Chris Dreyer:
Marketing is expensive. If you're doing this right, SEO, paid brand, all of it, you could easily be writing a check for 10, 20, $50,000 a month. That's real money. That's payroll, that's new attorneys, that's cash that could be sitting in your pocket instead. So when you're spending that kind of money every single month, you better be getting something back for it. And here's the question that might keep you up at night. How do you know they're not just cashing the check, sending you a shiny looking report and hoping you don't ask too many questions? Today, I want to talk about something that comes up in my DMs, it comes up on Reddit, it comes up literally every single week from the firm owners who come to Rankings. "Chris, I'm spending real money with a marketing agency and I have no idea if it's actually working."
So to help answer that, I've got seven red flags that show you that maybe your agency isn't making the most out of your investment. If your current agency has more than one or two of these red flags, then it's probably time to start looking elsewhere. And then we've got some bonus green flags that are good signs that your agency has your back. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, a legal marketing agency for elite law firms specializing in personal injury. We help firms sign more auto accident and personal injury cases. Let's get into it.
Red flag number one, agency leads every call with traffic, never case count. You got to have access to that CRM. That's one of my biggest frustrations with working with clients is I think in order to be successful, we got to have access. We got to understand if you're signing cases, if the types of leads that you're getting are quality because it helps us direct your strategy and change our content tactics, our link building tactics, everything centers around your case count. So on the outside we may use tools like AHRS, SEMrush, Google, Search Console, and we see a lot of traffic and that looks good to us, but we're only going to know if you're making money if you tell us the cases. So red flag if the agency doesn't have any involvement in regards to the case count.
Red flag number two, baby, for an agency if they're just talking about Rankings are up. And again, it's a vanity metric. Rankings are predictive. We look at leading indicators, they are often predictive of a lagging indication of case count and things like that. But if every conversation is just like, "Hey, Rankings are up," when you're the client and you're telling the agency that, "Hey, the cases aren't coming in, the quality cases aren't coming in," then that's an issue. It's also an issue based upon what keywords the agency's sharing. If they're sharing these super long tails, these obscure practice areas that get no search volume, that's not going to mean a lot. It's one thing if they're talking about ranking number one for car accident lawyer, which is a very good signal and it's predictive of future cases versus something, something distracted driving hit, long tail phrase, it's just not going to work.
There are certain markets that have had personal injury law firms, they've been around for decades, not years, and they have a significant lead on reviews, on backlinks, on contents. They've probably hired multiple agencies in the past and they've been doing SEO for a long time. In order to beat them, you have to be different. You have to do things different. So it's not like even if you did top 1% SEO, the optimization, these types of things, it's going to take time to catch up with them. You got to be different. So there are situations where I would say maybe you don't start with a head term like car accident lawyer, maybe go after Uber or Lyft accidents or motorcycle accidents or even truck accidents in some scenarios can be less competitive than car accidents.
Red flag number three, they lock you into a long-term contract before proving results. This is a huge red flag because especially for a search agency, it doesn't take... It actually doesn't matter what agency. If you're doing branding, branding is very long-term orientation. We've heard many individuals talk about that they don't get a return on their investment for two or three years. Search engine optimization and AI optimization, GEO, that's going to take more than just a few months. Here's the thing though, if they lock you in, they don't have to prove results. They can kind of be asleep at the wheel. So I think it's a red flag when you see a long-term contract, even though it takes a long time to get results. I think you should have the discipline to provide value on a month-to-month basis and earn your keep.
And I just had this conversation yesterday with a client, they're month one. And my team was talking this and that and I was like, "Guys, they're investing this dollar. They did not sign an increase of cases, so they're losing money with us right now." It's more important than ever that we show all the execution that we did, make sure they're aligned on the strategy and the commitment because this is going to take some time and they're not going to get a return month one, especially for search. In some scenarios that can occur with Google Ads and Facebook ads and other things like that, but it's a huge red flag if they lock you into a contract. And especially I've seen other situations where it's two years, that's just crazy pants. So yeah, it's a red flag. Any long-term contracts, they should all be month to month.
Red flag number four, they can't explain why a metric move. I think one of the common things I see in most agencies are the account managers. They may have different titles. They may be called a project manager, even though they're using it incorrectly typically, or a customer success manager. They heard some cutesy like, "Oh, it's client success," like a SAS, they're trying to copy a SAS company. Typically, an account manager or account strategist is the person that leads the campaign. If they are not competent, they're first of all not going to be confident. And the other thing is they're not going to be able to explain the metrics. A key component of driving a strategy is understanding the metrics, is understanding that your CAC's too high or your wanted conversion rate is too low or your speed to lead isn't quick enough. Every little metric, every little KPI, it's crucial that your account manager understands it. At Rankings. It's why it's one of the highest comp positions we have. It requires a lot of skill, a lot of experience, and we treat that very seriously.
Red flag number five, every report is a win. Nothing's ever framed as, "This isn't working." That's a huge red flag. There has to be trust in the relationship and there has to be an understanding when things are good or they're... And this goes both ways. This goes both ways on the law firm, not sharing if they're not getting cases and not being candid if they don't like something in terms of the content or this or that, or maybe the design. Radical candor is crucial. I think that holding things back, it builds up tension, it builds up resentment. So this goes both ways, right? So this is if the account manager isn't having radical conversations and isn't sharing, I think resentment starts to build. So I think it's critical in regards to trust to say, "Hey, this is really working. Let's keep rocking and rolling or this is not working."
I'll give you an example that account managers need to say to their clients more frequently is have real conversations about reviews. Right now, reviews, you want to talk about the SABC tier? Reviews are SS plus plus tier. They matter so much. And when we see a 3.3 review rating, it makes it incredibly challenging to get results and that has to be beat over the head. It's hard as an account manager to go to a client and say, "Hey Bubba, you got a bunch of bad reviews" because it's like conflict and tension, but you need to do that in order for them to succeed and they need to understand. Because a lot of times people that don't put importance on reviews or focus on reviews, the only people that leave reviews are the people that are upset if they don't have any method of asking.
I've seen great law firms. They just didn't have a review request process. So the only people that left reviews are bad upset clients. And you can turn that around, but it's a huge red flag if your agency's just kind of coats and only framing everything is," Hey, this is going in the right direction." You got to have those radical candor conversations.
Red flag number six, bad numbers always get an excuse, never a follow-up question. It is so critical to diagnose what's happening in order to have the correct strategy. There's a framework called the five whys. So it works like this. I would hear some things like, "Well, why are the numbers bad?"
"Well, we haven't had as many calls."
"Well, why is that?"
"Well, I'm unsure."
"Is it blah, blah, blah, blah?"
Here's what happens when you do the five whys in different scenarios. It helps you uncover real issues. For example, in July and August, for most firms, anyone listening here, for most firms, we're a down month. There's seasonality trends. Typically for law firms, January, February, March are the best months because what happens is people defer action around the holidays. People don't love to hire a lawyer. They want to go to Christmas parties and holiday parties, right? So right now, why are they as bad? Well, in the previous weeks, they had their kids. Now they're going back to school, so they have an opportunity to go hire a lawyer to do these things. There are seasonality patterns. There's seasonality around winter.
You would think that there would be, I used to think this, that there would be substantially more cases. Here's the deal. In the winter, typically people drive slower. They drive more cautious. They're not distracted driving on their phone because they're worried about running off the road, so they're going slower. So when they do get an accident, typically, not always, it's not as severe. Taking another step. Let's say Arizona, Miami, sometimes South Texas, it gets hot as hell. And people, they're not going to outdoor things. They're staying inside into the comfy AC. They don't drive as much, not as many auto accidents.
There's a lot of things that you can uncover with a follow-up question. So back to the red flag. Bad numbers always get an excuse, never a follow-up question. It's important to diagnose. And also that the agency has accountability. Maybe they didn't do something right. Maybe they did something wrong. Maybe content wasn't... Who knows? It's important to have accountability, but it's also important to understand why. Why are the numbers bad and to really dig deep?
Red flag number seven, impressions or engagement are the headline metrics. I'm going to push back on my team here. I'm going to call that a green flag, baby. Green flag. Impressions or engagement are the headlines. I'm going to give some context here. It depends. It depends. If your strategy is to build brand recognition and to be seen, brand is creating demand awareness, it's not demand capture. The thing that you measure is impressions. You see this, the KPI that you look at is CPMs. So I would actually say green flag, if they're looking at this as a headline metric, if you're doing brand, if you're doing demand capture, no, no, no, no, no, that would not be a headline metric.
Follow up question on that, when should you demand awareness versus demand capture? Demand awareness is the other word that people refer to it more frequently. It's called brand, advertising to everyone versus demand capture, which is capturing someone that has intent to hire an attorney, someone that types in car accident lawyer, right? You're advertising to just the injured people with capture versus everyone with demand and awareness. If you are a newer firm and you need the cash flow, you need to focus on capture because at its shorter orientation, doesn't take as long to work and you just capture everything, it's quick. Could be more costly, at least in the short term.
Then demand awareness, it's when you're more seasoned and you've kind of plateaued on the capture and you want to build an asset that has equity, that has value. The way that you do that is through brand. I look at this as like a pie chart. In the beginning when you need cash, it's like 99, 90 to 100% capture. Maybe you sprinkle a little bit of brand doing some grassroots belly to belly stuff. Over time, the ratio changes. It goes from 90 to 80, now you're 20% brand, then 70 to 30. What I see for the biggest firms, it's now flipped, 80% brand, 20% capture. That's what happens because with brand, you have a lot more people to advertise to. That's the key component here.
Let's talk about the green flags. Green flags, they bring up cost per case before you ask. So if the agency's bringing up cost per case, they know the metrics, they know the industry. If they don't talk about it at all, they don't know how that impacts your investment and when you get a return. So it's a green flag if they talk about cost per case.
Number two green flag scenario here for an agency. They'll tell you when something isn't working unprompted. Ooh, I like this one. That's when your agency, your reviews, you don't have enough reviews, you're not approving content, you're taking a wrong strategy from a PR or copywriting perspective or conversion perspective. There's a lot of components here and they'll have that radical candor conversation. It makes me think of that book, The Challenger Sale, where you challenge, and this is already post engagement, but everything's selling. Everything is selling. It's communication. But that's a green flag if they tell you when something isn't working. Yeah, it's a green flag when the agency too, so it's not just something that maybe you, the firm, isn't doing, it's if the agency tells you that, "Hey, something that we're doing isn't working, that you should pivot your investment or your content strategy or this or that." So it could go both ways.
The next agency green flag, reporting looks the same month to month, so you can actually compare it. I think this is an interesting one. I think if you're constantly looking at different metrics, that's an issue. And I also think that it's an unsophisticated agency that you're working with. So it's a green flag if your reporting looks... You're hitting the key metrics. That's the main thing I want to hit here. Cost per lead, cost per case, on a conversion rate, CAC to value ratio, which is CAC to case value ratio, drop rates, if those are consistent. And that would be on big picture return on investment. Then let's say channel specific. Channel specific would be like for search, it would be, let's talk about your... Rankings could be a component of this. It could be your share local voice on maps, the number of backlinks. So there's things that you want to consistently show on from a productivity leading indicator perspective. And the consistency matters. If you're always comparing different things, it's not apples to apples, it's apples to who the hell knows.
Green flag number four, they can explain why a number moved in one sentence. Clarity and brevity comes with expertise if you can explain something that's complex in a simple method. I used to use analogies back in the day when our prospects weren't really familiar with what a backlink was, I would say. Imagine you were trying to win an election, you want to get as many votes as possible. And think of this in the same way for backlinks. If you want to win the election of the first page of Google or the top result, you want to get as many links as possible. And I would try to frame it in similar ways, use analogies. Hopefully that was clear. It's been a while. Bit rusty, guys, because I don't do sales that often anymore.
But the thing here is people that are experts, attorneys can simplify and talk, explain things. If people are using too many words, they're fillers, they don't really understand it themselves, they're kind of stretching. So green flag, if an agency can explain why a number moved in one sentence, it also shows that they're prepared. They came into the meeting prepared. They've already investigated something. They talked to the team and have context on it.
Green flag number five. Green flag for an agency if they ask about your intake and close process, not just your ad spend. This is so critical. The best marketing agencies deliver leads, but leads does not create a return on investment. The sale does, the intake does. You could send a thousand leads, but if they're going to never never land, they're going out in the ether and nobody's closing these bad boys, you're not going to make money. So it's critical that you have an understanding of... And also of the capacity that a PI firm can take. How many intake specialists do they have? What's their overflow mechanics?
So if they want to crank it up on the front end, can you maintain the same wanted conversion rates on the back end? It's critical to understand this. This goes back to the deeper understanding of the relationship between marketing and sales. That's why the role that's been emerging and more important than ever is the chief revenue officer because the chief revenue officer connects marketing and sales. So it would connect marketing and intake as opposed to a chief marketing officer typically would just look at the marketing or a chief sales officer or chief intake officer would just look at the sales.
I like connecting marketing and sales because all marketing is, guys, is leverage sales. Instead of one-to-one, it's one to many and it's pre-selling things, that's what brand does. And so green flag, I kind of went long-winded there. If your agency's asking about intake and close process, it means they understand the game. It means they understand and value your investment and they want to make sure you get a return.
So that's the list. If you're sitting here and you counted three, four, five of these red flags, that's not me trying to scare you into firing your agency tomorrow. It's me telling you go have the conversation, ask for the cost per case number, ask them why a metric moved, see what they actually say back. And if you counted mostly green flags, that's great. Keep doing what you're doing, but stay sharp because some agencies can get complacent, especially after they lock you into a long-term contract.
I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. See you next time.
