Speaker 1: 0:05

Stop chasing every new marketing trend. Welcome to Legal Marketing 101. I'm Toby Rosen. Every time a new app or a new platform or a new buzzword even drops on the internet, I get a hundred emails from people like you law firm partners that are asking, hey, should we be doing this? Can you get this started for us? How much is this going to cost? Are my competitors doing this?

Speaker 1: 0:30

And for most of these guys and ladies I mean, I'm very much a using guys and dudes kind of person indiscriminately. For most of you, I have to do this little song and dance about yeah, this platform is really cool and this is a lot of potential and it's something we definitely should be looking into, but you still need to work on getting Google reviews, or you still need to do the video we talked about, or you still need to look at this content that I sent you. And yeah, that's typical, right? There's always some fundamental thing that whichever attorney I'm working with owes me, and I have to redirect them into that instead of saying, yeah, this really cool new AI platform for local looks great, because it probably does look great and I'm going to go look at it and figure out if it works for anybody, but it is probably not for you. And look this whole episode. This is not anti-innovation. Yeah, there's going to be a little bit of cognitive dissonance and weirdness throughout this, but there is a really big reason why it doesn't make sense to just go chasing after every new trend Because, let's be honest, we have all had that moment.

Speaker 1: 1:38

The new platform launches a competitor, posts about some shiny thing or tells you about it at lunch or over coffee, or a marketing agency hits your inbox with this breathless pitch this is the future. If your firm isn't doing this yet, you're completely behind all your competitors and just like that, the panic sets in. I know, I deal with it every day. That is FOMO marketing in action. It's the fear of missing out. And it's powerful because it taps into something incredibly real to a lot of us. None of us want to feel like we're slipping behind the curve, especially when we're in an industry as competitive as law. So we chase, we experiment, we try to go back and forth and, you know, do a bunch of tests without actually doing the test properly, and we burn our budget trying to keep up, even when we may not actually know what we're chasing or why. And the legal marketing world doesn't make it easy to resist.

Speaker 1: 2:30

Influencers and agencies and me all of us are out here treating every new trend like it is the second coming of Google. Jesus. You need a vertical video strategy. Your firm has to be posting three times a day on TikTok. Have you ever launched a podcast in the metaverse?

Speaker 1: 2:46

It sounds ridiculous when you put it in a row like that, but in the moment, you guys do get swept up in the buzz. I mean, we all get swept up in this buzz. It's easy to, and especially when those ideas are dressed up with these charts and case studies and numbers and look, marketers can be really good at their job sometimes and it's normal to feel annoyed when you get sucked in. But the reality is it's. You know it's designed to suck you in.

Speaker 1: 3:10

But here's the thing this is a big trap. It is misplaced envy. You see another firm winning big on social media or getting press attention and your assumption has to be oh, they must be doing something new or better or different. So we copy the surface level tactics they're using instead of digging deeper. Maybe that firm's success is because they joined a trend, or is it because they, you know, they dialed in their intake system, their clear brand, their consistent messaging, their fundamentals. These trends are flashy, but the foundations that every firm that's doing well has, they're invisible. But these foundations are the difference between just making a lot of noise and actually getting some traction, and sometimes chasing these trends, especially when you guys bring them to me after seeing it on Instagram or TikTok or whatever.

Speaker 1: 4:01

It's not even about results, it's about the appearance. We want to look modern, we want to feel like we're doing cutting edge marketing, and there is nothing wrong with being innovative. I said that up top. I like innovation. I want to test and get better all the time. But if we're really honest here, looking modern and being effective are two very different goals and often I shouldn't say often, but sometimes they pull in pretty opposite directions, and this isn't a rant against new things. I really feel I should make that clear. Experimentation is how we grow. I talk about A-B testing all the time. But if your marketing strategy is just becoming this revolving door of different marketing trends, then you're not building, You're reacting and you're not really building up. And in the legal, thank you. So I know we've all done this, but if you've ever jumped onto a trend without a plan, then, yeah, you're not alone, because now it's time to rethink the impulse. We're all going to do this together and we are going to start building smarter, chasing every shiny new marketing trend.

Speaker 1: 5:14

The cost of this is not just the obvious cost, it's the not just the ad spend, the software subscriptions the real price is this compound damage it does over time. Software subscriptions the real price is this compound damage it does over time. First, there is the time and budget dilution. So when we're dabbling in five different platforms, we're testing two or three new tools every month, we're launching campaigns that we're maybe not 100% committed to and we're spreading our resources incredibly thin and unlike the long-term channels that like SEO, email nurturing, review generation, referral networks, these trendy tactics whatever video thing it is, or whatever you know hack that you found on TikTok, they just don't really compound. That's the thing. You're trading this depth for width, and in marketing, width without depth is usually just noise. We can throw it out there, but if we don't throw it out there 10 times a day, it's a problem.

Speaker 1: 6:07

And then there's the brand confusion. Again, I'm not the brand guy, but we're going to talk about each new trend that you do here. It has a voice. It brings a new voice to the table. It brings, maybe, a new aesthetic, a new way of showing up online. So one week, you're posting these polished client wins on LinkedIn. Next week, your intern is trying to make you go viral on reels with legal memes. Look, there's a lot of things that we can be doing here, but the bottom line is that none of it really connects. Your brand starts to feel like this patchwork of personalities and voices and it's not this trusted, cohesive presence we want to put forward. And if you're confused by your own messaging, geez man, think about how your clients feel, because your team also is going to feel it. Yeah, one of them is going to be pushing this, but your team is going to feel this too.

Speaker 1: 6:54

The trend chasing creates whiplash. One day, they're learning how to edit vertical video. Next, they're setting up a chatbot lead gen funnel and there's no time for them to actually get good at anything. There's just this constant loop of learning, launching and abandoning, and that is the chaos that leads to burnout and disengagement fast. And the last big caveat here or the big issue, I guess, is a better word the trend chasing. It steals focus from the boring but powerful stuff we really need to be working on Tightening up our intake process, refining our GBP, actually following up with leads. Yeah, they're not exciting because it's real work, but these are the things that grows firms.

Speaker 1: 7:33

If you're too busy keeping up with all the TikTok trends to nail following up with your clients, you are not just missing out, you are falling behind, and I know that's what the marketing guy said to get you on TikTok. But the reality is there's some more important things. So if we're not going to be chasing trends all the time, what are those more important things? What should we be doing? So let's talk about the 80-20 rule.

Speaker 1: 7:56

This can be a really simple, really powerful framework for our marketing that keeps us grounded, focused and keeps us focused on scalable things. So it's obviously very common. It's not flashy, but it works. So here's the idea 80% of our marketing energy, time and budget should go towards the proven channels that align with our firm's actual goals. So instead of 20% doing the heavy lifting for the other 80%, we want this to actually be the 80% being the 80%. So this means we're doing things like content, search engine optimization, pay-per-click ads only when they're targeted and trackable, referral systems that are actually nurturing existing sources and yielding good results. Reviews that are building social proof and trust on Google and on other platforms, and focusing on marketing automation that keeps our team out of the weeds and keeps our prospects engaged. That's the foundation, that is the 80% we're going to work on, and, yes, it's the boring stuff, but everything else is. I mean, even pay-per-click is kind of a trend. So these things compound over time and it's not sexy to do it, but it does perform.

Speaker 1: 9:03

Once we dial that in, then we move to the fun zone, the 20%, that last 20% of our budget and our time. That's where we can try new things, we can test fresh ideas, explore platforms. That might be the next big thing. Maybe we experiment with TikTok or threads or AI-powered avatars on the website. There are a million things you could do a geofencing campaign around your local courthouse for car accidents. But here's the key. We are only going to move to the sandbox after the house is built. We do that 80% first and then we get to the fun stuff.

Speaker 1: 9:40

Everybody else too many firms too many I mean people in general they are flipping that ratio. They are spending 80% of their energy chasing whatever's new and then they end up with a house made out of like cardboard and Lincoln logs, no foundation under it and a bunch of half-built experiments lying around and you cannot scale this. You can't scale chaos and you can't grow on guesswork. That's why we constantly talk about A-B testing. We're using the 80-20 rule because it's going to force us to ask better questions Not what's trending right now, but what's actually working for us and particularly, where are we leaking clients? That is how firms make serious progress.

Speaker 1: 10:21

You focus on the things that compound Visibility, clarity, trust, ease of conversion. These are timeless principles and, unlike trends, they are never going out of style, because the truth is that firms that win in legal marketing don't win because they tried everything. It's basically never that. I don't think I've ever talked to a firm who tried everything and was successful. The firms I talk to that are successful are winning because they master the few things that really matter to them. It depends on their market, on their vibe, all these things that go into a firm. But what they did is they got consistent, they tracked the results, they built systems and then they layered in the creativity. I'm sorry, but it just doesn't work the other way around.

Speaker 1: 11:06

So if you're feeling like your marketing is all over the place. Start here. Get your 80% locked in, then you can afford to be playful with that 20%. That's where our real leverage lives. So let's take a break and let's zoom out for a second.

Speaker 1: 11:22

When you strip away the noise, the social trends, the AI hype I mean, I'm a contributor to this, for sure All the hot new ad formats, everything like that, what is actually moving the needle for your law firm? What is driving real growth, not just attention? The answer in 99% of cases is actually kind of deceptively simple. It's three things systems, assets and trust. So let's start with systems. Systems beats hacks every single time. Hacks are temporary systems scale.

Speaker 1: 11:55

Let's start with intake. Think intake. If your team doesn't have a reliable process for responding to leads within five or seven minutes or worse, if you don't know how long it takes to respond, you have a conversion leak. There is no TikTok campaign in the world that is going to fix the fact that your team's not following up with clients. Let's look at your CRM. A well-setup CRM is not just a glorified contact list. It is your command center. It tells you where leads came from, who followed up, who ghosted, who needs a check-in, who's ready to sign, how much they pay. All of these things. It turns chaos into clarity in a spreadsheet. And then there's nurturing. This one's really big. Whether it's automated emails to cold leads, handwritten thank yous to new clients, quarterly check-ins with top referrers, any of these things. This is the kind of consistency that builds serious momentum. These are the quiet systems that generate compounding results and pay for your dumb TikTok ideas.

Speaker 1: 12:53

So next let's talk about assets, and this is not content for content's sake I don't want to talk about. Oh, let's build video, and later we could put it on TikTok. But real assets and yes, there is a significant difference here. A real asset here is something like a high converting landing page that turns a Google search into a signed client. An asset could be a sharp 90 second explainer video on your homepage that builds instant trust. An asset could be a crystal clear call to action on every page of your website. These things are working for you 24-7. They compound, they're not loud, but they are powerful.

Speaker 1: 13:34

Now let's compare that to the marketing noise we see every day A half-baked Instagram reel, a one-off webinar with no comments, nothing on it, a blog post that's could literally have just been written to feed into Google without a human ever really reading it and with obviously no point of view. All of that stuff might feel productive from a sort of junior marketing perspective, but we are not building any equity here. That's the biggest problem is, you are spending money and you are spending time on this and in a crowded market, attention without trust, big dead end. And now let's talk about that trust, because this is where all of this long game pays off.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Trust does not come from the clever slogans, no matter how good I'm loving it is. Trust comes from consistency that at this McDonald's, at that McDonald's, at the McDonald's 500 miles away, it's going to taste the same no comment on what it tastes like Every time they serve one of those 1 billion hamburgers. That company I'm referring to is delivering a clear message over and over again, and they're doing it across every channel, not just the burger. They're doing it on their website, in their advertising, in their delivery calls, in their social media and for you that means intakes, social follow-ups, because you don't need a new voice every quarter. I'm pretty sure the Hamburglar has been around for like a really long time. You just need one voice, you need to dial it in and you need to make sure that it makes your clients feel seen and safe and and helpful content. That's a big trust builder too.

Speaker 1: 15:08

If you want to do content, I'm not saying don't, but it's just about doing something that's a little bit better than the whole. Like let's write a 2000 word FAQ that no one's ever going to read. What we really want to be doing is writing practical, human content. A checklist to prep for a custody hearing, a three-minute video on exactly what to expect in mediation, a story about how you helped a client navigate a tricky situation, shared, obviously, with their permission. These are the things that make people say, okay, I get this, I trust this guy. And with all the talk of automation for all these things, I should also sort of hit home the point that personalized outreach matters so much more than firms realize. And yes, it can be automated. But let's just highlight what it is Short email from a partner to a past client or to a referral source.

Speaker 1: 15:58

These things lead to six figure, seven figure, sometimes cases. A voicemail to a lead who didn't hire you, even just to say you know what? There's no hard feelings, if you need us, you can still reach out. This might be the difference between complete crickets somebody who just walked out the door and someone who turns around and says actually, you know what, you guys are a good fit. But finally, let's not forget about the platforms that we know really work Google, youtube, email referrals, even Facebook, instagram. None of them are really trendy anymore. I mean, instagram is in a certain demographic but it's not going to make you feel cutting edge to have a cool Instagram strategy. But if you want predictable, repeatable, long-term growth, these kinds of platforms Google, email referrals, even YouTube really these are your best friends, because this is where intent lives. People go to Google when they're ready. They open email when it feels relevant. They trust referrals way more than they trust some advertisement on TV or on you know connected TV or on Facebook and YouTube. I mean people build really significant relationships with their audiences there before they even know they have a website or a business.

Speaker 1: 17:13

So here's the idea Stop worrying about what's cool. You're a lawyer. You're probably never going to be cool. Just focus on what compounds. We're talking about systems, assets, trust and the platforms that are consistently delivering leads. That's what moves the needle for our businesses and it's what stays relevant. If you want to be a cool lawyer, it usually has something to do with making money or helping people, and if you can't get clients in the door, how are you going to do either of those? That's it for Legal Marketing 101. Check out RosenAdvertisingcom for more Thanks.