In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Hayden and David Haskins, owners of Haskins & Company a Law Firm Marketing Company. They will go over their background, their business setup, and their law marketing work and strategies, paying special attention to how to hire the right marketing and social media company for your law firm. Listen to the episode to learn some great tactics to choose the right fit for your company.
Also, Hayden and David have political marketing and campaign work backgrounds, and they took many things from that sphere into law firm marketing… In this episode they will go over some of these lessons learnt…
Their Firm:
https://haskins.co/
“A lot of times Attorneys get into marketing arrangements, contractual agreements, and they are not as familiar with the lay of the land as somebody like us, that have actually seen a lot of the work that’s out there or a lot of the shady tactics that people do… ”
Some of the red flags when hiring an online or offline marketing company:
1. Contractual limits and ownership of content and IT.
2. Transparency and reporting
Please give us a shout out in the ABA JOURNAL’S ranking of podcasts!
Hacking’s hack:
Jim mapped out his ideal week, and going through that exercise has helped him a lot. So, map out your week!
David’s tip: The best SEO book David has ever read! It’s like a Google biography so hopefully it will help you create content that Google likes.
In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
Hayden’s tip: Figure out how to track where your leads are coming from. Get as granular as you possibly can with that information. And figure out what your true cost per case is.
Know where your leads are coming from with: https://www.callrail.com/
Tyson’s tip:
Move Pay for a private server. It’s more expensive but it will speed up your website.
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Transcripts: The Right Marketing Company and Strategy For Your Law Firm ft. David and Hayden Haskins
David and Hayden Haskins
Something that, you know, we try to carry over with our social strategy with a lot of attorneys is, you know, hey, there’s no magic pill for a lot of this. You have to just be out in the community. And you can accentuate all that with social. But if you’re not really ingratiate community, then things aren’t going to work as well as you think they are on social, like, you’re not just gonna go put up, you know, make a funny post and then all of a sudden get cases off of it. You got to be somebody that did the community and that folks really trust.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.
Jim Hacking
You’re back on the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking
Tyson Mutrux
and tastes and metrics. Jimmy how’s your drive to Indianapolis?
Jim Hacking
Indianapolis I got a naturalization interview meet with some new clients on an interesting case. And then I just got back from vacation in Panama City, Florida with the kids and a mine. And I took a break in the middle of the vacation to go up to Chicago for my quarterly Strategic Coach meeting which got me all pumped up for all the kinds of things that we like to talk about on this show. How about you?
Tyson Mutrux
I’m just prepping for trial of that next week. And so it’s been really a fun trial. Other than that, I haven’t been doing a whole lot. I guess we took a little mini vacation a couple weeks ago but nothing. Nothing too major. Exactly. That was sick during it. But it was pretty nice. Just to get away from the office and recharge my batteries as much as I could. So a lot of fun. You had a lot of videos you shot on the beach, it seems so that was pretty cool. Just kind of like you are the knockoff of Mitch Jackson. So it was a cool little little series by Jimmy so we’re doing something a little different. This week. We’ve got two guests on we’ve got David and Aiden Haskins, they own Haskins and company. And they got started a little over 10 years ago. And they worked with over 100 law firms with things such as implementing smart and aggressive growth strategies. And they go all over the country speaking at conferences and theories, David and Hayden, how you doing? Good.
David and Hayden Haskins
Hey, how’s it going? Guys? What beyond?
Jim Hacking
Guys, we’re really excited to have you on this week, I remember when we were playing the maximum lawyer conference, and you guys were kind enough to buy four tickets to the show. And that was the most tickets bought by anyone. So we’re big fans of yours. Tell us a little bit about how you guys got started in the industry.
David and Hayden Haskins
Yes, I had a grant, I worked in some political campaigns, through school. After I got out of school, I had a friend launched a law practice. And I just sort of gravitated towards it sort of the marketing side, we tossed ideas around and came up with a Spanish marketing efforts that we put together, because I speak Spanish, my mother Spanish, and that really took off in the community, which provided us you know, capital and sort of momentum to try all sorts of different marketing strategies, English and Spanish, online and offline. And so within, you know, three months, I was working full time for him. And then I worked about three years there, and then started my own company. Hayden has been with me ever since then. And we’ve been doing web marketing, SEO, a lot of SEO for law firms all over the country now about since about 2012.
David and Hayden Haskins
Yeah, you know, I came into this business after, again, I’d done some political work, just like David is gonna get into it. And my last one I did, I’ve worked, you know, on Obama’s campaign, and 2012, moved back to my hometown, and David was kind of starting this whole thing up. And, you know, I knew a lot of the stuff that he didn’t know, and vice versa, you know, the way we like to describe it as he he rose the pig, and I put lipstick on it. So, you know, he knew how to make things work on the back end, and I know how to make it all look good and make it look easy. So we realized we had a good marriage of talents there.
Tyson Mutrux
So that’s actually a great segue into my first question that I want to ask you. How do you divvy up the work? What does each of you actually do other than roast pig and put it on the lipstick?
David and Hayden Haskins
So I lead the SEO efforts, SEO and content efforts. Hayden is our marketing director. So anything building new site, landing pages, Kayden ties all of the lead tracking in as well so that you know we’re able to do reporting in and you know, sort of have accountability. And then I’m sort of leading the team on the SEO strategy and then sort of high level account management and, and working directly with clients on that
David and Hayden Haskins
kind of stuff. I make sure everything that needs to get made gets made and they make sure that everything that needs to come up comes up A simple way of putting it?
Jim Hacking
Well, I’m interested in what did you learn from your political campaigns, working on candidate cases and then transferring that over to the legal field.
David and Hayden Haskins
One of the things initially, that really helped from the political sphere that we took into the law firm, was our very first marketing effort, which was focused on the Spanish community. It was very much like a grassroots political campaign. So we didn’t start by saying, you know, what’s your the billboards that we can buy for, you know, $1,500 a month? Or where can we put 10 to $20,000 worth of TV around the area? We looked at and said, where are these people going? What kind of events do they go to? What kind of restaurants and stores do they shop in? And what kind of, you know, periodicals? Or magazines do they do they read once we looked at those we saw that, you know, at the time this, the firm that I was in, was doing mostly family and criminal work. And most of the Spanish marketing efforts or the Spanish outreach was for personal injury. So we sort of filled that niche. But we did it in a way that was very grassroots. So you know, we would just eat at Spanish restaurants, you did Mexican restaurants go to the canvas, and the bakeries. And just introduce ourselves. And we printed out, we printed out Spanish business cards with a Spanish phone number on it, which we call the Caliente line. And it was very much handshake face to face. routed. So we were going to community meetings, we were introducing ourselves to, you know, sort of the leaders in the gatekeepers of the community, it was very much like, you know, like, like a grassroots political campaign, everything was done on a on a pretty tight budget. And, really, that’s, that’s one of the things that I think we really, a lot of times bring to the table is that, like, my experience in law, firm marketing came from a, I have a friend who’s 2728 years old, starting his practice, he has no rich parents that are funding his practice, he doesn’t have any sort of momentum or anything, he literally put the shingle out as almost no money, and we’re trying to make something out of nothing. And that was that was really, I think, a lot like a, like a political campaign sort of building from the ground up.
David and Hayden Haskins
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it just to kind of, I mean, I had a very similar experience, politically, you know, I’ve worked on a few races in South Carolina, but you know, going to a state where the city and the territory where nobody knew me, and, you know, when I worked on President Obama’s campaign, just, you know, the way that they did organizers, they kind of just parachute you into a territory and kind of, you know, show you how to how to kind of get into that territory. You know, I was a complete outsider, I mean, in every sense of the word, really, I was in Scotland County, North Carolina. And what I had to do was very similar to what they had to do, you know, with the Spanish market is, really just get out into the community and, and make real connections with real people and develop real relationships. That’s something that, you know, we try to carry over with our social strategy with a lot of attorneys is, you know, hey, there’s no magic pill, for a lot of this, you have to just be out in the community. And you can accentuate all that with social, but if you’re not really ingratiated community, then things aren’t going to work as well as you think they are on social, like, you’re not just going to go put up, you know, like a funny post, and then all of a sudden get cases off of it, you got to be somebody that’s in the community that folks really trust. That’s one of the things I’ve learned from, you know, political organizing is, you know, folks are gonna come and volunteer for me, because, you know, they, they love Obama, you know, if they really wanted to do that, they just go knock doors by themselves, which, you know, in some cases they did. But you know, they can volunteer for you, because they like you, I think the same applies as an attorney, you got to be a part of that community. And really, you can really just have real relationships throughout your community.
Tyson Mutrux
So I guess get a little more specific, I had responded to a help or a Reporter Out Article Request a few months ago and ended up being quoted in it because they were asking about people that have hired companies or individuals to do the social media outreach. And I think it’s, I think you could fail and fall flat on your face if you do it the wrong way. When you’re talking about social media steps, I think it really is about engagement and making sure you’re real with with your community, your social media community. So do you all help people attorneys with their social media outreach, and what are some specifics on how you do it?
David and Hayden Haskins
Yeah, so I think I’ve seen mentioned a few times in the group, when someone’s looking to hire somebody to do their social media is a very, very tricky scenario to be in. If you do hire somebody, I would say absolutely needs to be somebody local, either full time or part time in the office, or at least regularly involved physically around the office. The thing that we do to help people with social media is to when they have a social presence, we will sort of help them build upon it with I hate the term but like growth hacking strategies, so creative things like giveaways contests, community efforts. We do like for instance, every September we’ll do for our personal injury lawyers will do Carsey giveaways. And those are huge. So we give away car seats, I always tell everybody, you’ll give away one for the contest, but plan on giving away two or three, just because you’ll get such a huge response. And people we’d be putting pictures of their children, they’ll have sob stories, the last one that we did, you know, one of the one of the posts or one of the comments of one of the entries, they put up there, how they have to take the kid home from ICU after a month, and they don’t have a car seat, and they have to give the one back to the hospital. And our client called us up. He’s like, can we give this woman another car seat? Can we just give another one away? So you know, those sorts of things are really powerful. But absolutely, either if you’re not going to do it yourself, have somebody in the office that’s regularly involved with your community, you know, community events.
Jim Hacking
David and I were talking offline before we started the show about a topic and the topic that we came up with was the ways that lawyers can stop getting screwed over by their marketing companies. And I thought that was a pretty provocative title. What What were you thinking about David, when we were sort of going through the,
David and Hayden Haskins
I think we have an interesting perspective, and that we probably looked at and evaluated more lawyer marketing contracts, or lawyer marketing relationships, and then probably any of the attorneys certainly that that are in the group or that you work with, I think a lot of times it is in the marketing arena. It’s very much like a client that comes to you, you know, Jim, a client comes to you and says, I have never done the immigration process before, right or Thyssen, they come to you, I have never made a claim like this before. And I have no idea what to do. And I am going to get railroaded, if I try to do this myself. And a lot of times attorneys get into marketing arrangements or contractual agreements, and they are not as familiar with the, you know, the lay of the land as somebody likes, like, like me or hate. And that’s, that’s actually seen a lot of the work that’s out there, or a lot of the shady tactics, you know, that that people do. So we often see attorneys that we talked to, and they’re just, you know, sort of, they’re just really drained, they have kind of given up and they want to throw in the towel, like, yeah, I have another, you know, another contract, another provider that fell through and everything sounded great the first month. And now it’s just just like every other, every other one. So what I wanted to do was, you know, sort of educate some of your listeners on things to really watch out for the big red flags that we’ve seen, you know, when you’re entering into a relationship with, you know, either online or offline marketing companies.
Tyson Mutrux
So let’s get into that, then let’s, let’s talk a little bit more about that. What are what are some of the things whenever you’re evaluating these companies, what are the things you should look for, whenever you’re looking
David and Hayden Haskins
at him, one of the big ones is going to be contractual limits, and ownership of content and IP. One thing that just never ceases to amaze me is, you guys are attorneys. And you get into these very restrictive contracts that don’t allow you to own your own content, or they put you into, let’s say, for a website, they put you into a website platform that is closed. So it’s its own, it’s owned by the marketing company. And if you want to cancel them, then you also lose the even lose the ability to run that website, you know, without them. So I’ve actually seen one where a company of two law firms have a marketing company for about 10 years. And at no point in the contract, did they own the content, but they had 10 years of content they had built up through the company, and they ended up having to buy the content out outright for like it was between 50 and $60,000. That’s what they’ve been paying this firm for 1010 whole years. That would be one of the big things. And so you get into an arrangement or relationship and then, you know, a year two years, 310 years down the road, you realize it’s going to cost you an extra, you know, however much just to own the content on the on the platform or whatever. That’s a big one. Another one I think would be things like transparency and reporting. I have seen sort of like a black box that people will put the reporting in. So marketing company and when we run the website, and then they will sort of blackbox, the analytics or the or the stats, so that you don’t get the true analytics from Google Analytics, you just get the portions that they want you to see. So one example of this would be, we were doing one of our audits. And a client showed us the report and the report, like, if you look at the grass, every single month, the report shows the graph going up into the right, in terms of leads, every single month more higher and higher and higher. Well, when when you actually look at what the graph says, its cumulative leads. So it by default, it has to go up every month, because it is showing you the cube instantly. So even if you have one lead, the graph is still going up to the right. And I’ve just seen, lawyers are very busy, they have a lot of things going on, especially solos and small firms and partners, they have a lot of things going on, they can dig into and become, you know, reporting, you know, our analytics experts. And so these are, these are some of the things that we see that that that end up happening.
Tyson Mutrux
Jimmy, I’m gonna follow up really quick because it relates to the whole contractual thing. I’m curious if David and Hayden have seen something similar. So my, my partner at his old firm, they had hired a one of the big internet companies, I’m sure you know who they are, they do SEO. And it was a very, very similar situation. And what he has done is he realized, like, let’s, we’re not getting the results that we think we’re we’re supposed to get. So he hired another company, who took them, he gave them the contract and say, I want you to take this contract and see if they are doing what they say they’re doing. And they were doing maybe 10% of what what they said they were doing. So he was able to get out of that contract, that you will see anything similar to that.
David and Hayden Haskins
Yeah, absolutely. And then And then even on top of that, I think a lot of times the especially really the bigger the agency, or the bigger the provider, then it even just becomes an issue of checking the boxes off, right? Like, you look at that, and you’d say they’re only doing 10%, even sometimes even when they are doing 100% of the line items from the contract. In the end, you don’t care if they do 100% of the things if it’s not working. But yeah, I’ve seen that a lot. And it just goes back to you know, lawyers are very busy. They don’t have the time to follow up. I mean, Tyson, you’re getting ready for trial, if at the end of this week, you said I’m going to take the afternoon off, instead of focusing on my trial, I’m going to dig in and really hold the marketing company accountable. At some point, really your time is more valuable to be spending on your legal work than you are auditing and trying to, you know, mix it makes sense. Yeah. Something that you’ve already hired somebody to do. But yeah, I have seen that a lot. And several these examples are probably the same large provider that you’re that you’re speaking of.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, yeah, and just a cautionary tale for me. I mean, I was a relatively new lawyer, I didn’t know much about SEO or about websites, I had a static, boring, five page, generic website. And I came across a law firm marketing company out of Virginia, that focused on websites for attorneys. And I spent $10,000, building up that site. And then I was paying them $750 a month to just run the site that wasn’t even for SEO that was just to run the site. And slowly it dawned on me that and they had all their content and a proprietary system. That looked an awful lot like WordPress, but it was a little bit different. And it dawned on me that I was the one adding all the content to the website. And this was back in the day when the more content you added, the better. So I was adding content every other day. And they they I don’t think we’re doing many of the things that they were supposed to be doing. And so I paid all that money. And then because it was locked up in their proprietary system, when I decided to pull it out and get it into WordPress, I had to pay someone else. So it wasn’t even matter who owned the content, it was just the cost of getting the content out of there, locked up system that that was a whole other thing. So I really encourage our listeners to listen to David and Hayden and think about, you know, do I really understand what I’m spending my money on? Am I really locking myself into a system that I’m not going to be able to get out of and then, you know, what advice do you have for someone like Tyson or I or our listeners where they do have to focus much more on getting ready for trial or getting their work done. And I mean, one little tip that I’d throw out there that’s been helpful for me is find a 19 year old 19 year old than a big law firm. And if you’re lucky enough to come across someone like Kent Richardson, I really think that that’s just a much more manageable way to go. And you should always need control and fully understand where every dollar you’re spending goes.
David and Hayden Haskins
Absolutely, yeah, yeah. If you can find somebody that’s talented in those areas that you need, and they’re actually local and you can deal with them. That’s okay. And personally, that’s, I mean, that’s going to be your best bet. In the area of SEO that, I’ll tell you, I hate the industry. And I hate trying to read out talent, because literally every single person you ever meet always says that they’re the best and everything. And you probably known if you’ve talked to companies, I would say, one thing, when you evaluate a provider, one of the ways that many of you will make your decision will be to talk to the representative from the company, and then sort of asked for some references. And, you know, he might get two or three, four names, of course, they’re going to be good references. Yeah. Right. So I mean, nobody’s ever going to give you a name of a client of theirs, that hates them, or that fired them, right. So just know that having three good references that you can call is almost worthless, right? I would say, talk to attorneys that you know, and ask them who they’re using. And, you know, if you have to, of course, not just looking at attorneys in your market, because that’s what a lot of times what people will do is they’ll look at other attorneys in their market, then call those firms and they’re already you know, locked out. But I’d call attorneys, you know, across the state, ask people who are doing well, who are having success in their campaigns, asking who they’re using, and then find a couple and vet those. But, you know, really, if somebody’s doing good work for a friend or a colleague of yours, and they can vouch for them, that’s much better than having, you know, a random company of a random person giving you a reference or a name of another, you know, random lawyer, one thing I like to do is, I just like to say, here’s all of the attorneys that we worked for, don’t call any of them, if any of them say don’t hire us just don’t. Rather than say, like, here’s three people that will give you a glowing reference, as much stronger and more more, you know, authentic. But, you know, this is not a, it’s not an area that you that you are in every every week, sort of the process of hiring and vetting and sort of weeding through the Bs is not going to be natural. You know, when it comes to like, what marketing companies you can trust and that kind of thing. I mean, you really just have to look in markets that are bigger than yours. And find the guys that are really dominating the search engine result pages and looking into they’re using go to the bottom of their website, nine times out of 10, they’re gonna have a link to whatever SEO company they’re using. But you know, really go with folks that you trust. I mean, anybody can go find, you know, a handful of lawyers and say, Hey, we’re gonna do your SEO for free, just say good stuff about us. When the time’s right, when people call you or whatever, and they’ll say good things about them until the cows come home. Let me give you a specific tactic that you can use, because I know how slimeballs work. And this will work in your favor. Let’s say you’re evaluating a company, they give you three references, you called three references, they all sound great, and you’re comfortable moving forward with the company, as you are onboarding, let that company know, hey, listen, if I am not satisfied with this, I’m going to call those three references back and let them know how how terrible of a job you did and how upset I am that you refer them to me. So we actually were testing a few marketing strategies out. And we hired a company to do a geofencing campaign. And it was just a total mess, man, it was it was complete garbage. We got zero li zero reporting or anything. And we basically said, You’re not even doing any part of our agreement. And we asked for the money back. And they they said like, no, we’ll give you a few extra months or whatever. And then finally, our COO just said, you can pay us the money back, you can refund us what we paid you, you haven’t performed anything. Or I’m going to call your three references, which is probably the only three references they have. And I’m just going to read them out and let them know, you know, can you didn’t perform, and let them know that I’m actually mad at them for referring you. And that got the money refunded by the end of the day. And
David and Hayden Haskins
actually, funny story, one of the references, we realized we did some research and realized one of the references was the guy on the company’s buddy that he played football with in high school. So, you know, you should never trust the references they give you, you know, obviously unless they’re gonna give you the whole roster. But yeah, so we just selectively havior a couple references. I mean, you know, it’s like a resume, you know, you’re gonna put people that are gonna say nice stuff about your new resume, otherwise, you’re not going to put them on your resume.
Tyson Mutrux
So this leads me to an interesting question, because I think it’s a topic that goes on quite a bit and on the Facebook page or Facebook group. And the biggest question that comes down to is should you do all the SEO in house or should you contract it out? Now? I think you will, might be a little bit biased. What is your response to that? That question that goes on quite a bit.
David and Hayden Haskins
I say it’s different for each firm. And yeah, we were biased. But you know, one of the things we do is we do this audit, and I will get on a call with a prospective client. And they’re, they’re shocked when they hear me say this, I say, what we’re going to do in this audit is I’m going to find the reasons why you should not even take this on right now. Okay, I’m going to try to dig into all these different areas, and try to find why you shouldn’t even try this, or why you shouldn’t embark on this. If I can’t, then I’ll show you what you should do, how we would do it and sort of give you a roadmap for you who wanted to hire somebody else? Or how some hire somebody locally, we’ll give you the I’ll give you the roadmap in this in this audit for how you could perform this yourself. And that’s always catches people off guard, because yes, of course, we’re bias, of course, we want to, you know, get more clients and grow the business and, and all that. But, you know, really, in the end, I’ve just seen a lot of scenarios where a firm might think that, you know, they’ll call us up and they’ll say, Yeah, I need to, I need to fix my SEO, and we’ll start digging, and we’ll realize it’s not a marketing problem. It’s a it’s
David and Hayden Haskins
like a call to you problem. And it could be
David and Hayden Haskins
that it’s a staffing problem. And, for instance, in one of our audits, we did a phone audit of all their phone leads, and several times, they would have a case that was maybe not the primary focus of the firm, they’d have like an ancillary case, like, maybe they did one where anytime somebody called about workers comp, the receptionist was just telling them, oh, you should call so and so because that person is one of the most reputable workers comp lawyers in the city, rather than sort of doing the intake and then letting the attorney and the staff run it through their referral channel. And you know, they were just sending it away. Or we found another one where the Pay Per Click company was doing, whether it was a lead generation company, they were selling, the firm leads for $400, a lead. And one of the way they were generating these leads was they made a second website, a copy of the firm’s website, they ran leads with the law firms name, because they bought the law firms name, which is like less than five bucks per click right? Yeah.
David and Hayden Haskins
And keep in mind, these guys bought a lot of TV, they sponsored a major NFL tee,
Jim Hacking
huge fair offer.
David and Hayden Haskins
So there’s, there’s tons of search for their name. And so they were buying the firm’s name in taking the calls and then selling the leads to the firm, for $400 elite. And these are people who are ready by typing the name already wanted to contact that firm. So a lot of times, you know, we want to figure out the reasons why what they’re doing currently isn’t working. But then, you know, if you, if you were to determine that you should embark on an SEO effort, then I would say, I’d say you could do content in house, if you have either the staff or you have yourself, you know, have the time to write your own content, I would at least get a consultant to maybe periodically check, make sure that you’re doing a lot of technical things, right, make sure that you’re tracking results correctly, tracking lead sources and that sort of thing. But we have clients that will do we have clients that do a lot of their own video. And then we also have clients that like to create their own content. And so we use that to supplement because I get the question a lot when the client, you know, engaging us or asking about hiring us is, well, I’d also like to write my own content. And what has happened a lot of times is they have the best of intentions, but just because business ramps up, you have trial, you have all these things going on that as a focus tends to drop off. Whereas with a company like us, that’s our that’s our that’s our job. So we don’t end up getting distracted and that sort of thing. But yeah, he absolutely could do it in house, but I would get somebody to help with some of the technical list and, and that sort of thing.
Jim Hacking
I think the point that you made about it’s not always a lead problem, but sometimes it’s a conversion problem or some other traffic problem or I think that’s an extra point. We’re talking with David and Hayden Haskins today about law firm marketing and sort of the ways that you can be taken advantage of fellas, one thing that Tyson I’ve been kicking around lately, is the difference between clients who hire an attorney based on a contingency fee where they’re not going to have any out of pocket expenses, versus lawyers who get paid upfront by the clients themselves in consumer facing type practices. Do you have any thoughts or different marketing mindsets for those two scenarios?
David and Hayden Haskins
Yeah, you know, like a family law campaign or a criminal defense campaign. You know, we do one of those. It’s a little Different than doing, you know, a personal injury or car accident campaign, just simply because of the fact that, you know, I mean, if you want, you could just spend a couple 100 bucks and get a whole salary of family law leads, but they’re all just going to be, you know, can you modify my child support payment, I can’t afford it. And, you know, it’s just going to be much folks who can’t really afford, you know, your representation. One way we’ve kind of, you know, ensure that we get better quality leads for our family law clients as well just target, you know, very affluent areas in the town, and then that kind of thing. But
David and Hayden Haskins
yeah, that’s, that’s one of the things that I bring up in our audit is, is we’ve had firms also that will do, you know, one, which I call good to good contingency, and the other, which I call, like, retail law, you know, like, walk up, pay money and start getting services. And for some firms, just depending on their risk tolerance, depending on their cash flow, and their budgeting, their projection, you know, their, you know, case intake modeling, or whatever their strategy is, is, is, let’s look at the trade off between tackling this practice area. Right. So, you know, maybe they do criminal defense, family law and personal injury. And sometimes I have helped in the criminal and family effort before the personal injury, just because a personal injury is much more competitive. And then also, you know, as long as it takes to get to where you’re starting to generate leads and personal injury, then you have the case settlement, you know, maybe even six, nine months down the road, that that will be starting. So, you know, understanding the difference between when you’re going to start seeing an ROI in one practice area versus another and making sure that that that expectation is said and that X that expectation is being met. Yeah, that’s absolutely a huge consideration. And I guys, I don’t want you all to give away all your secrets. But what I do want you to do is, can you give the listeners maybe one quick win? If they were going to do their own SEO in house? What’s one quick win they could do today? To kind of get on it? All right, you’re looking under the hood. So let’s say that you are a high end attorney, you have some really good results. And you’re trying to compete against some of the bigger marketers and that sort of thing. I would say, actually, this would be a good one for John Fisher. Right. So take the state that you practice in, create a landing page that’s optimized for referrals. So Tyson, so yours would be Missouri personal injury attorney for referrals, right, optimize this page, talk about some of the case and trial victories that you’ve had, and talk about how you treat your referral partners and how you, you know, how you treat clients, and how you want to, you know, maintain the highest level of everything, right? When an attorney in Tulsa, Oklahoma has a case in St. Louis, if he doesn’t already have a connection, right? Like we see people in the group, I need an attorney that does this in the city, if he doesn’t have some sort of referral or a network connection, they’re literally going to google it just like a person in Tulsa, Oklahoma that doesn’t have, you know, that’s not an attorney with. So when they’re Googling for a personal referral, because a lot of times it means referral, they’re Googling, they will find your page, even if you don’t naturally rank number one for personal injury, if they were to type that word referral, then you have a much better chance of showing up if you’ve, you know, optimized page for that. That’s one thing that people don’t think about, because they just think of like the practice area, or like the high intense search keywords, but with a phrase like that, that could attract a higher end case. You know, that’s from another state where the attorneys trying to source you know, local counsel to partner in on that case. So that was, I would say, is sort of an easy win, even in a very competitive, you know, sort of market.
Jim Hacking
Well, as I know that you were both at the conference, and we were all expecting a big battle royale between sets price and will never, never really materialized. But I was wondering what your thoughts and impressions were on Williams top secret very, what I thought was very excellent presentation on that SEO question that Tyson was asking about sort of doing yourself SEO.
David and Hayden Haskins
So I will be completely honest. And I think I told William this. After his talk. I had sort of a bad taste in my mouth when I read it titled like SEO with no backlinks. I was like, oh, ridiculous. And then And then I heard him in one of the first thing he said was, look, if Google really had their way, they wouldn’t rely on links on links at all right? If they really could just assess content and you know, and the Officer and you know, in the provider and the site without looking at links, they would, you know, without looking at this sort of manufactured and produced efforts to rank, they would do that. And he was very right. I really like what he’s doing. I mean, his content, he’s gone, you know, all the way, all the way in on that. And he’s ended up ranking for some of those keywords nationally, which is really strong. But no, yeah, I mean, you had great, you had great people at the conference. And there’s, I think there’s a handful of marketing companies that are involved in the group, and they’re all, they’re all the good guys. That’s one time said, you know, he said, Look, you know, people like us, you and me and a handful of other ones, he’s like, we’re like pimples on the back of, you know, he named one of the one of the big companies and, and we realize that a lot of these firms, people, like, like, some blue shark, and consult with some of these groups, we’re doing really good work, and we’re trying to do things correctly and hold ourselves accountable. So I think you’re probably going to be very safe. If you are talking to people in the group or, you know, talking to their providers. I have seen actually, there was a talk last week, somebody was talking about the the ABA platform and then being sold. And I wanted to mention that I think they were they were asking, is that going to go to a PE only. And that’s one of the things that the very large sites have really, really come down on is sort of locking the site up. And then even, I would say, this is another thing to look out for, just like a marketing company could buy your name as a keyword, and, and then sell your your own leads, some of these sites are using your likeness, and your picture and your profile to generate leads for themselves. And that actually, Tyson I actually saw that on your Nolo profile last week, while I was testing this out, and you pull up, you know, matrix, Vinny on nolo, there’s a big orange button right underneath your logo. And I mean, it really is in many ways is, is dishonest. So it’s, it’s a matrix any, and then it says contact us. And big orange button, contact us, you click that. And you type your information in talk about your case, and then that gets sold to five companies, and you might be one of them on that lead. But, you know, sometimes you might not be but that’s one thing to, you know, that I think people don’t always notice is it that kind of stuff is it’s not as visible. So it’s not something that you would notice, it’s not like it’s happening on the front page of your website or on the, on the homepage of your competitors websites or anything like that. It’s sort of in the background, and you really have to dig and discover that
David and Hayden Haskins
you’re gonna call one of these people up, and they’re gonna say, Oh, I work with another firm. And first thing you’re going to think is oh, you know, there’s so in my leads to, you know, five different law firms, because that’s what’s happening with a lot of these sites,
David and Hayden Haskins
other types, and I will say, when I, when I put my name in there, one of the, like, three other firms called me and I told them, oh, no, I was trying to reach somebody else. And one of the firms still said, Oh, well, you know, we do personal injury, we can still help you. Man. Yeah. They weren’t gonna let that one flip. I
Tyson Mutrux
love it. That’s funny. All right, Jimmy, as much as I hate to wrap up this episode, there’s a lot more information that we can get from these two. And I’ve got a ton more questions all just ask them offline, as we all do. So before we get to our tips and our hacks for the week, I do want to remind everyone to go to the Facebook group, we are 13 Think away from 600 members, which is kind of crazy thinking about where we were two months ago. And also go to iTunes, if you will, or wherever you get your podcasts and give us a five star review, please. I was looking from the other lawyer groups and lawyer podcasts. And I think we’re among the top when it comes to Facebook group and then also reviews, but I’m not sure if we have the most reviews, a viewer could really focus on getting some reviews. That’d be awesome.
Jim Hacking
I wanted to make sure that David and Hayden talk about how we can find you how if people are interested in doing work with you guys, sort of let us know all the places that you’re we can find you on the web.
David and Hayden Haskins
So yeah, if you’d like to find us on the web haskins.co haskins.co. And if you’re interested in the audit, if you tell us that you came from Max lawyer, we’ll do 50% discount on the audit if you’d like that.
Tyson Mutrux
By Jimmy, what is your hack of the week? All right, so
Jim Hacking
for my hack of the week, I just came back like I said from coach and I sat down yesterday and you know, I definitely am not structure is not a strong suit for me, but I went and I mapped out an ideal week For me in 15 minute increments for 24 hours a day. So I have a goal of what I’m going to be doing on each day of the week. And during different times of the week. Now, obviously, that won’t always work. But just going through that exercise of seeing how I’m spending my time and how I’d like to spend my time was really helpful. There’s a template that I downloaded, I just typed an Excel, calendar spreadsheet, and I loaded that up onto Google Sheets, and they sat down and mapped out the time that hopefully is going to be the way I spend it. And it was really helpful.
David and Hayden Haskins
My tip of the week would be a book on SEO. And if you are interested in doing your own SEO, yourself, this is probably the best seo book that I have read. And it’s not very technical. It’s not a manual. It’s not. It’s not code and keyword density and percentages and all that stuff. It’s a book called in the Plex, it’s by an author named Steven Levy. And it’s basically a biography of Google. And it sort of goes into the history of Google the, you know, the founding of, of Google, the launch of the search engine, their spam team, their SEO team, and just talks about Google sort of as an individual almost. And if you sort of understand the history of Google and what they’re looking for and what their goals are, then I think it will help you create content that Google will like, it’s called in the Plex, by Steven Levy.
Tyson Mutrux
I love it. All right, hey, you’re not getting out of giving a tip. So what’s your tip of the week?
David and Hayden Haskins
My tip of the week, is to figure out how to track where your leads are coming from, figure out exactly where on your website and get as granular as you possibly can with that information, and figure out what your what your true cost per case is a lot of firms, you know, they get into this practice, where they just kind of take everything that their marketing companies telling them with where their leads are coming from, and the value of those leads to the acquisition costs. One way to do that would be just installed call rail on your website, it’s really easy for the call rail.com, you can send it up within five minutes. And I would do what they call a number pool, where they have an integration called dynamic number insertion. And it’s a small script, you can paste at the top of your website. And what it’ll do is it’ll change the phone number, depending on where someone’s coming from. So you can kind of see which efforts are producing leads in cases, honestly, if you, you know, if you want to set this up, or you’re trying to set it up and having trouble with it, shoot me a message on Facebook, I’ll walk you through, it’s very easy. But I’ve found that it’s very valuable to know exactly where those leads are coming from and what’s actually producing. And what’s actually giving you those nuisance calls or folks are coming in Colin, tire kick in and that kind of thing. You know, a lot of times, you’ll notice that you get things for certain pages and other pages will produce lower quality leads. So you know, again, call rail.com. That’s
Jim Hacking
a big tip.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s awesome. It’s funny, it’s kind of timely, because mastermind experience, John fishes master. My experience is doing a demo today of call rail, Michael Samuel over there. So that’s pretty cool. All right. So my tip of the weak is actually it’s it’s related to sort of what we’re talking about today. And we wanted to speed up our website. And so what we’ve done, and this is based on advice with MIDI is we’ve actually moved all of our stuff just last week over to a private servers we have, we have our own private server. It’s a hosted server, I guess, a cloud server. I don’t know what to call it, David and Hayden, but we basically pay for private server. It is more expensive than doing a shared server, but it’s set up our website quite a bit. So and I think I think that that’s something that is a factor, right? Whenever it comes to SEO, so that’s what we did it. So we want to speed up a website. We’re doing a lot of changes in our stuff. So that is my tip of the week. Move all your stuff over to a private server. Jim, you have anything else before we wrap it up?
