Digital Marketing

If you’re a brand new attorney, then you need to provide content and value. Start a Facebook group and start providing value. Pick a specific niche, don’t just pick everyone.

Don’t Try To Go After Everyone

For example, let’s say you’re a personal injury attorney in Los Angeles. That’s a tight market and tough niche. Don’t necessarily try to go after everyone.

If you try to go after every car accident case and try to get the #1 listing for Los Angeles personal injury attorney on Google, you’re going to fail miserably. When you get there, it’s going to take you a long time. What you can do instead is figure out a group of people that you can speak to.

Pick A Niche To Speak To

For example, let’s say you have a teenage daughter. You could start a Facebook group talking about parents of teen drivers. All you do is put out content that is teaching parents who have teen drivers how to make sure that their teenagers stay safe while they’re driving.

You pick that niche. It does not take long to start collecting people, especially if you get into a group where you figure out what people want, which is parents of teenage drivers.

My kids are not driving yet, they’re not even teenagers yet, but I can imagine that when they get to be that age, I’m going to be very nervous every time they leave the house.

Figure Out What They Want And Provide Content And Value

If you provide content and figure out exactly what they want. For example, they want their kids to stay safe, they don’t want their kids to crash, they don’t want their kids to kill anybody, they don’t want their kids to drive drunk, they don’t want their kids’ stupid friends in the car.

All these different things are going through their minds. You can create content and teach them how to handle some of these situations. You can do interviews with people. There are all these different things you can do to provide value to that group.

What’s going happen is that anytime anyone gets into a car accident that’s in that group, they’ll think of you. That group will grow fast because there are so many people out there with teen drivers that are afraid. They’re scared every time their kids leave the house, and it’s also a place to vent, where people can complain about their kids’ driving.

Thinking Outside The Box Is Key

It would be funny if you’d make custom t-shirts. If you want to own this space and indoctrinate people, make t-shirts that say, “My kid’s driving, so stay off the sidewalk.”

Somebody told me that joke before. That would be funny to put on a t-shirt with your law firm’s name. You pick a group like that and own it.

Stop Worrying About Being New

Some people are afraid, and they say, “Oh, I’m new. I don’t have the most experience. I’m not the best lawyer.” Who cares! Just go on and help people.

I’ve never talked to an attorney that has been practicing for 25 years. Every time I go to Google, we’ll be looking at search results, and I’ll be talking, and especially during consultations, I’ll say, “So, you want to rank number one to your competitors.”

The first thing they always say is, “Good.” You go to Google, and you search personal injury attorney, and there are all these firms here, and I’ve never heard of these guys. I’ve been practicing for 25 years. I’ve never seen this guy at the courthouse once.

Something To Keep In Mind

The reality is that there’s no correlation between being the best and getting paid for it. There’s a correlation between being the best at marketing and getting paid for it. That’s the God’s honest truth.

You can be a new law firm, have an excellent marketing strategy, and you don’t have to get everyone. You can pick a target demographic and own that demographic.

How I Market To Attorneys

For example with my marketing, if I went abroad and tried to market to everybody, it’d be very difficult. But instead, I focused on lawyers because there’s a lot of lawyers that I can speak specifically to them, and it works well.

If I were to do the general marketing thing, I probably wouldn’t have as much success, and I would have to be a lot more vague about a lot of things.

If you’re a new law firm, that’s my suggestion. You create content for a very specific niche and own that niche.

Somebody asked me this question: “I have a lot of reviews on a review website. Can I copy them to Google? What if I create fake Gmail accounts and copy them?”

How Review Services Work

There are a lot of services out there that provide review links for people. You can set up an automated text message so that every time a client is finished with work you did for them, you can send them a link. What that allows them to do is leave a review on the review website and then you can get an aggregate of all your reviews.

A lot of times, these review sites act as a buffer, so you can send everyone a review link. What typically happens is that they’ll say, “How was your experience with our firm? Please leave us a review.” And then they can leave a review on the review website.

If it’s a 4-star or a 5-star review, the review website then asks them to go leave a review on Google or Yelp or Avvo or wherever you actually want them to leave a review. It filters people out.

The Problem With Getting Reviews

The problem is that getting people to leave reviews is very difficult. A lot of times what happens is that they’ll leave a review on this review site, like getfivestars.com or something like that. There are so many of them. So you end up with a big list of reviews on these review websites and none on your Google profile or your Yelp profile. Maybe not none, but they’re a smaller number.

How can you solve that problem?

The question is can you take those reviews that are legitimate reviews and either post them yourself on Google or create fake accounts on Google and then use those fake accounts to post them?

The Ethical Issue

There are two issues here. First of all, there is the ethical issue from your state bar association. This is a very grey area if it’s a legitimate review but it’s not placed on Google by the actual client.

I don’t know what the answer is on that one. You might have to research that yourself. I’m not going to even pretend to try to answer that question because I don’t want you to do something and then get disbarred and then come talk to me about it. That is definitely one consideration.

The Duplicate Content Issue

The other consideration is whether it’s going to be considered duplicate content because it exists somewhere else, or if Google is going to flag it possibly as spam. I don’t know the answer to that. We have not done it for clients but I have seen instances where clients have posted Google reviews to their Google My Business account and have gotten away with it.

I don’t like it. I think it’s way too risky. If Google sees that you have a Google My Business profile and you’ve got 30 different reviews on it, and if Google starts seeing duplicate content everywhere, I think it’s a little risky. I personally wouldn’t do it.

What I Would Do

I would probably just try to figure out a way to get those clients to go back and leave you another review on Google. Give them some sort of incentive. That would be my recommendation.

I would never advise a client to leave fake reviews or create fake accounts or anything like that. I think it’s too complicated and I think it’s a lot easier just to get real reviews from real people even if you just get a handful.

Getting reviews is one of those things. It’s an ongoing process. You always have to be getting more reviews.

Someone asked me, “How would this look to the bar?” That’s my concern. Is it really worth that risk when it could be a grey area or even a black area? I don’t know if it’s worth it. Especially since you could figure out different ways to get people to leave you reviews. 

Create A Cheat Sheet

The cheat sheet has to be about something that they want to know how to do while avoiding something that they don’t want to do. For example, maybe it’s how to live or work in the United States without fear of deportation.

I recently received a question about how to get people into your Facebook group and to join your weekly email list. For this example, we’re talking about immigration. Here’s what you do.

I don’t know exactly what it would be for immigration or for your particular clients. I don’t know if you focus on a family or if you focus on H1-B visas, but you’ve got to figure out what it is they want and what is it that they’re afraid of.

Run Ads For The Cheat Sheet

Then, you run ads for the cheat sheet. You go on Facebook, and say, “Hey, I’m attorney Jim Hacking, and I created a cheat sheet.”

Or you can say, “Hey, I’m attorney Jim Hacking. I am an immigration attorney, and I’ve been working with clients, helping them stay and work in the United States since 1992” or whatever you’ve been doing.

Tell A Story

We recently had a client come to us who worked at this company, and this thing happened to him, and he came to us. So, we did this, this, this, and this, and we helped him solve that problem.

Now I realize that a lot of people have the same problem and a lot of people really could use some information about how to solve this problem. So, I put together a completely free cheat sheet. If you want to know how to accomplish how to stay in the United States without fear of deportation, without losing your job, and while being able to protect your family and so on, click the link included with this video, and download my free cheat sheet. Click here to enter your information.

By the way, if you need a template, I’ll send you a click funnels template where all you have to do is change the logo, and you can use it.

They click the link, they go to the landing page where it says enter your email address, and we’ll email this to you. Once they enter their email address, they’re taken to a thank you page. The thank you page says, “your cheat sheet has been emailed to you.” Your next step is to join the blank Facebook group.

Get Them Into Your Facebook Group

I don’t know what your Facebook group would be, maybe Indians living in Saint Louis. You want it to be the benefit followed by a geographical location. Then again, if you’re doing immigration, you might be able to take clients nationwide.

Once they enter their information, they’re automatically added into your email list. They get your cheat sheet in the confirmation email. In that email, you want to say the following:

“Hey, this is attorney Jim Hacking. Thanks for downloading this. You can get your free cheat sheet here. By the way, do me a favor and respond, “Got it” to this email, just so I know you got it.”

The reason that you want to do that is that will fix your email deliverability. If you’re sending a bunch of emails and getting no replies, then you could run into some spam issues. But, if you’ve got people that are responding to you, it’ll make your emails much more deliverable. That’s a little hack that not a lot of people know.

Then you can say, “You’re obviously interested in this subject. Your next step is to join the Facebook group.” That’s in the email. Also, when they get to that thank you page, it says, “Thanks, your cheat sheet has been emailed to you. Your next step is to join the Facebook group.” And you have put a button there with the FB logo that invites them to join the Facebook group.

I don’t know what your group is called, maybe Green Cards in America. Whatever the Facebook group is, you got to figure that out.

People Are Silently Begging To Be Led

Don’t say, “if you’re interested, join our Facebook group” or “if you have time, be sure to join our Facebook group.” You say, “your next step is to join the Facebook group.” The reason why is because people are silently begging to be led. People need to be told what to do.

If you give them the option versus saying your next step is to do this, they’ll get in your Facebook group, and now they’re on your email list as well. If your topic is about how to get the thing that they want without the thing that they fear, then they will download it left and right.

How To Target People With Facebook Ads

Now, how do you target people with Facebook ads? What you do is you figure out celebrities from the countries, and you target those and target people who are interested in those celebrities.
If you’re trying to find people that are from India, figure out who are their biggest celebrities. Who is the Kim Kardashian of India and target people that are interested in her?

Also, figure out who all the other celebrities are, particularly people that Americans wouldn’t be interested in. If someone likes this person, they’re definitely from India, and that’s how you do it. You just target people that are interested in that.

Here’s the question:  When making a short video, how much legal support do you recommend mentioning in the video?

How Much Legalese And Factual Info Is Needed?

Basically, you’re asking how much legalese should you include in the video or how much factual content?  How much research do you need to do? The answer is not much, and it actually works out in your favor, because you’ve got to remember that people relate to stories better than they relate to anything else.

Tell a Story Instead

So do a video where you tell a story about something that happened to a client and how you helped that client and what the resolution was. That’s going to be way better than you saying, “Florida statute 7412 says that if you’re in a car accident, you have up to 72 hours to go to the doctor.”

If you say instead, “I had a person just leave my office. They came in for a free consultation and I wasn’t able to help them and here’s why: They got into a car accident and they felt fine. But the problem was that three days later, the pain started kicking in. Just because you get into a car accident and you feel fine right away doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not injured.”

Think about when you work out. Imagine you go to the gym and you haven’t been to the gym for two years… For example, I went to the gym and I lifted weights and the next day I was so sore, I couldn’t even lift my arm. But I wasn’t sore that day, I was sore the next day.

So, a car accident is kind of the same thing. So this person came into my office and they weren’t injured right away. They didn’t get themselves checked out, and then they waited and they waited.

And now three months have gone by, and they’ve got a ruptured disc or whatever the issue is, but they didn’t go to the doctor. Because of that, I really can’t help them, unfortunately.

When you tell that story, that’s a lot better and a lot more meaningful and a lot more impactful than just giving facts and figures and things like that. So, it’s going to be a lot easier just to tell stories.

Some Clients Try To Write “Term Papers”

I’ve talked to some clients that get hung up in the research. It’s like their kind of writing a term paper and that’s not what these videos are supposed to do. These videos are supposed to be just quick pieces of information that go on to solve a problem.

What You Should Do Instead

And you can say something like, “Here’s a quick tip for anyone that’s in a family law dispute: do not post anything about the opposing party or your case at all on social media. We just left the court and in the case before us, the husband went on a Facebook rant about his ex-wife and how she was out partying – on Facebook.

And because of this, her attorney saved all the screenshots and you know what? He used it against him. And then we saw this result and this person is actually going to have to live with whatever the result is.”

That’s a better story than anything that’s just facts and figures. So, obviously, make sure what you’re saying is accurate, but it’s better to tell stories than it is to just use facts and figures and do a ton of research.

Also, doing a ton of research is going to make it a lot harder for you to consistently create content, so just tell stories about things that happened in real life, and that’s all you need to do.

Here is a question I just got:

Does Clickfunnels Take The Place Of My Website?

ClickFunnels includes the word funnel because you’re trying to funnel people in a certain direction.

What’s On Your Website

With your website, you get to the homepage and then there’s navigation at the top with About Us, Practice Areas, Contact Us, Awards and Settlements, and so on.  And then you have content on the homepage and all these different things.

There’s also a phone number and there’s a place where they can enter their email address or maybe fill in a contact form. There are so many different things on a website, so when you go to a website, it can really become kind of a fact-finding journey.

How Clickfunnels Works

ClickFunnels and funnel software, in general, is designed for one specific thing. You’ll see it if you go to any of my pages, for example, my book page, which is freebookforlawyers.com, or if you go to heylawyers.com, where you can get that free Google My Business course.

Those pages are designed to accomplish one goal. It’s to get whatever the person is on the page for. It’s trying to get them to accomplish a task.

The Example Of Amazon

Go to Amazon, for example. When you’re in the shopping cart of the checkout page on Amazon, all the other links go away. The only links left are there for the purpose of getting you to complete the checkout.

If you’re on the Amazon homepage, you’ve got Home, and they’ve got the Search box and they’ve got all those other links. But once you’re basically in the sales process, they’re trying to get you to accomplish their goal, which gets you to spend money.

A Funnel Has A Specific Purpose

So, a funnel is designed for that specific purpose. We use funnels all the time to get people to download a cheat sheet, or to get them to opt into whatever it is. And the reason I use ClickFunnels instead of my website is that I can hyper-focus them on a specific task.

And when you have things you can up-sell as well, then ClickFunnels works really well, because you can add those up-sells too. You can do the free cheat sheet. Then you tell them, Hey watch the video training, and Hey buy this thing…

What Lawyers Can Also Do With Funnels

It’s a little different for lawyers, but a lot of lawyers can be creative in figuring out different things they can sell. You can even do promotional materials, where they’re just paying for the shipping. I do a lot of the free for shipping offers and it helps liquidate a lot of your cost.

So, ClickFunnels is different from a website because the website is traditionally more informative and a funnel is designed to get people to complete a specific task.

Tracking Law Firm Organic And Social Media Ads Leads

Here’s another question I’ve been asked: How do you track cases coming from organic searches as opposed to coming from Facebook ads?

Basically, you can put a different phone number on your Facebook landing pages. Or here’s what we do a lot of times with our clients. We use a software called LeadOwl, which is really cool.

What LeadOwl Can Do

And what LeadOwl does is this… First, we tie it to a cheat sheet. So we’ll do a Facebook lead ad and it will say, download the free cheat sheet that teaches you how to get creditors to stop calling.

You can tie it into the software LeadOwl, so that the second a lead comes in, you say, enter your best phone number and we’ll text you this guide. That way you make sure that you get their correct phone number.

And then LeadOwl ties into Facebook lead ads. So you automatically get a notification on LeadOwl and with one touch of a button you can press call or you can text them and you can use canned responses. So you can typically track it that way if you’re doing Facebook ads.

What About Organic Leads?

Now if you’re talking about organic Facebook, that’s a little more difficult. But truthfully, there’s not a lot that comes from organic Facebook anymore. So much of it is ads because it all pays to play these days.

The Google Analytics Option

It’ll all come down to your phone number. Now what you could do is you could go to Google analytics and you can go to the acquisitions section and then look under, I think it’s medium. Somewhere in there, it says social, and you can see how many people are coming from there. But it’s kind of hard to do it that way outside of the tracking number.