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Hi, and welcome back to the Marketing Law Cast. I'm Jennifer Goddard, CEO of Integrity Marketing Solutions, and today I want to talk about something that we keep hearing from estate planning and elder law firms. Why your marketing may be working, but you're still not getting hired. Let's get right into it. So we talk to estate planning and elder lawyers every day, several times a day, and we hear some repeating themes. There's friction in the marketplace. And this is how you may be feeling because we're hearing it from a lot of your colleagues that your marketing feels inconsistent, leads may be feeling unpredictable. Conversions are getting hired. It just feels like it's harder than it used to be. And yet your website looks fine, your SEO has not collapsed, your content is going out on a regular basis, and when you look at it, nothing feels broken, but it just doesn't feel steady. And this is what's frustrating. The marketing didn't stop working, it just stopped behaving in a predictable manner. And what I've realized in talking with so many firms every single day is that there are really two separate problems that the firm can have. And most of the time, the lawyer is having a really hard time separating them and distinguishing between them. So we have two different problems. The first one could be visibility, and the second one is selection. They're truly two different problems. And when we look at it from a marketing strategy and analysis viewpoint, we really want to pin down where that problem is. So some firms that come to us truly are just not being seen. If you're not visible, you're not going to get hired, period. So visibility online is the first step. It doesn't matter what else you have in place. If people aren't finding you, if they just don't see you, you're not going to get hired. So visibility is step one, and it's still the entry fee. You can't be chosen if you're invisible. But many firms are visible. Their SEO is working very well, and they're still not converting the leads. They're still getting attention, but not the decisions. So while visibility is important, visibility alone doesn't close the deal anymore. So it's really important to know which problem we're dealing with so we attack it appropriately. So let's start with visibility because it matters. And then I want to talk about what happens after that, because that's where things get really interesting. So why does SEO still matter? And why it's not an instant fix. So you may have been hearing a lot about SEO is dead, but it's not. It is absolutely not. Local search is still one of the most reliable sources of high intent leads, leads that are ready to hire an attorney to solve their problem. Your Google business profile still matters. Your online reviews matter probably more than ever before. So organic visibility, the visibility that you're not paying for per click, that gets you ranked in Google, that gets you seen when people do a Google search, that organic visibility compounds. For estate planning and elder law firms, SEO is still one of the best long-term assets that you can build. But SEO is not like a switch that you just flip and turn on. It's not something that can be fixed in a week or a month or a few weeks because Google doesn't hand out trust instantly. And SEO is not something that you just install, like can you come fix my SEO and just install SEO on my website? It's something that you build and momentum takes months, not days. Be skeptical of anyone that promises you page one rankings in 30 days. They may very well be able to deliver on that using what we call some black hat tactics where they kind of game the system. And we've seen that happen where lawyers have fallen for that, and they're so excited because they instantly jump up to page one, like within a few days. But then what happens is Google gets wise to that hack, and they're within a few weeks, that website cannot even be found. It's not even within the first hundred pages of a Google search. So really don't fall for that. That's a scam. So for visibility, the things that you really have to do is have consistency with your Google business profile. It needs to be fully optimized, and then you need to be consistently keeping it up to date. You need to be working really hard to get your positive reviews, your five-star reviews, because people read those and they trust them. You need to have real search, excuse me, you need to have real service pages that match search intent. So when people are looking for the best estate planning attorney in my area, or that they put in, you know, in Albuquerque, you need to have a search service page for that service area. And you need to have content that sounds like an actual attorney, not just generic filler. So yes, visibility matters, and if you're not being seen, you have to fix that first. But even when firms are visible, a lot of them are still getting overlooked. So why is it that visibility just doesn't finish the job anymore? It's because discovery has changed. We've got AI summaries now that give people the information without them ever having to click. So we call that a zero-click result. People are relying on the map packs. So they're making their comparisons so much faster these days. Oftentimes, prospects aren't arriving at your website with curiosity anymore. They're arriving cautious. So they aren't trying to learn what a trust is, they're trying to avoid making a mistake. They're not looking to you into your website for information. They're looking for confidence. And that's where the real bottleneck shows up because being found is not the same thing as being chosen. So why do firms get overlooked even when they're visible? Prospects are asking questions that you might never hear out loud. They're asking, does this attorney handle situations like mine? Are they experienced? Can I understand even what they're offering? Are they very clear in what they do and what they don't do? Does this seem like a safe decision? So visibility gets you noticed and you have to have it. But selection is what gets you hired. Selection signals reduce the risk or the perception of risk. When firms sound similar, when you have the same thing that every other estate planning website has, then prospects will hesitate and they will compare. And oftentimes they default back to comparing on price, or who's the closest to me, or who can I get the first appointment with, who can I get in the fastest with? Or they will just delay. They're just overwhelmed and they just won't make a decision. So when everyone looks competent online, competence stops being enough. And once you're in that comparison zone, everything after that just gets harder as you're trying to get out of that comparison zone and get into the chosen or the selected zone. So what does it what does it look like in real life if you have a problem with the selection? You've got the visibility, but you're not getting the selection. Here's what it looks like. When you have an initial consultation with a prospect and you're in this, you're having this selection problem, it feels like you're convincing them. It's like you're persuading them to do this. Instead of just confirming their choices, prospects will ask price questions very early. They will start the conversation with, well, how much does this gonna cost? How much do you charge? You'll find that after your initial consultation, you just can't get a hold of people anymore. They just ghost you. Or they feel like they're just less decisive. You hear a lot of, I need to think it over. I've got to think about it. Or if you find that your website traffic is good, so when you look at your at your dashboard and at your stats, you say, I've got good traffic. My SEO is working, it's bringing people to my site, but I'm not getting people to call. I'm not getting them to request a consultation or to book a call with me. So the leads just aren't not making that commitment. They're coming to the site, but they're going away without making a commitment. This is why your marketing could look fine on paper, but it still doesn't feel like it's working. So all the numbers are looking good, but you're saying people are coming to me and saying, you know, I don't know what's really wrong. I'm just not getting enough, I'm not getting enough engagements, I'm not getting hired. Now, there's something I really want to add at this point because it does come up a lot. Sometimes the issue isn't even what your marketing says, it's what happens after the lead comes in. So there could be what I would call conversion friction, and this is huge. Most attorneys don't really understand the levers that they can pull to improve conversion. So what I mean by conversion friction is you're getting the leads. You may even be getting that first phone call, but you're not getting hired. Maybe you're not even getting to an initial consultation. If you don't know how to diagnose where the breakdown is, then oftentimes you'll just assume that the only answer is we need more leads or we need better qualified leads. Somehow we've got to get better, more, better leads in. But there may be a conversion friction problem that it'll be a lot easier to solve if you can diagnose it. So let me give you an example. Say you're getting 20 leads a week from your internet marketing. But what I see is oftentimes attorneys are putting these leads through a grueling pre-qualification process. They have to fill out a form, a very extensive form, before you'll even talk to them. Or you have to pay for an initial consultation. There's all kinds of things that you can be doing to pre-qualify your prospects. And when you do that, you can bring these 20 leads down to your only meeting with one or two people. And if that's happening, then your close rate would have to be 50% or greater just for you to get one client out of those 20 leads. And I gotta tell you that most attorneys do not close 50% of their cold leads. And by cold leads, I mean people that weren't sent to you by a referral source, such as a CPA or a financial advisor, where they're really warmed up. These people are coming to you from the internet. Even very polished salespeople aren't closing 50% of these cold leads. So frequently you're meeting with one or two people and you're not even getting one client out of that. So the issue isn't traffic. It really isn't even the quality of the leads. The issue is friction. So if you're in that situation where you need more business, you need to lower the barriers for doing business with you. You need to remove some of that friction. You might have to make it easier for people to do business with you. And that probably means meeting with more people, and some of them will be less qualified. But that's okay at this stage, if this is the stage that you're in. If your calendar is empty, you need activity, you need practice or reps, you need more reps. So you need to meet with more people and practice your sales skills. So, in order to do that, you have to make it easy for people to book a call. So put that calendar link on the website. And don't make people jump through too many hoops just to talk to you. When you're trying to grow, convenience matters more than you really want it to. And that leads me to a really controversial subject: whether or not you should be charging for your initial consultation. And there is, it's not right or wrong to charge for the consultation. Understand that what you charge for that initial consultation is one of the levers that you have in your practice management, in your marketing outcomes. So get it out of your head whether charging for the consultation is right or wrong. The question is, how are you going to use that lever? If you are too busy, it can be very smart to charge for your initial consultation. It will definitely reduce your volume and filter out any tire kickers. If you're overwhelmed, charging for a consult can be a great decision. It will cut down the number of your initial consults by at least half. And if that's what you're looking for, that's a great lever. But if you're not busy, if you're needing to fill your calendar, understand that charging for an initial consultation is going to cut down your consults by at least half, maybe more. And the small amount that you make from those consultation fees will never replace the estate planning revenue that you lose by cutting down the number of consultations that you have. So if you need business, charging for that first meeting will cost you more than it earns you. You just have to meet with a few more people and get some more practice. But understand that charging for that initial consultation is going to greatly reduce the number of initial consultations that you have. And in some cases, that's a good thing. If you're booked out, you know, for the next six weeks, you really don't want to meet with people who aren't highly motivated. So it can be a good move. Just use it strategically. Another place where firms are losing out is in the follow-up. Most attorneys don't follow up with their leads at all. So if you're running a webinar, for example, a webinar marketing funnel, and you have people going through and registering for the webinar and watching the webinar, and you're just sitting back and hoping that they're going to call you and schedule their appointment, chances are you're going to be disappointed. You need to be able to follow up with your leads. And if you do that, you will greatly stand out from the crowd because most attorneys do zero follow-up. And those who do some, oftentimes they're very awkward at it. They don't really know how to accomplish the follow-up, and they're inconsistent. So maybe they follow up with one or two of their leads and it doesn't result in a consultation or it doesn't result in a new client. And so they say, well, I tried that and it didn't work. But you know, the old saying you've got to kiss a lot of frogs before you meet your prince, that's really true with follow-up. So follow-up doesn't fail because follow-up doesn't work. It fails because most firms don't actually do it. And if they do, they don't do it consistently. So use lead magnets to help capture some contact information. And you know, a webinar is nothing more really than a lead magnet that supplies a lot of education and motivation as well. But nurturing those leads matters, and you just remember that you can't rely on prospects to come back on their own. We have one particular firm that comes to my mind who has just been killing it with webinars for a few years. They get consistently solid, good business from their webinar marketing. We run their ads for them. But what they do is they are very, very good at the follow-up with their leads. And it just proves the point that following up can convert those leads into actually getting hired and running and driving more revenue into your firm. So marketing is not just getting the lead, it's what you do after that lead raises their hand. And this is exactly why just doing more marketing won't necessarily fix your problem. So one of the big mistakes that I see is just wanting to stack more tactics. So sometimes firms will come to us and they will say, you know, I think we just need more social media. We need more uh blogs. Uh could you just fix our SEO? And a lot of times that's just more noise. You can pour more leads into a broken conversion process, and you're still not going to get hired. So activity is not the same as clarity. And volume is not the same as trust. So what is it that the firms who are w winning right now, what are they doing differently? Well, here's what we see that the strong firms are doing differently. They stop trying to be everywhere. They focus on being very clear about who they serve and what they do, their values, who they are. And they design their marketing around driving the decision, not necessarily the click. So that means there's clear positioning, calm authority, and they make it easy for their prospects to take the next step. The goal is not necessarily more attention. The goal is to make it easier for the prospect to make the decision. Make that decision easier. When your clarity is strong enough, then the prospect stops comparing. They don't want to go through this entire comparison process. What they're really hoping when they click on your website is that they're going to say, oh, this is the person, this is the firm, and I can stop looking. This person understands. They serve, they provide the service that I'm looking for, they understand my needs, they have great reviews, et cetera. It's easy. I can just book a call right now, and I can have this process started very painlessly. That's what you're wanting. So when you have that, then your conversations are much cleaner and on a much higher level. Now, you've all been hearing about AI-powered search and how AI is changing the marketplace. What AI does is make this clarity and this decision ease more important, not less. So AI replaces all these generic explanations that we used to see you'd make all this content, you know, what is a revocable living trust. You don't need to have that on your website because information is everywhere. Judgment is the product now. Judgment is where you shine over AI. When information is abundant, like what AI has done, it's made information abundant, then trust is the real differentiator. And generic marketing blends. In faster than ever. So if your marketing feels inconsistent, here's the decision that's in front of you. If you're not visible, fix your visibility problem first. If you're visible but not converting, then fix your selection signals, your selection process, fix that. Most firms actually need both and in the right order. So visibility is step one and selection is step two. And you can't skip either one of those steps. So ask yourself these questions. What is my marketing doing right now to help someone confidently choose me or choose my firm? And once they inquire, am I making it easy for them to move forward? These are the questions that matter now. And if you're listening to this thinking, I don't even know which one is my problem, I encourage you to meet with one of our marketing strategists to get clarity on exactly what is going on with your marketing. What is the friction that's holding you back? We work exclusively with estate planning and elder law attorneys to resolve just these types of problems. The call is free, and just getting clarity around your sticking points could make it the most valuable call you have this week. So if you take nothing else from today's episode, remember these things. Visibility online still matters, but it isn't the finish line anymore. The firms who win next won't be the loudest. They will be the ones who make it easy for prospects to decide and to move forward with confidence. Visibility gets you found, but it's selection that gets you hired.

That's a wrap on this edition of the Marketing Lawcast. Thanks for joining us. Head over to imsrocks.com. 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.