Strategies and Pitfalls of Growing a Law Practice

Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 49: Strategy Over Tactics With Brant Schlieffer

Narrator: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Law Firm Growth podcast, where we share the latest tips, tactics, and strategies for scaling your practice from the top experts in the world of growing law firms. Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Let's get started.

Jan Roos: Hey everybody, welcome back to The Law Firm Growth podcast. I'm your host as always Jan Roos, and I am here today with what I think is going to be a very interesting conversation. No pressure. This is going to be with Brandt Scheifler. So Brandt and I actually met up. We're both working with the same client who will not be named, but it's running a fantastic estate planning practice.

Jan Roos: And we got to talking a little bit around some stuff around the client. And I realized that Brandt had a really fascinating brain as far as marketing tactics. It's a very philosophical guy. And I just wanted to talk about some stuff related to legal marketing that I think you guys are going to appreciate.

Jan Roos: So thanks for being on the show, Brandt. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. [00:01:00] All right. So we were actually talking a little bit before the pre call about a story that you had, which I thought was a really good metaphor. Do you mind filling the audience in on the story you had about your uncle and the fishing?

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah, absolutely. So full disclosure, I'm not a fisherman. I grew up in a hunting family. It just Wasn't my thing. I love to go to snowboarding instead of going hunting. So that was my story. But my uncle who was borderline professional fishermen, he actually, there's a story my aunt would tell where about an hour before dinner guests would show up at their house, he'd be heading out of the house and she'd say, where are you going, Mike?

Brant Schlieffer: And he said, I'm going to catch dinner. And it just blew her mind that he had that kind of confidence that kind of timeframe before the guests are coming, even knowing what kind of fish you wanted to have for dinner, he would run down to the lake because they lived on a lake, go out in his boat, come back with fresh dinner.

Brant Schlieffer: And so that just blew my mind because again, I'm not a [00:02:00] fisherman and I've never really seen that sort of confidence. He has records and in some states for fish he's caught. But the whole point I want to make there is that he knew what he was fishing for. He knew what lure and bait to use and he also knew Where those fish hung out because he fished that lake almost every day.

Brant Schlieffer: And when we talk about marketing, especially these days, Yon, it gets really we like to look at this stuff through a microscope with analytics and data and all of these things when the best paradigm or lens, I think anyone can use when they're thinking about growing, their practice is fishing. And I'd like to use that as our context as we're talking about marketing, because we have to know what kind of fish you want to catch, how to catch them and where they hang out whenever we're talking about marketing.

Jan Roos: Yeah, I totally agree. And to your point, we have so many options today in marketing, and it is something that was very exciting piece by piece. And it's interesting. When you look at the history of this [00:03:00] stuff, the internet comes into the public eye, probably in the nineties, and then get some wider distribution around the turn of the millennium.

Jan Roos: And then every single new channel. Panel was very exciting and very new. But if you're stepping into it, and God forbid you're starting a practice in 2020, there's just so many different options. It's bewildering. But to your point, if you have this kind of context in the same way that your uncle had with all lures and that kind of thing, you can get predictable results.

Jan Roos: You just have to know where things are coming from. I'll also say this too. This. Reminds me of something that's been on my mind. And we've had a couple of solo podcasts about this referrals are maybe like walking around and seeing if a trap goes in, but the things that the people who know that they can eat every single day, people who know how to fish, right?

Jan Roos: Yeah, absolutely.

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah. And I was driving past a lake earlier. I live in, I grew up in Minnesota, so lakes everywhere. Now I live in North Carolina and we're a little fewer, but I was driving past one. And I was thinking about this analogy. And I thought, man, I don't know how to fish. Of course I've been fishing.[00:04:00]

Brant Schlieffer: If I wanted to go out there and catch something, how would I go about it? And I thought the wrong way. I'd go to the store. I'd look at fishing poles. I wouldn't know the difference between one or the other. I'd probably shop on price. This one's affordable. Let me buy this or it looks cool. Then I'd look for bait.

Brant Schlieffer: Oh, these are shiny. All right, cool. I, there's this little podunk gas station, not too far from where I live. I know they have a sign for live bait. Maybe I'd grab some of that. Then I'd head out to the lake. I don't know what's in the lake. It's the one closest to me. So I'd throw my line in and I'd see what I could catch.

Brant Schlieffer: Now, maybe after a couple hours, I catch nothing and I can walk away thinking there's no fish in that lake. That didn't work. Is that the right assessment? Is that the, is that a good, Solid conclusion to form based on my

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah, so I could head pack up head back to the car put my stuff in the trunk Oh, there's a guy with a string of fish.

Brant Schlieffer: Okay. He was at the same lake He [00:05:00] must know something that I don't and then I asked Oh, what kind of rod do you have? Which again is the wrong question.

Brant Schlieffer: So that's just, I run into this day in, day out just in terms of marketing. And so I think it, it's just a great lens to use as we evaluate how should a business owner go about Thinking through their marketing.

Brant Schlieffer: I have seven different things. I thought that we could talk through if that sounds good to you, or if you want to say anything about my story, we can go there too.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Look a hundred percent. And I'll say as far as you, you actually ring and this is, I'm seeing a lot of angles to this metaphor brand, so it's been really good, but one of the things is that, I see this kind of pervasive thing and I honestly think it's a self serving mindset.

Jan Roos: If somebody ends up failing at something, be it marketing, be it anything else, the most ego protective interpretation take of what just took place was it's impossible to do anyway. And just like in your metaphor, you had the guy who's walking around with the string of fish. Most law firms are probably able to point to somebody within a pretty close [00:06:00] geographic radius that's making things work on a lot of different channels.

Jan Roos: If you wanted to pick one out of the book, there's probably somebody who's succeeding at any one. But honestly it's when you watch people's feet and not their lips, you see that a lot of people don't actually believe that this stuff works. And when you look at the seven figure and bigger firms that end up having this stuff happening repeatedly.

Jan Roos: Then it's clearly obvious that this stuff works. But again, to your point there's so many different variables. It's really tough to suss out from the outside. Also, I just wanted to, and it's funny, I'm thinking a bit of a diversion in my interview style to avoid this, but I think it bears a little bit of mentioning at this point, just as far as your background with just marketing brand what would you say are like your kind of go to tools, if you will, to helping out law firms and other clients?

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah, in fact, I think the inception point of how I got into this is probably the most important. So this goes back many years now. I got into this from a small business owner standpoint. So I've had a couple different types of businesses in [00:07:00] different industries. This one specifically, we did sales and compliance training in a financial services niche.

Brant Schlieffer: And we had this boy wonder genius kid who ran all of our Online marketing. We had a lot of content that was self hosted and I just let him deal with all of it. All right. Then he started acting funny. And as we look a little deeper, we realized that he had this little cocaine problem. Didn't

Jan Roos: expect that

Brant Schlieffer: one.

Brant Schlieffer: Neither did I, I'm assume the best kind of, person of others. Trust, but verify as well. And upon further verification, it's I told my business partner, listen, this is not a good situation. Not only do we not understand how any of this is working, we don't even have access to our content because it's at a server at his house.

Brant Schlieffer: I better get involved and understand and get some control back. Thankfully, that ended very well, but my, [00:08:00] journey into understanding the digital marketing side, especially, has really grabbed my interest. And after exiting that business later on, I just really stayed with the marketing piece. And I began using it for my own purposes, helping friends.

Brant Schlieffer: And then it grew into more than that. And it's now, my business, but all that to say this, I come at this from a business owner's perspective. I really don't care. Let's just use a Facebook term here. I don't care about likes and shares. I care about leads and sales because I know as a business owner, the only thing that makes a difference and moves the needle is when new customers or clients are coming on board.

Brant Schlieffer: There are other objectives to consider as well, but that's how I got into this. And so that's really the paradigm that I use. I don't know if that helps out at all there.

Jan Roos: No, I think that's super helpful. And like another thing, just to, as far as where it went from there I know that you have a pretty broad skill set and stuff that you offer with automated outreach, but [00:09:00] was the content, that's still something that you're very interested in today, the content and the SEO, right?

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah. So again, caring only really about results and obviously getting them the right way. Bernie Madoff had results, right? But we don't, the process does matter, but in measuring different channels. I kept coming back to organic or SEO as being a channel that would really deliver long term value for clients.

Brant Schlieffer: Because, and I'm getting ahead of myself, but the type of clients that we serve are service based clients. They could be white collar like an attorney, they could be blue collar like a plumber. But if a consumer is going out to Google to research a question, to read content, to find a solution, we've just found that SEO or optimizing the website and showing up for those important search queries just delivers a lot of value.

Brant Schlieffer: And so that's where I really centered my efforts and we've just stuck with it. For a very long time for those reasons.

Jan Roos: Okay. Awesome. And I'll also just break the third wall here, but if you've noticed we've, we're probably about 10 minutes in the [00:10:00] conversation. We haven't mentioned a link or a domain authority or anything like that, which is why Brant's one of the guys I like to talk about SEO so sorry about the little diversion, but yeah, just with now that we have a little bit of context, so I'm actually super interested to talk about these points that you had here.

Jan Roos: Let's maybe take a frame and if we can maybe map this a little bit on the fly one of the things I think would be useful and especially for some of this content stuff is this conversation of niche practices of the law. And maybe someone that deals with, I think we both have a shared estate planning client, but maybe somebody who's dealing with something, let's say they deal with state planning for nontraditional families or something like that.

Jan Roos: So if we're thinking about something like that, or a very specific client, so maybe we'll just keep that as a move in targets as we go through these.

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah, let's reference that as an example and make this as tangible as possible because that's what really counts in the end is a takeaway like that.

Jan Roos: Okay. Awesome. So yeah, we can go ahead and get started. What was the first one on your list?

Brant Schlieffer: All right. So yeah, these are things I see disclaimer here. I know we're talking to attorneys. I'm not blaming any of you. If you make some of [00:11:00] these mistakes, it's not your fault. Okay. So number one, and this is irrespective of industry.

Brant Schlieffer: First thing that I run into quite a bit is that Jan, you and I can do this too. Small business owners often focus on their trade and not client acquisition. And why is that? When you go through schooling, you're going through law school or you're going through an apprenticeship as a trades person, you're focused on that trade.

Brant Schlieffer: You're focused on being excellent in that skillset. And that's extremely important. And there might be a class or maybe a chapter that talks about how to grow a practice, but it's not emphasized. And so it's no surprise that when people, percentage of these people are going to move on to their own business, and they're just not equipped very well.

Brant Schlieffer: They haven't been trained to, to value client acquisition almost equally as important as being excellent at what they do in their trade. And so that's the first thing that I see quite often.

Jan Roos: So yeah, no, it's [00:12:00] interesting. I think this is a lot of stuff that ends up getting disseminated in law school And there's that old phrase those who can do and those who can't teach So you could probably bet that most of your law school professors weren't fantastically Successful business people basically I think there's a huge, yeah.

Jan Roos: And I, I don't want to say that there's something wrong to be focused on. Obviously your product is going to be the most important thing for driving word of mouth and that kind of thing, but it's vanishingly rare. And I speak to people all over the country and law firm owners when I'm doing a sales process for case fuel.

Jan Roos: And it's very rare that we see people who are like, yeah, and every once in a while I found out I had a guy I spoke to today, he has a word of mouth practice. That is basically more than he can deal. He would only be interested in growing clients if it's the absolute top of the chain. But again, he's been in practice for 37 years in a relatively remote, affluent area.

Jan Roos: So if you want to wait fewer than 37 years it probably, you're gonna need a little bit more of a boost than just doing good work. And the other thing too is to keep in mind is that the [00:13:00] people that are doing that today. Started their careers in a different position. It was a lot less competitive to be a newly minted JD in 1985 than it will be for people who are getting minted right now So whether that's even a sustainable strategy in 20 or 30 years, we can't even tell for right now.

Jan Roos: I definitely agree it's important to get the ball rolling and be able to control this up the end of the day, right?

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah, you know where the rubber meets the road. I think everyone listening can identify with this because every city has this guy. Okay, so Personal injury would be such an easy example Okay, but pick anything could be any industry every city has this person that has a massive market presence And you look at them as a peer and see all the holes and what they do in it.

Brant Schlieffer: I can't believe they have all this business that they have all this revenue. They have all these customers or clients, and yet they don't do this. They don't do that. I know they do that wrong. But yet they're growing well beyond what i've [00:14:00] grown and so there's this sort of resentment And if I were to be honest almost like an entitlement Because we believe this half truth.

Brant Schlieffer: Hey, if we are better at what we do than the other person We will be more successful in terms of growth not always the case Unfortunately that joker probably understands client acquisition better than you do That would be amazing if they understood client acquisition And had the chops that you do because then it'd be a best case scenario for clients and for them anyway that happens in every market and there's always someone that people will talk about I can't believe that guy can't believe they're so successful, look at what they do, but yet there they are and it's because they understand the marketing machine.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Ultimately, if you think about it too, to be able to understand what a good attorney is versus a bad attorney, you have to have a pretty well developed skillset. So unless you're marketing to other attorneys, a lot of the stuff that you think is legible might not be. Okay. [00:15:00] So super good point.

Brant Schlieffer: All right. So number two, a common pitfall is that when we approach marketing, We think tactic instead of strategy. I'll give you a classic example. Okay So especially as an attorney, I mean you're on the list of everyone thinks that you're rich you have endless marketing budgets and so whether it's software or lead gen companies or I mean you name it I don't need to give examples because your inbox and your phones are filled every day with someone trying to sell you something And when that does when one of those breaks through what often happens is this?

Brant Schlieffer: And you can't see me, but I'm holding up my cell phone looking at it. I'm thinking, okay, is this widget, is this tactic good or is it bad as a piece of marketing? It might be good or it might be bad, but the question is what's the strategy. Okay. And if you don't have a strategy, what often happens is we end up being overly focused on the tactic.

Brant Schlieffer: And because we aren't sure if the tactic's [00:16:00] going to work or not, we ask how much it is. We either think it's cheap or expensive, and we make our determination based on that. What's crazy, Jan? Yeah, I'm not a huge stock guy, but let's just say that I wanted to plan for my retirement and you were a stock guy And I said, hey, is it is tesla good for me to buy?

Brant Schlieffer: How would you answer the question? It depends Brant, are you trying to buy Tesla and sell it tomorrow for a profit? Might be good, might be bad. Brant, are you trying to, how much do you have to invest? What's your time horizon? What kind of risk tolerance do you have?

Brant Schlieffer: There's all these questions that are going to lend itself to a better answer of yes or no. And so marketing shouldn't be a tactical approach where it's just this tactic or that. Let me say, there are some tactics that really shine regardless of strategy, and it depends on what's hot, and you can ride those out.

Brant Schlieffer: But let me tell you, when the guy that wrote Yellow Pages and only had a tactic, And didn't have a strategy. [00:17:00] Guess what? When the tactic expires, you have this, Oh, moment now, what? And that's where it becomes very revealing that there either is a strategy or isn't a strategy behind choosing those tactics.

Jan Roos: Yeah. That's super interesting. It reminds you, this is interesting. So we've been doing a lot of. Testing internally just to see what kind of headlines people are clicking on. It's actually for marketing our own services. And one of the things that we found that people really love is the, Hey, five common mistakes to avoid.

Jan Roos: Here's the quick tip. Here's our list of tools that you need to get started on this. And despite the fact that it's not like anywhere close to the best thing that people can actually do. I think there's this kind of interesting wishful thinking, I would say in terms of people wanting to say, okay, yeah It's just, we're just one widget away.

Jan Roos: And I wouldn't even go so far as to say tactics might be easy and strategies a little bit harder.

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah, you're right. It's, it takes a special person to really sit down and think through strategy. And that said, let's reference school again. Even like Silicon Valley has thrown out [00:18:00] old school business planning, where you have this three inch business plan.

Brant Schlieffer: We're not talking about that. We're just talking about, in fact, as a little teaser here, we're gonna get into three, three things. It's just a helpful framework. In a short time here, as we get through this list, three things, anyone can ask to develop their marketing strategy. It's not difficult. It's just that people don't take the time a it's awareness B it's just, you're busy focusing on their trade.

Jan Roos: Yeah, no, I totally agree. So we've got a couple more, I think I see here on the list. So I want to say these ones are related brands. So what are the next couple?

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah. So a lot of times if I'm speaking to a prospective client or maybe even a brand new client, we're ready to get started.

Brant Schlieffer: Okay. And I asked this question, who's your ideal client? And I get a variety of answers. There's usually two though, every once in a while, there's a special person that really has this dialed in, but usually it's anybody who needs what I offer. And if I say, okay sounds fine. Okay. If we were to narrow that down a little more, who would that person be?

Brant Schlieffer: Anyone who [00:19:00] needs what I offer in my area. All right, Do we have the marketing budget to speak to? Anyone in your area who might need what you have to offer? And then of course we realize that from an economic perspective, there are limited resources that we're dealing with Everyone has no limitations.

Brant Schlieffer: And so we do have to bring some focus on who that ideal client is. And I would say that, if you're trying to market to everyone, you speak effectively to no one. And do you know the main reason for that? I know you do, but can you think of a main reason why it's hard to speak to everyone right now?

Brant Schlieffer: And a little hint is You and I probably already got a text message since I asked you that. You probably already got a phone call. You missed. You probably already got an email. Why is it hard to speak to everybody and anyone?

Jan Roos: Because we're, we're locked out and we're just distracted.

Jan Roos: We're constantly on zoom meetings. We're constantly inside looking at stuff to reach people.

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah. If someone's listening to this and you're driving right now, do you remember the last time? Like three billboards ago. Do you [00:20:00] remember what was on that billboard? Do you remember what was on that guy's truck that maybe he was a pest control guy?

Brant Schlieffer: Do you remember his name? Do you remember his phone number? I doubt it and we are bombarded with so many messages I often tell clients Listen, I know you're focused on this Yahoo that you're trying to overtake in your market. That is a competitor and yeah, they're a competitor But listen, the main competition we have is the busyness of your potential client You That's what we have to break through.

Brant Schlieffer: And so if we can move away from trying to speak to everyone, speaking to someone, that message becomes a lot more specific and we'll get into this within the framework. It's just easier to break through all that noise.

Jan Roos: Yeah, I totally agree. And in addition to that it's cheaper too. I'm sure you've read this book, the immutable laws of marketing.

Jan Roos: What was that guy's name? Was it Maxwell? I'm sorry. I don't remember. We'll edit this out. So we sound smart later. But I think it was basically, and this was how they used to think about things in the old, like Madison Avenue [00:21:00] days. It was like, okay, if you're the, it was all about market position, right?

Jan Roos: You got your number one guys, probably going to settle around 50%. Your number two guys probably going to be settling around 25. And then it's a fractal all the way down. But basically the amount of money it would take. And I think this is the the mutable loss of branding is that you need to spend money to break out of the concept, like the schema in somebody's head.

Jan Roos: So why do you think you see all this money getting spent at the super bowl? If you think about a great beer to drink on a summer day. That's why we've got Coors Light versus bud Light . It's the same thing. And Coke versus Pepsi, they're both competing for the same slot. So unless you happen to set up shop in Antarctica, chances are you're not the first personal injury attorney that went in town.

Jan Roos: True. To overcome that, it's gonna be, it's gonna, it's gonna take a lot more resources than to be the specific person as well.

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you brought that up. This isn't on the list, but let me just say another common mistake that it's natural as humans. We emulate things we see.

Brant Schlieffer: It's just the pattern. It's how it works. We all do it. But what small [00:22:00] businesses do is they tend to try to emulate big brands like Coke and Pepsi or Budweiser. I have a friend. He's the lead guy in an ad agency. I can't name the retailer, but think of one of the top retailers in the world. That's his main client and he'll fly out to LA to oversee a photo shoot That ends up with one picture in one little takeaway at a register and that'll be a hundred thousand dollars they'll charge 50 grand to send out a custom email blast.

Brant Schlieffer: Okay Nobody as a small business owner has those kinds of resources Or if you do you need to pursue those kinds of strategies, but for most people You They need to be smart with their dollars. They needed to know who they're speaking to and that way they can be effective when they're trying to speak to them.

Brant Schlieffer: And that comes to our next point, which is internal business strategy. Yeah. And I don't know if you deal with this, but I'm happy to help people develop their strategy as a means to an end to get to marketing. We do it all the time, [00:23:00] but sometimes it's frightening to me because as a vendor, usually a new vendor, a lot of times what we're being asked, I say who's your ideal client?

Brant Schlieffer: Not sure. Okay, let's work on that. And what's your messaging? Not sure. Okay, let's work on that. And then what ends up happening is I'm realizing, hey, we're actually developing the internal business strategy of your business. Whose responsibility is that? Do you really want to delegate that to a marketing guy?

Brant Schlieffer: And while I'm glad and I know you are too, trust us with helping them hone this in. And I know we're both glad to do that. What if you entrust that to the wrong person? Marketing guy or like a hourly employee or someone fresh out of school who ends up being delegated the marketing decisions to make for the firm Yeah, those are some interesting waters.

Jan Roos: Yeah, or has a nasty drug habit Call that Yeah, I mean it's interesting too because it's like sometimes and it's [00:24:00] interesting so I would say as far as that we work for firms that are Solos and just by nature of the resources that they have they can't afford so I sometimes i'm responding to somebody putting the bat signal in the sky and sometimes they can afford to call in the avengers, right?

Jan Roos: But basically it's interesting because sometimes we do have and it's I would say it's pretty rare with most of the law firms that we work with that they have a dedicated marketing hire. And as far as who that ends up being, a lot of the times it's all over the board, I would actually say one of the best marketing folks that I've ever worked with across any client was actually not a marketing person entitled.

Jan Roos: They were actually titled, they're actually the office manager. It just got interesting. I think office manager means COO in a lot of law firms.

Brant Schlieffer: You're right. There

Jan Roos: Yeah.

Brant Schlieffer: And they're tasked with 150 things as well.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And that's the thing too. It's if you're delegating high level thought to somebody who's also responsible for cleaning out the garbage bins at the end of the night, what can you really expect out of that?

Jan Roos: And also, what's the compensation for that [00:25:00] too? Usually. That's a situation where you're asking somebody to add a lot of value. And I would say a lot of more intelligent employees are aware that comes with certain compensation. And you might find somebody who just likes to do it out of the goodness of their heart, but I would probably say it's usually pretty rare.

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah. Yeah, it is. And those people are out there. They are hard to find. And if you have one, if you're listening and you have that person, hang on to them because they're in high demand.

Jan Roos: So we're coming up to the end of this list here. So we've got a couple other ones too. I wish we had a better segue.

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah. No, that's all right. Basically, these are kind of summary points. If you skip the above work, which. Honestly, most people will have skipped this above strategy work and it's common. And let me just reemphasize, we do not mind helping clients with this. It's one of our, to use a really cliche term, value ads.

Brant Schlieffer: We do this part before we move on to the other part. It's just included in the marketing because we want the marketing to be effective. But if you do skip that work and you aren't working with someone who's going to [00:26:00] help you dial in that scope. You're going to move from tactic to tactic.

Brant Schlieffer: You're going to be throwing the line in this lake or then trying the next lake or then the next lake. And you're going to be disheartened. You're going to become jaded. Just speaking of SEO, I have SEO companies contact me, not even realizing we do SEO saying, Hey, your SEO is terrible. You want our help?

Brant Schlieffer: And I'm like, do you guys even know who you're emailing? You get those messages too, I'm sure. And. The thing is, when we do take over someone's online strategy, we're usually the fourth try. It's you know what? I think you might be a good option. Don't really trust you. I've done this before.

Brant Schlieffer: Let's try it. And so we have to dig out from this trust deficit even to get to ground zero. And that's one of the unintended consequences that really will impact you as a firm. If you go from tactic to tactic, Not knowing what you're doing or how to measure it and things aren't working. You'll start to think nothing works and you'll start to think everyone's just [00:27:00] lying.

Brant Schlieffer: And you won't end up investing properly in good marketing that can grow your firm.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And I would actually, I totally agree with that. And there's a couple of things I'd like to add. And one of the things just like the size of the shot that you're taking. And I think there's an issue with underinvestment sometimes.

Jan Roos: And. It's actually tough. It's like on some levels, like you're almost more certain to get a better outcome, the more resources you can allocate to something. And let's just not talk about money. It's also time. So one of the things that I see that's a losing strategy is you go out, you invest a fair amount into a channel and then you're like, Oh, that didn't work.

Jan Roos: So the next time you take a smaller shot and then without knowing it, you think you're hedging your risk, but. In reality you're actually ensuring almost that it's going to be less likely to be successful than the last one. And the tough thing is that it's really tough to see from the outside who the good actors are and the bad actors, but sometimes, that's the channel.

Jan Roos: And then sometimes there's issues that are on the other side of the equation as well. And that old saying, saying, if you [00:28:00] run into a jerk in the morning, then that's bad. But if you run into 15 jerks every morning, then, maybe it's not everyone else, but basically, yeah, no, I can definitely see that happening.

Jan Roos: And the worst thing ever too, is honestly, this is more of an issue. I think probably when somebody is executing SEO campaign, which I've always said, and again, not my specialty, but whenever people ask me about SEO, it's yeah, you know what? Solid SEOs are going to say it's going to be tough to see something that's going to move the needle before six months, sometimes 12 months.

Jan Roos: And you don't get any points for having a three quarters baked cake a lot of the time. So that increased sense of urgency is it's like a sabotage loop almost. And you really have to see things through. Before you can really determine whether it worked or not.

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah, you're right. And SEO does that have that challenge and I tell people, listen, you don't have to close your eyes.

Brant Schlieffer: Like it's a blind trust exercise and getting ahead of myself where we're going to go shortly. Every marketing test needs measurement. So you need to have certain dashboard measurements where you can see progress happening. You can start to [00:29:00] see some leads flowing in. Maybe they're at a lower volume, but with anything technical, I'm sure even some attorneys do this.

Brant Schlieffer: Sometimes it's easy to hide out in the technical weeds and build the smokescreen because maybe That company's not really doing what they should be doing anyway, so there's smoke out there So it's oh, this is really tricky and complicated and we can't really explain it No, it's pretty straightforward.

Brant Schlieffer: We know what to measure. We know when it should begin to be measured and people can have that visibility, but yes, it does take us a six to 12 month clip usually. And I do acknowledge that it takes a lot of trust, especially after having invested in some of the wrong tactics prior to.

Jan Roos: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Jan Roos: I'll also say this too. And I've mentioned this before on the podcast. And one of the things I found super interesting is as I was going through the law firm 500 and it's a list that gets put out, it's like being 5, 000 just for law firms. I would probably say 60, 70 percent of the top 50 all have really strong SEO presences.

Jan Roos: Clearly people have [00:30:00] made it to the other side of this chasm. So it's definitely a worthwhile endeavor. I just didn't want to spin that like I'm into SEO, but it's yeah, it's absolutely worth the one hours.

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah. Hey, should we get to the framework? I don't want to keep people waiting here.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Let's get rock and rolling. All right. So yeah, let's talk about what to do with this information.

Brant Schlieffer: All right. Yeah. So this is not original to me. There's this old school grumpy guy named Dan Kennedy. He came up with this. He's in the direct response marketing world. If you've ever seen one of those proactive infomercials for acne for teenagers, billion dollar campaign, he's behind a lot of these campaigns.

Brant Schlieffer: He boils it down to three. Three things, three Ms. Okay, there's market, there's message, and there's media. And if you're a lawyer and you're trying to answer this question for yourself okay, how do I apply this in a concise way? Just think through these three steps, okay? Who is your market? While your market is everyone who needs what you have, and probably everyone in your geographic area, it could also be who your ideal client is.

Brant Schlieffer: [00:31:00] Who's your ideal client? It could be a few people. It could be the most profitable client, which is how a lot of people like to look at it. It could be the client that you know you can get the best results for. It could be the client or the type of service you have the most passion for, speaking back to estate planning.

Brant Schlieffer: Maybe there's an element that you just love solving. You do it so well. It's like your hedgehog, use the Jim Collins word. And however you want to evaluate it, That's your call. But once you identify who that ideal client is, or maybe it's one or two different types of ideal clients, you can apply the 80 20 rule.

Brant Schlieffer: You don't have to say no to everybody else. You're still going to get referrals outside of those ideal clients, but guess what, those ideal clients are probably going to refer other ideal clients to you. You're going to have testimonies from those ideal clients and it becomes self perpetuating. But the second thing that's actually more important once you identify your ideal client within your market Now, you know what your message should be I challenge you [00:32:00] to look around your competitors and try to figure out what makes them unique Because it'll easier to be easier to see their error versus your own and then consider the question.

Brant Schlieffer: What makes me unique? To help that ideal client. Okay, if you end up with words like value service Those are really, I would say bad answers. Dan Kennedy would blast you for that. They're just not the best answers. Okay. Because if we have to compete using the words, everyone else is using a message is not going to break through and we're going to end up in a price war if we just seem like we're everybody else.

Jan Roos: Yeah, a hundred percent. It's a commodity too. It's that's the other thing I was like Brant, do you mean to tell me that we care about our clients and provide great services, not a game changing brand proposition?

Brant Schlieffer: Hopefully that's like where the bar starts.

Brant Schlieffer: And honestly, these days that is a high bar.

Brant Schlieffer: What you say but yes, when you're [00:33:00] communicating. Let's go back to our estate planning example. All right. If your market is anyone who needs estate planning guess what? Legal zoom has wills Someone who's in the medicare market might need some estate planning for even medical reasons have brought some of those or medicaid questions have come into play or Maybe you prefer helping A wealthy family who has a blended family who has more complexity.

Brant Schlieffer: Maybe you want to charge a little bit more than the average estate planning attorney, okay? If you identify that ideal client, can you see how your messaging is going to be a little different? It's not, we offer estate planning, come one, come all, we have great customer service. It's are you a blended family?

Brant Schlieffer: Are you the responsible person in a blended family dealing with complex real estate and estate issues where you have to consider? A number of different parties in your planning and a number of different people to make happy While also protecting yourself. That's a pretty specific message. We're talking about [00:34:00] now You see how that's going to appeal a little bit more to that ideal client?

Jan Roos: Yeah, 100 percent too. And that's the thing, that's the person who doesn't want legal zoom. And I would argue people who are trying to price gouge at the end of the day, those are the ones who see this as a commodity, but they also generally have less at stake in some ways. And I think this is going back to a super old school, like Michael Porter, I think is a concept you fundamentally have.

Jan Roos: Two strategies in business. You can be a value leader or you can be a price leader. And guess what? You gotta be big. Walmart can be a price leader. You hang up your shingle on the first day of opening your practice. The price leadership will not take you far.

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah, absolutely. And bankruptcy would be a great example of that.

Brant Schlieffer: The 99 bankruptcy ad that's out there. You don't get to talk to your attorney until you show up at the hearing. Maybe he's even sick that day. I don't know, but. Cutting through that noise happens with a very specific message. And then guess what? We didn't start with the lure. We didn't start with the rod.

Brant Schlieffer: We're coming to the last M, [00:35:00] last, which is where it should be. Media. Once you know your market, once you know how to speak to that market, then you can ask, where are they hanging out? Which lake are they hanging out? Let me go to that lake. Living in North Carolina, if I want to catch a salmon, I can't go fishing here.

Brant Schlieffer: I'm going to have to go to the store to buy that. If you start with media though, can you see how you end up in a completely different place? Then let's say you take out an ad in a magazine. You don't really know who the market that reads the magazine. Let's say they tell you it's a certain demographic.

Brant Schlieffer: Then the next question they're going to ask you is what do you want your ad to say? I don't know. Let me see some other ads as examples.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Yeah.

Brant Schlieffer: Completely backwards now.

Jan Roos: No, it's a tail wagging the dog. Honestly, what I really like about this framework brand is that you can arrive At a completely different place.

Jan Roos: Just based on the expectations that you're going into this exercise with and that's the thing if you're starting from chasing this shiny object and trying to follow everyone else you're setting yourself up for failure [00:36:00] because whatever like let's say it's the magazine all of a sudden you're trying to sell estate planning services like furniture restoration or something you know and then who knows Okay, that's awesome.

Jan Roos: And then as far as just expectations and this kind of thing, one of the things I see often is people having these preconceived notions of one thing is they read it in a book somewhere, you should get some sort of an ROI on marketing. And also, I think one of the things no book talks about is the time that it takes to get our marketing.

Jan Roos: Absolutely. So can you comment on that a little bit?

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah, so here's another word picture to summarize this. The first one is phishing. You start with your market, then you go to your message, and then you choose your media. But once you've done that, and we're all human. These are our best guesses, right?

Brant Schlieffer: They're educated guesses. Now we have to literally go out there and begin testing this. So the word picture is a combination lock. I don't even know if they still use these in school. I'm 42 now. So I they're probably like on their smartphone now I have no idea but You used to have three different numbers, right?

Brant Schlieffer: You [00:37:00] turn right find that first number Maybe some people remember this number and they go back. You got to pass it And land on it. Then you go to the last one. Boom. The locker is going to open. We've all been in a hurry. We've all tried that. Maybe at the gym even. You miss one and you're like, okay, what happened?

Brant Schlieffer: I missed one of the numbers. Which one? Let me spin spin. Let me start over. All right. All three of these things have to line up properly, like a combination lock. And that does take time and it does take testing. It's not a blind exercise where it's just open ended, where you just have to hope it's going to work.

Brant Schlieffer: But if we know we have the right ideal customer or client and we believe we have the right message then let's test the media. All right. Now we have, as you got to tweak Facebook ad spend. Am I spending enough each day? Okay. Hey, we got a couple leads. Let's see if we can get more. Let's tweak the messaging a little bit.

Brant Schlieffer: You were talking about headlines. As you start refining that process and when someone is committed to that testing process, that's how [00:38:00] you dial in those three numbers. When you can begin having conversations about scale and this idea that everyone loves is that I want to put in 1 and get out 2.

Brant Schlieffer: When you can get to that point, and many firms have done that, but it comes over time with a commitment to understanding these 3Ms and also a process of testing and measurement to make tweaks along the way. To improve those results.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And ultimately too, I think it's so important from when you start from the point of an ideal client, it's, it also makes the stakes different because if you're just trying to crack this code and you're going to have a harder time and you're beating your head against the wall, and it's literally just to close a deal.

Jan Roos: That's completely different than having the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, which is having your ideal clients and as many of them as you can potentially reach your market. So I think it's also a super important thing as far as actually making this whole process worthwhile. So Grant, I think it's been super awesome.

Jan Roos: I know we're getting towards the end of the time we had allocated and I [00:39:00] would love to continue this conversation, but if people are vibing with you they like what you're saying and they want to take the next step. What's the best place to get in touch with you?

Brant Schlieffer: Yeah, I'd appreciate that.

Brant Schlieffer: You can reach out to us at automaticoutreach.com, just the word automatic and outreach. And this is just a simple website. We have other websites, but this would be a way where you could submit a request for a complimentary competitive analysis. What we would do is we'd take a look at, we would start with who your ideal client is as a question, but in general, What are the type of clients you're trying to obtain?

Brant Schlieffer: What market? We would look at your competitors and we would begin to give you some information on what that's going to take from a strategic point of view, especially on Google, but not limited to Google. And that's how you can get in touch with us.

Jan Roos: All right. Awesome. And I also want to say to just like as like a wrapper for this whole thing, bring it full circle to the metaphor of the uncle.

Jan Roos: It's like there, there's a situation if you're at the mercy of just having whatever you can find, if you're at referrals, it's like this skill set becomes super important because the best thing is that [00:40:00] when you have this, the strategy, Dialed in and whether it's working with somebody like brand or taking the time to learn all of this stuff on your own, that's really how you can get these consistent results.

Jan Roos: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having the, taking the time brand. I think it's been a really great conversation and I will be back with the rest of you guys for another episode of law firm growth podcast next week at Tuesday 8 AM.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Growth podcast for show notes, free resources, and more head on over to casefuel.com/podcast Looking forward to catching up on the next episode.