Tanner Jones:
And if you want to protect your business or at least increase the probability of success, you're going to invest in both brand-building techniques and sales activation.
Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, legal marketing company the best firms hire when they want the rankings, traffic, and cases other law firm marketing agencies can't deliver. Do me a favor and hit that follow button right now to subscribe. You'll be the first to get every new episode delivered straight to you the moment it drops, giving you the edge.
On these special toolkit episodes, we dive deep in the conversations with the leading vendors in the legal sphere, the masterminds behind the technologies, services, and strategies to help law firms not just survive but thrive in today's competitive landscape. This is Toolkit Thursday on PIM, your weekly guide to staying sharp in the legal world. Let's get started. Deciding where to invest marketing dollars can feel like throwing darts at a board. Each toss can earn points, but it can be hard to hit the perfect bullseye for ROI. My guest today will help you find your target.
Tanner Jones is VP of Business Development at Consultwebs, a law firm marketing agency that has delivered legal marketing and advertising for over 20 years. If you're just starting out, Tanner explains how to build a solid digital marketing foundation and dominate your area. For more mid-size firms listening, he shares how to level the playing field with the big guys. For firms of all sizes, success comes down to data. Tanner explains how knowing your data will lead to long-term success. Here's Tanner Jones, VP of Business Development at Consultwebs, on how they got their start back in 1999.
Tanner Jones:
We're one of the longest-standing-legal-focused web marketing companies out there, but we take pride in what we've learned, what we've seen over those years. Dale Tincher is our founder and our owner. He started Consultwebs in 1999. This was back way before most lawyers were even asking questions about search engine optimization, even asking questions about websites. I mean, I think it was at that time, clearly Yellow Pages were still going full speed ahead, the double truck ads were the coveted place to be, and really I think law firms at that time were starting to see websites more as the virtual business card, if you will.
And then it wasn't a few years later, Dale was starting to get asked, "What about this search engine? Is there any way I can show up when people are looking for me?" Consultwebs has always really evolved based on what the web has provided and what law firms have been asking for. Where are the gaps? What are they seeing? And we've just evolved our business to try to fill the gaps and serve a need, which is primarily related to growing a business, attracting cases in a competitive industry.
And as you know, Chris, personal injury is one of the toughest industries out there, especially in legal. It's most certainly one of the toughest verticals within legal. So that's what we've been doing. We've just really tried to continue to leverage great team members, leverage the technology that's available to us, and as I've said many times before, using the Wayne Gretzky quote, "Trying to skate to where the puck is going, not where it's at."
Chris Dreyer:
So did you know Dale? How did you join the team? How did you guys all connect?
Tanner Jones:
So I went to school in Kentucky, a small school called Berea College, and I had just finished up school. I had sold some insurance, not very successfully, and ended up finding my way back working at the college. And at that time, I was connected with Consultwebs. Consultwebs had been... they had opened up an office there in the local town. It was a secondary office for the business, and we had at that time maybe about 10 people working out of that office space, and they were needing someone with business acumen who had a comfortability in talking with lawyers in particular.
So it was really at that time they connected me. And Consultwebs has never really been a big business development entity. We've always felt like if we can deliver, if we can create enough experts around us with production mindsets, with results-oriented mindsets, that's going to do a lot of the selling and the marketing for us. And so we've been blessed in that area. When I joined, it was pretty much Dale that was driving the business and having business conversations. So a big leap of faith for him. Big milestone for me as well. And it's 15 years later, here we are.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, absolutely. And you guys have a great reputation. I don't think I've ever heard a negative thing about Consultwebs. When you choose a niche, you're choosing to have a relationship in that niche. So I've always appreciated that with just speaking to you, speaking to Magnus. I haven't met Dale, but he's always been very kind in our digital communications. The core services that you offer. If you could just give a brief rundown on those. And then, I wanted to just pick your brain on some of the ones that are different and that stood out to me.
Tanner Jones:
We were born out of the concept of search engine optimization, much like you, Chris. You've built an incredible reputation around doing extraordinarily well with organic search, and Consultwebs has followed suit in that. But naturally, as the web has evolved, it's become much more fragmented. That has necessitated our company to continue to bring on more experts outside of organic search. And so today, we can service law firms in virtually any and all aspects of digital. There's certainly continuing to serve on the content and search marketing side.
Design goes there, development, making sure your site loads very fast, easy to use. All of that is still a core competency. Consultwebs today also has the ability to service on paid advertising, and that in and of itself is also fragmented from YouTube ads to OTT and Connected TV to social media and other search-type paid programs like local services ads and pay per click. So today, we service law firms from A to Z on digital, and we often say, "If there's a new area that pops up that we don't have an expert for, we're going to go find it and make sure that we can service clients in that realm."
Chris Dreyer:
I like that. So that's like the agency of record type model for legal. Yeah, we're playing the game of attention arbitrage, and that attention shifts, and things become more valuable and less value, and you got to be flexible. So I wanted to first just give you a couple hypotheticals just because I think this would be good for our audience to hear.
So first, let's talk about the individual. Maybe he's worked at a law firm for a couple of years, making a good salary, knows the practice of law, and he's going out to hang his shingle, has a little bit of capital. Where would you say a few of your top recommendations?
Tanner Jones:
While there's no singular or universal one-size-fits-all method, I think you can appreciate that. There are certainly some critical foundational elements for any digital campaign, any digital presence. For that individual who's just starting out, likely very limited on what capital they can access, first and foremost, we want to find out what capital do they have access to because I'm a huge believer in if you know your niche, if you know your area, go after it. Be aggressive. Don't tiptoe into this because this certainly is not the industry to be tiptoeing into, or you will get ate up.
And so, that being said, if we are limited on capital, it starts with really securing your own personal brand, understanding who you are, who you serve, and ultimately, why people are going to hire you if they have not hired you already. Establish those unique value propositions because that is going to be the root of all of your communication, your messaging, your intake, your marketing, all of that's going to thrive off of that foundation. From there, translate that into a quality web presence. Now, what does that mean?
That can mean a lot of different things, but at minimum, you need some form of an infrastructure, even if it's just a singular landing page. You create that. It represents your firm, represents your practice areas in a quality way. You also need to establish a Google business profile that is just as important, if not more important than, your own website entity itself. Beyond that, you need to start recruiting reviews aggressively as hard as you possibly can. Start within your circle, build out your reputation through a review standpoint.
People do business with those they know, like, and trust, and the only way they're going to trust you is if you have a reputation that is trustworthy. And the best way to do that is to lean on the people who already know you. Even if they haven't used your services, they know who you are personally. They can speak to you, your integrity, your hard work, whatever that may be. That is... At minimum, Chris, what I see is that's bear foundation. You need that. It's essentially serving in many instances as that virtual business card, but it at least gives you the hub, and then you can begin to build the spokes out from there.
Chris Dreyer:
I appreciate the answer. I appreciate... Look, the reviews at this point in time specifically are more important than ever. Local services ads and Google Maps just because organic's been pushed down and just the real estate and social proof and how people buy and their behaviors. I really appreciate your answer about your identity and your values and things like that because I think so often firms will say, "Oh, I'm going to go do this channel," and then creative in their identity is secondary when I actually think that you need to have continuity in your message to be memorable. So I really appreciate that.
I'm going to take it a different approach, and I'm going to let you have some fun with this one. Let's say the big dogs, right. So you got Azar is the biggest. You got him in Colorado. You got Shunnarah, certainly the biggest in Alabama. You got Glen Lerner. He's in Phoenix and Chicago. Let's take one of the big dogs that's got the capital. Where are you seeing the most value? Let's say you've got the capital, what are you thinking about, big picture channels, distribution, all those types of things? And I know there's that it depends. But let's say the big dog PI, auto trucking, how are you approaching that?
Tanner Jones:
The best case scenario, if you're a brand that's well established, and the short answer for me is you want to be everywhere, and that's difficult. Most people hear that, and it feels lofty. But what do I mean by that? There was a study done many years ago. Les Binet, I believe, was a leader in the research. Peter Fields, maybe it was the other name. Don't quote me on that. But they created this study called The Long and Short of it, and they studied some major businesses, big businesses who were investing in marketing and advertising and they were assessing sales activation techniques of advertising, things that would immediately elicit response and conversions and then assessing that against brand building techniques.
Brand building being more traditional advertising that we typically think of TV, billboards, radio, creating awareness for a brand. And what they found in that extensive study, I'm talking years of data that they collected, was that the most successful brands combined both sales activation and brand-building techniques for the long term. They did not try attempt to capture lightning in a bottle with some particular tactic, and that's what allowed them to win enormously. No. It was a daily effort of being intentional at recognizing that for sales activation, in most instances, we're going to pay a premium to get the case, but we're going to get the case in early.
And so we can lean on that as a business model to be able to get our caseload built up, grow our referrals. But without the brand initiative supporting that, there was a significant amount of volatility in the business that was coming in. There was also more expensive cost per case or a cost per client with the sales activation because the brand building was not there, creating awareness and constant knownness in the marketplace. So this study proved that both are critically important, both in the short term and in the long term. And if you want to protect your business or at least increase the probability of success, you're going to invest in both brand-building techniques and sales activation.
So bring that full circle to a law firm that has an incredible brand and a big wallet. I want to make sure that that law firm is consistently investing in all aspects of brand in the marketplace. And the best way to assess that would be where are other bigger competitors currently investing. Because if you're not working to dilute their brand presence and overpower theirs with yours, then you're missing opportunities within that pocket. I would invest as aggressively in all of those aspects that are reasonably possible and available to me as a law firm. And then, I'm going to continue to invest and double down on sales activation. That can mean protecting your own house through search engine optimization, local services ads as we brought up.
But I'm also looking at other entities like lead generation companies, and I know that that may come with a bad taste in some people's mouth, bad experiences there. But a full-court press with this type of campaign is critically important if you really want to be the number one entity in the marketplace. And so that's it. It's be everywhere reasonable. Is the budget often one of the biggest preventers or bottlenecks of that? Yes. And so then you have to begin to prioritize, but as long as you're continuously investing in both camps, brand building, and sales activation, you are giving your business the best chance of maximum long-term growth.
Chris Dreyer:
Consultwebs offers some unique services. One is accident data center. It is a free online aggregator that's up-to-date auto accidents across the United States. The site reads like a bulletin board or a news site with clickable headlines and a blurb to each accident.
Below each blurb are clickable buttons like request a police report or talk to a lawyer. Consultwebs partners with this site because it provides relevant backlinks from hyper-targeted news article pages to client strategic motor vehicle accident pages on their websites. This is a tactic they use to supplement their SEO efforts.
Tanner Jones:
The whole concept of search engine optimization is about working to establish credibility and authority around particular subjects. You want to be seen as the subject matter expert around A, B, C. For a personal injury lawyer who wants commercial policy cases, they want to be the expert for semi-truck accidents in the marketplace. And so to do that algorithmically, the way Google assesses it historically, backlinks have been one of the best ways to do that. A backlink is when you get a connection from one website over to another, and it's essentially that website trusting your site enough to send their website traffic to the other website. So it's a popularity contest to a large degree.
Well, the more relevant links that are coming into your website, often the more perceived credibility that that business has around that particular subject matter. So, really, I would say the core of that entity, the accident data center partnership that we have and how we help law firms with this, is primarily driven by the value of a backlink, getting a backlink from one website to the next and passing that subject matter expertise over and that credibility. Now intent. I think there's a lot of argument to be made in terms of how users are actually landing on this. Are they searching because it was their cousin that was involved because they're just curious because they drove by this accident on the interstate on their commute home?
They want to find out were there any fatalities, serious injuries? Who was it? There's a wide range of intent behind that traffic coming there. But what we also find, in addition to just pointing a link back to a car accident page, for example, Google continues to want to serve local results. We've been seeing that, Chris. Over, I mean, the last decade, Google has continuously modified their search landscape to deal locally, and that's because I mentioned earlier, people like to do business with those they know, like, and trust. Well, in most instances, those are people who are in their community, and we've learned to search locally, and Google has evolved the search engine.
So what am I getting at with it? With accident data center and them being able to report on a wide range of accidents that are occurring throughout a geographic area, a metropolitan or even a state. Every time that article is being placed on that website and mentioning a specific location of where that accident occurred, specific highways or roadways, and we're getting links from that entity, we're driving local signals back to our website or our client's website that's tied to specifically auto accidents. So we see this as one of the richest, most unique, most relevant types of backlink that you can get, and that's the driver behind that type of service to help boost overall rankings for quality case-driving search words.
Chris Dreyer:
And I can appreciate that. Obviously backlinks being immensely important through the downward pressure of the ability to create content at a cheaper rate, so there's more content, so a greater emphasis on links.
The other thing too, I will say this. I'll give you the pro on the accident data center is a lot of this content isn't evergreen, so it'll be good for a few weeks and then drop out. So it's better to have that content on an external site than maybe your core legal website. Let's talk about a couple more. We know data and attribution and measuring success is important, so just give me the brief overview of the LawEval.
Tanner Jones:
Sure. LawEval is an analytics dashboard and a reporting dashboard that we've built in-house at Consultwebs. This is only available to existing clients, and that's intentional. There are a lot of great platforms out there. In fact, I mean, you go to a trade show or a conference today, and you're going to find half of the vendors seemingly are some type of CRM or tech stack company that's serving law firms. It's incredible the growth there. So, for us, really, the heart of this type of platform was built around transparency and communication for clients.
We obviously know that reporting is important, but any kind of just subjective or arbitrary reporting is worthless, waste time, and doesn't give fruitful direction between the client and the vendor, whoever that may be. So we built LawEval really with three core concepts or three core modules, one being analytics, and those analytics can be customized based on the client's desires. What do they want to see? Are they most interested in average rankings for this set of keywords? Are they most interested of current trends, ups and downs, certain pages, and the conversions coming through that? Everyone's different.
Obviously leads and cases are most important. And so, in addition to an analytics module, we have a leads module, and this is essentially a boiled-down CRM for law firms and especially tremendously valuable for law firms who do not have a dedicated CRM where they're able... their intake team is able to classify leads as they come in as signed, retained or rejected or referred out, not a lead. This is invaluable information. And if you don't mind, Chris, I'll make a very quick point. Anyone investing in any kind of digital marketing, there should be accountability built around that relationship.
Otherwise, without accountability, there will be a season of drought, and when that season comes, when you're not informed or in the know of what's going on, you will often allow emotion to drive decision. Listen, I've been there. We've all been there. But when emotion is driving decision and not data or not fact, we will most often shortcut quality decisions or shortcut ourselves and, in turn, be left to try to dig out of something we've put ourselves in. I'll get off my soapbox there, but that's really the heart of that type of data to be constantly assessing of the leads that are coming in your door, what is actually being signed up.
What's being referred out? Are you generating referral income from that, or what's just simply wasting intake time and being a bottleneck? That's the purpose of that module. The last module is around the network, your security. What we're finding today is that one, site speed is critically important. And so that's a bare minimum component of that module where it's constantly... every single minute, it's taking a snapshot of your website, it's determining whether your site is up or down, and this goes 24/7 so that you have historical data.
A lot of times, we find certain vendors that are basically short-cutting or finding cheap alternatives for servers. Your site may be down for a long period of time throughout a night. It may slow down on speed. This is insurance. This type of module helps to make sure you're in the know of this if a site goes down. Another piece to this is most websites today have a lot of third-party components happening with this website, from WordPress plugins to live chat to call tracking, and that's just scratching the surface.
All of these need to be functioning 24/7 for your website to provide the best experience possible. So with our security and networking module, we're able to monitor all of this and send immediate notifications both to our dev and support teams, as well as to the client. "If any of these scripts break, your live chat goes down, your call tracking breaks, whatever that may be, you and us are being notified immediately." So that's the heart of LawEval. It's to better serve clients and make sure they're getting more results, better results, and being accountable to those results.
Chris Dreyer:
One of the things we do too, we seek or chop, right. We want to know that if we're driving leads that it's going to be handled properly, especially even LSA. It's the graveyard if you miss a call. So just briefly, podcast production. Tell me about that service. Obviously we're on a podcast, we understand the benefit of distribution, and we're doing a keynote presentation in the office right here. How does the podcast production service work for Consult?
Tanner Jones:
There are a number of ways that we can service law firms through a concept of podcasts. There are a lot of great podcasting companies out there that'll take you through from soup to nuts on identifying what's the heart of this podcast, and they'll work with you to create it. Our real value is in the promotion aspect of a podcast. While we can consult law firms and getting it started and creating it, our value is leveraging the actual episodes and being able to get as much mileage out of them as possible, Chris. So our service is less around the infrastructure and the building and more around the promotional piece of it.
And I'll just hit very quickly that we've talked about the importance of brand building. Podcasts do just that. We've not really hit on the power of how Google looks at podcasts or how Google looks at individual experts. But we've heard nothing but EEAT over the last several years by Google emphasizing expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness. And one of the best ways to illustrate those signals to the search engines and to the World Wide Web is through hosting a podcast and being able to tell your story and illustrate that expertise.
So that's the heart behind the service. It's really a way to allow us to leverage clients who are willing to be vulnerable, to get on a microphone, to get in front of a camera, and be able to tell their and do it in an intriguing way. And for us, that makes our jobs a lot easier because it gives us actual assets that are unique to the firm that no one else can recreate or replicate, and we can push that out into social, to the website, break it up into a lot of different ways and get the most mileage possible.
Chris Dreyer:
Love that. Love that. Especially the video component is social. So the podcast we're recording right now on Riverside. One of the reasons why I chose this platform is because it creates the videos and formats for social distribution as opposed to Zoom, who really doesn't. And not to say you can't, but it just makes it more challenging. How is Consultwebs different from other digital agencies? We've talked about some of those things already, but just big picture, how is Consultwebs different?
Tanner Jones:
There are a lot of very credible organizations out there. Chris, you and I have known each other for a long time, and to me, it's a matter of acknowledging that we're not the best fit. Consultwebs is not the best fit for everyone, and we're okay with that. Consultwebs has really built our organization over the years, as you kind of alluded to, based on reputation, based on results, not on just a lot of pizazz and our marketing and our messaging. It's really just based on we do the work and we get it right. Do we get it right every time? No. No one does. So Consultwebs real selling point and how we attract quality clients is through our team of experts. We have over 130 people.
It's not just you're going to be successful by having over a hundred people. That's not what it is. But what we found is because the web is so fragmented... I found it very difficult early, as the web is becoming more and more fragmented to be able to effectively sell and understand every aspect of digital marketing. And so what we identified was a need to start bringing in specialty people, people who have been in the trenches in this particular area, they've proven themselves, and they're worth their weight in gold when it comes to being able to guide us as an agency and our clients through this specific area like local services ads or like TikTok in and of itself.
And so, law firms seek Consultwebs out to be able to provide a comprehensive assessment and management over all aspects of digital and not be one-sided or more tactical than strategic. Another thing would be our year-over-year results. It is very rare for an agency like Consultwebs to look back and see every single year. Both Consultwebs has grown, but our clients have increased intakes, have increased cases and, in turn, increased revenue year over year. Very few organizations have 10 and 15-plus-year client relationships in the search world as well.
So that's really our unique value to the marketplace is we're strategic. We're not... You're not going to see us running around screaming at marketing events and trying to get attention. In fact, we're probably... we've been told we are the best-kept secret in the industry, which is not what a marketing agency wants to be known as, but that's really our nature and the culture that we've created as organization.
Chris Dreyer:
Fantastic, fantastic. And then, Tanner, one final question here. Where can people listening go to connect with you and learn more about Consultwebs?
Tanner Jones:
Sure. Yeah. Easily just go to consultwebs.com. You can find everything you need to know about Consultwebs. You can also find our phone number there, where you can reach out to us. Certainly happy to answer any questions or provide any consultations when it comes to a digital strategy.
Chris Dreyer:
Thanks to Tanner for all his insights today. Let's recap. Make waves. In this highly competitive market, dipping your toes will not yield marketing-dominating results. Dive in and spin as much as you can, reasonably, of course. Invest in both brand-building and sales activation techniques for the best ROI.
Tanner Jones:
If you know your niche, if you know your area, go after it. Be aggressive. Don't tiptoe into this because this certainly is not the industry to be tiptoeing into, or you will get ate up.
Chris Dreyer:
Build a solid digital foundation. Begin with really understanding your unique selling position. Once your personal brand identity has been established, dial and digital. Focus on your website presence, Google business profile, and online reviews. These are the non-negotiable bare minimums.
Tanner Jones:
If we are limited on capital, it starts with established those unique value propositions because that is going to be the root of all of your communication, your messaging, your intake, your marketing, all of that's going to thrive off of that foundation.
Chris Dreyer:
Check your emotions at the door. Data must drive your decisions. If you don't have the right data, then you will make rash changes that will hurt you in the long run. Invest in a system that accurately reports the data that you need to make informed choices over time.
Tanner Jones:
Anyone investing in any kind of digital marketing, there should be accountability built around that relationship. Otherwise, without accountability, there will be a season of draft. To be constantly assessing of the leads that are coming in your door, what is actually being signed up, what's being referred out? Are you generating referral income from that, or what's just simply wasting intake time and being a bottleneck?
Chris Dreyer:
All right, everybody. That's it for this toolkit episode. I hope we added a few more tools to your kit. For more about Tanner and Consultwebs, head on over to the show notes. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind with me, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. Before you go, do me a salt and smash that follow button to subscribe if you haven't already. I'd sincerely appreciate it, and I know you won't want to miss out on our next episode. Catch you next time. I'm out.
