This week, as I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, I came across a comment by a seasoned estate planning attorney who uses seminars to feed his practice. Now, you may be like this fellow, or you may have been down that road and got a little panicky over the high costs of printing, mailing and advertising to promote a successful live seminar. Mailing and advertising to promote a successful live seminar. So you know, it wasn't really the fact that this guy was a seminar jockey that caught my attention. It was his next statement, and I quote I have found webinars to be a dismal marketing strategy, total waste of time and money. If you've heard or read this from your colleagues, let's talk about why that is such a dangerous, though popular, myth. Welcome to this week's episode of the Marketing Lawcast, where we dive into the strategies that help your practice not just survive but thrive. I'm your host, jennifer Goddard, ceo of Integrity Marketing Solutions. Today I'm talking about a topic close to my heart and crucial for the growth of any estate planning or elder law firm mastering digital marketing. Let's get clear on one thing first Webinars are one tool in your law firm's digital marketing toolbox. They are not the end-all and be-all of digital marketing and of course they come in lots of different flavors. Some people do a live webinar every week, use on-demand webinars. Some webinars are entertaining and compelling and some are dry and boring. So if someone tells you that webinars are a dismal marketing strategy, I encourage you to filter that statement and read the subtext. What this fellow is really saying is my webinars didn't work well for me, so I went back to what I know, which is seminar marketing, and of course seminar marketing has been around for decades.

My first role as a marketer for an estate planning law firm was focused exclusively on seminar marketing and that was back in 1995. I understand how powerful seminar marketing can be, how powerful and even innovative it was back in 1995. We just accepted the high costs of printing, mailing and advertising and the high risks of investing in a seminar and the anxiety of making sure we got a decent return on that investment. We just accepted the bargain shopping prospects, the feast or famine lead flow, because back then there was no internet. We were pioneers back then, breaking away from that referral-only strategy that locked most small firms out of the best estate planning referrals. It was a good old boys club back then, with the best clients snapped up by long-standing players who wrote mostly wills and raked in riches from probate. Do you remember those days? We were all considered mavericks for bringing estate planning to the masses with free live seminars. In fact, I remember being a little worried way back then that the local probate lawyer would file a bar complaint against us. It was that new, it was that unthinkable, that disruptive. But that was 30 years ago. Today the internet breaks all those barriers, letting us reach more people faster and across more distance than we ever could with a live event.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you should never conduct a live seminar, but consider this I have a client in St Louis who did and still does live seminars. It's very successful prominent law firm. Chances are you know of them. But a few years ago he got curious. He wondered if he could be even more profitable if he mastered online marketing. So he came to us and we worked with him and his terrific staff to redesign and optimize his website. Then we launched a webinar marketing campaign.

In less than one year his first year with us his revenue grew by 62%. I'm going to pause a moment to let that number sink in. I'm going to pause a moment to let that number sink in. That's not 62% growth in a small startup firm going from 10,000 to 16,000. That is a multiple seven-figure law firm adding 62% revenue growth in less than one year. That's without hiring more attorneys, that's not even hosting more live seminars and it's not investing hundreds of thousands of dollars. It came from redesigning and optimizing his website so it ranks well for high intent local searches and converts visitors into initial consultations. And it came from developing a single powerful webinar and designing a marketing campaign that gets people to watch that webinar and book a call afterward. Imagine the leverage and initial investment in building a system a little fuel every month to keep it running and it delivers three to five qualified leads on the daily.

They could stop doing their live events altogether. Overall revenue would probably drop but the margin would go up. But they don't have to quit doing live events. They have a good system for running them. Their live events deliver good leads and the firm is pretty well known for their entertaining and in fact both strategies work well together. The firm gains name recognition from their webinar marketing and that probably drives some registrations for their live events and if someone is curious about the live event they may pop in and watch the webinar first.

You see, relying exclusively on referrals or live workshops is like looking at a bustling marketplace from the sidelines. Yes, these methods have their advantages Referrals come from trusted sources and workshops allow for that face-to-face interaction but they also have their limitations. Referrals aren't scalable and referral sources can be fickle, and workshops can be costly and sometimes they can attract clients that may not fully align with your firm's target demographic. When I see comments like the one from that fellow who claimed that webinars are a dismal way to market, I think it's so important to set the record straight.

Digital marketing isn't just about throwing a strategy at the wall and hoping it sticks. It's about a sophisticated, comprehensive approach to your law firm marketing. Take SEO, content creation, paid advertising and your online presence, for instance. These aren't just buzzwords, they're tools. Tools that, if used correctly, can build a robust digital presence that attracts and retains clients. Attorneys have problems and challenges and disappointments when these tools are used without a deep understanding or a strategic framework. I'm sure you can relate to this scenario because it happens in your law firm.

Every time a prospect calls up and asks how much do you charge? How much do you charge for a trust, you cringe right, because you know you need way more information to decide whether this person even needs a will or a trust, and what the best strategy would be to achieve their goals, which they haven't even shared those with you yet. It's the same thing in digital marketing. Attorney calls up and asks how much we charge to do SEO or run Google ads and yes, there are plenty of agencies out there just ready to take your money, promising the moon and delivering nothing but a handful of dust. They do your SEO for $499 a month or they will run your ads for free, just taking a percentage of your ad spend.

That's not how we operate at Integrity Marketing Solutions. When an attorney approaches us wanting to dive headfirst into any particular marketing strategy whether it's webinars, seo or paid advertising we know that's just the beginning of our conversation. We use that question as the opening to get to know more about your firm's overall marketing strategy, your budget, your staff capabilities and your expectations. We won't just launch a certain strategy because that's what you ask for. We want any and every strategy to be fully integrated into your broader marketing ecosystem and in complete alignment with your goals, just like you wouldn't draft a will without first assessing if it's the right tool for your client. We don't recommend strategies without ensuring they fit your firm's needs.

Digital marketing is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It's a tailored suit designed to fit your firm perfectly. So let's shift the narrative. Embrace digital marketing as your ally in leveraging your time and your budget, reaching and serving more clients better, and scaling your revenue without working yourself to death. Remember, the landscape of estate planning and elder law is evolving, and so should our approaches to reaching and helping clients. Thanks for tuning into the Marketing Lawcast. I'm Jennifer Goddard and I look forward to navigating this digital marketing journey with you. If you're ready to really master online marketing and reap the benefits for yourself and your clients, let's talk. You can schedule a free call on my website at wwwimsrockscom.