Legal Marketing 2.0 Podcast

Law firms and companies trying to target a B2B (business to business) audience are starting to recognize the value of paid LinkedIn advertising. Paid advertising on LinkedIn is a great way to not only expand your reach, but provides you with incredible targeting opportunities. Budgets for LinkedIn Advertising Like Google Adwords, you can set up your own budget. However, the difference between Google Adwords and paid social, and in particular, paid LinkedIn, is that LinkedIn is much cheaper – as much as half the cost of pay-per-click. Some clients spend $200-$250 per month and are seeing great results. You can set your own budget and based on the results, choose to spend more or less. What is "Matched Audiences"? Matched Audiences is LinkedIn's retargeting platform and lets you serve an advertisement for a piece of content to someone that's already familiar with your brand. Studies have shown that people are much more likely to engage or purchase from a brand they're already familiar with. Matched Audiences op

Podcast Shownotes In episode 18 of the Legal Marketing 2.0 podcast we chat with Jennifer Ellis about using the WordPress platform to build a website for your law firm – from solos to large firms. Jennifer literally wrote the book on WordPress for Lawyers: WordPress in One Hour for Lawyers: How to Create a Website for Your Law Firm (ABA). Jennifer has had an unusual career in the legal profession going from continuing legal education (CLE) professional to practicing lawyer to marketing expert and, in addition to our conversation about WordPress, she shares some "Alt Legal" career tips, so make sure to check out the interview. Here are some of the highlights: What is WordPress and why should lawyers use it? WordPress is a database-drive software that allows you easily publish a website. It's free and easy to use and update, and lets you quickly design the site, add images, pages, blog posts, and so on. You can create a site using wordpress.com (not recommended) or wordpress.org (recommended). You'll need to sub

Have you built a new website or redesigned your existing one and don't know what to do next? In this Legal Marketing 2.0 episode, hosts Guy Alvarez and Tim Baran discuss the top three takeaways - content, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media - from our popular blog post: You've Built a Website. Now What? It starts with content Without content you can't have a successful SEO or social media strategy. "You've built the Ferrari (website) and now you need the fuel (content) to make it go." But, not typical content - about the firm or the attorney, or practice area description. We're talking about thought leadership and client-centric content that anticipates the issues and concerns your target audience has. Clients want lawyers who understand their problems, their business, and have the experience to handle their issues, and the best way to demonstrate that is with client-centric content. Instead to starting out with what you do, talk about the problems your target audience face and then show how yo

Podcast Shownotes What is Google AdWords and how does it work? Google AdWords is an advertising platform that allows advertisers to place ads anywhere they are willing to pay to position them. It enables law firms to gain qualified leads by high placement on the search results page. The platform works on a market principle. In other words, what you pay is based on what the market will allow - more competitive keywords requires higher bids. Google will give you a Quality Score based on an algorithm that looks at the relevance between the keywords you're bidding on, the ad you wish to show, and the landing page you're trying to send people to. The lower your Quality Score, the more you pay to rank. If you're able to increase your Quality Score, your cost per click will be lower. When you start bidding, see where you're positioned in comparison to others. Then, you can raise your bid incrementally until you're in the position you want to be in. The key elements of your Google AdWords campaign Ads that reflect yo

Podcast shownotes The conversation and effort around SEO has been about how to optimize your site, get inbound links and the technical aspects. But increasingly the importance of local SEO has taken center stage. What is local SEO? In a nutshell, local SEO tailors web results to your geographic area. A customization based on where you are in the world. It's important because typical search isn't for a specific lawyer, it's for the type of lawyer you're looking for or problem you're trying to solve. Google can take that search data along with your location and give you results that matter to you. If you're on the East Coast there's no point in getting results for firms based in San Francisco.  What factors go into optimizing for local SEO? 1. Consistency of information in directories is the most important first step - Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) should be consistent across the 100+ directories that search engines crawl. Tools such as Yext can help, especially if a firm moves offices or changes phone n

Law firms are not just about selling legal services but the client's experience receiving those services. To do that you need to marry good industry insight with vigorous market research with exceptional design. What is the biggest challenge in getting a firm to do brand research? Their knee-jerk reaction is: "We don't need it. We know our clients. We've got it covered. Let's skip that and go straight to design." Though law firms may know their clients, it seldom tells the whole story. Most engage with their clients on a specific case or matter. They seldom sit with clients and to find out more about them and their company generally – where they're at and where they're going. As a result lawyers get a skewed view of what's important to the client because they're only getting the view of what's important to that matter. Market research can help identify the bigger — and softer — concerns clients and prospects have. Three points of resistance with research: 1. To reiterate, firms think they know everything. The

Podcast shownotes What does it take to build a marketing and business development department? You're responsible for sustaining a vision for how a law firm can improve and what it can become. Also, for inspiring colleagues and partners to embrace the same vision and to work with management on barriers to change. None of this is possible without buy-in and support from management, especially in top-down cultures. The more management can work hand-in-hand with marketing professionals and support and collaborate with them, the more success you will see over time. What's the difference between being CMO at a law firm vs. being one at a company? You have more flexibility at law firms in terms of how you spend money. With public companies, you have a responsibility to your shareholders and have to be more mindful about spending resources. A company serving the legal industry is more like a strategic partner that helps to advance the industry. Commercial litigation finance is helping to facilitate access to justice

Podcast Shownotes In this episode of the Legal Marketing 2.0 podcast, legal marketing leaders with decades of experience in the industry, provide super useful insight and advice on the process of law firm directory submissions. Chambers and Partners and The Legal 500 directories play a prominent role in the discussion. Let's get the big question out of the way: In today's world, do you even need a directory listing? To answer the question our esteemed guests provide a list of benefits of the submissions process that go beyond being listed and getting ranked: - Third party affirmation – You get an independent and objective look at your practice and your lawyers as compared to your peers - An opportunity for an internal practice review as you're putting everything together to see whether or not you're hitting your benchmarks. - The submissions process is an information hygiene exercise and provides a framework to organize your information and keep it up to date. A big frustration partners have is: a matter may

Podcast Shownotes Evan started out at a big defense firm which represented large insurance companies. He left the firm to become a solo practitioner, and a few years later, joined together with another solo practitioner who was a former colleague, to form a firm with a primary focus on insurance recovery for policyholders. Identifying an underserved area of law Evan identified a law practice niche that was underserved, then went deeper into a sub niche – long term disability claims and litigation, and established a national practice. The firm was formed at a time that particular industry had undergone a significant change and shrunk due to an abundance of claims being filed by professionals like chiropractors and orthopedic surgeons and dentists. In 1996 when the firm opened their doors insurance companies were denying a lot of those claims. His marketing efforts started with a little yellow pages ad for insurance recovery and calls from professionals came pouring in. The sub-niche took off from there. Other

The beauty of CRM is it can do a thousand things. The problem with CRM is it can do a thousand things. Starting out, most firms should concentrate on only two or three things. The challenge is that those two or three things are different for each firm, groups within the firm, or attorneys. Start with a needs assessment. Understand what you want to get out of CRM before you get the technology. Consider people, processes, and problems first, then the product: - Some firms just want to manage email lists and events which saves tons of time and for law firms, time is money. - Others want to identify and leverage relationships. - Later, you can add client team support, an alumni program, business development tracking, pipelines for opportunities, and other activity tracking. CRM is a fundamental change and improvement in how the firm manages its most important assets: relationships. It's not a project or initiative that just ends. It's an ongoing effort. What is the best way to get your attorneys to adopt CRM tech

Think of online behavior as an extension of offline behavior. If activities run afoul of ethics rules offline, don't do it online. Twenty-seven states have adopted some duty of technology competence requiring lawyers to understand and use technology to provide adequate representation to their clients. It can cause significant stress for solos and small firm attorneys, in particular. On top of representing their clients and maintaining competence in their practice areas, while trying to figure out how to run their businesses which law school doesn't teach, they have to be up on technology. It can be overwhelming. But it's important to be on top of changes in technology. If you're a litigator and don't understand social media and how it can be used to mine for evidence and research jurors, you may be committing malpractice. Question: How can attorneys make sure they're complying with ethical obligations regarding social media and technology? Answer: The rule of thumb is to think of your online behavior as an ex

You're never in a bad situation if you have a full pipeline. And you can't build a full pipeline if you're not doing business development. What's the biggest myth that needs to be put to bed when working with attorneys on business development? That business development is not sales and that sales is not involved in the legal business development process. We're all individual walking brands. Lawyers deal with a lot of pointed, data-driven information. Legal marketers need to have a strong game when it comes to selling internal processes to get attorneys and leadership to buy into things. The shift from a firm-driven market to a client-driven market. Companies have gotten a lot smarter about how they do business and are more efficient about how they work with law firms and firms have to respond. They have to differentiate beyond performing legal work to include client service. Demonstrate why your service is better, why your touch points are better, why your team is better, why your firm is better. In other wor

First a little background on Mark Cohen's journey before digging in to how he used writing and social media to develop a thought leadership platform. Mark was a trial lawyer for almost 30 years. He started out as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, became a big law partner, then left to start a national boutique firm where he learned how technology could be used more effectively to manage legal services, After a conversation with Thomas L. Friedman, author of the book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, about whether some what what was in the book would apply to the legal vertical, Mark started Clearspire, a virtual law firm and legal services company that upended the traditional law firm business model, to provide services to clients that wanted it delivered better, faster, cheaper. After closing shop, Mark founded Legal Mosaic, which is where this thought leadership story built around writing and social media, starts: Mark shares some of the lessons he learned along the way: - Mark disc

Law firm awards submission insights and tips! The recognition awards provide is meaningful to lawyers and firms who don't get a lot of accolades for their work. In fact, they get a lot of heat. So when a publication says "good job!" or recognize them as part of an elite group of people, that can be a source of inspiration. Additional benefits: - Awards highlight something positive about the firm. There's a morale benefit for people at the firm that shouldn't be discounted. - Awards provide opportunity for networking and career building. They can also serve as a recruiting tool for new lawyers and lateral partners. - Awards tell a story. They provide a benchmark. Something for others to aspire to. But as deadlines approach, law firms marketing and communication professionals can get stressed out. You should know that it's OK to ask for an extension. But don't call and try to litigate the rules. Yes, that happens. It will not engender a warm and fuzzy feeling. Not all awards are created equal. Awards all have c

What is Client journey mapping and why is it important for lawyers and law firm marketers? Simply put, a client journey map is a visual of the actual experience a client has in working with any organization. For a law firm, that experience can start even before a prospect becomes a client. Client journey mapping entered the legal lexicon about two years ago and comes from the phrase "customer journey mapping" used by corporations around the world for many years. It started in retail but quickly moved into professional services. When mapping out the client's journey, think individual rather than organization. Law firms tend to think of clients as organizations or companies. It's important to remember that people are hiring you. Focus on the person rather than the organization to understand the experience individuals have when working with a law firm. A person with feelings, attitudes, objects, preferences, and a client journey map helps us better understand how, when we interact with this person, from the begi

Are you using analytics to track your website performance and digital marketing efforts? If so, are you using it correctly? In this episode of the Legal Marketing 2.0 podcast, we discuss - How to collect data - What to do with the data you collect - What are meaningful data insights? - Google and other analytics tools There's more to analytics than Google Analytics vanity metrics: visitors and page views. There's Digital Marketing Analytics: Not just measuring your website but the entirety of your integrated digital marketing strategy. This includes SEO, email marketing, social media, campaigns, events, and so on. Why is overall, integrated digital marketing analytics important for lawyers and law firm marketers? - To understand the effectives of all aspects of their marketing efforts. - To see how each marketing initiative is performing: social media, blogging, email marketing, online advertising, events, etc. - To get data on what's working and what's not across platforms, channels, and campaigns, and how t

Few things cause more confusion or frustration in digital marketing than search engine optimization (SEO). In the latest episode of the Legal Marketing 2.0 podcast, we clear up some of the confusion by identifying four techniques: Technical, On Page, Of Page, and Local, with some actionable takeaways. Show notes: Technical SEO – This is how the search engines crawl and index your website and blog. You have to think about SEO when you're building your website. It's not enough to make your site look pretty and functional, you need a good back-end or coding structure that the robots crawling your site can recognize and register. Other elements to consider are site speed and responsive design (mobile) to improve your ranking. Tip: Submit your site to Google Search Console, including your sitemap. This allows the search engines to index your website. You will get feedback on errors on your site. On-Page SEO – Are the pages on your website properly optimized for the keywords you're trying to rank for? This can be a

Ten essential elements to establish a thought leadership platform to build your personal brand, extend your network, and attract more clients.

Hosts Guy Alvarez and Tim Baran of Good2bSocial discuss marketing in the legal profession and why they're launching the Legal Marketing 2.0 podcast.