Your Marketing Agency Might Be a Sith Lord (Red Flags for Law Firms)

Nick Werker   0:00

In a world where law firms constantly miss out on new leads due to sloppy legal intake, and often because they just aren’t answering the phone, two marketers aim to provide a glimmer of hope.

Tony Prieto   

Like, I thought we agreed we weren’t gonna do the announcer thing.

Nick Werker   

Thank God, because that hurts my throat. You do the intro.

Tony Prieto   0:22

Gladly. I’m Tony Prieto, and this is my colleague Nick Werker. Believe it or not, we’re marketing professionals. Well, I think you’re the professional. Um, but we are true experts when it comes to all matters legal intake. For over a decade, our company, Answering Legal, has helped ensure that growing law firms never miss out on connecting with new leads. And now we’re ready to share our trade secrets and help make the legal world a better place. Or at the very least, help our listeners shore up their lead capturing processes and convert more callers to clients. Welcome to the Legal Intake Experts podcast.

Nick Werker   

Let’s dive right in. We are back once again on the Legal Intake Experts podcast, presented by Answering Legal. I am Nick Werker. I am presented by Answering Legal and by coffee. Joined as always by my co-host, Tony Prieto. How are you, Tony?

Tony Prieto   

I’m insulted.

Nick Werker   1:16

Why?

Tony Prieto   

We have done our audience a disservice.

Nick Werker   

This is, this is, I don’t know, I don’t know what you’re doing. Okay. I’m, I’m playing along. What do we, what did we do?

Tony Prieto   

We are providing them with a service here. We’re telling them about, um, how to improve the, uh, intake for their law firm when we could be doing something much more valuable, which is nerding out about Star Wars in front of them.

Nick Werker   1:41

Uh, I think you have captured the interest of probably Jared Correia- … for sure. Who else is gonna watch this and nerd out about Star Wars? I’m not sure. I’m not sure at all. Well, okay, so do it. Are, are, are we, are we nerding out? What are we doing?

Tony Prieto   

So this is not a Star Wars episode. It is a Star Wars themed episode.

Nick Werker   2:04

Okay.

Tony Prieto   

We’re going to, we’re going to start here on Star Wars, and we’re gonna take that to what we always talk about, which is intake. Now, Producer Joe has, has given us a challenge, and that challenge is to, to reveal something about yourself to prove just how big a Star Wars nerd you really are.

Nick Werker   

Well, I got somebody with this recently that I f- I don’t think, I don’t think you knew this, and maybe that’s an insult to you. Somebody was talking about Grogu, who’s Baby Yoda, uh, more affectionately, and obviously there’s Yoda. Yoda is an unknown species. If you look it up on, like, “starwarsfacts or info.com”, he’s an unknown species. But there is another Yoda or, or Yoda species in the canon of Star Wars, and it is a female character-

Tony Prieto   

I know this character.

Nick Werker   2:57

named Yaddle.

Tony Prieto   

Yaddle, yeah.

Nick Werker   

So who was the person that didn’t know who Yaddle was that-

Tony Prieto   

I don’t know.

Nick Werker   

… I was talking to?

Tony Prieto   

But the thing that’s funny about Yaddle is that she just speaks, I guess it’s galactic basic English, uh, straight, not like Yoda.

Nick Werker   

Oh, so I didn’t even get you. Yaddle just talks like you and me, so clearly Yoda’s just choosing to talk in a way that’s confusing. Okay, I got one that you’d only know if you are a nerd and you watched the Clone Wars comics, is that Count Dooku was Yoda’s padawan. That’s, I feel like that’s a good fun fact. What do you got?

Tony Prieto   

I, uh, grew up watching Star Wars. I wore out the VHS tape, uh, for A New Hope, which is not the best of those three movies. I mean, I, I, I think that, that Empire Strikes Back is the best one. But as a kid, Luke looking to the horizon, trying to leave his house, uh, his, his little, his little farm boy life and, and h- hoping that there was a better life for him a- a- ahead of time really resonated with me. And still, I cry when I see him stand and look at the, the binary sunset, which is pretty, pretty nerdy. But I think that my fun fact that is, is nerdy is that, um, the Sith, right, the, the evil, uh, Force users are… is actually, there’s two kinds of Sith. There’s the Sith, like, uh, Darth Sidious, uh, Emperor Palpatine. Spoilers, uh, I guess if you’re starting from the prequels, right? And then, uh, and then there’s also the Sith where this, like, uh, red-skinned sort of tentacled- um, alien race that lived on the planet of Korriban, which is the planet that Darth Sidious was trying to take his fleet to when he built them on Exegol in Rise of Skywalker. One of the, one of the only movies that made me wanna leave the theater when I was watching it.

Nick Werker   

I will say one more nerdy thing is that before Ahsoka Tano became super popularized in Disney in the last few years, I met my wife. We had a cat, this is while we were dating, and we named her Ahsoka. And I just remember telling her sister, who is really a lot like you, whenever I visit there I tell them all the funny obscure things, uh, that you’ve shown me, and then I bring back some things and I show them to you from them. And we were like, “Oh, we named the cat Ahsoka.” And she goes, “The Togruta female?” And I just remember being like, “Yeah.” It’s like- “That’s also awesome.”

Tony Prieto   

… human Wookie- That’s a human Wookieepedia right there. She is a- ‘Cause Ahsoka Tano-

Nick Werker   

She will go-

Tony Prieto   

… is a Togrutan female is the first line of her Wikipedia entry.

Nick Werker   

The Togruta female? I was like, what?

Tony Prieto   

Well, before we-

Nick Werker   

Yes, but what?

Tony Prieto   

Before we lose the, the people who aren’t Star Wars fans, Star Wars is about, uh, good versus evil, light and dark, and our theme for this episode is that unfortunately in the legal space there are some bad apples you have to watch, look out for. Some, you know, some hidden Sith deceptive people who, who are looking to take advantage of, of your law firm and, and the service you provide. We touched on this a few episodes back during our conversation with Ron Latz. I wanted to talk, go, like, a little bit deeper on what you can call, you know, bad actors in the legal marketing space. Let’s start with marketing agencies and how you can tell sort of red flags that show that the partner you’re working for might not be the most trustworthy.

Nick Werker   6:18

In this example, we’re the Jedi ’cause I’m not dropping this. This is good. Okay, we’re the Jedi. We decide what’s good, which is a, a flaw of the Jedi if you watch the Star Wars, uh, series. Anyway, I decide that, and these are the easy ones. You are finding a new law firm marketing partner, and you ask them, “Who owns my advertising account and my website?” And they say, “We do.” You say, “But do I also?” And they say, “No.” That’s a Sith Lord in disguise right there, buddy.

Tony Prieto   6:48

Yeah, that’s a pretty, uh, basic one. Ideally, you, uh, if you want to, right, you gi- you give this partner access to your website, you make them collaborators on your ad accounts if-

Nick Werker   

Well, okay, so in this example-

Tony Prieto   

Yeah.

Nick Werker   7:10

that one is the very obvious thinly veiled, not even veiled at all, uh, Sith apprentice. That’s Darth Maul, a guy with horns who is red, comes running at you with a double-edged red lightsaber. He is very obviously Sith. If somebody says you don’t own your data, you don’t own your account, you don’t own your website, and if you leave, we pull all of that down and you have to start from scratch, that is the, the Darth Maul not veiled at all, not thinly veiled-

Tony Prieto   

Okay.

Nick Werker   

Sith Lord.

Tony Prieto   7:39

Yeah, that one’s very obvious. The good version of that is the common sense. You add them as a collaborator and they, they help you. They don’t own it. I know that, like, the same thing happens with, uh, website registrars, right? Like, if you have your domain name registered with the same service that you have it hosted on, then if they own both sides of that equation, if you decide to just take your website down, they can just keep the domain name and you don’t get to port it over. What’s, what’s a little bit more, uh, a little bit more Count Dooku? You know, a little bit, little bit more veiled?

Nick Werker   

Ooh, like a smooth talker. I think Count Dooku is known for being a smooth talker, highly educated-

Tony Prieto   

Rest in peace, Christopher Lee…

Nick Werker   

um, very politically minded. What’d you say? I talked right over you.

Tony Prieto   8:27

I said rest in peace, Christopher Lee.

Nick Werker   

Yeah. He was so good, and his character on The Clone Wars looked so good. His beard, like that long white beard. Wow. Oh man, it looked so good. Okay, um, so we’re gonna go thinly veiled ’cause he’s, like, very obviously evil. You look at him and his name is Count Dooku. I feel like the, the sound of that, like the fricative, the, the, the koo, the do, like doom, you know? It sounds so thinly veiled. I am gonna say this might be a little bit more unpopular, but anyone who says that they are going to run the ad spend on their credit card and then just invoice you at the end of the month for the ad spend. The reason being is that there are things out there, and I don’t know how many people know about this, uh, that is like a layer that you can put into, like let’s say a Google Ads account, that will upcharge a click to the tune of something like 20%, and they will just add this pass-through fee, uh, and call it a Google Ads invoice, and really they are lining their own pockets. And actually I’ve heard of one even crazier, but you said Count Dooku level, and that is my Count Dooku level.

Tony Prieto   

I mean, now we don’t have to stick that… What, what was the other crazy thing?

Nick Werker   

The crazy one was I listened to this on Lunch Hour Legal. No, maybe it was Conrad on a podcast, and I know exactly who left the comment. Um, it was… No, I don’t know exactly who left the comment. Somebody said, somebody said that they were talking to their friend who turned off their Google Ads, and she said she had no impact on lead generation. And Conrad from Mockingbird Marketing and Lunch Hour Legal Marketing said he knew exactly why, and I had a similar thought- But also, uh, I was scared of what he said. He said that they weren’t spending very much money at all, um, that it might have, like, gone the lion’s share to brand, and the rest the firm was just, like, lining their pockets with. They weren’t actually spending the advertising money. Do you want some more? This is, like, my favorite thing ever. I literally have a file on my phone dedicated to really bad-

Tony Prieto   

Keep ’em coming.

Nick Werker   10:43

ads and stuff that I know is, um, is just complete tomfoolery. Ugh, I hate this one. Shout out to– I don’t really spend a lot of time on LinkedIn anymore. I can’t do it. It’s all AI. It’s, a lot of it is performative, and I’m not super self-promotional, and I’m, I’m very busy. But I went on LinkedIn today, and I saw a person who I don’t know personally at all, but who I think is very smart and very good at her job. Um, she owns a fractional, I wanna say it’s fractional CMO, but I, I, I don’t know. She’s a, she’s a, like, a law firm consultant, very intelligent, has helped me on a problem before. Her name is Tifiny Swedensky of Sharp Cookie. And she said, and I don’t wanna misquote you, I’m sorry if I do, um, that, uh, a hill that she’s willing to die on is that SEO is overvalued. And I think anyone who pushes you toward one specific solution instead of a, I don’t know, like, all-encompassing marketing strategy. They’re just like, “Hey, we do Google Ads. We’re gonna get you all these results. It’s just this. This is the only thing that matters. This is the most important thing ever. We specialize in it, so you should pay me double what it would cost somewhere else because I’m a specialist.”

Tony Prieto   12:00

That sort of thing is what I would call, like, an overt scare tactic. “I’m the expert in this one thing. This is all you need.” Let’s talk about that. So- Um, think about the, the like Star Wars metaphor here, right? The Jedi believe in balance and communion with the Force.

Nick Werker   

That’s very funny. Okay.

Tony Prieto   

Whereas the Sith are all about power, right? Power is the one thing that moves them. Why is that Sith approach to marketing, focusing on just one channel, one source, why is that much, uh, much less effective than the Jedi way, the bal- the way of balance with the Force?

Nick Werker   

We essentially all are using advertising, renting space. Google Ads is a great example of this, and Google Ads are so popular for attorneys because they’re so effective, and I think they get a really bad rap because they’re really expensive and because they’re so immediate. And I will, I will see these battles online of people who will say, “Oh, it takes a while to see Google Ads results for a new law firm,” and others that will say, “It doesn’t take a long t- a long time at all.” Personal injury is very competitive, right? There’s, there’s players like Morgan & Morgan, there’s nationwide law firms, there’s people who have been in the space forever. They have, they– Like, there’s always a big player in your market no matter where you are, um, if you’re the, the newer person. But if you pay enough money, you can place your link in a four spot area or a local, uh, result for someone near you based on proximity. You can do it smart enough so that you unearned just pay for that placement and someone has the opportunity to see your law firm on Google Ads. And you can monetize that because you can track it, you can see that they came to your website, you can use call tracking to see that they called you, you can use web form tracking to see that they filled out a form on your site, and it’s so immediate that people will hang their hat on, “I can get you cases right now.”

Tony Prieto   14:09

Yeah. And they’re not wrong. But what happens when that becomes prohibitively, prohibitively expensive, right? Acquiring that case or, or you don’t have that initial investment to make, right? And I’ll go even beyond that, right? Your Google advertising will never be as effective without other marketing channels to support that direct response channel, that, that immediacy for people who have the search intent of getting, uh, legal help. It will never be as effective as, as someone else who is doing all of the things, right? Someone who’s posting on social media, who is known for social media, who is seen on social media, who is engaging with their community, d- posting local content about their community, sponsoring things in their community, showing up, um, being online and having conversations, handing out business cards.

Nick Werker   15:01

If you, Tony, were to move here tomorrow and open up a law firm and do Google Ads, you might get cases. You really might.

Tony Prieto   

Yeah.

Nick Werker   

If I open up a law firm tomorrow, right, and, and someone sees my name, I’ve been living here for over 30 years. People are gonna know me more than they’re gonna know you. I’m local, and I can say I’ve been here for… I’m 32. I’ve been here for 32 years. That guy has not. He’s an old carpetbagger. You know what I mean? Like I’m not-

Tony Prieto   

Yeah.

Nick Werker   

… actually gonna say that. Um, but just this, this whole like put your o- you put all your eggs in my basket and I will triple your money. I’ll find you that 4X ROAS you’re looking for is not [BLEEP], but it’s not a whole truth.

Tony Prieto   

And on top of that, things like Google Ads, something that we’ve noticed on Answering Legal, we here at the marketing department, we have Google Ads, Facebook Ads, I’m sure you’ve seen them. Google Ads do not get less expensive. You can only ever spend more on it. You cannot spend less and get the same or better results. There’s no way to optimi- I mean, you… There’s plenty of ways to optimize and make things better, but in particularly the legal space, you have, let’s not call him Darth Vader, but John Morgan spending a billion dollars a year on advertising. He has an theoretically infinite budget in your local area to spend on Google Ads, and Google Ads bids work in, on a lot of ways, but one of the ways that they work is, uh, you know, the top ad, the one that has the best match rate and all that stuff, if it, if they run out of budget for the day, then yours shows up, and that’s, you know, a win that you get. You do not get that win when someone who is, has an infinite budget is just ratcheting that price up year over year. We’ve seen our Google Ads budgets double, and we’re getting a lot of great results from it, and you would too, but there’s no… It’s not, it’s not cheap. There’s no way to make it cheaper, right? And so it is a, an effective channel, and it’s a good short-term plan, but long-term, uh, I mean, I doubt it’ll get to the point where, right, the average case on a motor vehicle accident is… case value’s 6,400. I doubt you’re gonna get to the point where it’s $6,400 per click. But you’re gonna get to a point where it becomes profitable in the, um, in the grand scheme of things, but on the short term, the profit margin’s very small, right?

Nick Werker   17:31

One of my favorite jokes of yours o- of all time is on an infinite timeline it’ll be $6,400 a click.

Tony Prieto   

Yeah, exactly. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s, uh, if you get enough monkeys together on a, on a typewriter, they’ll write Shakespeare eventually. That number’s just gonna keep going up. But let’s, let’s talk about, uh, the opposite. What does the Jedi way look like, right? We talked about being a local, a participator in your local market. A lot of that comes back to brand, right? To being recognizable as a local actor in your community versus your competitors.

Nick Werker   

I wanna walk back, not really walk back so much as add context to my last statement. I didn’t know that you were gonna ask this question, so I get this opportunity now anyway. Hiring a marketing agency that specializes in one thing is not a bad thing.

Tony Prieto   

Yeah.

Nick Werker   

Unless they are saying that that’s all you need, right? I’ll give you a very good example. My good friends Bo Royal and Jacob Barufkin over at Pareto Legal are the best that I know of at specializing in paid marketing, right? Google Ads, Facebook ads, I can’t even think of anything else off the top of my head. Now it’s ChatGPT. I don’t know if they do ChatGPT. D- don’t freaking quote me on that. But they’re, they’re specialists at paid. They, they can optimize, uh, ads. They know how to layer negative keywords and funnel things. I’ve seen people talk about, like, layering campaigns to funnel. I’ve seen some crazy stuff that these people know how to do, and they do it with data. They have a phenomenal, um, data department that helps law firm owners make better decisions, right? They show you everything, and they go through it with you. Um, but I know from experience that neither Bo nor Jake would tell you that that’s all you need.

Tony Prieto   

Right.

Nick Werker   

They’ll say that that’s all they do. Right? Because they’re specialists, and maybe they don’t wanna get into the realm of doing, um, the omni-channel marketing approach. But they would never say, “Don’t do SEO. Don’t make optimizations to your website. Don’t engage in local social content. Don’t sponsor a little league team. Don’t hand out business car-” You know what I mean? Like, they would never say that.

Tony Prieto   

Yeah.

Nick Werker   

If someone is saying, “All you need to do is this, and I’ll get you 150 cases in the next 30 days or you don’t pay me,” I would love to see the terms of that contract- … that you’re inevitably gonna make them sign.

Tony Prieto   

Well, hopefully, you know, as a, as a, a lawyer, as a legal expert, you’ll be able to read that contract and see the, um, the pitfalls there. But, um, think- you could think about it this way, right? You could pay through the nose for Google Ads, people click on it, and then they end up on a website that isn’t optimized for people to convert on. F- uh, they end up on, you know, a homepage when they should’ve landed on a landing page. They end up on a page that is not related to their inquiry at all. And what you’re going to see is a bunch of people clicking on your ads, and you’re paying for them, and you’re not getting anything out of it. And of course, there’s a world where you find the best person in the world for Google Ads, and you hire them to do just Google Ads, and then you find the best person in the world for Facebook Ads, and you hire them to do Facebook Ads. Eventually, that becomes, you know, on an infinite timeline, really difficult to manage ’cause it’s a lot easier to manage one relationship with a marketing agency than it is to manage seven. But, uh, if that’s the way you want to do it ’cause you really love having the best in the world at X, you can go for it. That’s not what we’re saying. What we’re saying is that, like, there is no I… You know, there’s no get-rich-quick scheme, right? It’s all hard work. It’s all going to be a lot of work to get the results that you want, but when you get there, it will be by a balanced approach.

Nick Werker   

So let’s assume that I am the first trilogy, not the prequels, the first trilogy.

Tony Prieto   

Mm-hmm.

Nick Werker   21:16

Four, five, and six. I just now, me, Luke Skywalker, Mark Hamill, who I aspired to be my entire childhood, have just defeated Sith Lord Darth Sidious. I save my father from what a- appears to be going to hell, right, in his final redemption. He’s now, he’s a good boy again. We love him.

Tony Prieto   

He’s a force ghost with Yoda and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon.

Nick Werker   21:41

Those are my… Yes, exactly, yeah. Uh, do they change that?

Tony Prieto   

Yes.

Nick Werker   

Yeah, they do. Um, I-

Tony Prieto   

It’s, it’s Hayden Christensen in the, in the, um In the, the new versions. On the old version, it’s the guy who was playing Darth Vader. His name I don’t know.

Nick Werker   

I have the, the VHS tapes.

Tony Prieto   

Yes. So- VHS tapes will be the original …

Nick Werker   

I, I’ve seen it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I should get a VHS player. Anyway, so that’s my trilogy, right? Let’s say we defeated my Darth Vader. Now you are Rey, who has no last name, and don’t tell me her last name is Skywalker, ’cause it’s not. You are Rey. Who is your Kylo Ren slash… What is that guy’s name? Snoke?

Tony Prieto   

Uh, yeah, Leader Snoke.

Nick Werker   22:21

Snoke.

Tony Prieto   

S-N-O-K-E.

Nick Werker   

Garbage. Sorry that I made you this franchise. I just, I went first.

Tony Prieto   

Sorry, what was your question? Oh, who’s Kylo Ren?

Nick Werker   

Who’s, who… Yeah, who do you defeat, right? What are your… Who’s your, who’s your, who’s your Sith? What do, what do we look out for?

Tony Prieto   

I think me, I mean, personally, is, is, uh… And I, I think that this applies to almost every situation, is someone who has all the answers. I think that that, for example, is, uh, what Anakin runs into in, uh, in, uh, Revenge of the Sith, is, is he has all of these problems, and he goes to the Jedi, and the Jedi say, “Well, that’s life, man. You just gotta deal with it.” And then he goes to his good friend Palpatine, who says, “That’s not true. Death can be avoided.” Uh, anyone who tells you that kind of thing is someone you know you cannot trust. You have to be on the lookout for con- and constantly analyzing your relationships with everyone to make sure that you’re never on the side of the guy who knows exactly the answer to everything.

Nick Werker   

I really like your answer because it kind of, it, it, it’s, it’s similar to mine in that it’s somebody who tells you that they know and that you don’t need any other information. It’s somebody who’s just full of half-truths and isn’t willing to give you the full nuanced answer. When I was originally being taught SEO by Chris Watson of EverSpark, I think he ended up opening a company named Peachtree. I haven’t spoken to him in a long time. He would show us, like, all of this stuff to do about SEO, and he would say this, like, you could do this with backlinks. Backlinks are super important. Content is super important. Syndication is super important. Citations are super important. He would show us all of this, these things. Technical SEO is super important. And he would show us all of these things that he knew how to do, but he would explain this is white hat SEO. This is what Google tells you is the right thing to do. This is black hat SEO. This is a known or unknown, really undetectable spam tactic, right? You will get away with this for the time being.

Tony Prieto   

Yeah.

Nick Werker   

Right? There is no way to tell whether or not somebody will be caught doing this thing, right? And a, and a good example of this is like, I, I’ll call it what it is, a private backlink network, right? Say you go and you find some SEO person who wants to sell you SEO, and they tell you that all you need in order to achieve great rankings and, uh, now is just impressions really, ’cause like what else can you really, uh, tie yourself to in the world of zero-click search and AI Overviews and AI… What did somebody email me recently? XEO. They wanted to sell me XEO. They’ll tell you that they’re gonna do it with a backlink strategy. Well, if they don’t explain to you where they are going to acquire these links, you can not be certain, I shouldn’t say you should be certain, that they won’t do anything that could be harmful to your business. Uh, one of these known things is that people got together back in the day and created these backlink networks that you could essentially pay to get your website into a network of people who had agreed to post your link onto their website and just like send all of this traffic around. Now people do it on LinkedIn with engagement pods. They try to artificially inflate the algorithm showing them more using this engagement pod. This is the same thing. Uh, when you get caught now in a private backlink network, I don’t even know if you will receive a manual action from Google anymore. But I can tell you that you will receive a penalty in the form of reduced visibility. And so if you are allowing somebody to sell you something that sounds good to– too good to be true, you should find out, is it how the sausage gets made?

Tony Prieto   

Yeah. You know, um, and like I said, this is something I kind of take as a, as, as a, a life motto, which is that life is difficult. I-it– for some people, it’s easy, sure. But like, like the things that really matter in life are not easy. And if you find someone who tells you that they can make it easy, right? Like getting backlinks is the hardest part of SEO. One of the safest ways to do it is to produce good content, share it so that people share it, and then link back to it when they produce their content, a sort of organic version of, of what you were just talking about, and that’s really hard. It’s really hard to stand out when everyone’s trying to do that. It’s really hard to put all this time into this content and see nothing happen. It takes a long time. It can take 18 months, you know. But that’s, unfortunately, that is the way that it has to be because everything else, the shortcuts, will end up biting you back. Well, you’ll end up, again, uh, you’ll end up with the revenge of the shortcut.

Nick Werker   

You are so good at this stuff.

Tony Prieto   

So let’s talk about the return of the Jedi, right? Let’s talk about what the good version of this looks like.

Nick Werker   

Okay. Good version. Glinda the Good Witch. I’m Glinda the Good Witch. There’s something wrong with me. The good version is someone who tells you that you’re gonna own everything, all the data, all of the accounts. You are responsible for the payment of the advertising. They want to be your partner, um, which means that they wanna continually make sure that their efforts are being attributed to signed cases and an increase in profit, right?

Tony Prieto   27:59

Yeah.

Nick Werker   

We want profit. We want growth. Uh, we want partners who are invested in what your goals are, right? And so if you’re entering an engagement where you just feel like you’re being sold something instead of somebody trying to find out what your business goals are… I’ll, I’ll give you an example. I was on a phone call recently on behalf of a law firm with a vendor, and the vendor asked what the firm’s goals were. Do you want to expand into this new county, this new municipality, this new territory, a new state? Do you have multiple offices? How are you supposed to sell anybody anything without knowing what their goals are, right?

Tony Prieto   

Right.

Nick Werker   

And so if the answer is, “No, I’m not really looking to grow that much, it’s just that my worry is that my case volume is getting, uh, really low, and I haven’t paid attention to my website or my SEO in a long time, and I know that that’s really hurting my, my visibility and my brand awareness.” “Oh, the person who was doing my social media moved, and so now I wanna find somebody to really invest in my social media because I know it was doing a good job, and I don’t wanna let it slip.” “Somebody put up a new billboard. There’s a billboard for sale, and I want somebody to run the creative for this billboard. I need a creative agency to help me come up with a good ad, because I don’t think that me smiling with a thumbs up saying, ‘Call Tony’ will be as good.”

Tony Prieto   

Well, it actually would be.

Nick Werker   

Okay, so you should pay me money for that idea. Somebody who’s invested in what your goals are, not what their version of success looks like for you.

Tony Prieto   29:28

Exactly, and I think a lot about… We were just talking about, uh, results and how if the marketing agency’s producing a lot of leads and the lead quality is low, it could be the marketing agency’s fault, but it could be your intake is bad, or you’re not giving them the right, uh, right goal- goals. When someone comes to you and says, “Hey, how are the leads? I know we’re delivering the leads. How are they doing?” Or if you give them access to that and they can monitor them themselves, that’d be awesome. But that question is a really, really green flag because that means that they’re not just interested in providing the results that you’re looking for. They want to make sure that they’re providing the right results because, I mean, a 10% reduction in leads with a 30% increase in close rate would be– would look worse for them on, in terms of, like, raw lead volume if that’s the only metric you’re using, but it’s a lot better for you.

Nick Werker   30:26

We’ll end with this. I truly believe this, and I’ve said this before to my friend Annette Choti, that digital marketing is every, l- there are so many scams in the world. So many s- my friend was just scammed the other day. It was the funniest scam I’ve ever heard of in my life. He was doing a giveaway for his YouTube channel, and somebody, uh, won this giveaway, changed their, like, profile picture, and said that somebody else stole the money by changing their name on, like, Venmo or whatever it was. Stole the money. Everything is a scam, right? Digital marketing is so easily scammable.

Tony Prieto   

Yep.

Nick Werker   

You can come on the internet and say, “I will manage your Google Ads,” right? And for whatever ethos and whatever, you’re a good talker, you convince somebody to do it. I truly believe anybody can build a website and anybody can run Google Ads. That doesn’t mean anything, right? You have to make sure you’re finding the right partner. And so I think the best ones will find what outcomes you’re looking for, and it’s exactly what you said. Whose interest are they serving, right? What metrics of success are they tied to? Gyi talks about this all the time, is-

Tony Prieto   

You’re right.

Nick Werker   

Say your agency is able to cut your costs by 10% while delivering you 30% more cases. Do they take a lesser fee because they cut your costs if they’re billed?

Tony Prieto   

Yeah.

Nick Werker   

If they’re billing on total advertising spend, is that how they’re tied? Or are they incentivizing you to pay more, right? You have to look at the way that these relationships are found. Are you tied to case outcomes? Are you tied to wanted leads? Are you tied to lead volume? Are you tied to impressions, right? What interest does that serve? It’s just about finding somebody who actually understands how a law firm operates and how your law firm and you operate. That’s the Jedi way. There’s, there’s, there’s other… You know what I mean? Like, if you wanna get down to, like, Yoda meditating, floating on a, on a thing, like, in a dark room by himself, and Anakin comes in, and he’s like, “Don’t worry about it,” that’s the Jedi way.

Tony Prieto   

I’m going to land this podcast with a better send-off than Rise of Skywalker and say that we referenced Answering Legal a few times during today’s episode, so I just wanna let our listeners know that they can head to answeringlegal.com to learn more about our virtual receptionist service. There’s a link in the bio of this episode to get started with a 400-minute free trial of the service. And if you wanna share a Star Wars fact or just talk about Star Wars with us, leave a comment on the YouTube video, a review on the podcast, whatever it is to get in touch with us, and we will hit you up.

Nick Werker   32:59

Tell me your favorite Star Wars fact. I will tell you my most random one as a sign-off. I used to drive a 2014 Subaru Crosstrek, and it was silver. And if you squint hard enough at a 2014 Subaru Crosstrek in silver, it kind of looks like the Millennium Falcon. And I, I had a bumper sticker. It was a magnet, so it’s not really a sticker, but it was a bumper sticker that said, uh, “This car made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs.” And I still think about that. I also had a Stormtrooper, uh, tow hitch cover for a truck that I drove, so I guess I really am a Star Wars nerd. But anyway, thank you to all of our listeners, and we will see you next time with another episode of The Legal Intake Experts.

Tony Prieto   

Be sure to, uh, follow us to, on, uh, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and the Answering Legal YouTube channel to catch future episodes. And, uh, may the Force be with you.

Nick Werker   

I can’t follow that up. Okay. May the Force be with you. Shh, Nick, don’t say anything else.