Chris Dreyer:
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This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. We don't hide behind jargon or excuses. You'll always know what's being done and what's coming next. We show you exactly how we're turning rankings in the cases every step of the way. Today we're exploring the future of traditional marketing with the firm owners who do it best, from amplifying traditional media efforts with digital presence to creating memorable ads. And we tie it all together with the importance of cohesive branding that stands out and attracts the exact clients year after. The insights you hear today are pulled from just a few of our speakers at PEM Con, the Personal Injury Mastermind conference.
Mitri Shantara:
In the first eight months of the year, we have put out over 115 million impressions and over 225,000 clicks have come from those impressions. So it is just a constant, constant push to get impressions out there, get in front of the eyeballs at the right time.
Chris Dreyer:
That's Mitri Shantara, the right hand marketing man of the Billboard King himself, Alexander Shunnarah. Alexander Shunnarah trial attorneys didn't get this volume out of the gate, so let's go back to 2008 to understand where they came from, how they got to where they are and how you can do the same. Alexander Shunnarah explains how his traditional strategy has evolved over time.
Alexander Shunnarah:
Around 2007, 2008, when the mortgage crisis hit, I felt that print was dying. And so I did some research on some billboards and I wanted to know why corporate America did it. Some of the things I learned was that it has something called a ping factor that consciously or subconscious, it will ping your brain. Seven words or less, keep it clean. If you keep them up long enough, year two is better than year one, year three is better than year two, and then eventually it's supposed to build a brand and that's what billboards really are.
I was with a digital agency, it was one of the first digital agencies that I used and it was out of Dallas and they said, "Hey, we're doing a shoot. You need to come in." And the last thing I ever expected to meet was Bongo, the Monkey. It's just kind of been a joke and it's kind of been with us, but it ran for about probably a year in Alabama. But I quickly figured out that from about that point moving forward, that we have to do whatever we have to do to get some cases in the door.
Mitri Shantara:
Obviously, as years went on, I started at the firm at a young age, but as I grew up in the firm with Alex and everybody else. More and more challenges appeared with traditional marketing, one being cost. For those who are in traditional marketing or have done it, TV is expensive, production is expensive, billboards are expensive. It is all expensive, high cost, and it's constant and they're long contracts. You don't usually just go up and down, up and down on it.
Next thing is personalization. It's not personal to anybody. You may have a great ad like Bongo who again, Bongo connected with me. I would've probably hired Alex if I saw Bongo and had been in a wreck, but it doesn't connect with everybody. So it is a struggle. And then third is attribution. That is one thing when we talk about what we're trying to do now, trying to be able to attribute every case to a source, where it came from, when it came in, what time it came in. And so that's something that was a struggle back then and still a little bit now it's a lot easier because you have trackable numbers, you can do a lot of different things, but traditional now, but attributing your cases and the cost and everything to a billboard back in 2008 wasn't easy.
Alexander Shunnarah:
It started back in 2001 and all we knew was traditional marketing. There's usually four or five firms that are attempting to do the same thing. And so you are trying to figure out how you could differentiate yourself from those other firms. But the truth is that I think most of the firms that did really well, it was just a blitz campaign to be honest with you. The person who spent the most money, who was pretty much everywhere. And traditional obviously served me well. There are some challenges with it and I mean you can build a brand and you can have some top mind awareness, but I knew the phone book was dying. Actually, my cousin is the one who sold me the phone book ads. He had a good job. I called him and I said, "Hey, I can't do the phone book anymore." And to be honest with you, I don't think he's spoken to me in 15 years, even though I told him, I said, "Print is dying and I've got to do something different."
And hence, I was fortunate enough, I got a couple of good cases, I was able to resolve them. And that was kind of when I went all in on the billboards after I did my homework. And as a result of it in Alabama, I've been nicknamed the Billboard King. We have probably 2000 billboards. I know it's at least 2000 in the southeast. I know that we have brand awareness, but is there brand loyalty in legal services?
Mitri Shantara:
How consumers finally decide what they're going to purchase or what service they're going to use, which plumber, which lawyer, whatever it is. That journey is erratic. It is not as simple. And we all hope you see the ad, you click the ad, you hire us. You see our billboard, you call our number, we're the lawyer for you. We know that's not the case. We learn it's not the case. If they see your ad, they go back to it later, they forget about you, they remember you, they scroll by you. Oh, then it pops up again. They forget to click all the way through the chat submission. So you get like a half empty chat submission. I know everybody's received one of those where there's like five digits of a number before you set it to where only full numbers could come through because we've all done that before until finally they decide on you.
And so what we've been trying to figure out for a while now, but heavily the last year is how do we make sure that we are relevant to the consumer when we actually need to be? With traditional, you have low frequency because it is expensive. Yes, Alabama, we're an anomaly. But in our other markets where we have traditional, we don't have as many billboards. Lower frequency, but we have high relevance because they see us. But the problem is that is all occurring before the accident happens. They're aware of us, they see us, but they don't need us. So we're really not important to them until they need us.
So the hope is with digital is to get out in front of them at what we call activation, which is when they're in an accident. And so where you are high frequency because we know how heavy you can go in a digital push and how relevant you can be. But the goal is to get in front of them and we're doing a lot of different things to try to get there. So dollars are spent correctly, dollars are spent wisely, and then we're able to help as many people as we can along the way.
Alexander Shunnarah:
We still do some traditional, but obviously the traditional has always been for everyone. It's, we call it a spray and pray campaign, right? You spend a lot of money, you put it out there. Are you really relevant to them? They can go by your billboard a hundred times a thousand times, but if they're not in an accident, you're not relevant to them at that moment. I mean, the only thing you are to them as a brand, and maybe you don't have any brand relevancy.
Now look, it Alabama it's a little bit different. But really outside Alabama or wherever you practice outside a city, a county, depending on honestly how relevant you are in your own space, anywhere else, everyone is equal footing. I mean, I'm no relevant than anyone in this room than anybody in any other state other than Alabama. So if this is done correctly by any firm, I think you can be successful or at least increase your chances of getting some cases.
Mitri Shantara:
So as Alex mentioned, no more spray and pray. Consumers have really three things. They have a goal they're trying to achieve, they have a desire, they have a problem. And we are fortunate to get leads from everywhere digitally. Traditionally, we have referrals and those people generally are coming to us after their accident, right in the middle of it.
Alexander Shunnarah:
In this space, it's always problems, goals and desires.
Mitri Shantara:
Yeah. Problems, goals and desires. And so to kind of get the right message to the right people at the right time, we're continuing to work on it, but kind of building a tech stack that involves everything from, I call it our essential nervous system. We're heavily, heavily involved with HubSpot, so we use HubSpot across everything we do when it comes to our marketing. So all of our stuff, if you are a referral partner to us, if you're our PPC, our digital, everything runs through HubSpot to kind of help us with this client journey.
And some of the things that we use, again, our PPC, we use some programmatic. When it comes to making sure we take care of our clients, is we're actually partnered with AttorneyShare. So we even take it the next step to where we've actually integrated with some outside partners to where if we can't help somebody, we get them out to the right place. And the good thing about them is all the lawyers and there are vetted. So we know that any client that comes to us, we're still able to track all their attribution, how it got to us, where it came from, what the result is, but we make sure we get them to the right home. So I did want to shout them out here because they have been a big part of this digital boom that we've been in.
Alexander Shunnarah:
Look, I mean the amount of money that ... It's interesting to me that you would think that the, back to the traditional sense, that outdoor advertising is still really, really popular. And I do think there's a place for it, and obviously we will stay in that, but broadcast television, even though the eyeballs are not there, they still want to charge you an arm and a leg depending on the market, radio stations want to charge you. I think we have just made a decision that we want to take some of those dollars and allocate those dollars to this type of model in a tech stack to basically anytime we feel like there's any touch points with our firm, we want to place ads and we want to chase them in the journey of catching them at the right time again with the right message, hoping they interact with us and eventually becoming a client.
Chris Dreyer:
Traditional media can play a strategic role in your marketing mix. As Alex mentioned, you must appeal to the right people at the right time.
Ed Herman:
People always wonder in your marketing, how do you know what's working and what's not? And my quick test is this. The thing that people approach you and talk to you about when they see you in public, that's the thing that's working because the number one rule in all of your advertising is it has to be memorable.
Chris Dreyer:
Ed Herman managing partner at Brown and Crouppen and Jeremy Corray, executive vice president at Cool Fire Studios, have done a great job of creating traditional and digital ads that connect with the audience.
Jeremy Corray:
Why the hell should these people listen to us? Huh?
Ed Herman:
That's a great question. You don't have to listen to us. That's your choice. But if you want to make a lot more money, we might have a couple of nuggets that might be helpful. This is Jeremy Correa. Jeremy is my creative partner. Jeremy works at a place called Cool Fire Productions.
Jeremy Corray:
Yeah.
Ed Herman:
For those of you who are familiar with BCTV, which is the media branch of Brown and Crouppen, which is my law firm, they have helped us create an incredible brand that has become very recognizable throughout the Midwest and beyond that has grown our business exponentially. He's here to help us convey in a more interesting way how we've gone about doing it and also give you some tips on how you can recreate it in a way that would work for you.
Jeremy Corray:
Yeah.
Ed Herman:
Different from the way we do it, but in a way that would work for you.
Jeremy Corray:
Yeah, it's awesome. We're going to build upon themes you've seen and heard a lot of, and in particular the smaller firms just starting out with maybe you've got three attorneys, growing. These are things, you don't have to be Mike Morris yet, right? Mike Morris started somewhere and he got there. So we're going to leave some actionable tips, and I want to introduce Ed here, which I know you've seen him on the circuit. We've all seen his cereal videos, his nap videos. When I first met this guy, first met him, it was on a pizza commercial. What kicked off was an awesome creative collaboration. So not only has this guy won nine Emmy Awards, okay, four Golden Gables, but the guy make no mistake, his best material, his building Brown and Crouppen to a powerhouse regional law firm, biggest in the Midwest, taking Terry Crouppen's vision and really taking it from a goldfish bowl to a large aquarium. So this man is an absolute killer. Don't let the velour fool you.
Ed Herman:
Here's the thing. We are in an industry where you cannot create demand, right? But the reality of it is most people don't need you today, and most people will never need you ever. So you cannot follow the normal course of things with most products or services. They got to know you, they got to need you, and then they get to choose you. But if you do that in what we do, you just wind up in a really bad situation where if you're waiting around for people to need you, it's just a feeding frenzy at the end of a bunch of people trying to go after a lead through pay-per-click, which is very, very expensive. What we do is we flip the order and we think at first they have to know you. What if we can get them to choose you before they need you?
And the way you do that is you get them to really like you and trust you and find you to be approachable, relatable, and more than anything, likable. I always say to people, likeability is the ultimate tiebreaker. But if you can get people to make a qualitative opinion about how they feel about you, if you can get them to build what I would call a brand affection as opposed to just merely a brand awareness, then they're kind of pre-choosing you. And that's what these things are all about. My mechanism for that tends to be humor because people like to laugh, but this isn't the only thing that we do to connect with people.
Chris Dreyer:
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Ed Herman:
As you know, one of the other series that we do, and it's one that's easily replicable, is a series called Three Lawyers Eating Sandwiches, which I do with two of my partners. And that allows us to get into the community to feature local businesses. We try out different foods, we talk about the things that we like, and we put it out to the public and the people love it. They love watching cooking shows to begin with. People love watching food content to begin with, and that's a big part of what works online is don't force speed people things to watch that they're not already naturally interested in. Look at what people are already watching on the internet and then find how do we do our version of that and latch onto it? And what do people like on the internet?
We are living in a world where we are seeing a hockey stick growth of artificial intelligence. And at the same time that we're seeing AI take over everything, the hunger and need for things that feel genuine and authentic have never been higher for most people. For people want to hear the greatest piano player in the world, they can go to iTunes, pick the greatest piano player and listen to the hardest piece if that's what they really want to do. But nobody does that. But if you have a TikTok video of a teenager in an airport playing a classical piano piece, everybody gathers around and wonder and you watch that video and you like it. Why? Why does that happen? Because it's real. It's right in front of your eyes. You're amazed by it. You're seeing something special. Why do we get fascinated?
Jeremy Corray:
Right. And what do you say to the folks out there who are like, "That's nice. I've seen Mike talk Jen and everything. I didn't go to law school for this bullshit. I'm not naturally funny and talented and award-winning like you. How can I apply this strategy?"
Ed Herman:
The process is this. We sit down with a lawyer, take Tim Myler for example. I know we have some of his samples. He's a great lawyer out of West Virginia. You start the process by sitting down, and it doesn't necessarily have to be whoever the name lawyer is at the firm. You use the term inside influencer.
Jeremy Corray:
Inside influencer.
Ed Herman:
I love that term. Because you never know who it is at your firm that has just that right charisma, just that right amount, passion or energy that's just contagious, that contagious kind of energy. And you sit down and you find out what a person's truly passionate about. It could be anything because it's the passion and the enthusiasm that's actually contagious. So we sit down with somebody like Tim Myler and we talk to him. What are your dreams? What do you like to do? Forget the law. Nobody wants to hear about the law. Nobody cares about the law. Hot take. What are you into?
And in the course of conversations, we found out that his secret dream was to be a stand-up comic, even though he's not particularly funny.
Jeremy Corray:
Well, he's a good sense of humor, but he's not like a particularly funny guy. But self-deprecating.
Ed Herman:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Corray:
And it turns out he has a passion for the road. He drives a trike.
Ed Herman:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Corray:
But his wife drives a motorcycle Motorcycle.
Ed Herman:
Motorcycle. Yeah.
Jeremy Corray:
And we heard that and we're like, well, we love that because there's such a natural tie-in between that and what we do for a living.
For us, we look at what makes people light up when they talk about it, and we flesh that out and we start to build an idea around that. And with him, I think our first thing with him was ...
Ed Herman:
Tiger Talks.
Jeremy Corray:
Tiger Talks was his educational informative series. But to your point, we launched a campaign called Lawyer Jokes, right? We're all familiar with that trope, but instead we turned it around on the insurance companies. So this was a scrappy, not crappy little shoot we did in the basement, Ed was there, and it turned out people loved it.
Ed Herman:
People always wonder in your marketing, how do you know what's working and what's not? And my quick test is this. The thing that people approach you and talk to you about when they see you in public. That's the thing that's working because the number one rule in all of your advertising is it has to be memorable. That's rule number one, because they don't need you today. So in order for it to stick to have any sticking power at all, rule number one is it has to be memorable. If it wasn't memorable, then it has zero sticking power. It will not do anything for you in the long run. It has to have sticking power. Memorable is number one. The easiest way you can tell if something's memorable is that is the thing that people use as their opening when they meet you on the street.
Chris Dreyer:
Every billboard, TV spot or radio ad should reinforce your unique selling proposition. What sets you apart in a crowded market? This is how you transform traditional media from simple exposure into powerful brand building. It's about creating a recognizable presence that resonates with your ideal clients, whether they're driving past a billboard or watching late night TV.
John Berry:
If you had to describe your brand in three words, which words would you choose? If you reached out to that new associate, that new paralegal, what words would they use to describe the brand of your law firm? Would you be willing to take out your phone, text one of your clients and ask them what three words come to mind when they think about your brand? Those three words matter.
Chris Dreyer:
John Barry, founder of Barry Law breaks down how to craft a brand that stands out in traditional media and attracts the exact clients you're after.
John Berry:
We had to think hard about how we were going to best serve our clients. Now we have three verticals, veteran's disability, personal injury, criminal defense, and we decided that our veteran's disability, because it is a national practice, would be a separate website from our criminal defense and personal injury site, which is only in Nebraska and Iowa. So the first one that we did was this. We had a Super Bowl commercial, Hollywood style production, and we just took still frames and we built out the site with that. We didn't want to show ourselves as a bunch of lawyers and suits and ties. We wanted to show our veterans that we were one of them, that we were veterans serving veterans. And so that was that site.
But that didn't speak to all of our other clients in Nebraska and Iowa. So we built another site based on the commercial we shot. This was our in it to win it commercial. Because our brand is a team of warriors To fight alongside you, we have to have a team in there. We want to show that we go to court and try cases. So we wanted the courtroom, and then we took that concept and brought it into the billboards.
Now, the thing about billboards is you don't have a lot of time to brand with billboards. When someone is going 80 miles an hour down the interstate, you've got about 0.2 seconds. What I'm about to show you is probably going to be critiqued by some of you, but that's fine because it works. So this is the first billboard, and I know what you're thinking. "Seriously injured? Oh, that's so lame. That's a lame tagline." And then, "Oh, there's no phone number, there's no website."
Yeah, no shit. This is about branding. You think someone can drive by and see on the interstate and see your phone number, see your website? Yeah, but are they going to know what you do? They can only process three things in those 0.2 seconds. So I want my face, I want them to know what we do, serious injuries, and I want my logo, and that's it. Is it cute? Is it clever? No, but I learned a lesson from Harlan Schillinger, the godfather of legal marketing. And Harlan told me this. I was shooting a commercial in Los Angeles and Harlan's there, and he's like, "John, look, what you need to do is you need to look into the camera and you need to talk to the camera like you're talking to a jury." He says, "Look, John, anytime you talk to the public, you talk to the public like you're talking to a jury." And for me, that means being clear and concise, and that's what this is.
And then, so yeah, we spice it up. Look, we got the blood-red channel letters that glow at night, the 3D logo, love it. From there, we're able to move on to other things. My father, who's a great trial lawyer and also a Vietnam veteran, we've got pictures of both of us in uniform. And even for our criminal defense side. Back when we sponsored the Huskers, back when the Nebraska Corn Huskers were winning games, we had this right outside the stadium. And as you can see, even though they're different practice areas, you can tell that the brand is still the same.
We had to choose one cause and we would go all in, say yes to that and say, no to everything else. And so our cause was to work with a bunch of great brands, veteran and military nonprofits. If it wasn't veteran or military related, we say no. But let me tell you how you can build this into something great.
So I get a call from a friend of mine. He says, "John, we need $10,000 for the Johnny 'The Jet' Rogers Foundation Scholarship. It goes to the local community college." I said, "That's great, but what does it have to do with veterans?" And he said, "Come on, Johnny 'The Jet', 1972 Heisman Trophy winner. Don't you want to be associated with this?" And I said, "It has to be for veterans." So he came back the next day, he said, "Oh yeah, I got it. The Johnny "The Jet' Rogers Military Scholarship for Veterans sponsored by Barry Law." Bam.
And then that led to a speaking engagement where I had about a thousand people in the audience, and someone recognized me. He was a guy I served with in Iraq, and he said, "John, we've got this thing called the 50-mile March. Would you contribute to that?" And I uttered the magic words, "Yes. And what else can we do to support you?" He said, "Well, we need an honorary commander. We need someone to go out there and give the hype up speech right before they walk. 50 miles. Will you do it?" I said, "Absolutely." I said, "Do I have to walk the 50 miles?" And he said, "John, you still lead by example, don't you?"
So I walked 50 miles, but this was great. It got a ton of press, and that opened the door for something even greater, our mission service. So the TV station that was covering our march said, "Hey, we really like positive news stories. We'd like to honor a hero. We're wondering if you would sponsor a three minute segment." So we did that, and then we got a hold of the Creighton men's basketball team, and we said, "Look, we're sponsoring these heroes. We want to bring them up to center court and honor them." And Creighton said, "Sure."
So we get the local hero. They're on the news. There's a big story about them. Then after the first time out, their story is read by the announcer with Barry Law logos everywhere. And the great thing about it is after we present that award to that hero, standing ovation. And all of our competitors go to the Creighton games and they have to stand and clap while the Barry Law logo is on there. This led to an opportunity where down in Lincoln, 50 miles away, they said, "Hey, we need someone to sponsor the Lincoln Veterans Day Parade, would you do it?" And I said, "Yeah. And what else can I do to help?" The magic words. "We need a grand marshal." "What's a grand marshal?" They said, "Well, you have to sit up there with the mayor and the Lieutenant Governor, and then you give a speech to the crowd." Awesome.
So these were some great opportunities, and they all came from committing to the brand we wanted to be and who we wanted to support. The key for us was to really narrow the focus and get it on brand. That made such a difference with our clients, our potential clients, and most importantly, our team members. As we do this, we're going to have to put it all on social media, and you're going to hear a lot about social media, but you're reaching out to audience who are everywhere. So once you're really clear on what you want to do, you're going to have to blast it on social media. I know the power of a brand, and I've made that brand promise to my team, and I've seen the results. We don't chase clients. They chase the brand.
Chris Dreyer:
That wraps up this special episode of Personal Injury Mastermind with me, Chris Dreyer. You can learn more about our guests, grab their contact info and their resources mentioned today in the show notes. While you're there, pick up a copy of my new book, personal Injury Lawyer Marketing from Good to Go. And if you like what you hear, help a brother out. Leave me a five-Star review on Apple or Spotify. All right, everybody, thanks for hanging out. See you next time. I'm out.
