Law Firm Marketing “Gap Of Disappointment” – Is It Real?!
How To Hire From Overseas
Andy Stickel: What are you trying to do with virtual assistants?
Bobby Buchanan: I am launching a new brand for my firm in the next month or so. It’s much more specific as far as what I’m doing. It’s giving me the opportunity to relook at my social media presence. I really want to expand that presence and make sure that I’m consistently posting on social media, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, and wherever I might get a good return on my time.
How To Get Help With Social Media Posting And More
Given how busy I am, I don’t have the time to execute on all the ideas that I have and what I have in mind. So I’m looking for someone who has the time to do all of the tedious tasks it takes.
AS: Okay. That’s what I do with my stuff. I touched on it before where my philosophy is that I get paid to think and other people get paid to do. You get rid of all the busy work because there are always people that can do the busy work for you. You can train them to do the busy work.
I get all of my virtual assistants from Upwork. Have you ever used that site?
BB: Yeah, I have. I definitely have. And l’m also looking at onlinejobs.ph, the Philippines-focused site.
AS: I’ve never used that one before. I just use Upwork, just because it’s an all-in-one platform. I know the platform.
BB: Yeah. Upwork, definitely familiar with it.
AS: A couple of things. First of all, I’m not sure what experience you’ve had with Vas (Virtual Assistants), but I’ve got some VAs that I couldn’t run my business without. They’re that important. The way that you hire is the most important part.
How To Hire Assistants You Can Rely On
Whenever people work with people overseas and they get poor results, it’s for one of two reasons. It’s either you can’t communicate properly with them or it’s because you didn’t give them good instructions.
The first thing you need to do is you have to make sure you can communicate with them. What I always do is this: during the interview process, I always ask them questions that they can’t Google. Like what are their hobbies, where did they grow up, tell me about your family, different things like that.
That will assess their communication skills because if you can’t have a conversation with them, then it’s going to be impossible to actually be able to give them good instructions. That’s the first thing.
Here’s the next thing I do when I hire somebody. After all, it’s cheap, just $3 an hour, or $5 an hour. So I hire five people for the same job and I test them. I’ll give them some task that requires research, critical thinking, and communication. Whatever it is. I give all five of them the same task, pay them all to do it, and keep the ones that do a good job.
I’ll say “Okay, I need you to create a document with the names, email addresses, and phone numbers of 25 estate planning attorneys in New Jersey.” That’s all I’ll give them. I want to see what they come back to me with.
Training Virtual Assistants
Obviously, once I actually hire them, then I give them much better instructions. Usually, what I do is I do videos for everything. I’ll show them exactly what the task is and I use Screencast-O-Matic.
I’ll record myself doing the process. I’ll explain everything, give them all the links, give them access to that. I don’t have a problem because I know I can communicate with them and I give them really good instructions because I’m actually showing them what to do. When you do that, it’s really good.
How To Outsource Writing
Now, with social media, there are some things that you probably don’t want to outsource, like writing. What I do is I create a video, and then I send it off to my team and then I’m finished with it.
My team then creates the YouTube thumbnail and the YouTube description. They turn it into a blog post and an email. They also add it to my email sequence and to social media.
The one thing that I don’t do overseas is writing. I have a writer. We have lots of writers but we hire American writers because again, that requires thinking but it’s not as much thinking as creating the content. What we typically do is go to rev.com, get the blog or the video transcribed. It’s like a dollar a minute.
Then you send that to a writer and you say, “Look, just clean this up. Make it so that it actually reads well, but don’t change it.” Because you don’t talk the way that you write. Get rid of all the umms and the uhhs and stuff like that. I just have them clean it up.
It’s still your words, they’re just making it legible basically. You have a writer for that. And they also write the YouTube description and the email. Those are a little less important but you still want to do that.
That’s all you do and you just give them really good instructions for every piece. It runs automatically. That’s the nice part.
BB: Alright. That helps a lot because one of my major concerns or questions was, “How do I tell whether or not these people are actually going to be able to do a good job?” Hiring three or five of them right off the bat and giving them a task and seeing how they do seems like a pretty simple solution to that.
AS: Yeah. It’s really easy. Just make sure to ask them questions they can’t Google. I’m telling you, some of the VAs that I’ve had in the Philippines are really good. It doesn’t matter where they are. If they move to the US and started charging American rates, they’d still have a job.
How to Attract Builders and Contractors as Law Firm Clients
The Question:
My clients are contractors and builders. What’s the best strategy to get contractors and builders as clients? Does marketing even work for them, or is it just who you know?
Think like a Contractor or Builder
If you’re trying to get homebuilders or contractors to retain you, then you have to think like a contractor or a homebuilder.
Think about what it is that they want and what problems they face every day. How can you help them solve those small problems? Because here’s the theory, and I’ve proven it many times that it’s true:
Help Them Solve Their Problems
If you can help people solve small problems, then they’ll eventually hire you to solve their big problems. As you know, they will need a lawyer for their big problems.
So you need to think about this: What are the problems that contractors typically run into? And what are the problems that homebuilders typically run into? Just start creating content and answering those types of questions.
Find Facebook Groups of Contractors and Homebuilders
And then you can go into Facebook. I guarantee you that if you go into Facebook you’ll find groups of contractors and homebuilders. And you’ll be able to start providing content to them and answering questions. You can start providing value, start educating, and start talking about the solutions to the most common problems that they have.
Create an E-book
You can also create an ebook that basically answers questions about one of the most common problems that they have.
I’m trying to think about what a problem might be that a contractor or a homebuilder would have. Maybe it’s something to do with making sure that you get some sort of contract. Maybe it’s making sure that you get paid on time or get paid at all, or perhaps it’s dealing with delinquent payments.
Let’s say it’s about delinquent payments, to create an ebook about “Four Ways Contractors Can Get Paid On Time Every Time.” And then you run that as a Facebook ad.
Don’t Advertise Yourself
Don’t advertise yourself. Just run an ad for the ebook, and for the solution. So run an ad saying, Hey contractors, do you want to read a guide written by an attorney that can teach you four ways that you can get paid on time every time for every job that you do for the rest of your career? If so, download this ebook.
Get Them Into Your World
And when you do that, then you’re getting them into your world. That’s what I do most of the time. Most of the people that hear about me came into my world because I created a cheat sheet for lawyers: Three secrets to getting more law firm clients from social media.
So I don’t advertise myself; I don’t advertise my services; I don’t advertise anything. All I advertise is the solution.
What I Do
I say, “Hey, do you want to learn how to get more clients from social media or from Facebook?” If you want to learn what I do then give me your email address and I’ll email you a copy of this cheat sheet.
From there, I slowly start introducing value. Every person that’s in my Facebook group gets an email from me every single day. And the thing about my emails is that I try to provide as much value as possible.
I get emails over and over again about how people love my content. It’s because I’m providing value. It’s because I’m hearing the questions that lawyers have and I’m creating content to answer those questions.
I see the problems that lawyers have, from a marketing standpoint anyway. Then I create content that helps them solve those problems or get closer to solving those problems. And that’s the strategy. It works for every business including for a lawyer who’s targeting home contractors and builders
Why I Reject Most Law Firm Marketing Clients
The Question:
Do you or your team do all of our social (Facebook, YouTube, etc.) placements and uploads if an attorney sends you guys the video content?
The Answer:
About Our Done-For-You Service
So you’re asking if we have a “done for you” service where if you send us the video, we basically take care of everything else. Yes, we do have a service like that, but we are very, very picky about who we take on as clients.
Why We Are So Picky
The reason for that is that a lot of times clients commit to doing this. It’s a lot of work for us up front to build the Facebook group, and build the YouTube channels and all that type of stuff.
And a lot of times, we find that lawyers don’t necessarily follow through and it ends up us having to babysit them. And I’m not really in the business of babysitting. I’m not in the business of emailing lawyers over and over again saying, “Hey give me that video. Hey, give me that video. Hey, give me that video.”
What You Can Do If You’re Interested
So, if you’re interested in doing something like that, I would say book a call with me so we can talk about what you want to do. And to do that, go to call.andrewstickel.com and there’s a survey that you can fill out to book an actual phone call with me.
Because of the problems we’ve had, we’re very, very, very picky about who we take on as those clients. We started taking on everyone that asked us to do that and we’re realizing that it’s not working out as well as we had hoped it would.
That’s because a lot of the lawyers that we’ve worked with just aren’t getting us the videos. And then there’s this awkward, “Well, it’s not working.” And we have to tell them, “Well, you’re not doing the work.”
Social Media Marketing for Law Firms in Rural Areas
Social Media Marketing for Law Firms in Rural Areas
Here’s another question I just got: “How does your system work for firms in more rural areas? I’m spending a small fortune on AdWords and we’d love to quit writing them checks every month.”
The Benefits Of Needing To Reach Fewer People
Actually, small, rural areas work better because you have fewer people to reach. If you have a thousand people and you’re trying to make yourself the authority on a particular subject, it doesn’t cost nearly as much money to reach a thousand people over and over again as it would to reach millions.
Marketing In Rural Areas Is Easier And Cheaper
If you’re in New York City and you’re trying to reach a city of 3.4 million, it will cost a lot more money to do that. So rural areas are actually a lot easier and it would be a lot cheaper because there are fewer people. I don’t know what your practice area is. But I think that being in a small area would be a lot easier.
There are fewer people so you need to spend less on ads. It’s also easy to get people into the group if you’re doing a Facebook group. It’s good.
Optimize Your Law Firm’s YouTube Videos to Get More Views!
Tools For Optimizing Your Law Firm’s YouTube Videos
