Speaker 1: 0:01

You're tuned in to the Marketing Lawcast with Jennifer Goddard. This is where estate planning and elder law firms turn for high-octane marketing strategies and powerhouse success stories. Brace yourselves for game-changing digital marketing tips, professional sales training and exclusive interviews with industry gurus and top-tier attorneys, smashing the six and seven-figure barrier. It's time to drive your practice to success. Welcome to the Marketing Lawcast.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Next up -- search engine optimization. Does your website come up in a local search? I'm just giving you an example here. If I go into Google and I type in a search for in Overland Park, I notice my partner, Kyle Krull, shows up on page one twice. When I type in that search, i get more than 2.3 million results. There's a little bit of an effort here to show up on page one twice out of 2.3 million results. Is that even important? It's a great thing, but how important is it? Well, let's look at this 84% of all the clicks for online search are going to go to these top five listings. The really cool thing is Kyle is in there twice. How many of these clicks do you think he's going to get from local search? Almost all of them. People see that and they see that as authority. They see it as trustworthiness, and who else are they going to choose? Also, he's got 85 five-star reviews showing up on Google. That's a big consideration for people to click through. What we know about SEO is that 84% of all the clicks are going to go to that shaded area, those top five listings. You want to be in those top five listings. Why?

Speaker 2: 2:21

Let's continue our scenario where we talked about the average website and then the website designed for conversion, which is scenario two, with a 3% conversion rate If, through search, we can have more visitors to the website. We've designed this website to convert. Now we're going to take care of SEO. We're going to have not 1500 visitors per month, but 2500 visitors per month. Same conversion rate, but 75 calls. Now we're converting 75 of those to 22 new clients At the same average fee. We haven't changed our fee, we haven't changed our closing ratio, but now we got a website that's generating $56,250 per month. Folks, this is how you get to seven figures without working yourself to death. Start doing these things right. Get your website designed to convert. Now show up in search so that you can increase the number of people who are visiting the website every month. You don't have to do anything else. You can increase your revenue many times over.

Speaker 2: 3:37

Now, in that bonus, that "ethical bribe that I have for you to stay to the end, i've got the top 100 keywords for estate planning and elder law, the top keywords that you should be optimizing your efforts around in order to get that traffic to your website through search engine optimization. I've done all the research here for you guys. You just have to download the worksheet and you will have the top 100 for your market. I also have a checklist for you for onsite optimization of your website, so this is also in your bonus materials at the end. I just walk you through every single thing that you can look through and check off for your website.

Speaker 2: 4:24

Now, a lot of SEO occurs off of the website, so you can have great SEO on your website, but there's more work to be done, because Google looks at all these signals across the web to determine who's going to show up highest in the search results, and so let's look at some of these off- page SEO factors that you want to be focusing some more of your efforts on. The first one is you want to claim and optimize your Google business profile listing. Now, just a few years ago, this was called Google My Business. Now, anything that you used to think as Google My Business is now GBP Google Business Profile. If you don't have a Google Business Profile, you're going to miss out on most of the off- page SEO opportunities. So you want to be sure that you firstly have a GBP profile and, secondly, that it is optimized for your business.

Speaker 2: 5:27

There are other directory listings across the web and you wanna be sure that you claim and update those citations which is what we call them so that your name, address and phone number, the NAP, is accurate and consistent across the web. Why is this important? I hear attorneys say all the time well, my clients don't use these other directories like lawyerscom or AVO or some of these other directories. Your clients may not use them, but Google does, and so it's all about sending the signals to Google as to who you are and how much authority and credibility you have. So when these citations either don't exist or they are inaccurate, it's going to harm your SEO, and in a competitive market, it can be the difference between being in that top five or being 15. So you wanna be sure that you're doing all these off page SEO things as well, particularly if you are in a competitive market.

Speaker 2: 6:33

Now, reviews I told you about that E-E-A-T, and the first E is experience. That's where your Google reviews are so important to your SEO. Now, google reviews are also important to your conversion rate. They're also important to your click-through rate. They tell the prospect that you are trustworthy, but you know what guys? they also tell Google that you're trustworthy, and so getting those five star reviews is extremely important even more so than it used to be in terms of showing up in the Google search results. It's not enough to just sort of do this haphazardly, guys. So you have five, you have 10 Google reviews and you're gonna be showing up in the search results in competition with people who have, like Kyle, 84. Some people have even more than that.

Speaker 2: 7:30

So you need to use an automated system to get these Google reviews from your happy clients and then syndicate those reviews back to display on your website And that's where a system or a platform like Bright, local or BirdEye can really be helpful to you to automate the requesting of reviews, to make sure that you're responding to reviews as they are posted, and then to syndicate them back to show them on your website, and you don't wanna just copy and paste them onto your website. You really want to syndicate them back so that Google makes that connection between the reviews on Google and the reviews that are showing up on your website. Now you also want to have a content marketing plan so that you are deploying strategically optimized content onto your website and syndicating it across the web where you are the authority who created that content, and that's part of the strategy of creating backlinks. All of these are a strategy for ethical backlinking that will drive you to the top of the search results, and they become especially important when you're in competitive markets. These are the things that the folks that are showing up at the top of search in metropolitan markets. These are the things that they're doing and why you may be struggling because you aren't seeing the off page SEO that needs to be done in order to beat the competition or meet the competition. So some of the places where you may look to start building backlinks to your website it's an avoprofile, lawyerscom, justia, findlost, super lawyers, all of these legal directories that are online. They almost all of them will have a free profile that you can claim and build out, and then that link to your website gives Google a signal of your authority and of your credibility and your trustworthiness. So you want to be sure that you are claiming all these profiles and actively building out the profile and optimizing it, making sure that you have a backlink to your website.

Speaker 2: 9:57

Okay, just to kind of summarize your SEO highlights it's so important to driving traffic to that conversion designed website. You're on page SEO. You have a page for each practice area and major city that you serve. To optimize your titles, give unique content for every page. Then your Google business profile needs to be claimed optimized. Add citations management to your strategy. Put a system in place for driving your online reviews and adding new citations on an ongoing basis that you're backlinking. Then you'll want to be pushing new blogs out on a regular basis and syndicating those across the web and leveraging those signals. There's the EEAT experience, expertise, authority and trust.

Speaker 2: 10:47

That's the newest Google algorithm update and it's a big update. It's not like a tweak, it's a major update that we have to re-engineer all of our marketing around that update. So you want to have multiple do follow links back to your website from your Google business listing and internal pages as well on your website. Get that map embedded on multiple pages. Make sure you're getting fresh content on your website every month and then syndicate your reviews. Sindicate them back to the website. It's all about sending these signals to Google that you have authority, trustworthiness, and one of the big signals is that experience from user-generated content. Now that's how you get ranked for universal results.

Speaker 2: 11:41

But how also are you ranking on the Google map? If you're not familiar with that, i just want to highlight. These are the results for the Google map. This is where you see these results. How important are they? 44 percent of all the clicks and the calls from local search will go to this three pack, this local three pack of people who are showing up on the Google Maps. So how do you make sure that you show up there?

Speaker 2: 12:13

Well, we have a process that we use with our clients. That's proven, to get our clients into this three pack. It starts with getting the on-page SEO done right. All those things that I was just talking about in terms of the on-page SEO has to be done right. Then we look at the Google Business Profile. We make sure that it is claimed, that it is properly optimized, that it's properly linking to the website and that we're getting reviews on that Google Business Profile. So it's on-page SEO, it's the GVP, and then reviews. And then we look at the back linking strategy All those citations and all of the content that we produce and syndicate across the web to create those backlinks. When you have all three of those working for you, then you're going to show up in that three pack and you have to do it better than everybody else in your market. There's only three that come up in that three pack, and that's for 44 percent of all the clicks for local search are awarded to the people in that three pack Very small group of folks who are getting all of these things right.

Speaker 2: 13:24

Now, the next thing is are you active on social media? Now, this is someplace where a lot of attorneys really fall down and resist advice to the contrary. We say you need to be active on social media. They say we don't want to be active on social media. It's probably something that I hear every day, but it's very important and these are the reasons. Your clients are on Facebook. Many of your potential referral sources are on LinkedIn. You want to engage with your clients on Facebook and your prospective clients on Facebook, and you want to engage with your referral sources and your prospective referral sources on LinkedIn. If you will separate in your mind that LinkedIn is your B2B business to business and Facebook is your B2C business to consumer, now you can start to have a great strategy for interaction and engagement on social media.

Speaker 2: 14:30

When we look at this new algorithm update remember I keep talking about this EEAT it's a big deal. It's a very big deal when it comes to search engine optimization, that EEAT for experience. We talked about the importance of reviews, user-generated content, but also your social engagement People who are liking, sharing, commenting on you and on your law firm on Facebook. That sends engagement signals to Google. It will boost all four of these the expertise, the authority, the trust and the experience signals. If you're completely ignoring LinkedIn, then you're missing one of the big pieces of this SEO success formula. Your competitors, who don't ignore it and who use that piece, will beat you out For those very few positions on the search engine result page. They get most of the clicks. If you're not in the top five, you're not in the top three and you're not active on social media. Maybe being active on social media will push you into that top five position.

Speaker 2: 15:50

There's another reason to be active on social media You can build your audiences. When you build your audiences on social media, then you reduce your client acquisition costs. You can get direct referrals from people on social media. You will improve your SEO, which gives you that organic traffic which is free, and then you also can retarget to people who have engaged with you on Facebook to generate highly qualified, low-cost leads. Remember that formula that we talked about on the worksheet How much is it costing you to get a call booked. Your engagement and your activity on social media can lower that cost and get down to something that is really very affordable and lower your marketing budget that's required for you to hit your revenue goals.

Speaker 2: 16:48

Next up. Remember I talked about utilizing your database. Are you leveraging email marketing? First, you got to be building that database, and social media and advertising on social media is one way to build your email list. When you're using your email list, you're going to be using that to get reviews from your new clients and from current clients. You're going to be using it as a follow-up to social engagement. So when people engage with you on Facebook, engage with your advertising on Facebook, you're going to put them into your CRM and begin the process of emailing them to nurture those leads to become new clients. You can use emails to your referral market. We're running an email marketing challenge at IMS right now and some of our clients are having tremendous success by emailing into their referrals, segmenting their list and just emailing those referrals with relevant messages And it kind of reactivates some of those referrals for them And, finally, for lead nurturing.

Speaker 2: 17:59

One of the big downfalls that a lot of law firms fall into is they generate a lot of leads but they don't do anything with those leads. So only a small percentage of your leads are going to actively go through the entire process, carrying the water themselves, walking every step of the way themselves until they finally become a client. You could have kind of help Jump in there and carry water for a little ways yourself with some of this automation and nurturing these leads along, helping them get to the next stage so that they then become clients. Now, finally, get all these things in place. Are you tracking your ROI, your return on investment? Do you have tools in place to be able to do that? So you're watching your traffic trends with your Google Analytics? Are you tracking how you rank for your important keywords? Are you tracking how many people call you from your website directly with a tracking phone number on your site? We use CallRail. You guys can use CallRail yourselves. You can just callrailcom. Go visit them, see if you can get a tracking number and stick that on your website so that you know how many people are calling you directly from your website. Use a tracking tool in your CRM to track your lead sources and how much you're billing these new clients that come through various lead sources. We set that up for our clients in Laumatics as a marketing dashboard where they can keep track of where their leads are coming from, how much their leads are costing and how much they're billing. So what is their ROI? So you get those things in place, then you may be wanting to take the next step, to look at paid marketing.

Speaker 2: 19:51

So for most of our estate planning and elder law attorneys we look at three channels for paid marketing. We have paid search on Google, we have Facebook lead ads and then Google local service ads. So we have primarily three channels that we look at. Paid search is highly targeted by intent. Those people may or may not match your target demographic because we can't really put a lot of demographics into paid search. That's based on a keyword search And the cost per lead may be higher. But, again, high intent. With Google Paid Search, facebook lead ads, we get to target by demographics. So we know that the people that are seeing the ads are going to be within your target demographic but they may not have a high intent. So bringing them along, carrying the water for them a little bit, is gonna be very important, but typically it's a lower cost per lead than Google paid search. And then you've probably heard of these local service ads. We're gonna talk about them a little bit more. They're highly targeted by geography, but they really may not match your demographic. And they do come in at a lower cost per lead. So there's always those trade-offs.

Speaker 2: 21:14

But before you really looked at paid marketing, paid advertising, i want you to check these boxes first, is your foundation strong? Do you have the conversion centered website? Are you hitting checking all the boxes on search engine optimization So you are getting the most organic traffic or free traffic to your website? Are you being active on social media? Are you using your email marketing? Do you have marketing automation set up to nurture your leads to become new clients? And finally, do you have the tracking and reporting in place so that you can track your ROI? It really should look like this. It's a pyramid You start with the conversion design website, you layer on your search engine optimization, then you bring in their social media engagement, your email marketing, and when you've got all of that set up and you know your tracking is in place to track your ROI, then you look at pay per click, ppc, paid advertising.

Speaker 2: 22:23

So let's take a look a little bit closer at Facebook ads. Typically, we see for estate planning and elder law attorneys that the biggest bang for your buck is going to be advertising on Facebook, and that's because you have a highly targeted demographic. Everything that you do for your cold traffic ads creates a re-targeting audience and it builds your email list. So you're getting like a triple return on every ad that you do on Facebook. You have your cold lead that may convert, may go watch your webinar, may download an e-book and may book a call right away. But you're also collecting that information to grow your email list so you can nurture those leads to become new clients and you're building this amazingly targeted market for re-targeting. So when you combine Facebook ads with a strong funnel, you can get well qualified calls booked at a consistently affordable cost. The caveat about Facebook is you always want to test and you always want to stay on top. Things with Facebook change very rapidly, so you really have to look at what's working in terms of your audience targeting, your message and your creative. So it's an effort to bring good results out of Facebook. But dollar for dollar, we find that Facebook ads are extremely effective for estate planning and elder law, as you are definitely a consumer facing practice and very lead dependent. You have to constantly have new leads.

Speaker 2: 24:07

Google ads search ads ads that show up when people look for an estate planning attorney in their geographic area have a very high intent. People are actually looking for you. They went online and they typed in a search for an estate planning attorney in their city, so it's a high intent And the trade-off is the higher cost per lead. Google ads usually do require professional management in order to get a good ROI. What we find is they work really well if you have a high volume of searches. If you're focused on a high volume search term in your market, then Google ads can really work well.

Speaker 2: 24:52

If you want to take a step into Google ads, a good place to start is if you have a probate practice. Probate is a good starting point to begin pay-per-click ads, because when people need a probate attorney, they need one. They need one right now, so it's a high intent. So if you have a probate practice and probate is something that you want to do more of, then Google search ads would be a good first step for you for pay-per-click, remembering that you've already checked all the other boxes that we talked about. Okay, so that you'll get the best ROI If you've got your SEO and your website all set up. You've checked all those boxes and then you say, okay, i'd like to try a little pay-per-click and probate is a great place for you to start your pay-per-click campaign.

Speaker 1: 25:43

That's a wrap on this edition of the Marketing LawCast. Thanks for joining us. Head over to wwwimsrockscom for more growth-focused insights. If you're ready to skyrocket your firm's marketing, don't hesitate to book a free discovery call with our team right on our website. Here's to your success. See you next time, jang.