Chris Dreyer:
Chris Dreyer here, CEO and founder of Rankings.io where we help elite personal injury attorneys dominate first page rankings. You're listening to The Rankings Podcast where I feature top business owners, entrepreneurs and elite personal injury attorneys. I'm excited today to have Ian Garlic on the show. Ian is the CEO of authenticWEB where they specialize in telling the unique stories of small businesses. He is an expert in both video production and SEO. Ian is a published author in Marketing Strategy as well as a featured speaker for the New York State Trial Lawyers Association. The Manhattan Association of Realtors and the Nassau County Bar Association Through authenticWEB, his clients have run the gamut from attorneys like Houston's Brent Mayr to author and EOS founder Gino Wickman. Ian welcome to the show.
Ian Garlic:
Awesome, Chris, thank you so much for having me on. I love to talk legal marketing. I'm weird like that.
Chris Dreyer:
Well, that's why I got you on the show. You're a beast, and I'm excited to speak with you. So let's take it back. So how did you get started in video marketing? You've been obsessing about this for years. How did you get started?
Ian Garlic:
Sure. Absolutely. You know, I was in marketing in general for Thomson Reuters back in the day. 2007. And I was, you know, I remember very specifically, nothing against Thomson Reuters fine laws marketing consultant. We were going around doing websites, and all the websites were kind of looking the same. And I meet with attorneys and everyone had a different message, different story. I'm like, well, we got to make this better. And then all of a sudden you YouTube was purchased by Google and having an SEO background. I'm like, this is it. Google's not gonna let YouTube do anything but succeed and they're gonna be able to deliver, we're gonna be able to deliver video and stories in a way we've never been able to before. And plus once they started integrating it into the universal results, meaning that YouTube videos were showing up inside of Google, I knew it was a game changer. And I was like, this is where I've got to be. I've always loved storytelling, I love video, and really loved SEO and I was like, this is a perfect confluence of it. You know, and the funny part was for up until probably about five years ago, we're selling SEO and websites to get people to do video. Because everyone's like, oh, video really, but now it's obviously dominating. We love it and it's just innovative and you know, since then, we've also launched storycrews.com which helps people find videographers that know marketing around them. So you can find one around the world. And we just did the Giants of Video which I'm super excited about. I interviewed 40 plus of the best market video marketers in the world on what's working now during the pandemic, and after pandemic has video has exploded. So that's kind of the quick history of it. But that's how I got into video. And that's what I've been doing since.
Chris Dreyer:
Yes, he already mentioned several that I want to dig into The Giants of Video, Story Crews, authenticWEB. You know, let's start off with it. authenticWEB. So, and you kind of mentioned this, but for people who don't know what authenticWEB is about what what you guys provide, kind of what's the what's the 80:20? What does authenticWEB do?
Ian Garlic:
We help you get your it's the right story at the right time. Storytelling is about timing. And we help create those videos they we understand the customer journey in that client journey and where they are in it because the same video is not going to apply to the same person at the same time we purchase because we make decisions because of timing and where we are in our stories. We make those videos and then we help to design them and help to market them so they are in front of their ideal prospects or clients ideal prospect at the exact right time and we work with professionals. I started with lawyers, we work with all sorts of professionals. I love it. I love service based businesses. And there's nothing better because we help. In essence, we help you to become the authority and the friend to that potential clients. When they walk through the door. They feel like they, they're, you're the best friend and you're their Savior, because they've seen all your videos.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I completely agree. You get to see the person's face, you get to hear the tone of their voice and see if you actually want to work with that individual, as opposed to just reading some long form text about their credentials. So let's take like an example here. So let's take a Chicago personal injury law firm. What would you do to help grow that firm with authenticWEB's video marketing services,
Ian Garlic:
so yeah, we take them through what we call our video blueprints we take who their ideal clients are now every personal injury attorney thinks that they're all going after the same ones. They're think they're all going after car access, which a lot of them are. Especially, you know, when you get to a bigger one, you have to go after a lot for clients, but you can get very targeted, especially at your mid level about who you want to work with not just niche wise, but where are they located, who are these people, and that's called design the avatar, we designed that Avatar and then we walked through their entire journey. So we walked through from not knowing that they need a personal injury attorney so like don't smoke before the accident to the accidents, what happens after the accident, onboarding them in figure out what stories they need to hear where they are, and then we create that video, we create that video plan. And then we do a documentary style video process where we're interviewing for the wants and needs and excuses of their potential client and creates anywhere from 40 to 100 videos that we then optimize we put in Facebook retargeting YouTube ads, and we work with incredible partners to do So that we are working with SEO teams like you know, rankings auto if we, if we were ever so lucky. But um, you know, in and we work with other website designers, we work with their teams to make sure it's all cohesive. And we're delivering these videos over and over again. And what's really cool is it a lot of times these videos last for four or five, six years, so you get this huge ROI. And in the end what like I said before the results I mean, we've we've had some awesome results, but that's the big thing you know, and from a granular level, some of the places that we look at you know, definitely retargeting you should be retargeting your stories, what we call case stories, not testimonials, storytelling, but our biggest wins have been ranking video stories, stories of your clients, actual stories, not saying I got a million dollars in a lawsuit. No one's gonna watch that. No one cares. I mean, if you've just got an accent, yes, you care, but you need something for people to watch. So you need to tell their stories. So Your your clients stories are so important. You should have an arsenal of those edited in different ways. You're about us the second most use page on the website. What do attorneys do? Usually they throw up their CV who can read their CV other attorneys. If your personal injury attorney, no one understands what's on your About Us page, you can be like, Oh, you know, Trial Lawyer of the year. I don't want to go to trial. You know, I want to sell into law school. I don't know what that means. I'm board certified. What does that mean? Right? So it's but it's your opportunity to explain to someone so we create videos, we create content on there that like I always say they bout us is about them. How do you tell your story to them? Because what happens then after that, after that about us people go to the contact page. So these are some places some easy low hanging fruit plus, obviously make videos about Car Accident Attorney, etc. And we're always working on optimizing those but we create roughly nine types of video for every client Long story short
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, there's there's a lot in there. So I want to point out a few things he said So first, you're creating content or video content for all areas of the funnel so that awareness before they even know about you all the way to getting them to like you that engagement side and then hiring you and even post hiring for for those case stories to highlight your successes. And the other thing I like that you mentioned is, is really making it about the customer, the client, as opposed to making yourself the hero because you got to think about a consumers or are thinking about themselves as the victim and what's in it for them. And I think that that's a that's a good point to really make that the client the hero
Ian Garlic:
is a huge point is to make the client the hero and understand their alibis or excuses for taking action because everyone thinks is about you know, there's that percentage Yes, they want the most money, but i've you know I personally have recommended refer people to personal injury attorneys. And probably nine times out of 10. It's more about how they want how they feel that they feel like I'm not a person that Sue's that I, you know, I like my insurance company, oh, I'm not that injured. So why do I need to call an attorney? I mean, I just had one of those happen, and or, you know, ice, I don't want to ask someone about an attorney, because I'm just not that type of person. These are all things that your videos should be addressing. Because there's this huge majority of people that you're missing out on, that might have a decent case or big case. And, you know, if you're not addressing it, you're just not winning.
Chris Dreyer:
And I completely agree in and there's so much into this, you've been doing this for years, and you've got a lot of experience and that kind of transitions me to Story Crews. You know, for someone like myself or many of our audience members thinking about producing video just seems overwhelming and Like who you're going to get, you know, maybe you want to work with someone local. So how does Story Crews fit in? Well, you know, identifying these expert videographers.
Ian Garlic:
So yeah, you know, years ago, probably, you know, I got known for the case story thing, and I and in the About Us video, so people were flying me all around, which is awesome. There's only one of me. So then we start looking at, you know, hiring videographers, and every time we hired a videographer, I mean, not every time but nine times out of 10. It just didn't work out. Because the videographer is a filmmaker, they went to film school, they don't understand your business, they don't understand marketing. And that's a big thing. We assume that someone's mate knows how to make video, they know how to make video that works. And, you know, we've seen plenty of multibillion dollar Video Productions film productions that didn't sell. So assuming that someone knows how to make a video that works for your business is a bad assumption. And we saw that over and over again. So what we decided to do was start training videographers train them on how to To make videos that work and there's it's a different art, we use a lot of copy driven principles, copywriting, I know some of the best copywriters in the world and apply them to the videos techniques. So we've been trained them all around the country all around the world. So you can hire one. Now if you need a case story on a video case story, you can go there and find that right person. If you want to find someone locally for yourself to pick up and shoot some videos, they'll be able to direct you because you think that they're telling you what you know what's great, and what's even worse, sometimes people want to make things that look cool. I've watched so many videos, curse that 30 seconds and I'm like, I'm not sure what this video is about. And you know how many people watch 30 seconds of a video? Probably 30% of the viewers. Yeah. So you know, you need someone that knows how to translate your marketing message, understand your business and be able to translate that as well. As you know, if you're gonna put them in from a client, ask questions. Well, you know, get the story. stories out when things I'm kind of known for is making grown men cry. But it's in a good way. Because I get we get engaged and you know, you know how to ask them the questions and get that emotion out. And that's not something once again that they shouldn't film school so that you know, that's why we developed Story Crews, so you can find these people all around the world.
Chris Dreyer:
And that's incredible. I think one of the most difficult parts of being just a business owner in general is finding top talent. And this is a way to find that top talent. You know, so, back to the, you know, trying to get some video marketing tips and things like that. You had the GiantsofVideo, you had some of the most successful video marketing specialists. You know, on this, it was a it was a webinar correct. And
Ian Garlic:
it was a video summit. It was a 15 day video summit with 50 plus hours of people teaching video techniques.
Chris Dreyer:
So after all of that time, Here's the super broad, you know, just launched into football here question. So what were some of your top takeaways that are just those individuals just crushing it with video? What were some of your top takeaways?
Ian Garlic:
You know, I'm gonna tell you the number one take well, trend and then takeaways. The number one takeaway was this thing I discovered was strategy stacking. And it comes off of Scott Adams who wrote Dilbert, and whatever, he has weird political views, whatever you take of it, but he's an amazing, amazing business writer and but he talks about talent stacking, like you can be decent at four different things. Like he's a decent artist. He's a decent business person. He's a decent comedy writer, but put that together and he's really successful. So I noticed that with the Giants video, none of them were incredible at video production, including, like Matt Johnston, who came from Business Insider has had millions upon millions of views of his videos, viral videos. annexing Gaul who has a huge production studio, but his productions he misses first, okay. But they add, you know, decent copy decent audience knowledge, decent targeting plus they then they do this they stack strategy. So your email should you shouldn't be writing email but campaign a TV campaign, a Facebook campaign, they should be stacked and moving people from one place to another and that's what these guys are doing which was really cool. So the video is kind of connected. I saw this with a lot of like live streams that went into video email funnels that went into video, another video livestream that retargeted to case story. So that was one of the big things was strategy stacking. So you're connecting everything instead of running it simultaneously. I see that a lot. Like, everyone's like, I'm doing TV and I'm doing Facebook ads and I'm doing YouTube, but they're not connected. And by connected I don't mean running the same thing. And going oh this video is on you YouTube videos here in this videos here, I'm saying that they move people from place to place. So that was one of the biggest ones I saw happen. It's a little more it seems advanced, but it makes a lot of sense. And, you know, yeah. Did you have a question?
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, so I was just gonna say that that really sounds similar to a blog I read recently went to Rand Fishkin's, blog, he's talking about, you know, flywheels and how you kind of connect this cohesive marketing strategy. So builds momentum for all the channels. And I really liked that because it's, it's like, how can I leverage this channel to move them to this other channel to just keep your audience engaged?
Ian Garlic:
Yep. Yeah. And it's not just bombarding them from all sides. It's connection. And so it's a theme, knowing that people go to YouTube to learn and somewhat be entertained. They go to Facebook to be distracted. They're going to their email to stay connected. They're going to Instagram to flip through and somewhat be entertained, so you know that the same video doesn't work. But you can move them from place to place and TikTok is I know we've talked about before. That was another one. TikTok. I was my mind was changed on. I think it's a huge opportunity right now. Matt Johnston talked about it. And I think it's a huge opportunity for everyone, but a branding opportunity for personal injury attorneys. Huge branding opportunity.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I completely agree. And I have to admit, I finally broke down and downloaded TikTok recently, and it's, you can just stay engaged for forever, because then it figures out what you like. It shows more of the same content. And I think that anytime there's a new marketing initiative, a new channel being first in it's just there's less saturation saying we you know, if you would have done podcasting two or three years ago, and how you got into video earlier, it's just easier to stand out. You know, Twitter has, you know, audio tweets coming out LinkedIn has the LinkedIn newsletter and LinkedIn live, it says it's important to be in the forefront of these different channels and initiatives.
Ian Garlic:
Oh yeah, sorry. Important, it's when everyone's saying one thing and keep hearing from everyone I say about TikTok is Oh, isn't that just for 13 year olds, but now if you go on there, there's plenty of adults and moms, decision makers, like your personal injury attorney, your you know, moms or decision makers in that, right. They're there. If a family members in a car accident, a lot of times the mom is the decision maker, so or an influencer, so you can be in front of them with your messaging, and it's free. I mean, 10s of thousands of views. That was a big, big one that I took away. TikTok, let's see what else you no and the other thing is hyper personalization of video, meaning onboarding, we you know, we've we've talked to Joey Coleman before, I'm not sure if you have you've had him on yet but he's amazing. King of customer satisfaction. 5% increase in customer satisfaction increases 25 to 100% increase in profits. So personal injury attorneys like Well, my you know, my tribe skills are what leads the profits. But know, even if you don't land that client, even if that client's too small the case for you, even that client doesn't, you know, call you back, if you give them an exceptional experience when they first call, you've send them a purse, you know, a personalized video, which is super easy to do in five seconds with some of the software. You're going to create an incredible client experience. And if they don't refer to you now they're going to talk about you. And that's the one the big things I saw over and over again, is small audience client experience. I think it's the latest trend.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, and then Joey Coleman is coming on in the future. And he's a great guy, his book, Never Lose a Customer Again, talks about that hundred day experience. And I think what you pointed out is there's all different phases of the client journey. And even after they're a client, then you have those review opportunities. So let's talk about the channel itself, your YouTube channel, let's talk about basic, optimal All right, I'm I'm, I'm an SEO guy. I'm not really a YouTube guy. But let's talk about optimizations, playlists, things like that. What are some of the core foundational things you should do to optimize a YouTube video?
Ian Garlic:
Well, the first thing is, and I know you talked about the suit is quality content. So how do you create quality content? one video, you have to get their attention first, you know, people can't scan like written content and look for their answer. So you have to know what that person wants and be able to speak to it and get that emotional engagement. That's why stories worked so well if they're done right is because it's a story. So it's engaging. So thinking about quality content, or your viewer, right, what do they want? What do they want to get away from? What do they want to go towards? I always say once away once towards you know that they're overwhelmed. You know that you just got a car accident, you're scared. You know, you're not sure who to talk to you. You're getting so much information and talk about their situation. So that's A big part of it, because you want to also get view time. That's to the big signals right now for YouTube and on Giants of Video, we really went into a deep with Jesse who has millions of viewers on his videos. And prize one, you know, I love them just genuine guy, and also some of their other YouTube experts. They talk about view time. So it's percent viewed, but also total view time. So getting like longer form content that's engaging. And how do you do that by making videos paying attention to it? So that's, I mean, from that's the core of it. Now you can also look in answer all the questions that are out there. Along that client journey, besides personal injury attorney like what are some questions they have earlier on? Questions about insurance, because, you know, I've worked at personal injury attorneys and one of the biggest problems is if someone calls up, they have no insurance themselves and were hit by someone with no insurance. Well, that's not the kind of client you want. You want someone that was hit by someone with a lot of insurance. So you got to figure out what those persons questions earlier on and some of it won't be about necessarily about personal injury law. You can be answering stuff about your town, your referral sources, things like that, just to get more views, and move them along the journey. And then yeah, like you said, keywords playlists, make sure you have great descriptions, you're tagged, well, you're linking to other videos, you're going for subscription. So you have to give them a reason to subscribe if you just transactional, well, if the if it's just about personal injury law, while they're not going to subscribe or not hate a whole ton of subscribers. So think about things that your audience needs they want and the kind of content that you can provide for them. We're seeing a lot of traction with the lives. So YouTube is putting a little bit of more emphasis on ranking lives, total volume of content. You know, once it gets to that 50, 60 video point, you're really getting more viewers Getting over 1000 subscribers is important. Those are just a few of the factors. But if you get started with really good content really understand be obsessed with your potential clients, then you're going to win.
Chris Dreyer:
So would it be fair to say that if you created high quality content, maybe you wouldn't maybe some of those optimizations things eat while they're good maybe wouldn't be as important. Maybe it's it's mostly about view time and quality.
Ian Garlic:
Oh, yeah. It is mostly about view time and entertainment and quality. And you have to be somewhat entertaining too. It can't just be a boring reading this. Yeah, it is quality, it's engagement and practice and that's why it's important to make tons of video and, and one place to test stuff is Facebook, and then make it using YouTube. That's what the Harmon Brothers did, who made Squatty Potty poop array that we talked about that on Giants of Video, how they test stuff on Facebook to see what's quality, and then bring it over to YouTube.
Chris Dreyer:
One other things that just come to mind I have previous guests I had Ed Herman on. And Ed has Ed versus cereal. He has, I think two lawyers and a sandwich or something. It's not all about the law. But he's he's building a lot of local awareness around St. Louis. He's really building his brand and getting people in the door and he's, he's becoming likable. He talks about his brand love. And he's just not just totally 100% focused on what should you do after a car accident? What should what are the steps you should take? It's it's kind of just building that audience as well.
Ian Garlic:
Yeah. And then also doing crazy stuff like that. Ian Stanley, who was on and I that's why I love doing the Giants of Video, because, yeah, I know a lot about video and doing it for 13 years online video. I think definitely we are some of the experts, but I don't know what everyone's doing. I want to watch it. I want to be, you know, the Ted Williams and I, Ted Williams is to always go, like, if you ever read anything about Ted Williams, everywhere he went, he'd be asking whoever about anyone that was an expert at anything about how they ate breakfast, how they did this because he was always looking for that edge. So that's one of the things I liked about trying to video that said, instead Stanley was on amazing corporate copywriter makes millions of dollars writing emails, makes funny videos, and he said really something important. You know, it's, it's not as much about the quality or as much as being different to and if you can be different and stand out people are gonna you know, and that's what you know, Ed Herman's doing over here you know, with these videos and then people link to him that comment on them. And that's an important thing to do. But it's it's scary for attorneys. But guess what, you know, it's funny, I think about growing up in Orlando, John Morgan, was everywhere. More and more Morgan calling Gilbert you know, in the 80s when they first loud video, and everyone's like, Oh, look at that guy. Right. All the other attorneys were looking down their noses at him. He's not doing too bad now, because he's stood out. And he you know, and I understand there's, you want to be professional, you still be professional, but the most important thing is to get that client if you're a great attorney, the most important thing is to help them. And if you know if you have to, if you're in a if it's in your thing to wear a crazy green suit, and jump around if it gets your clients, and you serve them well. Oh, more power to you.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I mean, we kind of when you were saying be contrarian, I was thinking of the hammer in Texas, and I was thinking all these different kind of individuals that have really been different. And everyone talks about some people talk about them being positive and smart and other negative but guess what? They have our attention.
Ian Garlic:
Yep. Yep. People link to them. They Yeah, it's from an SEO trick. Did you ever read the thing in the New York Times about the eyeglass guy? I haven't, Hoss. So there's this one eyeglass guy in New York that ranked in Number one, for I think it was for like luxury eyewear. It was a super competitive, super valuable term. And the way he ranked number one wasn't through high quality service and I don't recommend this, but he screwed everyone over so bad. They complained so much, but they complained everywhere. They had so many links to his website. There were so many complaints that he ranked to number one. So, you know, it's standing out and now I don't recommend this
Chris Dreyer:
got the negative SEO or attention.
Ian Garlic:
But you know, you got to know everything that works. But like I said, if we're talking about someone, if they're linking to them, that's in then you're gonna win.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, let's talk about one of your favorite success stories of one of your clients. What's something that stands out?
Ian Garlic:
You know, I mean, I've we've helped a bunch of attorneys like one law firm in Denver, we help grow from zero to now. You know, a nice size seven figure law firm over the course of five, six years, and just be the dominant player in Denver through a video. And it was just making tons of video early on, and taking advantage of constantly being on the cutting edge. So he was always like, let's just do it, let's do it. Let's do it, and not waiting to see everyone else doing it. So that was one, you know, one of my favorites. And always, you know, when we can get case stories to rank, especially ones that make people cry, and that's like, number one for those super hard search terms. Because that's, that, to me is the biggest success. And then I hear from attorneys that you know what, you've changed my business, you changed my life. The people walking through me, I feel like I'm their best walking through the door feel like I'm the best friend. Those Those are my favorite success stories. But you know, and that's, you know, I don't necessarily have one specific one than the one in Denver works out. We've worked with all sorts of law firms that we've just helped grow one personal injury law firm. He's a little older now. But now he worked. He had a nice high seven figure year last year and work three days a week. Thanks to all the videos, so I love that too.
Chris Dreyer:
That's incredible. Yeah. And working with Gino Wickman you know, the king of EOS Traction and and yeah, he's, he's amazing too. Hey, let's let's shift to personal development. So are there any business books that come to mind that you recommend?
Ian Garlic:
There's like a whole slew of them back there. It just, you know, I'm constantly reading, constantly listening to stuff. I love The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. That's a great one. How to be Like Walt by Pat Williams. I just interviewed Pat Williams from the Orlando Magic founder, co-founder, Orlando Magic almost all his books are amazing. And he's written 100 books, but How to be Like Walt. It's just like one of those stories that's mind-blowing, and so inspirational and just really how Walt ran his business. I love you know, those types of biographies. I love, you know, other motivational books too. All the EOS stuff if you're running a business, EOS is super important. And then, you know, constantly refining some reading books on copywriting. Geez, I will the dangle will be Yeah. Dan Kennedy, Scientific Advertising by Eugene Schwartz. I mean, from a marketing standpoint, if you haven't read, Influence by Robert Cialdini, you need to read that great one. Yeah, as well as All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin. Love that one. And then, you know, from a personal development, motivational standpoint, I still listen to like some of the greats like Jim Rohn I love Jim Rohn you know, it's a little old time speaky but He still inspires me on a regular basis.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. Jim Rohn, his Twelve Pillars of Success. Yep. I love that when you can get through that one in a day. It's incredible. So, yeah, all of those books are just amazing. And now I've got several more to add to my Ian is there. You know, one final question here. Is there anything that you want to talk about that we haven't discussed?
Ian Garlic:
You know, I mean, the big thing, I think, I think there's a huge, huge, huge opportunity for personal injury law firms to be in YouTube and YouTube ads and doing it different and they all should be looking at it and also make sure you have a strong video retargeting campaign. It's amazing to me how many personal injury law firms I go, and they don't have any retargeting going on. But you know, YouTube's the cutting edge. retargeting should be your fundamentals that you're always refining. Speaking of great books, Wooden that's the Definitely one that I would also read. It's all about fundamentals.
Chris Dreyer:
Well, those are some amazing recommendations. And I completely agree about the retargeting, and there's some huge opportunities there guys. So guys, we've been talking to Ian Garlic, CEO of authenticWEB, Ian where can people learn more about you?
Ian Garlic:
So you can go to authenticweb.marketing if you want to set up you know, if you want to talk about your videos, talk about your video strategy, feel free to reach out to me let's go through a discovery session. You can also find any of our videographers that Storycrews.com if you won't connect with me on LinkedIn, go for it. I love to connect with people on LinkedIn. Make sure to let me know you saw me here with Chris, the one and only Chris Dreyer, and I'll make sure to hook you up.
Chris Dreyer:
Awesome. Thanks Ian.
Ian Garlic:
My pleasure.
Conclusion:
Thanks for listening to The Rankings Podcast. We'll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
