I mean, we're already almost over the first month in 2021. Uh, this really goes without saying, you know, I, there's still, I can tell you there's so many websites still. Um, and we're talking every three to five years, you've got to upgrade your website. Um, I, I was just talking to somebody on

the phone today that had a lawyer actually that had an HTML website. Um, I mean, solid brand, solid experience. Um, and not to say that there was anything wrong, uh, with the website, but it was like, what it was the lack of potential that you could do. Right. So there was nothing necessarily wrong, but like, there was just so much more, um, she could do. And, and really, you know, some of these older websites, like everybody's on their phone. Now remember when mobile traffic was 20, 30% of traffic and then it was like 50, 50, and then now it's like 80, 70, like it's, I mean, even higher potentially in certain areas. And so like mobile first, right. You need to be designing your website for mobile first. Um, you need to be thinking about, uh, like low time on mobile and desktop is different. Okay. Also the rankings in Google is different. Okay. And so really, um, you need to see where your traffic's coming from in your analytics and make sure that you're targeting that. But I mean, yeah, I think it goes without saying you need to be mobile friendly, but I'd be surprised to tell you, uh, or I'm surprised to tell you based on what I'm seeing, how many sites are not mobile friendly. So, I mean, there's 30%, maybe, maybe 20%. I don't know, somewhere in that range of sites that I still run across that are not mobile friendly. And in today's world, that's actually quite a big number, right? And so if you're one of those people, I would encourage you to look at updating a website, especially with COVID. Um, you know, you know, people are on, on screens more than they are, uh, any other place. They're not driving around anymore. Uh, uh, I mean, I think social media, people are, uh, still communicating and giving, uh, recommendations and references, but guess what? What's the first, uh, experience that somebody has, what are, where are they going to go? They're going to go to your

website. And so that needs to represent your brand, um, and, and, and how you want to communicate. So videos, uh, mobile friendly, uh, well-built design site is critical. So. Absolutely. Uh, and then finally, this is the ninth way to improve your law firm marketing show social proof. And we actually talked about this earlier. The best way to do this is really with reviews. I mean, there's a couple of ways. So one, um, which wasn't mentioned in this article and, uh, that, that can be very important is like having badges or social proof, uh, badges on your website. So, and they can be an Avvo badge or they can be, you know, lawyer of the year badge. We've got one client who has just a ton of badges and, and he, and we display them proudly because they're all represent some value and quality that he provides to his clients. Uh, and then the other is reviews. And we talked about that pro testimonial. Um, that's a great way to get those video reviews. So, uh, so yeah, I mean, I, I think we've kind of throughout this whole podcast talked, talked about like social proof and building the brand and kind of tying it all together. I would say, just go back to what Google's looking for. What the algorithm is looking for is based upon what, um, what people are looking for. That's how Google is building their algorithm, right? And so, uh, the quality rater guidelines, um, talk about eat expertise, authoritativeness and trust. So figure out how to do those things online and then do them. And then boom, like you're going to see more success. Google is going to show you the love. People are going to find you. People are going to understand more about your brand. People are going to hire you. So, yeah. Yeah. So interesting. Some more, I like this data. So recent research reveals that a whopping 98% of respondents, uh, say reviews matter to them when researching law firms. Uh, 90% said they look at

Google first. And then 69% said they would use Yelp, Facebook, and 13 Avvo. So Avvo, uh, at least in this survey, uh, the, the larger of the lawyer, um, aggregating site. I would tell you, if I'm looking for a lawyer, I'm going to look and read all reviews, right? Every single one. Every single review. Like I want to, and, and, and that's the same thing about your brand online and like social proof is like, I'm trying to understand as much as I can before making a decision. Right. And I think that a lot of people are potentially that way when making a tough decision, um, especially if they don't have any experience in a certain area. So they're going to consume all information. And if you provide more of that information out there, they're going to feel more comfortable with you and you can, uh, position yourself better, uh, in the marketplace and, and the, the accessibility of, of information for them to make, um, a good decision because I can't tell you, um, how many people we were talking about the BBB podcast, how many great people I'm meeting that are just in obscurity that I would have never interacted with. And I would never be able to share them, uh, to other accredited members without, um, interviewing them. Right. And so like, that's one of the main things I'm consistently seeing is we, we gotta, you gotta, you gotta pull out and share your brand with everybody. So people know what you're about and who you are, um, so they can find you and do business with you. So, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, put Tiff to Christopher Jones, uh, for writing this article. Uh, one of the things that's really important and was important in this article is reviews. Uh, we would also say that those reviews are important to us. So please go leave that review at EWR digital.com forward slash review. Uh, and hopefully you can make that five stars. We appreciate you. Um, anything else to wrap up, Matt? No,

just, uh, thank you for listening. Uh, we appreciate you. Uh, you made us one of the most popular podcasts, uh, on iTunes, internet marketing, SEO. Um, you know, we're starting to, uh, get some visibility in like small business podcasts. Um, a lot of, uh, people in the community, um, uh, and on other, uh, large podcasts, we've been doing some collaborations. So we just, you know, we just thank you for the support. Um, you know, Chris, uh, you've been doing, uh, podcasting before it was popular. So, um, what a visionary you are. So, uh, thank you so much for everything that you do and thank you all for listening. Uh, we'll see you next time. My name is Matt Bertram. Chris Burris. Bye-bye for now.