Strategies for optimizing legal lead generation with automation and LinkedIn outreach

Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 59: Automating Intake and Leveraging LinkedIn with James Viola

Jan Roos: [00:00:00] Hey guys, this is Jan. Just wanted to say before this episode starts that we had a little bit of an issue with echoey audio. However, the content is really awesome and I think you're going to really enjoy it if you're able to push through that. But I just wanted to say that upfront before we got started.

Jan Roos: Thanks.

Narrator: 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 is always Jan Roos, and I am here with a fantastic guest in James Viola. So James is James and I have been become friends over the last year. He is an agency owner. He owns Family Law Accelerator, but also has a very interesting product with a way that I've seen people reach out to get business for attorneys in a way that I haven't seen before, which is called Linked Leads.

Jan Roos: So very diverse background, a lot [00:01:00] of really interesting stuff that's happening. So thanks for coming on the show, James. Thank you for having me. How's

James Viola: everything going today so far, man?

Jan Roos: Ah, good. So far we'll see outside and we'll see if the costs keep up. I was kidding. It's not that bad, but all right.

Jan Roos: So I wanted to talk about something and you and I were chatting a little bit on the pre call and I was talking about, hi, I had never been able to get family law to work on anything else than Google AdWords. And you guys have been having a lot of success on other platforms like Facebook, but you said it was.

Jan Roos: Kind of about a lot of the stuff that you guys are doing on follow up, right?

James Viola: Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, we definitely do use a multi channel approach as far as cold traffic it's like you said, Facebook and Instagram for sure. And then we also like to use YouTube where it's appropriate, but other than that, regardless of where the traffic is coming from, we find that it's super important for us to do as much as we can in order to nurture those leads in a timely fashion, because.

James Viola: Lead response after five minutes, like The line is like [00:02:00] this. It's a podcast, right? Because of that, we give them basically three touch points on in three different fashions, right? One text, one ringless voicemail, and one email right away, like as soon as they fill out the lead form, right?

James Viola: And that enables us to get a much higher response rate, which is going to allow us to qualify or even disqualify as many leads as possible. And that's I think what I was talking to you about in the pre call is that, for us disqualifying as many leads as possible before they get on the line with the firm is super important to us, right?

James Viola: Because the reality is, For one reason or another, what we find with those leads is that probably about 92 percent of them are not going to close, right? So it's not like they're going to choose another firm or something else like that. It's they're either not really ready to move forward yet, right?

James Viola: With the divorce proceedings or whatever family law matter that they may be facing, [00:03:00] or they don't have the financial wherewithal to move forward one or the other. And we're doing our best to find those things out through a combination of Automation and also having account managers inside of our CRM to assist with follow up as much as possible so that we don't tax.

James Viola: The actual either lawyer or intake staff, depending on, the structure.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And that's, it's a really interesting breakthrough too. Cause I think the last time, and we still actually have a handful of family firms that we deal on now from years ago, but yeah, that was one of the things too.

Jan Roos: It's a very exciting practice area to be in because, a good divorce case, depending on where you have, it could end up being, maybe even a hundred thousand dollars, probably. More frequently, 10 or 20, but still, those are pretty good numbers, but it's also a really weird practice area because.

Jan Roos: There's obviously the decision that's made on the part of the prospect, but when they decide to move forward with it, you can't educate somebody on why they need a divorce. But once they have a divorce, it's tricky to pick the time when it's a time to move [00:04:00] forward. And yeah, so I wanted to dig into that a little bit too, because that's also something that's come up a lot too.

Jan Roos: So when we ever ended up having our family, our clients that we were doing way back in the day with the AdWords stuff, I would say probably one out of five of them optimistically would have the intake process. Baked into what they were doing. And they were the ones who were able to make it actually work.

Jan Roos: But what you're saying is that you guys have a process where you're able to take that out of people's hands. That's super interesting. So walk me through how you guys ended up arriving at that process and, what kind of goes into it?

James Viola: Yeah. Yeah. So it was definitely born out of necessity, right?

James Viola: It wasn't like we were just like, oh, let's innovate this way to, automate lead nurturing and automate the intake process for our attorneys. It was born out of necessity in that, even though we would generate a certain number of leads and knew that, x amount of them were implausible, eventually we would find that people would be end up replying to our clients and saying, Hey, I chose this way over here, or I chose that me here over there or [00:05:00] whatever the case may be.

James Viola: And that definitely has to do with a few different things in our estimation of that the speed to, to the lead is certainly one factor there. And then the other thing is like the candor during the intake process. So those are two different things, but we're able to help with both.

James Viola: Because we've seen the firm, our firms that perform best versus the ones that don't close as many deals. And really what ends up being the biggest difference is a, like I said, that the speed in which we respond to the lead in the first place to get them either scheduled or get them on the line with the firm, and then also, the way that the firm handles that lead once they're on the phone with them.

James Viola: And obviously how do we know that? Because our CRM is also. Tracking and reporting calls and things of that nature, so that we can actually review that intake process with the firm, and if it needs improvement, help them to improve the fund. Because the [00:06:00] bottom line is, The firm's first job is to make sure that the person knows that they called the right place, right?

James Viola: They need to know that they called the right firm and they made the right decision by scheduling with your firm, rather than just going straight for the juggler and be like, Hey, by the way, our retainer is 5, 000. So you have that in your back pocket or no, because the bottom line is like 82 percent of the country doesn't have that in their back pocket.

James Viola: The job of the firm is the first, when we've done our job and got somebody beyond our series of questioning inside the CRM and things of that nature, and got them on the phone with the firm's job at that point, the first job is to make them feel reassured that they've made the right decision by choosing that firm to consult with.

James Viola: Then you talk about dollars and cents, and hopefully you're going to be flexible in your payment options. And things of that nature as well. And that's really what we've seen is the difference between a firm that closes 20 percent of the leads versus [00:07:00] a firm that closes maybe 2 or 3 percent of the leads, right?

James Viola: And really the difference is night and day.

Jan Roos: Yeah, I was going to say, that's, if anyone's a fan of Grant Cardone, there's your 10x right there. You got a couple extra, but I know as far as the brass tacks go when you're talking about the amount of, if somebody wanted to do this organically, and I think we're going to segue into the the automation part.

Jan Roos: As far as the touch points that go into how long is that sequence? What, are we talking days, weeks, months, even what can it take between the initial contact and eventually getting somebody into the office?

James Viola: Yeah, no, it's a super. Super appropriate question there, John. And the reality is it really depends on the behavior of the prospect, right?

James Viola: So if the prospect opts in, meaning they fill out a lead form. And for us, the lead form is the reason for contacting the firm, meaning whether it's divorce or child custody or visitation, whatever the case may be. The reason they're contacting the firm, first name, last name, email, phone. That's opt in, right?

James Viola: So that person is now [00:08:00] opted in. Now, if they opt in and then go right to the booking page and book, they're going to go into a sequence that's going to encourage them to show up for their consult, and it's also going to ask them a little bit more details about their scenario. As I alluded to earlier, we can try to pre qualify or even disqualify as many people as possible prior to them even getting on the phone with the firm, right?

James Viola: Because, you'll get people who straight up ask right within the CRM, do you do pro bono or something like along those lines? And, of course, that's not really what the firm is looking to provide. And obviously, that these canned responses, people would be like, hey The initial consultation is free, but no, of course, there's going to be a charge depending on your scenario is what will dictate how much that, that charge is going to be.

James Viola: That's really what dictates what ends up happening because if you just book right away, they're just going to go into a reminder sequence and, maybe it's only a day long in that [00:09:00] scenario, right? Like I, I opted on Wednesday. I booked for Thursday. My my nursery sequence only takes me up to the call and I get on the call right now.

James Viola: Let's say somebody opts in, but then they don't look right. That's where it's going to be extended because it's okay, we're going to give them three touch points within the first. 15 minutes or so, and then we're going to space it out, maybe one 30 minutes later, and then we're probably going to give them the rest of the day off in terms of touching it, right?

James Viola: And then we'll touch them again the next day on a couple of different channels and so on and so forth. And that type of drip will typically only last about five days. But then what we do is that once every 30 days with leads who've gone dormant, meaning they haven't told us yes or no, good, bad, or otherwise, we're going to We'll run a reactivation campaign on those people once every 30 days, right?

James Viola: So that is the way that we approach it. Now, of course, if you have a firm who's [00:10:00] willing to outbound dial those leads on top of the stuff that we're already doing, it's only going to increase the amount that we're able to convert. But we've basically gotten to a point where we don't even expect that.

James Viola: We don't make it a requirement. We don't expect you to outbound dial those leads three times or X amount of times. Because, basically between a ringless voicemail, a text message and an email, we're and the way that we have the language in our follow up sequences, we make it very much conversational, right?

James Viola: It's not like very marketing type language. It's super conversational language. So we're doing our best to emulate the idea that A human being at the firm is following up with them, even through automation.

Jan Roos: Yeah. So one thing that I wanted to ask from a technical perspective is, I think you mentioned that there's a, you have these agents that are primarily working through chat and text messages, that kind of thing.

Jan Roos: So how have you been able to get people on those channels? Do you see any situations where people choose to respond over [00:11:00] email versus the callback versus the voicemail? And I guess in a, in the bigger sense, like how do you end up working in these agents to help people? Take it from the automated part to that, that last, 20 percent where it's important to have a human interaction.

James Viola: Yeah, absolutely. No, it's a fair point. And honestly, Don't get me wrong. Obviously a lot of people are leaning toward that ISA route where they're actually having callers and things of that nature. For us, what we ultimately want to do is pre qualify these people prior to them getting on the phone with the firm as much as possible.

James Viola: And what you just mentioned is super appropriate, right? So like with the CRM linked leads that we use basically. Everything is all there in one coherent thread, right? If somebody calls, obviously you can tell they're the type of person who likes to pick up the phone and call someone, right?

James Viola: And then vice versa, if they respond to a text or they respond to an email, then our agents are going to respond in kind, right? And the cool thing about that is, you're really able to figure [00:12:00] out the preferred method of communication for that particular individual. For many Prospects, it is going to be text message.

James Viola: That is the overwhelming most popular form of communication that we have with the overwhelming majority of our leads. But that doesn't mean that there aren't a certain percentage of people that prefer to talk on the phone or a certain percentage of people who prefer email over text. And if somebody, if somebody were to, let's say, have all these systems kind of band aided together the way that we used to have to do it when, when they weren't all under one roof. Somebody might respond to you via email and you might not get it and then you might text them, right?

Yeah, that

James Viola: really is disjointed because, They've already responded to you via email. So obviously that's the way that you should be replying to them. And that's exactly what we have. Our account managers do is, they're armed with kind of a library of templates that we've already tested with dozens of other firms.

James Viola: And trust me, we've [00:13:00] tested a bunch of responses that didn't work, they didn't get wise. So the only ones that we. Give to our account managers are the ones that have elicited a positive response in the past. The benefit there is Although it's not going to get a hundred percent response rate the likelihood of getting that positive response using The messaging that we've already tested in the past is much higher

Jan Roos: Yeah.

Jan Roos: I want to like highlight that as well for anyone who's listening. And this is the thing too, like when you have a really awesome, sophisticated automation platform, sometimes people go in and this is never something who is experienced with running these kinds of platforms will have an expectation for, but there is no system where there's a hundred percent magic bullet reply.

Jan Roos: That's going to get everyone on the phone. It's about making the percentage of people who get to the next step high every time. And that's what what James has been talking about here. Yeah. But I actually find it fascinating too, that that you found that SMS is the thing, cause it's I've honestly never run the analysis on it, but on, on the stuff that for art, but it's just I can't help but think of the people who have been buying the infusion soft [00:14:00] dream and just think that they have this magical email machine.

Jan Roos: That's going to be taking them all the way, because if if you don't have SMS and for people who are doing it, they're finding that SMS to the channel or calling is the channel. Then. At best, you're, at best, you're leaving money on the table. And at worst, you're losing deals because you're having these disjointed client experiences with people who aren't getting the either the, or they're getting hit by multiple agents or multiple people at your firm, or just not getting followed up with because they're assuming that somebody else is going to be doing it.

Jan Roos: So I think the integration is a super important. Super interesting thing as well. And yeah, I'm just curious as far as like the type of things too, cause this is one of the I'll just put my devil's advocate for a little bit too. There's people always say, look, if somebody was a high net worth person, then why would they be responding to a Facebook ad or a Google ad?

Jan Roos: As far as getting so when don't these people know attorneys and what kind of experiences have you been. Finding with the types of cases and the volume of cases that you've been having with people within your program.

James Viola: Yeah. The bottom line is when it comes right down to [00:15:00] the way that we're able to filtrate them, maybe not on the platform, but post, we're able to get what their annual household income was prior to the separation.

James Viola: So obviously we're looking for in most cases that 80k plus through 100k plus rent range and things of that future. Of course you don't always get it, but I think that people who are affordable owners know this, but there's plenty of there's plenty of scenarios where, a family makes 50, 000 a year, but they have a house that's paid off.

none: So

James Viola: as long as they're having those assets that. need to be separated and in that nature. Going to make it you case that that the a looking for. Plus, I mean doesn't happen this way e Even if it's just your standard 5, 000 retainer, right? When you're getting leads as low as sometimes 10 bucks, yeah. And you're converting one out of 50, even, right? [00:16:00] Even if it's just one out of 50, which really our rate is higher than that. Even if it's just one out of 50, you're talking about what? 500 bucks for 5, 000. right there. 10X return. I think most people are going to take it. And of course you don't want to put people in a position where They pay your retainer and then they can't pay anything else.

James Viola: The other cool thing is, and I don't know if you've looked at this at all, Jan, but there are specific companies that will do lending for legal retainers. Yeah. And they do it down to a pretty low credit score as well, right?

Jan Roos: Yeah. We had a The one that we

James Viola: use is called iQualify and they literally lend as low as 10, 000.

James Viola: 550, I want to say,

Jan Roos: and

James Viola: the attorney gets paid in full. The interest rate isn't that terrible if they are, if they do have decent credit and that's not always the way attorneys are going to want to go. But for us, that's something that we talked to them about during the sales process, right? Is this something you're willing to do, especially given the world that we live in right now?

none: Yeah. [00:17:00]

James Viola: Unfortunately, the reality is, like I said, mentioned earlier in my little stat, 82 percent of the country allegedly can't afford 1, 000,

none: right?

James Viola: If 82 percent of the country can't afford a 1, 000 emergency, then we need to be able to provide those people a way to divide their assets, right? Because Even if they don't have 5, 000 in their back pocket, they probably have 100, 000 in equity or more in their house, so it's not like they're gonna come out of this thing with nothing, as long as you as a lawyer, do your best job for them, right? So as long as we're like flexible and have a little bit of an imagination in terms of okay, Can I help this person? Do they have assets where I'm going to be able to help them maintain their fair share of those assets to where they're going to get their money's worth out of me?

James Viola: Does it make sense for them to potentially, finance my retainer? And if so, then that's the way that I would recommend you proceed [00:18:00] with somebody who doesn't have the cash.

Jan Roos: Yeah, no. And this is the thing we had. I believe it was Rick Lewis from ePay Legal, not iProspect, but I think they, they do similar service.

Jan Roos: And I was fascinated to talk about him about how this stuff works from a technical perspective, but you having not only that, but also seeing how this fits together from the overall intake perspective. I'm just curious, is this something that you're bringing up early in the intake process or even on the ads that you're running for clients?

Jan Roos: Like when do you tend to introduce this or recommend your clients to introduce this to somebody who's in their in their funnel?

James Viola: Yeah. I definitely bring it up throughout the sales process. So maybe not on the introductory call that I had with a firm, but no,

Jan Roos: For the firm with their with, oh, okay.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Yeah.

James Viola: Cool. Yeah. That goes right back to what I was saying toward the beginning of the episode, right? Where I was mentioning that the firm's first job and the way that the firms that are Closing the most deals that I listen to their calls, the way that they handle it is the first thing they do is [00:19:00] care about the person, right?

James Viola: The first thing they do is make sure that they're ensuring that person that they came to the right place, right? And then once that person feels that way and the person wants to know how much it is, right? Not you shoving your retainer down the throat, but the person saying, okay, so how much is this going to cost me once they get to the point where they're comfortable enough to even ask that, then it's yeah that's definitely going to depend on, your specific scenario.

James Viola: So we certainly need to have a, an official consult with with one of our attorneys. But here's what I would tell you is that Our average retainers range from 4, 500 to 9, 000. Is that something you're comfortable with? And if it's not, then you bring up those flexible options, right?

James Viola: And whatever those may be, whether you're using an in house payment plan or whether you actually have something like I qualify, or what was the other one that you said was

James Viola: EPay legal, where they're actually financing it. Being flexible [00:20:00] in that regard is something that in my estimation is something that we have to do me as a business owner, I'm not that rigid either, right?

James Viola: If somebody was like, Hey, I can't pay 10, 000 for this service. Can I pay 5, 000 now and 5, 000 in 30 days? Of course you can change this because it's a business decision to say no, if you don't have 10, 000 in your pocket, you're not good enough to work with me, that's honestly just being a human being, right? That's. That's the way that I look at it. And again, I also like for them to look a little bit further down the line and say, okay, like not only does this person need to be able to afford my retainer, but whenever, hourly rate may come, should it go to trial or whatever the case may be.

James Viola: So I need to figure out if this person is going to actually be able to afford to go all the way through the process. And if they're not right, even if they can, let's say they can afford the initial retainer, what if they have to, like you were saying, yeah, what [00:21:00] if it's a scenario where it's going to be one of those, Things where it's getting up into the 100, 000 range, right?

James Viola: So now you might be talking about somebody who's well qualified as far as credit is concerned And they're going to get a great interest rate on whatever You know money they need to pay the retainer anyway, right? It's really it almost doesn't make sense to not do right? Think about it in terms of purchase size, right?

James Viola: Think about it in terms of buying a car Imagine you went to a car dealer and they were like no like You We literally won't sell you a car unless you have 60 grand in your pocket. You know what I mean? That their businesses wouldn't be able to operate that way. And, there was a time where cars didn't cost as much and people had comparatively more money in general, and, they were able to purchase a car, but that's not.

James Viola: That's not with the way inflation has gone and the way the prices of cars have gone and wages have stagnated. Car dealerships had to change their business model. So [00:22:00] that's just the reality of it, where right now it's not the norm at all. It's not even common to see, attorneys offer biases and things of that nature.

James Viola: But. I would have to say that, before long, like you would assume that it probably will become the norm.

Jan Roos: Yeah. It's super interesting. I just zooming out a little bit. What I find really interesting about the way that you set up your service is that basically, and if we want to run things back five or 10 years, it was like, Hey, look, I'm Jeff, the SEO guy, or I'm, Mike, the AdWords guy or whatever here's your lead.

Jan Roos: Go get them. So not only have you actually created a ton of value in having process for people to do stuff with it with the actual leads are being generated, but you're actually getting people to make decisions to change their business and just suggesting that, which I find super powerful. So it's definitely like awesome.

Jan Roos: And it just it's a bigger picture thing, which I think is going to become the norm for not only agencies, but business as a whole kind of moving forward. And I want it to switch gears a little bit. Because I wanted to talk about link selling and [00:23:00] kind of the work that you've been doing either for LinkedIn in general, but I also find this really fascinating because I don't think we've ever had somebody on the show.

Jan Roos: And it's funny because anyone in this show has made Facebook ads work for family law attorneys, but we also have anyone on the show who has made LinkedIn works for attorneys. So can you tell us a little bit more about that? And yeah, just in general and some of the results you've been getting for attorneys and that that, that bridge.

James Viola: Yeah. Yeah. So basically, so linked leads is an entity that I formed with my partner David has his own agency as well. So we each have our own, agencies, and then we have a a separate entity that we're partnered on. And basically in linked leads, we actually help multiple different types of B2B firms to acquire more clients using LinkedIn organic outreach.

James Viola: We do it in a way that's a little bit unique though because we combine the organic outreach with some email follow up components and also multi channel retargeting. [00:24:00] So the cool thing about the approach is that, I'm sure you've been exposed to it, maybe you know some of the lawyers haven't, but people like to leverage The power of sales now, right?

James Viola: Which is a native LinkedIn platform that has really powerful search functions built right into the platform. So rather than trying to, target X, Y, Z business owner on Facebook ads and spending thousands of dollars to get that going the right way, people like to short, cut the process.

James Viola: Target decision makers in a specific sector inside of LinkedIn and send those decision makers messages inside of LinkedIn, which, in 2016 or 2017 was really all you had to do. You didn't have to get much fancier than that, but as time has progressed and more people have caught on, there's a couple of different things that businesses need to do in order to be able to.

James Viola: Cut through the noise and differentiate themselves from everyone else that's on the platform. And the way that we've been able [00:25:00] to do that is what I just mentioned. So we start with, first of all, selecting a niche, right? So for us, our niche is family owned. So that's, if you go to any of our LinkedIn profiles, anybody who works for our company, That's the niche that we're here to work.

James Viola: So if you're an IP lawyer, or a business bankruptcy lawyer, it's probably not enough to just be specific in that service. You should probably be a specialist in not only the service, but who you deliver the service to. Because the more specific that you can be on LinkedIn, the more you're going to Cut through the noise without getting lost in the weeds.

James Viola: And that's really what we help the firms that we work with to do. We say, okay for instance, we have one particular lawyer that we work with right now that works specifically with like logistic stuff. But if you looked at any other stuff, Like whether it's their main website or linkedin profiles, whatever, you would never know that they were specialists in that particular sector.

James Viola: So [00:26:00] obviously, any of the profiles that we use in order to do prospecting We tailor them to position them as an expert in that space, right? So that's the first thing that we do because ultimately If I send you a connection request young the first thing you're going to do is come to my profile, right?

James Viola: So rather than my profile looking like a resume which is what the majority of LinkedIn profiles look like. It's rather going to look like a customer facing almost like a landing page, right? That's almost what we turn the LinkedIn profile into. And basically outside of the profile optimization, which is what I just glossed over we're also going to have a messaging sequence that coincides with the search that we've done in sales navigator and the profile.

James Viola: And that messaging sequence will typically last for about seven days. It'll be maybe three or four messages in there, and then after that is done, if we haven't gotten a good, so we're gonna get about a 20 [00:27:00] percent response rate out of that sequence, right? That's our minimum metric, let's say. Some of our people 50 percent response.

James Viola: That's either here or there. So out of those people, We're going to sort and sift who's interested and who's not, right? And the people who are interested, we're going to get them booked on our client's calendar so that they can have their initial consultation or discovery call or whatever it is that they refer to us, right?

James Viola: And then for the, let's say it's 20 percent response rate. That means 80 percent didn't respond, good, bad, or otherwise. So we have no idea where they stayed. And the reason for that, Jan, is because There's a lot of people who will connect with you on LinkedIn that literally never check their LinkedIn. So it doesn't mean that they got your messaging and read it and said, oh this guy

none: His message

James Viola: sucks or his offer sucks or whatever.

James Viola: No, they never read your message. So rather than let those 80 percent of people, which is the largest segment of the people that we've connected with slip through the [00:28:00] cracks, we're going to roll those people out into a. Lukewarm email follow up. We call it a lukewarm email follow up because it's like cold email, but you have a basis for your relationship by the fact that you've connected with them in the week.

James Viola: Does that make sense?

James Viola: Cool. So we roll them out into the lukewarm email follow up. And the cool thing about it is we get a super high open rate. And a super high response rate from those email follow up sequences. And it's directly correlated to the fact that we've already connected with the person on LinkedIn, right?

James Viola: Obviously, with that, we're able to pick up a few more bookings for ourselves, our clients, whatever the case may be. Just to be clear, this is a process that we run for our own lead generation. Not just lawyers, right? The other facets are the fact that we are also going to roll them into multiple custom audiences or multi channel retarget, right?

James Viola: So the way that we do that is every time we connect with someone, we get their email address, that email address is automatically [00:29:00] zapped into a custom audience in Facebook ads, so we can serve them as on Facebook and Instagram. And then also a software called AdRoll. And the reason we use AdRoll is because.

James Viola: It enables you to zap people into a custom audience like that and serve ads to them on Google Display Network, Native Advertising Networks, LinkedIn, which is where we initially connected.

none: Wow. Yeah.

James Viola: And a couple other placements. So really what's awesome about this, Jan, is that you can literally use like a 5 or 10 a day budget, right?

James Viola: And you can be everywhere to these people. And the reason for that is because. It's only the people that you've connected with, right? So let's do the math. Let's say we reach out to 2, 500 people a month. We get a 20 percent connection rate, which is our minimum metric. So you're talking about 500 people who are getting added to your custom audience on a monthly basis.

James Viola: Guess what? It's not that expensive to stay in front of 500 people paid ads, [00:30:00]

none: right?

James Viola: So if that's all you got in your audience, And you're only spending five or 10 bucks a day. Those 500 people are going to be like, man, this guy's everywhere. He's killing it.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And if they ask their friends in the industry, they all have the same thing to say.

James Viola: It really enables you to have that omnipresent feel without having, the budget. A gigantic corporation.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And that's a super cool thing too, because it's really interesting. One of the things that I really, and I'm starting to see the commonalities in the process that you guys are running for Facebook and the process for LinkedIn, because the key is if you don't have a process to.

Jan Roos: Do something with the people who aren't saying yes right now. The ability to follow up with people over time and get that conversational filtration. Oh, I'm talking like an engineer, but like the conversational filtering is going to be really key to keeping those people out and also keeping your calendar clean as far as that goes.

Jan Roos: And that's, would I be correct to say more or less, it's a similar thing that's happening with the sequences, whether it's on LinkedIn or on Facebook.

James Viola: Yeah. [00:31:00] Absolutely. And the other thing is, With our tonality, especially in LinkedIn, like we're not very salesy, right?

James Viola: We're not like really going for the jugular when it comes to LinkedIn, which is atypical of what you'll normally see. And the reason for that is because, that's what a lot of people do, right? Straight up go right for the jugular. And, I guess it works if somebody just happens to be like hot and ready to go.

James Viola: At that very second, but for everyone else, it's going to be a little bit of a turnoff, right?

James Viola: But you know the amazing thing is That like we've lived I literally had A lady who I sent a connection to request to september 22nd 2017 She responded back on august 24th of 2020.

Wow.

James Viola: We've been my client for three months You know what I mean?

James Viola: So that's the reason why We don't You know go too hard or go for the [00:32:00] juggler right now to me because it's like, linkedin is something where you don't want to tarnish your brand right while you're doing prospect. You want to be able to Prospect without doing damage to your brand at the same time So there's a very specific way or a kind of a fine line to tow That you're going to want to be able to say, okay, like You We're doing enough to let them know this is the service that we offer.

James Viola: We're really good at it. This, that, and the third, but we're not, we're also not being overbearing to the point where, we're trying to be lost at an alarming rate.

none: Yeah.

James Viola: So that's really our strategy. And honestly, the reason that David and I teamed up is because David accidentally tried prospecting me one day back in 2017 in LinkedIn, right?

James Viola: And being that I was already doing the same thing to acquire my own clients, I was like, Oh man, that's cool. What are you doing? What software are you using? Are you doing this or you're [00:33:00] not? And he's Oh no, I didn't even know you could do all that stuff. That's crazy. And I'm like, yeah, what are your numbers look like?

James Viola: And his numbers were better than mine, even though I was doing all this extra stuff. So I'm like, Oh man, this guy must have his messaging and his targeting and all that stuff dialed in. Cause he's doing as good or better than me. And I'm doing all this extra stuff, this email follow up and retargeting is that the third.

James Viola: So when we combined our processes, that's where we're going to put together something that was like really dope.

James Viola: And really carried me all the way up until this year. I would say like March or April of this year. Is the first time I really ever started running cold pay traffic for our own agency, right?

James Viola: Up until then, LinkedIn was our, was the lifeblood of our agency. That was literally the only thing that we used. So what ended up happening was that after David and I teamed up, it was born out of demand rather than us [00:34:00] Oh, we should this partnership and go, sell this service to people.

James Viola: It was more like, other people in the agency space, other people were asking us like, oh, how do you guys do that? You know what I mean? And after, doing a couple master classes and this, that, and third, Dana and I were just like, all man, let's just form a complete completely separate entity and we'll teach people how to do this.

James Viola: Or if they want us to do it for them, we'll just do it for them, whatever the case may be. You know what I mean? But it's unique in that it wasn't something that we planned on or, plotted on.

Yeah. It was

James Viola: something that was really born out of demand rather than out of us thinking that was a great idea.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And it sounds like it's like you guys almost have like some of the like elemental. Yeah. Approaches to marketing, right? There's the technology like angle. And then sounds like Dave's got like a big time of the it's got the hustle and the copywriting sort of thing.

Jan Roos: And when you can get the best of all worlds, I'm sure that contributes to the success that you guys have been having. All right. Awesome, man. I know we're getting to the end of the hour, [00:35:00] but it's been super awesome to talk to you. And we got two really interesting and very diverse topics and the CRM and the Facebook follow up and also LinkedIn.

Jan Roos: So if anyone has been liking what they're hearing, what's the best way for somebody to get in touch with you?

James Viola: Yeah. For family law, it's just, it's a pretty simple website address, although it might not be the easiest one to spell it's family law accelerator. com. And then for linked leads. We really don't do that much in terms of selling stuff without, really just getting on the phone with people or whatever the case may be, but we do, we did write a book and that book is.

James Viola: I guess technically it is available for purchase now. So that is linked leads book. com. So that's that book is not, it's not like a lead magnet book or anything like that. It's like a literally a hundred page book that describes our entire process. Basically, what I just summarized the new and more depth, so [00:36:00] that's really the only thing that we had there. Like I said, that was born out of out of demand rather than us planning it. That's pretty much the two different things that we discussed in terms of how they would be able to potentially access this.

Jan Roos: All right. Awesome, man. So it's super appreciate both of those.

Jan Roos: And as far as yeah, depending, I don't think there's probably a ton of the Venn diagram for people that both is probably pretty slim, but depending on which one, depending on which one. But yeah, no, I think it's a really great resource. Guys, I want everyone to pay attention to some of the commonalities.

Jan Roos: And another thing I want to say is that we talked about a lot of different things. So the process is obviously super important, but if we start from that base assumption that a bunch of people that are reaching out are not going to be able to buy right now, you got to be there to play and you got to make sure you're following up with the way that James is great.

Jan Roos: It's, but it's super important to think about this stuff in the longterm. So thank you so much for being here. sharing all that stuff with us, James, and for everyone else, I'll see you guys in another episode of the law firm growth podcast next Tuesday at [00:37:00] 8am. Eastern.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to the law firm growth podcast for show notes, free resources, and more head on over to case fuel.

Narrator: com slash podcast. Looking forward to catching up on the next episode.