Chris Dreyer

Welcome to the 100th episode of Personal Injury Mastermind, the show where elite personal injury attorneys and leading edge marketers give you exclusive access to grow strategies for your firm. Over the course of our first hundred episodes, the leaders who have shaped our industry have come on week after week and given their wisdom on how to get clients, grow your firm and become a better lawyer. So in this milestone, you want to take a look back at some of the awesome people we’ve had on the show, and listen to all those incredible guests.

James Farrin

To be effective, you have to sort of go big or go home.

David Farkas

There are a number of different factors when you’re trying to evaluate the quality of a link.

Gary Sarner

How do you touch the these people over and over again in an affordable way?

Harry Morton:

Getting started is just the most important thing

Chris Dreyer

Today in this mega episode it’s all about how to get clients. With help from some of our all-time favorites, we’re going to look at how to excel across all your marketing channels. We’re huge proponents of omni-channel marketing over here. We’ll cover TV, radio, social media, and digital marketing before heading into our bread and butter, the wide world of SEO, with some of the biggest names in the business. These all-stars will share their hard won wisdom to elevate your marketing strategy and get you the clients that will take your practice to the next level.

Ali Awad

If your page is on private, it’s literally like having a business with a door that’s locked and closed upfront.

Glen Lerner

We’re all different people. I advertise to what I believe are my strengths.

Shaina Weisinger

Don’t get on Tik TOK if you know that your audience isn’t in their twenties.

Jacob Malherbe

The less you spend the cheaper it is.

Chris Dreyer

I’m your host Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. We help elite personal injury attorneys dominate first page rankings with search engine optimization. Before we dig into the nitty gritty, I just want to highlight something from the legendary Mike Papantonio, who said this on this very show.

Mike Papantonio

It’s tough to tell a lawyer to think about something. They want to grab that same, you know, whatever’s been handed down. They just want to embrace that. They’re afraid to say ‘no, I reject that’ or ‘I might accept it, but I want to modify it and make it better’. It’s so difficult to get lawyers to do that, man. You may not know this, but the Clarence Darrow, probably one of the greatest lawyers of his time. He hated lawyers. He was one of the most impressive lawyers of his time. He said, they’re not creative thinkers. They’re afraid to innovate. They don’t read enough. They don’t Excel in areas beyond the law. And his point was, we have to do all of that to be sustainable, not just sustainable in your practice, but sustainable is an individual that has any kind of cultural lens.

Chris Dreyer

If you want to become successful and you want to help more people and make the world a better place, you have to be willing to get outside your comfort zone. So I urge you to bring Pap’s spirit of innovation to this episode. Not all these ideas will be right for your firm, but some will be. They’ll just take a little courage. To kick us off, let’s talk about TV. Personal injury attorneys have been using TV ads to attract business for decades. And we’ve had several masters of the art on the show talk about why it’s so effective and how best to pull it off. First up, we have James Farrin. His firm has helped over 50,000 clients and a key part of reaching those clients has been his wildly successful TV ad campaign.

James Farrin

I think when I decided I was going to be a personal injury attorney, it seemed to me that the big time was going to be people who were on TV. That seemed to be how you have a lot of cases, how you got some notoriety. So I think I was always interested in going in that direction. So when I had early in my career big results, big settlement, I decided to plow that money into a TV campaign. And I thought that the market masters campaign, which is the one that we used was the most innovative. Because I thought it looked professional, really well-polished and frankly, I didn’t have to be on as myself. I think that would have been, I’m not that great of an actor. I wouldn’t want to be bothered in restaurants, by people having seen my face on TV. So it’s allowed me to live a life of an anonymity and take advantage of the benefits of their really professional polished campaigns. And so we started that back over 20 years ago and it’s a, Commercials kind of were an immediate hit, took off, built us some notoriety. And then of course that led to the necessity of really getting good at running our law firm as a business, because suddenly we are dealing with questions of scale, lots of cases and having to have good technology. So by going on TV, I don’t know that I played it all out in my head at the time, but that led to lots of cases. And thus led to the need to become effective at running operations, in a strong business like manner.

Chris Dreyer

I’ve always wondered, what are some of the foundational recommendations when it comes to TV in terms of, minimum budgets, even consider it, just some of the basics. And I have always heard you’ve got to advertise during the news and sports because that’s where people watch live TV. What are just some general advice to those looking to maybe do TV to in today’s time period

James Farrin

The amount that you need to spend depends on the size of the market. Obviously we like being in the top three to five positions in the market because one, if you’re pretty far down the list, you just don’t get enough visibility and your messages drownded out. And so I think that to be effective, you have to sort of say go big or go home and be a strong player there. I’m a big believer in, I think TV is a direct response vehicle. For, at least for us we’re looking for people who have been hurt most people have never thought about who their lawyer is going to be, if if they happen to get involved in a serious wreck and need a lawyer. A lot of people have not thought about who that person is quite a bit in advance. Right? So what we want to do is catch people in the moment when they’re in need. And we do that by running lots of daytime TV commercials. Now there’s other schools of thought, which is go to more of a branding approach and run commercials different times of day, evening news. I have found that less cost-effective for direct response. I’m a big believer in just running on the air broadcast commercial. During the day in heavy frequency, that’s a formula that’s expensive, but it does work. And I think it leads. If you can afford to do it, it can lead to a good number of cases on an effective cost-effective basis.

Chris Dreyer

It was so great to hear James talk candidly about the financial realities involved with TV advertising and he isn’t the only one to subscribe to the go big or go home policy. In my chat with Glen Lerner, he also stress the importance of looking at your market before deciding if competing in the TV space is financially viable.

Glen Lerner

Obviously you have to look at the market. Oh, the cost per TV households, how much is being spent by attorneys per TV household to see how competitive it is, obviously the most competitive markets in the country, Vegas is one of the most competitive markets in the country in every medium, especially TV, but billboards. I mean, you go to Vegas and it’s nauseating how many ours included, but yeah. Atlanta obviously is incredibly competitive. Baton Rouge, Birmingham. There’s some incredibly competitive markets that are just so skewed. They don’t even make sense. If you’re not going to spend enough to be the top four or five players in the market, I just think it’s almost better to find another way to advertise, find a place, find a niche where you can have a strong presence. It just depends on the market. It depends on what your message is going to be. Who are you? I don’t think people can come and say, I’m going to do the same advertising as Glen. You’re not me. And I’m not going to say same advertising as John, that I’m not John, we’re all different people. I advertise to what I believe in my strengths, my ability to just to be approachable and Hey, that guy seems like a cool guy, a regular guy. That’s what my commercials are. I’m just a regular guy because of. That’s not going to work for everybody. Cause people are gonna see through and you, if you were a jerk, they’re going to see you’re a jerk trying to just be a regular guy. And if you’re a regular guy trying to be a jerk, they’re gonna see through that. I’ve always looked at it like it’s the jury out there and it’s, I’m giving my message. My competitors are giving them a message. And who does security? Who does the jury listen to? And I think we’ve been, we’ve been relatively successful in our market set, where we’ve been the dominant player in all of our markets that the jury has picked us up, been a couple of markets we’ve gone into where they said, you know what guilty.

Chris Dreyer

One of the things you mentioned, we had James Farrin on from North Carolina. He’s like, Chris, he’s like a lot of people talk about TV is just brand, but he’s like, I really use it as direct response. A lot of times people say like it’s either, or, but kind of from what I’m hearing from you is you think, Hey TV, it is brand, but it is direct response during.

Glen Lerner

Yay and nay. Ultimately TV is absolutely brand-building. I think certain types of TB marketing, our direct response. For example, your mass torts advertising become direct response because they absolutely, oh my God. Oh, I need that right now. But when you’re advertising your normal commercials all the time, a lot of times you just try and get for us. Obviously we have our jingles and we get the branded numbers, so, in Chicago, two two two twenty two twenty two, call 2, 2, 2 22 22. So it stays on their head. Some people, meet them in a big, your number was the first number my child ever knew. I hear that about a thousand times a year, but that’s creating a brand. Will that be, is that, direct response. I think there’s right. I think there’s a nexus where direct response and a brand intersect, but I still, ultimately, I think we’re about building brands. I don’t think anything’s ever going to trump the brand. The reason why I like the brand. So many people go online now to find the other lawyers. And so if they go on, they find you in the first page. So go down the first page. A lot of times they say they stopped at the top three. They go through the first page and ‘that’s right- Lerner & Rowe’, man, I can’t believe I forgot. So I mean, that’s what you’re trying to do.

Chris Dreyer

Both Glenn and James see TV ads as a crucial element of brand building. If you’re already known and trusted by a potential client prior to their accident, they’re more likely to remember you when they find themselves in need. For Gary Sarner, it’s the same method, different medium, with radio. He sees an opportunity to meet clients where they need you most.

Gary Sarner

Where do car accidents happen? They’re on the road in their car. There’s a few cars out there that have video capabilities, but every single automobile out there has audio and audio today. People don’t use the term radio as much because people consume audio the way they want to, whether it’s on an FM or am radio station, it’s on an iHeart listening app, an Odyssey listening app, and obviously there’s Sirius XM and there’s Spotify and podcasts. But they’re all through the audio system in the car. So listen, nobody wants anybody to get in an accident and get hurt really bad, but they happen every day. How do you touch these people over and over again in an affordable way to get an ROI that makes a difference to the business’s bottom line. It’s with radio. That is, for me and what I have found in the eight and a half years of I’ve worked with personal injury attorneys, radio makes a difference, a bigger difference than television has ever made for the people I worked with.

Chris Dreyer

TV and radio are still fantastic. While myself, I see a little bit of the market share shifting on the TV side because of streaming and the ability to skip commercials. It’s still very viable for daily news, daytime television, and just overall. It’s a significant portion of the population still watched TV, particularly on cable. So it’s still fantastic. And in radio, the reason radio is so powerful is because wrecks occur in a vehicle. And that’s where you listen to the radio. I know things have changed there too with Pandora and Spotify, but a significant portion of on the radio still listened to sports and and those other stations. So these are fantastic mediums. And there’s a saying that all marketing works, but it’s just, how much are you paying for those impressions and arbitrage occurs where attention shifts. So if more people go to other mediums, those other mediums may become more expensive. TV and radio may become less costly. So you just got to look and see if the overall numbers make sense, the number of impressions you’re getting and how it can impact your overall strategy from a flywheel perspective, because as your brand builds and you get greater visibility from all these mediums, it can actually supplement other channels as well. And we all know that. No matter how focused we are on attribution, that it’s nearly impossible to get it down to an exact science. So just be aware of that and be aware of how these two mediums can have a significant impact on your brand. While TV and radio have been longterm staples for many firms, digital marketing is a much newer game, and it’s also one that is continuously about. There are so many different platforms for where your content can live. And each one necessitates a different approach on a recent episode, web design and copy extraordinaire Mike Budny explained why having a presence online is so crucial.

Mike Budny

People Google your name all day long, whether you know it or not. What shows up is, if you’re leaving it up to chance, who knows. There might be reviews about you, it might be this and that. You’re not controlling the narrative that actually represents you and expresses you properly is what the truth of it is. So, if that’s important to you, which in many cases, it probably should be having at least some level of presence there that can properly represent you. Then point back to your firm is a big win.

Chris Dreyer

I see so many beautiful websites, but when I read the copy or kind of look at them, I’m like, how are they different than this guy? Maybe you can speak to me just a little bit about, the copywriting your team and kind of what that looks like.

Mike Budny

One universal fact that I think we all know, but we don’t think about consciously, is that people do not read website copy. Super important to realize that like, okay, you’re writing great copy, but are people reading it? The answer is not most of it, but what people are doing and the way we all consume websites for the most part is we scan there’s just too much going on in all of our. And we’re summarizing summing things up very quickly and we’re pattern recognition machines through and through. So you couple, all those things together and what you get is somebody who’s just going to your site is going to load and they’re gonna be scanning down your site and they’re picking out a couple of things. One is this speaking to me? The second question they’re gonna ask is what’s in it for me if they get past that. Yeah, it is speaking to me now for you guys as attorneys and firms, it’s not hard to get through. I’m speaking to you. This is what. But what really resonates is, like I said, that makes us different as a story work that really humanizes and builds that bridge. And what the messaging that we want to do here is we speak to people in headlines. If you’re going to scanned on a website, you’re not going to read any of the body copy or the paragraph copy, unless you get brought into it and you engage and you get roped into it. And the way we want to do that is through a us really strong, bold, four word, five word headline that your eyes are going to scan. You’re going to read it. And then ideally, because again, we’re doing all our custom work. The section that you’re getting roped into is custom designed for the copy. That’s the sequence of events. You never have design happen, but until copy is on point and going in that direction, otherwise you’ve got to scrap the whole thing. They have to work in conjunction.

Chris Dreyer

Mike’s approach of having content that resonates, but also looks great, is something that can be applied to more than just your website. Ali Awad described similar ideas during his top tips for dominating Instagram.

Ali Awad

First, if your page is on private, it’s literally like having a business with a door that’s locked and closed up front. Don’t put your page on private. It needs to be public. And once it’s public, make it a business page. Once it’s a business page, now you can take analytics. Okay. That’s number one. And it should be self-explanatory but I had to mention the biggest problem. Immediate number two is obviously if your door’s opened, then we should be able to go into your store and see what you have to offer. You don’t walk into a Macy’s and see that there’s a hundred sale signs right at the entrance. You find that they strategically put something that’s going to grab your attention and lore you deeper into the store. They usually put their best product upfront. Hey, here’s the new mattress. Here’s the most comfy couch, that $14,000 cloud couch. You go to restoration hardware. They’re going to put that couch right there in the front, and they’re not going to clutter it with advertisements. They’re going to give you the best of the best right there in the front. So your opportunity to make a good impression on people is your store. And I know this because I worked in retail and jokers, audio, and my car audio shop for over a decade. And I strategically put all the radios and the TVs and the fun stuff in the back of the store so that I could lure you in. But in the front I put all the fun stuff, like the hoverboards, right in the brand new 18 inch Mac daddy subwoofer that obviously no one could afford, but everyone wanted to touch your page. Your Instagram page is your storefront. And if everything looks like an advertisement, then you’re inviting people to leave. Because I don’t want to come here just to buy I, everyone likes to buy, but not everyone likes being sold. So you want to make that as smooth of a process as possible. And so you invite them to your page. You invite them to your content, starting with good highlights, things that show the type of person that you are and fresh new content that is not advertising. That is entertaining first and educating. That’s how you do it. So if your page looks like advertisements, that’s the biggest mistake you can make. No one cares about independence day, bro. No one wants to see the fireworks and all that other stuff, but Hey, happy independence day. Hope you’re spending it with the loved ones. No one cares about that. So why are you even wasting time? Like, yeah, I know you can post from time to time just to have filler content, but don’t do that. That’s not what people are coming to your page for. So number one, make sure you’re set up as a business profile. Number two, make sure that you’re actually giving people the best information that you have and it’s fresh and relevant. Think of it like the storefront of your retail store. And number three, my video trick, my favorite video trick of all. When you’re putting out videos, don’t introduce yourself in the morning. Don’t say my name is Ali Awad with Alia Wal-Mart and we fight for maximum compensation. Cause I’ve already scrolled seven other videos, and I’m literally watching this cute kitten video by the time you even got through your intro. My secret is to put your conclusion in the beginning of the video, because it’s literally the best hook that you can get. And if you have a hard time with this, just record a normal video and then edit the intro, the introduction out, and then just take the close of the video and put it in the. And when you do that, you grab people’s attention within the first three seconds, which is the holy grail of content. You grab people’s attention within the first three seconds. They’re going to stay on that page. Facebook is going to reward you by showing it to more people. Your engagement increases, your awareness increases your CPL or your cost per lead, and your cost per client decreases all because you figured out how to give people engaging. You do those three things, which I promise you, 99% of you are not doing. You will be a lifelong fan of social media.

Chris Dreyer

When it comes to organic social media marketing, there’s always the dreaded question of algorithms and what to do. How much should you post, who engages? How much? Few of them are more intimidating than LinkedIn. LinkedIn as a behemoth, but who better to show us the ropes than ShayRowbottom?

Shay Rowbottom

I do think quantity is more important than quality on LinkedIn. I, myself, I posted three times a week starting out.. So the thing is if I would have posted every day starting out, I would have gotten the same amount of use, but I would have been doing twice the work and twice the posts, because LinkedIn will distribute the views between multiple posts. And I still, even today with over 600,000 followers, I don’t, I usually won’t post more than once a day. So I would say once a day, once you’ve built up a following, if you’re just brand new, starting out even less than that is fine. And also Chris, the most important thing on social media is consistent. So post what you can commit to, if you can only commit to one post a week, starting out. And that’s the only way you’re not going to get overwhelmed and quit, then that’s fine. Start with one a week and you can build from there. A lot of people want to hit the ground running. They want to start with like 10 posts a day and it’s like, they just ended up burnt out really quick and also frustrated. I don’t get it. I’m posting so much where the views it takes time to build that personal algorithm on your page. So you want to do it strategically. You do want to do it slowly, make one post, do everything that you can to accumulate as much engagement on that one post first, as much as you can, let it die out, then go to the next post. And these are all things that I also break down in the program, but. Yeah. At the end of the day, if you’re posting all the time and getting no reach stuff, because you’re basically communicating to the LinkedIn algorithm over and over again, that you’re not valuable and you’re butchering the personal algorithm on your page.

Chris Dreyer

It makes a lot of sense. And you listen to a Cardone book, maybe 10 X or something like I need to post 10 times a day and maybe I need to repurpose and just keep posting. But I think the most important, or one of the very important things you said there is the engagement. How important is the early engagement on your posts and what types of tips do you have there?

Shay Rowbottom

Absolutely. It’s super important to get engagement in the form of comments on LinkedIn. That’s what really drives the average. So just ask, if you’re doing your very first post on LinkedIn, have some people lined up to comment on it. That’s okay. If it’s not purely organic, starting out, you want to jumpstart your algorithm. You want to get your video into the feed because every single person that comments is now exposing that piece of content to their following. And that’s how you grow. That’s what I did in the beginning. When I hired my coach, I made my first post. He shot it out to his network. He had all his peeps go comment on it and it really helped jumpstart me in the algorithm. And it kinda goes for like any business, really? Like if you’re starting a business, what do you usually do? You usually have a few of your friends buy your product for free or discount, and then they write you a testimonial and then you build and build from there. So there is a. Some controversy, I guess you could say on LinkedIn about the morality of this inorganic engagements starting out like, oh, you just cheated Shay. You just had people manually go comment. It’s like, that’s. That’s right. If I’m going to do door to door, vacuum sales, who are the first couple of people I’m going to go to are going to be my mom, my grandma and my sister. And all the people that I know personally, like that’s normal. We all need help jump-starting our business. Jump-starting our brand and LinkedIn is no exception. So I would say starting with just have some people to comment right away, have them comment within the first hour, whether it’s your employees, your colleagues, your partners whether it’s your mom, have your mom go common on your LinkedIn and that will help propel your page forward and kind of jumpstart you in the algorithm. Especially if you already have a dead profile where nobody is seeing.

Chris Dreyer

There are a ton of things that you can do to drive more social media organic traffic to your social profiles, through engagement, posts, frequency, the types of content, the medium, the entertainment value. All those things can drive organic social media traffic. But if you want to take a little sidestep and you want to give them a little extra boost, you can always pay for social media traffic as well. So I spoke with Facebook advertising specialist, Jacob Malherbe about how to set a paid social budget with surprisingly little money.

Jacob Malherbe

You can literally come in with as little as you want and I’m talking, you can spend $50 a day if that’s what you want. We have no contracts because I think that’s bullshit. We have only one thing on our invoice that says any money not spend on Facebook. Fully refundable at any time for any reason. So what we try and do is say this, Hey, all those people and the attorneys ask me all the time, Hey, what are people spending? Because I want to spend more than them. That’s not how it works, how it wants this, you have a service. And inside in the middle of that circle is your coal audience. And the less money you spend, the more money will be spent on your call audience. The more money you spend, the more we spend on the peripheral of your core audience. So I can almost guarantee you that if somebody came with a hundred dollars and another guy came with a thousand dollars, the guy that came with a hundred dollars, will get a cheaper lead than the guy that came with the thousand dollars, however, he will not get volume, of course. Right. So that’s another play. But even if you have little money to spend in Facebook, it’s not a problem. It’s about twenty-five bucks per thousand views in Facebook. And right now, just to give you an idea, because we were talking about Santec cases, some cases come in at about 600 to $800 today. So that is between 40 and $50 per week for cancer cases. It’s a misunderstanding this thing at least on Facebook. And I don’t know Google as well, but on Facebook, the less you spend the cheaper it is.

Chris Dreyer

If you’re going to talk about paid social, we also got to talk about pay-per-click and we got to talk about Google ads. Similar to Jacob, Steve Ginsburg stresses that it’s not as simple as more money equals more conversions, and he joined me to talk about the Google quality scores and how to get the most clients from a PPC campaign.

Steve Ginsberg

So the amount that an attorney or any business pays per click on Google, it’s dictated mainly by two things, your bid, obviously what you’re willing to pay per click, and then what your quality score. So Google has what they call a quality score for every keyword that’s that you’re managing. And you’re in your AdWords. Campaigns has a quality score. It’s a number out of 10, obviously 10 out of 10 is, is the best in, zero out of 10 would be. The higher, your quality score is the lower that you actually have to pay per click. What determines your quality score? There’s several factors, but the main two would be your click-through rate. Right? Google obviously wants to show ads in the top spots that they know are getting traffic and making Google. And then the relevance of the ad and the landing page to that query. So Google made it official it’s guess it’s been maybe about a year and a half or so, because it used to be where you could run one or two, two ads in an ad group and test it and it didn’t have an impact on your quality score. Google says now, but if you don’t have three. Minimum in an ad group that it’ll actually dock your quality score. I haven’t actually seen it really dip because of that. And maybe it’s because we test, three plus ads in a group, but so it’s become part of the quality score algorithm. So if an attorney, has an agency that’s running their pay-per-click campaigns definitely suggests that maybe it even more important point when you say, like an ad. They’ll start to serve the ad more that gets more traffic, right? They don’t care about the conversions. They want to show the ad that they’re seeing get more traffic. But the default setting in Google ads is to steer the budget towards higher performing ads. So the right thing to do, because if you don’t set the ad to rotate indefinitely at the beginning, where they do a straight split test or an ABC test with all the ads, then Google will automatically, even if it’s a couple of days in, and it’s a tiny sample size and they see that one ad got a few more clicks, they’ll immediately start steering the budget there. So that’s just, and a lot of people make that mistake. They’d come out of the gates. Google says, Hey, optimize your ads for the ones that get the most traffic and people try and do it that way. But you have to rotate them indefinitely to start to get a real sample size and to get statistical significance on what ads are really working better. Not the ones that Google is just going to steer budget to right away.

Chris Dreyer

Your website and social media platforms can all be optimized to help grab a potential client’s eye, but what about their ear? Harry Morton is an expert at making branded podcasts and he told us all about why they’re so effective and how to maximize their impact.

Harry Morton

What podcasting does best is we see levels of engagement that you just don’t see in any other media. I think, if we look at the statistics behind and we do, we spend a lot of time nerding out on this stuff, behind the kind of consumption of a podcast, that’s say a 30 minute podcast, we’re commonly seeing 80, 85, 90% completion rates. Meaning the average listener is listening to, 90% of that content of a 30 minute episode. That’s a period of time that you’re spending with your customer, with your client, with your prospect, that you just can’t get anywhere else. So if for example, you pay that to social. You’ll be really hard pressed to get, the average person listened to more than five, 10, maybe percent of a video that you put out on social or a, post or whatever. Email open rates, anything above 50% is a really great rate. And so to be able to consistently week over week, spend 30 minutes of your time with the people that you’re trying to reach is really powerful.

Chris Dreyer

For those listening it might be really appealing because a podcasts typically you think of it as like a DIY, there’s a lot of that DIY nature to it. What advice do you have for businesses that might consider starting their own podcasts?

Harry Morton

Yeah, I think the first and most important thing is really to think about why you’re making a podcast, because I think a lot of people come to us and they say, we’ve got this great idea for a show. We’re really excited. Build a huge audience. It’s going to be great. And so what they quite often do is will come to me with a concept. And so they’ve, they’ve got this idea. We’re going to speak to X group of people about this topic, and this is how we’re going to be. This is why the show is gonna be great. I think where we see the most success is when people actually think about instead what is the business objective I have here? What am I trying to achieve? Who am I trying to reach? Like, so who’s our target buyer or prospect or whatever that we want to be our audience and what do they need right now? Offer because rather than coming at it from here’s the show, I’ve got this idea for, how do I find the listeners that I want to listen to it. We prefer to go the other way and say, here are the listeners, here’s what you have to offer. How can we build something that kind of meets their needs? So like what shows are they already listening to? What other podcasts are already serving that vertical, where their gaps and how can we make something unique because we’re in a world where there’s 2 million podcasts in existence, so there’s no shortage of choice. So we need to make sure that we’re actually offering something genuinely unique and differentiated. So that would be what I would say. The other thing I would say is that while it’s incredibly important to come out of the gate sounding good. And, because you want to represent yourself properly in this medium, getting started is just the most important thing. So, if you’re a DIY podcast or you’re considering starting podcasting, Start now because the old cliche, the best time to start a podcast with 10 years ago, but the second best time is today. So just get started because it will take a while to kind of see that, that listenership. And so, the effect over time will certainly compound.

Chris Dreyer

So far, we’ve covered a lot of different formats, platforms, channels, and I know what you’re thinking. How do I make enough content to be across all of these? Don’t panic because Shaina Weisinger has the answer.

Shaina Weisinger

Don’t become overwhelmed with having to be on every single platform. Know what platforms your audience is on. Like pick one that you want to do really well and you know they’re there. Don’t get on Tik TOK, if you know that your audience isn’t in their twenties, like it’s just not, why? Start with something that you know they’re there and then you can use the other platforms to supplement and just to make sure that you are creating more brand awareness and you populate consistently. Like social media is insatiable. There’s just no way to put enough out there. And the most efficient, cleanest way to do it is to create pillar content, larger pieces of content. Be it text, audio, video. I’m sure we’ll get into that later. And then. Create with intention, knowing that you’re going to create micro pieces, the small snippets under two minutes out of it to then use on your social media strategy. And what’s cool about that then is you’re not just creating content to get likes. You’re creating content that hopefully dives into something bigger, something longer into a journey for that viewer. So it’s just much more intentional and it’s a much more efficient, scalable way to create content for your company and all of those social media assets. The intention is to take that. Off of the platform onto like a landing page where now you’ve got them, you can do retargeting pixels, you can have an opt-in with like your digital downloads. So you can now collect their information. The intent is to get them off of the platform. And if you can create content that will make them want to close it. And see the rest of the content. Then I think that’s the savviest way to be creating.

Chris Dreyer

When it comes to social media marketing. In my opinion, the most important thing is consistency. You’ve got to consistently show up and deliver. It’s going to take time to create that. The other thing is you can’t think just about yourself, creating your content about, what are the steps that I need to take after a car accident? And you’re creating this content that’s all about acquiring personal injury clients. You’ve got to have some entertainment value. You’ve got to have a reason for individuals to like your content, to follow your content and to engage. And that’s why I’m a huge proponent of not only doing the organic social media on a consistent basis, but also complementing that with a paid social campaign to boost your content, to get it in front of your potential audiences eyes. Because at the beginning, we all start from ground zero with not a very big following, but it starts to compound. And over time you get more and more. And that’s the way to success is to create consistent content that’s entertaining and compliment that through paid social. Hey, we’ve talked a lot about channels, but where does everyone go these days? When they want to convert, they go to Google. We all have our phone within arms length. So we got to talk about this final area of discussion. We got to talk about SEO, that’s my bread and butter, that’s what I’m passionate about. We’ve had the masters of SEO on the show each with a mountain of amazing advice, but let’s start with Brian Dean on why SEO is so important.

Brian Dean

SEO still brings in a way more traffic than any other source by a mile because those other sources also aren’t necessarily getting more organic reach either. If you look at YouTube. There’s more ads. It’s more competitive. It’s hard to get your video seen. On Twitter, organic reaches down. It’s more busy. It’s more loud. It’s hard to get your message seen. If you, just kind of check off every other possible channel. It comes back to SEO and email, and those are the two channels that just work really well. And on the bright side of this whole, like Google adding more stuff. I don’t know if you noticed this, Chris, but I’m just seeing that two years ago, they rolled out a bunch of stuff like two or three years ago since then it’s been kind of like in terms of rolling out these features that reduce clicks and the search results. I feel like the last two years they’ve been kind of quiet. I think maybe they found an equilibrium there where it’s like, all right. We definitely want people to stay in Google and not leave Google, which is understandable, but we also want to give people what they want in general. I think people do want a quick answer. Sometimes the feature snippet, but sometimes they want to go to a site. So I feel like the trend isn’t like clicks are dropping. I feel like they’re pretty consistent over the last, maybe two years, two and a half years. So for me, I’m not that worried about it. I’ll try it. Every marketing channel under the sun and SEO and email are by far number one in numbers.

Chris Dreyer

Shifting over to link building. It’s difficult in the legal space. Nobody wants to link to a car accident, lawyer sales page, or practice area page, so what would just in general, and this is big throwing the softball up there, Brian, in general, what would. Some recommendations in terms of link-building maybe attracting links for a difficult niche, like the legal vertical.

Brian Dean

Yeah. I mean, I have I’ve experienced, I used to run an agency myself and I had tons of attorney clients and you’re right. It’s tough because no one wants to link to a DUI lawyer website. The content that is usually around those topics are usually pretty uninteresting like what to do. If you get pulled over drunk, drinking and driving, like they’re just not content that people generally link to. So what I’ve seen a lot of people have success with is creating data around these topics and having that be the link magnet. And from there you boost your domain authority and your service pages will rank because like you said, Chris, those service pages. It would be amazing if you could get people to link to them, but they’re not the same way with an e-commerce site. If you have a product page, it’s almost toaster. No, one’s going to link to that page ever. So just forget it and just. Build your domain authority create pages that people will happily link to go, want to link to, and that’ll boost all the pages on your site. So I think in the case of the attorneys, it’s in that whole space, I don’t see it as being done. And it’s a huge untapped opportunity in this space because you guys, they have tons of data. They have tons of smart people working in all these firms. And they just, what they usually do is just hire some random freelance writer to write 10 things to know about hiring it’s yet DUI, lawyer. It’s not going to do anything. You got to create something that people link to. And there’s tons of interesting data around your actual niche, but also just in general. So you’re a patent attorney. How about writing… I would love to know… how many patents are getting filed now versus 10 years ago and tracking over time, that’s the type of thing that people will link to happily. So, yeah, I’d focus really on data. So instead of being a resource, be a source for other blogs journalists, so they link to you when they reference, the number of patents have increased by such and such, or the number of DUIs has decreased by, 83% since the pandemics or whatever. These, this data sitting out there already, it just a matter of collecting it and organizing it in a attractive.

Chris Dreyer

Like Brian said, increasing the linkability of your content is absolute key, but if it’s going to impact your ranking, there are a few other things to consider as well. And who better to lay it all out for us then link building specialist, David Farkas.

David Farkas

I’d say that there are a number of different factors when you’re trying to evaluate the quality of a link. So, number one is that like the website that’s linking to you? So that website is that a credible website, does that website have traffic? That’s something which is pretty basic, you want to make sure that the website has a pulse and then I’d also look around that website. Does that website have any sort of editorial standards? And of course you want high editorial standards. And then of course, relevance is a major factor as well. So that’s the first thing that I’d say is looking at the LinkedIn website that’s linking to you. But I feel like these days, Google has gotten more advanced than that, and that’s not a. And they’re looking at other things as well. So besides for the website that’s linking to, what are they linking to on your website? Are they linking to a great piece of content or are they just linking to like your services page or your money page or things of that nature? Because I feel that Google has certainly come a long way and they’re much more advanced, and a lot better at recognizing what sort of content is actually link worthy and merits having someone linked to it from their site and. That’s why, when you think about link-building these days, you also really have to take into account like your on-site strategy and how you’re going to provide for your users, meaningful content. So when the site that’s linking to you is linking the. Quality piece of content, then those two things like compliment each other. And then that link has a lot more effectiveness. And the third thing that I’d probably look at when I’m thinking about what makes a link, good is also looking at it from the perspective of the user. So if they’re on the site and they’re linking on that link, that links to your site. Are they going to be pleased when they end up on the other end of that link. And on the other side, on your site, are you actually, again, are you providing something valuable or are you just trying to have some sort of sales pitch and you were able to crank in a link and stuff went into this site?

Chris Dreyer

When it comes to SEO, here’s the thing you’ve got to do. The things that other individuals, other firms aren’t willing to do. If your content is a thousand words and all your top competitors contents, a thousand words, you need to make a 4,000 word landing page that answers your consumers in. And is the absolute best source of information around that subject area. That’s just content. Your website needs to look great and needs to have a great UX. And let’s talk about link building. Here’s the thing about SEO agencies, all of you that are looking to hire an SEO agency. Sure. Many of them can create content. Many of them can optimize a website, the differentiating factor, the thing that sets them all up. It’s their ability to acquire links. Think about this analogy. If you’re trying to win an election, you want to get as many votes as possible. If you’re trying to win the first page of Google, you want to get as many quality links as possible. It’s the hardest thing to do from an SEO perspective, because it’s not just creating content, it’s sourcing the operative. It’s going through an editorial review process. It’s working with those webmasters to contribute content on their sites. It’s making value for other individuals that’s relationship building. So here’s a few things you can do if they are just building directories and doing the guest posting. If you have a podcast and they don’t, you can get links from podcast hosts, you can get links from people linking back to their interview. You can get links from those mediums, those podcasts. Let’s talk about a different mode. If all your competitors are just doing a bunch of content written content, you could create video and get links from video directories. You can turn. PDF into a white paper and get links from PDF directories. You need to be willing to do the things that other SEO agencies and other firms aren’t willing to do. And you need to find an SEO agency that, that knows and understands those tactics and has those competitive advantages. Whether your strategy includes TV, social, or SEO, you have to be observant, agile, and willing to learn. I think Neil Patel summarized it perfectly.

Neil Patel

If you’re trying to succeed as a lawyer, anyone, what works now may not work in the future. And I don’t know what the future is. You don’t know what the future is. No one does, but typically if you can end up going out there and making the best of the opportunity. What I mean by that is we have clubhouse. I don’t know what clubhouse is going to do a year from now. I just know you can build up audience really fast on it. We don’t know what LinkedIn is gonna do a year from now. All this stuff is amazing, but it could change in a year from now. And some of this stuff may not even exist a year from now. I look at it as just go and use all the channels for what they work. And as they adapt experiment, adapt with them and be ready for the change. And that’s actually the biggest thing that we’re seeing. People make a mistake on in which I hear all the time. People say, oh, Google is taking away more clicks for me. That’s not fair. You don’t have to be on Google. You don’t have to have your content index be appreciative for the traffic they’re driving in the first place. If you don’t want to, someone will take your spot. Oh, Facebook isn’t giving me the shares anymore. Like they used to we’ll use it while they can go on Tik TOK. I see lawyers on Tik TOK, generating businesses from it for things like personal injury, auto injury, stuff like that. Right. Use these channels while they last use them, while they’re willing to give you the organic reach. And if they don’t complain about it, be willing to adopt with them. And that’s where I think people are making the mistake in which they’re like, oh, I want to just get my rankings on Google. I want to use Facebook. And I expect them to give me all this love and help me make a ton of money. Forever are businesses too. I can say, Hey. You’re a lawyer, you’re here to help people. You pass your bar exam, help people for free and help everyone because they can’t afford it. And they deserve your services. Look, you’re going to do what’s right for you. Whether someone agrees or disagrees with it, Google is going to do what’s right for them, whether you agree with it or disagree with it. And you got to figure out how to make the best of the marketing world. And the marketing world is consistently changing Google single over eight algorithm changes a day on average, maybe even nine plus a day on average. Take whatever you can get adopt and be okay with it. And that’s the reality.

Chris Dreyer

I’d like to thank all my guests for sharing their stories and advice with us. And I also want to thank you. Whether you’ve been here since episode 1 or 99, I really appreciate your support. And of course, here’s the next 100. You’ve been listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. I’m Chris Dreyer. If you liked this episode, leave us a review. We love to hear from our listeners. I’ll catch you on next week’s PIMM with another incredible guest and all the strategies you need to take your personal and your practice to the next level.