Speaker 1: 0:06

How do I set up a high converting funnel? Welcome to Legal Marketing 101. I'm Toby Rosen, and why are we diving into funnels today? Well, for a law firm that's looking to bring in more clients and grow your practice, generate more revenue, a well-structured marketing funnel is kind of the whole game. We need to think of this as our roadmap to guiding potential clients from the moment they first hear about our firm all the way to booking a consultation or retaining us or paying a fee. Without a funnel in place, we're basically leaving our lead generation, our client acquisition, all of this marketing budget up to chance, and that is not a strategy. So, no matter the size of your practice, whether you're a solo or a full service firm in multiple practice areas, a really effective funnel, or multiple funnels, is going to help you attract the right clients, build trust and streamline the entire decision-making process for the client. And it's not just about getting more leads, it's about nurturing the leads who will actually bring the most value to your practice. A well-crafted funnel automates a lot of the heavy lifting when we do it right, and this allows us to focus on what we do best or what you do best providing excellent legal services, I hope. Essentially, if you want to grow your law firm in a smart and scalable way, understanding how to set up a high converting funnel is one of the major keys DJ Khaled style to getting to that success, and that's exactly what we're going to be covering today.

Speaker 1: 1:36

So let's start with the basics. What exactly is a marketing funnel, especially in the context of a law firm? At its core, a funnel is a framework that guides your potential clients through a series of different stages, from when they first hear about your firm to when they decide to reach out and then, ultimately, when they become paying clients, and traditionally, these stages are broken down into four parts. This is the college professor version. These are awareness, interest, decision and then action. Awareness is where prospects are first coming into contact with your firm. So this could be a blog post or an evergreen page on your website, or a post on social media, a Google ad, maybe even a referral. Whatever it is, your goal here is really simple Make them aware that your firm exists and that you can solve their legal problem, and from that stage we're moving on to interest, and this is where those prospects begin to explore whether your firm is actually the right fit for their needs. So maybe they're downloading a guide from a landing page you've published about estate planning or about family law, or they're signing up for a webinar that you're doing weekly, or even just an automated webinar for business law, or they're reading reviews about your firm on Google. At this stage, the prospect is just collecting information to determine if you're the legal partner that they're looking for and if you can solve their problem.

Speaker 1: 3:00

And the fun part or one of the fun parts decision comes right after that. And right here your prospect is narrowing down their choices and is really close to actually making a commitment. And this is where the trust and credibility that we try to espouse in our marketing really is crucial. Things like case studies, client testimonials and the seamless intake process that we need to have these are really key. Here You're aiming to remove any friction that could prevent them from we need to have these are really key. Here You're aiming to remove any friction that could prevent them from reaching out to you, even if it's them scrolling to the bottom of your GMB and seeing a one-star review. And then finally, we have action. This is when that prospect decides to book that consultation, sign an engagement letter, sign the retainer letter, send in a check or just otherwise commit to working with your firm.

Speaker 1: 3:48

And now, why is all of this important for law firms? Simply put, a funnel helps you automate and optimize the journey that each potential client goes through. It ensures you're consistently moving these leads closer to taking action without having to manually guide every single prospect with all of their you know idiosyncrasies. Let's say so for firms that deal with complex cases or high value clients, this is a really important step. But even if you're working with high volumes of clients or you're working with smaller clients, having this process will make your life easier, because the reality is that legal decisions are often really difficult and complicated for people. They require a great deal of trust and they involve longer conversion timelines than pretty much every other industry. Maybe buying a house takes longer, I don't know. That means your funnel needs to be a lot more than a pipeline for quick sales, unless you're in bankruptcy. You need to be building a relationship here. You need to be nurturing leads with useful content, answering their questions and creating more touch points that demonstrate your firm's value to the prospect. So when we understand and we really properly implement a funnel tailored to our practice, you're not just getting more leads. That's not even the point. You're getting more of the right leads and you're getting more of the right clients. But before we can build a really effective funnel, we need to know who we're building it for. And I've talked about what I'm about to talk about a bunch, so I'll try to keep it quick.

Speaker 1: 5:19

The first step here is identifying our ideal client persona. This means we're trying to understand who we're targeting. What are their pain points? What are they looking for in legal services? What are they going through? Are we catering to business owners who need ongoing corporate counsel, or are we catering to individuals who just have this one-time family law issue? Your funnel is going to look very different depending on the type of client you're trying to attract. And to gather all this information, we just start by analyzing our existing clients. We want to look at demographics, legal needs and maybe even ask them why they chose the firm. Client surveys can be really insightful here. They'll tell us what factors influenced this particular client's decision to hire you, what they found valuable. We can use this in our marketing. On top of this, industry research, market trends all of this can give us a little broader perspective as well on the pain points and priorities of our potential target audience.

Speaker 1: 6:13

A practical approach here is to craft a detailed persona that includes factors like their age, profession, legal issues they commonly face, even the kind of language that might resonate for them. What we generally want to do right after that is the client story, but I won't get into that. Once you've built that persona and created something of a client story, what we're really doing here is step-by-step mapping out the journey for this client from awareness to conversion, and if you haven't done a client story, this can actually be helpful for creating that. So what this involves is breaking down each stage the potential client goes through, from the first moment they hear about you to where they start thinking about a divorce or the phone call they get from their mother and things aren't going well and they might need to hire an estate planning lawyer soon. All the way from just that first hearing about you to ultimately deciding to hire you, every step along the way.

Speaker 1: 7:09

A really useful tool for this process I like to use different stuff from setup. I've talked about that before but a really useful tool for doing this kind of map is mind mapping software so you can visually lay out each stage of the client journey, and then you can match it up with the corresponding funnel stage or group things together and as we map out this journey, we can start aligning the content we want to have in our funnel and all of the touch points we want to have, so that we can effectively meet the client where they already are. So, for example, someone in the awareness stage might need more general legal information about the topic, whereas a person in the decision stage is going to benefit a little bit more from a testimonial or a case study that's relevant to their specific situation. The goal is to design this funnel so that each step along the way, we're providing exactly what the client needs to move forward in their decision-making process. Mapping the client journey out in this sort of roundabout way ensures for us that the funnel isn't just attracting a bunch of new leads, but it's actually effectively guiding them towards becoming clients. We always want to make sure we know where we're going when we start the journey, but now that we've sort of you know, gone through the main elements, the you know structure and how we can start planning for this, let's actually dive into those four key elements and see how we can create those. So for a law firm, every stage of the funnel here this is an opportunity for us to guide potential clients closer to choosing our services. So we break it down into those four steps awareness, interest, decision and action and each stage has slightly different strategies, slightly different best practices, and we're not going to go too deep into each of these today. But the reality is that when these are executed effectively, they work together really well to drive client conversions.

Speaker 1: 8:57

The first stage in that funnel, like we talked about, is awareness. This is where potential clients are discovering the firm and the goal is really just to get the name and the topic, or maybe an edgy message, in front of as many relevant eyeballs as possible. So here we're going to want to use usually a combination of organic marketing and paid marketing strategies to generate traffic. So organic traffic generation, like SEO, is a long-term strategy, but it's still pretty valuable for law firms. In a lot of markets it's still a must. So for this we want to think of content that answers your target audience's questions like what should I do after a car accident? How should I start a business in my state, all of this type of content.

Speaker 1: 9:43

We've talked about how some of the elements of this work before, but these not only position you as a thought leader, but they're helping with our Google search ranking positioning. And that's really one of the big benefits here, because, look, it's not just about getting traffic. It's about getting the right traffic from the people who need legal services and are closer to ready to take action. So the higher we rank on Google, the more likely it is that we're going to get the good traffic from them. But on the flip side, paid traffic strategies like Google ads can be really effective. They're great because they target users that are actively searching for legal help, so sometimes they provide quicker results. Social media ads like Facebook, linkedin, x or Twitter or whatever it's called, all also allow you to target based on demographics and interests, which can be really valuable if your practice has sort of a specific niche that these platforms allow us to target.

Speaker 1: 10:37

But regardless of the traffic source, what's really important here is effective calls to action. Even in this awareness stage, a CTA can be as simple as contact us for a free consultation or download our guide to family law, but the goal here is to start enticing the audience to take that small step that moves them down to the next stage of the funnel. Whether we're running paid ads, we've got organic traffic coming in or we're doing something on social to raise awareness, we need to have CTAs that are clear, compelling and directly related to the content that these users are engaging with. We want to offer a relevant and easy next step. That just sort of makes sense, because once a prospect is aware of your firm, the next step is to start building their interest in your services. That's phase number two. This is where our funnel needs to provide opportunities for potential clients to learn more and start establishing trust with us.

Speaker 1: 11:34

So a landing page usually is one of the easy ways to convert traffic into leads, whether this is for organic or for paid ads. This is a focused, highly relevant webpage that speaks directly to a potential client's specific needs. Whether it's personal injury, ip law, divorce, ep, whatever it is, everything on this page needs to serve one purpose to get the visitor to take action. Whether that's filling out a form, a resource, making a phone call, scheduling a call, whether we're doing something a form, a resource, making a phone call, scheduling a call, whether we're doing something for pay-per-click or we're doing something for organic. The more we can minimize distractions here, the easier it is to start gathering leads from our landing pages.

Speaker 1: 12:15

And look, the reality is that not everybody wants to just call and then pay for a consultation. Some people want a little bit of something before they pay you, and that's why lead magnets are a really valuable tool for nurturing interest. A lead magnet is something valuable that we offer in exchange for a prospect's contact information. We've talked about this before. This could be things like an ebook, something like the first 10 things to do after a car accident, or even things like a webinar, or, you know, it could be the free 15-minute consultation. I don't want to get into the politics of free consultations, but there are always options to minimize the cost to you and maximize the value to the client. The lead magnet, though.

Speaker 1: 12:55

The key here is to be highly relevant to the practice area and to what the legal need of the potential client is is, and to offer practical, actionable information. The goal is to show them our value while obtaining their contact details. That's it, and that allows us to continue nurturing the lead, and one of the easy ways to continue nurturing that lead is through email sequences or retargeting ads. We've talked about all of this stuff before. An email sequence could be a welcome message, a bunch of informational emails that are giving insights into the services, or stories or, you know, just walking them through the process, and then we could have things like case studies or common questions. All of that stuff works in a system for email.

Speaker 1: 13:39

The content needs to be building a narrative, though, that starts to educate and move the prospect closer to making a decision, and that's when CTAs are really valuable again. And, on the same page, retargeting ads can help us stay top of mind for visitors who have already come and interacted with the website, but maybe they haven't converted into our email list yet. So these ads can help remind them of the lead magnets, or offer new content or just encourage them to go ahead and take that next step, and at this stage, your prospect should be starting to decide whether or not to choose your firm. They might be comparing their options, they could be weighing costs, they could be even evaluating trustworthiness, depending on a bunch of different factors, and this is where you need to start providing some really you know A plus content and a few more touch points to make sure that your firm is the obvious choice.

Speaker 1: 14:29

So there are a few ways to tackle this. One is creating social proof and, frankly, I think this is probably the most powerful way to build trust. So things like client testimonials, case studies, awards, recognitions although I'm not a big fan of the awards and super lawyers and paid recognition client testimonials are my favorite, but all of these play a crucial role in establishing our credibility. And, like I said, a testimonial from a previous client who faced a similar issue as the prospect that you're talking to can be really, really persuasive. They went through this, you solved the problem and why wouldn't they hire you? Case studies also show that you have solved a lot of legal problems effectively and given your prospects confidence in your capabilities. So we can easily include these all over our website, our emails, publish them on social media. This social proof is one of the most powerful tools we have for building this trust and moving people through this stage three for decision.

Speaker 1: 15:29

And there are other types of strategic content that we can build as well Detailed FAQs, more in-depth versions of case studies, explainer videos. All of these help clients make informed decisions. Faqs can answer common concerns. What does a free consultation cover? What should I expect in court? How long does it take to resolve my personal injury case. This kind of content helps us address the objections, it helps us set expectations and, again, most important it demonstrates our expertise. And these explainer videos if you can get these done, if they have someone from the firm they add a really personal touch and they make a lot of legal topics a lot more digestible and it just makes you guys seem more personal, because that personalized touch the reality is it still is needed to convert a lead. I'd like to believe in the world of chatbots, that it doesn't need to be, but it does, and so, whether it's a phone call, a live chat, an email from an attorney that answers specific questions, even the way we're handling our intake forms matters. Keep all of this really simple, user-friendly, reduce the friction and make sure you're engaged. This streamlined, personal approach can make a huge difference when it comes to the prospect that's trying to make that decision.

Speaker 1: 16:45

And now we come to the most critical and the final stage action. So your prospect has decided to engage with your firm and now it's time to ensure a smooth and effective transition to becoming a client Because, like I mentioned, a smooth intake process is really essential here. Any friction at this point can result in a lost sale Ensure your intake forms are concise, your scheduling process is simple, your response time is fast. Prospects they need to feel like the process is professional and straightforward and I know you may feel like it is, but the reality is we can always be faster. They shouldn't have to wait long to speak with someone from the firm, and there are a lot of tools we can use to make them feel like someone is on the case and then to get these people over the line. We want to make sure we have clear, compelling offers. So if we have a free consultation we're emphasizing that heavily we say in 15 minutes we'll provide a clear action plan for your legal needs. The key here is to make it really clear what they're getting, why it's valuable and how easy it is to get started. So we just want to use plain language, avoid any legal jargon that could overwhelm or confuse the prospect and tell them straight up this is what you get.

Speaker 1: 17:59

Now, before we move on to the data nerd strategy, you need to have follow-up strategies. This is overlooked all the time, but we need to have follow-up strategies in place for leads who just aren't ready to convert right away. This is going to happen. It's the legal world. People don't want to sign the retainer agreement on the first call. We can apply the three-date rule here sometimes. So if someone, for example, books a consultation, but they do the consultation, they do the call, they come in and they don't sign an agreement immediately, we need to send a follow-up email summarizing the key points discussed in our meeting and then offering a way to get started.

Speaker 1: 18:35

Another CTA and for people who have shown interest but just aren't ready to commit even to an initial consultation, you want to keep maintaining regular contact through things like email, nurturing sequences these are drip campaigns or just offering helpful content, case studies, a newsletter that's frequent and reminding them how your firm can help them. Each of these stages the awareness, the interest, decision and finally, action they all work together to create this high converting funnel that's tailored specifically to the client for your law firm. When you understand how to actually guide these prospects seamlessly from stage one, two to three to four, you're building a system that is not only attracting leads, but it's converting them into clients who understand and see the value in what your firm offers. And we're not going to go into it, but we all know that that means a lot fewer headaches for you at the end of the day. So now we're going to get into my favorite part, that you can all fall asleep during. But you've already built your funnel and you want to make sure it's doing its job effectively.

Speaker 1: 19:40

The key to really maximizing the performance of the funnel lies in the tracking metrics and the continuous optimization of each stage of the funnel, because, after all, even the best designed funnels need to be tested, tweaked and improved over time to continue to convert effectively. It's kind of like a car engine If we can make one part of the engine work better, then other parts of the engine will be more efficient. And if we can keep doing this, you know, one piece after one piece, we're creating like a force multiplier that's going to power our marketing engine further. But to understand how our funnel is actually performing, let's go into the key metrics for each stage. I'm just going to run through these relatively quickly.

Speaker 1: 20:19

In the awareness stage, we're focusing on how we're attracting potential clients. So website traffic, social media engagement, click-through rates on our ads this will all help us gauge how effectively we're reaching our target audience. So for running paid campaigns, keep an eye on the cost per click, the cost per conversion, and make sure we're getting a good return here. Then we're looking at the interest stage metrics. So once a prospect is moving from awareness to interest, it's all about tracking that deeper engagement. Landing page conversion rates, for instance, are really crucial. This is the percentage of visitors to a page who take the specified action like filling out a form, downloading a resource, picking up the phone and things like email open and email click-through rates are also going to give you insight into how your email content resonates with your audience. If you're using lead magnets, make sure you're measuring the conversion rate of downloads or signups so that we understand how our prospects are finding our offers.

Speaker 1: 21:17

Then we move on to the decision stage, as potential clients are weighing their multiple options because, look, we'd like to think we're the only option in town, but they're competitors. The metrics here that matter the most for us are consultation, bookings, form completions, direct inquiries, phone calls all of that stuff. The goal is to see how well our content whether it's the testimonials, evergreen pages, faqs, case studies how well all of this is persuading prospects to take action and reach out to the firm. And at the final stage the action stage we're looking at our ability to convert leads into actual clients. So the key metric here is our client conversion rate, the percentage of leads who actually sign on and become paying clients, and on top of this, we usually want to track how long it takes from the initial contact to signing, because a shorter time to conversion usually indicates a smoother intake process, and if we can improve that time to conversion, well, we can make more money, and tracking tools can simplify all of this process.

Speaker 1: 22:18

I'm not going to link to any of this stuff because it varies so widely between what you're using, what your marketing looks like, what your CRM looks like, but there are a bunch of different tools Google Analytics it's a really great overview of your website traffic and some of the digital conversion metrics. Crm tools like Clio for law firms or HubSpot or Salesforce we've talked about these are all great for managing and analyzing client interactions, from that first touch point to all the way down to the conversion. And then for email marketing we've talked about ActiveCampaign, mailchimp, et cetera. All of these are really great for allowing us to track our open rates, click-throughs and all of the other engagement metrics that we need to see, and once we start tracking these metrics wherever we're tracking them you're probably going to see some areas for improvement, and that's where our A-B testing comes in.

Speaker 1: 23:06

This is, like we've talked about, one of the most effective ways to optimize the funnel. Essentially, we test two variations of a single element whether it's a CTA, an email subject line, a landing page headline and we see which performs better. I'm not going to go too deep into this, but we've done a previous episode on it, so go check that out. And really the name of the game here is continuous iteration. The goal is to keep refining the funnel based on this performance data, based on these A-B tests, not just once or twice or for the first couple of months, but really forever, on a regular basis. If a landing page has a high bounce rate, or it develops a high bounce rate, it might need a stronger headline or a different photo or a more compelling offer.

Speaker 1: 23:50

If your email open rates are low, it's time to rethink your strategy with subject lines or even your delivery times. Remember that a funnel is not a set it and forget it thing. Client behaviors change, market trends shift, technology continues to evolve in the most frustrating ways, and your funnel needs to evolve too. So make it a habit, make a note, make a recurring checklist on your to-do list to review the funnel metrics regularly, at least monthly or quarterly, and then run these A-B tests or direct your marketing team to run these tests. Then make the iterative changes based on what's working, what's not, and then do it again. By consistently optimizing measuring the funnel, you'll ensure that it remains not just functional but it'll do what we need. It'll be highly effective in bringing new clients in to the firm. That's it for Legal Marketing 101. Check out RosenAdvertisingcom for more Thanks.