Prologue:
Welcome to The Rankings Podcast where we feature top founders, entrepreneurs and elite personal injury attorneys and share their inspiring stories. Now let's get started with the show.
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. Speaking of top entrepreneurs, I have Bill Hauser on the show today. Bill is the author of PPC for Lawyers (Not Dummies), and the CEO and President of SMB Team, a Philadelphia-based law firm marketing agency. Bill's company specializes in unique marketing solutions for small law firms. As they put it, they help law firms small law firms think big. Under his leadership, the SMB Team has seen 300% growth year over a year for two consecutive years, and currently manages over eight figures of annual ad spend. Bill. Welcome to the show.
Bill Hauser:
Gosh, I wish I could introduce myself like that sometimes. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I'm excited! You've been hosting these giant masterminds, you've been surrounded by tons of individuals and you're just a powerhouse in the legal vertical and I was excited to have you on the show. So let's kick things off. So you know, how did you get started? Where did the idea come from to create SMB Team.
Bill Hauser:
Yeah. So it didn't start from a place of like abundance. Unfortunately, it started from bankruptcy. Started in 2008 is when I started getting to the bug for internet marketing because my dad, and and our family business went completely under, you know, in the 2008 recession. And as a result of that, I left like pondering and always wondering like why did our family business go under Like what happened? And, you know, as Tony Robbins says pain triggers pondering, right? So I pondered and I and I looked through all the mistakes we made and everything we owned, got repossessed. And I ended up calling my dad two years after not seeing him. And, and he was with another woman at the time, who I don't know, and some Random House in like upstate New York and he called me randomly. And I found out two weeks later, he so I basically hung up on him because he was really pissed about everything that happened with our family. I found out a couple days later, he had a gun to his head when when he called me and I start with this deep of a point because that's how important marketing is to me. So I got texted a video of a gun to his head as he was calling me after not talking to him for two years. And when I received that video, that's when my whole life changed. And I said, you know, all these shoulds I have about learning marketing, need to turn into musts I must learn marketing because that's the reason our family failed. The Yellow Pages died. categorical as I call it categorical marketing died, meaning you can't just hang up a shingle and say, Hey, I'm a lawyer, open up a phone book, and people just find you in a category anymore. No, consumer psychology is completely changed. Now people have to articulate specifically what they need online by typing things in. And this is what's made online advertisements. So competitive now is because some people understand unique creative messaging, but others didn't. And in my family's case, we didn't understand it. So fast forward another two years. I end up working for a very large $2 billion company I become a Google Ads consultant for their company. And and I decided I could do it better myself. You know, the whole e myth, thinking that a technician could become a business owner. I started doing it. My first client was actually a settlement funding company. So it wasn't a lawyer. It was a pre settlement funding company. So I did all this marketing for my dad. Actually, a couple years later, we kind of buried the hatchet. I made all these mistakes, I built him like a keyword stuffed website, I sent all of the traffic to the homepage of his website. And it didn't work that well, we wasted a lot of money, but he landed one big job. So we made out okay. But when I had this settlement funding company, I thought to myself, let's just do the opposite of what I do with my dad and see if it works better. And we went from like $400 per lead down to $20 per lead in my first launch, using like just these rinky dinky little landing pages and very targeted keyword matching, what they call you know, exact match and phrase match keyword match types. Whereas for my dad, I was doing what's called broad match and, you know, very targeted landing pages and it worked and then that led to a worker's comp, law firm referral, who's still with us Since day, believe it or not, and, and yeah, the rest is history. We just decided to go all in on the legal vertical because we did something that worked from the get go whether it was luck or not something worked. So we doubled down on it. Yeah,
Chris Dreyer:
So there's so much here. So, I mean it was it was not only a passion but it was like a must do like I have to figure this out. I've saw the what can happen on the bad side. And just personally we've been surrounded around that. And then, you know, one of the things that I love hearing about kind of how you got started with your agency was you got started by being highly skilled and talented, and then getting referrals first. Like that's the that's the sign of a high quality agency. You got referred to a worker's comp attorney, you know, most of the time. individuals don't just freely refer out you have to there has to be a little bit of probing there and and you're required And that's that's really incredible on sewn
Bill Hauser:
Well i think it may have also spoke to because not every month was perfect. I'm not saying everything I do is perfect, but I've worked harder than I ever worked in my life when I started the business and I was literally answering intake calls I was that committed for my clients, but a lot a lot tied into their curse. Don't think it was just I had a magic bullet from the get go.
Chris Dreyer:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, no, I gotcha. We're all like that. Um, yeah, so So tell us what, what is SMB Team do for people that don't know?
Bill Hauser:
Yes. So we created a method that's called the WAM Method, the Word Alignment Marketing Method. And this is actually recent. We didn't realize we were doing it until we reverse engineered a lot of our most successful internet marketing campaigns for lawyers. And what the WAM method means word alignment marketing is we're experts at determining how potential legal claims Search for lawyers, right through research and surveying. And then we combine that with unique selling proposition messaging, that actually, which is also words, right. So we identify the words that clients use to search for lawyers and the words that lawyers use to attract clients. And we get into what's called Word alignment, where the words that they're typing in align with the words we're using in our messaging, to attract those clients. So the WAM method can be applied actually, not just to search engine marketing. It can be applied to any facet of your marketing, like any form of creative messaging, it can be applied to actually social ads. It's very fascinating. I know you'll like this. We found that a lot of the lowest performing keywords on Google Ads actually work great on social media ads, or as research blog topics. Because what we found is when we get low conversion rates on certain Google Ads keywords, that's a sign that's Google saying, alert, alert. This is a research term, people don't want to immediately convert into a consultation on this term alert, alert. So instead of thinking, Oh, my Google Ads campaign isn't working, I just wasted all this money. What we also teach attorneys to do is to take that valuable data and repurpose it to build a better robust, comprehensive marketing strategy for their firm. And that's, that's through data analysis. So it's the WAM method, data analysis, and very simple landing pages. But then Aside from that, we actually just launched a very popular course that's called The Grand Lawyer Marketing Plan Course, which, as of now, I have 164 attorneys in it. And actually, this will probably be dated by the time this releases, but we're, in one week launching a full marketing coach program. So yeah, man, we're just we're just going with what our clients keep telling us they want that's we tell lawyers to do. Stop trying to Market to the clients that aren't searching for you because you can't force people to search for you.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, that. So one of the things you mentioned there, so you took basically concentrate on that bottom of the funnel that the consideration, and all the top and middle, you're moving it to over to is that what I was hearing it, you move it over to social media and blog topics. And so it's kind of different, different approach like a channel specific approach. But it's not that maybe the topics aren't right. It's just they're they're right for one channel, not the other. So that's that's really smart
Bill Hauser:
for Google ads. Just as a quick point on that. We look at Google Ads. Well, obviously, we're going to have implicit bias because we primarily what we do is Google Ads for lawyers on the service side of our business, and but we look at it as the hub of all immediate data. I always say with Google ads, one hour of testing saves 10. So you can test out pretty quickly whether you like a certain cohort of personal injury demand or any practicing demand pretty quickly on Google ads. It's a see if you even like that niche before you go waste 10 years barking up the wrong tree.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, it's incredible. You know, especially if you're wanting to try a different practice area, you know, especially with with kind of what's going on today, you know, where there's not as many auto accidents and everyone's you know, not on the road as much, maybe, maybe you could target you know, I know some individuals were doing business business interruptions, there were some other other areas that spun off and then you could get immediate traffic with pay per click where SEO would take some time. And those other tactics does take time to develop.
Bill Hauser:
Yeah, and we're also big fans of expediting the SEO process through social through simple social ads. So like, a big thing we're a proponent on is again, again, implicit bias, I get it. But we look at Google Ads traffic as the bottom mist of bottom of bottom funnel traffic right there. The people People who are most likely to usually percentage wise, immediately need that consultation. But of course, there's a there's an expense tied to that. It's not it's not all else being equal. But we also look at it as a great source of look alike campaign data like where you can retarget those leads. And if you just released, I know you guys are fans of doing very, very helpful pieces of organic content. So one thing we found a lot of success with is taking your Google Ads hot audience creating a social look alike audience for it, or the exact same retargeting audience and actually just sending a little bit of traffic to it, to expedite the process of people getting to your blog. I'm sure you guys already know of this, but it's something that that we're adamant about because we like people seeing ROI as quickly as possible within reason.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, and that traffic can be an SEO signal, the dwell times there, navigate Got the site gets the page recrawl more frequently, then you can test and optimize that traffic and you know what the experience is? So a lot of these tactics, let's kind of let's kind of break this down. Yep. Let's let's break down what it takes to make a successful Pay Per Click campaign specifically for personal injury attorneys. Yes. Let's start with number one. Yep. They want to know how much they should spend. How do you establish that beginning budget?
Bill Hauser:
Yeah. So the first thing to ask yourself is should you even be spending on Google Ads before we go into budget? So I think, you know, there's a valid point to be made that if you're not doing, you know, somewhere around 30 or $40,000 per month, in your law firm, it's probably not going to be like drop everything and just spend all of your money on Google ads. Now, there's people who would disagree with that. I certainly did that probably a little earlier than I should have in my company. It actually resulted in 80% 10 of our clients last year marketing to lawyers on Google ads, believe it or not, and we probably started a little earlier than we should have. But I think the first thing to ask is, are you in it for the right reasons? So, so, you know, the first step is, you know, are you looking to dabble? Are you looking for a predictable, you know, every month, the same exact cost per lead can't be a penny over? You know, that type of mentality, then Google Ads is not going to be the right fit for you. The benefits of Google Ads is that number one, it's immediate. But number two, is, it's such a it's such a good platform for you to get out of the rat race of the third party lead directories right so no matter what every attorneys main goal should be to get on the first page of Google that should be like goals you have written on your forehead, behind your ear, on your wrist everywhere, like just write down get on the first page of Google, because life becomes way easier. So then the next question is, what are the ways I can get on the first page of Google? Okay, well, I can show a Google Ad tomorrow, right? can't really get on Google Maps. They, you know, they, they sometimes show the ads, you know, on Google Maps, but it's like one ad. So what's really the chance you're going to show up for a competitive PI firm at the exact time of day you need so you can show up on Google Maps, there's too many unpredictable there's, there's a veil pulled over that you can't like bid adjust for Google Maps ads yet, to my knowledge. You can't like tell Google I really want to prioritize showing up in Google Maps rather than above Google Maps. But then the only other choice if you're not going to do ads to get on the first page fast is these third party websites, right? So Avvo, Find Lawyers Directory, lawyer.com all these third party websites. So I look at Google ads as a tremendous benefit. When compared to third party directories because there's not as much blood in the water, when someone clicks on a directory listing, or on a directory website, there's a whole slew of other lawyers pretty much they all look the same. And it's just like a picture and a phone number and like, what their practice area is it so you're in the red ocean, right? So, you know, Google ads, the cool thing about is when once they click their ad, it's just your ad, it's you versus you. And once they're on your landing page, it's like, does your copy compelling enough to them for them to reach out and if they get a good experience, the conversion rate doubles or sometimes five X's based on practice area, by just having one landing page that where people don't have as many options. I've also noticed you get higher quality leads, you get leads that aren't looking to quote unquote shop you in PI like this is these are the cases that you just let slip by, because they weren't an easy step. Sign up right on contingency fee work. It's so easy to make rationalizations that Oh, that that client was irrational that client would have never signed up that, well, what if that client was a seven figure case like, you know, you can't look at it in such a high ticket niche like PI, where you're just like, Oh, we don't really want those leads. And I think Google Ads is a great way to do that. Especially when combined with SEO. So my goal for most lawyers is I want I want most sellers to just blanket the first page I want. I want them to see your ad, I want them to see your map, and I want them to see your organic listing. And you probably if you have the budget also want to be on a directory so that you can't miss anything, right? And you get the link juice from it. And it's just, you know, it's not an all or nothing battle. So I'd say, you know, the first tip is 40 k a month plus. Okay, now let's talk about Google ads. Now the budget question. We just recently raised our minimums to 5000 a month on on personal injury ad spend. But the interesting thing, there's so much tied up in the budget question, what is your intake process? Are you hemorrhaging leads? Or do you have automated email drip follow ups? Are you nurturing the leads that that don't sign up with you to get referrals from them? Because, you know, for some law firms one lead is worth $5,000 because of nurturing right? And for another, it's worth $200 because it's just like you're you're, you're treating them like a warm referral that's going to follow up with you. So there's so much tied into it, you know, generally speaking, I'd say if you're on the lowest of low budget, you know, 2000 can work per month in a lower competition. geographic area, like if you're in upstate Middle of Nowhere New York State, or like Kansas, in the middle of nowhere Kansas, not in a major city. We have campaigns that run very good at 2000 a month in AI, you know, considering geographic location, but typically the broad strokes, you know, a ballpark minimum is like the 5000 range where you can predictably get cases every month and start drawing some math behind the cases that you're pulling in.
Chris Dreyer:
So that was a tremendous answer to a large softball that I threw at you that we could go a number of ways. Yeah, could be anywhere from you know, if they're a soft tissue firm or they're taking any type of injury, then they can pay less versus maybe a someone that only wants to litigate those those major injuries. And the other thing that I mentioned and I completely agree with what you what you said about just dominating the first page another reason to do ads like you're saying over the directories as well the the directories you get locked into this, this fixed monthly fee. And if you're in a situation where the directory just stops performing like that, Avvo is right now it's just tanking, then you may be paying an inflated fee, whereas pay per click, it's auction based. It's driven by competition. So there's all kinds of reasons, not only from a from a cost standpoint there. Yep. And so let's talk about a couple things is just some general optimizations here. So I'm going to give you an example. I'm very, I would say, average pay per click guy, we don't do pay per click at our agency. But when I did in the past, I would run these call only campaigns, but then I would just get bombarded with you know, I'm trying to get more car accidents, I would get bombarded by the lemon law. You know, hey, I need my car fixed. I need my car fix. What type of what are the basics when it comes to negative keyword optimizations?
Bill Hauser:
Yeah, so So there's two there's two points you made and that number ones call only ads. Number two is negative keywords but What makes negative keywords a lot easier? There's something before that, which is your match type, right? So, and the keyword selection, right? So let's be very clear, you don't need the craziest of crazy negative keyword lists. If you have brilliant keyword selection done from the get go, right? The only reason you had to exclude perhaps, and and what Chris is talking about negatives, for those who don't understand is a negative keyword is a word that you can put in either at an account level it campaign level, or an ad group level, right? And you can tell Google, hey, if someone types in the word, auto lawyer, car lawyer, but they also type somewhere the word lemon right in there, don't trigger my ad, okay, so you can exclude a word like lemon. You can also exclude every variation of every state, full spelling every abbreviation of every state, right the two letters except for in and Maine. Right, so Indiana and Maine and he, right you don't want to exclude the word in lawyer in x town or me for near me. So there's certain states you don't want to exclude. And then major cities, right so you just pull a list of Top 100 major cities By the way, for everyone listening right now what I'm telling you is like a multi hundred thousand dollar lesson just right here, like, go type in list of state names. Okay. And then on Google, copy that whole list, delete the state that you're in that you're targeting both the full spelling of the state the abbreviation and state then pull a list of Top 100 major cities, right? Delete every major city that's within your geographic area. Right? And right there, you just excluded everyone who's on a mobile device. Right? This is how Google rips people off in a lot of ways. Someone's on a mobile device. Let's say someone travels to Washington State And they're they live in Los Angeles, right? They go to Washington State, and they type in personal injury lawyer, personal injury lawyer, Los Angeles for example. And if you were showing ads in Washington let's say you have Washington state law firm, you're showing your ads in a 30 mile radius where that person standing with their phone, okay? If you're not excluding the phrase, Los Angeles, l period, a period la without periods like variations like that. Your ad will trigger and boom, there goes 120 to however many hundred dollars your click causes, and these things add up. So PI is a game of inches, right? So it's like, I always say, you know, everyone wants to get super, super creative with PI campaigns and I've never seen one long lasting successful PI campaign. That is super, super massively complex, because it's more a game of what you exclude than what it is you target. Right. So, back to your original point, Chris. You know, the first question I'd ask is, did you have the right keyword from the get go? Right? So, if you were bidding on, this is what a lot of lawyers do, because it's cheaper in the car accident niche. You'll bid on a keyword, you'll select a keyword like auto lawyer, car lawyer. And if you put plus signs before each word, that's what's called a broad modified match type. So essentially, what that means is you're telling Google show my ad any anytime someone types in the word auto and the word lawyer, regardless of order, regardless of how many words are in between it, that's what's called broad modified match type, right? So if you just know if you do that in your campaign, You will pull in arguably 50 to 65% like lemon law, property damage type leads and and you know these are little costly lessons you can learn and test on your own but I'm just telling you that's what happens. So you would have been better off by adding the word accident injury, crash wreck, etc. all the words you know about doing SEO because then you wouldn't have to exclude the word lemon or you still could it's not going to mess up anything but the chances are 99.9% of people are not going to type in car wreck lawyer lemon law it's just it's it's too specific for the word lemon to be pulled in enough times for you to waste a lot of money on it. Then just car and lawyer it's just it's just did you choose the right keywords from the get go. So that's why I think keyword research is like vital. You know, to Know what is popular in your market? What percent of your budget Do you want to put towards trucking motorcycle? Do you want a segment of med Mal? Do you want some pedestrian keywords? Like the most important thing you could ever do is what I call a budget allocation framework where you actually draw out not not what's in your head, oh, severe birth injury cases. Right? You know, that's fine to want those cases. But I always say I think and I feel is what ruins marketing campaigns. You say, I think my clients are going to type this in. I feel like they typed this in. But then you go to the Google Keyword Planner, you type it in and you realize it's only search 10 times a month in the entire state. So it's like, how much can you really do with that keyword. And that's where SEO comes in creating research content that can attract more top of funnel awareness that then can filter into those higher value cases.
Chris Dreyer:
There are tons of incredible nuggets, they're talking about different the different match types, the different types of bidding strategies. The other thing you know, when I got started with pay per click, this is just kind of funny here, you know, I looked up negative keywords, well, I kept seeing, you need to put all the phrases like cheap and, and low cost and free will in the legal vertical specifically, you don't want to exclude free because then your free consultations is out the window. And that's a common, you know, common query. So just be really careful guys, if you research this online, make sure you look go to you know, Bill's site, go to SMB Team and you look at the negative keywords for lawyers and not just general negative keyword list with because those tactics are different for e commerce and things of that nature. Yep. Let's talk next about here's another another common one is landing pages. So should the attorney take their their high intent, Car Accident Lawyers Type phrases they're bidding on and drive that directly to their websites, you know, page that was created for SEO purposes? Or should they be considering maybe a sub domain landing page or a no index landing page for PPC purposes, kind of what's your thought here?
Bill Hauser:
So and and we can go longer if you want Chris metro on your schedule, but because I could talk about this all day, yeah. Okay, so this is a huge, I call it sunk cost theory. I don't call it it's an actual thing. In investing, right, what some cost theory where you spend money on something and then you try every way you possibly can to make the thing you spent money on work for as many things as you possibly can, because you already spent money on it. And this happens with lawyer websites. Man all the time, all the time. So let's say you have a internal page on your website. Okay, and it this especially happens with town names, right. So let's say you're trying to rank for some, you know, sub town within your area. Let's say your office is located in a town like Lynwood. I don't even know just make it Colorado. And it's right outside of Denver, Colorado, right. Let's say your personal injury lawyer page. Your internal page is like Lynwood personal injury lawyer. And that's like, that's those are the three words at the top of the page. And that's because we're trying to rank for Lynwood cases because that's where our law firm is. And, and the funny thing is, is when you do like when people do psychological studies of what towns people identify, living with, in right, you'll see what's it's called a designated marketing area, a DMA, right? Most people broad strokes like you know, they're gonna Look at I'm looking for a Denver law firm like, you know, just Denver and those little micro moments where someone's outside of the town, Lynwood, you're showing up like a 50 mile radius, your ad you're showing for right? And then you send someone who's 42 miles away from Lynwood, Colorado, right to a page that the number one selling point is Lynwood personal injury lawyer. What do you think they're going to do? Put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't know better, right? They're going to bounce they're going to go out. I want to go all the way to Lynwood. You kidding me? That quick hundred 20 bucks, 140 bucks, hundred 50 bucks gone. Right. And the challenge with Google Ads is the fact that it registers based on cell phone towers, right. So a lot of people forget this. You can't geo target on Google Ads the way you can on Facebook ads, it's not going to happen. And if you read the fine print of Google's patents, right, so every time Google releases a patent, there's people who follow Google's patents and including my director of PPC, every time an algorithm change happens of some sort, right? It will try and patent some little element of their AI. And what happens is when a patent is released, and there's new things in the in the island if you call bylaws not a lawyer, but in the fine print of all the mumbo jumbo that's on the back end of Google, right? It says very clearly, any geographic radius or target that you set could have a five to 10 mile wiggle room. That's a pretty big wiggle room. And you know, so thinking that you're just going to show ads and Linwood, and send Lynwood ads to ellinwood landing page is is crazy because you'll see it right. It's based on browser history, all these crazy things. You'll be outside of Lynwood, I did this for a client of mine who wanted to show ads in a town outside of Philadelphia called Allentown, PA. And I was trying to do this specific geo targeting This is why I've learned that busy work is not necessarily always tied to results. I thought I was doing all these little hacks to get them better ROI. And then I'm in Philadelphia one day I type in workers comp lawyer in my phone. And I see his Allentown ads show up. I'm like, I got to rethink my entire strategy here. I am not in Allentown. I had the ad settings set to just showing ads in Allentown, like in the county of Allentown. I'm like, probably 38 miles south 3840 miles south of Allentown, and I see an Allentown ad, right. And it was at that point that's not five or 10 miles, that's 3840 miles, right. And I see an Allentown ad. So when I saw that I was like, wow, we got to change our entire strategy here. So what we follow is a practice where we're very adamant of separating pages that are designed to rank for SEO purposes. Right. Also, there's a lot of bounce rate problems that happen with Google ads, you're going to get a higher bounce rate on Google Ads traffic, which then can actually hurt your SEO because your website is going to seem like people don't like that page unless it's no index, nofollow or whatever. That wouldn't be an SEO page. So what we do is we actually either create separate URLs or a subdomain, like you said, primarily because it allows you to sell someone on the consultation. Okay, SEO content is value value value, put some strategic keywords in there value value, value, value value, right? It's meant to be more research oriented, right. That's why people are scrolling, you know, lower, obviously, excluding Google Maps. But regardless, a landing page for Google Ads is a sales pitch and a lot of lawyers hate the word sales, right? No, no, make no mistake. someone clicks a Google ad. Okay, it is not a time to say Lynwood personal injury lawyer, take up the entire space of the entire page. And that's your unique selling proposition. You're not going to get leads. So instead, you need a separate page with a headline, sub headline, benefit driven call to action above the form above the fold form fill, write a quick video or you know 92nd video or a group photo of some sorts three quick hitting points, another call to action boom. Like that's it's a completely different thing from what ranks on SEO versus what gets someone to take immediate action. Stop what they're doing and go Wait a second I got a call this lawyer right now despite the 50 billboards I've seen this despite everything else I've heard, I got to stop now and contact this lawyer because I always say the Big mistake lawyers make as they try to sell people on marriage, like when they visit them for the first time, like, all you need to do is address the fears they have of reaching out to you. Hey, were you involved in a car accident? This would be a Google Ads landing page headline. Are you involved in a car accident? In the XYZ area? Not specific town, right XYZ area. Question mark. Are you worried if you call it Are you worried if you call a lawyer, you're going to talk to someone who isn't a lawyer question mark. We're different. Call now to speak to a lawyer that it's just somebody came over the top of my mind. You're only selling them on the first step. Right first step not. We've won $40 million in this and that we've done all this and we've done that and we've done all these things. And oh, yeah, call now. Oh, we're done all that. So it's like you got to actually sell these people to take an immediate step right? than try and commingle your SEO strategy with a paid search sales strategy as I'd gone.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, so I'm so glad you answered. That's exactly where I was pushing you as is, you know, here's the thing. If the individual converts quickly or they bounce, I mean all these things, so they don't spend a lot of time on the page, if you send it to a small dedicated conversion page that that's going to hurt your SEO, exactly what you said. Wait, do you actually you say you100% agree.
Bill Hauser:
Yeah, I feel so much validated now, because I've never had an actual SEO expert go like, Yeah, that's true.
Chris Dreyer:
Well, I'll tell you another thing, too. Just little nuances, guys, for our audience. And I'm a big fan of the subdomain pages too. And the reason is, because if you have an SEO team that has to know that a page is no indexed, or you may unintentionally build internal links to that page and drive a lot of authority to that page and all that could dilute your overall SEO equity. And like Bill said, I mean, it's it's totally different. You're using copywriting pins principles to convert because that's the intent that's the action you're trying to drive versus SEO or it's you know, it's research you just want to provide information you may even link to other you know, expert topics and and even away from your site just to validate your opinion and that's not what you would do for pay per click. So yeah, I completely agree. Those are great tips. I didn't know the thing about the the five to 10 mile wiggle room. So right there on its own, and immediately I'm here in St. Louis, or near St. Louis. And I think, well, Clayton, but if you're in Clayton, you probably refer to yourself as St. Louis, you probably don't refer to yourself as being in Clayton. So
Bill Hauser:
as you can make an ad specific to Clayton, right. If someone types in the word Clayton, personal injury lawyer that's different. You can show them an ad that says Clayton personal injury lawyer, right. And But still, even in that case, because Clayton personal injury lawyers not going to be a high traffic term, right. Maybe it serves 10 times a month or year. So Google Ads standpoints, like do you really want to have a landing page for Clinton? Or do you just want to? Is that important, right? Or can we just say, Hey, we're in a car accident, Saint loser? Are you feeling this fear right now to reach out? Are you frustrated that you're not getting answers? You want to know the value your case? I mean, do you just want to feel like your life's back in order, just put in your information, no obligation? What's going to happen? Three things, you're going to get the information you want, you're not going to be pressured into making a decision, and you're going to talk to an actual lawyer. Okay, put your information in right here. We're here to help you, like completely world of difference than then trying to like do this micro town landing page strategy. So I'll shut up on that.
Chris Dreyer:
Now, I completely agree. I think there's there's tons of nuggets from the negative keyword list on its own, I'm going to really be featuring that because that's just that's just gold and, and thinking about ion and me and then nice landing page optimization. So there's two Tons of value here, Bill. Let's get some quick hitters on. So what's a what are some of the metrics is general that attorney should be paying attention to, besides case acquisition, besides conversions, those some of those granular metrics, what should they be looking at?
Bill Hauser:
Yeah, so it's a tough question. I say a controversial statement that numbers do lie in, in Google ads. And in a lot of paid advertising, because, you know, I actually say, it's kind of contrarian to the more married you are to any one number in your marketing, the more short term decisions and wrong decisions you're going to make, right? So what I've learned, this is psychology 101 for lawyers, is that when lawyers feel like they're getting duped or like they don't know what they're spending money on, or they get the feeling of skepticism, the easiest thing to do instead of having a tough conversation with Whoever you feel that way with, which is always hard for human beings to do because we like to be accepted. Instead, it's way easier to detach and go, what's what number Can I look at? In this campaign that isn't improving the way I expected? I'm not an expert. But what one number can I complain about without saying, you know, a tough conversation and I've noticed in Google Ads that could be conversion rate that could be cost per conversion. That could be click through rate, it could be impression share, it could be all these different factors, right? And it's so funny because I don't really care about the numbers. I don't even care about quality score. I think they're all gimmicks and games it you know, if I have super low quality score campaigns that are going after creative keywords like workers comp, pa workers comp laws, Right and showing a worker's comp lawyer add to a keyword like that. Well, Google says as not really a good quality score, you're bidding on workers comp laws, and then you're showing a worker's comp lawyer ad, they're not really relevant. Okay? But, um, but I'm paying, like $5 a click for it, right? So I'm okay with a lower quality score, it doesn't really matter to me. And I'm also okay that I have a low click through rate, right, I have tons of impressions, tons of people seeing the ad that aren't clicking on it, maybe it's a point four or 5% convert or click through rate. Again, I don't care. Right. And, you know, let's say the cost per conversion is 1000 bucks, right? And whatever. Again, I don't care if if the if the leads that we get from that through the form submission on the landing page or through the phone calls, all convert into cases then doesn't matter. All of it doesn't matter. So it's like, and then and then the other so I don't mean to be like, confusing here. I'm a bit creative.
Chris Dreyer:
I like to contrarian view.
Bill Hauser:
But then the other the the other the other thing I think there was like, Well, okay, what about the holistic success? This is the reason why I'm so just a little squeamish towards artificial intelligence. It's like, ah, like, I just don't think that I think AI so for example, in Google ads, if you depend on automated bidding strategies like maximize clicks, right, you set it and forget it bidding strategies, maximize clicks, target cost per acquisition, all that Bs, like, like, artificial intelligence bidding stuff. Well, the truth is, a lot of people don't know this. is Google, just like an advertising company does. Google's just trying to make your numbers look good on paper, right? They want they want your numbers to look good on that dashboard. Right? That's their key thing. They don't know if you're converting cases on it. They don't know the quality of the phone calls, they don't know, everything that happens after the case they're optimizing for vanity, right? So that people will keep spending money and see improvements, see good numbers that beat manual bidding and beat, you know, these other more difficult ways. Okay, that that don't maybe don't look as good on paper, right? So I always say like, it's about the holistic marketing strategy to, you know, if you if you were to just focus on conversion rate and say, Oh, my conversion rates have decreased and I no longer tolerate this. My cost per lead has went $1 above what I will tolerate. Therefore, I will be turning off my Google Ads campaigns. effective immediately, right with this black and white mentality. I'm just like, dude, that's not how billionaires think it's it's not like billionaires make asset allocation decisions, not abandonment decisions, like they're just pulling the lever. Oh, test this out. Oh, interesting. You know, right now my cost per lead. Get on Google ads for our own campaign is like two grand, right? I don't frickin care. I don't care at all. I know I have a 45% conversion rate direct from the Google Ads leads. But I know people are doing research. I know once they opt in, they're get they're gonna go on our webinar. I know they're gonna get emails from us. I'm not like gonna freak out over that. So like, you know, that's, that's just having a growth mentality. So as soon as I stopped focusing on any one number, that's when my brand exploded, is when I when I stopped worrying about the $1 in Am I gonna get two or three or stop it? And I just, I just went into abundance where I was just like, man, how can I just how can I just be everywhere? How can I just help as many people as I want, how can I have faith that something's going to come back and that everything else I did? Right is gonna come to this Pinnacle point where I get a client Right. And and it's, it's not perfect, but I you know, I think I think the important thing is always, as Jeff Bezos says, that is number four leadership principle is for Amazon is great leaders are right, comma a lot. And what that means is great people on his leadership team are always questioning their pre existing belief systems. They're always going. Yeah, I see that. No, no, no, I know, I feel that way. Right. That's why they're big in the meditation is like, I know, I feel that way about this decision. Let me step back. Could I be wrong? What data Am I operating on? Where was I burned in the past that's causing me to feel this way? Okay, I'll come back to this. I'll sleep on it. Right. That's that's the right way I think to make decisions long term when it comes to lawyer marketing. So sorry to get so psychological.
Chris Dreyer:
I love that answer. And I had a bunch of takeaways there and you know, the long term value on a own from that client you may have other things to sell you're building your email list your that can activate as a trigger to power any marketing initiative. And I liked it the abundance mindset not just looking at the granular it's the big picture. Am I am I growing? Am I more visible? am I helping more individuals? So I love all of that,
Bill Hauser:
especially with SEO?
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Bill Hauser:
Can't when not being abundant on SEO?
Chris Dreyer:
I mean, absolutely. Yeah. And so so let's shift over to personal development. So you drop Jeff Bezos, you've got you know, E Myth you've we've kind of been talking about a lot of these great mentors books. What are some of your favorite business books?
Bill Hauser:
Huh? Yeah. So I'm Scaling Up one that comes to mind. I'm sure you know, Scaling Up,
Chris Dreyer:
yeah, Verne.#### Bill Hauser:
Okay. Yeah. So Verne Harnish Yeah, really, really good. So I, you know, I have my whiteboards actually behind the computer right now. And I always have written up there. People strategy execution cash, which are the four sections of the book Scaling Up. So always try to come back to that and think if I'm experiencing a challenge in the business, instead of feeling like I'm a failure or something I did is wrong or I'm a bad leader or whatever. I try to go, Okay, well, let's break this down. Let's, let's, let's quantify what I'm feeling. So try and go Okay, this is the people problem, my attracting and keeping right people right then ago, okay, is this a strategy problem? Am I am I differentiated enough in this segment of the business? Right? Am I clearly the choice for x, right? In whatever niche of the business it is? Okay, execution. Maybe I have a good strategy. Maybe I have the right people in the right seats. But is there an execution problem? Am I not pulsing properly with my team with recurring weekly meetings? Is there some accountability hiccup right? So that's the execution side. And then last but not least, is the cash side. Everything sounds great, but you can't do anything without cash and a lot of people mistake a profit and loss statement for you know, building and growing cash reserves, right. So it's a difference between operating with profit and actually building cash reserves that equate your your monthly expenses in a certain multiple. So I always come back to Scaling Up that that really helps me a lot I think, Think and Grow Rich. So I am very adamant about my major, definite purpose I write my goals down in full every morning, all of my health goals, all of my relationship goals, all of my spiritual goals, and then all of my business goals along with my quarterly rocks, so I write that out every morning, along with five things I'm grateful for. And then I paced around my kitchen. Sometimes in my To underwear like a maniac reciting my major definite purpose statement, I know I have the ability to achieve the object of my definite purpose in life. Therefore I demand myself persistent continuous action towards its attainment, I here now promise to take such action, there's a lot more to it. So I recite that out loud, and sometimes it wakes up my fiance, which is fun, definitely wakes up the dog. And then so Think and Grow Rich is really, really big for me. And then, you know, it's, it's always a new book, I think the way the way I've learned that I learn is by I try to immerse myself in the teachings of a person. That's how I personally learned at this phase in my life. So Verne Harnish, for example, rather than He's the author of Scaling Up, he's also the founder of EO entrepreneur organization. So when I found out about Verne Harnish, rather than just reading the book and being done with the book instead, before I Read a book I try and learn about the author. Right? So I'll watch a lot of videos, I'll take notes on the author. I'll think what's his viewpoint before I read this book, or read the book, maybe in bits and pieces, then I'll go try and learn a little bit more about him. That so I go on like binges, right? So two weeks ago, I went through a Jeff Bezos binge or I went through a little bit of the everything store I only watched his videos for that week. And I'm just looking for one habit like every week or two one little thing that I can like do a little bit more of and but it's all it's always something new Chris it's never like it's it's not like other than Think and Grow Rich. It's it's always new book. I know that The Power of Now I will say did did dramatically change my life because I suffered from anxiety for Gosh, five years, I was clinically diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. And I suffered so bad and once I learned meditation, and it's fine works better and meditation is taking massive action I learned but just taking action on all the things that you resist immediately before they become bubbled up in your subconscious has, uh, has worked well but a lot of a lot of that came from the The Power of Now from Eckhart Tolle.
Chris Dreyer:
Definitely I'll have to read that one for sure. Yeah. And yet so, you know, I've heard your battle cries. I've seen him on your Facebook story and definitely have been more than a few times clicked in there your written down goals kind of glance at what you're doing. And, and it's been really exciting. And that's why I wanted to have you on the podcast. So, you know, one, one final question here. Bill. Is there anything that you want to talk about that we haven't discussed?
Bill Hauser:
Man? What a good question. Yeah, I think, you know, I know we're a little over our time, but I just think I do Trying to do every, every, every talk I ever do as if it's my last and, you know, I wouldn't feel fulfilled if I didn't say, you know, that all of the all of the How is is great. I mean, you know, if you're an attorney listening to this right now and you're, you're filling yourself with all these little nuggets and data and then and then you're just gonna stop right and nod your head and go Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. Oh, I learned things. I learned things. And then that's it. Right. You know, I wouldn't feel like I I did. I did my job here. So I think the thing I always ask is like, as a result of today's podcast, what are you going to commit to doing and write that down right now. And before you move on, right from writing it down, after you've written it down, communicate that to someone else and say, I'm going to be doing this okay. By this day, and hold me accountable to finish that write the only other thing I'd say other than that if you just do that one thing, it'll make me really happy. So thank you. You can email me if you actually do. Bill@smbteam.com The only other thing I'd say is like a lot of this game. I'm 28 years old. I have, you know, gosh, 15 full time employees. Our business doubled since Coronavirus hit. This is my second legitimate year in business. Two and a half, I guess. Yeah, I think two and a half, maybe maybe three and a half. I forget two and a half. And, you know, I'm not. I'm not smarter than anyone. I'm not, you know, I'm not really. I am working really hard. That's definitely true. But I just believe that the goals that I write down aren't they're not fairy dust. And, like it's just a different it's one thing To set goals, but it's like to actually have conceptual strategic communicated plans behind them that have have different pathways and it's just so it's so different than writing down your goals. And I struggled so long not believing my goals. And, and, you know, the other thing I'd say is like, if you're going to make a commitment, you know, what, what is the unshakable belief behind that commitment that, that you no one else needs to give you a head nod to approve of, but it's like, I know I can do this and and and what is that? Because Google ads can help you with certain things in your business. But until you make a, you know, flagging the ground commitment to something of what you're going to do with your practice, you know, and make it zoom down, make it big, like, you don't have to fully be able to see it at First but do you want to to extra revenues Do you want to to extra profits Do you want to do it Chris did with his company and only takes select clients and and build this amazing business model that allows him to do the right things for the right clients within a very specific niche like Chris had to get crystal crystal clear on that and and say no to 5000 things to pull that off and you know, I just I just learned that the how you can learn all the how in the world but if it's not embedded with this insatiable No no, like yeah, I'll use PPC Yeah, I'll use Chris for SEO Yeah, I'll do that. But I'm going there. Right I question is what's there for you and and do you actually believe you can pull it off so sad to say that as a as a parting parting thing, sorry to get Tony Robbins on you guys
Chris Dreyer:
know I love that so well in there. That's amazing, amazing piece of advice. Guys. We've been talking to Bill Hauser, CEO and President of SMB Team, Bill, where can people go to learn more?
Bill Hauser:
Yeah, just go to lawyerppcbook.com. It's just a it's my book PPC for Lawyers (Not Dummies) and can learn more there or SMBteam.com always feel free to reach out to us. But the book would probably be the best. Best next move.
Chris Dreyer:
Awesome, Bill. Thanks so much.
Bill Hauser:
Thank you, Chris.
ConclusionThanks for listening to The Rankings Podcast. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
