Life Beyond the Briefs
At Life Beyond the Briefs we help lawyers like you become less busy, make more money, and spend more time doing what they want instead of what they have to. Brian brings you guests from all walks of life are living a life of their own design and are ready to share actionable tips for how you can begin to live your own dream life.
Life Beyond the Briefs
Jay Berkowitz's Ten Golden Rules: The Secret to Attracting Clients Like a Magnet
Are you tired of your law firm's marketing efforts falling flat? Meet Jay Berkowitz, the mastermind behind the Ten Golden Rules of law firm marketing. In this transformative episode, Jay reveals how to skyrocket your client acquisition game and build a thriving practice.
Dive into the power of the Dream 100 strategy, a game-changing approach to networking that can open doors to your dream clients. Jay shares his own journey from Winnipeg to South Florida, including the inspiring story behind the iconic White Out tradition in sports.
Discover how to leverage cascading content to maximize your marketing impact, repurposing one piece of content across multiple platforms. Learn the art of storytelling to engage and educate potential clients, and master the secrets of Google's Local Service Ads to boost your online presence.
Whether you're struggling to attract clients or looking to take your firm to new heights, this episode is packed with actionable insights and real-life examples that will revolutionize your marketing strategy. Get ready to attract clients like a magnet and build the law firm of your dreams!
Want to learn more from the marketing mastermind himself? Connect with Jay through these channels:
- Website: www.tengoldenrules.com
- Twitter: @JayBerkowitz
- LinkedIn: Jay Berkowitz
- Email: jbrokewoods@gmail.com
Don't miss this opportunity to elevate your law firm's marketing game. Tune in to the full episode and let Jay Berkowitz guide you to success!
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Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. 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
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It's called the ultimate sales machine, and one of the concepts people often hear and they don't know the source is the Dream 100 concept and basically that concept is you would develop a list of a hundred for us. We do marketing for law firms. We develop a list of a hundred law firms that we wanna do business with that perhaps their SEO is going down from our tracking or we don't see them on the first page of Google and we'd say these are big law firms we wanna, or we don't see them on the first page of Google and we'd say these are big law firms, we want to do business with them. They're not on the first page of Google and they're our dream 100. We're going to reach out to these folks and we're going to try and book meetings with them. We're going to send them free information, we're going to send them promotional items and we're going to nurture this relationship. Very, very successful sales strategy. What is up, my friends? And welcome back into another exciting episode of Life Beyond the Briefs, the number one podcast for lawyers who want to exit the traditional, build more hours and be more busy mindset. In today's episode, I'm talking with my friend, jay Berkowitz. Jay is the founder and CEO of 10 Golden Rules and, trust me, you don't want to miss this episode if you are at all into digital marketing. Jay and I dive into the world of law firm marketing and I inadvertently reveal the name of Jay's secret legal networking group, and then we dive into how you can rip off and duplicate this networking strategy within your own practice and begin to acquire more cases by talking to more centers of influence. Jay and I also talk the concept of cascading content, which is the idea that you're gonna take one piece of content and use your team to make it appear in dozens of different places across the internet. Jay's insights on cascading content digital marketing strategies will have you rethinking how you engage with potential clients. So if you are ready to break free from mundane marketing and supercharge your law firm game, buckle up and let's dive into the wisdom of Jay Berkowitz and discover how to make your life thrive beyond the briefs.
Speaker 1:Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. Today's guest is Jay Berkowitz. Jay is the founder and CEO of 10 Golden Rules. He is the host of the 10 Golden Rules Internet Marketing for Law Firms podcast and he is a very popular webinar host where he co-hosts on YouTube webinars showcasing what law firms have done with the information that he teaches. Jay, welcome to the show. Thanks Great to be here. I'm happy to have you.
Speaker 1:You were speaking at our summit a little bit later, maybe three, four weeks after this comes out in October. I had the privilege of speaking on your stage in Boca Raton in April of this year, so thank you for that. Yeah, you were great. Thank you for coming down. I appreciate that. I appreciate you hosting in such a nice location. Yeah, we're actually locked in March 10th at 11. Oh, nice, we're in beautiful, sunny South Florida. Yeah, it's going to be just a little bit. Our head office is in Boca. We're going to be in Delray Beach. All right, put it on your calendar. You are originally from the Great White North. Yeah, I'm from Winnipeg, canada. No-transcript. People actually live here and really enjoy it. So we've been here for 22 years and it's absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1:The most amazing thing to me flying into Palm Beach for your event is there's a plane that's landing. You look down and, like all of the houses kind of look the same and every single one of them has a pool in the face going. I mean, look if someone's thinking of it. It's an amazing quality of life Because it's sunny 300 days of the year. And think about your life right. When it's cold and wet and rainy or snowy and miserable, you're less happy. When it's sunny 300 days of the a year, you're happy most of the time, and the other day it's just it's raining, and normally it doesn't rain till three o'clock anyway, so you've got the whole day. Yeah, yeah, all right. I want to talk about your background, because you told a story at your event in april that I had not heard before, which which is that if anybody has been to a collegiate sporting event and now they're mostly collegiate sporting events that do that where you've experienced a white out or a blackout or a JMU, it's a purple out, because the Dukes are purple. You owe that tradition to Jay Berkowitz. So tell me that origin story.
Speaker 1:We didn't do it first. We might have done it best, but I was the account manager on the White Pipe Jets hockey team, again at an agency called Palmer Jarvis, and the client came to us and they said we want to do something like some of this. You know the schools are starting to do where we want. The colors of the Jets are red, white and blue, so we want them to wear red one night, blue one night and white one night. And so we got together and had a brainstorming with the team and we said, you know, first of all we can't communicate that level of complexity. We got to keep it simple. We got to pick one color and it was spring in Canada, so it was. You know, weather's changing and people are finally bringing out their white clothes and everybody has a white t-shirt or, you know, a white Winnipeg Jets sweater, and we said let's do all white. So we called it the white out the first.
Speaker 1:The day of the first playoff game and this was for playoffs only the day of the first playoff game, I was on the cover of the Winnipeg Sun newspaper with a few of the Winnipeg Jets hockey team staff and we had the pom-poms and they gave away white pom-poms at the first game and it just became a huge hit and they won a playoff round that year. Unfortunately, every year our playoffs would end with the Edmonton Riders. That was the Wayne Gretzky era, and those guys would take us out every year. We actually had a great team, anyway, so we would get one or two playoff rounds. If we played someone else first, we could beat them and then we'd lose to Edmonton in that. But we got a great run and it just became a tradition. They still do it today and the photos are amazing and it was on David Letterman like it became a real trend and then now obviously it's become immersed in sports.
Speaker 1:I'm curious because I didn't remember the part of that story that it was in playoffs and so the impetus must not have been sell more tickets because you probably sold out in playoffs. It really is culture and rally and provide a great home field advantage for the team. If you were doing that again, is there anything that you think you would do differently about that marketing? I don't think so. I mean it's been such a hit. I've been in Florida 22 years. I was in Toronto 10 years. We're going back 30, 35 years and it's a tradition that today they do whiteouts throughout the entire city. They have a street party with I don't know 5,000 people outside the arena, just on the street, while the arena is full inside and it's a big white-out party. There are big-screen TVs, while the bars are full of people, and so you know, I think it's just become a great spring tradition in the city and part of the culture. So I think if you get it that right, there's nothing I would try and do better.
Speaker 1:Well, something else in your history that I discovered today that I'm interested to ask you about you were the director of marketing for McDonald's McDonald's restaurants, yeah, amazing. For, like the for US, or for Canada, or I was, I guess technically I had Eastern Canada, eastern Canada, yeah, in that position I'm curious, because it is such a large corporation, it's global. You know, kind of your autonomy to what sort of marketing decisions is the director of marketing for half of a country, for a corporation like that make? You know, on my own, I made relatively small decisions, but the one key learning I had and this might be applicable for people even on charity boards or people dealing with, you know, groups of franchisees or my Coca-Cola I was also a director or as a category manager similar position to Coca-Cola and we were dealing with the bottler and the one thing that was really important was to develop your marketing calendar and soft sell it through the board of directors, and perhaps that was the thing we did the best and I was able to have the biggest impact and what we would do is we would do marketing and business pro formas on different promotions. We'd do small market tests or we'd get the test results from other markets and then we'd take the executive of the franchisees through the pro forma and why we were recommending what we were recommending, and then a lot of times we'd actually get those guys to be part of our presentation when we presented it to the franchisees, because the franchisees at a McDonald's or the bottler at Coca-Cola, these are all multi-million dollar, very successful business people. Right, like you don't buy a McDonald's franchise as your first job. You know it's millions of dollars today and was hundreds of thousands of dollars always. Generally, you've got very successful business people, very smart, savvy operators who have their own businesses that they market and they market locally for the McDonald's. So you know we would pitch the marketing calendar and that was a big part.
Speaker 1:I did have one little win. It was actually a big win. One of the products we had was we sponsored the NHL All-Star Game and this was McDonald's of Canada and I came up with an idea that we could do All-Star, we could do hockey cards and then we used the All-Star as our unique you know the cards with the players in their All-Star pictures, and we always would do four-week promotions in Canada, and so we had the hockey cards. We didn't have hockey cards for four weeks For everyone who bought a Big Mac or a breakfast sandwich. They could get the hockey cards for 99 cents. So we had four weeks of hockey cards. They sold out in about 10 days. It was like the craziest, most successful thing. Were you at McDonald's during the period of time when they were running the Monopoly promotion? Yeah, and how does? How does the popularity of the uh, the hockey cards compare to the monopoly promotion? Yeah, when the early days of the monopolies were were really, really successful. The hockey cards was almost unlike anything. You know, because we, you know we would plan for four weeks of monopoly coupons and sometimes you'd you know they'd still be available for five weeks and sometimes they'd be three and a half weeks. But the hockey card selling out in a week and a half was an unbelievable success, and they ran out for 10 or 12 years.
Speaker 1:After I left obviously started doing new stuff, yeah, and so the last question I'm curious to know about your history is so you went from hawking Big Macs to working for ediotscom was your very next gig. It's a very unfortunate market shift. Yeah, it was really good for my waistline, like I literally went from selling some of the most delicious high fat food in the world and even to make matters worse, personally, we were always in the restaurants with the franchisees and you always had to sample their wares, but we had a test kitchen in head office, so we were always trying all these new products. It wasn't good for the waistline. And then I moved to edietscom and immediately lost dead pounds. I was spending my day with you know, the nutritionists and the fitness trainers, and we actually had on-staff nutritionist fitness trainers who created content, and we did online meetings very early on. This was all in 2002, 2003. You could come for an online meeting with a fitness trainer or a nutritionist. It was really. We were very far ahead of the game and we were very, very successful. We grew that company to $60 million in revenue Wow, wow, amazing.
Speaker 1:All right, let's talk about law firm marketing, which is what you're doing today. So I think, jay, you are one of these people who are exceptionally good at network marketing, and one of the things that you've done and I've been to a handful of these calls is you run a program called the Legal Dream 100, where you bring together maybe it's not 100, but centers of influence or people who are in your space, other people who serve law firms, and so I think this is such a good idea and I think it's something that lawyers can rip off and duplicate in our own spaces. So can you take a couple of minutes and explain what that program is, how you went about generating the list, who you invite and then how you facilitate these meetings is how you went about generating the list, who you invite and then how you facilitate these meetings. It was, until now, a highly secretive invite only. Well, it's still invite only, no.
Speaker 1:The business concept yeah, the business concept is very valuable for everybody and the basic concept is that if I pitch Brian Glass, the attorney, we pitch, you know, do networking, have a breakfast, have a one do networking, have a breakfast, have a one-on-one, have a business meeting, and I do a great job and you develop a little bit of no like and trust for me and hire us, I get one client. But if I build a relationship with Brian Glass from great legal marketing and we develop alikey press relationship and you put me on your stage and you recommend me to some of the mastermind members, I could get 30 or 40 clients. So the strategy, the Dream 100 concept, was written by Chet Holmes. I keep the book right here, right here, right here, right here, right here, one of the greatest sales books and business books of all time. I was able to meet Chad. Unfortunately he died of leukemia way too young, but it's called the Ultimate Sales Machine and one of the concepts people often hear and they don't know the source is the Dream 100 concept and basically that concept is you would develop a list of 100.
Speaker 1:For us, we do marketing for law firms. We develop a list of 100 law firms that we want to do business with that. You know, perhaps their SEO is going down from our tracking or they're not. We don't see them on the first page of Google and we'd say these are big law firms we want to do business with them. They're not on the first page of Google and they're our dream 100. We're going to reach out to these folks and we're going to try and book meetings with them. We're going to send them free information, we're going to send them emotional items and we're going to nurture this relationship. Very, very successful sales strategy.
Speaker 1:The extent of that, or the natural extension of the legal dream 100 concept is that if I build relationships with 100 people who have 100 law firm relationships, you know I've got thousands of opportunities. You know, think of it. If you're an attorney, you know who are some of your best referral partners. They're often folks who deal with lots and lots of lawyers. Build a relationship with, or certainly lots and lots of Indian people, obviously building relationships with the chiropractors, the orthopedic surgeons, mri clinics. You know that's obvious stuff for legal. But what's a further extension, like who are accountants who refer a lot of people and so the type of people who deal with a lot of people. The concept is that you build those relationships and deepen those relationships and then, in terms of bringing it together as a group, we do a mastermind sort of brainstorming once a month on a Zoom meeting and then we all get together and meet up at conferences and so I'm building relationships with a hundred other people. The list is up to 90, actually. So we have 10 more invites, 90 folks who, all you know, consult with lawyers, software companies for lawyers, deal with lawyers on a regular basis, sell to lawyers. So that's that concept.
Speaker 1:So for the longest time I did not think that was a Chet Holmes concept because I read about it in Brunson's Traffic Secrets. I just pulled it out just to kind of flip through. Brunson does credit Chet in the first. You know, on the seventh page, that he's describing this stream 100. God stop. Seventh, though, about 100 pages that he devotes to stream 100. Yeah, russell, great, I love Russell Brunson and funnel hacking. Matter of fact, I hung out with Dan Glass, dad, yeah, at, uh, at, a funnel hacking live in orlando this year last, yeah, last last, and actually that's the digital one is kicking off in I don't know seven, eight, nine days. Awesome, I feel. I and I feel like um, it's gonna be a very different experience because that funnel hiking live was like an entrepreneurial rock show, right, lights, sounds, energy, and it's just a totally different experience watching it all day on a tv or from your desk. You know the problem. Problem, of course, is that you, the temptation is to do seven other things right while that's playing in the background. Of course he is well back to the dream 100.
Speaker 1:We've, in the law firm, ripped off and duplicated that by going to senators of influence who might talk to in our two verticals number one, auto accident clients. Number two, long-term disability um claimants before they would be talking to the lawyer. So in that you know, the auto accident is kind of obvious. But in the ltd space and this works for just about anybody who's dealing with high net worth clients like, how can you find the financial advisors, the cpas, the estate planners, um the real estate brokers? Those are the people who you know who may also be needing um somebody, that um that does what you do, and so putting together that group facility and then you know you get. You get to cache aj from being the center and being the hub and being the person that puts that whole thing together.
Speaker 1:So if you're listening and you don't have a mastermind group, that you are younger out, just like, just go out and start and you you probably are the only digital marketer in there I would assume that you are an invitee. Yes, as the inviter. That is my primary, but here's a better extension. The real logic of this thing is you obviously want a relationship with the chiropractors in town, but if you could build a relationship with the folks who are consultants to chiropractors, if you could build a relationship with the folks who are consultants to chiropractors the folks who sold chiropractic equipment, sold supplements to chiropractors and build a relationship with someone who deals with 50 to 100 chiropractors. You know there's the magic of that concept, or the extension of the Dream 100, that you find the folks who can introduce you to 100 and build relationships with 100 of those people. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1:So, jay, one of the things I think you and your agency does really well is something that you call cascading content, which is the idea that you can take one piece of content or one piece of information and use it in about seven different ways, and it's something we've been trying to implement in the law firm through the use of VAs and with my marketing director. But walk us through that idea. So if I have an article, let's say, about spinal injuries after an auto accident, and I've written a blog, and the blog is performing well, what are the next couple of steps to create digital omnipresence with my physical inventory out there? Yeah, the full way we use it for our clients is we start with a video a lot of times, and a lot of times that video is designed for SEO, search engine optimization and so we ask the attorneys to answer a question what do I do if I get hit by an Uber, and we include the question in the end. So we'll say something like one of the questions we often get asked is what do I do if I get hit by an Uber? Who's going to pay for the car repairs? And so we include the SEO question.
Speaker 1:You know, because the way people Google things these days is they ask Google a question right, and we do it more frequently. Now there's Google Voice, there's Alexa, there's Siri, and so literally we know how to ask Google a question right, and we do it more frequently. Now there's Google Voice, there's Alexa, there's Siri, and so literally, we know how to ask Google a question, and Google, for the last five to 10 years, has been building what's called the semantic understanding of the human language. So they know that when you ask a question, you're saying best personal injury learner be. They connect the dots for you with your question, and so we've been having attorneys ask and answer these questions on video, and then the video is search engine optimized on YouTube. So that's the first case. Then we do a blog. We write a little blog post about the video and the video is embedded in the blog. So that's better SEO, because it's a page with a video as well as search engine content.
Speaker 1:Answering a question. Google's patents all say that websites that succeed in SEO today are helpful to answer consumers' questions, and we see that in reality, like if you're what answers questions, you come right to the top of Google. There's a section now called People Also Ask If you can be at the very top, or in that people also ask other other variants of the same question. So those videos and blogs are very, very successful in getting ranked in the search engine and then the cascading concept is that we also use that in facebook, twitter, linkedin, instagram and we format it. We actually shoot it really widely. The way you're you're sitting right now is great because we could do. We could just zoom in and create a reel or, you know, an Instagram or a YouTube short, or we could have a wide format for Facebook, traditional and we produce it for each of the different piece.
Speaker 1:We also use the video or link to the blog on the Google maps. You know Google maps is critical part of SEO. It's the first thing people see, the first free thing people see below the ads, and you can add content to your Google Maps. Matter of fact, google recommends you add something every week, so they're telling you that cadence of the minimum, add something every week. So we add the video Q&As to the Google Maps and then we use a couple of the Q&As in the monthly newsletter. So with one relatively inexpensive video shoot, like literally could be sitting in your office, like you are now.
Speaker 1:We get YouTube videos, we get social media videos, we edit it in different formats, we get an SEO blog post, we get newsletter content and we get Google Maps content and the pushback from the lawyers has got to be something like well, we can't put the same piece of content in certain different places because people are going to notice, right, but nobody's actually making attention to it. What a nice problem to have. Yeah, that's right, that would be a nice problem to have. I mean, I got some. I can get all of my, all of my digital properties. Yeah, you and I are very educated consumers. I mean, I rarely ever see anyone's LinkedIn post and Facebook post about the same thing. But if I do, I mean what are the odds Like, even from the folks we like? We probably open their email newsletter once every three months, right, right, you know LinkedIn's like a slot machine, like Facebook's. You know the content rolls by you so quickly. So if you reach people once by hitting all seven places, that would be a win.
Speaker 1:No-transcript yeah, I mean there's certainly a ton of content that we've come up with and you know, a lot of times we answer questions that literally are coming up and people also ask. So we'll answer the one question. Then Google gives you four other suggestions. Here's the other things most frequently searched related to the topic of what to do after a long-term disability claim, how to hire a lawyer for a car accident or a divorce. So those questions are there for you in Google. They're also in the dropdown on Google when you start typing and they're also in your search results. You know what are you ranking on page two or three for? Okay, you know you be ranking for what to do after a motorcycle accident, but you're on page three. So do a video, do a blog post about what to do after a motorcycle accident and push yourself from page three to page one.
Speaker 1:And the other problem that lawyers have is we get so hung up on well. Well, this is a boring piece of content, or? Or? This is something that everybody knows right now. Not so much boring, but this is something that everybody knows. Well, yeah, everybody in your world knows that. But people who don't deal with auto accidents or don't do a long term or whatever it is day in and day out, have no idea. And so the problem, you know, with trying to create the next novel piece of content is what keeps people from actually producing anything. And if you would just sit down and answer the questions that most frequently get asked to you during intake calls, you would have a handful of really good videos to give somebody like Jay to distribute throughout the rest of the internet. Yeah, you know, I consider that strategy the SEO, question and answer strategy, the blocking and tackling like the foundational stuff that we do, but we also try and do some social media videos. So we have a couple of different takes on that.
Speaker 1:One is we ask the attorneys to tell their funny stories, and there's nothing funny about personal injury, divorce, bankruptcy, but there's often I'll use Seth Cohen's term remarkable stories. And there's nothing funny about personal injury, divorce, bankruptcy, but there's often I'll use Seth Cohen's term remarkable stories. And so you know, we've had attorneys tell stories about their client getting hit in a car accident and they went and checked the social media from the guy who's driving the pizza delivery car and he posted a video of himself smoking weed at work 30 minutes before the accident. We've had the airport like the Hertz rental car. Van delivery person got in an accident. A bunch of people in the van were injured. Our attorney found out that the person didn't have a driver's license the person driving the van. They got the full amount of the claim that the attorneys and the other attorneys and the other folks in the band didn't do their homework. Um, they, they got all the money. So there's a thousand of these stories we've had to slip one up at at bill walmart. You know, so they're. They're funny when you tell them they're not funny if they happen to you.
Speaker 1:I had a case one. I didn't have a case, but I got a call one time from a guy who'd gone to like one of these Korean barbecue places where they cook their food in front of you and he'd gotten sick. And he calls me and he says, yeah, I went to this restaurant and you know, I know that they don't do a very good job of watching the silverware and so so I'm sure that that's why I got sick, because the civil war was there, but I brought it back. What did you do? What medical care did you have? Did you document this thing at all? They said nothing. I didn't. You know. No hospital, no primary care doctor, no plain medical. I said, well, I can't help you with that, right, you don't have any care.
Speaker 1:The next question, jay, is well to do next time Film video? No, no, don't. I said I don't think I want to be involved for the next. Good luck. And then the final piece of what we're having a lot of success with, and we've had a number of those videos with hundreds of thousands of views. The final piece for me is catching on those social media memes. So we had a little bit of success the last few months with of course I'm a lawyer, because there's this meme like of course I'm a doctor, of course I'm a teacher, and you just shoot a bunch of instances where you're lawyering.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's why it's so helpful to have somebody who's have an agency working on this stuff for you, because, like, I don't have time to keep up with what are all the TikTok trends, but I'm sure you have somebody on your staff whose job is to, you know, figure out what's trending, what's the format, and then get all of your clients, or as many of your clients as will make a funny video and make the funny video Exactly. And our, our social media king's great they're. They're young, they're digital natives. They're young, they're digital natives. They're totally plugged in and know exactly what's happening. You and I are less inclined to know what's buzzing on Instagram or TikTok at any given moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about Google and AI, because you know you mentioned that the Google, my Business, or the Maps, the Map Pack, is the first thing that comes up. But more and more often, as I'm searching on Google, especially when I'm asking questions, google is feeding me this AI-driven blurb with the answer to my question, which doesn't seem to me to be tracking back anywhere, and so for a long time, it was like let's try to answer the question so that we get the Google snippet, or let's try to answer the question so that we get the Google snippet, or let's try to answer the question so that we're at the top of the page. But that opportunity seems to be diminishing as Google is providing the answers itself. So what's going on there? So, like ChatGPT and probably in defense of ChatGPT Google has been working on artificial intelligence, ai, for a long time as well, and so they're now serving something they call AI overviews, and so they're compiling data from several websites and giving you an answer to your question, and if you actually click on the more, they have a thing called the carousel and they show you the three websites that they captured most of the information from and those are clickable and it's an SEO opportunity. Okay, all right, good, and the good news is we could save a couple minutes because they've already answered the question as to how you get your website to come up with those answers, and essentially, you answer questions. You be helpful. The videos with the blog posts are even better, and having a very short, succinct summary of your answer is also very helpful. You know in rich snippets, which was that box at the top. Other people also ask when they show your website as the best answer, you know write a little snippet of content that could easily be grabbed by Google and given as the answer to the question. So all of those strategies are part of that algorithm that Google's going out and they're looking for the website that best answers the question that other people have linked to and referred to Now, all opponents of Google's SEO algorithm. So if you have a website that has already answered the question. They've sent people to your website, people spent time, they've read the page and scrolled down the page and maybe give you a call or done a conversion action. So all of the regular SEO algorithmic components contribute to you being found in those AI results, your content being part of Google constructing that AI result.
Speaker 1:And, unlike Tati Petit, they quote the source in the section down below. And so where do you think that world is going? Do you envision a future where Google either doesn't quote the search or is just populating the answer on its own without fretting? Or is that kind of antithetical to what google's who's? You know? Because at the end of the day it's, it's really the businesses and the ad revenue that's actually paying from. And so what would that be? Kind of cutting off the nose, to strike the face, if they were to cut out the uh, the attribution portion? I mean let's look at google's business first and foremost. Right, like they have to, you know, the attribution portion. I mean let's look at Google's business first and foremost. Right, they have to. You know the ads can't go away. As a matter of fact, some people are saying Google's going to do chat, gpt results and they're not going to show any ads. But that was completely ridiculous. They make $250 billion a year for ads.
Speaker 1:So obviously Google's job, from Google's perspective, is to give you the best answers so you don't go anywhere else. So Google's incorporating a chat GPT style answer to prevent you from going to chat GPT. But they've just got to find the right balance on their page where they give you the best answers. So you always go to Google first and then they show some ads so they can make some money, and they've got to find the right balance. I think that's where it's going. It's going to the place where Google, from their perspective, they prevent you from choosing Bing or, you know, bard or any of them. Probably it's Google, but you know there's several of these large language models coming out in addition to TagGPT and they want to prevent you from going anywhere else for your search queries and give you the best answers, and all of these internet companies just want more of your eyeball time. That's the whole game is how can I keep you on my platform for as long as possible? Yeah, and that's been the game for a million years. On my platform for as long as possible? Yeah, and you know that's been the game for a million years, like even before Google.
Speaker 1:I was telling someone a story the other day of when, when I was at eDiads you know it was really before Google even had paid ads they were still in beta. Can? We did all our advertising and MSN, aol, yeah, and that was the game. If, if your email was an AOL email but what we used to do in the old days, we'd go to AOLcom there's a little box right on the homepage. We'd type in our name and our password and we'd check our email and then we were on AOL. So then we'd go to AOL Finance and AOL Sports and AOL Fashion, and that was what we considered to be the internet, because these portals had the best content on the internet. So it's always been a game of eyeballs, and then Google was able to say, hey, if you've got a question, come over here, we're going to answer your question and refer you to the websites that can best help you, and so they've won that game for many years now. So if lawyers want more eyeballs and let's say, all they have is a website right now or you have a social media handle, but the last thing on there is your 4th of July puts from earlier this year.
Speaker 1:Where would you say is either the lowest hanging fruit or the highest leverage kind of lowest cost opportunity to gain some traction and begin building a larger online presence? Look, so job one is a website. That's your home base. If you don't already, if you haven't already claimed your Google Maps address, google calls a Google business profile and you know, get some Google reviews and get some content in that Maps. We talked about that earlier. Put in all your practice areas and answer all the questions in the Google Business Profile. Have a very robust, completed profile to guide you through that. I'd say. The next biggest opportunity is the local service. It's available now probably in 80% of all practice areas and I love the local service ads. I talk a lot about it at the different conferences. My keynote at National Trial Lawyers was on the local service ads. Talked about it at NOMA.
Speaker 1:Positioned right at the top of Google is there's two boxes or three on your cell phone and it's got a checkmark and it says Google Screened and the consumer doesn't know exactly what that means, but it means they've vetted your firm. For lawyers it generally means you have a physical address, you have a Google business profile and your Google and your law license is current. Your bar license is current Very high volume. But it used to be. It used to actually have like private eyes. We did a little bit of research. It's a little easier now that they sort of trust the bar associations with that now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and and the reason I love that, you know number one, you're right at the top of Google. Number two you've got a checkbook beside your name saying Google's vetted you in some way. That consumer doesn't know exactly and they don't, and those are paid per lead positions. So if you're looking on your phone right now, like, the scary thing is that two of the three results. One of them has no Virginia presence at all. One of them is a criminal defense lawyer and the other one is primarily a Maryland firm that I don't think has a Virginia trial lawyer. So that's who's buying ads in LSAs in Fairfax Virginia trial lawyer. So that's who's buying ads in LSAs in Fairfax Virginia? Yeah, then they have to at least have a GBP, a Google Business Profile, google Maps in Virginia in order to run that. But really, like you said, it's a low bar Law license, google Maps, and then you can get in the local service ads, and then there's about six or seven things you need to do to get in those top three positions.
Speaker 1:We call it our secret algorithm. Interesting, but it's not just pay the most money. You can't pay the most money Because if you bid $100,000, you're still only going to spend like $2,000. Okay, I don't run any LSAs, but are you bidding in the same way that you do for an AdWord by? I will pay X per call. Or are you saying here's my budget for my max budget for the day and just charge me whatever? Yeah, you give them a weekly budget. Uh-huh, and what's the price per unit For your PI clicks?
Speaker 1:They're probably $250. But I said the wrong word. It's not a click, it's a call, right, yeah, and if it's, you know someone's looking for a divorce lawyer, you don't have to pay for them. So the beauty of that program is they're only phone calls which are better than clicks. Yes, because when somebody calls you I'm guessing 20 to 25 percent you sign them up as a client, right, well, so, right. So the math on that and I'm just telling client members math on that is somebody coming from Google who contacts us, about 12 percent chance that we actually want their case in the auto space and of those that we want, we're currently converting 80%. It's going to be a higher, probably a higher, wanted percentage 80%. So that's a little bit expensive if it's like $150, $200 for each lead. Yes, we don't run any paid ads, so that's just me. You'd be looking at about $2,000 to sign a PI case. Given that math, it probably is a little less on average for those LSAs. But we still see that the local service ad case acquisition cost is less than pay-per-click, yeah, and less than almost every other barrier.
Speaker 1:And the way to get in the top three, as I mentioned, is our secret algorithm. And then you're supposed to say well, jay, share some of the things in the secret. I already exposed the secret in 100, so let's talk about the secret algorithm. Actually I'm smiling because I have shared it on my webinars before. So it's less of a secret, more of a marketing hook.
Speaker 1:But the first thing is you have to answer the phone and you know every lawyer tells us oh, we answer the phone, you know, 99% of the time. And then, as soon as we turn on the local service ads, google actually cracks it and they find out oh, we missed four calls last week. How do we miss four calls? Oh, they came in and watched and one receptionist was on the phone. The other receptionist was at lunch. But missing calls really hurts you in the algorithm. So Google's actually tracking how not only do you answer the phone, but how quickly you answer the phone, and you only have about 15 seconds and you shouldn't have a phone tree or an answering machine or anything like that.
Speaker 1:So what we recommend is to the local service ads. Go directly to the, you know, press 1 if you're a new client, and just make the phone ring, pick it up, and pick it up within 15 seconds. Don't make the person go through the phone tree just automatically. You know you pay $250, 250 or 250 for that lead and in the long-term disability might only be 25, but it's. You know these are phone calls. These are people who searched for your, your service, your practice area. Pick up the phone, um.
Speaker 1:The second thing is you have to disposition the leads in google system very, very quickly. So you have to give google feedback then. Yes, I answered the phone. Yes, this was a great case. We booked it. We booked a meeting and you know mrs smith will be for me at three o'clock and you literally like, book a meeting. Because this program was built for the air conditioning, home service guys, roofers, locksmiths, for like, so the terminology still from their interview, your work. We book the meeting. Like, you wait up to check the order and so you book a meeting.
Speaker 1:And then I'd say the third thing in the algorithm that's really important is getting Google reviews, because your local service ad is linked to your Google Apps. But the magic of that is you don't need to have the most reviews, like in Google Maps. Generally, you'll see the top three positions go to people with, you know, a couple hundred reviews, depending on your market. But the good thing about local service ads is to be competitive. You only need one to two reviews per week and you're better off to have a consistent cadence. You know, if you get three reviews and spread them out over the month, you can do really, really well in the program when Morgan Morgan might be getting 300 reviews each month, but you can still compete. So it lets the little guys compete and I love it. Interesting, interesting.
Speaker 1:And then for a while there was some anecdotal evidence around. Well, if you go in and you dispute a lead, so you said, if somebody's calling for you for a while, you just say no, they weren't looking for me in and you dispute a lead. So you said, if somebody's calling for you for a while, you just say no, they weren't looking for me. There's some anecdotal evidence that if you were doing that at all, then Google was throttling your LSA reach. Is that still true? Was that ever true? Well, it's no longer true, for a different reason.
Speaker 1:But clearly the truth is that the entirety of the algorithm means whether or not you're going to get in the top three. So first, you've got to answer the phone. Second, you've got to not miss calls. Third, you've got to get in the system and give Google feedback. Fourth, you've got to get a couple reviews every week. And then there's a couple other compras to the algorithm. But essentially, if you do all those things, you're going to show your ad.
Speaker 1:If you don't answer the phone and you miss calls and, by the way, you of a computer to show you're at. If you don't answer the phone and you miss calls and, by the way, you just dispute half of them. You know, the guideline is, like I said before, if someone's calling for a divorce lawyer and you guys do long-term disability and personal injury, you could dispute, and there's nothing wrong with that. If someone's calling to sell you something, you could dispute that. If it's a robocall and it's Google's Google's catching most of those anyways, and Martin knows his arc completely you don't have to pay. But the good news is the gray area has been cleared up. Google is taking the dispute function away and they're giving it to their artificial intelligence. So now they are listening, they listen to all the calls. That's how they decide whether or not. A if you answer the phone, b if you look to me. The artificial intelligence is listening to the calls and they're making the decision on the disputes. They announced that they will dispute more on average than the attorneys do anyways, so they're going to give you the benefit of the doubt. We have seen the odd ones sneak through that absolutely shouldn't have been paid for. But they're doing a pretty good job disputing most of them and at the end of the day, you know it's Google's playground. If you want to play in it, you know you've got to come with shoes and a shirt and you want to play by their rules.
Speaker 1:I learned so much when we do these episodes that I wouldn't. I mean, this is the read the host box. It's like you get so much inside knowledge and you get to ask the questions that are important to you and you get some. There's some one-man things like should I turn back on my digital marketing space? So we'll talk about that when we're together in october. I know that you are getting ready to begin your research so that you can present uh awards to the best attendees of the great new marketing summit on the digital marketing side.
Speaker 1:Why don't we wrap up by talking a little bit about what it is that you look for in a firm that's doing a great job with holistic digital marketing? Well, that's a great point. We love it when we do the awards. I guess it's technically still called the Golden Awards, but I want to rename them the GLAM Awards. You guys have to give me feedback on that. It's your award, but I think you know GLM, we could call them the GLAMies or something. Yeah, okay, have a little bit more penance, but essentially you all give us all your members, all their websites and then we go through and it's an exhausting process. You know there's 150 or 200 websites, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:We go through 27 different criteria. We look at how many keywords they rank for where they rank in the local service attitude. If they rank, we even call the firms now to see if they answer within 15 seconds or if they miss the call. We look at where they're positioned in Google Maps. We look at how fast their website is. There's a lot of components of SEO that we can see from the outside in that Google's placing a high value on Like. If your website doesn't load quickly, google penalizes you because you know if they send someone to your website and it's like spinning, they hit the back button, go back to Google. They're dissatisfied with the selection Google ate. So Google deprioritize your website, pushes you down the page. So there's a bunch of things we can see from the outside in that are reflective of is a website search engine friendly?
Speaker 1:If you're running paid ads, are you doing ad testing? Are your ads well-constructed? Are your landing pages well-constructed? Does your website have some of the basic things? Is the phone number in the top right position? Do you have chat? Do you have one of the chat services we like? So there's 27 different criteria and we go through the presentation and then I'm very kind. So if you're going to be in the room, don't worry.
Speaker 1:We only show the folks who are doing a great job. Only showing the winners, yeah, and then you should. Maybe one year we should do a slam awards and the lowest, the slammy words. We have the glam and the slam. Yeah, we should have an audible mention, but we do have some. You know, we, we, we do have a little bit of fun with it. Sometimes we have the most approved things and then we have all the data for each of the firms, so we're happy to share that with any. If any of the members are watching and you're not at the event this year for whatever reason, get in touch with Tim Golden Rules. Jay Burke yeah, amazing and so much better than what some firms do, which is you white label, a sub-ratch or an a-ratch report and you call it a free web audit. Thank you to you for putting on and going through that exhaustive 27-point checklist to rank the members and to do a true audit of you know who's doing well, and many firms are doing well, and then who could use a little bit of help. So, jay, if people are listening and they do need a little bit of help, how can they reach out to you and your agency? Yeah, tangled and Rules spelled T-E-N and Jay Berkowitz.
Speaker 1:I'm Jay Berkowitz on almost all the different social media. Do you know chiropractor Jay Berkowitz in Virginia? He's the first guy that. So you have an SEO problem because I looked you up and he was the first hit that I got. Oh, so normally I wipe the other Jay Berkowitz's, out, but maybe because you're in Virginia or maybe he's in Northern Virginia somewhere, maybe in your local search, but those kind of joke that generally I'm way ahead of Dr Jay Berkowitz and Professor Jay Berkowitz, probably much more important to society.
Speaker 1:I just get to Twitter and Gmail first. I get my name on all the social media. By the way, I get a lot of emails for Dr Jay Berkowitz at jayberkowitzcom. All right, so I'm sorry but I may have cut you off in the middle of selling people where to find you, but we'll link to all of that in the show description. If there is a best way, why don't you say it now? And then we'll make sure we link to that. Yeah, 10goldenrules, t-e-n-goldenrulescom has pretty much everything. Links to all our social media and, like I said, I'm Jay Berkowitz on Twitter, linkedin, facebook, all the new ones that come out, I grab it first. Perfect, I appreciate you coming on, jay and I.
