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333. BONUS: The 2025 Law Firm Lead Generation Growth Formula Webinar Replay w/ Mike Budney
00:54:51
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- [00:02]
Chris
Hey guys, Chris here. I'm excited to share the replay of our latest webinar, the 2025 Law Firm Lead Generation Growth Formula. We went out and Talked to over 250 of your peers, some of the best in the industry, to uncover the biggest challenges and winning strategies shaping law firm marketing over the next 12 months. It's a real snapshot of what's working now. We're bringing you data driven insights and actionable tips to level up your marketing and fuel sustainable growth. And while you're here, mark your calendar for our next webinar. AI optimization for lawyers. Search has changed. Most PI firms haven't. It's happening June 24th at noon central. We'll break down Google's AI driven search updates and show you how to stay visible, competitive and keep signing cases. Link is in the show notes or head to Rankings IO webinars. All right, let's go.
- [00:49]
Ken Maffley
Well, hello everyone and welcome to Rankings Live virtual event where where we'll be discussing the findings of the just published 2025 State of Law Firm Marketing Report. I'm Ken Maffley, the VP of Marketing here at Rankings and I'll be your host for today. I'd like to share with you today's event format since we'll be talking through the findings of our report that we commissioned. This is going to be a special interview style where I get to sit down and ask our Director of Strategy to help us understand what our nationwide survey uncovered. It is jam packed with our findings and action steps you need to take today to stay ahead in today's market. I'd like to first introduce to you Mike. Mike Budney is our Director of Strategy here at Rankings and is an expert strategist who supports high performing mission driven entrepreneurs, empowering them to increase their impact and profits. Having started his unconventional career in the speaker author coach space, Mike has played a crucial role in scaling multiple seven and eight figure businesses over the last 20 years and now serves as our Director of Strategy here at Rankings. Welcome Mike. So to start things off, we are in an ever evolving landscape. To understand what attorneys and law firm marketing professionals are up against, we conducted an in depth survey exploring their challenges, strategies and outlooks for the next coming 12 months. Our state of Law Firm Marketing report gathered over 280 responses from law firm professionals and then made sure that the participant pool represented 70% of US states. That means it's a real representative snapshot of the current marketing landscape for law firms here in the US by delivering these insights, we want to empower you with data driven strategies to enhance your marketing efforts and drive sustainable growth. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into the survey findings. As I mentioned before, I'll walk through the findings and then invite Mike to give his expert opinion. So I'm going to start with the first question. And by the way, everyone, my screen is over this way, so if I look this way, I'm just reading from the screen. Okay. So this first one is actually to level set. I just want to kind of like set the stage because we asked the question, my law firm's revenue will improve over the next 12 months. Agree or disagree? And what we found was a very optimistic solid rating of 4.2 out of 5, with over 88% of all respondents agreed, agreeing that their revenue will improve. And this also corresponds with the second question that we asked. We sandwiched them together because we also asked, you know, will the need for your services increase over the next 12 months? And the answer was exactly the same. So I just want to set the stage here and say what we're kind of seeing is most lawyers and most law firm professionals agree we're in a pretty bullish market. So that's the level set. Now on to the next question where it gets a little bit more dicey, and then we'll bring in Mike. The next question we asked was I have greater marketing exposure than the majority of my competitors. Agree. And what we found was kind of a split. Smaller law firms, 1 to 25 employees had a pretty tepid rating of 3.4 out of 5, with only 54% agreeing with the statement. While larger law firms, you know, had a 3.9 out of 5, a little bit better, but they're feeling the heat. So, Mike, what are you seeing out there with our customers?
- [04:59]
Mike Budney
Thank you, Ken. I'm honored to be here today. Excited. What a great group we have on the line here. This is a great question because it dances an interesting line. It's funny, the previous slide, the optimistic view, right. 88% firms see a an uptake or expect an uptake. However, boots on the ground, what we're seeing on the day to day is not as optimistic. So I want to kind of be kind of a thread of reality cutting in between here. I do see a divergence between the smaller the firm versus the large of the firm. And this is what we're seeing over time is the competitive landscape. Is your first one of your first slides. Is he consistently evolving? So here's the evolution of what we're seeing. And we're on the bleeding edge of that. And what we're seeing is if you're on the smaller side, you're feeling a little bit more of the crunch. You're feeling more of the. I might be seeing a little bit less case gen than I was seeing the previous year, year over date, month over month. So you might be seeing a little bit of that pressure of like ah, the same thing we did before isn't getting us to where we were. So we're seeing that on. And this again, the smaller firm is going to feel that only because they you. The smaller the firm you are, the less you're playing all of the avenues as well as the bigger firms are. So if you're a larger firm, it's likely you have a bigger budget, you're likely spreading yourself more irons in the fire across multiple channels. And if you're a larger firm, you're also more likely to expand and move into additional markets, secondary or main markets, than a smaller firm will. You'll see larger firms max out on what they can do in their markets. What happens when a top tier firm capitalizes in kind of caps out of that tier in that tier one market they may be in, let's say they're in Chicago, for example. What are they going to do next? Well, they're going to move their presence into the secondary markets around that major market. And that's where the smaller firms are going to feel that hit too. Because the bigger firms may be encroaching upon turf that they weren't prior to expand their footprint to make sure they're getting the kind of case gen they're hoping for. So the dichotomy is the smaller the firm you are, the more likely you may be feeling that crunch. And I just give you guys some supporting data that we see on the front lines to just bring this home, which is the same deliverables, the same budgets last year, this time of year are all increasing. So we have to bring more to the table locally and organically to win in the same markets. It's not going down, it's going up. So. And it's because of all these factors stacking on top of each other. So it's funny to see the reception and the reporting, but man on the front lines, that's not the sentiment we are hearing or seeing which is interesting.
- [07:43]
Ken Maffley
Yeah, I was going to say I would imagine you're seeing a lot of increased pressure and especially like you said, with the larger firms maybe moving into new markets. Well, those people that are already in that market now, all of a sudden, their SEO may be less effective. You know, their paid channels may be less effective. And so they have to be able to pivot.
- [08:02]
Mike Budney
You're sharing that market share now with a firm that probably has more authority than you PO possibly can come in and kind of bully you out of a market that you belong in. And they technically don't. That's the sentiment. Okay, the hell are these guys? They don't belong in my market. Right. That's what we hear. And it's like, yeah, I get it. But we. That's what we help firms do. We help firms, corner markets dominate and then move on to the next one to edge out the competition. That's what we take great pride in, but that's what we see. And if you're not playing that hand really strategically, and look there, if you're a smaller firm and you're concerned, you've got moves to play here. They're different than the larger firms. And if you're not concerned with those artists, as an aside, we can talk to you about those. No strings attached. We're not trying to put, you know, we're not trying to force a deal to you, but we do these audits and we'll give you the strategy, no strings attached to. Of what we would do if we were you. The best play you got. But the move you make, if you're a smaller firm versus a larger firm, radically different. It's like, why would you like Morgan and Morgan is in your market spending on ppc. Do you want to fight against the big boys that have unlimited funds, or do you want to play a different game? I suggest a different game.
- [09:14]
Ken Maffley
I love it. Okay, the next question is funny that we're now talking about competitive landscape. We know, we asked folks, you know, has the competitive landscape for your firm increased over the last 12 months? Pretty solid. 4.1 out of 5 say yes. 81% of all respondents agree that competitive landscape is increasing. Exactly what you were just talking about. Any thoughts to add there?
- [09:38]
Mike Budney
Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm going to use an example of a firm that's doing this as this is what's happening across the United States. There's a firm, I'm going to mention the name of the firm. It's panish. They have presence out of la. They rank for car accidents. They're PI specialists, and they are in every major metro city in the state of California, and they have a powerhouse presence online, and they're gaming it. Well, what do you do when you own and you have great presence in every major metro city. You move to the next ones outside of your state. So what are we seeing with Panthers? Just as a great example to kind of pull out is now all of a sudden they're ranking top of market in Las Vegas for car accidents. Now all of a sudden, they're ranking out of market in Phoenix for car accidents. They don't belong in those markets, but you know what they're doing? They're competing and they're winning. And. And that's more and more of the trend. And again, that's why the competition is. The landscape keeps evolving, is in. The more. The longer you're in the game investing, the more upside of this asset that you can carry around, the weight of it, if you will. And we're exceptional at helping you leverage the weight of your SEO to get in front of cases. But that's what we are seeing and you're seeing. And again, the sentiment is very clean and simple. Who are these firms? They don't belong in my market. And they're. They keep coming in. And some of that, just as an aside too, is private equity is entering this market and is continuing to enter the market. And that's also helping disrupt some of the growth we're seeing. It's. And it's on both sides. It's disrupting the law firm industry, but it's also disrupting the service provider industry. Our side, some of our biggest competition is being acquired this year. As an example, the landscape is tightening up. Some of the bigger law firms in the domestic United States, private equity buyouts, and they're using those funds to leverage their marketing efforts. We can compete against that. But you guys need to know this is the shifting landscape. And if we're not understanding what's happening there and we're not playing to those on that bleeding edge, it's likely you could be getting left behind. It's like the same example of AI entering the space. It's disrupting the back office of legal as we see it, as we know it. And if you're not leveraging it or looking at leveraging it, you're likely going to be getting further behind. That's just something that we want to put on your radar front and center.
- [12:00]
Ken Maffley
Love it. Okay, so the next question kind of like feeds into this, you know, being pivoting and moving to where he needs to be. So we asked the question, my law firm's marketing budget will increase over the next 12 months. Smaller firms, a little more of a tepid response. You know, 69% did agree with that statement with a 3.7 out of 5 optimistic rating. But obviously the larger firms, 4.1 out of 5, 79 agree with the statement. So a little bit stronger there.
- [12:32]
Mike Budney
It's funny about that sentiment. Tend to step on you here, please. That's what I would expect to see. The more established a firm is, the more they've been playing the actual game, they might understand the game that's being played. And it is a pay to play game in many cases. And if you're not willing to invest and put your money on in the market effectively, your results too will typically follow that. And the bigger firms that have been scraping their knees and learning this the hard way and improving upon that understand the value of investing that dollar. The interesting thing that we experience being on this front lines is the juxtaposition of a firm on the one hand wants to pay the least amount possible and they want to get the best upside they can get. And the juxtaposition there is, you know, local, organic ranking. The top of Google is typically a deliverables game. And to win the deliverables game is a budget game. These deliverables scale to budget and if you want to sacrifice budget, you're sacrificing deliverable. And deliverable is the velocity of your ability to rank. Meaning if I have more deliverables month over month, I will, you know, expedite the ability for you to rank top of market. And the other part of that's again competing here. The smaller the firm you are have been, the less likely you've been competing at all in performing any of these efforts. And you're up against the larger or mid scale firms that have been doing this at budget more than you're probably willing to invest for years. And you're up against that. And that's the reality of the landscape is we have to go up against more established firms that have been investing for a longer period of time with more budget and wherever you may find yourself. So there is a strategy, no matter where you find yourself, of a way to play your hand, but you should not play your hand like everybody else is playing their hand. You have to understand where you fall in this market and all these things. And that's what we help firms do all the time, whether we work with them or not. We're doing this every single day. And that's what I would encourage you. If anybody's sitting here going like, yeah, I, I identify myself as one of these smaller firms and I actually don't know how to play this hand, you should be reaching out. At least get our report. But at minimum we do again as just a free service. We do audits. Let us give you a leg up and a perspective that can arm you. Whether you have any intention of hiring a firm like us, we can at least arm you. And that's what I would suggest. If you're not sure, let us arm you.
- [14:53]
Ken Maffley
Yeah, and I think, I think you're right. Like, you know, listen, you know, smaller firms, they have a limited budget and they just need to know how to maximize it. Especially when you have the larger firms that are feeling a little bit more bullish, as they should. Right. They have larger budgets and they feel like that their budget's likely going to increase. But I think what we see here maybe is that there's a little bit of pressure with a smaller budget, with the smaller firms aren't sure that their budgets are going to increase. So that means it's even more important to, to make sure that you're optimizing what you are able to spend.
- [15:23]
Mike Budney
Very true. Yeah, very true. Because yeah, your dollar is not going to stretch as far if you feel like you have a little bit more of an unlimited pocketbook. And these larger firms do are playing with some funny money here.
- [15:33]
Ken Maffley
So.
- [15:34]
Mike Budney
And it's, that's why it's like we have to be intentional about where, what avenue we compete against these firms. Because again, you don't want to try to beat out somebody that has a better hand than you at their game. That's not the best. You know, like that's more of a losing proposition. So again, that's what we want to lean in where the opportunity is and where we can, you know, and I tell this to small firms all the time, typically against a larger firm. We can stair step you up, but I'm not going to come right at the main competition. Otherwise we need the sizable budget in a muff Runway. Or as I call it, the pill to swallow is not really fair to ask of us to you.
- [16:12]
Ken Maffley
Yeah.
- [16:12]
Mike Budney
And that's the game. There's a way to strategize. But it's just that it's strategy and it's very intentional strategy to move the puzzle pieces here. But there's a way.
- [16:22]
Ken Maffley
Absolutely. So budget achieving goals.
- [16:25]
Mike Budney
I.
- [16:26]
Ken Maffley
This is one of the parts I really wanted to talk to you about because this is, I think, where the rubber meets the road. My current budget is achieving my lead generation goals. Agree or disagree, here's where things get interesting. Across all law firm sizes, we're seeing a Little bit more of a tepid. Yes. Only a 3.8 out of 5 with only 65% responding, say that they agree with that sentiment. We kind of been hitting on it. Mike, I want to pass it back to you. What are you seeing? Are folks having trouble with this?
- [16:59]
Mike Budney
It's again, another interesting one because this isn't necessarily matching with the sentiment I'm hearing in the market. Boots on the ground, which is actually a retraction of. We're using the word leads. But I'm going to get more specific. Rather than I say the word lead, I'm going to say signed case because I know everybody on this line. You give a lot more credence to a signed case than you do a lead. And that's really where the rubber meets the road and what matters most to you. And I'd say the, the feedback generally just for everybody here to. If you're a fly on the wall for the conversations we're having out in the marketplace on the front lines, it's that we're seeing a drop year over year. I mentioned this prior, but you're absolutely right. And it's, I'm just, I'm not, I'm seeing firms that are not able to continue the same effort while getting that same case, you know, signed case load month over month and there. And it's bringing a lot of people, a lot of firms to us with those types of concerns and looking for insight, looking for strategy. And that's a big thrust of what we have coming to us are the, ah, where what was working for us then was not working for us now. So in some of this, I wonder is this, are some of these respondents being a little bit more aspirational in what they're saying here? Because, man it, when I survey the landscape and talk to these, to firm owners across the board, the sentiment's pretty consistent. And we're, and that's why. And we're seeing that with our campaigns where we need more budget. What would work in a market for MVA at $10,000 a month for a retainer, for example, that's like, that looks like 12 to 15 now in some markets. So it's in. It's not because we want to charge more. It's because we need those resources to win in market against the landscape.
- [18:42]
Ken Maffley
Yeah. And I, and you know, it's a good call out that there is a distinction between leads and cases. And you know, typically whenever I talk about, you know, marketing brain, we talk in leads, attorneys talking cases and marketers are always moving to qualified leads. That's the important thing. And I know some of what we do is, you know, obviously help with that, but I'm wondering if at an upstream level, it just sounds at least what the survey is showing us is that at least the lead generation goals, they're not quite being met, whether that be qualified leads or just volume as well. And like you're saying, downstream people are talking cases, because that's right. The two. The two mesh together.
- [19:28]
Mike Budney
Leads are work, right? You gotta work a lead. You. If you get a lead, it's not a deal, it's not a signed case, it's legwork and it's intake to get to the conversion. It's a number of things, right? And even if you get a lead, even from an advertising route, you're right, it's qualifying that lead. And who's to say that, you know, you get that lead through an advertising route and it comes into intake and it's looking for a different practice area, something you don't even do. That's. I feel that we fear that feedback all the time, that you go through all this effort to put out your ads and you're getting back leads you can't even work.
- [20:03]
Ken Maffley
Yeah.
- [20:03]
Mike Budney
So.
- [20:04]
Ken Maffley
And that's just it, right? Because if it's not a qualified lead, come on, it's.
- [20:09]
Mike Budney
It's a waste. You're actually. It's an opportunity cost is what it is. Because you're tying up resources that you invest in your, I. E. Your employees, timed intake. And when they're on a call fielding something that's not relevant, what they're not doing is on a call fielding a possible case they could be signing for you. So that's the opportunity cost that you don't want, tying up your valuable resources. And I'm telling you, intake is something extraordinarily overlooked. Because no matter how good of a job a firm like us can do with getting you great leads that are qualified, wanting to hire you if your intake can't convert, you can't afford to bring a team like us or anybody else. You shouldn't be looking to bring in a team until you have your back of house. And I just tell you, if you're not sure and you're like, if I just brought something up, get your numbers right, understand what your numbers look like on intake. X amount of calls, closing percentage based on qualified opportunities. Know your numbers. Because if you don't, you got a hole in your game. If you don't know your numbers, you have a hole in your game. Just Guaranteed.
- [21:13]
Ken Maffley
Yeah. And I don't want to stay on the slide for too long, but, man, you brought up something really impactful. Because the truth of the matter is, if you were to up your percentage of. Of converting your. Your leads to cases by just a.
- [21:25]
Mike Budney
Couple percent, one of the biggest upsides.
- [21:28]
Ken Maffley
Oh, man. Yeah, you're right. Okay. We've got a lot.
- [21:31]
Mike Budney
We work with firms on that very part. It's something that, it's one of the few things we don't do for a firm. But it's so important that we have the playbook. We share that playbook. It's important.
- [21:40]
Ken Maffley
I love it. Okay, next slide. And this is what I'm. This one I found very interesting. So here we've got a little bit of a split and then we're going to dive into why that is here in a moment. But so we asked the question. My marketing strategy is currently taking advantage of all marketing channels at my disposal. Agree. Again, we saw that split. Smaller law firms, very tepid. 3.3 out of 5. Only 45% agreeing with that statement. Medium to large law firms, 3.8 better. But still on. On the tepid side. Talk through just briefly. You know, obviously there's an omnichannel approach, but what are you seeing there? What are folks struggling with in terms of getting the message out?
- [22:26]
Mike Budney
This one in terms of the data looks pretty intuitive to me in terms of what I would expect to see and what I'm. What I am seeing. And what I mean by that is the big. The larger your firm, the more revenue you have to play with and the more you can afford to go traditional like, hey, let's get billboards. Let's do some tv. Let's do some ott. Let's also do some advertising. We can go across many channels. We could do Google. We can do more of a programmatic. We also want to rank high in Google. So we'll go SEO. Like they can afford to look at all these channels separately and invest in them. They have these budgets. The bigger the firm, more established, typically has some experience with these. And that's where they know they want to invest more. Like even the previous couple slides back where we. Where those. The bigger, the larger. The firm knew that they were going to be investing more because they know what they really know, what we know, which is the pay to play. If you aren't willing to put your money where your mouth is to win out on these efforts, it's a big commitment, but you have to be willing to play and invest. And those that do can win again with the right partner and strategy. But that's what I would see. I would expect it to be the larger for the smaller firm is getting more conservative with their money. The smaller firm is less likely to be in traditional because those are different types of spends that are again harder to attribute and aren't really direct transactional. If you just did billboards and did nothing else, I would not advise that that's not you can't even that's not something I would bank on. For example, if you're a smaller firm, you may be looking more at local and organic SEO because you don't have unlimited funds and more importantly you want to stretch your dollar to be as maximized as possible. That's what local and organic will get you. It's the best quality lead out of Google but more importantly the best upside of your dollar. So I would tell you guys that that's generally true for local and organic. The catch with that is nothing's immediate, nothing's quick with local and organic. It's not a overnight w you need to play it out. So for that very reason if you understand the value of that, you're going to start doing that. You're going to have other efforts that you stack on top of that to bring the immediacy and that's the value of advertising. You look at advertising for that quick shot in the arm to counter while you're stacking your other efforts that can get you more upside. And this is what we help firms do strategically is figure out based on what you know, how big of a firm you are, what cases you want to go after, how to best maximize that dollar to win for you. And I'm telling you small firms different strategy, larger firms much you we can do a little bit more. What I can tell you on the other side what my what our head of operations down would love to tell you on the delivery side of what we do, they would tell you that the more irons in the fire you have, the more you spread yourself out there with other efforts beyond local and organic the routes to the top of Google the more effective our campaigns are across the board. So even the smaller clients that are willing to even engage in PPC LSA do you know even smaller traditional play. All of that makes our work with local and organic more potent, more effective. Our best campaigns bar none are multi pronged where it's we're diversified in our in the market the best healthiest campaigns and then we're weathered. If something occurs in the algorithm one month you got other. You've got other efforts that are picking up the slack in a bit of volatility. Everybody experiences volatility in campaign at some point or another. But if you have other efforts picking up the slack, you're weathering that storm. It's like diversifying your investments.
- [25:57]
Ken Maffley
Okay, next slide. So I'd like to go ahead and just kind of set this up. So this next section, we basically asked three questions of about 20 different marketing channels. And so let's go on to the next slide because I'll show how we kind of set this up. So this four box, which, you know, might look. Might look familiar to a lot of folks. You know, we're certainly not the first people to do this, but I feel like we have our own little unique spin on it because we kind of. We asked three questions and created two four boxes. So as you can see here on the left we have the, the ranking for value. So the farther up you go, the more valuable people find these channels. And then down below you have the usage. So the further right you go, the more people are using it. So as for example, you can see the one that is the most top right is SEO or organic traffic. So people find the most value in that and they're using it the most. And then conversely, all the way to the most kind of bottom left would be maybe like Bing search ads. And so people are find that to be less valuable and are using it less. So the only other thing to note here is we've kind of split it out. So green is basically your organic channels, yellow is kind of your paid channels, and the brown is more of your traditional channels. And they're kind of some tight clustering there. So if you can't quite like, like radio billboards looks like one thing, but it's actually radio and billboards. So I just want to set that up. And Mike would love to get your thoughts here. You know, especially maybe even through the lens of like smaller or large law firms. How would you look at this four box?
- [27:51]
Mike Budney
Yeah. So I'd say this looks consistent with how we view the upside of these efforts. Meaning, you know, SEO up in the top of the right being the best upside to your dollar. But it has its own caveats, right. Of it's not an immediate win, but it will help all other efforts. And again, for every dollar in let's say we can get up to $22 on the other side or some there somewhere abouts. Right. That's the kind of upside your dollar can stretch in that effort. I'M going to juxtapose that against ppc, which is fairly close to that in the effort. But PPC being, being a kind of a counter to what we do with SEO and organic where it is immediate, it doesn't have the luxury of stretching your dollar and having a significant upside for you. But man, you can get cases right away, but at a high cost, at a very high cost. That for the smaller firm is probably not as advantageous than the larger firm. So I would say that's the way you want to look at some of these efforts as how am I going to, you know, look, I need, I know I want to invest in local and organic SEO. It's the best use of my dollar. But I also know I need more cases now. So I do. I am going to know naturally if that's the sentiment I have. I'm going to need to have a multi pronged approach. I need to make sure I have that effort coming into SEO test so I can search that dollar. But I know that's going to be nine months a year out at minimum before I can be myopic on that investment. And as a smart business owner, I have to know that I have to compartmentalize that effort and then I can look at all these others and validate which ones is which ones are going to make the most sense. And if I'm a smaller firm, it's probably ppc. It's probably lsa. What I would tell you on lsa, that's there's two advertising routes to the top of Google. Ppc. Lsa. PPC has been around forever. Pay per click. I just want to make sure I'm not losing anybody in the understanding of what these are. LSA is local service ads. That's low advertising locally through your Google business profile. You have to have a Google business profile with at least eight reviews. You can run LSA ads through that. The landscape is evolving. Let me help you understand where it's evolved to. LSA used to be the hack for the smaller firm. You're the smaller firm. PPC is too expensive. LSA is our hack. Let's get LSA ads and for spending less we can get more immediate cases. Well now where the evolution has evolved to, you know, getting local and Google business profile and LSA is still a bit wild west with Google and the terrain where LSA was you was for us more of that hack or cheat code for the smaller newer firm. Now it's going in the other direction. Now you're getting gated. You can't really run LSA without enough reviews in market. If you're in a competitive market and you've got firms with, you know, 600 to a thousand reviews against you, good luck getting your LSA ads to post. So now it's the again, the evolving landscape is the same tools that were working last year for us that we were going hard in the paint bringing forward are not the same tools we can use today. It's okay, there are ways around it, but that's how this is impacting the small versus the larger firms. Again, larger firms can afford to spread out and invest in. You know, the harder part is getting into the orange where you're getting into radio, tv. Without significant budget and longer term commitment like this type of advertising, you need at least six months to a year. I would say commitment. You don't just dip your toe in the water on traditional. You have to be committed to at least a cadence long enough to understand. And for that very reason the smaller firms aren't going to play that game the same. It requires a level of budget and commitment that a smaller firm just can't justify as easily. And again, the traditional efforts are way, way hard to end to end track and attribute the way an online effort is. Because everything online we can tracking codes, end to end attribution. We can see, oh, they went from here, they landed here. Now they're on our site, now they bounce the intake. Whereas traditionally we just don't have that same breadcrumb to follow. And our confidence in what's working and why is way more heightened digitally for that reason. And again, the more you understand the value of your dollar, what's working, what's not, the more effective you can be in your campaign. This is why almost all roads lead to more digital. Because we have that the owner, we have the we can drive better, we can control the minor the campaign at a higher level. And yeah, you have more options versus more traditional.
- [32:15]
Ken Maffley
Yeah, I love that. And for those that are following along at home, I forgot to mention kind of the quick definitions of this four box. So in your top left you have reconsider. And that is, that's basically the thought of people may find this valuable but they're not using it very much. So it might be a signal to, to use wisely and which I know it also says that down below. But then your top right optimize a lot of value. A lot of people are using it. So that means you have to be really on it in order to compete effectively. Your bottom left people, maybe you're having mixed emotions on how much value they find or they're using it. So you have to use it wisely. You really have to have a good steward that's been around the block a time or 10 to help you really understand how to, to spend effectively for that, for that category. And then your bottom right is experiment. And that basically means people are using this a lot, but they may not be finding a lot of value yet. So you'll need to, you'll need to dip your toes, find what works.
- [33:21]
Mike Budney
It might happen not to step on you, Ken, but I would say what fits in that experiment mode and I would love to give you guys permission on this line to view it as such would be more along the lines of organic social media and even paid social as a means to experiment. The reason why is you can control your spend on paid social in a way more controlled setting. And what you can do is you can use paid social and even organic social to test messaging and if there's good reception on based on testing. If you're, let's say you want to do something different with a video or something else, you can use social as a means to get feedback, engagement, understand how the market responds to it and then you can leverage the intel from that effort and bring that into some more, more concrete PPC campaign or something else. There are ways of looking at these channels as you know, mitigating your risk on just throwing money at the wall and seeing what sticks and using them with smaller spends. What we know in marketing, I know you know this well, Ken, being a significant marketer is we can leverage spend to get intel. You don't throw your whole budget at something, you throw a minimal spend because your intel is the intel and you can extrapolate from that. So a lot of times you looking at social as more of an experimental channel would be more wise because you can take liberties there and get, you know, and you know, you for very little money. If anything, you can get some good things. And before you go hard on a campaign, love it.
- [34:52]
Ken Maffley
Okay, on to the next slide. All right, so this is the second part of our three part question that we mashed into two four boxes. So obviously on the left you still have that value prop. So the farther you go, the more people are finding it valuable. But here's the twist. Down below we have our affordability scale. So the farther right you go, the more affordable it is. The farther left you go, the more expensive it is. So as you can see, things basically stayed in their kind of their same groupings. But there was kind of some dramatic shifts. So I'd love to get your hot take on what you're seeing there.
- [35:32]
Mike Budney
This is consistent for sure. And it's, I will say this is what you really beat home before I interrupted you, which is the down and to the left are cautious. Like, be cautious. Like this is not for the faint of heart or for the inexperienced. And if you don't have a strong strategy or confidence with somebody that has a lot of experience that can champion this, guide you or Sherpa you through it, be cautious. Right. The lower it is on that spectrum, again, the more subject matter expertise you better have coming in and guidance to make sure that your dollar is being leveraged properly. Right. Traditional. All the more reason for that. But then I would say on, you know, again, it's the stretching of the dollar and the upside of the dollar. The we see you're going to be hard pressed to buy to beat SEO and local performance, a Google business profile, well performing in market plus organic positions, the best quality leads, the best positions you're going to. That's what we're, that's what we're staking out for and that's what we see here with the dollar spent. So I'd say that this is very consistent with that. And again, paid is always going to move a little bit over to that on that side a little, be a little bit more of an endeavor for depending on the size of your firm.
- [36:44]
Ken Maffley
Yeah. And again for the folks playing at home that the top left box. Reconsider. You can read that one of two ways. A lot of people read that as, oh, if I'm doing that I should reconsider. Think about it a little bit differently. Think about it. If you're not, if you're not using it, maybe it is time to reconsider because if you, it may be more expensive but people are finding a lot of value in it. So maybe it's time to reconsider what you've done in the past and if it hasn't worked for you, tweak it because people are finding a lot of value there. What do you think about that?
- [37:22]
Mike Budney
I love it. I love it. I think it's, you know, we've got Brianna here. Paid social. Yeah. Heck yeah. Brianna knows something about paid social. I'll tell you. And yeah, I'd say it's a huge avenue. It's brand is the future of where we're going with SEO positions. So if you understand that, you understand paid social has a role in this 100 because that's how we expand upon our brand presence and recognition and awareness. So it's a big, it has a role and a place here. And I think there's ways to look at those efforts and look with any kind of marketing you can try, you can just, you can do what everybody's doing and you could just kind of follow along. But I mean, when I say brand, I mean finding what makes you and bringing that forward in a way that is again, authentic to you. And that's the part again, a good brand is going to make that expression well known to the outside world. And it's gonna, that's gonna be the likability and trust that you're messaging and how you present your humanize your firm. All of that is through is what I say, brand. That's the future. That's where, you know, you presenting yourself out there to the public, that's brand and doing it through social and these avenues and doing it in a way that's memorable and authentic. Meaning when somebody sees, they go o, this person's real and they're not doing a stick on me. But that's one part that get gets, you know, get people to align with you and go, I think I like this person. I think I see something in this person that is like me that I can resonate with. And that's the value of social on that in that regard. 100% there. 100.
- [38:47]
Ken Maffley
Love it. Okay. Gosh, we have, there's so much information in this report, folks. I'm afraid to tell you that the third half of our report we're probably not going to be able to touch on too much. But that's why we want to make sure that for all attendees, you have the ability to download this report and take it, take it home with you. That said, let's go into the next slide and I at least want to touch on like one question in the third section of our report before we move on to Q and A. So let's go on to the next slide. And just so everyone knows, the third section, basically what it did was it allowed law firm professionals to stack rank in order of importance, different topics. So this first one is, you know, lead gen priorities. And what we did was we were careful to watch the difference between like what, you know, an attorney might rank stack rank as a priority and what a marketer might stack rank. And we found some pretty intriguing differences. So again, we'll touch on this one and then we'll move on to Q and A. But I'll just read it through really quick. So for the first priority, everyone agreed achieving lead gen goals every month is the top priority. However, attorneys and marketers were a little bit divided with the second priority or the secondary priority. Marketers say that, you know, the secondary priority is to maximize leads, even if it means going over budget, getting that marketer brain, while attorneys believe that the second priority is making sure all leads are being worked properly by the intake team. And Mike, it's as if you read this report before because you've already touched on this, but I'd love to get your hot take on here, maybe revisit it really quick.
- [40:29]
Mike Budney
I love it. I love it. This is all very aligned for me in terms of what I would expect to see too is that, that, you know, like that we need more, as many leads as possible. I don't care what the budget is. And then there's like that. Well, but we have to make sure we're converting right before we do more leads. And both are right. But I, I defer to the attorney honestly, in this case because get your house in order. Like if you're gonna bring up, if you're gonna launch a rocket ship or concrete on the foundation. We don't launch rocket ships on sand. So for that very reason, like get your house in order and don't put the carpet for the horse and then build upon that. So I, to me, the priority is intake. Because again, one thing leads to the next, leads to the next. If you don't have intake rights and you're doing this on the front side with the leads, that is not gonna. There's no way this is maximized without this in place first. So get, let's look at the sequence of what has to flow in. And I would tell you intake is the priority. Get your numbers right, understand your numbers, look at everything holistically. And then once you get to a position where you know that's on a trajectory where it's in, it's going to continually improve. And you look, you know, and see your numbers. If you're not measuring it, looking at it, you're not going to improve it, period. You got to. But that. And then if you know those numbers. When I talk to a firm that knows their numbers, I am confident they're a partner. I want because that tells me everything I need to know about what they know and what they care about. And that speaks volumes to me. I know they got their priority straight markers. Marketers always want more money. I've been a marker for most of my life, so I can relate to that over budget but that, but I would just tell you I, I defer to the attorney view on this and I think that's the more important priority and that's what I would press to anybody I talk to you.
- [42:10]
Ken Maffley
Yeah. And you know what's interesting, you know you said you've been in marketing for years. You know I've been in marketing for. Well my, the gray in my beard says I've been around.
- [42:20]
Mike Budney
I've got some gray coming in baby. I'm working on it but you know.
- [42:23]
Ken Maffley
It what I hear in that secondary priority is they're in very competitive markets and the pressure is on to make sure that they are delivering value month over month.
- [42:34]
Mike Budney
They're in a pressure cooker and they're feeling it and they're. And honestly some asses are on the line you know like with these efforts. So it's table. You know it's. There's stakes for sure.
- [42:45]
Ken Maffley
Yeah, yeah. Well listen like I said there's actually a lot more slides that we will not have time to get through. I do highly encourage everyone to make sure to download the PDF right now if you haven't. There's a lot, so much great information there to make sure to be reading through. There's a lot of action items that we've tacked on to every single one of our findings so that you can have something to grab hold of today to make sure that you're working in the right direction. So with that said we will go ahead and move over to the Q and A time and yeah, there we go. Perfect. Thank you. So the first question that came through, I'll just read it verbatim and actually this kind of goes into exactly what we were just talking about. So Mike, what are your thoughts experience with working with a lead gen firm as a part of your lead generation formula Maybe like an intake team is kind of what I'm reading there. What are your thoughts there?
- [43:42]
Mike Budney
So when I read that I think this is from you Jeremy. So Jeremy, and depending on the context of the question you can speak into this in chat. We'll. I'll pick it up. The way I read that question is there are services you can find out there where you just pay for signed cases for 15,000, 30,000amonth. You'll. They will guarantee you X amount of signed cases within a certain type of case type and it's an arrangement you have with a firm and they get you those signed cases for that spend and I think that's what you're. Yeah. Outside lead gen firm. Yes okay, so that's exactly what you're talking about. I'm familiar with this model. What they're doing is they're running PPC ads and they're typically conquesting in other efforts. Conquesting is when I take one of your biggest competitors in market and I bid on their firm name, I pretend to be them and someone just types in their name organically in Google. My ad hits the top, they just click on my ad and they go to my site, not theirs. That's conquesting. That and many other efforts. There's a shade of gray, let's call it, that advertising firms will use to do that. And it's not a right or wrong or a judgment. But what I tell you is just like the problem with that effort is if you become dependent on it now what's, how are you run. What's in charge of your. The lifeblood of your organization is relying on what a firm that's running PPC ads and making money off of your. Off of what you could be running. If you were running something comparable and they're making margin on you, that's what they're doing. A margin you could so and if you don't have like it so and I know some firms that enjoy that service and do well. But my concern with it is it can dry up. They could pivot on you or disappear or go out of business. And if you become reliant and you need that source and it, and you don't have it and can't rely on it in the future, it's not. I, I don't. I like efforts where I can own the effort and that I'm not relying on some other outside force that could know that I can't control it just in terms of owning b, you know, businesses and being responsible for them. It's all about understanding that life, you know, there's nothing more important than where there's the next signed case going to come from. So I would tell you for that very reason if I could, if rather than invest and lose that margin to affirm doing that lead gen for me, if I could deploy my own SEO and local presence in time, I can outperform that. But again, the catch is the pill to swallow and navigating that path. So Jeremy, if at any point man, you want to talk about how you would play that hand, for example, that's what we do. So I'd encourage you like knock on our door or email Mike@ Rankings IO and I could, we can run an audit for you and give you A strategy there. But that's what I would tell you on that front is it's not a wrong or right, but it is a be cautious with that route. And that's what they're doing is they're running PPC ads.
- [46:33]
Ken Maffley
Love it. Okay, and this next one that I'll address quickly and then we'll move on to other questions. So was asked, you know, does rankings offer email marketing services? Short answer, no. But we wanted to make sure that we were getting as many marketing channels into our survey as possible so people could see the possible efficacy. You know, we're pretty focused on, on what we do. We are rather omnichannel in what we do, but we're also cost effective. Yeah, yeah. So I just wanted to make sure that was addressed really quick so everyone would know now, gosh, we might only have time for maybe one or maybe two more questions. So this first one, and I'll read it out, it's a little bit of a mouthful, but how frequently should campaigns be audited and reallocated to maintain performance efficiency? At what point should a firm cut investment in a channel if it isn't producing returns?
- [47:29]
Mike Budney
Okay, great question. It is a little open for interpretation across because every channel is going to be treated different. You know, you wouldn't talk about a, an organic campaign versus a PPC campaign and the context of how those play out are not really similar. But so with the context, I'll answer this question in will be in the line in the guise of local and organic. Where we're strongest at and where our reputation is taking you to the top of market locally and organically. The best place you want to be on Google. And I'll speak to that in the form of a campaign because that's how we talk about it, we call them. If we were to partner with your firm, for example, we call it a campaign. And that campaign is, you know, think of SEO in three month cycles. And everything takes about three months in SEO. Like anything I publish in month one, you may not see the upside till month three. Right. So it's three month cycles. And if you hire a partner, doesn't have to be rankings. Anybody that does great work in this space that you hire, typically that what I tell everybody is don't be myopic, don't be too into the data of your campaign, short of, let's call it nine months. So if you came to me and you were six months with a new partner and you're like, I'm concerned. I don't see it. I'd be like, I'd be telling you what I tell everybody. You didn't give your partner enough time. I'll still audit you. I'll give you an opinion on the six months you've been in campaign. But it's too early. It's too early. Give them at least nine months, maybe at least a year before you go to Myopic. What you're looking for is the right team, the right strategy and budget. And if you don't give them this last piece, you will lose money. And that's the Runway. You have to give them the Runway. I don't care. You could have the best team with the best strategy in the world. You don't give them the right time, you could be at month eight in your campaign and you don't give them until month nine. You may not see the pop. And if you bounce early, you will most certainly lose your money. Don't take. That's the mistake I see with firms not committing. And don't do this, don't do this of that. Don't look at a campaign of SEO or local short of nine months to a year. So do the due diligence. Spend the time finding the right partner. Don't for. Because I'm telling you there are a lot, plenty of firms that would love to extract any type of retainer from you with no intention of moving the needle. If we can prevent you from that, we call that a w, a win. But that's. Then that's why you'd want to maybe talk to us, just to prevent something like that from occurring.
- [49:55]
Ken Maffley
But yeah, no, I just, I. You said something that actually dispersed one of my axioms. You know, there is very little difference in temperature wise when you're talking about ice from 0 to 30 degrees. Right. But there's a big difference between 30 and 35. Huge.
- [50:15]
Mike Budney
Right? Subtle.
- [50:17]
Ken Maffley
Well, yeah. But you know, that's the thing with, with marketing. You might make a lot of progress, but you may not see a lot of results until you do. And it's like that. That you got to give them Runway that. I love that because it's true.
- [50:30]
Mike Budney
You know, the only way with the right partner and the right budget and strategy, that's the only way your SEO campaign is likely to lose money is if you pull early. But you. But that's why spend the time, do the due diligence. Find the right team and the right strategy. That's the most important piece. And if you need help with that, we do that all day long, no strings attached.
- [50:52]
Ken Maffley
Okay. So last Question. Because we're bumping up against time. Make it as rapid fire as we can. If you were put to it and someone told you that you had to pick two, maybe three marketing channels for a small law firm to prioritize, which two or three would you give them?
- [51:12]
Mike Budney
It's easy. Local. Local is getting a Google business profile in the right location in your market or markets to. To optimize out and then to land and expand to the next one. I would be playing a local game. So local is the biggest part. Google Business Profile optimization number one. Two is organic. Two is making sure. And again the organic. The pacing of which I approach organic campaign doesn't have to be. If I don't have a ton of budget, it can be slower. But I'm going to start playing the game as early and as soon as possible because the game doesn't stop and everybody's been on that ride for longer than me. So I'm going to get on the ride immediately and start playing the game because I need to start seeing and aging things for it eventually to be valuable to me. So knowing what I know, it's putting the pieces in place. Even if I don't have the amount of budget that I would love to have, I would be prioritizing local, which is Google Business profile optimization getting SEO underway, even if it's more minimal. And then if I needed to again, if I needed to bring one extra layer on top of that, it's going to be some form of advertising. It's not going to be traditional. It's going to be looking more at whether it's PPC in my market or lsa. Again LS the caveat to LSA is it might be gated behind reviews. Every market is different. If you're in a lesser competitive secondary or tertiary market, LSA is probably going to be your move. And if you're a more competitive market, it's just new. It's very nuanced. I can tell you we have a ton of campaigns across the domestic United States. None of them look the same. What case types, what priorities, where the dichotomy of what the law firm is hoping for. Everything is very nuanced. It'd be. And if we. If you paint with a broad brush here, you're gonna. You're not going to do a good job, which is why you need a very nuanced strategy depending on where you're at, what you're looking for. So you love it. Yeah. And that's what I would aim for. Getting my head wrapped around a strong strategy. It's local and then it's organic is what I would do.
- [53:10]
Ken Maffley
Okay. All right. Well, gosh, we've got to wrap. Bethany, I'll have you go on to the next slide. But just wanted to say, Mike, thank you so much for letting us pick your brain, really put you on the spot and just giving us that brain dump and helping us understand what the survey's been saying. I greatly appreciate it.
- [53:28]
Mike Budney
Honored to be here. Appreciate the time. Thank you.
- [53:31]
Ken Maffley
Love it. Okay, well, to wrap, I just wanted to point out, in order to succeed over the next year, what we found is that firms must be able to prioritize the right channels that bring them cases, track performance diligently to ensure that the right channels are being prioritized, ensure that their marketing efforts align with their overall business objective. And let's be honest, it's easy to say and harder to do. So, next slide. As always, finding the right marketing partner is essential. They can help outline your goals, construct the right strategy, build the right creatives, and make sure you are hitting your goals. As always, we are here to help you get the most out of your lead generation efforts. Our expertise and understanding of the legal market puts you, our clients, in the winning position. So contact us today to see how you can get the most out of your marketing campaigns. You won't be disappointed. Bye for now.
- [54:39]
Chris
Thanks for joining us on this bonus webinar replay episode of Personal Injury Mastermind. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.