Speakeasy Authority Marketing

Yes, that's right! Being on the 1st page of Google for a few vanity keywords won't get you any clients and there's a good reason why. Listen to the short audio below to find out.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I am going to talk about ranking on the first page of Google for those keywords that you were dreaming about, that you have been told that are important. Is it really that important to be on the first page of Google for a few select keywords like "Los Angeles Immigration Attorney", "Florida Bankruptcy Lawyer", "Washington DUI attorney", is it really that important, is it really that helpful? Not nearly as much as you think, and here is why. So I want you to think about clients that call your office or potential clients. What do they say to you? Do they say, "Hi, I am looking for a San Diego DUI lawyer", or, "I'm looking for a Houston Criminal Defense Attorney"? No. They call you and they talk about the problems they have. "Hi, I just got served papers and my wife wants to divorce me. I'm just in a mess right now. We've got three kids and I don't want to lose them. And I am self-employed and so on", that's what someone will call and say to you, or, "Yes, I was pulled over two nights ago by the Highway Police. They tested me on the side of the road and they arrested me. I had to blow on that breathalyzer thing. I blew like a 0.2. Am I going to go to jail? Can you help me out?" Those kinds of things.

They don't say the keywords that you think everyone types in. So guess what, when people are asking you these questions before they call you, they're asking Google the exact same questions. And I see this directly with all my clients. I've had hundreds of clients, we've seen the back end of their sites and we see these kinds of phrases, "Got pulled over, blew at 0.12, will I go to jail", "Violated order of protection, how can I see my family again", "Self-employed, in foreclosure, can I keep my house in bankruptcy", and those kinds of things. So here is your choice. When you are optimizing your site, when you're having your SEO people optimize it for you. If you tell them or they tell you they're going to focus on these 10 keywords or these 20 keywords, you're missing out on all the people that are first going to put questions into Google. So do you want to show up when people first put questions into Google, do you want to show up for the thousands of things that they could type in and have them go to your site, and then once they're on your site, find the answer to that question and then say, "Hmm, I should call this person" and call you the attorney? Or do you want them to not find you and wait till the very end when they may or may not put in "San Diego Immigration Attorney", and then you're in a crowded field, you're in the most competitive area of the web, everyone's gunning for those keywords. You got to be real strong SEO wise, you got to have a lot of reviews, you got to have all this money to compete in that arena, would you rather be there at the very end or would you rather be early on in the process?

Well, the clients I have, the attorneys I have that are doing really well are there early in the process, so how do you do this. This is called the long tail of Google search, okay. Here's how you get there. You got to add a lot of content to your site, content meaning articles, and you want to do this on a regular basis, not just one and done. So the way we've found, the easiest way to do it is to interview you by phone for about 30 minutes a month and that creates 5 to 6 articles each of 5 to 600 words. It's a truly effortless way to get information out of you and onto your website. The interview gets transcribed, edited and put onto your website. Yes, you can do the same thing. You can dictate it into your phone, to our secretary, you could have someone interview you, your current SEO company, you could have us do it, it doesn't matter. But instead of writing, this is a very effortless way to get this content onto your site. And if you flush out each of your practice areas with 30 or 40 articles in each practice area, okay, you're really going deep to all the nuances of what you do and all the questions that come up and you put this on your site, now Google's going to see that you have all those contents and there will be many, many, many more doors through which people can come and find your content and come to your site. Now you're going to start showing up early in the process and beat out all those other guys and girls that are focusing on just the last few keywords.

Yes, there are more to the stray than this. So if you want the full information on how this is done and maybe even more questions on why it works and what to do and how to tune it, email me [email protected], or call 888-225-8594 but don't be seduced by the few keywords because that's not where the money is, that's not where the clients are. Thank you.

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In this episode you'll learn how you can get clients in the desired cities near your main office location. You'll also learn how you can use Google maps to your advantage and how to create 2,3,4 or even more Google maps listings.

Listen to the audio below or download it.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. And today, I want to talk to you about getting, by appointment only, rented conference room so you can have a second or third or fourth office location and why this is important to do. So as you're listening to this podcast, what I want you to do is take out your phone and put in Chinese food, okay, into Google. And what you're going to see is a listing of local Chinese restaurants that come up, okay. Why it is this? Because Google knows where you're searching from especially if you're on your phone. And the most relevant results for you are going to be local Chinese restaurants, not ones 30-40 miles away. Why would you go to them? You're not going to them. So you're going to see local results to you, probably a mile or 2-3 miles away at most and they're going to be ranked in order of closest to furthest away.

Well, guess what happens when people Google attorneys. Google knows where they are searching from. And today, where almost 70% of all searches are from mobile devices, tablets, especially mobile phones, iPhones and android, guess what happens? They see lawyers that are closer to them in descending order of proximity. So how do you get clients from over there? The next city over that may be 10 miles away or three cities away where you know all the wealthy people live. Well, you do that by getting a second location. Now you don't have to get a full-blown office where you pay rent and you have desks and all that other stuff, you can go through your services like Rejuss or other services that charge about $100 a month and they'll give you a second address in another part of town. And what you do then is you have a Google maps listings made for that second address. Google will send a postcard to it by mail. You got to get the pen and have you guys put it into Google, and now you have a second maps location. You put that second location on your website. Now, Google sees you as being in spot A and in spot B, and now you're going to naturally start drawing business from spot B when you didn't before.

If you try to force Google and put keywords in, let's say it's called Smith City, the city you want to be in. If you try to put articles in your site that talk about Smith City and you put Smith City in 100 times in your site, you're trying to force Google to show you in that area and it's not going to do it. It naturally knows people looking for an attorney that are in or around Smith City when they are searching, it's going to show them local ones. And it's more than an uphill battle to try to rank there, okay. If your site gets truly strong over a time, you will rank there, you will, but most attorneys don't have the patience or time or luck in order to do that. So a much easier way is to go with Google instead of fighting them. And again, that's getting a second location and that's totally okay.

If you look at the top attorneys in your metro, in your practice areas, they typically have multiple websites and multiple locations. Some people are all over the place, they have 5, 10, 15 locations but I recommend you at least get a second one. It's very easy, very simple, low cost, a great way to get more clients in areas and cities that you're not currently getting without having to fight Google to the death or try to force it. So I hope this helps you. If you need help implementing this strategy, call us 888-225-8594, or email me [email protected]. Thank you.

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In today's episode I've shared an insight on how you can use your past cases to create useful content & case studies. You'll also learn how you can use this content to your advantage and get more clients. Go ahead, listen to the audio below for complete insight.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I'm going to tell you that you've got a whole bunch of gold nuggets sitting in your old client files. And here is what I mean by that. So, I just got an email from an attorney and he was saying to me, "Rich, I am having a real hard time getting testimonials. Everyone wants to be anonymous because I do criminal defense and Google won't let them be anonymous. Yelp has given them a problem and all that so it's very hard for me to get reviews. What do I do?" So I thought about this and here is the answer I gave him. And this is really going to be, you're going to like this one. So, this guy does criminal defense and DUI so I am going to start with that as an example. So I told him, "Look for your past client files and look for cases in DUI where the person had a really high blood alcohol level but yet you prevailed. Look for ones where they're over 21, under 21, they had multiple offenses and you still got them off. They had a very low BAC, they failed the field sobriety tests because they were way overweight and those kinds of things. Look for all these different cases that you've done already and write up case studies". So let me give you an example of one.

This is just a fictitious one just so you know. Attorney Smith got my DUI reduced to probation and helped me keep my driver's license. I was pulled over in LA by a highway police and when I was pulled over, they had me do those roadside tests, the Walk and Turn and that kind of thing. Because I am nearly a 100 pounds overweight, I wasn't able to do the tests and the police took this as a sign that I was drunk and arrested me. During my case, the attorney was able to show the judge that because of my weight, I was physically unable to do these sobriety tests and got them thrown out. Now, the police lacks probable cause to have arrested me and my case ended up getting knocked down to probation and the offense itself was changed to a lesser offense. It's not exactly the deal. This is the case study.

Now, here is how you use it. One way is on your website. So if you do, let's say, DUI and you have an area on your website with articles about field sobriety, put a case study like this on those pages because people are going to see that and they're going to say, "Yes, I have that same problem. I am way overweight too", or, "I think I couldn't even do those tests if I was sober", they'll see that stuff and they're more likely to call you. And this is not just for DUI by the way, this is for any practice area. Let's do a family law one just so you don't think it's only DUI. Let's say you're self-employed and you've been married for 25 years and you're getting divorced and in your state, there is perpetual alimony or perpetual spousal maintenance. But your attorney, because of some ability, they're able to not have to you perpetual alimony; it's only for 10 years which is better than for life. This is a huge help to you, it's going to save you tens of thousands of dollars. That's a great case study, okay. Or someone that wants to get custody of their kids but they are the man and normally you would think woman would get custody but the man gets custody because of your legal work, these are great case studies. A custody example should go on your custody pages; an alimony example should go on your alimony pages.

This goes the same whether it's bankruptcy, immigration, family law, personal injury, anything. Any of these things have case studies, you have them in your files, these cases you've done where you've gotten good results and you can talk about them without putting someone's name on them and without putting any identifying details that would expose that person. And now, here are some of the places you can use them. So, again, you can put them on your website, and this will help you. If you do direct mail, like Jail Mailer or Auto accident mailers, put them in there too, it'll help you; also on the phone. If you or your admin or anyone in your firm is talking to someone and they have a set of circumstances that's similar to a case study you have, well then you give them the simple script, you say, "You know what, I have a couple of cases I've done that are really similar to yours. I'm going to send you over some case studies I have. It does not identify the person obviously, we protect people's privacy but I am going to send it to you by email. What's your best email?" So what happens when you do that? You send someone — let's say they got into an accident with an uninsured driver and they were rear-ended and they don't know if they are going to collect any money, and you have a case study where you somehow were able to collect substantial settlement for this person. You send it to that person, the person is going to think, "Wow, this guy or this girl has handled cases really similar to mine. He got good results. That gives me a lot more faith in them. I am going to hire him or her", okay. That's the affect of this type of stuff.

Now, I am going to give you one more example. So I've got an attorney in Pennsylvania, I did a DUI, jailer-mailer letter for him. And in the letter, we had some case studies. One was where he defended someone that had a blood alcohol level of like 0.33 or 0.31 which, if you don't know if that's not your practice area, that's like 5 times the legal limit, that's like half dead. If you're that drunk, you're almost drunk. You got to be a major alcoholic to be that high, okay. He somehow got this person off because he got evidence suppressed or whatever it was. So he put his testimonial with his case study in his letter. He started getting calls from people with high BACs, 0.27, 0.25, they told them, "I was going to give up but when I saw in your letter that you defended someone with an even worse situation that I am in and still got a good result, I had to call you", and he got some great cases from it.

So of course you want to put disclaimers in this. Every case is different, yes, say that. Go ahead and put a disclaimer, no problem. The results in this case may not be the results of your case, each case is different. You can't depend or rely on these results but I wanted to show you these results to show you at least, in some cases, what has been possible. So if you put those disclaimers in and you mine your history and you get these case studies out of there, you're going to be a heck of a lot more powerful and compelling in the marketplace because you'd be able to demonstrate to people that you've helped people just like them. So if you want help unearthing these case studies for your practice, we can easily do that by phone. We can do a half hour or even an hour phone of interview. I'll charge you a flat fee for it but we can help get these cases out of you without you having to sit there and go through files. So it's up to you. If you want something like this, great. Email me [email protected], call 888-225-8594. If not, use this information yourself and improve your practice. Thank you.

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Watch out for undesired emails that claim to get your law firm's site onto the first page of Google. In this episode, I've shared some simple indicators to spot these scammers and also highlighted the tricks and tactics they use. Listen to the audio below and avoid getting burned.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I want to share with you an interesting email I received from one of my clients, a guy named Mike. So he emails me and says, "Hey Rich, take a look at this 'Report' below. I think you'll get a kick out of it. Mike". So the report says, "Mike, thank you. Below is the summary of our researching as completed and strategy for your firm acquiring new cases." I am not making this up; this is the English used in the email. "Problem: There are 481 errors on your website in Google's eyes. Your site has many spam back link that is hurting your use. Your content isn't updated frequently and it should be. The content on your site isn't converting on keywords sufficiently. Solution: We suggest repairing 481 errors, getting good back link and fixing content blog everyday and social media campaigns." Then it continues, it says, "Expected results: You are expecting 2 to 3 new cases top ranking keywords each month. Our company is focused on that statistics yet bringing in new cases. Every other statistic is just accessory to number of new case acquired. Are you open to discussing this information on Friday or Monday? John Smith, nation's only search engine certified firm", with a 800 number.

So, the terrible thing is even though this email is not in proper English, it's obviously written by someone from a third world country. And even though the statements in it are complete bias, like there are 481 errors on your website. Oh really, what are the errors? Tell me what they are so I could fix them. Well, I told Mike to email these guys back and ask them that and he did, and they said, "Oh, there are many errors that your site is containing. It is very technical for you to understand but we'll fix them", anyway, so what these companies do and you may have gotten these reports is they send you something like a fortuneteller would say to you, "Oh, I could see in your life, you have had trouble. You have had good times and bad times. Oh, I can see you have been in love and you will lose love and find love again", so you cannot refute these statements because they are just bullshit and they are just so nebulous and general that they apply to anybody if they apply at all.

So if you get a report like this, realize what's going on, okay. People think that because you are an attorney, you know nothing about marketing, and they think that they can snow you with statements like these, which again you'll be surprised. I get emails from people saying that they have a lot of concern about emails like this. And if you think about it, all you have to do is just use your skills as an attorney. Pretend like someone has brought a case against you and these is the — this is the evidence that they have, okay. Question every fact. Does that make sense what they are saying? Looking at where the hell it was written, looking at the words chosen, is it even in proper English? Does this make sense? So if you get a report like this, just realize that someone's messing with you and the stuff that they're sharing is pretty much bias. If it makes no sense, if it just triggers that alarm bell in your head and just puts you in an emotional state and makes you fear, then take five minutes to look at it, show it to somebody or even sit down and use your lawyering skills and say, "If this came up against me in court, what would I do to refute this or to make them substantiate these facts". Don't get caught up in this, don't get yourself yanked around by marketers that just see you as an ATM machine on a payday. So I hope this helps you. If you get a report like this, and you want answers to it and you actually believe it's a valid report, go ahead and send it to me, [email protected], and I'll give you my honest answer. I may curse but I'll give it to you. If you need any other help with your marketing, give us a call at 888-225-8594 and watch out for those guys that are trying to throw tech language at you to snow you. You know better.

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In today's episode I've explained the importance of reviews and have shared how you can get more reviews on the sites where they matter. Listen to the audio below and find out how to get more reviews, it's a little longer than usual but worth your time.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs from Speakeasy Marketing. And today, I'm going to talk about getting more reviews online. So I hear all the time that it's incredibly difficult to get reviews online, and that's true. It's very difficult. Even if you have clients that say they'll do it, a very few of them do. And then you have Google+, which is a pain in the neck to give reviews on, you have Yelp, half of the time they don't even make them live. Real, real stuff, so what do you do? Well, a few suggestions that are going to help you up big time.

First of all, where is it important to put reviews? From what I'm seeing, the top places right now are four of them. It's AVVO, Google+, which is Google Maps, Yelp, and your website. So the ones that are easiest to get is your website and AVVO seemingly; the ones that are more difficult to get is Google+ and Yelp. So how do you get more of these reviews? Well, first of all, I want you to look in context. You don't have to go bananas and get a 100 reviews. If you look your Google+ for a start, once you get five positive reviews, you'll get gold stars next to your listing. That's a huge metric because once you do that, your listing is a lot more visit-able, it pops out to the searcher's eye, it looks a lot better. So the gold really only has to be five reviews initially on Google+. Even if it takes you 6 months to get them, that's okay. You're still going to get them and it'll help you.

On Yelp, same deal. You need at least 5 reviews in order to really get some traction on there. But here is how you tell how many reviews you really need. Google attorneys in your area, your metro that are in your practice areas and see how many they have. A lot of areas, most of attorneys have none or they have one or two or three. Imagine if you're at a restaurant and you need like 500 but thank God, the bar is much lower for attorneys. So in your area, it may be as low as 5, maybe no one has ever used. In some areas, some guys, some superstars may have 20 or 30, and then it's going to be a lot harder to be number one review wise. But what I've seen though is once you get to at least 5 on Google+ and Yelp and you've got them on your website and you've got them on AVVO, now it's starting to get to a point that wherever someone turns, there are going to be reviews for you, positive ones, and that's really going to help bolster you so you get a rising tide lifting by having reviews in these areas.

Now, there are plenty of piddly little sites that don't show up very much, Thumbtack, places like that. And yes, it's good to get a review or two there, but they are not the main ones that I would focus on. Now, tricks, how do you get reviews? Well, one mistaken belief attorneys have is that they don't want to ask past clients for reviews because they think they're bothering them, or they think that there may be a pissed off past client that'll review them badly. That could happen, it happens sometimes but I would say 99% of the time, good reviews are what you'll get, not bad. And if you get a bad review, you want to overwhelm it with good reviews. And usually you can't wipe off bad reviews. The best way to counteract it is to have lots of good reviews. If you have no reviews and you get one bad review, that looks bad. If you've got 10 good reviews and you get one bad one, not so bad, okay. People look at it more in context. Big proof of this is go look on Amazon. There's not a single thing you could buy on Amazon, not even positive reviews, nothing. The best products will tend to have 60, 70, 80%, 5 and 4 star reviews and only 3%, 5% bad reviews. The bad products have 10, 20, 30% bad reviews, anyway, all in context but this is the point here.

Another misconception, when should you ask for reviews. Most attorneys think they can only ask for a review once the person's case is done. Not true. And it's often better to ask for a review before the case is done. Why? Because the case isn't done. The person still behold them to you and they want this great outcome but if they've already given you a review, they're much more under the gun to do it. So, how do you do this before the case is over? Does this make sense? Yes. Let's say it's a divorce case. Before the divorce is finalized, there are many milestones along the way. What are the legal milestones or the positive events where the person's happy in your practice area? So again, let's say it's divorce. You get to the mediation step and the person is a lot more comfortable process, they're not freaking out, they're not missing sleep every night, they're actually settling into a new life, they're calmer and mediation is starting to go really well. And you anticipate a good resolution. Ask the person for the review right then. "Hey Bob, it looks like the mediation is going good. No guarantees but I think we're going to have as successful a possible an outcome. Please, if you would, can you review me on Google+ or Yelp or my website etc. It really helps me to do good work for people like you and I really value your time and it helps me run my practice. Referrals are everything to me".

What about in the criminal case? Well, again, you don't have to wait until it's totally resolved. What if you get bail conditions lowered so the person gets out on bail when he otherwise wouldn't? What if in a DUI case, they're able to keep their driver's license and don't lose it but they still have to deal with the rest of the case? Well, that's a win. That's a milestone. Ask for the review right then. How about personal injury case? Well, what if you get to the point where negotiation has started with the insurance company instead of the insurance company just folding its arms and saying, "No, we're not going to pay you anything". That's a win right there. Or the person completes their medical treatment and they're on their way to working on a settlement or a case, that's another win right there. So you got to look in all your cases for these milestones, even if they're small. These little steps, these little victories at which clients get happy, and at those points, ask him for a review. They can hurt. Let me pull it back even further. Let's say a client doesn't even retain you, but they tell you they really valued the consultation or they really valued what you had to say but they didn't have the money, well that person can still write you a positive review, did you realize that? They don't have to be a full client, they can say, "I talked to Attorney Smith and he or she was very polite, very courteous, I explained my situation. Even though I didn't have money to hire him, if I did, he's the personal I would hire because he really did a great job". That's a good testimonial, why not. It could be 5 star, that could be a review. So there are many, many places to get reviews without waiting till the end of the case.

Now, last thing, asking for the review. Don't just ask once. People need to be reminded, so sometimes you got to ask them 2, 3, 4 times, not constantly hammer them but ask them periodically. A good way to ask is if you do a monthly newsletter to send out a request in the monthly newsletter or a dedicated email to past clients. "Hey, I worked with a number of you people over the years. We're looking to expand our referral base and not has to do so much marketing which is expensive. Please, if you would, write us a review on Google or Yelp or AVVO or just reply to this email and give us a review". So that's another way to spur reviews. We've done it for clients, we've gotten a lot of reviews for some people by doing that. It definitely works.

Another way to do it is to make it easy for the persons who review you, so ask your past clients or ask your current clients, "Hey, do you use Yelp? Oh you do. Okay, great. Would you review me there?" Because it's easy for them to do. "Oh, you don't use Yelp. How about Google Maps? Do you have a gmail account? Great. Can you review me there? Oh, you don't use the computer very much or just the Smartphone, would you mind just emailing me the review or even texting it to me? Reply to this email or reply to this text", get it the easiest way possible for that particular person. It makes it more likely that that person's going to do it instead of not. If I don't have a gmail account, it's going to be really hard for me to review you on Google+. If I don't use Yelp, same thing. Those are problems.

Last thing I want to talk about is wedding. So the two hotspots to get reviews are Yelp and Google+. What makes them hard is that these companies have algorithm that vet the reviewers. They don't want fake reviews on there so they look where the review is coming from. Is the person trying to use your office computer to write the review? And it's not going to work. They got to use their Smartphone or their computer. Where they're writing the review from? If you're in Kansas City and the person is reviewing you in Florida, it doesn't make sense. Google may kick it out, or Yelp may not decide to show the review. Is the review written in proper English or is it a mess? That's a grey area there, does the reviewer use curses, does it give personal information that Google or Yelp does not want to put in there, phone numbers, full names and that kind of things. Those are very important.

Another thing is Yelp's algorithm. So Yelp wants to make sure you're not just doing the review once and never using their service again, so in order for a Yelp review to stick, the person has to be using Yelp for other things. Review a restaurant, drycleaners or whatever. So people are going to review you on Yelp, encourage them, please, if you would, the review is not going to stick unless you also review like a restaurant or a dentist or something, two or three other places. So, please, make sure you do that. Yes. It's a hurdle but if you get a good review to stick, a lot of attorneys can't do it and you'll be in a much better shape. So, before I go into a whole hour long diatribe on this, I think that's enough info. You've gotten a lot. This is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. If you need help in getting reviews, which are critical, call me 888-225-9594, or email me [email protected]. Let me know and we can help you with this. Thank you for listening.

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Today's episode will bust all the myths about law firm phone numbers. Do "vanity" phone numbers still work? Should you have local or toll free number?

Listen to the audio below where I've answered all these questions.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs from Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I'm going to talk to you about phone numbers on your website and several important things you should know, several urban myths I am going to clear up about Google and your phone numbers. So here we go. First of all, you want to have your phone number, your contact phone number be a local number. Local meaning the area code, local not necessarily meaning the exchange which is the second set of three digits in the number. The reason why is that here's how people find numbers. They'll go to the web, they'll use their Smartphone about 70% of the time now, that's what stats are showing me across all clients. They'll come to a site, they'll Google someone's name and they'll touch the number and call 800 numbers, 888 numbers are more a relic from the past and the impression that they give is that you're not a local firm, that you may be a national one or that it's going to go to an answering service. And this is based on direct feedback from potential clients that we've talked to that have called law firms about 50 of them, so we've done like a mini survey or a mini study you could say. So that's the impression. When you see a local area code number, there is no there is no cognitive dissonance and they'll tend to call the firm without any hesitation but having an 800 number and 888 number actually puts people off a little bit, unless you truly are a national firm, but even then, you should have local numbers for some of your locations.

Secondly, vanity numbers, this is a big topic. Vanity numbers used to be great, 1800 dial DUI, that kind of stuff. They don't really work anymore because no one really keeps numbers in their head. You don't even know your own phone number half of the time and your wife's phone number. You just use your phone and that's your brain, call John Smith and it calls them, or you just look them up or you type their name in or a fragment in their name and it calls them. So vanity numbers do not have the pull they used to at all, they actually hurt you and here is how they hurt you.

If your number is 516-call DUI and that's on your website instead of the actual numbers, someone can't touch that on a mobile phone and have the number loaded with the dial screen, so it's causing you a problem, it's putting an obstacle in the way from people to call you. You don't want to do that. Even though it seems like a pathetic obstacle that easily is overcome, you'll be amazed that how lazy people are online and the slightest thing that makes people work, they'll just leave and go to another website. So don't put vanity numbers on your site. They are not going to help. You can give them to people if you want maybe even by the phone but that's not good either. If you notice on payphones, they use to have the letters underneath each number but on some Smartphones, they don't have that. And so people are not going to sit there and say, "Hmm, what number is P, what number is L", so I would avoid vanity numbers all together.

Here is another thing remembering your number. Maybe some clients will remember your number, most of them won't and here's how I know this. We do phone tracking for well over 100 firms. A lot of the attorneys say, "Yes, that call that you tracked, that was a current client, they called my number", or, "Court personnel are calling me on the tracking number in addition to leads". Why are they doing that? Because they remember numbers, they use Google for that. Google is their brain, their extended brain. What's that judge's number? Just Google them. What's that court officer's number, just Google them. What's that attorney's number, just Google them. That's how people do stuff nowadays. They don't remember because they don't have to. So thinking that, "Oh man, if I change my phone number, I am going to miss that and all these clients and leads", it's really not going to happen. I mean you may have a few, so fine, keep your number if you want but get a new number and forward to that number so you can call tracking or so you can change the number or whatever. Don't be afraid of letting go of old numbers, or if you want to keep them, fine, but you may not want that number to be the main number in your site, and don't let it stop you from changing your number.

So these are a lot of the urban legends surrounding numbers. Here's another one. If I change my number, Google is not going to be able to find my site and it's going to hurt my rankings. Well, there are two sides to this. Yes, if you just change your number on your website and nowhere else, sure, there's going to be a difference in your name, address, phone number, block on your site versus everywhere else. But if you change the number on your site to do tracking and then your SEO company or you or your web guy make sure that number is changed everywhere else on the web, which takes a little bit of work but can be done, you'll be fine. You're not going to lose any rankings, everything can migrate, it's not a big deal. And again, we've done this for many clients, so I am not just speculating, this is actual truth.

So these are all the urban myths I've seen around phone numbers. I hope this helps throwing lights on what's going on, so just make sure, like I said, regards to your number, they are at the top right of every single page of your site, they're not a vanity number, they're touchable so that number can load up into your dial screen because mobile is now 70% of all traffic, and that should allay your fears. If you want more information on marketing, if you want a professional assessment of your website to find the areas where it can be improved, email me [email protected], or call 888-225-8594. Thank you.

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In this episode I've talked about what should you do if you're unsure about putting up a new website. Trouble with money? Doubts about committing to SEO on site? Or you're just confused if you really need a new website or not! Listen to this audio below, I've covered all your questions and doubts.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I want to talk about what to do if you're unsure about putting up a new website; if you're having trouble with money and you don't know if you want to commit to SEO on the site; if it's a new practice area and you don't know things are going to go well; if you currently have another site and you don't know if you should have a second one. All these questions come into a lot of attorneys' minds and it causes them not to take action and put up an additional site. Here's how to resolve that and take baby steps towards something that will get you where you want to go.

So first of all, you got to realize by not making a decision, that's making a decision. By being in a holding pattern or sitting there and doing nothing, time is going to pass. Six months from now is coming, no matter what you do, no matter what I do. It comes, time cannot be stopped, you know that. Second of all, and this is the big thing, in order to get ranking in Google, in order to do well, in order for your site to be seen by potential clients and to get you business, it cannot just be registered as a domain name; it must be live on the web even if your site says, "Hello", and that's it. It's a blank white page. If your site is not live, it will not begin aging and acquiring the seniority required and the exposure required on Google to ever rank for anything, to ever get anyone to see it. So again, if there are 8 million reasons for you not to take action now, at least do the following. Register the domain name you want if you don't already have it, okay, the website name. Then get basic hosting. Hosting is the company that will take the files that make up the site and put them live on the web. Hosting is cheap, it is a commodity, it runs about $7 a month through BlueHost or GoDaddy or places like that. Get those two things, get your website live.

Again, even if it says, "Under construction", or, "Hello", it does not matter but get that thing live. Then if you do nothing else and 6 months goes by or a year goes by and then you are ready to do a site and SEO and all the other stuff, now you'll be at an advantage because your site has been alive for a number of months and it gives you a good head start in Google. It gives you, I would say, at least a 3 month head start. So again, if you do nothing else, do those things, domain name runs about $15 hosting, you got to pay for the year, so that'll be about $107 in change. So for $122, you can place a bet that is likely to pay off in the future or at least it's an option to hold out on the future and to get good things happening then. So I hope this makes sense.

If you want more help with your marketing, call me 888-225-8594; email me [email protected]. If you are ready to take action and even to put up a blank site, we'll do it for you for a nominal, nominal cost, probably even free. Contact us and we'll do it, no problem. Again, or if you need guidance to do it, let me know and I'll help you. Thank you.

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Today's episode talks about different Ante's that attorneys must pay to play the game of marketing, the game of competition and game of getting clients in 2016. Go ahead listen to this short audio below to find out the Ante's you need to pay to start playing!

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs from Speakeasy Marketing. I want to talk to you about Poker, maybe Texas hold them, maybe another forum but Poker. In Poker, there is an ante to play the game. You can't just come in unless you put in some money. To be an attorney and to have effective marketing, there is also an ante, it's called Google and Yelp and Avvo and sometimes other things but let me give you a couple of items that are required for you to ante into the game, the game of marketing, the game of getting clients online.

Number one is to have reviews, enough reviews. When I say enough, here is what I mean. On Google+ or Google Maps, if you notice, there are now three spots for attorneys. There used to be 7 for top keywords, now there are only 3. So look at the number of reviews the top guys have; do you have as many as them? Yes or no. If each of them 5 or 6 reviews, well then your ante is 5 or 6 reviews to compete there. If each of them have 20, your ante is a lot higher. But in order to get in the game, you got to have reviews on Google+ and the minimum ante is going to be 5 reviews. The reason for that is you want to get those gold stars next to your listing. Once you have that, your listing will pop out to searchers and it's a lot more likely they'll click on you. So that's what you want to have there.

Another reason to have at least 5 reviews is again hopefully to show up in that three pack; secondly, to draw the eye of potential customers; third is if your website shows up organically for keywords that have maps and you show in maps, you'll show up twice on the page which is great because again, that gets people to click on you more because they see you on several spots. Now, let's move over to Yelp. Yelp, very, very important source of reviews nowadays. Again, same process. Look at your top competitors that are ranking, how many reviews do they have? Do you even have a Yelp listing? You got to have one. And again, you want to have the same or similar amount of reviews as the top guys in order to appear in Yelp.

Third place is AVVO, what's your AVVO rating. Typical ante nowadays is a 9.0 or better. Lots of guys have figured out how to get 10.0s. Make sure you have an AVVO listing. Answer one question a week at a minimum. If you can do one a day, great, or have a legal assistant do it, but get that profile updated, get reviews not only from past clients but other attorneys. Here is a pro tip by the way. Other attorneys can review you on Google+ and Yelp, they don't have to say their clients but they can say, "I'm attorney so and so, I know Bob Jones professionally. I worked with him in the San Diego Court system. He's been practicing for 20 years. I see him do a great job for clients. He's a strong advocate", and so on. You can put reviews on this on Google or Yelp. There's no reason why not; a review is a review. It doesn't have to be from a client. So that may expand your thinking, your universe of how to get into that game and get there quicker.

Other antes. I want you to go to Google and put in your name and your state and the word attorney. So, "John Smith Florida attorney". If your name is really common, you're going to have to put the practice area, "John Smith Okaloosa, Florida criminal defense attorney". What you'll see is a page with your website, your map's location, maybe some AVVO and Yelp and other reviews etc. This main page I'm going to call your Google bio page because it comes up when someone Googles your name. And this is yet another ante for the Poker game. When people are researching your site, they want to look for other third party validations besides reviews or an addition to make sure you're the right guy. So they will Google your name and they will often do it with the state or the city or the practice area. You want to make sure this whole page is all you and it looks good. You can get videos on this page from Youtube, reviews from Yelp, AVVO, Thumbtack, different places. You want to have a fully filled out Google+ maps profile, all that stuff you want to appear on the page, not just nothing or complaints or mush. Again, look at your top competitors what do they have. Tell your SEO guys "Make my page look like theirs", okay.

So, again, these are not all the stakes but these are most of the stakes to get in the game today in 2016 to compete and get clients. I want to give you one last one which is a real obvious one. You've got to have a website. If you don't have a website, you're probably not listening to this podcast, you're far more advanced than that but if you don't or if you have one that's outdated sitting there and you're not adding content, you got to jump on the train and get content done on a regular basis and have a modern website that is mobile-friendly. That is the other huge ante to get in the game nowadays.

The big reason is Google demands it, April 25th, 2015, they publicly said so. They are going to devalue sites that are not mobile-friendly. Even if you are mobile-friendly, here's the main reason. Now, mobile is nearly 70% of all traffic. If you're not in that game, if your site doesn't look good on mobile, you're missing out and you can't play the Poker game, especially the high stakes one where all the juicy clients come. So these are the factors. I hope this helps you. If you want more detailed information on this and if you want a personal analysis of your site, I have what I call a 5 tweaks that any lawyer can make to their websites even non-marketing savvy ones. You can email me [email protected] to request that report free, or call us 888-225-8594. Thank you.

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This episode will cover the top 7 ways to raise your status with potentials. Again, we have tried & tested these and each one of the 7 ways work tremendously well. Many of our busiest attorney clients use most of these 7 ways to increase their perceived status. Listen to the audio below or download it to find out the top 7 ways to increase your perceived status.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs from Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I've got a pretty juicy podcast for you. I'm going to talk about the two sides of your status as an attorney in life. One side is your status in the eyes of other attorneys, and this is determined by things like what law school you attended, what big name clients you have in the books, the building you're in etc. The other status that's very important is a few potential clients, how do they perceive you, how do they see you. Very, very important obviously because if they perceive you as having low status and no status, they're not going to hire you; they're going to go to your competitors even if they charge more than you, which is very, very demeaning. You'll have a lot of no-shows and you'll have a lot of problems. So how do you raise your status in the eyes of potential clients? Now, there are many, many ways but I am going to go into 7 on this podcast, all very, very useful. And not a lot of law firms get this and certainly very few take all the boxes.

Here they are. First, obviously have a good modern, mobile-friendly website. Why? Because people search the web for everything nowadays. Look around. Your probably members are probably on the phone, they are facing the screens all the time. My kids are iPads, iPhones, Androids, my phone, my wife's phone, I mean constantly. I Google stuff all the time. I use voice search and my wife Googles stuff, we use it for directions, I mean we're on it constantly. I recently got a traffic ticket actually, so I had to call lawyers and the ones I had on our websites or crap websites, I just went to the next one. It was easy as just touching another part of the screen. So you got to have a good websites, got to be modern, mobile-friendly. Mobile-friendly why? Because nearly 70% of all search now is done through the phone, so very, very important.

Another thing you have to have is five or more reviews on Google+, which is called Google Maps. Why? Because now in most metros, the top three that are listed in that maps box have 5 or more reviews. And if you do, you get gold stars next to your name. This is perceived as someone that is a good attorney because they get those gold stars. So you got to have them on Google+ especially if the other guys on there have 15 or 20 reviews. Even if they have none, still you stand out. Yelp is also very important to have reviews. Again, same thing; how many do you have versus the top guys? AVVO, is your rating a 9.0 or better? 10.0 is the best. It's not that hard to get and you should have it. Your website, do you have reviews from past clients on your website? Very, very important. All these places, people look for third-party endorsements of you to show that you have prestige and status, very, very important. How are your phones answered? Are they answered professionally, or you say, "Hello", or, "Law Office"? Is your staff friendly, are you friendly, or do you interrogate people as soon as they call, "What's your name, what's this, what's that"? You'll be very surprised at how most firms answer the phone. And you think you're standing tough but you're not. You're scaring people away who are already scared. So, again, how are your phones answered? Are they answered 24×7? Do you let calls go to voicemail? That's a terrible, terrible idea today. Just like when I searched for a traffic ticket lawyer, I just clicked back on the browser and within half a second, I just clicked on another lawyer. I just want bang, bang, bang for the lawyers and then I just said forget it. Your potential clients would do exact same to you, so it makes you look terrible if you don't answer the phone. Have it answered 24×7, answering service whatever it takes.

Have you written a book in your practice area or practice areas? Why? Because small people that have been in their craft or their trade for many years write books. It raises your status to have a book on DUI or divorce or bankruptcy or whatever it is. These are books for consumers. Fifty pages is fine; it could be done in an hour-and-a-half interview process, which I won't go into now but they can be done rather quickly, they do not take years to write. You want to have when people call you or go on your website, you want to have your free book on facing X, whatever that X practice area is to be offered to the potential client. Even if they don't take it, even if they do, even if they don't read it, whatever, they'll raise your status. It's very, very important.

Do you offer a free consultation? Are you available 24×7, or do you have a strategy session, or a discovery call, or a 20 minute strategy call to talk about the aspects of a case? Do you have some antics? I mean they're all the same thing. But how do you present in your initial consultation can dramatically affect how people perceive you. Again, I'm available 24×7, call my cell, free consultation, sounds like everybody else and it sounds a bit desperate. If you want to raise your status and look better, call now to get on the schedule for a 20 minute strategy session where we'll discuss X, Y and Z and you'll get A, B and C from the call. Much more powerful, much more specific targeted, and again, you look a lot better than just the same as everyone else.

Number 6, do you spend 20+ minutes on the phone when you get a potential client talk about their case, potential defenses, what the legal issues are and everything or do you get them off the phone and you say, "You got to come in. Every case is different. Just come into the office on Tuesday"? Well, that strategy doesn't work well because you don't have any time to communicate to this person your expertise and your status. My guys that do the best, and we don't record their calls but we track the calls so we know how long they're on. On average, they're on 20 minutes or more with most or potential clients, and these are the guys that convert 1 in 3, 1 in 2, the top guys. The ones that are terrible that complain about leads, all the calls are one minute or two minutes. So I know they're going to voicemail where they're just ushering the people off the phone. So, it's very, very important. Spend the time, it's worth it.

Last one for now. Do you have a fully developed attorney bio on your website? Fully developed means it's not just a resume of the school you went to. There is a picture of you, multiple pictures of you and staff, a video, welcome video of you talking as they could see you and hear you and experience you. Do you really dimensionalize the type of work that you do, do you do DUI, or do you do under 20 DUI, out of state DUI, high BAC, low BAC, first, second, third, fourth DUI, DUI drugs, DUI involving bodily injury, see how you can dimensionalize what you do. Bankruptcy, chapter 7, chapter 13, high income, no asset bankruptcy, contested bankruptcy, bankruptcy for self-employed people, bankruptcy for those that are going through a divorce, bankruptcy for those people on foreclosure, see how you can develop that and make it sound a lot better than just bankruptcy. And we'll go through the last one. Let's say auto accidents, so auto accidents, where you're at fault, where the person is at fault, where you don't have a driver's license, where they don't have a driver's license, where you no insurance, where they have no insurance, out of country driver, high speed auto accidents, accidents involving substantial bodily injury or less bodily injury. You can dimensionalize what you do on your bio page and on your homepage, and this should be done because someone will say, "Ah, that's exactly what happened to me. This person handles that, I am going to call him instead of just accident and injury lawyer who are divorce lawyer or a DUI lawyer". There's a lot more you can say.

So, there are more ways to increase your status in the eyes of potential clients. I can't go into them all here. I have a report that goes into all of them in more detail. If you like to request that, you can email me [email protected], you can call us 888-225-8594 but the more these you can check off in your list as doing the more clients you'll get, the more you'll retain, the higher the volume you'll get and the better you'll do. This is what the top firms are doing, the bar has been raised, no pun intended. 2016 is not easy to get business, you know that. Business is down for most folks. You got to step up the game and these seven items are vital to do that. Hope this helps; talk to you soon.

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In today's episode I've shared concrete strategies to beat out local competitors who are bringing down your retainer fees. Listen to the audio below to find out how to beat low-ball attorneys.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs from Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I'm going to talk about the economy and pricing and how to protect yourself from people not wanting to pay you what you need to be paid to do the legal work. So I just literally got off the phone with a client of mine telling me, "Rich, we are having problems. Local guys are just way underbidding on cases. It's a problem I can't compete with that. What are we supposed to do?" So I took them through a series of steps that you can use for any practice area, okay. What I'm going to do is I'm going to start it DWI or DUI. It's just, in my mind, the easiest thing to revert to but again, if you're estate planning, bankruptcy, divorce, immigration, this applies to you and applies to all pricing, okay. So listen up.

So, DWI – if you wait until someone calls you and you give them a free advice and you go through it and then you present your price, and they say, "Oh man, that's a lot of money", or, "I talked to John Smith down the street and he'll do it for half of that", you're screwed. You waited too long to bring your price out. You got to justify your price in a way that's not confrontational and that's accepted as fact way before that point, way before people even call you. So how do you do that? Well, where will people go before they call you? They'll go to your website and they'll read stuff, okay. They may watch your video. They may run into you in all kinds of ways. So first of all, you want to have content out there that gets them before they even call you to intercept them and get them your message before they even think to call or not to call because you'll never know the people that don't call you. There is some reason they didn't but you'll just never know. Terrible, I know.

So, what can you put out there? Here is what I would do. For DWI or DUI, what I would do first of all, and I have this, is get a listing of all the potential costs someone will incur if they don't hire an attorney or if they plead guilty or give up. And I've seen stats on this, so the list is long, it's 15-20 items, and the bottom-line cost is anywhere from 10,000 to $20,000. So you'd present this list either in video or text format or whatever it is, and you say, "This is the cost of doing nothing, giving up", or, "This is the cost of losing even if you have defense on your case". The fee to hire me is far less than that. That's the next line item here. "So $15,000 for a DUI, well the good news is the fee to hire me is only a fifth of that. And there is a much greater likelihood that you may get a positive result on your case because now you have an attorney that's intervening for you. No, there are no guarantees on outcome but there is a good likelihood that some parts of your case will be mitigated and things will be better for you", okay.

"Now, let me tell you why I charge this much. So I charge $3,000 for a DUI in your case. Here is what I can do in that regard. I can challenge the breath test, I can do this, I can do that, I can file up to three motions, I can go to court five times etc. If you paid me $10,000, here is what I would do in your case. I would have an expert on this, I would have a reconstructionist and all that. Here's what I could do if you paid me only $1,500 and I know that there are other attorneys out there charging that. I could only do this, I couldn't do this, I couldn't do that and I couldn't do this. Now, I consider myself a good lawyer. I've been practicing for 20 years. These other guys, I am sure, are good lawyers too but unless they're superman, unless they come from some other planet where lawyers have special abilities that I don't know about, there is no way they could do anymore than I could do for that $1,500 price. So considering the severity of the case and what's at stake for you, which choice do you think is best for you? The lowest price, least amount they can do for you, the highest price, or the middle of the road?" And you leave people with that question, okay.

Now, there is a valid reason why you charge what you charge, you've shown them the high, you've shown them the low, and you've shown them what's at stake if they do nothing. This is a good defense against price. It's completely rational, it makes sense and all that. And if you put this in front of people either in a video or on an article on your website, or even before they come to see. Let's say they come for an appointment to your office, they're sitting in the waiting room. Have your secretary give a sheet like this to the people before they walk in because you want to shoot down any price objections before they even talk to you. Then you have a much better chance of winning the game and you don't have to back paddle and scramble and get underrated and agitated at the very last moment about why you charge what you charge. It's already taken care of.

So if you need help with strategies like this on price, on collecting money, on getting more clients to call you on the first place, call me, call 888-225-8594, email me [email protected]. We'll help you out. This is what we do, this is all we do. We've been doing it for 6 years for well over 700 attorneys. Thank you.

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