video marketing

72 – Delisi Friday – The Evolution of Our Marketing: What Worked, What Didn’t, & Where We Are Now

In this episode of the Trial Lawyer Nation podcast, Michael sits down with his Director of Marketing and Business Development Delisi Friday to discuss their firm’s marketing strategies. They start at the very beginning of Michael’s career for a full-circle look at why they chose to market B2B (business to business) instead of B2C (business to consumer), what to look for in a marketing professional and a marketing agency, how to market without spending money, the pros and cons of working with a marketing agency, and why they decided to move their marketing in-house.

They begin the episode by explaining why they only market to other law firms (B2B) instead of marketing directly to consumers (B2C). Michael shares that he’s had people tell him he’s insane for only marketing to other law firms for referrals because he only gets part of the attorney fees, but he insists it works better for his firm’s needs. He explains how he used to do B2C marketing, but after putting pen to paper and analyzing the profitability of his cases, he found that even after paying out the referral fee, he made about 3x as much money per hour on the cases that came from referrals. He also doesn’t have to spend astronomical amounts of money to advertise on TV in an extremely competitive market.

Delisi and Michael then briefly touch on their experiences and struggles with the burgeoning area of digital marketing, before Delisi asks Michael about the evolution of his marketing prior to bringing a marketing professional into the firm. Michael starts at the beginning, dating back 20 years ago when he had practically no marketing budget. He tried numerous methods, from taking out an ad in the yellow pages, to writing a free book for consumers and buying a corresponding TV ad which was not very successful (he only gave away 10 copies to consumers. The rest were to other lawyers and judges).

Michael then reflects on his past in-house marketers and why they didn’t work out. He begins simply by stating, “There’s a lot of flaky people in marketing.” He goes on to explain how he is an “idea person,” so he needed someone with tenacity to balance him out and ensure his ideas were followed through on and not forgotten 3 months down the line. Delisi echoes this sentiment and adds that with marketing, sometimes you have to give initiatives time to see if they will work- something she calls both the “fun and scary” part of marketing.

Delisi then asks the question sure to be on every listener’s mind- what should you look for when hiring an in-house marketing professional? Michael first reiterates that he needed someone with tenacity to follow through on initiatives and adds that it’s important to find someone with the poise and class necessary to communicate with lawyers professionally. Many firm owners are tempted to hire someone based on their looks because “they can get in the door,” but he firmly believes finding someone who can fit in and have a conversation with referring lawyers is much more important for him. Delisi agrees and adds her personal experience with hiring assistants and interns – they can be inexperienced in legal but need to be able to communicate with lawyers and have strong writing skills to succeed long-term.

They then move on to discuss Delisi’s advice for lawyers who are just getting started with marketing and have a very small budget. She highly recommends sitting down and looking at where every single case you got this year came from. While the task is tedious, she insists it’s necessary in order to fully understand what works, what doesn’t, and what you need to do more of going forward. Michael agrees and urges listeners to focus on their relationships to gain referrals. Some lawyers are close with their pastors and have found success within their congregation. Others like Michael who focus on attorney referrals should put time and effort into growing their relationships with those attorneys. They both agree that client reviews and testimonials, as well as providing excellent customer service, are crucial to your credibility and long-term success.

Once you have a more established firm and a marketing budget to match, there are multiple routes you can take to expand your marketing initiatives. Michael notes that at some point, you’ll be tempted to hire an outside marketing agency for help and asks Delisi what she thinks the pro’s and cons of that are. Delisi replies why it really depends on the firm and their needs, but when her and Michael chose to hire an agency it was initially beneficial because she and Michael needed support with graphics to make their ideas a reality. The graphics and creative support they received were crucial for testing out different strategies and figuring out what worked best.

One of the biggest cons of hiring a marketing agency is the cost. This varies depending on the agency, but after you pay each person for their services it’s usually not cost effective vs. doing it yourself. Michael and Delisi urge listeners who do not want to hire an agency to utilize contractor services such as Upwork to hire freelance designers and copywriters, or contract local talent. They also discuss why they parted ways with their marketing agency and Michael’s #1 tip for what to avoid when deciding to hire an agency.

After parting ways with their agency, Delisi and Michael decided it was time to hire more employees for their marketing department, namely a full-time graphic designer. They discuss their initial concerns with doing so, they both agree the numerous benefits for both marketing initiatives and case graphics have far outweighed those concerns.

Delisi and Michael conclude this episode by discussing where they are now and why it works for them. In addition to managing the firm’s marketing, Delisi now manages the intake department as well. They discuss how this has improved the performance of both departments and why it’s important for your marketing and intake departments to be in sync. It also helps that Delisi is on the management team at the firm, something Michael notes as a major difference between in-house marketing and having a marketing agency. Since Delisi is a part of every major firm decision, she is invested in the firm’s well-being, not just making the marketing department look good.

Michael emphasizes that while this was a 20-year process in the making, the goal should be to do at least some of your marketing in-house to invest in yourself and your firm so you can get the cases that YOU deserve.

This podcast also covers why digital marketing didn’t work for their firm, how lettuce on a McDonald’s quarter pounder is wrong, tax write offs, the initial challenges of moving your marketing in-house, utilizing Facebook groups and the Nextdoor app for organic leads, how they conduct their annual marketing meeting (and why you need to have one), and so much more!

 

27 – Michael Mogill – Becoming the Obvious Choice in Your Market

1 Stars2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (10 votes, average: 4.70 out of 5)
Loading...

In this Trial Lawyer Nation podcast, Michael Cowen sits down with author of The Game Changing Attorney How to Land the BEST CASES, STAND OUT from Your Competition, and Become the OBVIOUS CHOICE IN YOUR MARKET, and legal marketing expert, Michael Mogill, for a discussion on how he’s helping law firms drive meaningful results. Mogill and his team at CRISP Video produce videos for attorneys across the country in order to help them differentiate themselves and stand out from their competition. Which, in short, means they do everything from filming videos and editing to running ads and driving leads for their attorney-only clientele. Essentially, everything from start to finish in the legal video marketing space.

Mogill’s beginnings started when his family immigrated from Europe when he was 4 years old. They didn’t speak English and basically came with just $500 in savings. And while he’s always been entrepreneurial, having started a web company at age 13 writing HTML out of his house, he actually studied to be a doctor, took the MCAT to get into med school, but wasn’t sure if that was the path for him despite the pressures of his Jewish family. So, he took a year off and got a job first washing dishes at a dive bar and then washing lab equipment at the CDC. In the meantime, he bought a camera that he figured would just be a hobby and perhaps a good life skill to have. Then, in 2008, he started a video company, called CRISP, again with outside pressures of people telling him it wouldn’t work and if it did, he’d never be able to compete with the big agencies. This was also a time when YouTube was just starting to take off and videos were nowhere close to as accessible as they are today. Mogill explains that it wasn’t the simplest sell back then, nor was it easy (recounting 21 failures before the company really got off the ground); citing that his big breakthrough finally came to him through the hostess at a Texas Roadhouse at a time when he didn’t even have enough money for next month’s rent. The story he tells of his rise from rock bottom is one you simply have to hear to believe. Spoiler alert: He’s made it pretty big in the video production space having worked with companies like Coca-Cola and Red Bull. His shift to work 100% with attorneys and law firms wasn’t necessarily expected or even planned at the outset, and also came from unlikely beginnings paired with the drive to succeed.

Digging right in, Cowen asks Mogill the big question, as in millions of dollars big, of how can solo and small firms compete with their marketing (video or otherwise) and not get lost in the noise of the big firms that have $5M+ marketing budgets? And while Mogill boils it down to simply differentiating yourself, his insights on the content being produced in order to create an emotional connection with potential clients, versus joining the “we’ll fight for you” crowd, are thoughtful and CRISP (pardon the pun). Mogill uses Ben Glass’s video as a great example where his video talks more about the children that he has adopted in order to create a connection, with the viewer with little information about his firm. Which may seem to counterproductive when trying to promote a law firm, but to Mogill’s point, it’s much more effective to draw people in, using emotions and feelings they can relate to instead of a laundry list of the services your firm can provide. That “why” behind an attorney’s journey into wanting to practice laws also helps to create a sense of authenticity as well as to humanize each firm.

Mogill talks about the state of legal marketing along with the saturation of many firms focusing on the aspect, that it is all about the money and boasting about the size of cases won. He notes how today’s society wants to work with companies who go beyond the money and care about individuals, especially the millennial generation that loves to see businesses contribute to their community and pay things forward.

Once you’ve found your great story that differentiates you or your firm, how do you get that story out there, asks Cowen, while noting the extremely high prices of pay per click (PPC) in the legal market? Mogill agrees that PPC is not likely the answer but has found social platforms, like Facebook and YouTube, have worked very effectively for video marketing because you can target your audience fairly specifically. From a cost perspective, especially when talking about video content, Mogill points out how he has generally been able to push traffic at a rate of about $0.01 per view, and goes on to discuss the paradigm where if an attorney was to take what they would spend on just one billboard and put the investment, instead, into getting their video content out via YouTube and Facebook ads, the reach, and level of targeting would be similar to the reach of 100 billboards. All of which you can specifically target and track.

Mogill talks about the tactic of playing the long game, where on 364 days through the year, a personal injury attorney is not relevant to your audience, but on the one day, when something happens to them, it becomes extremely relevant, but how do they know who to call? Was it the last billboard they saw? Or, more likely, it’s the person who stays top of mind on social platforms where they then remember all the things they’ve seen you do for the community and have seen your story and are reminded of it consistently. And if they don’t remember, they reach out to a friend, who also has potentially been targeted and been exposed to your information. Most firms are marketing in a way with Google PPC toward the 3% of people who are ready to hire an attorney on that specific day while hitting the other 97% with the exact same messaging, for whom it’s not very relevant. In short, Mogill’s belief is you have to make someone a fan before you make them a client, by producing consistent content that nurtures someone’s perception of you or your firm over time.

Cowen and Mogill discuss a myriad of other legal marketing topics, including how attorneys can create great content that puts a spotlight on their “why,” the importance of living up to your marketing, predictions for where legal marketing is headed, and several other results-driven insights. The energy and expertise Mogill brings to this episode is a great resource to learn from for any attorney looking to compete with their marketing in, what we all know too well as, an overcrowded and noisy marketing space.

 

 

BACKGROUND ON MICHAEL MOGILL

Michael Mogill is Founder and CEO of Crisp Video Group (www.crispvideo.com), the nation’s fastest-growing legal video marketing company and the author of the “The Game Changing Attorney” (www.gamechangingattorney.com). He’s helped thousands of attorneys — from solo and small firms to large practices — differentiate themselves from competitors and earn millions in new revenue. Crisp has been named to the Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest-growing companies and has been awarded Best Places to Work. A sought-after speaker, Michael often presents at national conferences on innovative ways to create exponential business growth. His advice has been featured in publications such as Forbes, Inc., Avvo, ABA Journal, The Trial Lawyer, Huffington Post, and Wall Street Journal.