Nowadays, Marketing can be found in so many forms and be applied in so many ways that it is really important to have some criteria and pick the things and strategies that really make sense from a marketing standpoint.
In this episode, Jim, Tyson and Lee Rosen go through a list of marketing rules and tactics you should avoid when running your own law firm.
1. Sometimes you are already doing enough and the thing that you are doing have a lot of potential to grow. You need to go deeper, not broader. Stick to what you are good at and what’s working
You are already doing plenty, just keep going with that, don’t add something new to the mix.
2. You ought to pass on a marketing tactic if you don’t understand it.
Do not put money on the line for things you don’t understand.
3. Feel it in your guts. If you feel a tactic it’s not for you, then it’s not for you. DON’T DO IT.
You ought to be excited and energized about any marketing idea you are considering.
4. Don’t do the marketing tactic because somebody else is doing it.
Pick your own tactic, the one that works for you.
5. Don’t do things that don’t work.
If you are being pitched on a tactic and there is no evidence that it works, don’t believe it works just because this company is still pitching it to you. Get references, real life lawyers. Don’t buy it unless the vendor can prove to you that it actually works.
6. You don’t trust the vendor: STAY AWAY.
Trust your instincts.
7. Commitment. There is no reason in the world we live in today, to sign a 1, 2 or 3 year deal.
The things that today work best for us, involve no commitment.
8. Ethics. Beware of unethical tactics.
9. Expensive tactic. Today, we can market our practices on a small budget.
There are incredible possibilities!
Hacking’s Hack: An app: Google Keep. https://www.google.com/keep/
Screenshots, tasks, notes, you name it.
Tyson’s Tip: iPhone app: Chartistic. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/charting-app-chartistic/id1127272574?mt=8
It allows you to easily create charts from your phone.
Lee’s Tip: An A.I. (artificial inteligence) personal assistant: https://x.ai/
It provides you with an artificially intelligent bot that helps you with scheduling meetings!
Another A.I. personal assistant but for travelling: https://pana.com/
A gift from Lee! https://divorcediscourse.com/ri/get-rosens-rules/
The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.
Resources:
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Transcript: Lee Rosen: Rules for Passing on a Marketing Tactic
Lee Rosen
I think there are a lot of things we ought to be doing in terms of our marketing. But we also need to have some criteria for rejecting those ideas. For some of us, we see shiny objects. And when we get distracted, and everything seems like it would be a good idea, and you have a hard time focusing. And so I’m trying to help people out by talking about this topic. I’m trying to help them to separate the wheat from the chaff and pick the things that really make sense from a marketing standpoint.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm, the right away. This is the maximum liar podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking, and Tyson metrics.
Jim Hacking
Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer podcast. I’m your host, Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Tyson music’s Jimmy, we’ve got an awesome guest today, Lee Rosen. I think you and I are both really excited about him coming on today.
Jim Hacking
Lee, thanks for joining us.
Lee Rosen
I appreciate you inviting me
Jim Hacking
can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your practice?
Lee Rosen
Sure, I can do that I started my firm in 1990. The old I got out of law school back in 87, went to Wake Forest University in North Carolina, and built my practice there, we do family law, and we have four offices, and about a dozen lawyers all doing family law. And I did that for a long time. And then started blogging. And that’s how you guys stumbled across me. I started a blog called divorce discourse probably seven or eight years ago, and started writing about law practice marketing and management, technology, finance, that sort of thing for small firm lawyers.
Tyson Mutrux
Lee, I’m curious about the divorce discourse part of it, because we’re gonna get to our topic in a second. But when did you really realize that the divorce discourse.com started really take off, you know,
Lee Rosen
it’s always gotten a lot of feedback for me, I’ve never paid much attention to the statistics, I pay a lot of attention to the law firm, I’ve always felt like, you know, that was my primary activity was running the law firm and practicing law. And divorce discourse was really sort of a side project to, to help others. You know, I really felt like it was one of those things where I knew a little bit about this, and I could help lawyers that were coming along. And at some point, it became clear that a lot of folks were reading it and the ABA started giving it their awards for you know, the blog 100. And every year we would win our category and the popular vote. So it was sort of hard to ignore. And I got more and more interested in in that whole arena of what I was working on, and built out sort of a membership site. And I started doing workshops for lawyers, and had been doing all of that for I guess, three or four years. So it has turned into kind of a side business that actually generates income at this point. And it’s it’s really a lot of fun. I mean, in a lot of ways, it’s a real diversion from practicing laws.
Jim Hacking
Lee, tell us a little bit about those workshops, our mutual friend Tyson and my mutual friend Steve Bartel went to one of yours. I think it was in Chicago about two years ago, and he spoke very highly of it. Can you tell our listeners sort of what you do at those workshops?
Lee Rosen
Well, I don’t do them very often, I do them. I’ve done them probably 20 times around the world. And I’m not spending much time in the United States anymore. And so I doing them periodically. But it’s a really intense day with 10 lawyers, and we brainstorm and share ideas and talk about marketing and management and technology. And I have always taken sort of a radically different approach to doing a lot of these things. And I pass that along in the workshops. So for some folks, it really is kind of a perspective changing experience, they begin to see their practices very differently than they had before. And so in that way, it’s kind of an exciting day.
Tyson Mutrux
All right, Lee, I think we could probably ask you questions all day, but let’s get into the topic of the day, it’s 12 reasons to pass on a marketing tactic. You just want to tell us just generally what the topic is about and then go right into number one.
Lee Rosen
Yeah, you know, we are all presented with all these opportunities to do marketing in one way or another. And sometimes those opportunities are presented in the form of, you know, a phone call from some vendor trying to sell us something. Or sometimes we’re talking to another lawyer who’s telling us, oh, I’m having great results with this or with that, or often we just see somebody down the street doing something and we think, well, it must be working for them, we ought to do it. And I think there are a lot of things we ought to be doing in terms of our marketing, but we also need to have some criteria for rejecting those ideas. For some of us. We see shiny objects and when we get distracted and everything seems like it would be a good idea and we have a hard time And focusing. And so I’m trying to help people out by talking about this topic. I’m trying to help them to separate the wheat from the chaff and pick the things that really make sense from a marketing standpoint. And so the first rule that I really like to help people with on this, as I said, Look, sometimes you’re already doing enough, and the things that you are doing have lots of potential to grow. And you need to go deeper, not broader. So you know, I’ll meet a lawyer that’s doing great with networking, but they still have free time. And the last thing they need to do is go learn how to do pay per click advertising from Google, they need to stick with what they’re good at, and what’s working. And so my first thought on passing on a mound marketing topic or tactic is, hey, you’re already doing plenty, just keep going with that don’t add something new to the mix right now.
Jim Hacking
I think that’s phenomenal. Tyson was probably giggling when you were talking about people who have shiny object syndrome. So I’m struggling with that all the time. But the go deeper? I think that’s right. I think that too many people try to do too many things at once, instead of just focusing on whatever’s working for them, or whatever feels right for their personality.
Lee Rosen
Yeah, I think it ought to be sort of a guiding principle for all of us. The other thing that comes up a lot, and we all bumped into this is you want to pass on a tactic, if you don’t understand it. And that happens to all of us a lot, we get these pitches from vendors, and I analogize it to my experience with the financial gurus, they always say don’t invest if you don’t understand the investment. So there are a million investments, you know, I pass on, I don’t want to invest in stock futures or options, or, you know, forex currency trading, or I mean, I don’t understand any of that stuff. So I pass on it. And that advice is good advice. When it comes to marketing, when you get somebody on the phone trying to pitch you on search engine optimization, or they want to do remarketing or you know, they’re baffling you with baloney about Facebook look alike audiences, if you’re willing to invest the time to understand it, then maybe it makes sense. But if you don’t get it, and you’re not going to figure it out, stay away, do not put money on the line for things you don’t understand.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s really interesting, Lee, that you said that because I had a call just the other day, I think was last week from one of the usual suspects. And I was asking them how it worked. And I couldn’t figure it out. And they couldn’t explain it. And so I was just getting so frustrated. And I’d actually talked to another attorney that Jim and I know Chris Feeny. And he had the exact same conversation with the exact same company. And you’re right, if they can’t explain it, if you can’t understand it, just pass on it. So
Lee Rosen
many of us just listen to those pitches and think, Well, it sounds good. We don’t understand it. But we’ll throw money at it and see what happens. It’s just a bad idea. The other Biggie in this arena, is a marketing tactic that we when something comes up that you just know, in your gut, you hear a pattern and you think, yeah, we should do this. But you don’t want to do it. The best example is launching a program in your firm for networking, some of us love to go to lunch, you know, we love meeting new people, we love to go to events, we’re excited by that. And others of us just want to curl up in a fetal position under the conference room table and pretend it’s not happening. And if that’s the way you feel about a tactic, this is not the tactic for you, you ought to be excited and energized about whatever marketing idea it is that you are considering, just skip on those things. Don’t do them. If you’re not excited about it, you don’t want to do it, don’t do it, there are plenty of things you can do.
Jim Hacking
I think that’s a great mindset. You know, I really enjoy shooting YouTube videos. And I’ve gotten a lot of pleasure out of making those and having the interactions afterwards, where I’m just sort of explaining immigration law concepts to people. And that’s something I enjoy and going out. And networking is not necessarily something that I enjoy. And so diving into things that we really like or that fit our personality, I think that’s brilliant,
Lee Rosen
right? Have some fun with this, you know, don’t get bogged down and things that make you miserable. Now, one way we get bogged down in this, and this leads me into this next little bit of advice here is don’t do the marketing tactic because somebody else is doing it. And I see this constantly where the lawyer down the street is doing something it could be you know, something crazy, like wrapping your car in, you know, your firm name or, you know, we all see other law firms doing these things, and we get sucked in if the competition is doing it, we ought to be doing it. There are so many ways to build your practice. You don’t need to jump on the bandwagon just because one of your competitors is doing it. I think we get jealous we get distracted by knowing they’re doing it and we feel like oh, we’re out. That’s not a good reason. Pick your own tactic. Pick the one that works for you. Don’t bother with copying the other people. That’s another bad idea. You want to stay away from those tactics. I
Tyson Mutrux
think it’s a Mark Twain quote, he says, if you see everyone doing one thing, do something else. It’s the same thing with lawyers. In like lawyer advertising, Ben Glass talks about this quite a bit where if all the attorneys are doing one thing, you may want to do something else, because you’re just going to be going in with the crowd. And there’s more competition. So that’s great advice. Lee,
Jim Hacking
we have a friend who opened up his own law firm, and he he jumped on a billboard, he got a huge billboard, I think it cost him $20,000. And he didn’t get one case out of it. So I think your point is well taken
Lee Rosen
well, and that really leads me to another tip on this. And that is don’t do things that don’t work. That seems self evident, right. Obviously, you don’t want to do things that don’t work. But the bottom line is, we don’t always know if they work or not. And these marketing companies, I think one of the ways we believe we can discern a good plan from a bad plan or a good tactic from a bad tactic is if the marketing company has been around for a while. A good example of that is these companies that do what they refer to as matching, legal matching, wink, wink, some of these companies have been around for a long time, and I’ve not met many lawyers who’ve had good luck with these things. If you’re being pitched on a tactic, and there’s no evidence that it works, don’t believe it works, just because this company is still pitching it to you, or has been pitching it for a long time. Make sure you get references from these vendors and talk to real life, other lawyers that are having success with these tactics, a whole bunch of this stuff is just garbage. And it’s a waste of your time and your money and it doesn’t work. Don’t buy it unless the vendor can prove to you that it actually works.
Tyson Mutrux
Lee, I know a company you’re talking about. And Jimmy will appreciate this because that company has a great nine word email that they send out. And I don’t know if you’ve gotten the email Lee, but I’ve gotten it where they say we try to call your office, are you still looking for a marketing tactic or something like that they’ve got a bunch of good ones where it says, I thought you were interested in such and such services, they’re really good about sending these emails to really get you to try to respond to them. And I know what company you’re talking about. I’ve never used them. I’ve never heard anybody that uses them either.
Lee Rosen
Well, and you make a point. And that leads me right into this next reason to pass on a marketing tactic. And that is you don’t trust the vendor. And it is so obvious when some of these folks call or contact you, they just stink, they give off a really bad vibe, they have a bad smell. You need to trust your instincts when you feel that way. And if you’ve been practicing law for 20 minutes, you’ve gotten calls from people trying to sell you leads or search engine optimization or local advertising. And they just reek. I mean, you can literally smell it through the phone. If you don’t have a sense of trust, stay away from these people.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, you said earlier that you were old. I’m old too. And when I started my practice, it was the yellow pages, the the Yellow Pages, salesperson would come calling. And they would tell you, you know, you gotta have a quarter page ad or a trunk ad or, you know, a two page ad and they were just trying to, you know, their incentive is not to get you calls, their incentive is to sell as much ad space in the medium that they can. So I think that young attorneys, new attorneys really get taken advantage of,
Lee Rosen
they really do. And when you signed up for those yellow pages, you were making a minimum of a 12 month commitment. And I think that’s another big red flag and a reason to pass on a marketing tactic. And that is when they want a commitment. There is no reason in the world we live in today to sign a one year or a two year over a three year deal, like a lot of these vendors try to suck you into the reality today is that the things that work the best for us involve no commitment. If you want to advertise and you go to Google AdWords, you can commit for 10 seconds, you know, you can walk away 10 seconds after you start. And if you want to build a professional network, and you change your mind, well, again, there’s no contract, you decide to stop doing that you can stop the very effective ways to build your network or your practice today, do not involve signing a deal. And I feel like these vendors who want you to sign on for the long haul, they do that because they know you’re gonna want out. And boy, you can find articles all over the web on, you know, strategies for getting out of these contracts with these vendors. But it’s tough. I know people that have gone to court to litigate trying to get out of their contracts with marketing vendors. Today. There’s just no reason to sign on for any sort of commitment. You don’t need to do it.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I’ve been to court in the county. And I’ve seen that when the Yellow Page attorney has their call docket. They have all their people that they’re suing that for not paying on Yellow Page ads that didn’t go well.
Lee Rosen
Right. Yeah. And I think there are a whole lot of these website vendors that we all deal with, that also want long term commitments, and it’s because often their stuff doesn’t work over the long term. If it was going to work. They wouldn’t need commitment, because you’d be too Real to keep paying them. So you got to watch out for that. You know, one of the other big reasons to watch out on these marketing tactics is that some of them, you’re going to wonder if they’re ethical. And today, we live in a world where the ethics rules haven’t necessarily kept up with the marketing tactics, the technology is changing so fast. So, you know, when you have an opportunity, for instance, to upload your clients email addresses to Facebook so that you can remarket additional services to those clients, which I think is a really fascinating marketing tactic. But does it violate the ethics rules? You know, when you upload those email addresses? Are you giving away confidential information? I haven’t seen a lot of opinions addressing that. But it makes me worry. Same, if you want to create a look alike audience on Facebook, you know, there are all sorts of tactics today with the technology that make you worry about whether they’re really a good idea. You want to err on the side of being ethical, even if it’s just following the spirit of the rules. Lee, I
Tyson Mutrux
think you’re exactly right. I think that the ethics rules, definitely they’re old, they’re out of date. I’m not sure if any state in the country has up to date ethics rules, but at least in Missouri, we can call the ethics hotline and get an informal opinion. I don’t know if you can do that where you are. Are you in North Carolina?
Lee Rosen
Is that where you are? North Carolina? And yeah, but you know what, you ask them this question whether you can upload those email addresses to create a look alike audience, be willing to bet almost anything, they have no idea how to answer that. So if you push the envelope, you’re going to be living on the edge.
Tyson Mutrux
I absolutely agree. I guess one way around that maybe to get a waiver or some sort of marketing waiver from a client. But anything you do, it’s still kind of skating on thin ice, I completely agree with you.
Lee Rosen
And these things can come back to bite you. And I’ll give you one last reason to avoid a tactic today. And that is, if it’s expensive, we can market our practices on a small budget today, there are incredible opportunities, doing things like Pay Per Click advertising, building websites, producing blogs, doing what you guys are doing with podcasting, there’s just no reason to invest Big Bucks anymore. Back in the day, when we had to commit to a 12 month contract on a, you know, a full spread in the yellow pages, and you had to pay $5,000 A month or whatever it was that was then today, now you just don’t need to commit to a big budget. And so inexpensive marketing tactics can be just as effective, if not more effective. And if I’m presented with any options that just feel too expensive. I’m not convinced that today you need them, I think you can do this all on a budget and have really good results.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I was in a Marketing Group, a website marketing group, and I was paying close to $1,000 a month for that. And basically, I moved it all over to a WordPress site, I was the one creating my own content. And so now I went from spending 1000s of dollars a year to spending, you know, $30 a month. So it’s my costs have gone way down. And you’re right. In this day and age, there’s so many options, and so many variables that allow us to do things on a lot cheaper basis that I think you’re right,
Lee Rosen
yeah, it just makes sense to go with the lower budget option. And at least see how it works. You know, if it’s working really well, and you want to commit to something bigger, go for it. But I would shy away from anybody who walks in asking you for big bucks. And you guys, I’m sure having this experience, it’s not unusual for one of these vendors to walk into your office and not just ask for $1,000 for a website, but to want to sell you a website for 1000s of dollars. And then they want to add a search engine optimization package to it and double that. And then they want to add content production to it and triple it. And the number very quickly becomes way, way too big. And it just doesn’t need to be that way.
Tyson Mutrux
And I think that like you said, Lee, if you’ve been doing this for any amount of time, all the big names come out at you, they whatever it is they charge a lot of money up front a lot of money a month. And it just especially for a young return, it’s just gonna drain you, you’re gonna be stressed every month trying to make payroll, if you have staff paying for your office, paying for your marketing efforts, and it’s just can be a real drain on you. I know we’re getting close to about nine, about nine minutes. I don’t wanna take up too much of your time. So I want to go out and do the hack of the week, the tip of the week, and then you also have something you’re gonna suggest as well. So Jimmy, you want to do your hack of the week.
Jim Hacking
So I’m a big Google Apps guy. I spent a lot of time in Google Apps and they’ve come up with I think what they view as their competitor to Evernote, which is Google Keep. So you can do screenshots. You can do tasks, you can do notes, and it’s supposed to there’s a Chrome extension for it. And I’ve just started playing around with it. But I’ve never been an Evernote person, but I understand the utility of it. And I just didn’t do Evernote because I spend so much time in Google. So I’m excited about Google Keep and I’ll report back on how it’s working for me.
Tyson Mutrux
Fantastic. And I have an iPhone app. I’m not sure if it’s on Android yet but it’s called Chartist stick, and actually allows you to easily create charts from your phone, you can use them in ads, you can use them for trial, you can use them for whatever, it’ll take you minutes, all you have to have is the data, you put it in there, you plug in the numbers, and is really great, you can do it in minutes, I think it’s a really great tool that I’m gonna start using, leave what you got for us?
Lee Rosen
Well, I am a big fan of an AI, artificial, intelligent personal assistant, called x.ai. And what it does is it provides you with an artificially intelligent bot, that helps you with scheduling meetings. So if I were to send you an email Jim or an email Tyson and say, hey, I want to set up a meeting over the course of the next two weeks, I would simply copy my AI assistant amy@x.ai. And Amy would then interact with you and schedule that meeting in accordance with a lot of rules that she had learned from me in advance. And we would have all the interaction we need to get that meeting all set, and Amy is a bot, there is no real person there. And you would likely never realize that she wasn’t a real person.
Tyson Mutrux
See, that’s why we had Lee on this podcast because that is incredible. That is a fantastic piece of advice.
Jim Hacking
It sounds like something from outer space, but the guys from arch grants use it. And I actually scheduled an appointment with them a couple months ago, and I was absolutely scratching my head trying to figure out whether the x ai person was a real person or not.
Lee Rosen
Yep, you really don’t have any idea. I’m using all sorts of AI agents for different reasons. I’m using one@panda.com to schedule all my travel and travel full time. So there’s a fair amount of it. But these bots are taking over the world and they really function just like human beings.
Jim Hacking
Pretty soon they’re gonna be filling out immigration forms, I think,
Lee Rosen
Oh, most definitely. You It’s coming. So we better be elevating our of, you know, adding more value all the time. And Lee, would
Tyson Mutrux
you say was panna.com panna pa
Lee Rosen
na.com? Yeah.
Tyson Mutrux
All right. I’m typing in and now
Jim Hacking
we it’s so great to have you on the show. Where can where can our listeners find you? I know divorce discourses where you blog? Where else can they find you, you know,
Lee Rosen
the thing that I can do for the folks that are listening that I think they will find most helpful is to direct them to Rosen’s rules.com. And they will receive 10 rules that I have laid out for turning a soso practice into a thriving practice. These are the rules that I have derived after 30 ish years of figuring this out. And it’s an email sequence that lasts for 10 days, every day, you get a new rule. And I promise you, if you execute on these 10 rules, you will see your practice grow dramatically. It works time after time again, the emails I get from lawyers who say to me, Hey, these rules made a huge difference. Just blow me away. And they they really get me energized every day. But it just works. It’s simple stuff. But it’s stuff that none of us do consistently. Lee,
Tyson Mutrux
I want to thank you as well. It’s a great set of advice. You gave us a lot of good advice. I actually on your website now the 10 rules, and that’s great. I also want to make sure I do play your podcast, the divorce discourse podcast, I listened to it, and yours are much shorter than hours. I like it. You know, it’s six minutes. I think it was the last one. Some are 10 minutes or 15 minutes. I want to make sure people check out your podcast as well.
Lee Rosen
Well, I appreciate it. It was fun to be with you guys. Thankfully. Thank you, Lee. Thanks. Bye bye. Have a good one.
