Lies Lawyers Believe About Digital Marketing

by David Somerfleck | Digital Marketing, Top

A Lawyer with a Typical Digital Marketing Dilemma

To say it was a stressful day was an understatement.

My wife had just been diagnosed with cancer days earlier, and here I was now waiting in the doctor’s office for her to come out following an MRI so we could find out what stage of development the cancer was at and what treatment would entail.

Of course, I was also worried what her chances for a full recovery were, what recovery would involve, and what I could do to help her. It was devastating news that would surely leave a lasting impact.

In the midst of all this stress and overwhelm, I had completely forgotten that I’d scheduled a digital marketing consultation for that same day with a patent attorney a month earlier. I probably hadn’t slept since learning of my wife’s diagnosis, and probably hadn’t thought about much else.

Business was the last thing on my mind. But the appointment had been scheduled weeks before the diagnosis, and based on my over two decades of experience in marketing and consulting, I knew I could accelerate this lawyer’s client intake if she was interested in truly resolving what had been holding back her practice.

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If, on the other hand, she was not able to take action (for whatever reason), I’d be fine with wishing her well and moving on. After all, I had my wife’s health to consider.

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Also, I knew how to help committed clients accelerate growth and by that time had cultivated a fairly steady stream, so if one client decided they’d rather go broke than make progress, so be it.

The Questions I Needed to Ask Were:

What is the core problem as she perceives it, compared to what really is going on that’s preventing the right types of clients from contacting her and wanting to work with her?
What has she done to date to try to solve the problem, why, what worked, what hasn’t?
Is she interested in talking about her hopes and dreams and venting or truly solving the problem long-term? Would she be receptive to the discovery necessary in order to discern the best approach we’d need to take to get her to where she wanted to be?
Does she have enough of an understanding of digital marketing in general to value what using it properly could do to advance her practice and new client intake?
Does her anticipated budget range for getting results match up with realistic industry standards that would enable me to go to work for her? Or would this be yet another case of wanting to achieve specific business outcomes but not willing to invest?

Here’s What Actually Ended Up Happening.

I called her as scheduled, tried to allay her concerns (which were simply not getting any new phone calls or emails from anyone wanting to hire her as a lawyer), and offered to answer any questions she might have.

Bad move.

As it turned out, she had probably close to fifty questions of a technical nature. Of course my answers to her technical questions made no sense to her, (since she had no technical training in programming or digital marketing and no prior experience working with an experienced digital marketing consultant or agency).

Here I was discussing SEO, content marketing best practices, using hashtags to submit social media marketing content, the importance of using alt tags in website image use, how to fix issues with her “free” DIY template builder site (that was obviously costing her thousands in lost revenue every day it was up) while my wife was being treated for cancer.

And….

The lawyer had no idea what I was talking about and told me as much. In very uncertain, nervous tones, she admitted that after talking with me she was more uncertain than ever before, had no idea what I was saying and that it all might just as well have been spoken in Urdu to her, and that she would just leave everything as it had been, whether she was seeing any results at all or not. If she had to go work at Starbucks, so be it. She would not budge and was utterly lost in a sea of confusion.

When we hung up the phone, I felt terrible. I wished there had been a simpler, more direct way of explaining to her what she could do to reach her goals.

Instead of discussing goals and whether or not she would want to invest realistically in order to reach stated goals, I had wasted over an hour trying to explain technical concepts to her and answering her technical questions as to why nobody was calling her.

The answers were as good as gibberish to her, completely overwhelmed her, and it was clear she would instead choose to keep doing what she’d been doing, regardless.

Had I slept the night before, had my lovely wife not been diagnosed with cancer days earlier, I probably would have focused on asking this lawyer what specific problems were and what (if anything) she was prepared to do about it in order to start attracting new clients.

Explaining technical tools and processes had always been a huge “no no” for me, as most people tended to quickly become lost in the jargon.

Most would pretend to understand, but then their actions and behaviors would reveal that they had no clue what I was talking about. This process of answering questions, however sincerely, didn’t help either party.

Flashback

A year earlier I’d had a similar experience while actively volunteering as a business mentor and advisor for several nonprofit organizations.

I was consulting with another lawyer, this time a trial attorney who, again, had a “free” DIY template builder website that was costing him thousands upon thousands of dollars in lost wages annually.

The problem was that the lawyer didn’t know this.

All he knew was that nobody was calling him, emailing him, or coming into his office. He had figured any template builder website that was free or cheap would attract more clients.

It wasn’t.

Meanwhile, his competitors who were at the top of Google were raking in the referrals and new clients, clearly attracting new leads on a daily if not hourly basis.

This particular lawyer I was consulting with, had admitted he hadn’t had a new client in months.

Here’s the Kicker

But here was the kicker: he openly stated that he refused to invest a dime into digital marketing for a number or reasons: he didn’t believe digital marketing was more than a fad. He had a son who was good at Excel and “the web thing,” so, he reasoned, the son could “figure out that techy stuff for free for me.”

He also was a senior lawyer in a much larger, legacy law firm that also was not online and earned most if not all of its clients through networking and court referrals.

So here was the paradox: He wanted more leads, wanted the help of digital marketing, but conversely stated he didn’t need it, didn’t believe in it, and really didn’t need the leads after all, since he was with a larger legacy firm that (also) felt ambivalent if not negatively toward digital marketing at the same time.

So how could I possibly help? Answer technical questions whose answers wouldn’t help him, anyway? Advise him to invest what he would spend in one billboard into digital marketing and join his more profitable competitors’ ranks? I chose to wish him well, explain that I couldn’t do much to help him since he’d “figured everything out already” and move on.

Full Circle

Approximately six months or so after my wife had recovered from cancer, I was contacted to speak at a local law firm’s “digital marketing for lawyers” event.

I put that term in parenthesis deliberately because while I was flattered to be invited to speak at the event, I was the only digital marketing professional with any industry experience at the event. Other lawyers speaking with me were a lawyer who’d suffered through terrible experiences with a local hobbyist but then later said she was happy with the end-result (while admitting she got no new business from it), and another lawyer who’d said she simply didn’t use digital marketing at all and just drove around town meeting her older clients in-person (imagine the amount of time spent sitting in traffic and subsequent loss in billable hours). This was the “expo?”

Everyone attending the event was very pleasant and polite, but as I’d quickly picked up during the brief time I was permitted to speak, interest in digital marketing itself was actually quite low. Digital marketing was seen as a thing that you should use, probably needed, but nobody really understood or wanted to embrace. That was the general impression I’d picked up, right or wrong.

Which leads us here.

I read all the time in forums, reddits, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, question and answer forums such as Quora, that many lawyers want and need to reach more of their ideal types of clients, yet for a myriad of reasons just aren’t making it happen.

So in this post I’m going to pinpoint some of the staggering untruths lawyers believe about digital marketing I feel are holding them back from reaching more clients, and expanding their caseload.

Untruths

It’s a Fad. Let’s get real that digital marketing, online marketing, internet marketing, whatever you feel comfortable calling it, is not a fad. The common concensus is that while platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) may change, the internet’s not going anywhere. In fact, with the rise of the COVID-19 global pandemic, more people than ever before in history are relying on the internet to find accurate information, buy food, supplies, and work from home. When there are over 4,504,218,100 internet users, and well over 4,552,500,500 Google searches daily, refusing to advertise on that medium is choosing not to look for more clients. Period.
Any Old Template Is Fine. As I’ve written about elsewhere, supposedly “free” DIY templates end up costing users massively over relatively short periods of time in lost wages. Why is that? By using such a generic template, you’re essentially placing the future of your business in the “hands” of an automated generic “fill-in-the-blanks” template. That template cannot help you reach the top of Google (called Search Engine Optimization), nor can it help you figure out your best market. From that point down, the logic falls apart. If generic DIY templates were totally great, nobody would use digital marketing agencies or employ digital marketing experts and we would all go bankrupt. We’re not. Larger, profitable lawyers and law firms use digital marketing, especially if they are in major metropolitan hub cities – because they want to outrank competitors online and get the traffic they deserve.
Posting to Social Media Will Get You Seen Immediately. By itself, randomly posting content on social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram or Pinterest may solicit some views, but it won’t generate or build the audience you need in order to grow a business. That takes time, sometimes years. Randomly posting will get you random viewing, just as randomly attending a networking group every once in a while may or may not attract one new client every six months or so. That’s no way to build a profitable business in and of itself, which, at the end of the day, a law practice is. In order to reach a new market, you have to produce massive amounts of content, post regularly in multiple formats, post branded cohesive content that looks professional and serious, post in different formats (such as audio, video, visual, and posts) addresses specific needs of your audience, and brings them back to wanting to contact you. Effective social media marketing requires long-term commitment and combining with other types of marketing.
We Don’t Need No SEO. Most law firm and lawyer solo practice websites simply don’t have SEO. Those that do have SEO, typically don’t have correct SEO. So what is SEO and why should you care? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is how you outrank competitors online. That means reaching the top of Google search results. Speaking as someone who has been at the very top of Google search results before, I can tell you in no uncertain terms that it takes alot of work, alot of time, but can deliver considerable results if you commit to it. When I was listed as number one for a specific type of digital marketing consultant while living in Denver, Colorado, I was literally receiving a new phone call or email every 15-20 minutes. Some law firms or solo practice lawyers need to be listed so that they can dominate in local markets (probably most if I’m honest), while some larger law firms have offices in multiple cities, and they would require more work to generate needed traffic. It can be done. It’s being done daily. It can be done for you, too. If you’re open to the process and ready to handle the increased number of phone calls and emails effectively utilizing SEO brings with it.
I Can Do It All By Myself. This is a very common misconception among new small business owners, startup founders, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit founders who simply may not have much of a budget to speak of, are unfamiliar with marketing in general, unfamiliar with advertising, and just unsure as to where to begin. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. That being said, nobody can build a business completely on their own without some outside assistance or connections. Even if you’re more connected than most, you’d still need help scaling for growth, organizing work, and delegating so you can keep that ball rolling. A long time ago when I had to have surgery, I was flustered that I couldn’t find local surgeons with positive reviews near me. I had to look to the nearest larger city to find surgeons with reviews online. The one I eventually went to had a modern website that worked on my phone, had testimonials from actual patients, information about his work, online payment options, downloadable forms, a patient portal. That level of professionalism in the midst of nothing else spoke volumes and was all I needed to go to that particular surgeon. It didn’t hurt that he was also #1 in Google for his city and state and area of specialty. He had outsourced his digital marketing to a local agency and it showed. And paid off in huge dividends.
Hobbyists Are the Same As Professionals. This is probably one of the more prevalent lies or untrue beliefs I see on a daily basis, where the lawyer in question would hire someone from a “race to the bottom” freelancing marketplace website such as Fiverr or Craigslist, pay what they would normally spend attending a single luncheon, and then expecting that hobbyist to help them bring in more clients over a prolonged period of time. This is akin to me using a generic contract template I found somewhere online and going to court with it – and expecting a fair equitable ruling in my favor. If law were that easy everyone would be doing it and no one would hire lawyers any more. Experienced professionals may charge more, but they conversely will deliver more, with many offering money-back guarantees.
The Price Is Too High. Not true at all. For what most solo practice lawyers, attorneys, or small law firms would spend on a single billboard over the course of several months, you could easily work with most digital marketing agencies or experienced digital marketing consultants to achieve tangible results. The issue here isn’t so much affordability as it is comfort with more familiar, more traditional marketing efforts such as investing thousands in old-school “Yellow Pages” phone books that simply no one uses any more. We take out our phones and use Google to find businesses today in 2020. Yet small business owners and many lawyers still spend thousands if not tens of thousands annually on them. If the idea is to attract more clients, it makes more sense to go to where consumers go, Google, to look for them, not where they aren’t.

The Last Word

Finally, while there are certainly other misconceptions and untruths about digital marketing out there that legal professionals believe, it’s important to point out that the misinformation is not the fault of anyone believing something however ineffective that approach may be. Legal professionals are experts in their field, with digital marketing specialists being experts in their field of practice; and I’d certainly never want to represent myself (or anyone else) in a court of law any more than I’d expect a lawyer to also be an expert in digital marketing.

Yes, there are lawyers who are also web designers and web designers who are also lawyers, but most aren’t equally proficient in both fields. It comes down to the value of solving problems; such as attracting more of a specific type of client within particular demographics, reducing operational overhead, cutting redundant operations, moving more workflow online, automating email responses, providing better and more robust services to clients using modern web technology. Whatever further untruths and “lies” lawyers may believe about digital marketing, they will stem from the larger ones mentioned above.

You’ll get out what you’re willing to put in, and digital marketing results are no different in that regard than any other field of endeavor.

If we look at a comparison chart, we can see how one person’s use and the outcomes they achieve are radically different from the results (or lack thereof) that a competing lawyer may obtain. One lawyer builds a caseload hand over fist while another struggles; and the reason why one struggles while the other builds caseload is not determined by the tools they use so much as it their approach. In Buddhism, it’s called the “divine law of cause and effect.”

Now, you don’t have to believe cause and effect is divine, but the reality is digital marketing can and does help both solo practice lawyers build their caseloads as much as it helps firms land higher-paying corporate clients, if the interest and need combine with commitment.

Wan to learn more?

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