Your Law Firm is a Business. Take it to the Next Level

You’ve heard of SEO (at least, you should have if you’ve been listening to the show for a while) but have you ever heard of CRO?

CRO stands for conversion rate optimization. It is a very overlooked topic in the marketing world which is a problem. Your ability to optimize your conversion rate will make or break your lead generation and business growth in the long run.

In this episode, we’re talking all about CRO. We explain what it is and why you should care about it. Finally, we’ll teach you the specific things you need to change on your website to optimize your conversion rate and where to start with all of this. 

Show Highlights:

• What conversion rate optimization is and why it’s so important.
• Various examples of conversion points.
• When to start focusing on CRO.
• Things to change on your website to optimize your conversion rate.
• How to create persuasive calls to action.
• Why social proof is so important.
• How to start measuring your conversion rates.

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GNGF

The Legal Marketing Academy

Action Steps:

1. The action steps for today are to experiment with optimizing your conversion rate.

• Get a baseline: what are your current leads per month in both raw number and percentage rate? 
• Look at your key landing pages that are driving phone calls, chats, or form fills and see if you can adjust some of the things we mentioned (i.e. headlines, images, body copy, calls to action, forms, or adding/highlighting some social proof). 
• Change just a few things and see how it affects your baseline.
• Rinse and repeat.

***

Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.

In today’s episode, we’re tackling more of your questions! Joining us to do so is Jamie Kohls. Jamie is the Marketing and Partnerships Manager at GNGF. She’s helping us answer some of the questions you’ve sent in based on recent episodes of the show.

Throughout the episode, we’re covering topics like hiring a high-quality marketing agency and ensuring they’re getting things done, optimal ways to navigate team communication, and avoiding burnout. You all sent in some amazing questions that got us thinking deeper into these topics and providing more solutions for them. Tune in so you don’t miss a thing!

Show Highlights:

• How to hold the marketing agency you hire responsible for what they promised to do.
• What to do if you were burned by a marketing agency.
• What you’re missing out on by using only Slack and not a practice management software.
• Why you should store all of your firm’s documents in a practice management software.
• How to address burnout with your team.

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We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what Law Firm Next is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!

Supporting Resources:

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on Instagram

Follow us on Facebook

Online Law Practice Strategies: How to Turn Clicks Into Clients

Register for the Clio Cloud Conference

streamlined.legal

SEMrush

https://academy.gngf.com/

Action Steps:

1. When you’re done listening today, hop back into your podcast app and grab one episode that we mentioned today that caught your attention and give it a listen.

***

Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.

Over the last 50-plus episodes, we’ve taught you tips and given you action steps to help you market your law firm. Instead of diving into a new topic this week, we thought we’d tell you a story that sparks inspiration. We’re discussing a real-world example of a law firm that has applied all of these marketing tactics and had great success.

Joining us on this episode is Chris Casseday, the Director of Operations at GNGF. Throughout the show, Chris will walk us through an example of a full-service marketing client that his team has helped over the last few years. 

Tune in to learn where that firm started, the strategy and tactics that Chris and his team used in the beginning, some of the early measured results, and the next-level strategies and tactics that they're working on now. 

Show Highlights:

• Some background information on this real-world law firm.
• What led them to want to work with GNGF.
• How Chris and his team got started working with this firm.
• How they found strong keywords for the firm’s marketing material.
• Other SEO strategies they implemented.
• The success the law firm saw in their organic growth and number of leads.
• What Chris and his team are working on now.
• How they manage the content strategy side of marketing.
• The KPIs they use to measure success.

Subscribe and Review

We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what Law Firm Next is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!

Supporting Resources:

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on Instagram

Follow us on Facebook

Online Law Practice Strategies: How to Turn Clicks Into Clients

Register for the Clio Conference

streamlined.legal

SEMrush

The Legal Marketing Academy

https://4.gngf.com/nextlevel-LSA

Action Steps:

1. If you want to have some of the same success as this real-world law firm example, go back and listen to and take the action on the following episodes:

• Episode 6 - Should I Invest In SEO vs. PPC 
• Episode 4 - Can I Use Online Marketing to Compete With The ‘Big Firms’
• Episode 10 - What Are The Best Online Marketing Tactics? 
• Episode 39-44 - SEO Series  
• Episode 14 - Google My Business

You know that one person on your team? The one you’re merely tolerating and keeping around only because you don’t know what to do with them? We’ve all had team members like that. There comes a time when they’re putting a financial and emotional burden on you and your law firm and you need to let them go. That’s what today’s episode is all about.

In this episode, we’re talking about how to fire someone on your team. You may have someone in mind right now or you may have had to do this in the past and wish it had gone better. Well, today we’ll cover all the bases so you are prepared the next time you need to fire a team member.

This may not be a pleasant subject but it is an extremely important one. So tune in now to learn how to fire someone on your team properly.

Show Highlights:

• Why you need to prepare for turnover as a business owner.
• Various reasons for firing someone.
• Why you should give someone fair warning before firing them.
• What to do if a team member is underperforming.
• How underperformance affects the rest of your team.
• How to analyze your management to make sure you’re not causing underperformance.
• How to choose the right time to fire someone.
• Why you should always be hiring for every position in your firm.
• Other offboarding logistics.
• How to have the actual firing conversation.

Subscribe and Review

We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what Law Firm Next is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!

Supporting Resources:

1. Next Level Legal on Twitter
2. Next Level Legal on Instagram
3. Next Level Legal on Facebook
4. Online Law Practice Strategies: How to Turn Clicks Into Clients
5. Register for the Clio Cloud Conference
6. streamlined.legal

Action Steps:

1. Now that you’ve listened to how to make the decision and how to fire someone, do you have any team members that you’re tolerating, that maybe you should have fired already but haven’t because you didn’t know how to go about it? If so, make the decision now that you know what to do.
2. Create a policy that says you’ll always be recruiting for all positions (then announce it to your team and actually do it).
3. Create a draft termination letter so that you have one ready to go. Waiting until you have someone to fire makes it harder to remember some of the details such as a list of equipment to return, etc.

***

Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.

We’ve talked about marketing a lot here on the podcast. We’ve spent episodes diving deep into social media, web presence, and other forms of online marketing. However, we haven’t spent much time talking about referrals.

Well, that’s just what we are going to do today.

This episode is all about referrals. We’re going to focus in on why referrals are so important to growing your law firm and how to increase your referrals. Melanie will also give some examples of ways she’s gotten referrals and leveraged the to grow her firm. 

Referrals are one of those things that, if you will just give it a little bit of time and energy on the frontend, will pay dividends for your firm in the future. Let’s dive in!

Show Highlights:

• Why referrals are crucial to growing your law firm.
• The power of asking for a referral.
• Some marketing ethics.
• How to get referrals through lead magnets.
• Why you should provide more referrals if you want more referrals.
• Why you should always thank your referrals.
• How to create a referrals newsletter.
• How to protect your referrals.

Subscribe and Review

We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what Law Firm Next is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!

Supporting Resources:

1. Online Law Practice Strategies: How to Turn Clicks Into Clients
2. LFN Episode 13
3. 4.gngf.com/nextlevel-LSA
4. Atlanta Legal Tech
5. Top of Mind: Gifts Leave Lasting Impressions - Boxperience Andrea Herrera
6. Trademark Law: A Seamless Fit To Your Legal Practice

Action Steps:

1. If you haven’t yet, this week, tell 10 people you see exactly what you do and how you help people. Then ASK them for referrals. Think of colleagues, business owners, friends, and family. Remember that only 20% of people even think to give referrals.
2. Create a list of emails of people that could refer clients to you.

• Other lawyers in different practice areas
• Other business owners
• Past clients

1. Send an email newsletter to them reinforcing the understanding about what you do, examples of client success, and maybe some social proof like a great review. Then also ASK for a referral and let them know that you can help provide information or content to them for their clients. 
2. Say thank you to someone who sent you a referral. It’s never too late to send a thank you card.  
3. Double-check your online presence for your branded search (your name or your firm’s name). Protect your referrals.

***

Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.

If you’ve ever thought about hiring a legal tech consultant, this episode is for you.

We’re discussing everything you need to know before hiring a consultant. Many things make a good consultant that you should be aware of before hiring somebody. There are also many things you need to know before you actually start working with the consultant you hire. 

On top of this, being a lawyer is like being a consultant in many ways. We act as consultants for our clients. Some of the things we’ll discuss in this episode are things your clients need from you as you provide your services for them. This brings a fascinating perspective to hiring a legal tech consultant for yourself. 

Tune in to hear all about this and learn how to hire a stellar legal tech consultant for your law firm.

Show Highlights:

• What a consultant is.
• How to know what kind of consultant to hire.
• What makes a good consultant.
• Why communication and trust are so important in a consultant.
• How to ask the right questions.
• What you need to know as a business owner before working with a consultant.
• Hard decisions you may have to make when you hire a consultant.

Subscribe and Review

We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what Law Firm Next is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!

Supporting Resources:

Richmond Times Article

Streamlined Legal on YouTube

The Trusted Advisor: 20th Anniversary Edition

Action Steps:

• If you’re not currently shopping for or considering a consultant, bookmark this episode to come back to when you are.
• If you are considering a consultant, write down the answers to these questions:
  • Did they tell you any hard truths yet?
  • Did they take time to listen to you?
  • Have you seen or heard about any of their solutions from other clients or themselves?
• If you don’t have the answers to these questions yet, schedule a call with your consultant to get some of these answers.

***

Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.

Advertising is an important part of marketing your law firm. Especially with the prevalence of Google Ads in this day and age, you must at least consider investing in ads. However, if you only have a certain amount of money budgeted for advertising, what is the best use of your funds?

This is a question Mark and his team at GNGF get all the time. The typical answer is, “It depends on the firm.” However, one suggestion that gets brought up every time is local service ads.

In this episode, we’re doing a deep dive into local service ads. We’ll discuss how to qualify for them and set them up as well as what you should be monitoring each month to maximize your ROI. Join us to learn it all and start spending your advertising dollars in the right place!

Show Highlights:

• What local service ads are.
• The difference between traditional Google Ads and local service ads.
• Why local service ads are so beneficial for firms with smaller advertising budgets.
• How to set up your local service ad.
• How much these ads actually cost per lead.
• How local service ads are ranked and how to get your firm higher in the ranking.
• What you should be monitoring each month to maximize the ROI of your local service ads.

Subscribe and Review

We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what Law Firm Next is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!

Supporting Resources:

nextlevel.legal

ads.google.com/signup

4.gngf.com/nextlevel-LSA

https://nextlevel.legal/episode/lfn006/

https://nextlevel.legal/episode/lfn016/

https://nextlevel.legal/episode/lfn015/

https://ads.google.com/localservices/signup

https://google.com/business

Action Steps:

1. Do a few Google searches where you Google your practice area and geography area or even just “Practice Area Near Me” or “Divorce Attorney Near Me.” See if Local Service Ads are coming up in your market. On the desktop, there will typically be three ads showing a law firm partner's image, the number of reviews, and stars. If you hover over it, you will see that they are usually “Google Screened.”
2. If so, you can likely have your firm there in that valuable ad space and only have to pay if someone calls the firm.
3. Go through the process to be approved and verified for the Google Screened badge even if you decide to set a very low budget or immediately pause the ads after they start running. 
4. Be sure your Google Business Profile and Reviews are in stellar shape. If you need a refresher, go back to episode 14 and episode 16 where we cover Google Business Profiles and Online Reviews.
5. Make sure you have the processes in place to follow up with leads quickly. A 24/7 outsourced call service like Smith.ai or AbbyConnect could be a wise investment as the internet is a 24/7 world. 

***

Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.

The opportunity to get legal help is an imperative part of our justice system. It is something many of us may take for granted, especially if we live in big cities or other highly populated areas. However, many in America don’t have access to lawyers simply due to where they live.

Legal deserts are geographical locations with very few to no lawyers at all. These are typically rural areas with small populations. Though the issue of legal deserts isn’t well known or talked about, they are something that needs to be addressed. 

In this episode, we’re starting the conversation. We’re bringing awareness to this issue as best as we can in one episode. Tune in for a more thorough explanation of exactly what legal deserts are and what can be done about them.

Show Highlights:

• How ABA first made the public aware of legal deserts.
• How this issue plays out across our nation.
• The challenges in defining “rural” and “legal desert.”
• Why we are so concerned about legal deserts.
• What is being done to address this issue.
• What limited scope representation services are.
• Why we need to educate the public on when to hire a lawyer.

Subscribe and Review

We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what Law Firm Next is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!

Supporting Resources:

streamlined.legal/videos

https://harvardlpr.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/04/4.-Legal-Deserts.pdf

https://www.2civility.org/the-disappearing-rural-lawyer/

https://www.2civility.org/the-disappearing-rural-lawyer-part-ii/

https://www.2civility.org/the-disappearing-rural-lawyer-part-iii/

http://chicagobarfoundation.org/pdf/resources/limited-scope-representation/toolkit.pdf

https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2020/08/legal-deserts-threaten-justice/

https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2020/07/webinar-video---legal-deserts-in-america--a-threat-to-justice-fo/

https://www.usda.gov/broadband#:~:text=Unfortunately%2C%2022.3%20percent%20of%20Americans,by%20the%20Federal%20Communications%20Commission.

https://calawyers.org/california-lawyers-association/practicing-law-in-a-rural-legal-desert/

https://www.statebarofsouthdakota.com/project-rural-practice/

https://ujs.sd.gov/Attorneys/RuralRecruitment.aspx

https://ujs.sd.gov/uploads/RARPreport.pdf

https://www.equaljusticeworks.org/law-students/part-time-summer/rural-summer-legal-corps/

https://chicagobarfoundation.org/blog/bobservations/1-reason-people-dont-lawyer-need-one/

https://www.americanbarfoundation.org/uploads/cms/documents/sandefur_accessing_justice_in_the_contemporary_usa._aug._2014.pdf

Action Steps:

1. If this topic has piqued your interest, please don’t stop here. Check out our show notes where we have a slew of links to help you explore these ideas further.  Pick one article or paper to read to get a better understanding of the issues at play here. 
2. Take a little time to think about how your firm is offering its services. Is there an option for you to offer a service that is unbundled or limited in scope? This is not just an altruistic gesture. This can be a win-win scenario when you can reach a market that will not only be helped by your new service offering but also wouldn’t have otherwise hired you.
3. Figure out one thing that you can do to help educate the public on the types of problems you help to solve. Again, this can be a win-win scenario when you’re not only raising awareness about the issues but also positioning yourself as the expert in the area so that they are seeking you out when they encounter these issues.

***

Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.

At Mark’s marketing firm, GNGF, they are very proactive about thinking about their brand and how their agency is perceived. They’ve put a lot of thought into who their ideal client is, what makes them the best for that client, and what perceptions and feelings they want clients to have about working with them. When working with their law firm owner clients, they help them think through all of these things for their own firms.

Because of this amazing depth of experience, Mark is teaching us all about branding in today’s episode. 

Oftentimes, when somebody says the word branding, they’re just thinking about a logo, font, letterhead, or even their firm’s name. However, branding is so much more than that. Entrepreneur.com defines it this way: “Your brand is the sum total of your customer’s perceptions, notions, and experience. It's the face, personality, and values espoused by your business and everything in between.”

So, tune in to this episode and you’ll learn all about law firm branding, how to build a brand platform, and, once you have all this in place, what you should do with it.

Show Highlights:

• What law firm branding really is.
• Various questions to ask about yourself and your firm to discover your brand.
• How to figure out your values.
• How to determine your ideal client’s demographics and experience.
• How to analyze your competition and what differentiates your firm from them.
• How to craft your brand platform and what to do with it after you’ve created it.

Subscribe and Review

We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what Law Firm Next is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!

Supporting Resources:

Join.gngf.com

"Six Reasons Branding Is More Important Than Ever Before" by Arpit Sinha

Download our Branding Questionnaire

Action Steps:

1. Go back and listen to the questions I posed to help identify points around your USPs, Values, and ideal clients.
2. Document those USPs, Core Values, and Ideal Clients in one place. We often use a PowerPoint template but any central place where these are defined is great. 
3. Don’t forget to think about your ideal client's specific situation, concerns, and fears and document how your firm's USPs and values support the client in those situations.
4. Share your brand platform with the whole team and your vendors, especially your marketing team.
5. Look at the processes you have created for your firm and see if these processes support your ideal client's situation, concerns, and fears. Additionally, reinforce your Unique Selling Points and differentiators. 

***

Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.

Onboarding new employees is an integral part of running a law firm. You need team members to take some work off your plate and you need a consistent way to bring them onto the team. If you don’t institute a solid onboarding process, you will be more stressed and overwhelmed than you were before you hired help.

So, in this episode, Melanie is going to share some of her top tips for onboarding. She has perfected the art of documenting her onboarding procedures and now has a large, well-oiled team. They’ve grown fast and even gone remote. 

The three aspects of onboarding that we will discuss today are culture and connecting with other employees, logistics, and job responsibilities. Applying all of this information will allow you to get your onboarding procedures set in stone and ready to use when you’re hiring new employees. Tune in to learn it all!

Show Highlights:

• Melanie’s personal history with onboarding.
• Ways to share and communicate your company culture with new employees.
• What org charts are and why they’re helpful.
• Logistics you should set up for onboarding.
• How to incorporate the onboarding practices you’ve used in the past.
• How to train your new hire for their job responsibilities.

Subscribe and Review

We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what Law Firm Next is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!

Supporting Resources:

https://streamlined.legal/

ACTION STEPS:

1. Make a list of all of the software that a new team member will need access to when they start so that when you have someone new you can simply work your way down the list to make sure that you’re not missing anything.
2. Make a list of all of the hardware that a new team member will need. Bonus points if you include a link to purchase the item so that you don’t have to search for it every time you need to buy something.
3. Find all of the written and video resources that you currently have for training and put them in one centralized place (i.e. a Dropbox folder, an Evernote, a folder, etc). This doesn’t have to be fancy but it does have to be accessible to the whole team.
4. BONUS: If you are disappointed that you don’t have more or are feeling like you should have more, start a list of procedures that you’d like to create and save them so that you and your team can start slowly knocking them out one by one.

***

Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.