Digital Marketing

One thing that I tell lawyers all the time is that your phone call should never, under any circumstance ever, go to voicemail. But even if you have an answering service and even if you’re always trying to answer the phone, there are going to be times when the stars align, and the call goes to the dreaded voicemail.

Why You Should Not Let Your Calls Go To Voice Mail

What you have to remember is that the people that are calling your law office because they have a problem. They have a problem that needs a solution, and they want to talk to a lawyer now.

People want instant gratification. Think about Amazon Prime. For me, Amazon Prime is too slow, and that says a lot of people that feel the same way.

Let’s say you don’t answer the phone and the call goes to voicemail. Here’s an example of a voice mail you might have, “Hi, this is Attorney John Smith. I’m not able to take your call right now, but please leave me a message, and we’ll call you back.”

What’s going to happen is that they’re just going to hang up the phone and call the next attorney on their list. What you need to do is give them a reason to leave their information.

That way you can actually get their information, call them back and hopefully get the case. Now, how do you do that?

The One Line That Can Make A Difference

What you do is this: you add a simple line to your voicemail that most people have never really thought about. My partner is the one who taught me this trick about six years ago, back when we first started our business. She started telling all of our clients to do this, and it makes such a huge difference.

What she tells our clients to do and what I tell all lawyers to do now is to say something like this on your voicemail: “Hi, this is Attorney John Smith. I’m not available to take your call right now, but your call is important, and I do want to speak with you. Leave your name, phone number and the best way for me to reach you, and I’ll call you back within fifteen minutes.”

Now, both you and I know that you’re not going to be able to return every phone call within fifteen minutes. It’s just not going to happen.

But the promise of “I am going to return your phone call within a certain period of time” is enough to make most people leave their contact information even if they would have normally hung up.

Then, you can call them back and if they bring up the fact that you’re calling them, simply apologize profusely. But note that you would have never gotten their contact information had you not put that message on there saying I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes. Try and use it on your voicemail, and let me know how it goes.

The Question:

Is geo-fencing worthwhile? What about geo-fencing at the Daley Center, the huge courthouse downtown?

Geo-Fencing

We’ve done this before where we’ll drop a pin on the jail or the hospital – I haven’t done the courthouse – and we’ve seen okay results.

The problem is that if you drop that pin and you put the address of the courthouse in, or the address of the hospital or the address of the jail, then what happens is that it’ll drop the pin there and you can set it to one mile. So you’ll say I want to target everyone who was recently in this location, that is, within one mile of this address.

You Have To Narrow It Down

But it does a radius, so you get one mile north one mile south, one mile east, and one mile west. What you have to do then (and it’s kind of a pain in the neck), is that you have to drop more pins and set them to exclude locations.  

Basically, what you end up doing is you’re excluding all the other areas that are not the actual courthouse, so you can really narrow it down to maybe a one-block radius if you really want to. It’s kind of a pain in the neck, but then you just save the audience.

It Can Be Effective If You Do It the Right Way

But is it effective? It can be effective if you’re hitting the right people if you’re doing the right targeting if you’ve got the right messages if you’ve got the right landing page. It’s just another way to target people. I wouldn’t get too hung up on it.

I would definitely try it, but don’t get too hung up on it. But if you do it, definitely make sure to exclude those locations. Also they basically make negative locations and I should put out a video about how to do this. It’s kind of a pain in the neck but I can show you how to do it. It’s easy. It just takes some time

Andrew: Hey everybody, we are here with Tyson Mutrux. I wanted to bring Tyson on because he is a personal injury attorney that does a lot with social media, which are my two favorite things. Anyone that follows me knows that I believe that all attorneys should be using social media.

Tyson runs a Facebook group with other lawyers in the Facebook group and is a really good example of how you can manage your practice and also manage a social media presence. I wanted to bring him on and discuss this a bit more.

Can you tell everybody a little bit about yourself, what you do as an attorney, and what you do with social media?

Tyson: I’m a personal injury lawyer in St. Louis, with another office in Columbia, Missouri. I’ve had my own firm for eight years. I used to work for another firm that did a bunch of advertising with TV, billboards, radio ads, etc.

Interesting enough, they didn’t do a lot of social media or SEO. If you were to look them up on Google right now, they got terrible reviews. They don’t focus on any of that.

I started my own firm after leaving that firm and currently have a team of eight people. We run a pod system. We also have the Maximum Lawyer podcast where we have attorneys all the time and discuss practice management and marketing.

How Tyson Mutrux Incorporates Social Media Into His Marketing

Andrew: What do you do for your own marketing? Do you incorporate social into your own marketing as well?

Tyson: Oh absolutely. I think you have to. If you don’t, then you’re missing the point of a lot of all this that’s going on, but I think we do a little bit different. I think we do some of the generic push things that you see people doing.

For example, I did something yesterday where we pushed to get out the vote, but I don’t like to do that too much. I think it’s too generic, and people ignore it, but I’ll do it occasionally.

We try to make it a little more organic with our social media where I wrap together my personal life and the business a lot, especially with a lawyer. I get a bunch of social media question and Facebook messages about legal issues, so it’s hard to separate those two. It really is wrapped in together with each other a little. I want to be a lot more organic.

I think if you if you try to push all the stuff out to people, they’re going to ignore it. About four or five years ago, we hired a social media manager because we thought we should hire somebody to do this, but it doesn’t work that way. Social media is like a billboard that you interact with and you can’t interact with some weird person in some other country or another state. They want to interact with you.

Having a social media manager, in my opinion, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I think it can be done right in certain areas, but I think, for the most part, you have to interact with the people. Otherwise, it makes no sense. Social media is social for a reason.

Andrew: Yeah exactly. It’s all about value and if you look at the traditional forms of social media, the way that social media is actually intended to work before marketers got on and ruined everything, there’s three pillars.

There’s your content which you put your own content out. There is sharing other people’s content, and then there’s interacting and having conversations with people.

This is where a lot of attorneys make mistakes. They share their own content, and then they forget about the other two. They don’t share other things, and they definitely don’t interact with people.

What you find is that that interaction adds value and that personal connection is the secret to social media. That’s how to make it work.

Tyson: I think it’s a little more complicated with a lawyer because if you have a closed Facebook group and they’re asking legal questions, I think you can make an argument if you’re on the other side that you’ve now waived attorney-client privilege because they’re asking you these questions in that group.

That’s why I haven’t done that, although I think if done the right way, it’s doable. You have to be very careful about what you do. You charge nothing for your Facebook group where you provide a ton of tips, you’re just giving value away. I think that’s really what you have to do.

That’s why we do a lot of videos and put them out. I mean I did a simple one on Friday where I was in my hoodie. I went home early on Friday, and I had my hoodie on in my home office.

I shot a little video about a conversation I had with a client about an insurance adjuster because the insurance adjuster hadn’t done any investigation on the case. It was sort of like a “what to look out for” kind of thing, and people watch that, and they really interact with it. I mean I had people sharing it on Twitter.

I shot a two-minute video. I clipped it down to a minute so I could share it on Twitter and Instagram, I shot in different places, and people share it all over the place. I was providing value to potential clients.

Some of the other content I provide is for other attorneys, and they can get some value from my content as well. For example, if they are new PI attorney and they don’t know how to deal with an insurance adjuster, they can get value from my videos too.

People Don’t Want Robots, They Want Humans

Andrew: Exactly. Something I want to point out about what you just said. You said you were wearing a hoodie and you just pulled out your phone and filmed it. I think a lot of people are so obsessed with looking perfect, that it stops them.

I used to do the same thing. When I first started, I used to always make sure I was wearing a button-down shirt and then that one day, I just kind of realized I don’t care.

Nobody cares like as long as the information is valuable. Nobody’s going to say, the information was great, but I’m not going to listen to because he’s wearing a t-shirt.

Tyson: There are a few lessons of this. One, if you want it to be too perfect, you’re never going to do it. Oh, I’m too tired today, or I don’t have my suit on.

The other part of it is if you look at the numbers, the statistics show that the polished videos don’t get watched or clicked on as much. The rougher around the edges videos, like the cell phone videos, they get watched far more than those polished videos.

I have a green room a few rooms that we built out. It’s got the camera equipment, the lighting and all that, but we never use it because they’re not as not as effective as just using that rough video.

Andrew: And, it’s so much easier for me to pull out my phone and just hit record than it is to set up my 4k video, all my lights in the backdrop, and make sure the lighting and sound are perfect. Done is better than perfect. That’s my motto for everything.

Tyson: No, for sure. I’m wearing some jeans and tennis shoes right now, and I’ll tell you how many times clients love meeting you like this because they’re like you’re a human being, you’re not a robot. People really like that, especially as a lawyer.

People think that they want to see me in the suit. No, they don’t. They want to see that you’re a human being.

It’s the whole cliché of liking and then trusting someone. It all wraps into that. They don’t need some guy that is all polished, they want to see that you’re someone that they can relate too.

Andrew: I think times are also changing. With the age of the Internet and social media, there’s more exposure and behind-the-scenes for everything. Even reality TV takes you behind the scenes, and you realize that you want somebody more personal.

The reality is that nobody is perfect. People can relate to others that have the same problems that they have. For example, I did a video where my dog was in the background barking and my wife was like yelling at the dog be quiet. That was one of my best videos because everybody’s like hey, what kind of dog you have?

I was able to relate to people on that level, and we started talking about our dogs and all that type of stuff. It just makes it much more personable and shows that you are a real person and that sometimes, my three-year-old is going to walk in the room while I’m filming a video.

Tyson: You’re creating all these different points to connect with someone. When you are bringing in these other parts of your life, that’s another way for them to connect with you.

I’m looking around your office right now, and, if you pulled a book off of the shelf and then talked about it briefly, they have that connection with you. You’re bringing in these elements of your life, it’s ways you connect.

How To Provide Value

Andrew: So, let’s go back to the value thing. That’s what I think stops people because they think they don’t know what to talk about, but the reality is that the information is in your head. Everything you know about personal injury or criminal defense is valuable information that somebody that’s in that situation does not know.

It’s just like your video for dealing with an insurance adjuster. To you, that’s second nature, but to somebody that was just in a car accident, that’s really valuable information to know.

Anytime you can put that content out there and help people solve small problems, you’re going to make that connection. They’re going to see your value and want to follow up with more questions.

With estate planning or bankruptcy, what I found is that even though you’ve told all your secrets, people will still always hire you so they can ask more questions or to get it done better and faster. A lot of people worry about giving away too much, but I didn’t give everything away because at the end of the day, you’re just going to show how complicated some things are and they’re not going to want to touch it, but now they’re going to see that you understand it and you’re the authority.

Tyson: It’s funny that you say that, because that last point, I think is really important. You can tell them step by step by step by step by step, and if you think I’m giving away all my secrets, that’s not how they’re looking at it.

They are looking at it as, “oh my gosh, I’ve got to do all this work. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to give it off to someone else.” With personal injuries especially, it doesn’t cost me anything out of the pocket up front, so they’re more willing to do it.

I used to do a lot of criminal defense. I don’t do it anymore, but you explain all the stuff that they have to go through with their case, they’re not going to hire a public defender. They’re going to get that money to hire you. There’s a variety of ways you can do it to differentiate yourself and show that you are the thought leader in that area.

You can show how complicated it is to do it and how much work you do to show your value. There’s a lot of reasons you can do that, and it’s not going to hurt you. They’re not going to steal it from you. They’re not going to go out and start selling what you’re talking about. There is very little risk of that happening.

Andrew: I’ll do step-by-step tutorial videos where I’m literally recording my screen, saying okay, click here, click here, click here, click here and I’ll put it out, and I’ll still get 50 questions about it. All I’m doing is proving that I’m an authority on it and that I can do this for you if you need help with this. The biggest risk for me is that other marketing companies see this and start doing it.

Tyson: Let’s say that that happens. My guess is that if they’re going to call you and if they call the other marketing company, they have conversations with both of you, and you talk about how you created this video. If they start hearing that other person repeat the same things that you talked about on that video, they’re going to know that they stole it from you.

So, who cares? I mean, maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but you’ll still benefit out of it.

Andrew: That’s why I give a lot of this stuff away because of my agency’s full. We’re not really taking new clients. Every once in a while, we do, but we really don’t take that many new clients because I don’t need 15,000 clients.

We’ve got about 50 clients. We know we can handle and do a good job for 50 clients. But, there’s a lot of lawyers that constantly contact us and need help.

I just started putting stuff out initially just so people can figure out what good marketing is and what good marketing isn’t. It is amazing how many conferences I’ll go to, and I’ll talk to other people that do marketing for lawyers. Like I’ll go to a general search engine optimization conference, and there are always two or three people there that do marketing for lawyers, and I’ll meet them for lunch. By the end of it, because I have this habit where I give away all my information, they’ll be sitting there taking notes from all the stuff I’m telling them.

Tyson: There is that element of the go-getter part of it too. Who knows, that advice you gave these people, maybe in a couple of years, they’ll remember you if they’ve got a conflict or something. It’s not going to hurt you.

Andrew: I’ve never had anything bad happen from giving advice and sharing what I know. The only negative outcomes I’ve experienced have been from when I’ve held information back and didn’t get the outcome that I was looking for versus when I tell everything I know and give someone really good advice. It’s always good when I accomplish what I’m trying to accomplish.

The Negative Aspects Of Putting Yourself Out There

Tyson: I’ll tell you one negative, especially if you start it with a video. You start getting haters. Now I don’t care what network you’re on. I don’t care who you share with, there will be some point where someone says something bad about you.

When you first see it, it kind of pisses you off. If you look at my YouTube channel today, there are negative and stupid comments. But who cares?

At the end of the day, people are consuming my content, and they’re calling me. That’s what I really care about. You’re going to get some haters every once in a while, but who cares? There’re haters in every single industry.

Andrew: There’s a guy named Dan Henry, he’s a marketer and my business coach. But because he does a lot of videos also and gets trolls all the time, he was saying that nobody leaves a comment on your videos that are doing better than you are. Just think about that.

The trolls are just people that have nothing else going on. You almost feel bad for those people, but having haters is also a sign that you’re getting out there.

I always tell people to leave negative comments just because once there’s one negative comment. It’s easier for more trolls to keep piling on. Nobody wants to go to a party and start being a jerk, but if there’s already a bunch of jerks at the party, it’s easy for them to be a hater.

I’ve got a lot of things you can pick on me for. I’m horrible on camera. I have permanent raccoon eyes from sunglasses because I keep them on when running and I get sunburned. It is what it is, I can’t help it, but I get comments about that type of stuff. I also don’t see anybody doing better than me that’s leaving negative comments on my videos.

Tyson: I received a negative comment that had all these spelling errors and curses words, and it made no sense. It was about an old video I did probably five or six years ago about getting a warrant recalled. I had no idea what the comment meant, but it made me think, what are you doing all day that you have time to sit down and troll people on YouTube?

Social Media Is The Way To Go — But How Do You Begin The Process?

Andrew: I talk to a lot of attorneys, and everyone pretty much agrees that social media is the way to go but no one can really kind of figure out where to start, a lot of people can’t. So what advice would you give an attorney who knows social media is the way to go, but they don’t necessarily know where to begin? What would you tell them to do?

Tyson: I’d say start with just one social media platform. I’d probably recommend that they get into Facebook. If it’s a younger demographic they’re targeting, I’d say go to Instagram. People seem to be more heading that way, but I don’t know it seems like Facebook has been very versatile and they’ve been able to adapt even though all these other platforms have come out.

Just show what you do, pictures of yourself outside the courtroom, outside the courthouse, etc. Focus on content that allows people to peek in because being a lawyer is not something that most people get to be.

There’s a reason why there’s a lot of doctor and lawyer shows on TV because people dream about being them and they find it very interesting. If you can reveal yourself and show the things that you do, it’s interesting to these people.

You get to reveal yourself, and they get to know you better and then they are going to call you when they need something.

• Pick one platform
• Pull the curtain back
• Put content out there.

It’s pretty basic, but that’s what social media is. It’s interacting with people. It is one of the most basic things we do as humans, which communicates with each other. That’s what you are doing, communicate with people.

Andrew: You brought up a good point about just documenting what you do. That’s what Gary Vaynerchuk does. He says document, don’t create.

How To Balance Social Media And Being An Attorney

Andrew: You manage a firm, you’re a practicing attorney, and you also manage to do social media. How do you balance that all out? How often do you create videos and content for social media? How do you make it all work for you? I ask because a lot of people have this misconception that they don’t have time for both. So, how do you do it?

Tyson: That’s BS. You have time for it because the people watching are already on social media. So, they’ve already had some sort of connection. They’ve got the account set up. It’s just them not putting out the content.

I have on my calendar for every day at 3:30 pm to produce 30 minutes of content. You need to slot it on your calendar to start producing content, carve out a time each week or each day to produce it, then get it out there. Then you can use tools for scheduling that are pretty helpful like Hootsuite or Buffer. There’s even a tool called Agorapulse, where you can schedule these things out and communicate all in one app, so it’s not that complicated.

At the end of the day, it’s another marketing channel. You have to treat it that way. You have to harvest your crops, so to speak. You plant the seeds and then, later on, you harvest your crops.

Every day, you’re planting your seeds, you’re tending your crops, and you have to keep doing that. It’s not a one-shot thing like with pay-per-click, where you spend a little money, and you get some phone calls.

It doesn’t work that way with social media. You have to do it every single day, spend time on it, and interact with people. It’s a really big mistake if, you spend a lot of time creating content and then, you completely stop, and no one hears from you.

With their algorithm, Facebook’s probably going to push you down on the feed because they want to see that consistent interaction. The other issue is that people want to hear from you, interact with you and doing it in quick bursts like that doesn’t work that much. So, you got to be consistent about it.

Andrew: The other issue is that everybody makes excuses. If you can actually do it and stay with it, unlike pay per click, SEO, radio, and billboards, you will have no competition. That’s the most appealing part of it for me, is that there’s no competition because the barrier to entry, it’s not that hard, but most people think it’s hard, and that keeps a lot of people away.

I talked to a guy yesterday who started doing what I told him to do in September, and he’s already gotten four cases, with two being wrongful death cases. It’s just from social media and a Facebook group that has 300 people in it. This stuff works, it absolutely works, and he’s in New Orleans, which is a huge market.

Tyson: There are no tricks here, there really isn’t, you do it. You reveal yourself, and you make sure you don’t sound like an asshole when you do it. Just be yourself, be nice to people, interact with people on social media, and it just happens, it’s easy.

Andrew: Well listen, it was great chatting. I know you have the Maximum Lawyer Facebook group, everyone should hop in there, but you also have the Maximum Lawyer podcast, which can be found at maximumlawyer.com.

Tyson: Honestly, the best place to go is just to the Facebook group and get involved there. You have to request to be in it and then agree not to market to people, and you can come to the group. My coach Jim Hacking and I, we interact in the group, but we hardly post things on it anymore. It’s mostly other people posting stuff, and we interact with them. It’s a great environment because people are more than willing to share all their secrets.

I just got a review from a client. Actually, it’s for a client from a client of theirs. It’s an awful review, and I think that it’s time that we put an end to these terrible law firm reviews.  

I wanted to create a guide that you can use to send to your clients so that when they write you a review or when they record a video testimonial for you, it will actually be something that’s useful.

How To Get Better Law Firm Reviews

You want to take them through a journey and talk about basically what you did for them, how your law firm was different, how it impacted their life, and what the impact was. A lot of times, people just need a little bit of guidance because they have no idea what to talk about.

So, when you say, “Hey, will you leave me a testimonial,” what ends up happening is that they say “Uhh, I hired the Smith Law Firm and they did a great job. Thanks.” It’s better than nothing, but you can do so much better.

Five Questions

I want to show five questions you can ask your clients to answer when they write testimonials for you. I’ll also let you know why these questions work. If you ask these five questions, you will get much better testimonials, whether they’re written or video testimonials.

1) “What Was The Problem You Had Prior To Coming To Our Law Firm?”

This may be surprising, but a lot of people will not include the actual problem that they had before they came to the law firm in their review. It’s beneficial to people that are reading your reviews to find out what problems you actually help people solve.

2)“Why Did You Choose This Law Firm Over Other Law Firms?”

A lot of people are probably considering your firm and other firms at the same time, so this question helps to tell them what the client found to be better about your firm than the other firms. This just serves as another piece of social proof, but it’s a very nice piece to have in the actual testimonial.

3) “What Made Your Experience About Our Law Firm Great?”

Now, you want them to talk about the highlights of the firm. They’ll say things like “Great customer service. They always return my phone calls.” Those are things that you want people to know about you that they might otherwise forget to mention.

4) “As A Result Of Allowing Our Firm To Represent You, What Was The Outcome?”

Now, there’s going to be instances where there might be confidentiality issues or things like that, so you might have to adjust this question, but you want to get people to talk about the great results that you got for them.

That’s one of the best pieces of social proof you can get. People figure, if you got a great result for somebody else, then you can probably get a great result for them as well.

5) “How Has Your Life Changed Since Achieving The Outcome?”

Now, this is very important because you’re always future pacing. You always want to make sure that whenever you’re talking to a new potential client, you want to talk about how their life is going to be better because they’ve hired you. This is an excellent way to show that people have a lasting positive impact on their lives as a result of the work that you did for them.

Use These 5 Questions To Get Better Reviews

If you use all of these questions, the testimonials that you get will be much better. You can send them in an email form to get clients to write testimonials for you. They can also use these questions as a guide when they record a video for you, which is helpful.

I don’t know why a lot of people don’t do video, but video testimonials are helpful to put on your website, social media, and different places like that.

Go ahead and send this list of questions. You can say, “Hey, listen. For your testimonials, it might help if you could answer these questions. That will typically result in a better testimonial, one that will be more useful for the people that are relying on those testimonials.”

Today, I want to talk to you about something that’s probably going to make you mad because this is mostly a lawyer group. But I want to teach you a little bit of marketing psychology and how I would market paralegal services.

Recently, someone contacted me and said they’d been running Facebook ads and were not getting any results. They’re getting a few results, but they’re not getting a lot of leads. The ones they do get are people that say, “I don’t have any money, I can’t afford to pay you.”

I wanted to break down their ads and show you what’s going on. I’m looking at it from a purely marketing standpoint, i.e., what the problem is with these ads and what you can do differently.

The Problem With The Facebook Ads

There are two ads that I saw. The first ad was running last night. It’s not currently running. And then the other ad is still running. So part of the problem is that you’re on Facebook and this is just a straight advertisement.

There’s nothing about the ads that are beneficial or interesting to people. Especially the ad with the big headline “Paralegal Solutions LI.” Most people don’t know what paralegals do. They don’t know that if they have, for example, an uncontested divorce with no children, or if they’re trying to get a simple contract done, that paralegal services are available for that.

Now I’m probably going to make some lawyers mad, because they’re going to say, oh, you can’t have a paralegal do that, you have to have a lawyer do that.

I’m not saying whether this is a good service or not. I’m just saying strictly from a marketing standpoint, what’s wrong with these ads and what I would do differently if I were marketing this company.

Don’t email me about all the problems with not using an attorney. Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just giving you some information here, but you can use this information for your own law firm.

Why Are The Ads Attracting Leads Who Can’t Pay?

The ads say, “Don’t let legal matters spook you. We are professional and affordable. We offer payment plans.”

Now, one of their big complaints is that people are contacting them and can’t afford to pay. But they’re already targeting people that don’t have a lot of money because they’re saying right off the bat, “We have payment plans.”

They’re saying that if you can’t afford a normal legal service, call us. So, I think they’re inviting some of those issues. I’m not saying don’t do that. I’m just saying don’t be surprised when you get people that can’t pay you.

So what’s the problem with this ad?

Where Are The Benefits?

The problem with this ad is that there is no benefit whatsoever. First of all, it doesn’t show you what they do, and then there’s no benefit whatsoever to the user. It doesn’t show you what the firm does. It doesn’t show you what the benefits of going with a paralegal versus going with a lawyer might be.

And it doesn’t show what the user is going to get. It just says, “Don’t let legal matters spook you. We’re professional and affordable, and we offer payment plans.”
Nothing is enticing there. Let me show you what I would do if I were to write this ad, knowing what they do: DUI, DWI, Criminal, Tennessee small claims, family law. They do a lot of different things here.

The Importance Of Focus

First of all, I wouldn’t include everything in one ad. I would create one ad for one thing. If you’re a personal injury attorney and you do personal injury and also criminal defense, and estate planning, don’t run an ad for all of them. Run the ad for one of them.

For this one, just using my marketing brain, here’s what I would do.

What Would I Do With The Ad?

Let’s say I’m going to do divorce. I’m guessing that a paralegal can handle a non-complicated divorce, if it’s maybe an uncontested divorce where maybe there are not a lot of assets, and there are no kids, and everyone agrees on everything, all you need is the formality of the paperwork. This might be a good service.

Again, this is not my opinion on the service. It’s my opinion on the ad. What I would do is say something like this, “Did you know that the average divorce attorney charges $3,000 or $5,000 for a divorce? Why pay that if you have a simple divorce where you can get the same paperwork filed and avoid all of the hassle of divorce for one flat rate of $995.”

What you’re doing is, you’re showing the new opportunity, showing that the benefit is that you’re going to save a lot of money by going with his paralegal. If I’m going through a divorce or if I’m thinking about a divorce and I see this ad right here, this paralegal solution ad is saying, “Don’t let legal matters spook you. We’re professional and affordable. We offer payment plans.”

I don’t even know what this is. I’m not going to pay attention to it. I’m just going to keep scrolling.
Whereas if I saw an ad that said, “Uncontested divorces? We’re going to save you $4,000 versus going to an attorney.” That would probably pique my interest, and that’s something that’s going to pique the average person’s interest.

What’s Going On With The Other Ad?

Now the same thing is happening in the next ad. In fact, this ad is not very attractive, and it’s all text. I’m surprised that Facebook is allowing this ad to run because it’s so texting heavy, but it’s the same type of thing. They say, “We offer payment plans,” that is in the top right corner of the ads.
It’s not very attractive, so I wouldn’t expect that they’re going to get a lot of contacts from this ad. What they might get is probably going to be the bottom of the barrel: people that are trying to, just figure out, how cheap can I get this?

How To Improve The Ad

Don’t run ads for the service, run ads for the benefit. How would I benefit from using a paralegal service instead of an attorney? That’s what I would do. I think that’s the best way to do it. This type of advertising campaign is extremely simple to run, and they’re very effective because you can compete on price a little bit.

You are a commodity because people are looking for an alternative to having to hire an attorney in a lot of places. If you can show that benefit and show how the user is going to benefit and how you’re different, show a new opportunity, then that’s what I would do.

If you’re an attorney, how can this apply to you? It’s the same type of thing. I see attorneys doing this all the time. I’ve seen attorneys run ads just like this, “Don’t let legal matters spook you. Call us today for a free consultation if you’ve been injured in a car accident,” or “If you got a DUI, call us today. We’ll give you a free consultation, and we take payments.”

How Attorneys Can Compete With The Paralegal Ads

Attorneys do these same types of ads. They would be better suited by saying, here are the benefits of hiring me, or here are the benefits of hiring an attorney versus hiring a paralegal solution.

If you want to take the reverse, where if you’re trying to run ads for divorce, and you know you’ve got a big company like a paralegal solution in your market, what you can do is you can basically say, here are five reasons that you need an attorney and not a paralegal to file your divorce for you.

Now you’ve changed their mind on that one. Then, you can throw in that while attorneys are more expensive, it will probably save you more money in the long run. And by the way, we offer payment plans starting at $500 a month or something. That’s if you want to try to get rid of some of those people that just absolutely cannot afford to pay you.

Hopefully, I didn’t make too many people mad in this video because I know it’s going to be a sensitive subject. But, look at psychology, and look at how this is working. Hopefully, this will help you improve your ads.

The question:

Hi Andrew, which virtual receptionist would you recommend – Smith.ai or RubyReceptionist? Thanks.

My answer:

I have actually not used either of those companies. I’ve heard a lot of people recommend both of them. I’ve heard that RubyReceptionist is very expensive, I’ve also seen their ads. That’s what I know about them, to be totally honest with you. But I’ve heard that both companies do good work.

Two Companies We Have Used

There are two companies that we have used that I have no affiliation with. I have no loyalty to them. They’re just the ones that we’ve worked with and that we’ve gotten good results with.

They are VoiceNation and AnswerFirst, and we’ve had good luck with them. They’re definitely not the only ones out there, but they’re ones that we have worked with.