Podcast Transcript for hearing impaired

All right, everybody, welcome to another edition of elevating with Marcia. I'm Marcia Hawkins, your host. And I am with Mike Athas, who's also part of the Marcia Hawkins agency for our marketing services. And today we're going to be talking about marketing for attorneys and specifically, um, personal injury attorneys, because I'm absolutely blown away by how many billboards I run into when I'm on the interstate.

For personal injury attorneys, it seems like that is pretty much dominating. So welcome aboard, Mike. How are you today? Hey, Marcia. Uh, I'm doing fantastic, thank you. Excited to speak with you today. Yeah, me, too. Um, you're down in Florida. I'm in Massachusetts. I travel to Connecticut quite frequently.

Boston. Um, I go north, south, east, west, um, Albany area. And one of the things that has really jumped out at me when I'm driving is the amount of personal injury attorneys that are m marketing in the Hartford area. Hartford, Connecticut, Boston, Massachusetts, Albany, New York. And I know when I come down to Florida, uh, Orlando, Florida, West Palm, Palm Beach, Miami, uh, Tampa.

Personal injury, personal injury, personal injury. So that got me thinking. I, uh, know what a billboard cost. I've bought billboards a long time ago, and I know the reach that they have. But, yeah, I want your take on that. Well, I have a similar take, but I can shed some light on it, too.

So I've personally spent money on billboards just like you have. I used a company called Blip billboards, where it's like that electronic digital billboard, and you can pay for an ad. Um, I remember it was very expensive to do, but you get a large reach, especially if you're utilizing the blip services to go on different times that you're going to have a lot more traffic driving by, whether that be foot traffic or drive by car traffic, highway, whatever that is.

But here's what I'll tell you. That's interesting about that. So I agree with you completely that every time I turn around, there's another billboard on the side of the highway. And I live in Sarasota. And so I'm in the, uh, Tampa area, Fort Myers area, Orlando, St. Uh, Pete Clearwater.

I mean, I travel all those areas, Bradenton, all those areas very frequently. And the overarching, um, theme that I see all over the place is there's a guy that actually lives about a half mile away from me here on Siesta Key in sarasota. His name is, he owns 1800 ask Gary, and it's a legal law, personal injury attorney referral service.

So basically, he's got billboards all over the place, and he's making an absolute killing. He owns the largest home on Siesta key. Um, built it, I want to say, about years ago. And the thing looks like a huge mansion. Uh, it is a huge mansion, and you can see it on.

That MTV Siesta key show, he actually produced that with money that he made out of this 1800 Gary, uh, business. How does that work? I'm assuming it works a lot like bigloo.com for life insurance is you call in and he sells the leads off to these attorneys. They have to cost a lot of money.

I can't even imagine what the cost is because I see him and I see his son driving around on mass have boats and whatever, and driving around in very fancy cars with huge homes. So I'm assuming just through reasonable deduction, that he's making a lot of money on referring attorneys and basically just being a lead gen source for these attorneys.

And I think it's the same thing. When you buy leads anywhere else, it's like, you buy that lead, you may sell it, you may not, but that's the end of it. And it's not a long term solution. And that's where I think the more I dig into the website stuff that you and I do and the SEO and the video marketing, it's like, why not have the long term solution?

If you're going to pay the money, why not have the long term solution as opposed to just that one time shot? Yeah, it's almost like reverse engineering. It's almost like pay per click, but you're buying a billboard. And I'm assuming once he gets a lead, he puts it out to everybody and whoever wants to pay the top price gets it.

I would assume so. I've never dug into it because I'm not personally a personal injury attorney and I haven't needed leads there. But I would assume that he's going to grab whatever that potential client could be, and he's going to sell that as a lead off to whatever attorney is willing to pay that fee.

Um, he's a middleman. Good for him. But long term, that's not a solution for the personal injury attorney that is looking to grab that lion's share of the client. So, interesting. I was at the gym the other day, and they had on a personal injury attorney on a tv ad.

And for me, I'm still surprised. Um, and I know there's a need for local tv and advertising, and I get all that, but I feel about local tv and national tv advertising, to be honest. Um, I kind of feel about that. Like I did about print marketing, like five years ago.

Like, who does print marketing anymore? I don't know anybody that does. And I remember, um, I've worked with a lot of car dealers and car dealers when I would say, if you just take your newspaper budget and put it towards our monthly marketing services, you're going to be up money.

Ah. And they would say to me, yeah, but you know what? The reason we won't do that is because our competitors are still doing it. And, uh, I get it. It's kind of a monkey see, monkey do kind of attitude. And they feel if their competition is there, they need to be there.

But the Internet has changed all that. I know people that buy cars in Texas, and they're in Florida and California. It doesn't matter. Uh, with the Internet, the geographical piece kind of goes away. It does. But also, I mean, you just said something. Something. They keep doing the print ads and all that, because their competitors are doing it.

To me, as someone that makes their living in sales and makes their living in marketing, if everyone's over here doing one thing, I want to be as far away from there. Exactly. You got to be different. If everyone's doing print ads, I don't want to do that. If everyone's on tv, I don't want to do that.

Got to do something different, because not all shoppers are the same and not all buyers are the same. And so you got to find a way to differentiate yourself from the pack. Uh, otherwise, uh, you're just following the whole time, and I'm not a big fan of that. Right.

So let's stay in that vein and boil it down even more. So, let's say you do, like, no, I've gotten some business off tv ads. I'm going to keep doing them. What I find interesting is that, um, now I know when I watch tv, I record everything, and I fast forward through it.

I'm not a big tv person. Um, so I fast forward through everything. Like, I will probably start the Super bowl about, well, everyone loves the Super bowl ads, but, um, to me, it's like, I don't get what the big riff is about watching the Super bowl ads. I want to watch the game.

I'm a football fan. I want the game. So it's funny. But, for example, though, I do sometimes start things, like, if I am going to watch it in real time, if you will, I will start it 20 minutes later and just fast forward through all the commercials. The commercials drive me absolutely crazy, and I know I'm not alone.

I know a lot of people do that. No, I think you're the majority with that, Marcia, because no one wants to watch the commercials, and it's just not a viable way to generate sales at this point, from my perspective, because you have that aspect of it. Um, then you also have the aspect if people are watching it.

First of all, I think there's, uh, an age demographic that's probably still watching the local news as opposed to picking up their smartphone and grabbing it from a media source. That's a demographic that most likely, I hate to say it, but eventually they're going to be a dinosaur. And the technology, um, there's almost like a cut off.

And it's starting to get to that point where everybody is going to do everything on the Internet, and there's a very small part of the population that is still reading a newspaper and watching local tv. So you have that aspect of it. So when you think about what you're putting in for your marketing dollars every month, and you're putting out a tv ad, if you will, you have to assume that your demographic is going to see it and pick up the phone and call you.

I, uh, don't care who you are. Uh, with the exception of that demographic that I just talked about, everybody. I don't care what it is. If you see something, what is the first thing you're going to do? You're going to grab your smartphone and you're going to find them on your phone, which is.

Is why it is so important to make sure, as a personal injury attorney in Hartford, Connecticut, to make sure, or Orlando, Florida, to make sure that you are, uh, the personal injury attorney that somebody is populating, that somebody's going to click on and call you. It has to be first page results.

Yeah, I mean, right at the top up and not to mention like the larger, larger. I think down in Florida it's Morgan and Morgan. I mean, they're everywhere. So if you're a personal injury attorney in a smaller firm and you really need to get that kind of, um, know, throwing up a billboard is just not going to get it done.

I have a good story about a billboard. So I'm driving down, um, in Springfield, Massachusetts, and I see this, or Northampton, and I see this billboard and I have no idea what this woman does. It's like a chicken outfit or something. Um, I kept thinking to myself, I have no idea what that billboard is trying to tell me.

Being in marketing, it piqued my interest because I kept thinking, who spent that kind of money on a billboard? And little did I know as I progressed on my trip, which was to Hartford, Connecticut, that I would run into that billboard six more times. Wow. Um, six more times.

So Northampton, Springfield, um, and then Hartford, and, uh, east of Hartford, or west of Hartford, um, six additional billboards. So she had a total of seven up. When I came back, I ended up stopping in Springfield and lo and behold, I didn't realize she had one in downtown Springfield as well.

And I looked at it and I had to get up almost at the billboard where I could see her phone number was in real small print. And then it had her law firm, she was a personal injury attorney. I still don't know what the chicken meant, but ironically, when I did a search for her, because I thought, okay, she's spending an awful lot of money on marketing and uh, on billboard marketing.

And so I went to google it and I did get a law firm by her name, and I clicked on it and I'm looking for her, uh, as an attorney. She wasn't there. It was the same name, but different location. And I thought to myself, oh my gosh, I need to talk to this attorney.

This is such a waste of money. Um, so I don't know who's handling her marketing, but the end result was I didn't know what her billboard meant. I had no idea that she was a personal injury attorney. Could not comprehend. Uh, those billboards are probably 3000, probably more on average.

It's probably what she's spending on those billboard for 30 days, and, uh, there is no way that I would have been able to read what her law firm was or what her phone number was. Then to add. Ah, to add insult to injury. Pun intended. Um, when I got to Hartford, It was not only her billboards, but there was four other personal injury attorneys marketing on billboards in that same stretch of road, probably about 4 miles.

I couldn't believe it. Absolutely could not believe it. So, um, I'm here to explain to personal injury attorneys or if they're doing wills or they're a real estate attorney. Ah, uh, criminal sense attorney, um, divorce attorney, family law, immigration. The bottom line is, I don't care who you are or where you are, if somebody is looking for an attorney, they are going to go to their smartphone.

Absolutely. And you need to make sure that you have the most powerful and relevant content out there so that Google says to your website, yep, this is exactly what this person is looking for. Therefore, your listing is going to be prominently displayed and allow them to click through and call you.

So that is where we come in. That is specifically what we do. Um, and the one thing I want to drive home on this, uh, is that while we're in marketing the Internet, I love it. Absolutely love the Internet. The side of it that I do not like is that there are a lot of cutesy name marketing companies out there that you can pay a monthly fee to to market your business, but they're not going to.

Most likely you are talking to someone in India or the Philippines, and it's not somebody. I went through my spam folder today on, uh, just one email account, and I found 15 people pitching online SEO. To me, your page isn't ranked, which I know it is because I do my own website.

You go to my websites and they're chock full of content, so I know it not to be true, but they just go after anybody and everybody that they can, uh, to try to get them on. And really what it is, it's just an automated system that they attach to your website and they charge you x amount of dollars per month.

And when you cancel in six months, they really don't care because they'll just go on to the next one. In addition to that, if there's 550, uh, personal injury attorneys in the greater Hartford, Connecticut area, they will sell it to every single one of them. They don't care. There's no exclusivity to that.

So what does that do for you? Nothing. It would be like running an ad on tv, and then as soon as your ad ends, another personal injury attorney ad runs. So it doesn't make any sense to me why people would do that. We have actual humans that are actually doing the heavy lifting on the SEO, the video SEO, the content marketing, the website.

Development, which is really where, uh, our websites absolutely scream to Google, yahoo. And bingo. Screen because of how we construct them. Most people are using uh, a templated website and Google doesn't read a template. If you think of a template, a template is really just an image. Google does not have the ability to read that image.

You see what I'm saying? Much like when people create videos, um, they'll create a video and it'll just be a slideshow of images. Now I understand the thought process behind that because I use them. However, um, it's really how you construct that video that creates the video search engine optimization.

And most people don't realize that. They think video marketing, it's the video that is doing the work and it's not, it has nothing to do with the video. I always tell people I'll create videos to you that nobody's ever going to watch. It's the content that I provide, that we provide in the video, um, that creates the video search, uh, engine optimization.

So, um, you can't just be a drummer on the Internet and have Google and all the other search engines hear you. You really need a complete band or symphony, if you will, that will perform in unison and Google looks at it and ah, ah, this is exactly what this person's looking for.

Here you go. And that's how we create lead generation for insurance agents. Uh, in our case, we're doing a podcast today about personal injury attorneys, um, or any attorney for that matter. Um, uh, and I think the key is that we are only going to work for one personal injury attorney in any given area.

So if we contract with a personal injury attorney looking for marketing in Orlando, Florida, or Hartford, Connecticut, or San Diego, California, or Dallas, Texas, all the other attorneys are off our list. That's it, that's your area. And we are going to go in and absolutely, um, fumigate, um, the search engines with the content related to that attorney's practice.

Makes sense. Get rid of the competition right there. I love it. Mhm. Yeah. And that's a very competitive industry. Um, like for example, um, you know, for a personal injury attorney, especially, um, when they're competing against the real large firms, ah, law firms, it's very difficult for a smaller firm to really get their name out there and uh, be able to do that, which is why a lot of them end up doing billboards, because they are competing with a large firm and they're trying to grab that lion's share of the market.

Very difficult to do, and it's one of those things. Things. It's an investment. When I do a contractor, um, and an electrician or a plumber wants to do it. And we're going to do a couple of podcasts about that as well. Um, we want to make sure that, um, they understand that if they ever sold their business, all of that marketing goes with them.

So as they go on month after month after month, when we're performing all of the marketing services, um, even just their generalized phone number, if they're busy and they've been really busy, and they sell their business. And I have one electrician who was telling me, I'm going to sell my business in a few years.

And I was able to explain to him, you do understand that once you sell your business and your clients, um, all of that marketing is tangible to the person purchasing that. It's a win win. It's a huge deal. Because if you're just buying leads, let's say you're an injury attorney, you're a personal injury attorney, and you're buying leads from 1800.

Ask Gary, you go to sell your practice down the road. Yes, those leads can go with it, but what's the value of those leads? If they're two years old or three years old or four years old or whatever, it's next to nothing compared to if you have a, uh, search engine that's going to put you at the top ranking, that's worth a lot.

And so it's a tangible, um, service, tangible product that you have ultimately, when you build out your marketing, so that people are going to keep coming back to you. Um, it doesn't work when you buy leads. Buy leads. Buy leads. So those expire. Mhm. Here's the other thing too, though, in that vein. Let's say insurance is one of our, we do insurance. And so one of the interesting thing is when we buy leads, those leads are sold to 50 other agents. Right. My bet is that billboard is a, um, lead source, um, uh, in house, if you will.

They take them and then they resell them to 15 attorneys or 20 or 50, whatever, and say, okay, here you go, here's, uh, the lead list, here's ten leads, and that's $10,000 or whatever it is.

You may have spent that money on that lead, on that lead list, but you may not get a client out of that. Totally. Ah, as you know, um, when you buy insurance leads, you never know whether or not you're going to be able to procure a policy sale out of that.

Especially, um, because if they're sold to multiple attorneys, their phone is blowing up and most likely they're not going to take the call. And who knows? It's just to me again, I love the Internet, and I see how that could work. But once you get too many cooks in the kitchen with that, you know, That the soup is going to get boiled down to water and you're not going to like the taste of that soup.

So it really is about investing in specific marketing that is structured specifically towards you, your industry, your geographical location, and what your competition is doing. We don't just sell you something and go, okay, throw it on autopilot and hope for the best. We have a morning meeting every morning, and we go over and we look at what type of results that we are, um, able to procure and where it is and where we need to adjust.

That is hands on human marketing versus the autopilot marketing or the auto lead generation that people are trying to buy, the lists that are just done. Like you said, um, to me, it's just a complete waste of money. And we want people who understand how to invest in their marketing with a human that is actually doing the work.

Yeah, absolutely. It's got to be hand built. Plugins don't work. You know what the first thing I learned about marketing online is? There's no shortcuts. Google will not reward you for a shortcut. And if you take shortcuts, you're going to be calling that person that you hired to do your SEO, and they've automated it, and you're going to say it's not working.

And they're never going to tell you why it's not working, but I can guarantee you it's not. Yeah. All right, so that concludes today's, uh, podcast about personal injury attorney marketing. Um, again, we're nationwide. Uh, um, we focused on Orlando and Florida and Sarasota and Tampa and Hartford, Connecticut and Albany, New York and Boston, Mass, because that's where I've seen a lot of the billboards.

But I guarantee you, if I took a trip across the country, I would run into multiple personal injury attorney billboards across this country. So tune in again. We're going to be back with more marketing podcasts soon. Thanks so much!