attorney marketing

Chase Musser: The next question we have is from Dev. He asks, “Any advice on targeting employment law clients who have been maybe unfairly dismissed from their jobs?” He’s currently in the UK.

Andy Stickel: Yeah. What’s kind of cool about that is that I’ve always found employment law as really easy to generate leads for because most people that got fired are usually upset about it. If I had an employment law firm, what I would do is create a free guide of some sort that is called like, “Top 4 Ways That Employers Illegally Fire Employees and How Much Money You May Be Owed.” That’s really not that great of a title but something along those lines, something where if they were fired, they’re going to look at it and think, “Oh, wait just a second, maybe I was fired illegally and I might be owed money?” This gets people’s interest and sparks their curiosity. Then what you do is you put it on a landing page and you run Facebook ads that are basically saying, “If you were fired, then there’s a good chance that it was done illegally. Now, I’ve created a free guide that shows you four ways that employers routinely illegally fire employees and how we’ve been able to help get employees compensated when they’re fired illegally. If you want to get a free copy of this guide, click the link included with this video. Then on the next page, enter your name and your email address and we’ll email you a copy. What’s cool about that is now you’ve got their name and their email address. And you can run that as a Facebook ad pretty wide. I’ve actually never advertised in the UK so I’m not entirely sure what the targeting options are. I would imagine that they’re probably okay. They’re not as good as the US. But they’re probably okay. But honestly, you could probably run that pretty wide. And what I would do is make sure that you have a really good pattern interrupt. So the first line of the copy should be something like, “Anyone recently fired from their job needs to see this.” On my videos, I always have the red, “Hey, lawyers.” You can’t say, “Have you recently been fired?” because Facebook won’t allow that. But you can say something like, “Employers fire employees illegally all the time…” or something like that, something that’s going to get their interest because it calls them out. And then what you’re going to do is you’re just going to follow up with them on a regular basis providing value on the biggest problems that people have. That’s how I would do it. It’s pretty simple. If you go to lawyermasterclass.com, you can see a pretty detailed instruction on how to actually run that. It’s about an hour-long video. It shows you how to run that entire process. And then the other side to that also is that after they download the free guide after they give you their email address, I would push them into a Facebook group and make it an employee rights Facebook group – UK employee rights or London employee rights or whatever city you’re located in – and then you just create content and put it in there also. It’s the same strategy I use. That’s what I would do.

Chase Musser: Next up, we’ve got Stuart Sandweiss. He has a question. Hey, Stewart.

Andy Stickel: Hey, Stuart. What’s up?

Chase Musser: Andy, Stuart asks; “In this internet age, is there any advantage to getting a local vanity number?”

Andy Stickel: Maybe. It’s good if you’re going to be running TV ads and stuff like that. The reason that you have a local vanity number, truly, is so that somebody remembers your phone number. 1-800-ILOVEBRANDNEWCARPETS is better than 1-800-2784196. If you’re running TV commercials, if you’re doing billboards, if you’re doing something like that, then a vanity number is probably necessary.

However, I would also say that if you’re running billboards or TV commercials, you should probably have a different phone number on each one so you can actually figure out where the phone calls are coming from. Because if you can’t track it, then you can’t measure it. If you can’t measure it, then you don’t know anything about it, and that’s one of the biggest problems with TV and billboards and radio and all that type of stuff. So it’s give or take. Are they going to remember the phone number and call you? Or are you not going to be able to figure out where the phone calls are coming from? That’s why I like Facebook. Because they don’t necessarily have to remember the phone number.

There’s a lot of different options. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn. Social media. And then email also. Basically, you can have different phone numbers for different things. If you actually do a good remarketing campaign and a good remarketing strategy, then if they forgot your phone number, then it’s okay because they’re going to see you again in five minutes. I mean, that’s the whole thing. I don’t even put my phone number out there. Most people probably don’t even know my website address because I’ve got so many different ones.

By the way, we just launched andrewstickel.com three hours ago. You guys should check it out and let me know what you think. Chase actually worked pretty hard on that. But that’s the thing. Pretty much anyone that’s on this, if you needed to get in touch with me and you didn’t know my email address, you can pretty much just go onto Facebook or go onto YouTube and wait a couple of minutes and you’re going to see me. That’s the whole thing. If you’re going to use the mediums that I talked about, then maybe. But it’s also a catch-22 because if you have that number, then you’re not going to be able to track it, especially at multiple places. If you’re running one TV ad on one channel or one billboard or something like that, then maybe that would work. But on the internet, it’s probably not as necessary.

Chase Musser: Topic requested – “Referrals from other attorneys and CPAs in the bankruptcy areas.”

Andy Stickel: When I am trying to get other people, I look at it as a valuable thing. If I can provide value to them, that’s great. But, they have to be able to provide value back to me as well. This is an easy thing to see, so the evaluation only takes a few minutes, then we are ready to go.

One of the things that I always make sure to do when I get a referral from anybody is I always send them a physical thank you. For us, a client is worth a decent amount of money. Most law firms’ clients are worth a decent amount of money. So every referral could potentially be worth a few thousand dollars. If you’re an injury law firm, it could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or it could be worth millions of dollars. Who knows? People put a higher value on a physical item. (So one of the life hacks that I have when I want) It’s almost like reinforcing the behavior. What I do is always send a physical item as a thank you. For example, we had somebody that referred a client to us about a year ago and I know that they are really into fine whiskey. They are really big whiskey drinkers. So, I went somewhere and I found this whiskey lovers’ sampler pack or something like that and I sent that to them. That one, it cost me $250. But the client that they referred was a client that pays several thousand dollars a month. Since then, they have actually sent me more referrals, and I continue to send them physical thank-you items. That is part of the business. It is kind of like training them. If they refer business to Attorney A, that attorney is only going to give them an email that says, “Hey, thanks for the client.” But if they refer to you as a business, then they’re going to get some sort of actual physical thing that they are going to like. Another thing is to be sure to refer to out-business as much as you can. Obviously, if they’re talking about a CPA or a financial planner or something like that and you’re a bankruptcy attorney, then you’re not competing with one another. So, you can kind of form partnerships with people. And really, it’s tough because it’s like: do you have one go-to guy that has a lot of business that you guys can refer a lot of business to? Or are you trying to get referrals from a lot of different people? You have to make a choice. Because if there’s one guy who just has a ton of work and is willing to give you a lot of referrals if you can form a partnership with them and actually do co-promoting and stuff like that and you even do a Facebook group and you co-promote everything where you guys are going to work together to grow both of your businesses, that’s probably the best way to do it. Instead of going to one too many and trying to get a bunch of people to refer to your business, find somebody that’s already successful that works just as hard as you do and form partnerships with them, do co-webinars, do stuff like that. When this whole COVID-19 thing happened, I teamed up with a lot of different people that we’re targeting lawyers – because, obviously, I do marketing and I target lawyers – but we weren’t competitors. For example, we did one with Answering Legal and we had a thousand people on that webinar. And what was cool about that is that they’re targeting lawyers and we’re targeting lawyers but we’re not competing with one another. They do answering phones and I do marketing. So based on that, we both benefitted and we both got a bunch of clients out of that. If you do stuff like that, that’s another way to enhance that relationship and then you’ll start getting more referrals. But if you’re just trying to go one too many and you’re trying to get a bunch of different people, then make sure that you make it work. It’s like everything else. It’s like, “What’s in it for me?” If you can make it more valuable to them, then they’ll give you referrals.

Hey everybody. Andy Stickel here. I am taking a look at this flier here, which, I believe, is actually mailed through the post office to potential clients trying to get them to attend a free seminar where you are teaching about living trust and long-term care and all that type of stuff.

Overall, I think that the content in here is actually really good. There are a couple of things that I would probably do just to make this pop a little bit more and probably have a little bit more of an impact. And I think a big part of what’s going to actually increase the effectiveness of this flier. I’m not saying this flier is ineffective. It might be effective., but one thing you can do, especially if you are mailing it to people, the one thing that you have to do is actually create some sort of curiosity. Because whenever you mail something, the biggest obstacle is always getting people to actually open the thing that you’re sending out, and the way you do that is by inserting some sort of lumpy object into the flier. Here is a perfect example. A criminal defense attorney could do something like put one of those green army men inside the envelope, where you can go on Amazon and buy a bag of probably 500 for $20, maybe even more than that, and you can put a green army man inside of the letter. And then people get it and see this lumpy package and they’re like, “What is inside of here?” And then you can tie it together saying, “We’ll go to war against these criminal charges” or something like that. You could do a pen. There are all kinds of stuff that you could put in there. But that’s one way that you can actually increase the open rate of these just to get more people to see them. Now, once people do actually see them… For me, initially, the biggest problem that I have with this is that it’s like a giant block of text. And I think the content in here is actually good. But most people don’t want to read a giant block of text. You guys have obviously done your homework on this. “Learn why a will is not enough.” I’m guessing that a lot of people that you talk to probably think that a will is enough and they have a will. “Don’t lose what you’ve worked for to long-term care, the probate courts, and the IRS. Attend our free seminar on living trust and long-term care to learn the benefits for you and your family. No planning equals big problems. You may have heard about living trust. You may have been told that they are only for the wealthy. That’s not true.” That’s actually a really good objection. So what I would do is I would probably set this up more like an infographic rather than a just big flier like this. I would definitely add some more color to it and I would add a lot more bullet points that allow people to categorize things.

MythBusters – break it all down

“You may have heard about living trust before and you may have been told that they are only for the wealthy. Not true. If you own a home or more than $80,000 in assets or if you’re 40 years old or if you have kids…” Do you know what I mean? You could have a section that says, “Who needs a living trust?” or “Who is at risk of losing tens of thousands of dollars if they don’t have a living trust?” and then have some bullet points with checkmarks–homeowners, small business owners, parents, anyone with more than $80,000 in assets, anyone over 40 years old. You can do that type of stuff. Now, another thing you might want to really focus on is to think about all the things that they could lose. Fear of loss is a very powerful motivator. “Learn the truth about Medicaid and how to protect your assets. You will also learn about how the Medicare and Medicaid systems work and how a properly written plan can help avoid losing all of your assets if you need long-term care in a nursing home stay.” What I might do is I would probably tie this more to a number. I would say, “How to lose your assets? Did you know that the average nursing home costs $650 per day? And the average person has $250,000 in savings, which basically means that they have two and a half years in a nursing home and then they’re out of money. And then they’re going to have to go into Medicaid and they’re going to have to lose their assets.” Do you know what I mean? I would do something like that. A perfect example is – this isn’t in estate planning – we had a client who does nursing license defense. So he actually defends who are in danger of having their licenses revoked by the state nursing board. What we did is we created a presentation for him that basically showed… Now, remember, fear of loss is extremely powerful. It’s an extremely powerful motivator. The average that he defended was around 40 years old. The average nurse works until they’re maybe 65. We were able to figure out that, on average, if you lose your nursing license, it’s going to cost you about $400,000 over the course of your career. And that’s what we really led with. That was our big marketing message. It was basically, “Look. Yes, it costs you $4000 for me to defend your nursing license. However, that $4000 pales in comparison to the $400,000 that you’re going to lose if you lose your nursing license.” You can do that same type of thing with this. And you don’t even necessarily have to talk about the cost of your services right now. Really, this is just about, “Here’s how the average person loses x amount when… They lose 35% of their assets when trust has to go into probate or when a will has to go into probate.” That’s one of the things that I would do. I would probably make this a lot more visual. I would break it up with bullet points. “You may think that it’s only for the wealthy…” That’s actually a great point. For estate planning clients, we’ve always had somewhere in there, “Most people think estate planning is for old, rich people. Well, that’s not true. Because if you have kids, if you have a small business, if you have $80,000 or more in assets, if you’re over 40, you want to make sure that you have this in place.” I think it’s good. I would just make it a little easier to digest the information with bullet points. Let me just read a little bit more here. I’m having a hard time going through this whole thing just because of the fact that there’s so much text. I really like the chart that you did. “With living estate planning, your estate can transfer quickly to your family upon your death without the expense and delay of probate. You can preserve your IRA and retirement accounts and reduce income tax to beneficiaries. You’ll avoid guardianship if you become ill or incapacitated. Your estate will run as you direct it. You can avoid spending down all of your assets.” The other thing that I would do absolutely is I would take this into an app called the Hemingway. Let me pull this over here. And here’s what you have to remember: most people read at a 3rd-grade level, believe it or not. And you also have to remember that a confused mind always says no. You go to the Hemingway app. Let’s take even just these bullet points right here. Let me copy this and paste that in here. What Hemingway app allows you to do is it allows you to simplify your writing. It’s hemingwayapp.com. It’s free. You can see this actually written at a 10th-grade level. You can see right here – it’s highlighted in yellow – one of the sentences is hard to read. What you want to do is you want to take this stuff in here and you want to de-lawyer-fy it. Basically, what I mean by that is stop writing like a lawyer and start writing like a real person. You don’t want people to have to work to think about what you’re trying to say. “Your estate can transfer quickly to your family upon your death without the expense and delay of probate.” Let’s see if we can get rid of that quickly. “Your estate can transfer quickly to your family upon your death without the expense and delay of probate.” That’s pretty good. Then I would go to this next one here. Actually, some of the stuff here… Let’s see. “You can preserve your IRA.” That’s not highlighting. I’m copying from a PDF. This is actually pretty good. I’m just taking some examples here. Let’s see if we can do this one. “Without a proper plan, the government can decide if you live or die.” I would say, “Without a written plan…” “Decide if you live or die…” That’s good. “The court system will decide what happens to you and your money if you become incapacitated.” You could see this is a long sentence. I always say, “the courts.” Or you can even say, “a judge.” “A judge will decide what happens to you and your money if you become incapacitated.” “The courts will decide what happens to your assets and your family when you die.” You can play around with this. Like you can see, it’s still a Grade 5 level right here. You can play around with that. And it actually is pretty decent now that I’m looking at it. But that’s the whole thing. You want to make sure that this entire thing runs through the Hemingway app and there’s no color anywhere. You want to aim for a 3rd-grade level. 5th grade is okay. But you always want to aim for 3rd grade. Because you gotta always remember a confused mind says no. Let’s see. Another thing that you could do also is you could add a frequently asked questions section. The frequently asked questions section would be really helpful. What you can do is take every objection that people would have for coming to the seminar and answer them infrequently asked questions. “Is there going to be a sales pitch?” “Are you going to feed us?” A lot of times people do these things at Ruth’s Chris Steak House and everything. These actually might not be objections. Let me think about this. Whatever the objections are. “How long is it going to be?” I don’t know. I’m drawing a blank right now. But anything you can think of that would be an objection, which would be a reason why somebody would not come to this. I would create a frequently asked questions section for that. To summarize, basically, I think you’ve got a lot of really good stuff here. What I would really do is I’d really focus on probably making it more visual, breaking it up with bullet points rather than just big paragraphs. Everything that you have written here, I would also run through the Hemingway app. And if you can get a graphic designer… But I think that you can go to Pinterest, for example, and you can see examples of infographics. Let me just show you. These are infographics. You can have stuff that looks like this. It just looks really nice. And you can get a graphic designer. You can basically put all this information in there and you can have a graphic designer create a flier that looks really good like this with all that information. You can go to Upwork. Actually, one that I really like is graphically.io. This is a company that we’ve been using lately where, basically, it’s like all you can eat graphic design and it’s $299 or something. I’m not affiliated with them. This is just who we use. It’s really cool. How much is it? $149 a month and it’s unlimited graphic design. It’s really good. That’s what I would do. I would probably do that. And then I would also add a frequently asked questions section with questions and answers basically addressing every single objection that somebody has as a reason that they wouldn’t actually come to this event. Another thing you can do is if you have people that have RSVPed for this… I don’t see any instructions. Oh. “Seating is limited. Call to reserve your seats now.” Here’s the other thing I would do. I would go back through the last several of these that you did where you sent out this flier and you had people that RSVPed and then didn’t show up. I would call them and ask them why they didn’t show up. Because what will happen is you’ll start finding objections that you didn’t know existed. That’s something that I would definitely do.

Address your objectives!

Once you know those, then you can actually go through and you can address those objects. Because this entire thing is about objections. One objection is, “I don’t want to read this thing.” “Okay. I’m going to create an infographic and I’m going to break it up using bullet points.” The other thing you could do – and this might be really beneficial also – is to do an ask campaign. I want to show you exactly what that is. I did a presentation recently. Let me see if I can find this. I did a presentation recently where I did a webinar and it was all about Reviews software. Let me see if I can find this on my Google Drive here. Basically, I was creating a webinar where I was going to teach lawyers how to get more reviews for their law firm. And at the end of it, I was going to sell a brand new software that I’m currently developing. It’s a software called Review Judge. I did a big pitch at the end of it and ended up making about $50,000 on the webinar. But what I did prior to the webinar is I sent this survey out to a lot of people. I sent it out to like a thousand people and I got probably like a hundred responses. But these responses are what I based the entire software stack on. Everything on the webinar was based on these answers. Because once I knew what the problems were and what the concerns were, then I could tailor my message to those exact things. If you take a look at this… “Do you want to get more client reviews for your law firm?” The reason I ask this question is that if the answer is no, then I know to ignore the rest of their response. You could see I got 89 responses. “What do you think are the biggest benefits of having reviews for your law firm?” “What’s holding you back from getting/having more reviews?” “Is there anything outside of your control that is stopping you and what?” “What have you tried before that hasn’t worked?” “What’s the number one thing you want to learn?” “Have you ever spent money on a review software?” “What’s the number one fear that you want to avoid at all costs?” “Name three more things you want to learn.” “If you’d like to participate in the webinar, leave your email here.” And we got a ton of responses. And based on these responses, we were able to see recurring themes. And based on those recurring themes, I was then able to craft my presentation and address all the issues and concerns and desires and fears that people had. And the result is we ran an hour-long presentation and made about $50,000. That’s really the best way to do presentations. And that’s how I would do yours. Not even just getting people there. But I would also do a survey like this. That way, you can use that information and put together a better presentation because you already know what people are thinking. There’s a lot more if we could get into this. Sorry. I was a little bit scatterbrained. It’s the end of the day for me. But hopefully, you got some value out of this. If you have any questions, just let me know. Thanks.

Do you tell potential new clients what your law firm’s prices are before they come in for a consultation? Do you list your prices on your website? Should you do this? Well, in this video, I’m going to answer that exact question.

My name is Andy Stickel and I’m the author of “How to Get More Law Firm Clients Without Losing Time & Money or Getting Screwed by a Marking Company”. Now, lawyers ask me all the time, “Should I reveal my prices before somebody actually comes in for a consultation?” The first thing I typically ask them is, “Well, what are your prices?

The difference in what you say and what people hear

What do you charge to represent a client?” The answer nine out of ten times is, “Well, it depends.“ It’s never just, “I charge $5000 for a case.” Every once in a while, you get a flat fee. But typically, they’ll tell me something like, “Well, it really depends.” It could range anywhere on the high-end to $8500 and maybe the low-end is $2500. What a lot of lawyers want to do is they want to tell clients this, that their prices range. The client says, “How much do your services cost?” And you say, “Well, it all kind of depends on your circumstance. It could be anywhere from $2500 to $8500.” Now, the problem with this right here is that you say to the client, “It could be anywhere from $2500 to $8500.” What the client hears is $2500. They heard $2500. They did not consider the fact that it could be $8500 because they want to hear the best-case scenario. No one wants to spend money. The reality is that your prices are probably going to fall around here. They’re probably going to fall in the mid-range. What you now have to do is you now have to take a client who is price framed expecting to pay $2500 and you now have to convince them that the same service that they thought they were going to spend $2500, you have to bring them up here. You gotta get them to spend $3500 or $4500 depending on what the actual price is for their circumstance.  And this is very, very, very difficult to do. Now, conversely, if you are going to price frame, you can price frame on the high-end because it’s super easy to have someone who thinks they’re going to spend $8500 and it’s really, really easy to bring them down to $3500 or $4500 because they assume that they’re getting a discount. The problem is that a lot of times, lawyers will reveal that price and they’ll give a range. They won’t actually tell an actual price.

The wise way to handle your pricing

First of all, I don’t think that you should reveal your prices. But if you are going to reveal your prices, you want to always make sure that you’re revealing the higher price and you’re not saying it’s a range. And then when you actually talk to the client, then they will be price framed positively where you can actually lower them from the higher price to the lower price. It actually feels like they’re getting a discount. And if you think about major retail stores, that’s exactly what they’re doing. For example, everything at Kohl’s is always on sale. Everything is always on sale. It’s always marked at $10 and then 60% off. “This pair of socks normally retails for $10 but you’re getting it for $6.” What they’re doing is they’re price framing you. That pair of socks was always $6. It was never $10. But now they’ve assigned it a higher value so, in your head, you look at it and you say, “Oh, wow. I’m getting 40% off. That’s great.” Now, if the sign said, “This pair of socks is $6” and then it rang up at $10, there’s no way in hell you’d ever buy it because you’re price framed the wrong way. This is a mistake that I see lawyers make all the time.

Get those prices off your website!

The first thing I would do is I would remove your prices from your website. I would tell your staff. When someone asks what the price is, I would say, instead of giving a range – which will shoot you on the foot nine out of ten times – what you should do is you say, “Well, our prices are very custom and they depend on the exact circumstances of your situation.” Rather than just giving everyone a blanket price and have people paying for things that they don’t necessarily need or things that they don’t use, say, “What we like to do is we like to actually listen to your circumstance, learn about what you need, and then come up with a price that actually fits the circumstance. We’ll be able to give you a more accurate price once you actually come in and meet with the attorney.” That’s a much better way to set the expectation rather than saying, “Oh, our prices are anywhere from $2500 to $8500” or whatever the actual range that you tell people because you’re shooting yourself in the foot and you’re price framing people. I hope this helps. I hope this gives you some clarity as to why you shouldn’t reveal your prices. And if you are going to reveal your price, always reveal the top price. Never reveal the lower price because it’s much easier to get sales when you’re bringing people down rather than trying to have them have a thought in their head that service is worth one point and now you’ve gotta convince them that it’s worth potentially thousands of dollars more than they had already mentally prepared themselves for. If you use that and then you tell them that you’re going to give them a custom price when they actually come in, then not only will they come in a better frame of mind but they’ll also be much more receptive to your pricing just because of the fact that you’re telling them that this is a custom price that’s just for them. Hopefully, this helps. If you have any questions about this or you want to learn more about getting more clients for your law firm, then be sure to pick up my book How to Get More Law Firm Clients Without Losing Time and Money or Getting Screwed by a Marketing Company. This book is completely free. All you have to do is go to freebookforlawyers.com and just pay for a teeny tiny shipping charge. It’s $7.95. And we will send you the book, completely free, right to your door. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments. And let me know in the comments if you tell your prices beforehand or if you make people come in to actually reveal the price. Hope you guys have a good day. I’ll talk to you soon.

Hey. My name is Andy Stickel. If you have a problem where clients will book consultations and then not show up for the consultations, then I want you to watch this video right now. I am going to give you the solution and teach you how to get more clients to show up to consultations.

The thing you have to understand is that the more personal contact that the client has with your law firm, the more likely they are to show up for the consultation. What do you need to do? The first thing you need to do when you book the consultation is to make sure that you get their cell phone number. Actually, you can do it the same day that you booked the consultation or a couple of days before the consultation.

What you want to do is send them a text message. On this text message, you actually want to record a video – it can be a short video – that just says, “Hey, Mike. It’s Attorney John Smith. Looking forward to our consultation this coming Thursday at 2:00 PM. Be sure to bring your arrest report. (Be sure to bring whatever it is that you need to bring)

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at the office, 407-123-1234, or you can text me back at this number. I look forward to seeing you on Thursday at 2:00 PM.” If you send them a personalized text message, they’re much more likely to show up.

Another thing you can do is actually have someone from your office reach out and do the intake for them over the phone before they actually come in. The cool part about that is now, they have given you all this information. They’re complying more. It’s a compliant step. Because they are actually giving you information and they’re taking more steps, they are much, much more likely to show up for the consultation. Those are two things you can do if you’re having problems with lawyers or with clients not showing up for consultations.

Now, if you have any questions at all, leave me a comment below. Otherwise, you can send me a direct message. I’ll help you out. I hope this video helped you. I hope you are having a great week. I’ll talk to you soon.