Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / How to Leverage Google to Help Your Firm Scale Faster

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How to Leverage Google to Help Your Firm Scale Faster · Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love

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Unknown: And we're recording. Hi, and welcome to the wealthy
0:03
woman lawyer Podcast. I'm super excited today to have Ronnie
0:07
dever here with us because Ronnie is the CEO of noble
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marketing. And they actually specialize. They're a lawyer
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exclusive marketing agency that specializes in generating leads
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and increasing potential new clients and turning them into
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paying clients. And they are so confident in the work that they
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do that they actually have 100% guarantee which is very, very
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rare in marketing industry. So I've got lots of questions for
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running today. And he's got lots of answers for me, I'm sure. So
0:39
welcome, Ronnie, we're so glad to have you here.
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Oh, thank you so much. I'm so thrilled to be here as well.
0:47
As I have a coughing fit.
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I've had that happen while recording before it's the worst.
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We're just gonna roll with it. Everybody's just gonna have to
0:56
live with it today. Unfortunately, I live in
0:59
Florida, and right now everything is gold down here.
1:02
And it's a health problem, not a monetary goal. Alright, so
1:06
Ronnie, tell us apologize for that. Tell us a little bit about
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you. I want to know how you kind of got into marketing and what
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made you specifically focus on lawyers?
1:19
Yeah, so I got into marketing like 10 years ago and a very,
1:24
it's a it's one of those fun young stories. But looking back,
1:27
it's kind of crazy. But basically, I was like, young and
1:30
broke. I just moved to the city of Boston. I chased a girl. The
1:33
girl didn't work out. But the city did. Now of course not. I
1:36
was 19 thinking I was in love, right? Like, I was like,
1:40
anyways, so the girl didn't work out with the city did and was
1:43
broke, right? And so I went on Craigslist, and I found a gig
1:48
where somebody said, Hey, I need a website built. And I was like,
1:50
I can build a website. I got this. So I met with a guy, Adam
1:53
McDonald's, right? And the first thing he says to me is he's
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like, Hey, man, I want a website. But what I really want
1:59
is just show number show up number one on Google, right? And
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of course, young and broke. I was like, You know what, man,
2:05
pay me 400 bucks a month. And I'll make it happen right, now
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that I had any idea how to make it happen. All right, I spoke a
2:10
good talk. I kind of knew the terms, you know, content
2:12
marketing, and on page SEO optimization and whatever,
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right. But anyways, I ended up giving me the gig. And that's
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when I learned about Google My Business and actually succeeded,
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we actually did get him number one on Google, he did start
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making money off the campaign. And then I got started in
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marketing. And then 10 years later, found my way into working
2:31
with lawyers, which is really where I found my passion and
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love for it. And main reason being I mean, lawyers, y'all are
2:39
some amazing, inspirational people, all of you, I don't care
2:42
what industry you work in, because you guys voluntarily
2:46
decide to get involved people during their most emotional
2:50
times their lives, like you're just like, yeah, those guys,
2:52
they're the worst of their lives. Do what I'm gonna go help
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those guys. Right? And I'm like, wow, whoa. So I love I love
3:01
lawyers. I love what you do. And for me, I love the marketing
3:05
because it works. Well. It's very direct people either have a
3:07
need for a lawyer, or they don't need a lawyer. There's not a lot
3:10
of in between, there's not a lot of convincing,
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you're just hanging out one day and saying, You know what, I
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think I'll go hire a lawyer. No, you
3:16
don't, right? You don't run a Facebook ad says needed divorce.
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Right? Like maybe you don't like your spouse as much, right?
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Like, you're not doing a lot of awareness marketing about
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divorce as much right? Or a lot of it's very direct. It's very,
3:29
and of course, there's, there's time and space for other types
3:31
of marketing. I'm not saying they have no role. But it's also
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a very direct industry where people are like, Hey, I have a
3:36
need, can you fulfill it? And that's a style of marketing that
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I really just love.
3:40
Yeah, a lot of different industries don't have the kind
3:43
of urgency already built in baked in because urgency is a
3:48
huge factor in successful marketing, is if your
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prospective client doesn't have a need for what you do and
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doesn't have an urgent need for what you do, then they're less
3:58
likely to hire you. But it's one thing that's for most attorneys.
4:01
There's a built in urgency. If somebody's hiring a lawyer,
4:04
they're doing it because they have a need. Not some want just
4:09
mocks they haven't prepped for estate planning. They've got a
4:12
little harder. Probably a little bit harder. Yeah. But I do think
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that I do think that even then there comes a time when it
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becomes a need. I just think that there are a lot of people
4:23
don't realize that they have a need. And so you might have a
4:26
little more education that there is any but talk to me about
4:31
Google Google ads, Google Local, because I really love to get
4:35
some clarity around the difference. And so because
4:40
Google so first of all, Google for most most of us out there
4:44
probably realize that Google is a page ranking site. A lot of
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people think of it as a search engine. That includes everything
4:50
that's out on the internet internet out there so we could
4:52
find it. But it the thing that kind of differentiated is it
4:57
came out as a page ranking service. And it actually goes
5:01
out and crawls the internet and says, Okay, let's, there's all
5:05
these different sites of, you know, tag to this keyword, let's
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put them in order what we think is the most important right now.
5:12
So when we're talking about doing Google advertising, Google
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has rolled out different things. They have Google ads, and then
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they have Google Express was something that they came out
5:23
with, you know, to get people to do their own Google ads.
5:27
And never use Google Express, by the way.
5:30
So I want to talk about That's why I brought it up. And
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basically, the only one making money when you use Google
5:36
Express is Google. They're making a lot. And then they have
5:40
and they have Google Local. And I want to get dig into sort of a
5:43
little deeper into what each of each of those are. So why don't
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you and anything I'm missing here? So why don't you sort of
5:49
give us just a little brief primer to kind of sort these out
5:52
into buckets for us? So we have an understanding that we're not
5:54
always talking about the same thing. We're talking to people?
5:58
Yeah, well, I think the easiest way I found to kind of parse it
6:00
out is really just based on like, if you do a Google search,
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say any search, say criminal justice lawyer, Kentucky, right
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or criminal justice lawyer, specifically Louisville,
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Kentucky, pick a city, right? If you do that search, right, and
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anybody watching this, I encourage you to do that search,
6:15
you'll immediately see at the top our ads, right? Well, you
6:18
might see or one or two things, you're gonna see local service
6:21
ads, right. Those are the things that have like the image of the
6:23
lawyer, the actual attorneys face. All right, that's a new
6:26
form. It's basically, basically, since you mentioned it, Google
6:31
Express ADS has evolved. Basically, Google keeps trying
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to find a way that the platform is easier and profitable for
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small businesses who don't have any technical know how to run
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their own ads. Okay, Google Express was effectively an
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entirely a failure. I don't know anybody ever who ran Google
6:46
Express and made money on it. It was all over the place. If you
6:50
were an estate lawyer, you'd get calls for criminal, if you're a
6:52
criminal, you get called for PII, if your PII you get call
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for family law, like it was just terrible, right.
6:58
And they weren't making that platform, the purpose of that
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platform was to make it so the small business who didn't have
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somebody to help them could be use this right only except it
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really was just a moneymaker for Google.
7:12
Exactly. They failed entirely at the optimization, right?
7:15
Ironically, because here's the thing, this is between between
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agencies, and Google is a never ending war. Okay? Because
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Google's goal is to make money, right? So if you ever wonder
7:24
like, why do you hire an agency is because an agency is your
7:26
representative who's fighting Google and saying, no, no, no,
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Google, you're not going to take that money from me. Because I
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don't think that's going to turn into a lead. I don't think
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that's going to turn into money. So for example, putting a lot of
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effort and saying I don't want to pay for pro bono, I don't
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want to pay for free, I want to pay for cheap, I don't want to
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pay for this or that or somebody who tends to search, this tends
7:44
to not be profitable, right? Like you. They don't know the
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the human mind, right? They don't have that data of what
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actually from a click turned into a call and what calls
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turned into a case, right, but an agency does, right, as an
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agency, I can actually tell exactly every keyword that was
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clicked on, if they turned into a call. And if my client is
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giving me the data, if those calls turned into clients,
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right, which then means I can optimize that entire campaign to
8:12
tell Google to stop spending my money, right. And so my job as
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an agency is to not get more clicks. It's to remove as many
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clicks as possible. See exact opposite. Right? So a lot of my
8:23
campaigns, we may pay $100 or more per click right, which is a
8:27
lot $100 For one click Yeah, right. But so then on a $3,000
8:31
budget, we get 30 clicks, right? But of those 30 clicks, 15 of
8:35
them called you and of those 15 that called you five to eight of
8:39
them became clients, which really pays. Yeah, right, well
8:44
worth it. But the game there then is removing clicks, not
8:47
getting clicks. Google is good at getting clicks, you don't
8:49
want clicks. So you need to remove the ones that aren't
8:50
worth anything. But anyways, so Google Express came out total
8:54
failure, because it wasn't based on the idea of removing clicks,
8:57
it was getting more clicks. And that's a horrible idea. So
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Google Express then evolved into the next attempt they made,
9:03
which is now local service ads, which admittedly is way better
9:06
than Google Express. Okay, they made it its own little separate,
9:08
add its own little separate platform, some little thing,
9:12
right. It's got this little visual, it's Google screen,
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Google approved, you know, they get you to go through this whole
9:17
process of validating that you're legit business. And that
9:20
does, okay, I see people get cases for maybe 500 750 bucks a
9:24
case. That's all right. Pretty, pretty easy to set up. It
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doesn't scale very well. It has limits, but it's easier. It's
9:30
better than Google Express, right. And then the newest thing
9:33
that they just launched is now performance Max, which is
9:36
basically Google Express, but like combined with like their
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ideas that they got from like, like from Google screen and or
9:44
local service ads. And now they're saying, Okay, now
9:47
instead of just running Google ads, you can also run display
9:50
ads, which are like ads on websites, and you can run
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YouTube ads and Gmail ads, and you can run all these ads in one
9:57
simplified campaign. That's super easy for a small bit.
10:00
business owner to set up. Now personally, I fully expect it to
10:02
fail, right? Like, I don't know that I'm not a perfect Google
10:05
expert. Somebody on here who's listening who is telling me I'm
10:07
wrong, it's fine. But for me, it just smells of Google Express of
10:12
here's a super easy way. supermax or performance Max.
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Performance matters. Okay, performance Mac. All right,
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good.
10:21
So we got that I might, I had not heard her performance Max.
10:25
It's brand new.
10:26
All right. So let's talk about Google Local, because I, so I've
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had a client who uses Google Local, and they've done their
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own ads through Google Local, and it's paid off really well
10:41
for them. And they just noticed a drop in one of their practice
10:45
areas. But in the other practice areas, it's still doing pretty
10:48
well. Is that something that people can do for themselves?
10:55
That's different. This is a different question, then is that
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something they should do? This is a dummy they can do for
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themselves?
11:02
Yeah, I mean, you could do any of this for yourself. A lot of
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it's just, you know, grunt work at the end of the day. And, you
11:07
know, to kind of tie it to the previous question, we hadn't
11:09
quite finished with saying, like, Hey, what are the
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different elements, right, but you have Google ads, then the
11:13
next thing you see is Google, my business and our Google business
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profiles, the new name now, but also known as Google, local, the
11:20
map pack three pack has a bunch of different names, right? So
11:22
that's second, right. And then third is what used to be
11:25
traditional SEO, where people used to say when they say rank
11:28
one, that's what they meant was showing up on what was
11:30
traditional SEO, the actual text result, right? That's now
11:33
effectively, nobody cares about that just yet owns that Super
11:37
Lawyers owns that fine law owns that is a small business, you're
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never gonna be able to put enough money to own traditional
11:42
SEO, right?
11:44
Just a little bit. A little bit, okay. Because this is one of the
11:49
things that is a distinction that I'm always oftentimes when
11:53
I'm speaking with law firm owners, they tell me about SEO,
11:57
and they paid somebody a lot of money to SEO, their do SEO on
12:02
their website and do it monthly SEO and all that. And I tell
12:06
them, there's a distinction between SEO and pay per click
12:10
right, PPC, which is when you're paying for the ads. So SEO is is
12:15
is something that we think we're going to get organic search
12:20
about organic reach. And that your what you just said has
12:23
always been my argument is that if you want to take advantage of
12:27
signing up for all the attorney services, just get their free,
12:31
get their free listing, you don't have to pay those
12:33
listings, but you want to be on Justia, you want to be on any of
12:36
the ones that you could be on for free, because they they've
12:39
got that first page of Google's just sewn up. Yeah, right. Well,
12:45
this is actually where I want to add something to your kind of
12:47
your your framework there is that there is now a middle step
12:50
between PPC, Google ads, and traditional SEO SEO right.
12:54
There's now local SEO, right. And that and that's, that's
12:58
Google My Business. And here's the thing, the work you do for
13:01
traditional SEO, helps Google My Business, right, which is the
13:04
map pack three pack, Google Local, the thing in between
13:07
Google ads, that so there is a role for SEO, and it still can
13:10
make quite a bit of money. But it's not in the way that people
13:13
thought of it about 510 years ago, back in the day, 510 years
13:15
ago, you cared about website traffic. Nowadays, I don't give
13:18
a crap. If anyone has ever gone to your website, it doesn't
13:20
matter. The goal is have a good website, you have to it's
13:23
important to have one. But the goal of it is to have a good
13:26
website, because that helps your Google My Business or Google
13:30
Business Profile rank better and that local search part. And that
13:34
in itself is very profitable. Because Google Local SEO is
13:37
built on the foundation of what used to be traditional SEO. So
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traditional SEO has a role, but not in the way that people think
13:44
of they used to think it was like website traffic and rank
13:47
one. And now I'm like, no, none of that. Use it as a supporting
13:50
tool to help you with Google business, which kind of gets us
13:54
more into if you want to talk about it. What do you actually
13:55
do to take advantage of Google business?
13:58
Well, so if you've got so for SEO, SEO is, is what's happening
14:04
on your website, on the back end to your website on the front end
14:07
to your website. It's about the content, how the content reads,
14:10
does it follow certain rules that Google has put out there
14:14
that says they prefer for ranking? And so there are all
14:18
kinds of plugins that you can use to help you get the backend
14:21
set up the right way, and then there's certain contents or
14:25
rules and you know, I love what I like about the the certain
14:29
plugins is they get a little green light, you know, so you
14:31
know, Yoast SEO,
14:35
plug in the front of your site, but at least you make Google
14:37
happy. If you get a keyword stuffing, all of that just does
14:43
it's not nearly as effective as it used to be when Google first
14:46
started doing SEO, you know. So tell us tell us a little bit
14:51
about SEO kind of like what's not working anymore on that and
14:56
sort of what is
14:57
Yeah, so a lot of what you just talked about was actually what's
15:01
known as on page SEO, SEO can technically be divided into two
15:04
categories on page Off Page. Very simple on page means stuff
15:08
you do with your own website. Off Page means stuff you do with
15:11
other people's websites. So off page SEO would be like trying to
15:14
get backlinks from other websites like just fine law,
15:16
etc. Okay, all that kind of stuff off off page SEO of
15:19
getting some backlinks. I mean, it's worth it to the degree like
15:22
if it's free, go for it. But it's not worth it to necessarily
15:24
buy links or put a lot of effort into it, you know, off page SEO
15:27
stuff. What is still worth it is on page SEO, but not as much as
15:32
people used to think used to be in the old days, you'd pay to
15:34
$3,000 a month, or more, just for on page SEO and on page SEO
15:39
would mean would be blog posts, optimizing the website, meta
15:42
titles, meta descriptions, image, alt text, local schema,
15:46
I'm just throwing out technical terms, forgive me for anyone who
15:48
doesn't know it. But all this really technical stuff that you
15:51
do on this website, and on the ongoing would be new content,
15:54
etc, etc. Paying two to $3,000, just for that nowadays isn't
15:59
going to be profitable. And the reason for that being, as I said
16:02
is that you are never going to spend enough money to beat
16:06
justia or find law or Super Lawyers or any of them, okay,
16:11
for any of those relevant terms like criminal lawyer, insert
16:14
city, you're not going to win, you just don't have the money.
16:16
Those guys are spending millions a year, you just don't have the
16:18
money.
16:21
We were researching that Legal Zoom is what everything is
16:25
gauged against Legal Zoom is like the number ones Bender,
16:29
Google ads and investing in Google far involve multiple
16:34
multiple times over anybody else. So you and they set the
16:38
standard for like what keywords cost for lawyers,
16:42
you're not going to say you're not going to win that game with
16:44
with that traditional SEO. And here's the thing, even if you
16:47
did, and this is actually the biggest mind shift that I need
16:49
people to understand. I've actually set up call tracking
16:53
and form tracking and lead tracking on over 150 campaigns.
16:57
Okay, and so what that means is that if a lead came in, if they
17:00
called you, if they sent an email, if they fill out a form,
17:03
if they live chat, it didn't matter how they came in, if they
17:05
came in, I knew about Okay, so I've tracked well over 50,000
17:09
leads, okay, and what I have consistently found is no matter
17:13
how large, the firm was small or big 60 to 80% of every lead they
17:19
generated, could be directly or indirectly attributed to just
17:23
Google My Business. That's not the website. That's not even
17:26
Google ads. That's just Google My Business. So here's the
17:29
thing, even if you do invest all this money into SEO, and you
17:32
somehow beat justia and find law, or maybe you find some
17:35
really long term key like long keyword that they don't think of
17:39
like, you know, specifically marijuana lawyer in Lawrence
17:42
County, right? Like this really long one, right? Maybe you win
17:45
that and that gets you an extra couple 100 people per month on
17:48
your website, okay? On average, only 3% of the people who go to
17:52
your website will ever call you. So a boost of 300 people on your
17:56
website, which the big boost, right? That's a big number for a
17:59
lawyer most people only get only get 300 for their whole website.
18:02
Okay, so 300 for one blog is it's not bad. That's only going
18:05
to net you nine calls a month, nine calls all that effort, all
18:10
that money 1000s of dollars for nine calls, the math just
18:13
doesn't work out. When you compare that to Google My
18:15
Business where most of my clients are getting somewhere
18:18
between at least 50, but often 100 Plus calls a month from
18:22
their investment on Google My Business, okay? So it's really
18:27
the mind shift. There's like, hey, the calls the call volume
18:29
really comes from nowadays. Google My Business. It's just
18:33
like the way I think about once when you do a restaurant search,
18:35
you say, Italian restaurant near me, do you ever go to their
18:38
website? No, almost never. You look at their reviews. And you
18:42
they're saying and the menus even on there, you don't even
18:45
need to go to the website to look at the menu, it helps. Net
18:47
nowadays, you can even click order now in order takeout
18:50
without ever going to the website. Okay, so it's all on
18:53
Google My Business. So the same thing happens with lawyers,
18:55
somebody looks for lawyer near me, they look at your reviews,
18:58
they check out your profile, they look for your information.
19:00
And now that looks good call, and actually track that 75% of
19:04
the people who call you from Google My Business or somehow
19:07
attributed to it. Only call from Google My Business, they don't
19:10
even look at your website at all. So 75% of people aren't
19:14
even looking at your website, they call you without ever
19:16
looking at it. It's huge. It's crazy. So Google, my business is
19:20
where the call volume is Google business profile is a new name
19:22
technically. And your website is for me a supporting metric.
19:26
Nowadays, any investment, hardcore investment into your
19:29
website without focusing on Google, my business, in my
19:32
opinion, is now a waste and is not going to get you ROI.
19:35
Because even if you boosted your traffic by 300, you only get
19:38
nine calls out of that. A lot of money for only nine calls. But
19:41
you can get a lot more out of that from Google business.
19:44
Now does it so does it matter if you will everything for me? It's
19:49
in the name Google Local. So it really is about focusing
19:53
locally, regionally, have a national
19:57
it only had well So for anybody with national presence, the only
19:59
way you can get money out of Google businesses, you have
20:01
separate locations for in specific cities. Okay? So for
20:07
most lawyers, that's not a problem, because they just have
20:08
one or two locations, three, four, whatever, they have actual
20:11
physical locations. And then they just have location there,
20:14
they have a profile for each location. And each, they fill it
20:17
out, they make it do everything they can on the profile to get
20:20
reviews, etc. And then they compete. And Google business
20:22
profile has about a 25 mile radius, where you will compete
20:26
in unless you're in a very rural market like Salem, Ohio, middle
20:31
of nowhere, Ohio, you can maybe get 5050 miles. But mostly, it's
20:35
about 25 miles. But if you're an international, you just need to
20:38
have multiple locations. And there's lots and lots of
20:40
different ways. Yeah,
20:41
you and I were talking earlier about the call, like, for our
20:44
business models, where we're dealing with clients all over
20:48
the country, you know, having a local or regional is not
20:52
something but for law firms. Yeah, it makes that mean, your
20:56
clients are coming within even even working remotely. There's
21:01
only so many places your clients are going to come from and
21:04
people are going to hire people. Well, local more than they are
21:09
going to hire somebody on the other end of the state to do
21:11
their will or handle their divorce or whatever, cuz you
21:14
gotta find somebody who goes to court for you where you live in
21:18
your area. Right? So it's so that local model, that regional
21:22
model is really an important sort of distinction, right?
21:26
Yeah, Google, Google ads,
21:27
you can do whatever you want. Yeah, it's one of the with
21:31
traditional Google ads, that's one of the sort of pitfalls of
21:35
kind of running your own Google ads that people have found in
21:38
the past is like, I'm getting calls from, you know, KIPP
21:41
senior, or whatever, I'm getting calls I live in safer Florida, I
21:44
get, you know, I'd get calls from safer North Carolina, or
21:47
whatever, because, you know, you have to be very dialed in and
21:51
pay attention to where your calls are coming from. Right.
21:55
Yeah, that's both the the Achilles heel, so it's a double
21:58
edged sword is, it's amazing, because at the same time, you
22:00
can have that nationwide presence. And you can get cases
22:03
anywhere. With Google ads. There's no limits nationwide, as
22:06
long as you can practice in the area, you can run an ad.
22:09
Downside being if you're not managing it, if you're not
22:11
watching it, yeah, it happens all the time, that you get calls
22:14
from areas you can't serve. Now, local service ads help with that
22:17
a little bit, because local service ads make it same
22:19
concept, right? They very clear on your local service area, it's
22:23
in the name, right? Local Service ads. So that helps a
22:27
lot. So the local service ads are safer, but your your
22:29
traditional kind of text ads, which is still the majority of
22:31
ads on Google, yeah, you gotta be real careful. But yeah,
22:34
Google My Business, hyperlocal 25 mile radius. And if any of
22:38
those people listening who are trying to have a virtual office,
22:40
you mentioned this, I'm going to tell you right now, you're just
22:42
gonna have to, you're gonna have to find a way that you have a
22:45
physical location, there's no way around it. And trust me,
22:47
there's enough money to be made on the platform that it's worth
22:49
it. You can make deals with your local person, or you go to a
22:52
dentist and say, Hey, do you have a broom closet, I can rent
22:55
for $100 a month, right? As long as you have some kind of lease
22:57
agreement with them, that counts as a location, you can use that
23:00
if you're willing, you can use your own home address or a
23:02
friend's home address if they're willing to have it publicized.
23:05
But you need some form of location. If you're going to
23:07
generate leads from Google business, there's no way around
23:09
it.
23:10
Things like you might I guess some of the mailbox services
23:14
now. Are they using Street numbers for like UPS, whatever
23:19
are they
23:20
even if they do, you'll get caught eventually, and then
23:22
you'll get suspended. And then it's going to be brutal. You
23:24
have a sudden drop and lead flow and you're not going to want it.
23:27
We're clear on that point. So up for the UPS store, local UPS
23:31
Store or the setting store or whatever, those do not count.
23:36
Google doesn't like it if they find out that that's where you
23:39
get you've got a box there or something.
23:42
And now you need to have some kind of physical location. And
23:46
there's actually there's a cool story behind this. Basically
23:48
what happened this is here's the thing, a lot of small
23:50
businesses, small people are like, I want to go virtual, I
23:52
want to start my own business. Why is Google stopping me? You
23:54
know, they're very angry at Google. And I get it. It's very
23:56
annoying to be stopped like this. But here's the thing, it
23:59
actually protects you a lot. Yes, the people who protects the
24:02
most are the small businesses because here's what happened. At
24:04
one point, it wasn't necessary. And this is what happened. The
24:07
guys with money, Morgan and Morgan went into every city and
24:11
every market and created a brand new listing with no reviews
24:14
because they didn't need it because they're freaking Morgan
24:16
and Morgan, and everyone knows them anyways, didn't matter if
24:18
they had reviews. So they opened 1000s of GMB listings and
24:22
crushed every local competitor. So it became useless for local
24:27
businesses, local businesses had no role to play. So the only way
24:31
that the local business can be protected is if Google forces a
24:34
verification of some form of a local presence, right? So it's
24:38
actually in your benefit. And even as a virtual smaller firm,
24:41
that if you want to make money on this platform to be a ditto
24:44
except Google and saying, Hey, I appreciate that we verify
24:47
locally to some degree, because at least prevents Morgan Morgan
24:50
and anybody with enough money from coming in and launching
24:52
1000s of these nationwide and just crushing everybody. I gotta
24:57
say John Horgan is always impressing me, man. And he's
25:00
always steps ahead of everybody else in trying things and trying
25:04
to do things from a marketing standpoint, some of it some
25:08
white hat, black hat.
25:10
Oh, my God. I mean, that was the biggest suspension wave I've
25:13
ever seen in my career. I mean, we saw 1000s of listings get
25:17
suspended. Some, some of them from obviously people like that,
25:20
who are making these 1000s of them, but others just from other
25:22
law firms who just said, I'll just keep making more virtual
25:24
offices who had kind of taken up the same idea, but not to the
25:27
same scale. And people in Regus offices, co working spots
25:31
sometimes still get suspended. Yeah, I mean, it, it's tough.
25:34
But if you put the effort in either at a home address, or
25:36
again, make a deal with a local dentist a non competitive
25:39
business and say, Look, do you have a closet, and like that I
25:42
can rent for 100 bucks a month, you're gonna get more than 100
25:44
bucks a month and clients out of out of doing that effort, just
25:47
have a legit lease agreement, which again, I'm very big on
25:50
doing this, as ethically as you can, it's not breaking Terms of
25:52
Service, you do have a legitimate lease agreement that
25:54
says you rent this thing, right? That way you can give it to
25:57
Google, if you ever get suspended,
25:59
do something great for you have another other attorneys out out
26:04
there that you can, you know, rent their conference space for
26:08
the use of their conference space, if you pay them a certain
26:11
amount and, and have a lease agreement with them or something
26:14
like that, maybe a good way to go. And also, I do like the idea
26:18
of other other types of businesses, especially let's say
26:20
if you're, you know, you're an attorney, and maybe you rent
26:26
space with a therapist or something,
26:29
oh, these are great, because they're busy. They're in a
26:32
similar situation where they're not in it all the time. You
26:34
know, so they're, they're very incentivized.
26:36
Yeah, so great idea. All right. So let's go back to where we
26:40
were kind of, we were kind of clearing up the distinction
26:43
between all these. And so I think the last one we were
26:47
talking about was just kind of like what Google ads just
26:50
straight Google ads, what normal people normally think of when
26:54
they think of hiring agency to do Google ads for them. They're
26:57
not necessarily thinking, Google Local, they're thinking, you
27:00
know, we're gonna put ads out there or make it local, by the
27:03
keywords we use, or by the parameters that or something
27:07
like that. Is there anything we need to know about that? And how
27:10
that's different?
27:12
Yeah, I would generally say like the I would never do Google ads
27:15
on your own, ever, like I and of course, I'm biased in that. But
27:18
if I were to separate my own business, and I didn't have an
27:20
agency right now, I'd say the same thing. And the reason is,
27:23
is like, I've just seen too much money be burned. I mean, unless
27:26
you like the full and you want a full time job of managing it.
27:30
It's just a lot of effort. It's just a lot of going in every day
27:33
and seeing Okay, where is Google spending my money and then
27:35
telling it not to spend the money there, okay, like, it's
27:37
just a lot of everyday going in and saying, don't spend my money
27:40
this way. And unless you're willing to go in every day,
27:42
you're gonna burn a lot of money. Okay, local service ads,
27:45
sure, you can do that on your own. That's pretty easy. It's
27:48
limited enough in scope, that you set it up. Once you it's
27:51
really set and forget local service ads, it's kind of the
27:53
first time Google succeeded and what I think is a set forget,
27:56
campaign. So that's, that's fine. But don't ever run Google
27:59
ads on your own. And if you hire somebody, make sure that you get
28:02
them and ask them to talk about how they limit clicks, and then
28:06
figure out if they talk about really the metrics that matter,
28:09
like, like actually getting cases, because impressions,
28:13
clicks, click through rate, none of that means anything. If it
28:17
doesn't turn into cases, I don't care if they got 100 clicks. Did
28:19
any one of those turn into a call? Did those calls turn into
28:21
cases where they calls it? We're talking about Social Security?
28:24
When here you're not a Disability Lawyer, right? Like
28:26
it actually you gotta gotta get get them to talk about like,
28:29
hey, no, no, we generate cases. And here's how we do that by
28:32
getting rid of clicks as much as we can. And if they can't talk
28:34
about that, don't hire them. Just don't. Yeah, yeah. Like,
28:38
they're not gonna make money.
28:41
And one of the experiences we had is, we've learned my husband
28:47
who works with me in this business to provide it's the
28:50
only thing that we still do for our clients is that we do adult
28:53
for us Google ads. And when he became Google certified, it was
28:59
just a whole nother level of knowledge and information that
29:03
all the sort of secrets that you don't realize, that's why we
29:06
were telling everybody Oh, my God, no, do not to Google
29:08
yourself. Too much stuff. And we learned that the hard way,
29:12
because we had another business. Yeah. And that's what propelled
29:15
him to like, go in and become certified and learn it. Because
29:18
he was, you know, spending all this money to advertise another
29:21
type of business. And it was like, Oh, my gosh, there's so
29:25
much I don't know. And they that you can't, you can't google it.
29:29
No,
29:29
you can't you learn the hard way. That's almost it. There's
29:31
some online courses, but it's still hard to find.
29:34
Yeah. And they probably aren't as you know, one of the things
29:39
you and I were talking about earlier was how verta about meta
29:42
and Facebook, advertising, Instagram. And all of these
29:46
services are all Google is a little bit more intuitive, but
29:50
they're all always changing. So you can go watch a video from
29:54
somebody who says this is how you do such and so on YouTube, I
29:57
mean, my nephews who are college in college They're famous for
30:00
like going to YouTube to figure out how to do things, right. And
30:04
my husband, you know, will go look on things in YouTube. But
30:07
it's amazing how quickly those types of things expire. Because
30:12
they're no longer good, because of the platforms have changed
30:16
what they're doing, they're always evolving. And Facebook
30:18
right now is in a huge, you know, just being just turning,
30:23
just becoming meta, and all their focus and how they're
30:25
shifting, things are changing a lot of things. And you, you have
30:30
to have, like, people help you figure those things out, because
30:35
you can go watch videos all day long, but then you were like,
30:38
looking at your screen goal, I don't have any of those buttons,
30:41
were whatever that right. Things are always evolving, right? So
30:48
you have a very interesting guarantee, you have 100%
30:53
guarantee that what you do will work and will result in cases.
30:56
So why don't you go into a little bit more detail about
30:59
that, because I know people are going but so one thing about
31:02
lawyers, as fun as we may be to work with is that we are
31:06
skeptical lot. And we might look at that and go, Oh, I believe
31:10
that you can't do that. And of course, we're told everywhere.
31:14
That Well, you know, there's no guarantee and marketing. Yep.
31:17
Because we can't, you know, there's, you know, it's fluid,
31:22
things are always changing, right? So tell me what made you
31:25
decide to do this guarantee? And what it is exactly, yeah. So
31:30
we'll start with kind of talking about what is the actual
31:32
guarantees. So the explicit guarantee is, we guarantee the
31:34
campaign will be profitable in three months or less. And if we
31:38
fail, in three months, we'll work for free for up to three
31:40
more months. And if we fail again, after six months, we'll
31:43
actually refund all your money. Okay. And so for example, if you
31:47
were to do our base campaign starts at $1,500 a month, okay,
31:50
which means within three months, you'd spend $4,500. With me,
31:53
which means by the end of that time period, most lawyers, we
31:55
based on gross profits, so most lawyers gross profit around 60
31:58
to 80%, which means we need to be getting you at least $5,600,
32:02
to about $7,800 in revenue to make that profitable for you
32:06
minimum, okay. And the main reason we do this guarantee is
32:09
not because like that, like three months, getting only
32:13
$7,600 in revenue, like that's not, that's not the end goal,
32:16
right? Like, that's not a goal, right? We want you to make way
32:19
more money than that. But the reason we do it is our goal is
32:22
in that three months is that if we can get to the point where
32:24
the campaign makes enough money to pay for itself, well, then
32:26
you can sustain the campaign, okay. And so then you can
32:29
sustain it over the next 12 months, 24 months. And that's
32:33
where you're going to start seeing major gains like doubling
32:35
your business or tripling your business. But before we can do
32:38
that, for a lot of lawyers, if you can't start making money in
32:40
three months, you can't sustain it for 12 months, like you don't
32:43
want to take that risk. A lot of people, you know, they took SEO
32:45
risks, and when they got burned, and they spent 12 months
32:47
investing for $2,000 a month. And then 12 months later, they
32:51
didn't make $24,000 in revenue back. Now, despite all this
32:54
investment in quote, unquote, SEO. And so I was very much
32:57
like, I don't want to be that way, I want you to make at least
33:00
enough to cover the cost of the campaign within three months. So
33:02
then you can sustain it over the long haul over the next 12
33:05
months. And then I can make you even more money than whatever I
33:08
did in the first three months. Okay. So that's kind of the you
33:11
know, what the guarantee is why I did it was just because it's
33:13
the type of business I want to run. I just I love running
33:17
business in a way that I'm like, none. And I'm actually helping
33:19
these people grow their business like i It is not a success for
33:22
me. If I did all this work, and you didn't make money, okay,
33:25
like that's a failure state. Like, that's, that's not
33:27
acceptable. But that is not an outcome that I'm okay with.
33:30
There are many businesses that are that that's their whole
33:32
business model, like that's okay. Like, they're like 500
33:34
bucks a month. And I'm like, that's an okay for me, that's
33:36
not fine. If you're not making money, then I'm wasting my time.
33:38
It just doesn't feel good. So that's why I did it. In terms of
33:41
like, how do we do it? I mean, long story short, we just kind
33:45
of have the data on it. In general, we succeed within the
33:48
three months, about 80% of the time, we succeed within the next
33:51
six months, 98% of the time, we almost never have anybody
33:55
completely fail within six months. Okay. And basically, the
33:59
thing that fails more than often than anything is not the
34:01
marketing. It's often close rate. And I was actually
34:03
listening to the sales conversation you had with the
34:07
CEO of select sales development. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love
34:11
that episode, by the way. So cool. The plan meant that
34:14
talking about how to management questions, etc. That was a great
34:16
episode. But anyways, so we're often also doing like train
34:20
sales, training support, and I have my own theories on that.
34:23
But anyways, the point is, we just have the data that like, we
34:25
put the grunt work into Google business profile, we know that
34:28
60 to 80% of calls come from Google business. So we're
34:31
putting the effort where the you know, basically where we found
34:33
the 20% that drives 80%. So we're putting all our effort
34:36
into that. And we found that basically, Google likes Google.
34:39
So if you put effort into Google by filling everything out by
34:42
doing everything you can do on the profile possible, right,
34:44
putting all the grunt work in you can that Google rewards you
34:48
and that in most situations, within three months, most of our
34:51
clients have gotten at least 16 consultations. And usually if
34:54
they have at least a 20 30% closing rate that turns into,
34:57
you know, three, four cases of Okay, and most people's average
35:01
case value is somewhere between three and $5,000. Which means
35:04
even at the low end, they're looking at $9,000. Okay, which,
35:07
of course, more than pays the campaign off? So a lot of this
35:10
just comes down to pure numbers. Okay. Right. Right. And that's
35:13
how that's how we do it, and why we do it.
35:16
Yeah, no, that's great. It's great for you to share that.
35:18
Because I think one thing that's really interesting about that,
35:22
too, is that you make you make the point that it takes, this is
35:27
something that takes time, this is something that, you know,
35:31
when, when working with anybody on on ads, it's in, and we're
35:34
just very select, you know, I only work with my coaching
35:38
clients on this, but when we do, it's always like, it takes a
35:41
while, because you're tweaking you're changing, you're seeing
35:44
what's happened, what's working, what's not. And also things
35:47
change, you're in a dynamic environment, you know, they're
35:50
always sort of working that to tweak and make better, like you
35:53
said, remove those, those clicks that are, you know, you
35:57
shouldn't be getting right. And so I think that is, that's
36:02
something that people need to keep in mind, like any marketing
36:05
that you do, you have to give it time to work. And three months
36:09
is not sufficient, really to give it time to work, you have
36:12
to give it time, six months, 12 months, to really see, to really
36:17
see the full potential big benefit, it's not not some
36:21
benefit, you certainly should be getting something like you
36:24
shouldn't just be throwing money down a pit. But at the same
36:27
time, you know, to get the full benefit is something that the
36:30
longer you sort of stick with it even even just, you know, I
36:33
remember we had a we had a gym, and the first one we opened, we
36:37
wound up having to close that one. And we changed the name and
36:41
we did something similar or different. But that old site
36:47
just got so we were ranked like top when you search. Yeah. In
36:52
2005, or something. We were ranked like number one. And so
36:56
we couldn't we didn't want to give that up. You know, we were
36:58
driving traffic from that name. Because some of that is just
37:03
like how long you've been around and how long you've been doing
37:06
something and how long? Because Google looks at that as the
37:09
longer you're around, the more credible
37:11
you are, the more you've put consistent effort in, you know,
37:14
basically, especially with Google business, it was just
37:16
separate than Google ads. Right. But Google business, a lot of
37:19
it, I think it is kind of the online equivalent of how do you
37:21
have a good referral business? Okay, so then a good referral
37:24
business, the way you get referrals is that you prove
37:27
you're an expert to people, you help as many people as you can
37:29
you build their trust, you get them to speak well of you. And
37:32
you build your authority, right? Expertise, authority and trust,
37:35
okay. And then people naturally want to refer you because
37:38
they're like, Hey, this guy helped me he did good work. He's
37:40
an expert, he's going to help you in everything he does,
37:42
right? Or she I'm just saying he because I'm a heat. But anyways,
37:46
you know that that's a little referral? Well, Google business
37:48
is the same thing. You go on there. If you put the effort in
37:50
consistently to prove your authority, you really fill out
37:53
the profile, you put in your information that you do this
37:55
service and that service and you post frequently, you add photos
37:58
and you do questions and answers, you prove you're an
38:00
expert, you prove your authority by putting that effort in over
38:02
time, and you build trust by getting reviews, and then
38:05
responding to those reviews. Just put that effort in? Well,
38:08
then Google's then gonna refer you cases because now you are
38:11
the highest expert with the most authority in the most trust,
38:13
okay, it's just the same thing. And of course, as you said, that
38:16
takes time. And what we're doing is we're trying to bum rush it
38:19
in three months, just because that's the challenge we want to
38:21
put to ourselves is like, hey, we want you to make money. Let's
38:23
prove we can do it in three months. But then the real gains
38:26
and we have people, it's not uncommon. We have clients who
38:28
doubled their business in 12 months, like that's when we
38:31
started out, like 200,000 now is doing 400,000. And that's,
38:34
that's a fairly small firm still, but like we can we've had
38:37
other situations go from 400 to 800. Like that happens.
38:40
It's an awful. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I thank you so much for
38:45
being here. today. We have to wrap it up. But I appreciate you
38:48
being here. And I think I've learned a lot and I'm sure that
38:51
our listeners have learned a lot. So tell us how we can find
38:54
out more about you and how to connect with you and get you
38:58
know, dig into local marketing get to know more about what
39:01
you're doing.
39:02
Yeah, absolutely. Well, the first things first, you can
39:05
always contact me at our dever that's ours and Roger DS and dog
39:08
EA V as in Victor er at Noble marketing.co. You can always
39:13
contact me there. It's also the website. And if you don't mind,
39:15
do you mind if I actually suggest a link to another
39:18
podcast that I think people would appreciate listening to
39:20
after they listen to this one? Yeah, so I did a podcast with
39:23
Susan Guthrie. She's a top 1.5% podcaster and lawyer. And her
39:29
podcast that we did together was basically on the tutorial of
39:31
everything you can really do to take advantage of the Google
39:35
business profile and how you can really work it to get your
39:38
money's worth out of it. And you had mentioned you said hey, can
39:40
you do this on your own? And I said for Google business. Yes.
39:44
It's just a lot of grunt work at the end of the day. Okay. So
39:46
when anybody asked me like, What do I do? I say, look, I sell
39:48
grunt work, okay, like we don't have any black. We don't have a
39:51
black box. There's no black magic. At the end of the day.
39:54
What do I do? I take your Google business profile over I take
39:56
your Google Ads profile over and I just put in hours of work.
40:00
Every day on Google business that turns into posts that's
40:02
photos, it's questions and answers, that's breaking out
40:05
your services into 100 subcategories with 300 character
40:08
descriptions, right? That's adding products that's helping
40:11
you get reviews that's responding to reviews, just
40:13
grunt work. There's a lot you can do on the profile. It is not
40:16
a set and forget profile. It is absolutely a proactive thing.
40:19
Same thing with Google ads, as we talked about proactive,
40:21
removing negative keywords, we just put the grunt work in. So I
40:24
want you to watch that podcast, hear the grunt work. And if you
40:27
want to do it yourself, great, go do it, you'll make a ton of
40:29
money. And if you don't want to do it yourself, come talk to me,
40:32
we've got campaigns, we guarantee there'll be profitable
40:35
starting as low as $1,500 a month and I'd love to help you.
40:38
Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. You and I discussed that. And we
40:41
were talking about whether you whether what you can do and
40:45
whether you should be doing it. So my clients, anybody who's
40:47
followed me for a while knows that I'm going to tell them you
40:50
absolutely should not be spending your time.
40:53
I've recommended
40:55
way Wait, maybe at the very beginning, business, you have
40:59
more time than money, maybe. But I would also make an argument
41:04
that it's worth it to put it on a credit card just for a little
41:07
while. I've done that before. I have people who would do three
41:10
months of credit. And then by the end of the three months,
41:12
they've made the money back and they're fine. Like it happens
41:14
all the time. Because it's really a matter of should you do
41:18
it. And I think what people don't realize about marketing in
41:22
general, and any any marketing that you're doing any, no matter
41:27
what you're doing for marketing, it is a lot more detailed. And
41:32
there's a lot more knowledge there. It's there's a learning
41:35
curve, and it's people who are marketing on certain platforms.
41:39
There's a learning curve, like I used my I always use Instagram
41:42
as my example. I have someone who runs my Instagram account
41:44
for me, she and I need we work strategy. It's me, it's by
41:47
content. It's you know, I've always all that, but she's
41:51
there, she loves Instagram, she's on Instagram all day long.
41:54
She got it on Instagram, she played, she loves it. It's
41:57
awesome. And, you know, I don't have that kind of time. I'm busy
42:01
serving clients doing other things. And I don't want to dig
42:05
in and oh, I just found out that, you know, now you can add
42:08
links to stories.
42:10
Oh my god.
42:11
I don't want to spend the time digging. And I don't think as
42:14
you're trying to be the CEO of your law, firm business is not
42:18
where you need to be spending your time. But you definitely
42:20
need people to help you do that. So, Ronnie, thanks for sharing
42:23
with us today and you'll send me those links. We'll include them
42:27
in the show notes for this podcast, so everybody can just
42:29
easily click on them and go listen to Susan Guthrie's
42:32
podcasts as well and hear all those details. Thanks so much
42:35
for being here and sharing with us today.
42:38
Thanks so much. It's a pleasure.