You may be the best trial lawyer in America, but if nobody can find you then you are not going to get the quality cases and work you deserve. Seth Price of Blueshark Digital joins the podcast to discuss how he applied his experience building digital marketing for his own highly successful law firm to create a digital marketing firm that helps other lawyers. Seth discusses the dos and don'ts of digital marketing and the strategies that trial lawyers can use to put themselves on the digital map.
Join us for a discussion of digital marketing for trial lawyers with attorney and digital marketing guru, Seth Price. Learn how Seth used his experience building a successful law firm using digital marketing, and then started a digital marketing firm to help other law firms do the same. In this episode, we discuss what works and doesn't work for trial lawyer marketing, pitfalls that lawyers fall into and how to maximize return on investment for marketing dollars spent. In the process, we discuss a number of topics, including
About Seth Price
An accomplished attorney and transformational thought leader, Seth Price is a founding partner and the business backbone of Price Benowitz LLP as well as the founder and CEO of BluShark Digital. Seth took a two person law firm and scaled it to 36 lawyers in less than a decade. Now Seth has taken the same digital power that built the firm to create a best in class digital agency focused on the legal sector in BluShark Digital.
Seth has been a frequent lecturer and moderator at some of the largest and most influential law conferences in the United States, speaking on the tools and strategies law firms can use to align their business development with changing consumer habits. He has spoken on topics including but not limited to, how to build a firm, ethics, best practices for firm operations, search engine optimization (SEO), and digital marketing as a whole.
About the Elawvate Podcast
The Elawvate Podcast – Where Trial Lawyers Learn, Share, and Grow is where the practice of trial law meets personal growth. To succeed as a trial lawyer and build a successful law firm requires practice skills, strategic thinking and some amount of business and entrepreneurial savvy. Elawvate is a place to learn and share skills and strategies for success.
But it is also a place to dig deeper and achieve personal growth.
Those who succeed as trial lawyers at the highest levels cultivate character, principle, integrity, leadership, courage, compassion and perseverance.
We learn and draw inspiration from those who have achieved this success.
For more about Elawvate, visit our website at www.elawvate.fm. You can also join our Facebook Group at Elawvate | Facebook
For more information or to contact the hosts, see:
(Ben Gideon | Gideon Asen LLC)
Rahul Ravipudi (0s): Welcome to the elevate podcast. My name is Rohal Ravi Pootie and I'm Ben Gideon. Ben, how are you today? Ben Gideon (7s): Great Roe. And I'm really excited for our guests today. Seth price, have you heard of south or do you know him at Rahul Ravipudi (15s): All? No, I'm at all, but I'm really interested in learning about everything he specializes in. I mean, I tell you, even though we've started to grow and go larger firm, digital marketing, and those types of marketing efforts are still new experiences for us and things that we're trying to get really better at. I don't know how it's working for you at your new firm. Ben Gideon (38s): Interesting background in this, because I left a firm that was a pretty good size shop. We had 17 lawyers and we're big enough to afford a full-time marketing director. So I was able to rely a lot on staff to do the heavy lifting with respect to the marketing. The listeners may not know this, but I left that firm in January of 2021 to start my own firm. And when we started, it was just me and one other lawyer partner, and we had one staff person and we're six months later, we now have seven people. So we're growing rapidly, but a part of starting a new firm was to figuring out the marketing side. Ben Gideon (1m 20s): So as part of that, I spent a lot of time reading books, listening to podcasts, and that's actually how I came across south price because a few listened to podcasts on lawyer marketing. He's kind of a, a fixture in that universe. And he was one of the ones that to me seemed the most knowledgeable. So I reached out to him and developed a little bit of a relationship and he was very generous with his time and was able to mentor me through some of the early phases of that. So I think he'll be a great resource for people to learn more about digital marketing for lawyers. And I, I guess I was gonna ask you, you guys, so, I mean, I know Panisse, Shea and Boyle, you guys do have a marketing staff person. Ben Gideon (2m 6s): And so you're kind of, certainly not where I am a much more established. W w how do you get most of your cases, Raul? Do they come as referrals or they come direct from marketing? Rahul Ravipudi (2m 19s): Yeah, that's, that's a great question, Ben. And just a one clarification. We actually don't have a full-time marketing person in our office at the moment and actually never have. And that's part of the evolution of the firm is we're contemplating hiring somebody like that right now. But so really the learning curve is all going through the lawyers and the partners with each of us, trying to understand the various aspects. And I'm trying to be trying to be knowledgeable about it, but probably just being dangerous. And as a result, really 90% of our cases come in through attorney referrals and a little bit comes in through our website and other types of, of efforts that are being done. Ben Gideon (3m 11s): Yeah, we're, we're the same, almost all of our cases come from referrals. But one of the things we would like to do better at is getting more direct from consumer cases, because obviously you don't pay out as much in referral fees, but also there's a freedom in not having to rely on specific attorney referral sources, because that can be fickle. People can change their minds. And over time, if you can get cases directly, you have a little bit more market power. So it'll be interesting to hear more about that from Seth. He's been very successful in that universe. So hopefully he can share some of his wisdom with us. Ben Gideon (3m 54s): Today's podcast is sponsored by our friends at the expert Institute. If you handle cases involving lots of experts, I encourage you to talk to the expert Institute. Let me give you an example of how that works for us at our firm. Let's say we need an expert for a case, say an expert in neuro intensive care. In the old days, I would search my files for experts I've used in the past, or maybe reach out to my colleagues at my firm or on a listserv for suggestions. Then our office would have to track these folks down and perhaps the first person or two, we contacted wouldn't work out and we'd go back to the drawing board. It takes time and resources. It can be inefficient, and doesn't always land you with the best expert for your case. Ben Gideon (4m 34s): What do I do now? I simply send one email to my contact at the expert Institute. We then have a brief call where I explain what I'm looking for. And they do all the work after that. And they don't just recycle the same old tired experts. Every search is unique and independently tailored for my case, it's tailored by the specialty of the expert by geographic location. If I have a preference and even by the amount of litigation experience that the person has, if I want somebody who's never testified in a case before they will find me that person. And if I asked them to do so, they will locate several potential experts for a case, and then set up all the phone calls for me so that I can interview those candidates and decide who will be the best fit for my case. Ben Gideon (5m 20s): It's faster, it's more efficient and it produces better results for our listeners. Only expert Institute is offering 25% off your first expert case consult go to expert institute.com forward slash elevate E L w V a T E to redeem this exclusive. 2 (5m 40s): This is the elevate podcast where trial lawyers learn, share, and grow. Let's talk about how we can elevate our trial practices, law firms, and lives. And now here are your hosts coming to you from coast to coast trial lawyers, Ben Gideon, and Rahul Robbie Poodie. So I'd like Ben Gideon (6m 1s): To welcome to the show, Seth price, Seth. Welcome. Where are you today? Seth Price (6m 7s): I'm in Bethesda, Maryland, right outside of Washington, DC. So Seth Ben Gideon (6m 11s): For the listeners who don't know him as the founding partner and managing partner of price Benowitz, which is a 40 plus lawyer firm based in Maryland, DC and Virginia, which Seth built really from the ground up. Seth is also the owner and manager of a digital marketing firm that specializes in marketing lawyers. Seth, can you just tell us a little bit about your backstory and what brought you to this point of managing a really large successful law firm and marketing company? Seth Price (6m 41s): Sure. When you first see, when you first hear that, it sounds like they're very incongruous, but they, it actually makes a lot of sense. So after leaving big law, I went to make my fortune during the first.com bubble in the late nineties in New York. And ironically was a founding employees and they called us law.com way ahead of its time, sort of before Havo, before legal zoom and all of those and Washington legal zoom go IPO. It's kind of interesting because that was the model that was there. Is that, is that Ben Gideon (7m 9s): Us law still thing, is that still arguing Seth Price (7m 11s): Blew up in that first, first, you know, the, the, basically in April of 2000, the bubble burst and by January, 2001, nothing was left except, you know, Amazon had gone public, it went from $106 a share. It survived a Yahoo survive. Google was at its very infancy. So all, a lot of people got wiped out, just the valuations are high and the market corrected dramatically. I went and, you know, I will, I thought I was going to start a business. And my buddy from college and law school, Dave battle was really wanting to practice law. He's a lawyer, his lawyer like you guys. And he, he really wanted to practice. So I said, okay, let's divide and conquer. Seth Price (7m 51s): I'll be the marketing management guy. And you, you you'll be the chief legal officer. And in this, the guy would rather be in the courtroom than anything else. So, you know, built a website, had another lawyer built another website at another lawyer. And decade later we had about 40 lawyers and a whole family of websites. The thing that sort of, I noticed about my journey. And I think you guys could probably appreciate this with your internal resources, that whenever you have an internal marketing person who gets decent, you know, they either get really expensive or they leave or both. And I, every two years, I, I was like, wash, rinse, repeat. I would like train somebody up. They give them nice raises and they would go off and do something else, not competitive, just, you know, they'd go off in DC to foreign service or government contracts or something when God became a sports agent. Seth Price (8m 40s): And I got fed up with that. So blue shark was born sort of as a sustainability model where I could take my amazing team that I had and give them opportunities that they wouldn't leave. And I would have a stable environment for price Beto Bedouins, and you know, client by client now tones 200 clients. We now have a family of, of law firms that it almost as a cooperative, it allows me to keep top talent who leverage and sort of scale and pyramid, you know, people to do the work, but being run by really amazing homegrown talent from within, and that's sort of the blue shark story. Okay. Just Ben Gideon (9m 16s): To start out. I know our, our podcast listeners are mostly trial lawyers who spend a lot of time thinking about things like cross-examining witnesses, opening, and closing arguments, how to settle and try verdicts cases to verdict. Probably don't spend as much time thinking about how to market their own law firms. Can you give us sort of a big picture view of right now, kind of where is the energy and the value in marketing for lawyers? We know about the history of TV ads and billboards. Now we've got digital, but where, where do you see things going right now? Ben Gideon (9m 57s): Big picture wise. Seth Price (9m 58s): Well, look, I, I, I, my, my world is digital and there are a lot of ways to make a buck in life. And let me, what I focus on is the business to consumer legal world. So you guys is plaintiff's lawyers squarely in that sort of the top of the business to consumer world there's criminal family. There's trust the states, immigration, bankruptcy, anything touching a person. And we were talking just before we went on air about your, your partner's buddy, John Morgan. And he, he always made the analogy that we aren't really lawyers we're plumbers, and that when the hot water heater in your basement explodes and your significant other is yelling at you, the first person who can solve your problem at a reasonable price and get the business. Seth Price (10m 38s): That's how I built my firm. Now, there are a lot of ways to do it. I mean, both of you guys have, you know, awesome reputations and, you know, in California, for example, that is a brand that I was aware of before we even went on this podcast. Like that is a awesome legendary brand. And you're going to get other lawyers referring in cases as you get verdict. So there are a lot of ways to market meaning if you do a kick ass job and you speak publicly and you get known, all of a sudden, you know, work comes to you now, there's usually a referral fee attached, but there's no upfront costs. And I think that for everybody, the question is what is their mix? So I focus on digital, whether it be paid, you know, organic local, those are the three historic, and now LSAs the local service ads have been the big topic in California. Seth Price (11m 26s): You can't even get them anymore. You know, they're, they're so popular. Nobody goes there as you know, you've ever would say like you can't, you can't spend enough money to eat. There's just, you can't get what w there's out of inventory to get out, to get what you want. Can you explain to people what LSAs are for those local service ads are something that came into existence. In second quarter of 2020, they started the home improvement space and Google brought them over to the legal space. And it's essentially a pay per lead model instead of pay per click. Normally Google ads, you're paying for clicks that are very, very expensive California. That could be, you know, buck, buck 50 or more for a single click. Instead, they were selling calls that started at a hundred, $200. Seth Price (12m 9s): California might be $400. It's still a bargain compared to third parties that sell you calls 30 seconds. You have to listen to the call, decide if it's for you. You can challenge. If it wasn't a pie call to very desirous product for plaintiff's lawyers, particularly there'd been some issues in the fee for service areas where they don't convert necessarily as well. But here it's, it was really a gift, almost like a drug dealer giving out free samples to get you hooked. And it worked because you, you know, there is so much demand that exceeds the potential number of, of callers. We did a case study that showed that really most of what that did was cannibalize the other pay-per-click, there's the three pack where there are in the map pack, so to speak where it, which is organic, where you get reviews, this looks similar it's, but it's above the ads. Seth Price (12m 59s): And it puts a picture number of years in business reviews, all of that there as a conversion factor, but it clicks directly to a call that has sort of been the big market differentiator. But, you know, you know, looking at somebody two different markets, right? We've got Maine, we got California here, you know, tale of two cities, California is so hyper competitive. So in one sense, you know, sure you wish, Hey, we wish we had a bigger digital footprint. Great, but you have a brand that's so, so dramatic the thing that's interesting. And Ben, you and I talked about this for awhile offline, particularly as somebody who's starting at an enterprise, you got to be careful what you ask for. That's my philosophical thing. Cause look at trial lawyers, right? Seth Price (13m 40s): Trial lawyers, every trial arrival. I know you and a bunch of other people of your ill meaning amazing trialers in, you know, the, the panacea that is California all want the mega cases. You want the $10 million cases. And you're fortunate enough that you get a lot of them sent to you. It's very hard to go online and say, I only want the $10 million cases because the same guy who has a trip and fall says, oh, these guys look really good. I want them. And all of a sudden your phones are dry. You know, filled up with calls that you're potentially not even set up to handle. And that's always the thing that I sit down and talk to people because I look at clients for blue shark as partners. And first, if something doesn't make sense, it doesn't, it's not going to work and nobody's going to be happy. Seth Price (14m 24s): So the first thing I say to somebody is, are you really, you know, if somebody who is used to doing five, 10, $15 million cases says, I want to advertise online, I'm like, okay, well, you're going to be getting calls for people that have $5,000 cases. And if you're not set up to deal with it, several things happen first. You're not going to find the diamonds in the rough when they do call. But second, you're not going to cashflow the actual marketing that you're doing, because it's a pyramid. You're going to get a lot of lower dollar cases, some middle, a few very high-dollar cases. It's not like you can just say, Hey, I only want the high dollar and that's going to come. So I think it's, if the mentality and going back to what I talked about before that we are plumbers, not lawyers, that if you have the mentality, I know that if I was referring a case to two, relative to your firm, I would wait 48 to 72 hours to hear back. Seth Price (15m 12s): Because I know that if you took that case, I would have a partner co-counsel that would do an amazing job. Right? And so you have a little bit of leeway there, but if this was a situation where somebody's calling and they're like, I don't know who this relative parishes like, you know, dude, I don't know these names. They seem nice enough, but like, if I can't find them, I'm, I'm going to the next guy down the list. And so if you don't change the mentality of instant gratification with intake and lawyers that are set up to grab those cases, it's definitely not going to work well. And you're going to be disappointed and not get ROI, which is why I sort of say to begin with, you have to be careful what you ask for, because while you know you, and again, you know, you're going to get the referrals. Seth Price (15m 53s): The question is, are you really positioning yourself and your staff because the staff is used to this sort of, Hey, we're the biggest baddest guys. They'll wait for us to get back to them. It's not going to transition. Well, if you're sitting there and you have these cases and the next piece is, are you going to monetize the stuff that's below your pay grade? So if you spend a ton of money in California, very competitive Maine, a little bit less. So to get the phone to ring, you really need to make sure that those cases, even the ones you're not taking are going out and then by business model could be very synergistic. Get this to a family of people who love those smaller cases. And frankly are going to co-counsel with you on the bigger cases. Seth Price (16m 35s): But if that's not set up, if you're not positioned to capture that and send it out and hopefully make a minor buck on it so that you can cashflow that you're never gonna get to the point where you get those 18 Wheeler cases that you really want. So Rahul Ravipudi (16m 47s): Looking at the different types of firms that are out there that you've worked with and had experience sort of evaluating, what are the different types of digital strategies that you think are effective? Whether it's a small firm, whether it's a heavy desiring advertising firm, whether it's a group of just trial lawyers, like what are the different approaches? Assuming you've got the infrastructure built out. So Seth Price (17m 12s): There are two different let's let's bifurcate this right? There's paid search where you put your money down and the, the case cases come and you figure out, Hey, you know, it's going to cost me 1500, 2000, 2,500. You do your, you do your math backwards and you figure out what am I willing to pay this for a case, again, same issue. If you're not taking the lower dollar cases, your cost per case goes way up. Now, I know if you're used to mega cases, that may be fine, but it gets, it gets a bit scary. And a lot of people get squeamish and say, you know what? I'll just go back to the referral game. On the organic side, it's all about authority. Can you build a 30 to your site through content and links to the main factors of, of organic SEO in order to build the grabby toss so that the Google algorithm shows your site above others. Seth Price (17m 60s): And Google is trying to find, I mean, both of you guys are awesome trial lawyer firms, you know, Ben, your firm is much newer. So you're going to have to sort of demonstrate to Google to the, to the, to the bot, Hey, I am a legitimate player. Well, you guys have verdicts and links. All these things coming in. That means that if somebody harnesses the power of that, who was looking for you, they want to send somebody to your firm. The question is, can they figure that out? And if some kid in his basement being able to say, no, I have better links and content, Google is getting better and better and cutting through the bullshit, but you still need to be able to demonstrate through link equity through content. Seth Price (18m 41s): What's there pivoting back to your question. I think that particularly in a crowded market, the question is, can you become a content authority the way you, you know, online, the way that you are offline? You know, I knew of your firm before coming to this podcast, how can you show that authority to Google in content? Whether it be words, whether it be video demonstrating so that when the Google bot reads it, it can't know of you in the universe. The only thing you can do is understand the content on the page. And it's very good at doing and say, Hey, these people are pointing in. So at the Los Angeles times is pointing at you with links, demonstrating some sort of trust or authority. Seth Price (19m 24s): That's going to move you up. And similarly for Ben, you're a smaller fish bowl. But if you, if you're able to demonstrate your authority from people pointing at you, almost votes of confidence saying, Hey, this guy is, is, is the real deal. That's what the Google bot is looking for. And that's what will differentiate you. I think the frustrating thing, and I talked to a lot of trial lawyers in California is that there are a number of very, very good trial lawyers there. And there's this debate, I think internally sort of we're all for netting. You want it, like, I want everything. I want the referrals and I want the marketing, but you realize it's not there's, there's not just the ability to get the F the, the, the visibility, but can you somehow sculpted so that not only are you being seen for an auto tour, but can you be seen as the guy who differentiates yourself from others? Seth Price (20m 16s): I think the consumer comes into form being very simplistic, right? There are people that are just going to click on the first ad or the first website they come to. And it's harder to differentiate the two of you guys from the market for those people, because the kid in his basement, in his Mo you know, in his parents' house, theoretically, if there's a nice shiny site with some clip art and some pictures of people that look like they can take care of the case can accomplish a lot. What you have is the goods. And so that if somebody is reading about who each of you guys are, and they are digging deeper, you can differentiate yourself. And the more you can niche into topics that the average kid in his basement is like, I just want the auto cases. Seth Price (20m 56s): And you could be explaining how the traumatic brain injury is something that you guys are expert at, and that you have experienced taking cases that are difficult and proving to a jury that they're worth great sums of money. I think that is the, the art, the SEO at the highest level is when you combine the substance. That's personally my own journey. Like when I saw my, my partner is like a lawyer's lawyer. He teaches up at Harvard law for like a week, a year, and their trial skills program. You know, he got an LLM in trial advocacy. He loves this stuff. If I can differentiate us from our competitors in some meaningful way, when we started, it was mostly really schlocky firms. Seth Price (21m 39s): And over time, a lot of the really good firms have started to compete where, but at the same time, I just, the more you can demonstrate your content and links that you are a superior product. That to me is the game, as it stands today. Ben Gideon (21m 53s): Can you talk about it on the organic search, which I think you're talking about demonstrating your stature through links and content of that that can place you high in the, the map pack, where you see an area of maybe it's the big city and the top firms or restaurants, whatever you happen to look for. And then there's also what we had thought of in the old days as organic search, just the results that come below the paid ads and the map, but what I've noticed, and I don't know how this affects digital marketing is there's so many ads now, and then you have the map that by the time you get to organic search, it's way down there. And also it's hard to distinguish. Ben Gideon (22m 34s): Now, I, I feel like it is for me anyway, between the organic results and the ads, how does that play into all this? You're not Seth Price (22m 42s): Wrong? You know, the ads are dominant and Google wants its money. And the map pack has taken on the organic map pack has taken on a greater significance because the, you know, it's the first thing you see, and it takes up so much real estate. So yes, very significant, very important place to be for picking up meaningful traffic. Everything I'm talking about, let's work backwards is the fundamentals of organic. And as you're saying, in some situations where you do have LSAs paid ads map pack, and then the organic organic is harder to get to them per you have to really be pushing and researching to get there so that the map pack becomes that much more important. The, the algorithm to get in the map pack is partially view organic algorithm of those content and links and all the things that would get you into the organic. Seth Price (23m 31s): But there's more in the interface with the Google, my business, the GMB, including reviews. So, whereas reviews used to be a conversion factor in more and more seems that that is becoming a, an actual ranking factor, the name of your firm proximity. So it used to be that a juggernaut in a city could own a city that isn't really viable anymore, or is not as easy as it could be. And that Google is trying to say, just like a pizza place. You don't really want to place, you know, across town. You know, if west Hollywood is 40 miles from you, that's not going to do a lot of good for a pizza delivery place for a lawyer, you really would go further, but Google is not allowing you to own a city anymore, or it is forcing you to have locations closer to the people you want. Seth Price (24m 19s): We had a case study that we did in St. Louis with an immigration shop. Their firm was 20 miles out of the city center, and there's a nationally known group that you great work, and they would own their area, but they couldn't break into downtown. They could break into downtown for words, other than immigration, lawyer, like visa or other, you know, you know, words dealing with immigration, but not immigration itself. Because if somebody had an office downtown, it would Trump. We put an office downtown. And within weeks, that authority that they had built for the website correlated to the downtown office. And all of a sudden we got the traffic from there. And so we were, you know, what you're trying to figure out is a combination of the organic authority, content and links, which ads you demonstrate has relevance, but there's a lot of traffic in that map pack. Seth Price (25m 9s): And then leveraging that authority to, to then put pins on the map. As I say, Google my business locations in places that takes the authority of the website and then puts that a location in play. And that's the one, two punch that is ideal and really generates the most traffic calls and revenue. So Rahul Ravipudi (25m 29s): That sounds like there's certain rules that Google establishes as to how to utilize your authority. Do those rules change or have they changed over time and will they change? Seth Price (25m 41s): Great question. The Google is constantly evolving. What I would say is that I, if you look at it as Google is trying to show a good youth group, good user experience that they want to make a buck, but staying in the good user experience for a second, if you follow the idea of giving a good user experience, generally as the algorithm updates, it has benefited you so early on, if you had cheap overseas links that were spammy, that were manipulating the algorithm, Google figured out how to basically get those out of play. So if you continue to get high quality content and authoritative links to date, those things have stayed, tried and true and have continued in the right positive direction. Seth Price (26m 25s): They're not easy. They're not inexpensive to do it, or they costly process. But if you, in general, the algorithm for the most part has been tripping up people that have taken shortcuts where you're trying to save a buck. And again, I applaud people are trying to find a way to do this in a cost effective way, because we're not doing for health. We're doing it for our ally to make a buck. But if you follow best practices over time, while Google continues to change and update, most of the things that if you continue to do best practices, you don't, I haven't woken up recently and said, oh my God, the algorithm changed and everything's screwed. It really has been a progressive positive change. Seth Price (27m 5s): And that, you know, having sort of studied this and focused on it, I usually welcome these updates. They're scary. But once they, the dust has settled, it has been a positive. And look, I would argue, it's not as similar. You know, you go up against people that take shortcuts in court. And there are times when those shortcuts pay off for them and they, but over time, if you do things right, and I say, right, following Google's rules, they, they have continued to update the algorithm in my experience to reward that work. And for the most part that has continued. So to you flip to what you got, who you guys are, you have an entirely, you have a huge brand offline. Seth Price (27m 48s): Google is looking for you. And the question is, can they find you? And that is the constant sort of, you know, the, there they are saying, Hey, who has the most authority, let us find them. And the question is, are you doing what is necessary to sort of show them it's there? Ben Gideon (28m 5s): So I know you don't hold yourself out as an expert in television or radio or billboards, but are you, do you have any data? And are you seeing any trends that, where consumers are going for their hiring decisions relating to lawyers? Is it moving away more from those, I guess, older generation media to, to digital media? Or is it now just more of a dispersed messaging, but everything's important or how, how do you look at that? Seth Price (28m 35s): People make a lot of money with TV. So I, I, you know, people made a lot more money than I have with TV. So there's there, there's clear that TV is part of the game. What I could tell you is the cost per lead has gone up significantly. And that we are seeing people shift money from TV to digital a B you know, I can speak for my kids. I don't know if you guys have seen, I assume you guys have seen the same thing. My kids don't watch broadcast TV. They're on YouTube. That's, that's their place. And while there's now the ability to advertise there, and it, for example, when a Morgan entered our market and push crazy, my kids knew who he was because of that push. Seth Price (29m 16s): They would, they don't know any of the local TV advertisers in our market, the way they would have a generation ago, where that was part of, you know, if you were home sick from school, you would, you'd be watching, you know, the prices, right. And you would get the local injury lawyers that to me has, has disappeared. And so I think that as those eyeballs are disappearing, that people are looking it. So there's OTT, there's plenty of places to place video media. I think that the idea that you could just go and you had a handful of local stations and then cable, and that, that was your one stop shop to, to doing it, that the cost per case has gone up. Seth Price (29m 57s): I, I would not say, I think that just like some people's like SEO is dead. TV is not dead, but I think that it is no longer the, the, the, the sort of the one place that you would go to place your, your fortunes and, and be set. But I, you know, again, we all know plenty of people that have done very, very well at TV. I just, you know, I know that there are different ways to do it, and I'm watching the money coming into the market. And it, it, you know, that's the part that throws things off. No, you know, there's no more competitive market than, than yours. And that, that, that, that is one of the things I've seen is that we're the cost per case. If you came through and Hey, I want to do pay-per-click, I'm like, that's not for the faint of heart, you know? Seth Price (30m 38s): And that's why I talked about monetizing lower dollar cases, because you may be paying, I'm making this up, but $2,500 or more from Google pay-per-click, and that, while you're looking for a case that's three or four steps up the food chain, if you can't monetize those, all of a sudden, if it's one at a 10 and it's $2,500 per case, you're $25,000 before that, you're just throwing away because you're not monetizing those lower dollar cases. So, you know, billboards a whole nother conversation. Very few people have cracked that code. You know, a few, a few have even. So the people that have cracked it are always like, you know, ripping their hair out. Seth Price (31m 21s): So I think that the truth is there's no easy buck. It's, it's, it's test as best as you can track, but it's getting harder because as you talked about with TV, digital ads, you know, pay per click SEO billboards, very often people's journey to hiring is not that sort of direct line that at once was, you know, if you're planning a family vacation and you're looking at a cruise, not that we're also doing a cruise this season, but when you, in the past, we're looking at a cruise, you didn't just go click on whale, Caribbean, or Disney books, a cruise, you know, you might look at the website, you saw a TV ad that inspired you to do that. You spoke to your friend, you check reviews, you went back and forth. And on that 10 touch point, you actually booked the, the cruise. Seth Price (32m 3s): I think the, the, the lawyer buying cycle, particularly the higher dollar cases is becoming more like that. And that, you know, people are trying to get those multiple touch points and trust points along the way. Ben Gideon (32m 15s): We're going to take a short break. We'll be back in about 60 seconds with more of south price. We'd like to thank our sponsors expert Institute. Not only will they find you testifying experts for your case, but they also offer an entire staff of in-house experts to help you strategize and prepare your case each step of the way, go to expert institute.com forward slash elevate, and you'll get 25% discount for our listeners for your first expert engagement. Our show is also brought to you by smart advocate. Smart advocate is the top rated legal case management software in the market. It's simple enough for the smallest practices and robust enough for the largest class action and multi-district litigation firms go to smart advocate.com and again, ask for the discount available to the listeners of the elevate podcast. Ben Gideon (33m 6s): Our show today is also brought to you by hype legal hype. Legal is a boutique digital marketing firm for law firms. If you're feeling like you're in a digital marketing rut, perhaps you're tired of your old website seeking something better, I would encourage you to talk to Tyler and Micah at hype legal Tyler and Micah had been working in the legal space for 27 years combined. They both worked at high impact, which is a firm that provides national trial graphics to lawyers, where they built out a highly successful marketing and digital platform for that company. Now they've started their own company to be a boutique marketing and design firm for high-end trial lawyers. Ben Gideon (33m 48s): I've worked with both Micah and Tyler for a long time for Tyler for over a decade. They're incredibly professional responsive and have a real genius for aesthetics design and marketing. They designed our elevate website and all of our graphics, which I think is really fantastic. Give them a call and check them out at hype legal, H Y P E legal.com. Our episode today is being sponsored by smart advocate. I run a complex personal injury and medical malpractice law firm. It's highly documented intensive with hundreds and thousands of clients and files, and we manage our entire practice using smart advocate. It's really great. And one thing that's great about it is it's completely customizable. Ben Gideon (34m 31s): It has robust reports and dashboards to track all of your case and from operational details. And it makes my firm more efficient and more profitable. The system features tools such as intake, scoring work plans, automated procedures, a new case wizard, and lots of other features that help your team manage your cases as efficiently as possible with a responsive support team, continual software releases. In fact, they just upgraded their cloud-based software, which is what we use and is great because you can use it anywhere at home or at the office, or anywhere on the road. Smart advocate provides a legal case management software solution to help your firm. If you're interested in working with smart advocate, go to smart advocate.com. Ben Gideon (35m 13s): And when you talk to them, tell them that folks at elevate sign to you and you'll get a discount only for our list. Rahul Ravipudi (35m 18s): Kay, welcome back, Seth, if you're a new lawyer or somebody who's getting into the marketing space, you don't have the track record. And you're just trying to get a, a wide reach. What are the sort of messages or the, the up-to-date or current messages seem to actually attract consumers? I've seen everything in summer, some are offensive and some are not Seth Price (35m 44s): Right. And like, I don't think, I think the answer is be different, you know, but that's so hard, you know, like none of us want to be the meat injury lawyer. It is just a hard, hard thing to differentiate yourself from the market. Well, I'll, I'll, I'll answer the question. That was from my point of view, like the, the actual messaging is something that I'll leave up to the lawyer because it's opinion at what resonates in history is written by the Victor. My question is, how do I deliver that message? And I'll give you sort of some of my metrics that I, that I look at, which is, you know, for me, I would say, and again, every market is different. You're from two dramatically different markets here. Seth Price (36m 25s): I always ask people if they're over or below $350,000 in gross revenue, because until they're over 350,000 in gross revenue, it's really hard to invest assuming that you don't have an independent line of equity coming in to pay for this. That it's very hard to put meaningful money into SEO or PPC. I mean, you can start out doing something nominal. It's just hard to get traction. So I think that the, the, the, the key is can you and Ben, you just went through starting this new firm. Can you get enough revenue from referral partners from, from hustling, from getting cases, other people don't want, if you're brand new, whatever it is, can you build up that base so that you have the revenue to spend money on marketing? Seth Price (37m 13s): And that number is higher in California. That's probably a more of a, a main or ju I mean, everything's different in California. So what I would say is figuring out where you are understanding that websites have a period where you're in a sandbox before you even have a chance of getting visibility, your Google, my business, believe it or not, they don't call it the same thing. It doesn't have an official name, but there's essentially a sandbox period or age of that. Google my business matters. So there are things that, you know, they always say the best type of plants is Shri. You know, w w was yesterday, the second best time was today, like getting a website up and starting to collect the age and the authority through sweat equity of asking people for links and finding ways to do content, whether it's yourself, your staff, or others, starting to take these steps to build something up. Seth Price (38m 9s): Because without that, your message is almost irrelevant to me. If you can't be heard, what difference does your message make? Yes. Then once you have something that's a platform, then the question is, do you have a message that resonates and you can differentiate from the market? That's the next step. But I would just say that, making sure that you take steps to understand what's there and you need to live to fight through a particular on the plaintiff's bar, because you not only do you have to get the case, but you got to wait through settlement or verdict in order to get paid. What data Ben Gideon (38m 41s): Do lawyers need to track to determine if their marketing is successful or not? And we can kind of maybe leave it there, because that will be how we measure and hold ourselves accountable for the marketing efforts we undertake, Seth Price (38m 54s): The more you can track the better and there's areas that you can track really well. And that, you know, I believe in things like call rail to track your paid search, to see what comes in. But as we mentioned before, stuff comes in from all different directions. So I think you try to figure out what's the referral bucket and have to look at a top level. Cause you try to get too granular. Most of us are not good enough to be able to figure that out. But if it's something direct, like pay-per-click, it gives you an idea of what you're getting, because you can actually see these calls turned into clicks. That turned into cases. You're probably have a slight benefit beyond that because those ads at the top may have inspired somebody to click at the organic below, perhaps. Seth Price (39m 36s): So I, my, my, my point is figure out what's going on. Try to figure out what your cost per cases with pay-per-click. I always said, if you know, you invested a thousand dollars, which now you can't even do in California, it's not even a case, but if you invest X amount of money and it works double it, if that works double it, you know, those are, that's how I built my firm up. If it, you know, but there is, there's not an easy answer. I would say track as much as you can. Don't bury your head in the sand, but it is a building process. And something like organic doesn't happen overnight. It's going to take time and it's going to build over time. So I encourage people to experiment and see what works for them in their market. Seth Price (40m 19s): But at the same time, if you try to get too granular and the tracking you're gonna drive yourself crazy, and you probably won't, you know, just throw your hands up and stop. This has Ben Gideon (40m 27s): Been fantastic. We really appreciate your time today. It's been a wealth of knowledge for us and information. If our listeners want to hear more from you or contact you or find you, how do Seth Price (40m 37s): They go about doing that? I geek out on this all the time. You already questions about digital marketing. When I want to chat late night, I'm Seth at blue shark, digital Blu shark, digital.com. If you have questions about your site, we have a team that will throw it through like a battery of tests, send it back to you and say, Hey, this is what's working. This is, what's not, you know, my, my feeling is there are a lot of people that are just starting out. We're, we're there to try to help help them get there. So thank you so much, Ben Earl for having Ben Gideon (41m 4s): Me on. Thanks, Seth. Really appreciate it. Oh, thanks. You were awesome. All right, everybody though, that'll, we'll call it a day. Look forward to seeing everybody back for another episode. In two weeks, everyone have a good 2 (41m 15s): Week for more information about today's guests and the topics discussed on the show. Please visit our website@wwwdotelevate.net. That's E L a w B a T e.net, where you'll find guest profiles and show notes. And you can continue the conversation by joining our Facebook group. And if you enjoy today's show, we hope that you'll subscribe and consider giving us a five star review. So for now, keep on working to elevate your trial law practice, and we'll see you back again soon.