Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to Legal Marketing 101. I'm Toby Rosen and welcome to today's episode where we are, as you may have heard from the title, diving into one of the most powerful tools in legal marketing client reviews. Now, we've talked about this before, but we're going to keep talking about it because it's important. Think about it when was the last time you booked a service, tried a new restaurant, even picked a show to stream on Netflix, without checking the reviews first? For law firms, it's really no different. Potential clients rely heavily on the experiences of other previous clients to decide whether you're the right choice for them, of other previous clients to decide whether you're the right choice for them. And client reviews in 2024 and soon in 2025, these aren't just nice to haves, these are critical trust builders and you must have them. They showcase your track record, they reinforce credibility and they essentially act as one of our most powerful tools for digital word of mouth referrals. They can be the difference between someone reaching out to you or just scrolling to the next name on the list. But here's the kicker Client reviews do a lot more than establish trust. They're also a hidden gold mine of SEO stuff, content, video, ideas, all of this. Search engines really love authentic, user-generated content, and the algorithms that run platforms like YouTube also love this type of content, so leveraging client feedback is really effective when it comes to boosting our online visibility. That means more eyes on us, more inquiries and, ultimately what we want more clients. So today we're moving beyond just gathering reviews and starting to talk about how we use them strategically to amplify our marketing across all the different channels. We're on Trust me, by the end of this episode, we are going to be ready to turn every review into a powerful marketing asset.

Speaker 1: 1:57

Let's dive in and start with the fundamentals. These are the tried and true ways you may already be using where we can incorporate client reviews into our existing marketing. These strategies are really simple, but they're still really powerful when we execute them well. First up is our testimonials page. This is often one of the first places potential clients are looking when they're vetting our firm, so we need to make this count. This isn't about cramming as many five-star reviews as possible onto the page. It's about showcasing quality. So we want to highlight a pretty diverse selection of reviews that speaks to the different aspects of our practice, and we want to talk about the different elements of our services as well the professionalism, the responsiveness, the successful outcomes and even, you know, the human elements, the empathy during the stressful moments.

Speaker 1: 2:45

The other thing we can do here is keep the layout clean and easy to navigate, using headings to group reviews by service type or by the type of legal expertise this person experienced. That can work. And when possible, we want to have some visuals, maybe even pictures, of the reviewers, so a photo, a video, even just a name or a location. All of these can make the reviews feel a lot more authentic, especially if we can use more of the name rather than just a client or AB initials. And on top of working hard to make sure that these things feel authentic, we want to keep the page fresh, so new reviews shows that our firm is constantly delivering excellence, that people are constantly happy and that we're paying attention.

Speaker 1: 3:26

Now we also want to be using reviews on individual landing pages. But when it comes to these landing pages, the key here is really relevance. A general they give us great service and they're the nicest lawyers. It could work, but it might not really resonate with someone who's seeking help for some kind of complex divorce case. Instead, we should really try to align reviews strategically with the specific services that we're highlighting on particular pages. So if our landing page, if something we're running on Google or even just a practice area page for estate planning, we want to feature reviews that are emphasizing not only our clarity, attention to detail, but also the ability to simplify the estate planning process or how we save them money in a scenario. We always want to make sure we place these testimonials near a strong CTA as well. A well-placed review followed by a CTA like schedule, a free consult today, makes the journey seem really seamless, from that building that trust all the way through to action.

Speaker 1: 4:25

Next on the list is social media, and social media is all about connection and reviews, because they're one of these trust indicators, one of these, you know, pieces of content that are their user generated content. So they they show that, that connection. These are a fantastic way to engage the audience or just to supplement what you're already doing on social media, but the key here is to make things really visually appealing, to focus on how pretty things are. A simple graphic with a glowing client quote can grab some strong attention, especially if we add in a professional image of you or your team or your office, and we can use these reviews to tell stories. So instead of just sharing the text, we can provide context. So here's what Sarah said about her experience working with our team during a challenging custody case or some kind of case. We don't have to show Sarah, but we can, you know, lead them through what could have happened in that case and show the team that helped her. This humanizes us and it makes us a lot more relatable. And because this is user generated content, it's coming from what users will assume is a reliable source.

Speaker 1: 5:33

The other thing we can do to sort of supercharge these posts is to encourage engagement by actually asking your audience questions. So if we post a review about, let's say, a real estate transaction that we were involved in, we can follow that up with. What's the biggest concern you have when buying or selling a property? Let us know in the comments. I know this might sound a little bit silly, but it does work. People who are engaging and looking at your page already might be so close to picking up the phone that having that question answered could be what they need to take the next step. Now there's one more somewhat basic way to implement reviews in your marketing, and that is through your email campaigns.

Speaker 1: 6:11

Client reviews can be absolute gold when it comes to our email marketing strategy, especially when we tailor which reviews we're sending out to the specific audiences. So we've talked about segmenting before on the podcast and I'm not going to go into it too much today, but we need to start by segmenting our email lists. So clients who are previously coming to us for business law stuff might not be particularly interested in personal injury stuff. So we can match the reviews that we're going to send out either as part of newsletters or automated email. Whatever it is we're sending out, we can match these reviews to the recipient's interests or to their past interactions with our firm. In newsletters specifically, reviews can help us break up dense content as well, and they can make things more relatable. So instead of having to write a story, we can just feature a short impactful review with a client's first name and a link to read more about their case on the website For drip campaigns. We can also weave reviews into the messaging. Imagine this is an onboarding email where we say clients often tell us they appreciate how we keep them informed every step of the way.

Speaker 1: 7:17

Here's what Josh F said. Personalization here is really key when recipients of these emails are seeing that reviews speak directly to the concerns that they have. Again, it's building really strong trust and reinforcing the value of working with your firm. And these foundational tactics all of them email campaigns, social media, landing pages, having a testimonial page on your website these are the backbone of a strong client review strategy. They're building trust, driving engagement and they're providing real-world proof of your firm's capabilities to potential clients. But the thing is there's more we can do, and here's where it gets exciting. What if we could take these reviews and turn them into a multi-channel marketing powerhouse?

Speaker 1: 8:01

Next, we're going to talk about some more advanced and innovative ways to use client reviews. So now that we've covered these basics, let's take it up a notch. Let's start with how we can get even more out of our reviews and amplify their reach and their impact across all the channels that we're marketing on. First, we're going to talk about Google Ads. This is obviously sort of my bread and butter and it offers us a lot of really interesting ways to incorporate client reviews directly into our advertising. And first, if you've been doing Google Ads, you'll know that adding review snippets, star ratings, using these extensions these are really great for enhancing our ads with social proof and taking up more space on the page, essentially, but all of this is working really well when it comes to building instant credibility. That's what we're trying to do here. So we want to make sure we have these extensions set up whenever we can.

Speaker 1: 8:54

But here's sort of how it works Google's seller ratings, or GSR. They automatically pull reviews from trusted sources like Google, my Business or some third party platforms. There's a list out there and they display a star rating under your ad. This visual cue can significantly improve click-through rates. I don't want to say how much, but it's a lot, because people are you know. They're just drawn to ads that show high star ratings. It's on Google, it's a trusted rating. But don't stop there. We want to actually create some ad copy that integrates compelling phrases from our best reviews. This is a really good option if we're struggling to find ad text that really gets people engaged. So if a review says the team was really responsive they made a stressful situation easier we can use a variation of that in our headline so we can literally write what they say. Or we can write a variation like responsive, stress-free legal support that you can trust. This creates some consistency between the ads and the user's expectations and all of the other content they're about to see and look. It doesn't stop with Google Because, yeah, google Ads is probably the first ad platform you think of when you're thinking about pay-per-click or online advertising, but programmatic advertising and social media campaigns are really effective here, too.

Speaker 1: 10:10

Programmatic advertising we've talked about this with sources like Taboola, outbrain, things like that Programmatic allows you to serve ads that are tailored to specific audiences, and reviews can be really helpful here. So if we're targeting, let's say, business owners with a testimonial that highlights our expertise in commercial litigation, or we're reaching out to parents with a review about our compassionate family law services, with programmatic ads we can match these reviews to the hyper specific audience segments that we can build, which, again, we're maximizing relevance and impact and hopefully driving down our advertising costs a little bit. On social platforms like Facebook, instagram, linkedin and TikTok I mean there's 50 of these now reviews can be transformed into dynamic visuals or carousel ads. I've talked about this on the podcast before. Carousel ads are really great because they could feature a series of reviews, each of them paired with an image or some kind of graphic that's related to the practice area. Not only does this draw attention, but it also allows us to tell a story and add a little bit of value for a user.

Speaker 1: 11:16

If we're talking about Instagram or TikTok these you know video heavy platforms what we really want to consider there is turning our top reviews into shorts or animated clips or some kind of client testimonial videos. The visual storytelling is really effective when it comes to building trust with a more modern let's call it tech savvy audience. But the other reality is that, especially on Instagram, videos get more eyeballs, so it's a lot more effective than posting an image. If we can post a video, it's going to do better in the Instagram algorithm. But here's the thing Client reviews don't have to stay confined to the digital world. We can use these in offline ads as well, and they can really be a game changer for our offline advertising. They help us connect with audiences in more traditional formats like print or radio or even outdoor.

Speaker 1: 12:05

In print ads, what we really are trying to do is focus on brevity and clarity, and so we want to be selecting short, impactful quotes that immediately convey trustworthiness. Like they solved my case quickly and professionally and I highly recommend them. Pair this quote with your logo, your contact information, a clean design and right away you have a professional and approachable ad. Radio also offers a really interesting opportunity because one it's getting cheaper, has fewer people listen to radio, but because reviews can really be brought to life through voice. So we can hire a professional voice actor, maybe off of Upwork, to read this glowing review as part of our ad script, and this approach can really make things feel approachable and relatable, because the person's going to feel like they're talking to you. And if we pair this with a little bit of a narrative about our services, something like when I needed legal help, smith and Associates were there every step of the way. They answered all of my questions and made me feel confident in my case.

Speaker 1: 13:04

All of this I know I've said it 15 times in this episode, but all of this is really effective when it comes to building that relationship and when there's a voice literally speaking these things to the person, it's very human to people. And then there's the outdoor advertising, and obviously this isn't something that most of you are going to be doing a lot of, but billboards, transit advertising, bus benches, that kind of stuff. These quote unquote channels are still effective in a lot of markets and we can focus on bold headlines inspired by client quotes, like the attorneys who actually pick up the phone when you call. If we keep these statements concise and memorable, it makes it really easy for them to resonate with a broad audience. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention especially now that we've talked about outdoor advertising cross-media integration, because reviews are a really great way to generate some cross-media integration and just sort of start a campaign. So this is really combining your online and your offline efforts for maximum exposure. So if we put a QR code on a print ad or on a billboard, this can lead viewers directly to our Google reviews page or, probably a better idea, to a landing page that has more testimonials, information about your services and is going to start bridging that gap between traditional and digital marketing and starting to build an understanding and it really starts to just create this seamless experience for potential clients. We could also do something like running a social media campaign that ties into an offline initiative. So if we launch a hashtag campaign that encourages clients to share their experience with the firm, then we can feature the best submissions on the website and turn things into video testimonials or case studies or other types of dynamic multi-channel assets that, ultimately, the main goal again is to enhance trust and visibility at every step of the marketing funnel.

Speaker 1: 14:57

Now we're going to move on to the more innovative uses of client reviews and, whether you've heard of these before or not, these ideas are the ones that we're really looking at in 2025. If you haven't started working on your reviews, you need to, but if you have already, then this is your plan for next year, because, look, client reviews, they're powerful on their own. They're powerful if they're just text on your website, but if we're a little bit creative with these, they can become completely transformative marketing tools. So let's dive into the first one, which is video testimonials, and these can be used on a lot of channels Because, like I said, text is great, but video testimonials, they're taking trust building to that next level. Seeing and hearing real clients talk about their positive experiences with you creates a pretty serious and pretty deep emotional connection with those potential clients. These videos, they're proof that your firm doesn't just deliver results. They're proof that it does so in a way that leaves people feeling cared for and so pleased that they would be on video identifying themselves as clients of your law firm.

Speaker 1: 16:04

So first, to actually get this done, we need to start by identifying satisfied clients who are comfortable on camera and willing to share their stories. This is probably the hard part, and the only thing you can really do to make this easier is keep the process simple, so we want to provide some guiding questions to help them structure their thoughts, like what were your challenges before working with our firm, how did we help resolve those challenges, and what stood out about your experience working with us? Professional production is really ideal for quality, but a well-lit video filmed on a smartphone can also work for social platforms, and it's already in that portrait mode, so the authenticity there can kind of work. The big thing here is to make sure we always have signed consent forms to use the footage and that we're meeting any legal ethical requirements in our jurisdiction. The other thing that can make people feel a little bit more comfortable is that professional production level. Some people are going to feel more comfortable being filmed on a smartphone, and some people are going to feel like it's more legit if there's a whole crew there and they're mic'd up and there's big cameras. It just depends on the person.

Speaker 1: 17:11

Once we have these recorded, though, we need to start optimizing these testimonials for distribution, so whether we're embedding them on the website's homepage or relevant service pages, or we can put them on social media, we want to make sure we're tailoring it specifically for that platform. So if it's TikTok, we want short punchy clips, or maybe we want a longer format for YouTube or for LinkedIn and for pretty much all of social media, we want to consider using subtitles, because a lot of viewers are watching videos without sound, and this is also good for the website. And if we want to take this to the next level. The next level is really case studies. Reviews are sort of quick snapshots of client satisfaction, but case studies dive deeper. These case studies we can transform a review into a full, detailed narrative of success, and these stories not only highlight your expertise and all the legal mumbo jumbo that you guys do, but they're giving people a tangible example of the challenges you've overcome and the outcomes that you've achieved for your clients.

Speaker 1: 18:13

So here's how we start this off. First, we want to start with a strong review. So we start with a review that mentions a specific case or outcome. So this is a client who praised our firm for winning a difficult settlement or successfully navigating a complex dispute of some sort, and then we're going to gather some additional detail. So we need to go and get permission from the client and we need to help them expand on their review. We want to interview them a little bit to understand their full story, what led them to seek legal help, what obstacles they faced and how it felt to them when the firm provided solutions. And then we're going to take that information. And number three is tell a clear, structured story. So we're framing the case study with a problem-solution-outcome format and we're clearly articulating the legal issue, explaining how we used our expertise to address the issue and then clearly explaining the end result and how that worked out for the client. And these case studies they can live on your website, on your service pages. You can turn them into a downloadable PDF for prospective clients to review. You can post them to social media. There are a million options, but the main thing here is to stay compliance friendly. So we're anonymizing sensitive details, using generalized language when necessary and making sure we contact the clients whose information we're going to be sharing. A good case study doesn't just reinforce trust, but it also is providing this real-world example of how your firm delivers results. And if we're using this to reinforce trust, we want to make sure that the client we're talking about is okay with it.

Speaker 1: 19:48

Now, most of the strategies we've talked about so far have been manual and yes, manually gathering, showcasing, writing about your reviews. It's effective, but, as you may have figured out by now, it's also time consuming, and this is where the automation that I love these tools really start to come into their own here, where the automation that I love these tools really start to come into their own here. So we can streamline our process a little bit, ensuring that we're continuously collecting, monitoring, displaying reviews without actually adding too much to our workload. So here we can start with tools like Podium or Trustpilot or BirdEye. There's a million tools. I don't actually want to recommend any of these specifically.

Speaker 1: 20:25

Whatever works for you will work for you, but we can automate review requests with a lot of these platforms. They allow us to send personalized review invitations via text message or email. Some platforms have added other messengers and we can automate this to go out immediately after a client's case concludes, or we can set this up so that we can send this out when we feel they're the most warm, because timing is crucial here. We haven't talked about it too much, but we've talked about it in previous episodes, timing is really important. Clients are much more likely to leave positive feedback while their positive experience is still fresh, and these tools are great for monitoring feedback. They offer real-time dashboards that alert you to new reviews, positive or negative, and this allows us to respond quickly, addressing any of the concerns that a client may have had and reinforcing our reputation as a firm that values client input, whether it's positive or negative.

Speaker 1: 21:19

And these tools have another cool feature when it comes to the website. They can help us display reviews. They can generate widgets that update our website with the latest testimonials in real time. So we're having, like a, you know, a dynamic feed on our homepage or on our testimonials page or on our contact page that showcases all of the great, the best reviews we have on our profile as they come in keeping your content fresh and engaging and, you know, and reducing your workload. But beyond doing stuff just to your website, some of these tools can also integrate with Google my Business and start to feed reviews into your profile to help boost your local SEO. You can even set up automated social media posts to share new reviews, ensuring that you have consistent engagement and lots of posts going out and ultimately, we're doing this with really minimal effort.

Speaker 1: 22:09

I know it kind of feels like we're just taking the reviews and doing 10 different things to them, but using client reviews in these different ways allows us to extend their life cycle. It turns these simple testimonials into rich, multi-purpose marketing assets and video testimonials If you can get them, they build the strongest emotional connections you can possibly imagine. And these testimonials if you can get them, they build the strongest emotional connections you can possibly imagine. And these case studies they showcase our expertise and the automation tools we can add on to all of this make sure we keep the process efficient and constantly generating some kind of impact. Now, I've touched on it a couple of times throughout this episode, but next we're going to be talking about the benefits of client reviews for SEO and your overall content strategy. Because client reviews we do more with this than just build trust. They help us supercharge our SEO strategy and it helps us fill out our content strategy with one of the most powerful pieces of content that we have.

Speaker 1: 23:03

So let's take a look at how we turn every single piece of feedback into an opportunity to boost our visibility and engage more clients when it comes to SEO side stuff search engines, especially Google they really prioritized user-generated content like reviews when determining rankings. That's hard to say exactly what level of signal is in there, but we can tell that it's high. Reviews aren't just adding authenticity to our website, but they're also providing fresh, keyword-rich content that helps search engines understand your firm's services and relevance. And when reviews mention specific terms like personal injury lawyer, responsive legal team, helpful during estate planning, this is naturally aligned with the keywords that your prospective clients are searching for. This can lead to higher rankings for those terms without needing to rely solely on your or your team's copywriting efforts. So here's a couple of ways we can optimize our reviews for SEO.

Speaker 1: 24:00

First, we embed our reviews on high traffic pages. We've talked about embedding them, but if we have a widget, a rotating widget of our latest reviews, let's make sure we have it on our key pages our homepage, our service pages, maybe even some of the best blog articles. And we want to make sure we're using schema markup. I've talked about this before. We want to make sure we're using the review schema on our website to help search engines recognize and display reviews directly in search results. This improves click-through rates substantially by showing that star rating beneath your link. It can also happen on organic pages. So go and check out our episode on schema. And we want to encourage location-specific mentions, so reviews that are mentioning our city, our neighborhood. All of this is really good for boosting our local SEO rankings. So if we have a review that says Smith law firm helped me with my case in downtown Chicago, this signals to search engines that we're a trusted provider in downtown Chicago. So by strategically embedding these reviews you know, poking around the site and using them to sort of leverage their natural keywords, we're enhancing our site's authority and relevance and ultimately doing what we want to do with SEO, which is drawing more organic traffic from potential clients.

Speaker 1: 25:13

But we're not done when it comes to the website stuff because client reviews they can also inspire our blog content. This allows us to address real client questions, concerns and interests in a way that we know is going to resonate with people. So if we start to see recurring themes or frequently mentioned aspects of our service, these can be the foundation for those highly relevant blog posts. So, as an example, if we have multiple reviews that are praising our ability to simplify complex legal processes, we can write a post that's titled five ways to simplify the estate planning process, or if we're having clients that are consistently highlighting responsiveness, we can make a post that says why choosing a really responsive attorney is important for your case. And if reviews mention common challenges, like people are confused about personal injury claims and how that works, we can start a blog article that's addressing those pain points specifically, something like personal injury claims, what you need to know before filing, or the biggest challenges people run into. You can even quote snippets from reviews within your blogs to add more credibility and show why you're writing it. We could include a client testimonial at the top of the article to highlight our firm's expertise in this specific thing that we're talking about, and then we dive straight into the content. Not only does this demonstrate that we're attuned to our clients' needs, but it positions our blog as a resource for prospective clients that are facing those similar issues and want to know they're not alone. Plus, these targeted blogs can boost our SEO even further by aligning with some long-tail keywords and search queries. That's one of the things that's always happening when we're doing different things with reviews is there are always some good byproducts or positive side effects.

Speaker 1: 27:00

Let's say, now we've got one more idea here and that is review summary pages. So another really interesting way is we've got our testimonials page. We've got some testimonials on specific pages, but we could create review summary pages that are again targeting specific practice areas or specific services that we offer. These pages would aggregate all the relevant reviews into one location for a specific topic, and this kind of focus can be effective when we're trying to rank for more specific keywords while still showcasing our expertise. So here's how we would want to create some effective review summary pages.

Speaker 1: 27:40

First, we need to choose a focus topic. So we've probably got some distinct practice area pages already maybe personal injury, corporate law, family law, whatever it is. We're practicing that we can create mirror pages for the reviews Personal injury, client reviews, corporate law testimonials, family law, success stories or we could even focus on specific features, like clients love our transparent fees or clients love our responsive team. And then we want to group the reviews by relevance. So we're selecting and organizing the reviews that speak directly to the topic we've chosen for that page. So if we have a page on personal injury reviews, this should feature testimonials that are highlighting settlements, court victories, compassionate representation, that kind of thing, and then we're going to add some contextual content.

Speaker 1: 28:33

So we're not just listing the reviews here. We are enhancing this page with a short introduction explaining our expertise in the area, why the client feedback is important, and saying something like at Smith Law Firm, our goal is to secure the best outcomes for PI cases. Here's what our clients have to say about their experiences working with us. So we're going to do that, so we give the user a little bit of context. And then, on the technical side, we're going to use the schema markup, make sure we have some internal links. So we're optimizing the page, we're enhancing our search visibility and then linking it over to relevant service pages or blogs so that we're driving traffic throughout our site.

Speaker 1: 29:06

These pages, they're not just good for our website's SEO, but they're also a real resource for potential clients who want reassurance that their firm can handle their specific needs. Because client reviews, they're more than just one thing. These are one of the most significant tools that we have to elevate our SEO, enrich our content strategy, enrich our marketing strategy as a whole, and there's a lot that we can be doing here. Now, what I'd suggest to you today. If you're listening to this and you're thinking I'm doing none of this. Just pick one thing. We could create a lot of different pages. We can do a whole bunch of different pushing on social media or creating videos, or spend time asking for these video testimonials, but really all we need to do is get started in one place. What we're trying to do here is create a marketing ecosystem that continuously attracts and engages potential clients and reviews, because they're user generated. There's a million ways to use them, but the best way to get started is to pick one and finish it and then move on to the next.

Speaker 1: 30:10

This is our last episode for 2024. We'll be back at the beginning of 2025 with much more on legal marketing, how you can attack 2025, and how you can set your firm up for success. But for today, if you have questions, feel free to reach out on the website rosenadvertisingcom. I'll be happy to answer those questions. We're getting into the busy season where people really push on marketing, especially in the family law industry, so things are getting interesting once again, especially with changes at Google, big legal decisions coming out and potential changes coming up. So for today, that's it for Legal Marketing 101. Check out RosenAdvertisingcom for more. Thanks.