Struggling to attract high-value clients? Tired of the same old marketing routine? YouTube might be your secret weapon.
This episode with YouTube guru Ian Garlic will show you how to turn viewers into clients.
Here's what you'll get:
Imagine:
Stop spinning your marketing wheels. This episode is your roadmap to creating a YouTube channel that converts.
Tune in and transform your legal marketing strategy today!
Bonus: Dive Deeper with Ian Garlic!
____________________________________
Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
Want to connect with Brian?
Follow Brian on Instagram: @thebrianglass
Connect on LinkedIn
Struggling to attract high-value clients? Tired of the same old marketing routine? YouTube might be your secret weapon.
This episode with YouTube guru Ian Garlic will show you how to turn viewers into clients.
Here's what you'll get:
Imagine:
Stop spinning your marketing wheels. This episode is your roadmap to creating a YouTube channel that converts.
Tune in and transform your legal marketing strategy today!
Bonus: Dive Deeper with Ian Garlic!
____________________________________
Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
Want to connect with Brian?
Follow Brian on Instagram: @thebrianglass
Connect on LinkedIn
Any other platform, right. If you use Facebook ads, ppc, facebook organic, instagram, organic, tiktok all those things just go poof right. You make videos, they're gone tomorrow. Yes, you can build up a channel, you can build up an audience, but YouTube, if you focus on it. Literally, my client we were talking about before the show, he's like, hey, he came to my last workshop. He's like he's getting 100K. He's a criminal defense attorney, he's getting 100K clients from videos we made 10 years ago. It's still working, right. I mean, that's why it needs to be the center of it and I think it's just going to grow from there.
Speaker 2:What's up everybody? Welcome back to the show. Today's guest is Ian Garlick. Ian is a YouTube marketing expert. He's the founder of Video Case Story. He's the host of a couple of podcasts True Lost Stories and the Garlick Marketing Show. Ian, welcome to the show, my man.
Speaker 1:Brian, thanks so much for having me on. I always love talking to you.
Speaker 2:So you came in and you talked to the Great Legal Marketing Mastermind Groups, I think, back in January, and you were kind enough to give this presentation and you were kind enough to title it why Lawyers Suck at YouTube, yes, which always gets everybody's attention if you can just poke the bear right from the beginning. So let's kind of start there. I think lawyers are told, and especially small law firm owners, we look around when we go to conferences and you can do YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and SEO and LSAs and PPC and everything else under the sun, right. And so we go. I want to do that and that and that and that, and then we end up doing almost none of it well. So if you wanted to do YouTube, well, where would you?
Speaker 1:start? That's a good question. Well, you know, I want to say thanks for having me to the event and I made that. I have a CLE on how to use client stories, that's a Florida approved CLE credits and everything I didn't do that. I made that one just for you guys because that your group is so special and it was amazing group. And I'm just going to do a plug here If you are an attorney and you're not a mastermind, you got to join that one, but anyways, I appreciate that. Yeah, no, you got to join that one, but anyways, I mean it's true, it is true.
Speaker 1:I mean it was just a really smart group of people really sharing, asking amazing questions, really coming at things the right way. And I think that's smart too is like, how are you going to think about it and where to start? Where to start is a great thing. It's like, first of all, obviously, what do you want to do? Like what clients you want to attract? And you got to really get specific on that. I had I was talking to an attorney. That's like I want to do intellectual property and I'm doing personal injury. I'm like, well, which one are you going to talk to? And, even more so, like you like getting specific about, like the you know, virginia car accidents and the DUI accidents and really getting known for it and speaking to them. And who are you going to speak to? Because you YouTube is awesome If you know exactly who you want to talk to. And the problem is, is that most people there, the influencer strategies, are like I want to talk to as many people as possible to get as many views as possible, and that strategy is a road to ruin. Not I mean not that influencers don't make a ton of money, but like that's I know so many of them. It's like two years before they get traction, making two to three videos a week testing stuff out. I mean, you talk to Mr Beast. He spent, like when he started, spending 15 hours a day on his YouTube channel for like 10 years. Yes, has it paid off, but he was also there beginning.
Speaker 1:So, getting really specific about who you're talking to, what their problems are, and I think the best way to do that is like interview your clients. You know, that's why I wrote the book video. You know video testimonials that land the big fish was because that's the place, cause they're going to tell you what the real problems are and you can speak to them. And when you do that, you can get in front of the camera and talk to that person and that moment and not try to talk to everyone, not try to do you know, still do a commercial. No one wants to watch a commercial on YouTube, all right, and I see this. One of the worst things I see is people just take all their they're doing really good with TV and take that TV and put it on YouTube. I'm like they didn't want to watch that on TV. They had to. They definitely don't want to watch that on YouTube. So, yeah, that's where I would get started is really, really dive deep into that person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one of the things that you said that I thought was kind of a light bulb moment for me and for a couple of other people in the room is that you know so many of us. When we think about making videos for YouTube, what we're really doing is we're recreating our blog articles.
Speaker 2:We're taking our website and we're creating videos around the things that are on our website. You come at it from a totally different perspective, which is take your client's stories and take the emotion that's behind the stories and tell those stories, which is different than somebody who's going on YouTube and searching, and so I guess one of the questions that I have for you is where does the YouTube video strategy fit into the overall client attraction and attention attraction strategy?
Speaker 1:I mean, I honestly have made it the center of all of our clients' strategy, because there's a few different reasons. Strategy, because there's a few different reasons. Youtube when you send those ideal clients and you have the right content there and they watch it, youtube is not only going to show them more of your content, they're going to show more of those people, your content. So, if you're driving your ideal clients there and going, hey, here's some things you need to watch, here's some things you need to understand, and also from a standpoint of client retention too, because once so, even with personal injury attorneys, you know this once they sign on the dotted line, you still have to sell them on being a good client, doing all the stuff that you said, understanding the different steps, and that doing that will make them not only to a better client, get better results, but be happier. And then they'll share your videos and go hey, brian was my attorney, Look what he did for me. Right, and they will get excited about it. And for every minute that someone spends on your website, they're gonna spend 10, 20, 30 minutes on your YouTube channel.
Speaker 1:If it's good, any other platform, right. If you Facebook ads, youtube ads or not. Youtube ads. Facebook ads, ppc. Facebook organic, instagram, organic TikTok all those things just go poof right. You make videos from. They're gone tomorrow. Yes, you can build up a channel, you can build up an audience, but YouTube if you focus on it literally my client I was, we were talking about before the show he's like hey, he came to my last workshop. He's like he's a criminal defense attorney. He's getting 100K clients from videos we made 10 years ago. It's still working right. I mean, that's why it needs to be the center of it and I think it's just going to grow from there.
Speaker 2:That's one of the things that we've been talking about here lately, as we create more video content in the law firm is there's this obsession with shorts and trying to go viral on shorts, be it Instagram reels or YouTube shorts or TikTok or whatever. But if you're able to go viral, that's awesome, but if you're not, the distribution of that video is done within 48, 72 hours, whereas on YouTube it's going to live forever and it's going to live in the second largest search engine in the world, which is owned by the largest search engine in the world. But you said something back there about driving your clients, driving your ideal clients to it and then, even after they've signed on the dotted line, continuing to drive them back. So let's kind of take it down to the ground. Like, what does that look like for a personal injury firm? What's the mechanism that you're having? Having lawyers send clients back to their YouTube channel with?
Speaker 1:Okay, so perfect. That's a great question because this leads to what I call on the core for converting videos. So it's your process right If you own the process, before they sign on the dotted line. Now they go, look at other attorneys and they're like, well, that's not Brian's process. Brian told me it's this, this, this, this. And you know, I forget, I always forget who did the beer commercial back in the day where they showed the like we do this with the water and it's like every beer company did it. But they were the first ones to say we do this Right. Beer company did it, but they were the first ones to say we do this Right.
Speaker 1:So you own that process and what that does is it future paces people. So they understand what's going to happen. But now you know it's like hey, it's 30 days. In 40 days you signed. You know we're in the middle of doing all of our you know investigation. I just want to remind you what the process is right and tell you here. And then I also want to tell you you know what that investigation looks like. So I made a video about what the investigation looks like and you know, and you're getting X, y, z letters from the insurance companies. Here's how you handle those letters. I've made videos about all of that stuff and you send that to them because you know what they're thinking about. Right, you know what they're thinking about. Maybe other attorneys are calling them and going.
Speaker 1:Hey, when they shouldn't be what to do if this person calls you and those questions that they have at that moment. Plus, you should have an ongoing newsletter that sends success stories out, because it reminds them. Hey, you know what Brian is successful? Look, I'm in a car accident case. Brian just had the largest car accident case in Virginia and he's my attorney, and they'll want to share that with other people too. And this is where you really increase your profits is because you can start to get referrals right in the middle of that process and you know how to refer people, how to talk to people about your accident.
Speaker 2:How to leave a great Google review.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how to leave a great Google review. You know why reviews are so important to us. All of that stuff you can be sending back to your YouTube channel and you know what? They click on it. Watch a few seconds of it. They leave. They've seen your face, heard your voice. They got to spend time with you and I don't know if I mentioned this to you, but we talk about the malpracticing the number one. So medical malpractice, the number one. Cause of, the number one factor in medical malpractice lawsuits is time spent with patient. So you spend more time with your clients without having to spend time with them.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's the number one cause of bar complaints is communication for lawyers. So it's the same thing, it's how? So? I mean, it strikes me that the strategy that you just articulated really has like at least three benefits. One of them is it's reiterating all the things that we told the client in the initial consultation that they've now forgotten, like don't post things on social media. If you declare bankruptcy, I've got to know about it, things like that, yeah, number two, it's continuing to create a relationship with us as the celebrity lawyer celebrity maybe in quotation marks, um, but the authority, the authority, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Right With the authority, and you're continuing to talk to them, um, without actually having to spend any of your additional time talking to them. And then number three, you know, sending your clients who've already retained you back to YouTube is generating views and YouTube juice and telling the search engine that this is an important video, right?
Speaker 1:And not only that, but this is the type of person I want watching that video. They have 65 million points of data on every person. They know exactly what that person's thinking and they're combining that with everything else that person's thinking and they're combining that with everything else that they've seen. And now when someone likes them, you know like, let's say, I love ukulele videos and people that love ukuleles get more car accidents on XYZ day. So now they're showing you know XYZ car videos to people that watch ukulele videos. Obviously, that's a far fetch, but that's the kind of level of data that they have.
Speaker 2:But the closer analogy and I've always thought for auto accidents, maybe this doesn't work right, because there's not a definable characteristic for somebody that was in a crash last Tuesday, but there is a definable characteristic for somebody who's headed towards a divorce, right? Oh yeah, those people they're looking at certain websites, they're watching certain videos. Right, those people they're. They're looking at certain websites, they're watching certain videos. There's a characteristic for people who whose parents are elderly and they're they need to convince mom and dad to go and get an estate plan done, right, and so.
Speaker 2:So for so many consumer practices outside of this single event arena, like if you can tailor, make your YouTube channel for around a set of characteristics and teach, and that this channel is about this. Right, it's not about law and soccer and watching my kids do things. It's just about auto-accidental or just about family law. Right Now, you're working with the algorithm to drive your perfect clients back through, so talk a little bit about how to curate that and how to curate playlists as a lawyer, that'll speak to the algorithm and start to have it work for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. And side note on the personal injury and criminal defense, I think personal injury, they do have some predictive algorithms because, don't forget, they have all of your driving data, so they know that. Hey, you drive up and down I-75 at rush hour every day and then on Friday nights I know you're driving to the casino and back four times You're more likely to get in a car accident and I'm going to start showing you some of this stuff. But, that said, as far as the content, I start always with the core converting videos, your process video, your about us video. They want to know who you are, your FAQs and your video case stories. Case stories are the most important thing because you want to answer to them. Have you helped someone like me with a problem like mine, right, and how did that work and what was the outcome? And, obviously, how did they like you? And so those are so important. Plus, stories rank higher than anything else because people will watch a lot more of a story Like if you teach someone anything, they might hit the part where they're like okay, I learned what I need to jump off. Stories, if it's correctly crafted, can be 30 minutes long. We have some of those ranking number one on Google because you correctly craft it.
Speaker 1:Now, that said, once you start with those, next you move out into things around. So what are the questions they have around the problem? So, obviously, provider aware, when we talk warm personal injury attorney how to hire a personal injury attorney, do talk warm personal injury attorney how to hire a personal injury attorney. Do I need a personal injury attorney? What if I'm not a person type person to sue? And then you also think about you start to find the million dollar questions. Now, this one is it's I've done it in PI and it's usually it's geographic. There's something specific in the law that triggers it, like their attorney says, or something happened, or it's a specific type of accident and it gets a little more long-tail. But if you answer that for the right person it's worth a million dollars to them or more, right? And so, thinking about those questions that someone's asking, they're going to get and this is the. It's the paradox of it You're going to get very low traffic is the.
Speaker 1:It's the paradox of it. You're going to get very low traffic to this, very few people watching it, but when the right person watches it and you answer that question, they're going to be like. That's the person for me, right. It's like, and I mean I remember back in the day when Google used to and I was in New York doing working with attorneys and Google used to tell us all the data for searches before they start going hey, this is private, so they give us all the search data and someone put what to do if I was pinned between two cars on 42nd Street, right, I mean that person has a problem, right?
Speaker 1:And if you're ranking number one to answer that problem, you genuinely answer that problem. There's no one else they're hiring, so I, that's the next layer, and then I'd move into, like more authoritative stuff. And then you move out down to like speaking to people. You know. You know speaking to people before they have the problem, like signs, my husband is cheating on me, that that kind of thing and you move out and move out and then maybe into some community stuff, but you're moving from the time that they sign out and don't look for the big numbers, don't look for, hey, I want to rank number one for personal injury. I'm like that's not going to do a whole lot for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so. So what do you pay attention to then? Because you know it can be frustrating. You spend all this time and effort maybe money shooting these videos, editing them, creating the captions, whatever, and putting them up, and it gets 42 views. So what? What do you pay attention to to determine whether or not something is working?
Speaker 1:The easiest thing to do is, when someone works with you go, have you seen my videos? Have you seen any of my videos? They'll start to say oh yeah, right, though no one ever remembers how they found you. One of the worst things you can ask someone is how did you find me? Because they've done 500 searches and they've looked at you. Know, you know? I mean, at least your last name is Glass and not some generic, very generic name.
Speaker 2:Morgan, yeah, morgan.
Speaker 1:You know, I mean, we've got you drive through North Florida and it's like there's a hundred billboards for personal injury attorneys. That's like three white guys and three white guys names that no one remembers and no offense to them, but no one remembers that stuff. But they'll remember like oh, have you seen the videos? And they'll be like oh and like, did any of them stand out? Have that conversation with people. That's the number one thing you can do. Interview your clients is number two, and I come back to that because they will tell you a lot of these things in a post interview. Like, oh, yeah, I was watching the videos. I felt like no, pay attention to how clients act too, because I can tell you, if you have a strong YouTube channel, one of my clients was actually a personal injury attorney. I think we talked about him Wayne O'Brien, up in, yeah, up in Richmond, yeah, down in Richmond.
Speaker 2:I don't know my Virginia geography?
Speaker 1:I do. But the point being is, I remember interviewing his client and he's like I'm like, well, how, you know, where did you see Wayne? And he's like I saw him on TV. I'm like awesome, he'd never been on TV once.
Speaker 1:But you have those conversations with clients, you pay attention to it. And then also, if you're distributing the videos properly, like using a CRM, and we can track the links, put the videos and links, see who clicks on them, see who watches them. And another thing you can do too is you know, instead of you know, a lot of people are like click below to subscribe and comment on the video. Talk to them about something that, like they need that you know, like, hey, if you need um to, you know a document about X, y, z, uh, just comment below and I'll we'll put a link to it down there so that would show you that there's people, the right people, listening to it. But the best thing you can do is just talk to people as they come through the door. Uh, because you will see the difference if you do this the right way.
Speaker 2:What do you think is the minimum viable product for creating these videos? How good does the production value need?
Speaker 1:to be. I think it's more so the story value. I always tell the difference between Paranormal Activity. You remember that movie that?
Speaker 1:movie made something like $5 billion or something ridiculous. And then there's a movie around the same time by Eddie Murphy, the Adventures of Pluto Nash, which was literally had all the best people in the world but it had a crappy story. So you know, first really get the content down, so if you have strong content you can kind of get away with lower production values. And then once you get something good I mean I like having for my core converting your about us being really high quality and so something you know it's entertaining a few really good solid case stories with higher production value and you know you can go with process and about us, but after that it's more high quality content. High quality mean it's engaging to the viewer.
Speaker 2:I thought you were going to jump to Blair Witch Project with the low production value.
Speaker 1:I should have. It's funny because my old accountant was the accountant and the fundraiser for the Blair Witch Project.
Speaker 2:Oh, really You're responsible for raising $17.50. Yes.
Speaker 1:Back then that was a lot of money in Orlando for a movie.
Speaker 2:You know you make a distinction and you may or may not have made it here, but I've heard you make it in other places about the difference between a testimonial and a case study. So what is that to you?
Speaker 1:So if I ask you for a testimonial, if you ask anyone for a testimonialial, they're going to talk about you. No one wants to hear how great the attorney is. No one wants. They want to hear a story. So a testimonial in general is going to be someone saying you know, you know, you know, morgan morgan was great and we have this commercials here. They got me 10 million dollars and it's just like well, there's so many, you know, there's a few people that are going to be really attracted to that and also, it could have been a $20 million case, right Exactly.
Speaker 1:Right, you know, it could have been that that person needs $20 million to live off of for the rest of their life and you know, and they got $10 million, great, they're not going to be able to live past XYZ. So, you know, it's telling those stories and you don't get true emotion in testimonials. If you see someone talk about it, they're reading something, prepared something, and we buy emotion, right, we buy stories. And so that's the big difference is, when you ask someone for their story, they're going to talk about them themselves and what happens. And you ask for a testimonial, they're going to talk about you and no one wants to watch us. People want to watch a story, they want to hear emotions, they want to feel that, and you have to talk to them about their story and inside that story, they're going to tell you details you didn't know, whereas a testimonial is just going to be like hey, you know, yeah, you got the paycheck here. I'm really. I got the paycheck, I'm really happy, right.
Speaker 2:So what's this for asking? Because I think a lot of us you know, back in the day, when clients actually showed up at your office to receive the check, let me see if I can get you to do a Google review and then, if we're thinking about it and we have somebody from the marketing team nearby, like we'll also try to stick a video camera in your face, right, and that yields kind of the stilted testimonials. But so so what's the process for getting your best clients, or the clients who are going to deliver the best case stories for you to to sit down, probably think for a little bit beforehand. But then is there a script, is there a certain set of questions that you ask? How does that work?
Speaker 1:So yeah, I mean, we definitely have. That's an important part to this. I'm glad you asked that because you know you want to go into a courtroom or you want to go into a deposition and not have prepared questions and you want to go just print out questions from the internet and be like, oh, I got some good questions for this deposition Same thing there, you need to know, you know one goes back to what we talked about at the beginning. What do position? Same thing there, you need to know. You know once it goes back to what we talked about at the beginning. What do we want to get out of this? What's part of the story do we really want to tell? And then you know who's this person, why would they care about them, what were their problems, what were their deeper problems, what were their pains, and not only what was the conclusion, but what was the transformation.
Speaker 1:So we want to develop questions that elicit that and then asking we want to ask along the process. Right, and you want to get stories all along the way and tell them? Hey, we're going to talk to you about your story so we can document it. They'll help us to service you better and also help us help more people like you, right? Would you mind sharing your story?
Speaker 1:And nowhere does it say talking about us, right? It doesn't say the Ben Glass Law Firm. Can you tell us how great the Ben Glass Law Firm is? Like that's where you know it's. But and also, you want to prep them as early on as possible, like hey, we're going to be documenting parts of your story because we want to help you out, we want to get you awesome results and those awesome results are going to help other people, and so you prep them ahead of time too, and then you have those questions, those custom questions, ready and you sit down and talk to them and generally, what I'd like to do, too, is when the person who's asking not be a person that was directly involved in the case, because that's kind of like I always say. It's like going out on a date and then calling up your date and going.
Speaker 1:Hey how was the date. It's kind of weird. And is this done interview style or how does that work? Yeah, 100, interview style. People are not natural storytellers to a camera and so you have someone there talking to them. Just have someone who's a good interviewer talking to them. 100 that's what we do. We set up all this stuff and we do all that. We've developed this entire process around it because it's all steps in a process to elicit that awesome story. But you can do it remotely. And one side note you can do it remotely and then if it's really good that's why it's kind of a numbers game If they're really good on camera and it's a great story, then send a filmmaker out, because now you've kind of got that down and they're a little bit more comfortable telling it.
Speaker 2:And how do you go about client selection? Is it biggest case? Is it most emotional clients, best looking client? How do you do that?
Speaker 1:I start with. What are the ones we want to replicate? Right, who you know? Type of person, then. It might be specific pieces about the case, it might be emotional. I like to have a blend of them. It might be type of person, right, maybe, right, maybe there's a certain type of person that we really want to work with. Types of cases, though, aspects of the case and, obviously, economic level. If you're in family law, if you're in criminal law, the economic level is going to be important. It's going to be important too in personal injury law, because it's a certain economic level generally that most personal injury attorneys get from the internet. So you need to think through all those aspects and what we want to get more of, going back to those goals at the very beginning. That's where we start.
Speaker 2:And so I think so many of us get frustrated because, again, you put all this time, money and effort into it and then it doesn't work because nobody found you on YouTube, right? But one of the things that you've said over and over is this is like a holistic thing, Like this is moving parade of interest, and once somebody has reached out or contacted us for the first time, we want them in something like a funnel where we're sending them to YouTube, maybe to our website, because people are checking you out, right, especially the younger generation is. Even if they've gotten a referral from somewhere else, they're going and they're checking you in many different places, right, oh, 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's why you have a bunch of these stories, and it's like you get to someone who's once again younger, exactly like them. Like, oh, you know what, I had a 25 year old new lawyer who got in a car accident, just like you. I'm going to send you over his story and watch it on YouTube Right Now. You send that to them and now, like that one view could have closed that deal for you. And then what else are they going to do? What we have to remember is that there's almost no decisions made by one person, right, especially with this. They're going to ask. If they're younger, they're going to ask their parents, and if you send them stuff like that, that's not going to get sent to their parents. If it's just a website, it's just the website. But if you send something very specific, they're going to forward that YouTube thing and go hey, this is my attorney. And now you're selling the rest of the stakeholders too.
Speaker 2:I like that line, just like you, right? I mean, I think that's so important to delivery and the intake of the sales team is I'm going to send you a video of somebody a problem we solved. That's just like yours.
Speaker 1:Exactly, Exactly. Everyone thinks they're. You know, everyone thinks their cases. Everything's completely different from everyone else. They, everyone thinks they're a unicorn in any business shape or form, and that's why you need to have a bunch of these stories ready to go.
Speaker 2:How do you so? How do you think about that? Because you know, when you say you need to have a bunch of these stories ready to go, I picture now, okay, I've got to have a motorcycle trucking, pedestrian auto accident, but also you know all different shades and sexes and demographics, and also socioeconomic Like how, how do you you know, quote make sure you've covered the whole market, or is that even important?
Speaker 1:I think the more store, the more stories you have, the better you're going to be at this.
Speaker 1:And I mean, when I got started doing this, I actually did this for myself and I still do, and that's why I created and if you get the book, the video testimonials, land of the Big Fish, you'll have access to a tackle box tool where you put all your stories in one place and you start to build up over time.
Speaker 1:If you make this a habit and you you know, if you do this, even just one a month, all of a sudden at the end of the year, you're not going to just have 12 stories. Within every story, there's at least three or four stories that you can cut up into different ways and different shapes and different forms, and you'll have them all in one document so that can be shared with your team. And then also, you know, if you have a bigger firm, you should be talking about these on a regular basis, even if you're not collecting them. Get on a call once a month and go through hey, what's your best story, not what's the best case. What's the best story? We're all technicians, right, and you get a bunch of technicians together. They talk about the technicals. We want to talk about the story.
Speaker 2:Everybody's got now a six second attention span because of TikTok.
Speaker 1:So how long should these videos be? The better, as long as you can get them to watch, I mean. So I use some of the short clips to drive people to the longer stuff, but like we've got some that are 30, 40 minutes long, because I mean that's why I have true law stories Podcast is because people love law stories and if you tell a great story, they will watch 30 to 40 minutes. And if you get to watch seven minutes of your client and you, you're going to pretty much close that case.
Speaker 2:I like you. I think you mentioned your tackle box, which is the framework of how do you think about. You know, each one of these things is going to you. Get me this framework when, when we were together, last of the four questions that every piece of marketing should be asked who are we talking to? Where are they in the journey, why should they listen to me and what do we do? What do we want them to do next? So, for a YouTube video, what are the options for what we want them to do next? What are the various calls of action that you might use, or calls to action?
Speaker 1:I mean, one of the best ones you can do is watch another video, right?
Speaker 1:Just stick around the channel. Yeah, like, hey, you know, if you, you know you just got a car accident, the learn what you need to do next, watch the process of how we take care of them. And now you drive into another video. You're keeping them YouTube. Youtube's going to reward you. You're going to get more views. You're going to get more time with that client. Um, that's probably the best one. Um, you know, if it's, if it's a longer like, if I think, if you're in some, especially, I think, family law, this is a good one. It's like, hey, I know like you're. The subscribers to our channel are private. You won't, it won't pop up. It's a good thing to subscribe. It'll just keep you aware of what's going on tax law, business law. You know a subscribe is good there. Um, you know, pi, it's a tough one to do because it's like, hey, I don't expect to be on a car accident again. Um, I'm always, I'm always amazed by how many repeat clients.
Speaker 2:but they never remember who their last lawyer was or they never want to tell you who their last lawyer was uh, but so that's a good one.
Speaker 1:Obviously you know there's you're converting videos, you're about us, your process video should lead to call to set up a consultation because they're you know if they're watching your about us or your process video or your your firm overview, or what we call service.
Speaker 1:So, like you've got, you should have a car accident video, truck accident video, motorcycle accident video. That's very specific about that type of like attorney that should be, you know. No, no obligation consultation, you know, and if you have some longer ones you can have stuff, you know. You can have email lists, you know. Go to a quiz, you know. Do you have a real case? Right here's a quiz. I'll let you know. Do you have a real case? Those types of things. Varying it up is good, but in general, I would have a few videos that are converting videos and what we're trying to do is just keep as people on YouTube as much as possible and on our channel as much as possible.
Speaker 2:Just like for you know, for most solo or small law firm owners, they're like the entrepreneurial doer right. And so the idea of setting up this framework of who do all these videos need to talk to and how do I mix in different calls to action at the end of different ones, like you need a really organized marketing director, you need a good agency to do it for you. That that's the kind of stuff that gives me nightmares. How do we? How do we keep?
Speaker 1:track of all of this. You know, some of it becomes a muscle right when I you know and you do it enough, and you know and and if you really really like this comes back to exactly what I said in the beginning. If you know who you're talking to and like, I'm like, oh, brian, I know, you know from he's an attorney, he's a personal injury attorney. I know the type of practice. I know what he wants to do. I'm like what's the next best thing that I would you know?
Speaker 1:If he's sitting here, what would I tell him to do? And that's if you think that way it becomes a lot easier than I want to move him down the marketing funnel. If you're just like I care enough about this person and I'm going to give them the best thing to do. I know if they've watched this process video and they need to set up a consultation because they've got a problem. But if they're watching a video about what type of insurance should I have, it's like, hey, maybe you should watch these other videos about insurance, this other one, this other one this other one, and I think those would be the best for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's back to that piece of why should they listen to me? What do I want them to do next? But also, what do we want this one to do? Why is the person watching this video? And you're right, the video about buying insurance is probably not going to drive to a call to action of call the law firm. Right, let's go to some of these other. And then it's back to the philosophical idea that if you know that you're the best in your area at what you do, then you have this moral obligation to make sure that you persuade all these people to hire you. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so you've got to have great videos to do that and you provide enough value to people to the point where you become the only choice. And but if you do that with that mindset, not like you know, I grew up watching Morgan and Morgan videos. I grew up in Orlando like backyard, and I'd be home from school, from sick, sick from school, and there'd be literally I'd have to watch him like 40 times. And so people start to think that that's what it is. I'm like that's not it. It's provide that person value. And that comes back to if you do, if you do that, if you learn to do that, then it becomes so much easier.
Speaker 2:Well, and then you're not caught in the line of like. If we don't get them on the initial phone call, then they're just going to be onto the next one, right? Which is what happens with those daytime TV ads. Is it's, you know, 888, I'm hurt, or whatever right? But if you don't convert them on that, they don't remember who they called. But if you've provided value in the form of short form or long form videos and they've consumed enough of your content, then they wait to talk to you. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or, yeah, you know you get them on the phone like, hey, that's fine. If you don't want to sign up right now, I've got a process video. Make sure to go watch that. You know, and I've got a bunch of frequently asked questions. You might want to share that with your family, and you know you have that content. It becomes a lot easier to think that way and you don't have to have it all perfect. It's just like hey, I want to, I want to help.
Speaker 2:Yeah so. So on that issue of not having to have it all perfect, right? So one of the things that I noticed as I as I started to create our channel and start to scroll other injury lawyer YouTube's, is this this distinction between, like you know, there's the crappy lighting in front of the bookshelf video and then there's all the videos that have the flashy thumbnail and the clickbait title. Yeah so, number one it strikes me that like if all you're doing is trying to get the next click, then that barrier probably is not very high. But how much effort do you think lawyers should be putting into all of the things that are around the video? You know, once we've taken the time and effort to shoot it.
Speaker 1:I think that's actually until you're really building Like. If you're at the point where, like I, I know, my YouTube channel just converts and I want to get as many people to it as possible, that's the point where you should start caring about that stuff.
Speaker 1:until then, content first talk to that person. Basic thumbnails yes, call to action, but keep your integrity too, because the big clients like, let's say, I mean I had, I had a friend who got an act, her brother got an accident, he was a. He had a friend who got in an accident, her brother got in an accident, he was a young doctor, got rear-ended by a commercial vehicle I mean you talk about like a home run, yeah perfect case, perfect case, right.
Speaker 1:And they went with one of the big names and then I was like, nope, don't do that. And then I sent them over to another one of my clients' channels and the client's channel didn't look so like it looked professional. And so a professional is going to hire someone that looks professional, and so I think you don't, I think you go the opposite way. And, yeah, you should have nice thumbnails, you should have optimized titles that speak to that person's problem, make it very simple, very easy. But you don't need the rest of the flashiness or the click-baity stuff, because the right people know that.
Speaker 2:Most people know that now we're used to it Because in a practice where you could find my video from anywhere in the US but I can only represent you in Virginia, I mean, it just seems like the use case really is not in the search engine nearly as much as it is in people who've already entered the funnel in some way, shape or form, serving those people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I'll tell you, though, from a content standpoint, if you really know those million-dollar questions like what was the largest car accident case in Virginia in 2022? I don't know If you have that story.
Speaker 2:It's fine. I remember that one. I know the answer to that question it's a $4.2 million. Question actually.
Speaker 1:It's a $4.2 million question Exactly. If you have that, people are searching that and if you can optimize for that and there's some basic optimization stuff. But it's like it comes like the simple fact of YouTube is they want people to watch as much of a video for as long as possible. So if you tell a great story, have that basic optimization and get people to view it I mean we've had great stories with I'll go back and be like oh, we didn't optimize that. Well, they get 10, 20, 30,000 views. Or if you can just be number one for that, because a lot of times a person typing that in has a big case and they want to know what's going on, you're golden, you're golden.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. The other thing that sticks out from your presentation is this idea that a hundred K clients are lurkers, right? So the people who, again, who are calling your PPC, your LSA, ads with small cases, that's, that's fine. But the people who have the six and the seven figure cases, they're spending a whole lot more time vetting lawyers and and getting to know you before they ever pick up the phone.
Speaker 1:Oh, 100%. Especially, you know, pi. It's obviously much shorter for the most part. You know, I think I really think that that decision-making process has gotten longer on personal injury just because we have so many research capabilities. But when you talk family law or like white collar, criminal defense, business law, commercial litigation, you know they're doing research and they're doing research and they're doing research. So you need to be there for that research.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, the sales process is very different. So the the search may be longer, but the sales process is very fast. Um, which has surprised me again again. I've told this story before, but you know, before covid, I I would never send a retainer to a client who wouldn't make the time to come in and meet with me, because my theory was, if you didn't take time out of your day to come and meet with me, you wouldn't listen to me at the end of the case. Now, like we're sending retainer agreements, sometimes you get them back in 45 seconds, which is scary because I know you didn't read it, but you. The DocuSign is like I talked to you on the phone 12-minute consultation. We get enough about the case to deliver the message. I've helped somebody like you and I can help you with this case. Then we get all the information on the back end. But it's a very different sales process than the other ones that you identified white collar, tax, family, whatever where somebody is actually stroking you a check.
Speaker 2:That I know tax family, whatever where somebody is actually stroking you a check, right? That's that, I think, is the key distinction between what I do and what many other lawyers do is that nobody is actually giving me a check at the beginning of the case, right? And so? So, while there may be a very long tail before they call, the after they, after they call, for the most part is is fairly short, but I am going to implement your. Here's a video for somebody just like you. Yeah, along with the link to the retainer agreement.
Speaker 1:No, and I think that you know your point. The sales call this is what I get from my clients. Back to the lurker thing is people like these big clients come in and this is not just in law, this is. I literally had a client who closed a massive airline as a digital agency in two phone calls for like a million dollar retainer and because they'd watched everything. Now the sales process, that sales call, is really short. The research process was so long and those clients don't like your videos, they're not going to comment on your videos, they're not subscribing a lot of the times, but they're sharing those videos. They're going hey, this is what I'm thinking about, but to your point. But then they call and this is what I get from my clients all the time. They feel like they know me and you guys have a great presence, so it's doing so much of the selling. So people are pretty pre-sold by the time they get to you.
Speaker 2:This is a little bit of a turn, but I'm going to regret this if I don't ask it. You said a while ago that for some law firms, or maybe for all law firms, the subscriber list is secret or confidential or hidden. Is that a function that you have to turn on on YouTube, or is that?
Speaker 1:Or did I confidential or hidden? Is that? Is that a function that you have to turn on on YouTube, or is that? Um, I think I mishear you. No, I think it starts, as I don't think you can see people's subscribers, I mean. So it's hidden, meaning I can see who subscribes, but in general I don't think it's shared who subscribes to your channel anymore.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause they.
Speaker 2:they YouTube also people people are going to want to know if, if that's a function that you need to turn on.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:How do I learn all about divorce before my wife finds out that I'm watching divorce videos?
Speaker 1:So yeah, no. So oh, as a yes, as a user, you you need to go turn off your, like, your, your history, your subscribe, all that. Sorry, yeah, as the user, you do need to turn off what people can see. Your subscribe to your playlists, your, what your, your search history. Most of the time your search history isn't shown, but you don't want that like popping back up you don't want it to be discoverable later in a lawsuit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the subscribe thing you want to go turn off in general, awesome, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, ian, this is great information and I know that we're only scratching the surface on how somebody gets started in YouTube, but I think it is. There's so many lawyers that see YouTube as such a high barrier to entry because you assume that you look at the guys that are doing really well and they have thousands of videos because they've been doing three a month for the last decade right you go well, why even try?
Speaker 2:But if you're using it in the way that you're advising people to use it which is, yes, there's some organic SEO, but really we're just staying in front of people who've already reached out to us then that barrier is much, much lower. And so if people want to use that strategy and they want to find out more about you, where do you want to direct them?
Speaker 1:So you can go to videokstorycom. You can connect with me on LinkedIn and then on my YouTube channel. I'm going more through this, my personal YouTube channel. I'm going deeper into what I'm doing right now on YouTube. Video case story YouTube channel will be very specific to client stories and very, very specific to our business, whereas if you follow me on YouTube I am garlic. I'm putting out a lots of theory videos, but not also lots of like how we're thinking about it. Not just theory, but like what we're implementing, what we're testing, cause that way I can just put that stuff out fast because, being a video case story company, you kind of I'm like well, those videos have to be really nice looking and these are like.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm just going to riff on what's working right now on that channel. So I am the only one yeah, no, it's, it's Gary Vaynerchuk just documenting what you're doing, right? Yes, endless content. So I think that's so, so smart. Difficult maybe for lawyers to implement, but it's not really hard to sit down. And here's a conversation I just had with an adjuster and here's what I think about it right now. That's confidential. So I think, that's really cool that you're documenting your own journey and what's working and what's not working for your clients.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I'm doing it and you know it's, it works for me and I'm telling you it every one of my clients that's an attorney that's done this process this way. It, it works and it works and it works. And whether I mean they're landing 100k clients or not, the one thing that all of them say is my clients come in pre, like you said, pre-sold, ready to work with me. It's a whole different conversation. So, even if you don't work with us, concentrate on your YouTube channel, it will work.
Speaker 2:All right, awesome, we're going to make sure we link to all of that in the show description. Ian, such a good talk, man Good to see you Thanks so much for having me. I love it.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.