James Campbell: 0:00

Once you have these elements in place and you start to run your paid advertising, your ads are going to be much, much more effective and much, much less expensive.

Announcer: 0:12

You're tuned into the Marketing Lawcast with James Campbell. Brace yourselves for game-changing digital marketing tips 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.

James Campbell: 0:29

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining me for today's webinar Paid Advertising Strategies for Estate Planning, elder Law and Probate Attorneys Optimizing your Marketing Budget for Maximum Impact. Guys, my name is James Campbell, I'm the Chief Growth Officer for Integrity Marketing Solutions and today we're going to dive into some of those tailored strategies specifically for estate planning attorneys, elder law, probate attorneys those practice areas and my goal is to help you maximize your marketing budget and really just achieve the best possible result for your law firm. This is going to mean getting the most out of your budget, lowering the client acquisition cost, driving the best quality leads into your firm. So here's an overview of what we're going to be talking about today. We want to make sure that we understand the differences in advertising strategies for estate planning and elder law and probate. You want to avoid some of the common pitfalls, and really one of the biggest ones is just not copying strategies from unrelated legal fields. You want to optimize your budget to balance lead generation with a lower client acquisition cost, so keeping those costs low while driving the best qualified, best quality leads. We're going to talk about the importance of integrating your organic marketing with paid advertising and how those two connect and why they have to to have success. We're going to go over the specific strategies for estate planning and elder law, and we're also going to talk about those effective approaches for probate attorneys, and then I'm going to show you some real-life case studies, some real-life examples of successful campaigns and what can happen when you do a great job with your paid advertising. So let's go ahead and get started, guys.

James Campbell: 2:17

One of the most crucial aspects of crafting effective paid advertising strategies for estate planning, elder law and probate is understanding the key differences between these practice areas. Estate planning and elder law services are typically pre-need services, meaning that clients seek them out in anticipation of future needs, and this can often result in a longer decision-making process without the same sense of urgency, especially when your ads aren't positioning you with that sense of urgency. In contrast, probate services and Medicaid crisis planning are needed when someone has passed away or the family is facing some sort of immediate need for long-term care, and this urgency can significantly impact how we approach our advertising strategies, for example, estate planning and elder law. We focus more on building awareness and establishing trust over time. This means leveraging platforms that allow for ongoing engagement, like social media and content marketing or email marketing. On the other hand, probate and Medicaid crisis planning advertising needs to be more immediate and direct. Ok, potential clients are often searching for help right now, making Google search ads and those top of the page local service ads much more effective. Guys, understanding these differences helps us tailor our advertising strategies to meet the specific needs and behaviors of our target audience, ensuring that we allocate our marketing budget in the most effective possible way.

James Campbell: 4:04

Now, what are some of the common pitfalls that folks fall into? Because, as we dive into paid advertising strategies, it's important to avoid some of the common pitfalls that many firms face. One of the biggest mistakes is trying to replicate the success stories of colleagues in completely different fields, like family law, personal injury or litigation, some sort of criminal defense. While their strategies might be working well for them, my friends, they cater to a different audience with different needs and completely different behaviors. For instance, personal injury clients. Often you know the clients of personal injury attorneys, those prospects. They often respond to aggressive advertising because they're fighting a giant insurance company, so they want that aggressive attorney. In contrast, our clients in estate planning and elder law are generally in a different mindset. They're planning for the future and that requires a more trust-based, relationship-building approach and by understanding the unique dynamics of the field, we avoid wasting resources on ineffective strategies.

James Campbell: 5:15

Instead, what we want to do is focus on what works best for our specific audience. This makes sure that every dollar spent on advertising is optimized for a maximum ROI. Keeping track of your ROI is incredibly important, and if you're running ads and you're not keeping track of your numbers and knowing what your acquisition cost is and your cost per lead, guys, that's a big downfall. That's a big problem to have. Now, when it comes to optimizing the budget, it's super crucial that we get this right, especially if you're a solo or you're a small boutique firm. Every marketing dollar counts, and it's essential to strike the right balance between generating leads and minimizing client acquisition costs. So throwing all of your money at paid advertising might seem like a quick fix, but it can really deplete your resources without guaranteeing any sort of sustainable result.

James Campbell: 6:13

The key is to adopt a strategic approach, my friends, guys. This means carefully planning your advertising spend, focusing on channels that provide the best ROI, and then continually monitoring and adjusting your campaigns. For estate planning and elder law, this could mean leveraging social media for long-term engagement and using remarketing techniques to stay in front of those PNCs who are ready to hire you, but we want to do that without breaking the bank. We want to be there when they're ready. So we want to build that brand up over time. Remember, the goal is not to just get leads, but to get qualified leads that convert into loyal clients, and so by optimizing your budget and focusing on cost-effective strategies, you can ensure a steady stream of revenue from highly qualified clients at the lowest reasonable cost per new client. So keeping track of your budget and recognizing where the leads are coming from and what you're paying per lead and how quickly those leads are closing is vitally important.

James Campbell: 7:20

Let's talk about brand building versus promotions. In marketing. We often talk about the differences between brand building and promotions. Brand building is all about establishing a strong, recognizable identity for your law firm. This includes your organic marketing efforts, like your social media, posting your blogs, optimizing your Google business profile, your website and any content marketing, so your email marketing. Think of brand building as like laying the foundation for all of your marketing efforts. It's the building blocks of all of the stuff that you're going to put out there. A fundamental theory of brand building, even on the internet, is that it supercharges your promotions or your advertising. When people recognize your brand, even subliminally, they're more likely to engage with your ads, they're more likely to click through and they're ultimately more likely to become clients In the online environment. This means they're more likely to trust your ads and convert. Online environment. This means they're more likely to trust your ads and convert.

James Campbell: 8:28

The first rule of paid advertising is to get your organic brand building efforts in order to ensure that your website is optimized for search and it's set up for conversion. It's easy for people to know what to do when they get on your website. You're building your online authority through consistent content and social media content, and you're getting plenty of those Google reviews. Those five-star reviews on Google are crucial. Once you have these elements in place and you start to run your paid advertising, your ads are going to be much, much more effective and much, much less expensive. Now, how do we get prepared to run paid advertising? You can see on our little graph over here a lot of times people think about am I going to focus on SEO or am I going to run ads? And it's sort of like an either or thing, but the best strategy is to have both working for you at the same time. So, before we dive into all of the paid advertising strategies, it's really important to ensure that your organic brand building efforts are solid, and so this preparation sets the stage for more effective and more efficient ad campaigns.

James Campbell: 9:44

And here are some key steps to take. First, optimize your website. We've got to get the website working for you. It's the foundation stone of your website. We got to get the website working for you. It's the foundation stone of your marketing. So we got to get it optimized both for search engines and for user conversion. Your site should be easy to navigate. It should load quickly. It should include very clear calls to action, not learn more or contact us, not that. If you're doing that, that's wrong, so change it. Seo is crucial here, so you gotta ensure that your content is rich, it's not just keyword stuffed, but it is keyword relevant. And you also wanna make sure that your site structure is optimized for search. And then, after that, it's time to build up your online authority. This means having a very robust social media presence, regularly updating your blog with valuable content and engaging with your audience.

James Campbell: 10:41

Consistency is key in building trust and recognition and, if you remember, in estate planning and elder law. Trust is the foundational element here. It's the one thing that your prospects are really looking for. Another critical element is email marketing. You want to make sure that you're collecting email addresses throughout your website and through social media campaigns. Then you want to use them to nurture leads with information and engaging content and sort of building that relationship and that trust with the prospects once you've gathered their email address. Lastly, don't underestimate the power of Google reviews. You want to encourage satisfied clients to leave positive reviews, as these reviews significantly boost your credibility and your influence among potential new clients. When they see those reviews, it's sort of like bandwagon, the old marketing strategy of hey, everybody else is doing this. When folks see a lot of great reviews and a lot of positive impact, they understand that all those people paid whatever you charge, so it must be a reasonable fee and that you've done a good job and the experience was pleasant, and so that seals the deal for those leads. All right, moving on, let's talk about some of the specific strategies and what can really come from advertising for estate planning and elder law.

James Campbell: 12:08

For these attorneys, the best bang for your marketing buck often comes from social media advertising. Social media platforms often offer lower costs and excellent targeting capabilities, even with recent changes that have affected the targeting options. So everybody talks about the 2021 revamp of Facebook's remarketing and how it's not as good, but it's still way awesome. It's still so much better than Google when it comes to targeting. Social media allows you to play the long game and get a quick game result. For the long game, you can use your brand audience targeting to get people to engage with your ad, to visit your website or download a valuable asset, and this helps you collect email addresses of interested prospects, and this enables you to start emailing marketing campaigns that are generally free. Additionally, you can use targeted remarketing to stay in front of these prospects with a relatively low budget For a more aggressive, quick result strategy, drive people to register for a webinar. We're going to talk about some of the success folks can have with advertising a webinar to a very specific audience. So drive people to register for that webinar, to pre-qualify them, or simply ask them to book a discovery call and get started. We've seen outstanding success with this approach for our clients.

James Campbell: 13:40

Another effective option is Google local service ads. Those are the ones that show up at the top of Google when you do a local search, and LSAs, as they're called, are a pay-per-lead strategy. This can be very affordable and effective, and setting up an LSA is very straightforward. Most of you can probably manage to get this done on your own, although we do offer it as a service, especially for our clients that want to get some ad spend going. On average, the cost per lead in estate planning is usually less than $100 and often closer to $50. It kind of depends on the market and the competition, but those are really good ranges to know where the LSAs can bring you.

James Campbell: 14:23

Let's see Google search ads. They can also be very effective, but they tend to be quite a bit more costly but they tend to be quite a bit more costly. So to maximize the effectiveness of your Google ads, you got to make sure that your website performs well in search in terms of your SEO, your optimization, that your business shows up in the map pack, that you've got plenty of five-star reviews. When you do those things, your Google search ads can work extraordinarily well. We also have to make sure that your landing page from those ads is set up to convert and the messaging from the ad to the landing page is connected, that they're intertwined, that they're connecting the dots. When you have these elements in place, you're in a much better position to profit from any sort of Google ad. If you don't, guys, those ads are going to be really, really expensive. Let's talk a little bit deeper about these local service ads.

James Campbell: 15:18

Google local service ads, or LSAs, are an excellent starting point for estate planning and elder law attorneys looking to dive into paid advertising. These ads appear at the very top of Google search results and they're designed to help you connect directly with potential clients in your local area. One of the biggest advantages of LSAs is that they operate on a pay-per-lead model, meaning you only pay when someone contacts you directly through the ad. This can be much more cost-effective than the traditional pay-per-click ads. Lsas also build trust by displaying your reviews prominently and offering a Google Gu Google guarantee badge if you meet certain criteria and further this. Furthering this further encourages potential new clients to reach out. It kind of builds that trust to a higher level. And setting up LSAs is super easy. You just create a profile, you verify your business, you select the specific services that you want to offer. The process is straightforward and many attorneys and their firms can manage this and set this all up on their own. Again, on average, the average cost per lead for estate planning and elder law is between $100 to $50. So somewhere between $50 and $100 for your average cost, and this varies by market. Obviously, lsas are an effective and affordable way to generate high quality leads and they should be a key component of your advertising strategy. So this is sort of like.

James Campbell: 16:46

The place to start is with your Google local service ads. Now let's talk about Google search ads. Google search ads can be a powerful tool for estate planning and elder law attorneys as well, but it's important to approach them strategically to maximize effectiveness and manage costs. These ads appear in search results when potential clients are actively looking for services like yours, making them a very valuable part of your advertising strategies. Now, to get the most out of search ads, guys, preparation is key. Start by ensuring your business shows up on the Google Map Pack, which features local businesses prominently in those search results. You guys have seen the Map Pack. This requires very good local SEO practices, such as optimizing your Google business profile and encouraging clients to leave reviews. And, speaking of reviews, having plenty of five-star reviews can significantly boost your credibility and your click-through rates on your ads. So encourage satisfied clients to share their positive experiences online. These reviews will be displayed alongside your ads and can greatly influence potential clients in their decision-making process.

James Campbell: 18:03

Your website's SEO performance is also crucial. You've got to make sure that your site is optimized with relevant keywords, it loads fast, it's mobile friendly. A well-optimized site not only improves your organic search rankings, but it also enhances the performance of your paid ads. And then, finally, your landing page plays a critical role in converting visitors, those clicks into actual leads. A great landing page should have a clear, very compelling call to action. It should be very easy to navigate and provide valuable information that addresses the visitor's needs. High quality images, testimonials, trust badges all these things can help increase conversions. The big thing is making sure that the ad that you put out there and the content that you have on the landing page are telling the same story. By focusing on these elements, like your map pack presence, your SEO, your reviews, effective landing pages, guys you can create a very strong foundation that makes your Google search ads much more effective and much more cost efficient.

James Campbell: 19:13

Now, when it comes to probate, probate attorneys face a very unique set of challenges and opportunities when it comes to paid advertising, Unlike estate planning and elder law, probate services are often needed immediately following a death right, creating a strong sense of urgency among potential clients. This urgency means your advertising strategies need to be more direct and immediate. For probate attorneys, local service ads and Google search ads are particularly effective. People looking for probate services are actively searching for your help now, making these platforms ideal for capturing urgent leads. Lsas, the local service ads, with their pay-per-lead model, can be highly effective, ensuring you only pay for those contacts that come through directly to you. So you're only paying for the potential new clients. If it's a bad prospect or they want, like a DUI case, you don't have to pay for that ad even though you took the phone call. In addition to LSAs, google search ads allow you to target specific keywords related to probate. So, to maximize their effectiveness, ensure your business appears in the map pack, you optimized your website for SEO, you got the reviews and you create a compelling landing page that converts visitors into clients. So all these things still hold true.

James Campbell: 20:44

While social media advertising can be beneficial, it's generally less effective for probate. This is just because of the immediate need of their services. However, it can still play a role in remarketing to keep you and your firm top of mind with those who are searching for probate services. So when folks do that probate search and they hit your website on a probate search, we can retarget them on social media, on Facebook, with an ad about probate and that works extraordinarily well. Overall, my friends, focus your budget on LSAs, search ads and remarketing If you're going to focus on probate, and make sure your content marketing is robust with informative articles, so talk about probate in your blog articles and the pitfalls and the mistakes and the stories that your clients have had. What have you? And provide those resources that can attract the organic traffic and then help build trust that you've done this before, that you're trustworthy. This combination of immediate, long-term strategies will help you.

James Campbell: 22:00

Guys, I want to illustrate the importance of a coordinated digital marketing strategy of SEO, content marketing and advertising. So I want to show you some case studies from our clients, and these examples show how paid advertising alone can fall short, but when integrated with a comprehensive online approach, the results can be transformative. So let's talk about Sean real quick. Sean's challenges before hiring us were that his marketing efforts were scattered, he was running local service ads and he was running non-targeted Facebook boosts on Facebook, boosting posts and spending quite a bit of money but not really seeing the right amount of return.

James Campbell: 22:45

So what we did is we overhauled his marketing. We optimized his search ads, we optimized his social media ads, we changed up his website and his landing pages to kind of speak the same language as the ads. We optimized his blog content and got some authority built out there. And then we built targeted email campaigns for those folks to continue to nurture those leads. As he was paying for leads and getting the email addresses, names and phone number, that wasn't all that was happening. We were emailing them as we received those leads and the result a significant increase in web traffic and in lead generation and a reduced cost per conversion. So, looking at what Sean was doing before, in comparison to that, these new ads brought in 56 leads per month and one month he had 43 leads at under $1,000 spent in a month, so just like $25 per lead. Let's take a listen to what sort of effect this has on a firm when you make these changes. Let's hear it from Sean For the last 30 days I've billed $80,000.

James Campbell: 24:03

And if I go back one more month, $160,000. So I mean it's like 80 the last couple of months and like during one point in time I had a roll in 30 days where I actually hit $100,000 in billing. I'm kind of on an island, you know, solo practitioner and I stay busy enough between that and a family with five kids that I don't do a lot of networking stuff or rub elbows with a bunch of other attorneys, and so I never really know how I'm doing, you know, in comparison to kind of what's out there, and so I'm always kind of curious well, how am I doing? And so I was sharing some numbers with the other attorney that I was talking to, who used to work at an estate planning firm, and he said those are just like amazing, because I'm closing like close to 80% of what I have come in, it's like 76% of it.

James Campbell: 24:44

Okay, let's take a look at Phil. So great story from Sean, but Phil Roos a completely different market. So, from Texas up to Minnesota, phil's challenges were it was with his former agency. There was just a lack of accountability. He wasn't getting the service that he needed. He was spending money but he wasn't sure of where the leads were coming from or what his costs were, and it was very frustrating for him to not have the insight from his former agency as to how all of this stuff is actually working.

James Campbell: 25:15

We looked at what he was paying on Google. It was a very high cost per conversion on Google, and that's because the ads weren't run by a firm that fully grasped and understands all the nuance of estate planning. Also, the firm's website SEO performance was not living up to his potential. The firm needed a partner. Phil needed a partner who could take ownership of the campaigns and drive tangible results and then communicate that back to him. Okay, so what we did was we overhauled all of his ad campaigns, took over the copy, built new landing pages, refocused the keywords that we were looking for, and then we optimized the website for converting prospects. The result for converting prospects the result cost per lead dropped by $160 per lead. So I think he was paying like $200, $240 per lead and we dropped it by $160 to like $45 per lead. We doubled his leads per month and we increased website traffic by 70%. So all sounds cool when I say it, but listen to what Phil has to say in his own words about making these adjustments.

James Campbell: 26:24

Some leeway to invest in some of this stuff. We were using this firm before IMS and they did fine. They did fine, Not particularly responsive. It was a little frustrating if we needed a change on the website and we largely broke our contract with them in favor of IMS. And you remember, James, when we moved to you and I got to say, first off, IMS is and we can touch on this more later in the podcast but the customer service at IMS, even if the results were exactly the same, the customer service at IMS, even if the results were exactly the same, the responsiveness and the ease of working with you guys and how proactive you are, and the monthly meetings where we touch base and learn, kind of where the leads are coming from and where the calls are coming from, and then the promptness with which you make the changes that we talk about in the meeting is, and it's just so easy to get ahold of you and like that by itself has been such a load off my shoulders to be able to have someone who's easy to work with. But on top of that, part of this is our work.

James Campbell: 27:37

But I can't minimize the fact that we switched to IMS in December and we've had a noticeable increase in traffic. We were already doing pretty well, but you guys have taken pretty well and really pushed us up there. Our SEO results are higher than they've been and we were doing okay, but you guys really brought it to that next level. It's been fantastic. It's been fantastic working with you guys. I've been so excited. I'm actually excited about the vendor calls. Talking to Amber with my monthly call that type of check-in used to be a frustrating experience for me with the last one because we just weren't seeing what we needed to see, and now talking to her once a month is a highlight of my week. I really like the calls with you guys. You're doing a great job.

James Campbell: 28:24

Finally, I want to talk about Michelle Ungvarsky. Earlier in the presentation, I mentioned running ads to a webinar, and that can be a very effective approach to leveraging paid advertising. Well, michelle, out of New New Mexico, has done just that. Before hiring us and putting these systems in place, her big challenges were managing growth. She needed a way to pre-qualified leads before spending time with them. She's the only attorney in the office right now and has been for her career solo, but she can't waste time with leads that don't hire her. That became very expensive.

James Campbell: 29:06

She also recognized that there were big missed opportunities in Medicaid planning, in doing the crisis planning, that she was serving her small local market but that she could serve clients all across the state and she felt like she was the best elder law Medicaid attorney in New Mexico and that she should be doing the majority of the work. She also wanted to offload the marketing efforts to make time for client meetings, so letting go of some of the things that aren't paying the bills to do the things that are, so to be able to offload the marketing so that she can meet with more clients. So the overhaul for her was to work on her SEO, optimize the copy, take over the marketing for her, the blogging and all of that, and to dedicate pages, build pages specifically for Medicaid and probate. We also put a webinar funnel in place and for Michelle, we run three different webinars, not the same time. We rotate through.

James Campbell: 30:04

We have a probate webinar, an estate planning webinar and an elder law webinar that has a focus on the crisis planning. Guys, in the course of the year she's had a thousand leads come through the webinars, folks that have watched her webinar. She's consistently booked in her calendar. She's booked weeks out consistently with qualified prospects who have watched her training and are ready to hire her. And, guys, she's doing all of this on a budget of about $40 per day. Let's listen to Michelle. Let's let her say it in her own words what this program and this focus on her SEO and her advertising and then pre-qualifying through a webinar has done for her.

James Campbell: 30:44

April was the 12th month with Integrity Marketing. It's been a steady incline January, february. We're a little slow, but it's been a steady incline. April was a blockbuster, so I'm very grateful. I'm thrilled. A couple of weeks ago I reported that I was booked three weeks out and it has stayed consistent. I am just so happy. This system is working wonderfully.

James Campbell: 31:11

Guys, those videos. They showcase the transformative power of a coordinated marketing strategy. Guys, this demonstrates how integrating paid advertising with a comprehensive digital marketing plan can lead to outstanding results. Remember, the first rule of paid advertising is to get your organic brand building efforts in order. This ensures that your paid ads are more effective and cost efficient, and this in focusing on these principles, my friends, you can achieve a steady stream of revenue from highly qualified clients at the lowest reasonable cost per new client. If you want to help with this, if you want the same kind of result as Sean or as Phil or as Michelle, grab your phone and scan that booking calendar there. Or go to imsrockscom slash, apply and book a meeting right there on our calendar.

Announcer: 32:06

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