Join Seth and Jay as they discuss Google LSA, Google Adwords, and coming changes to the paid ad process. New changes mean new adaptations that marketers can make for their companies. They go into detail about how to best utilize resources to have the best return.
Hello, hello, and welcome to another edition of Maximum Growth Live. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane, CEO of FirmFlex, your social media marketing funnels for lawyers, as well as managing partner of Ruane Attorneys, a civil rights and pro defense firm here in Connecticut. I’m also the founder of the Criminal Law Mastermind, we’ll talk a little bit about them at some point, I’m sure, but with me, as always, is my man, Seth. Seth, as you can see is in the, borough, is that the basement of Price Benowitz? You know, we talked about on past shows, Seth’s basement, how a lot of people aspire to it, and all these people working on websites and intakes. Seth is the managing partner of Price Benowitz, DC, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina law firm that handles personal injury, family law, criminal defense, and I’m sure something else, oh, qui tam, I mean, you got something going on with a little bit of everything. And of course, he is the major domo over there at BluShark, the man who’s one of the two founders of BluShark Digital. So, Seth, it’s been a while since we did one of these shows, you had a break and I had a break, but it’s good to be back. How’s your week going?
It’s going well, we had a good, a good break. It was good to be in Florida, and as you were, we had Peter Shankman come over to BluShark for our first in person since he joined up and he’s all in, it was just great, you know, both privately getting to hang out with him, and then his sort of brainstorming with the group as a whole, just the way his mind works. And, you know, he talks about, you know, getting PR and doing, and he threw me some bones, and, you know, it was a good feeling to be back, you know, there was more press to be had on the Twitter acquisition story, where there’s really no wrong answer, you give your opinion, and it was interesting working with the press, you know, seeing what he had done with Haro was essentially like, he got annoyed with too many people calling him, just like you and I get called a lot saying, hey, who should you refer to? He basically took his personal Rolodex and turned it into a monetizable, and then eventually, sellable, you know, event. And ironically, he told the story that, was, that PR Newswire had come by and, you know, wanted to, you know, said, hey, you’re doing what we’re doing, you’re not allowed to do that, and It’s like, why not? And so, he says, buy me, and he was, you know, for 60, $100,000, or something, he would have just given it to them, and they didn’t return his email or call. And he was acquired for, you know, several multimillion-dollar deal, and then, the company that acquired him got acquired by PR Newswire, bought for even more money. So, essentially, they ended up paying probably eight figures for what they could have been given early on.
Wow, that’s amazing. You know, it’s interesting, I got to spend some time with him at dinner at Fisher’s mastermind in New York, at the beginning of the month, and you know, he’s got some really interesting perspective that I think maybe a lot of lawyers miss out on. And that is, when you’re communicating with the media, you sort of have to make it what’s in it for them, a lot of lawyers and law firms are used to just issuing press releases, you know, issuing the ego-based press release, here’s what, here’s what we’re doing, you should cover us. But he had a really good point where he said, no, no, reach out to the directors, reach out to the producers and say, here’s what’s hot, and I can talk about these things and solve your pain points, and talk about a totally different way of approaching getting press.
I couldn’t agree more. And I saw it myself, he said, hey, I don’t know why he didn’t want it, he said, hey, WPIX it was my childhood TV station, and the video game picks where you’d have to, you’d basically they were playing a video game, you’d be on your phone if you were lucky enough to get it into caller, and to move your pawn thing you had to yell picks. Anyway, I digress, but it was a producer, he was sitting at home, not feeling great in his sweats, and all he wanted to do is get through the day. If I could give him the sound bites he wanted, it was gold to him. He was so appreciative, and the idea is solving people’s problems come whether you’re doing SEO, whether you’re doing social, or whether you’re a lawyer, you know, if you solve somebody’s problem, they’re gonna pay you for it, and in this case, they pay us with airtime and links.
Yeah, and I mean, I think it’s really something that, you know, yet it’s sort of a paradigm shift. Lawyers, you know, I’ve been talking about it for years on social media, stop making it about you, make it about how you can help people, and that’s really going to be the difference maker in building your brand and getting you out there. So, I think, you know, it’s nice to hear a person sort of elucidate that a lot more eloquently than I can, and put it out there, and Shankman does a great job with that, and obviously, it’s working. So, follow that lead, make it about what problems you can solve for people, and really, that dovetails nicely into, you know, a law practice, because our job is to make problems go away. And it’s interesting to me, over the last couple of weeks, having been away, I have found that I have come to rely on the speed of something like Amazon Prime, so dramatically, that I think it’s sort of imbued myself, and I know my family and probably yours too, and many of our listeners that we sort of expect instant responses. And it’s amazing to me how many times I’ve gotten feedback from my intake team, saying, you know, somebody calls in at nine o’clock, they have a question and we say, hey, we’re gonna get used to it, we’re gonna do some research about your issue and we’ll call you back, and we’ll tell you if we can help, how we can help, that type of thing. And then at 11, the person’s calling in saying, okay, you got a response? And then at 12, and we’re like, yeah, we had to call our contact at the DMV, we’re waiting for them to call us back, it takes some time, or call somebody at a courthouse, it takes some time, and patience is God, people want instant. And I think that’s going to be something that good law firms are going to be paying attention to, in the next, you know, decade or so, is how can you move quicker and faster?
Well, and I’ll pivot to one of the topics I’m going to talk about today, which is the internal pain of hiring. So, for people that have, I have an internal recruiter, it’s something I’m a big believer in scale. In fact, I’ve gotten so, so in on this, that I have a recruiter, and they have deputies overseas doing different pieces of the recruiting, whether it be sourcing in one person for international, in person for domestic. To me, I’m all in, because it’s all, again, all about talent, but one of the things that kept coming up was when you’re looking for a difficult hire, let’s say my personal injury practice. There was a disconnect between the recruiter and the hiring partner for that division, and, again, I can take it down to yourself, because sometimes you have both those roles, but this person kept complaining, hey, the resumes I’m getting, not sure they’re exactly what I want. Now, part of it is just frustration that we’re looking for a diamond in the rough, it doesn’t always come, but what struck me, and Jay king of all systems, hopefully you can help us figure out how to create the system for this is, when hiring, it’s one thing to say here are my wrote questions and here’s my job descriptions. That’s why, you know, every recruiter outside, third-party recruiter wants that, but what are the six questions that are most important for this job, and putting those front and center. I know you do a lot yourself in, you know, you hold several of those spots on a theoretical org chart, but, for me, I was finding a disconnect so that lawyers were getting upset, they weren’t getting the talent they thought they should, and that, what I’m forcing people to do, and hopefully, we can create a system for this is what are your six, and we’ve actually want to create some sort of Google form, you want to make a hire, you need to fill this out and those questions will then be front and center. So, you’ll know, have you first chaired a trial? If so, how many? How many depositions have you done? We don’t know, how many years of experience, were you barred? For us, these are the central questions, which very often get lost. I was looking, you know, within my own hiring, and I could tell whether they had good transportation, and I could tell whether or not they were looking to work remotely or not, but I wasn’t telling the, for the more sophisticated hires those more detailed questions.
Yeah, you know, I think that’s one of the things that you see out there. A lot of consultants say, you know, when you’re hiring, this was back, back before the employee market was a little better than for the employees and better for the employers, but they would say, okay, make them FedEx MA, or use DHL to send in their application and make them jump through a million hoops, but I think that misses the mark in that, that sort of attention isn’t necessarily what’s needed. What you need to do is actually pull from the people who are actually going to put those people to work and find out exactly what it is that they’re looking for.
That was, I think that was the final piece, which is the, there’s the theoretical, but I was getting those questions like when you get to the interview, in theory, like those are the questions that I always, I’m asking, that should be the first and foremost when you’re starting with that, and that you’re diving into, is it the right fit for a bunch of reasons or knowing flat out, oh, this person’s waving into Connecticut or waving into DC, and that they’re not there at this second, can I live with that, but then I know that, and I’m not like, trying to like, know the Dragnet, the facts, just the facts, get the facts out of the way so you can have the personality driven and culture vision part of the conversation first and foremost and not focus as much on the other pieces, you may want to dive into them, you know, it says you’ve only done seven depositions, what gives? And it’s like, well, those were, you know, cases that, you know, anyway, where the deposition went on for three months, I’m making this up, but, you know, it’s the idea is, yes, there’s reasons to break the rules but I feel like I have not systematized that process, and that’s, you know, thanks to Jay I…
Here’s a perfect example, you know, I’ve tried 37 cases. Now, I have colleagues across the country in Texas, and in Arkansas, who tried 500 cases of DUI cases, but in my state 37 DUI cases, I think the next closest person to me has tried four or five, you know, so if I come to an interview, they’re like, oh, you’ve only tried 37 cases, I’m like, yeah but, you know, compared to my compatriots here, you know, I’m 7x what would they have done. So, you need that sort of context in the interview, and I think that’s one of the things that if you are working on a system for hiring, you should start to identify that early on.
So, I will challenge you, because you like to create these things, if there is some sort of a form that would allow people to put their requirements, which, again, I look at the requirements, and I say it with a snark, because I look at it like dating, you know, you want an attractive, back to my single days, I want an attractive woman who is this tall, and would, you know, played sports, and liked… all these things, and the point is, okay, great, but that’s not it. What are those questions? If religion is important to you, let’s find that out up front before you ever go, you know, if, do they live near you? Because if they don’t, that’s your, you know, they’re not geographically desirous, you don’t want to start a long-term relationship. What are those and putting something that would force the person requiring the hire to go through that exercise. So, I challenge that for the Jay systems project.
Okay, I get that done. Okay, I’ve got my assistant working on pulling out all of our hiring systems right now, because I’m going to release them in the systems group over the next three months. So, I can easily put that in, in fact, it’s something that we are actively starting to look for a new lawyer, to start a new section for us. And one of the things that I’m going to do is actually interview the two managers in that department, and say, okay, what are you looking for? Let’s not just put out because like you and I, I’m sure you’re constantly having job postings up just to see, you know, new people coming to the area and that type of thing, and I’m always recruiting, you know, I’ve got job postings on Indeed in five geographic areas that just stay up there every month, and it’s expensive, but it’s…
I know we go into other things, but let me ask you a question about this, because I do that, right? I want to be able to, like, for intake, I’m always hiring, right? There’s certain things, and I, you know, and I leave up more stuff, because I have fishing lines out, you know, if I could find this person I’d hire them, but they never come around. You know, I’m looking for some senior family law with a book of business or, you know, hey, if somebody wants to break… They’re a bunch of things that I’m always looking for, but there’s also do you think that there, there are people that do nothing but look at job boards. And if you have too many up, can you get, do you think it’s possible someone say, hey, do you have a lot of turnovers? Because you’re always hiring. I’m sort of torn because I don’t really, I don’t want that reputation, I don’t think we have it. At the same time, I want to be able to look for all these different things, and God forbid somebody’s fault, if any of those nine or ten people that I have up there, let’s say three are fires that we need to hire for, but everything else is wishes or wants, which would make me money if I could find it, but I don’t want to have a perception as…
So, what we do to counter that, just, you may want to include some of this, is we actually take an average of our tenure and talk about that in the job posting. And so, we’ll say an average person, an average lawyer in this department is with us for seven and a half years, that type of thing, and the division is growing. And so that frames the job posting of, oh, they just need more people, it’s not a dumpster fire of a practice group. So, that’s the way we frame it. And we go so far as in our job posting, say, okay, here are our core values, make sure they align with you, and then, we have a whole section ¨This job will be for you If you want to do these things. This job is not for you if you don’t like doing these things¨, because we want the job postings to speak to people and say, yeah, that’s the kind of place for me. For us, you know, we’re criminal defense civil rights, and for us, you know, it’s not that, people don’t come to these practice areas for the money, you know, it’s definitely not something. But I want to talk about the money a little bit because a lot of people have messaged me, and I’ve messaged, you know, I’m sure you’ve gotten some stuff. There are some things going on in the Google world and there are some ads being run for other, for other speakers, and that type of thing, about changes that are coming to pay per click, to LSAs, to maps, to all that stuff. So, I challenged you in a text message two days ago to come up with some answers for me. So, overall, broad, can you tell me what are anticipated changes in the LSA and pay per click world? So people can sort of understand that the sky is not falling.
Two things, let’s separate clickbait versus reality, right? Because there are people selling stuff, whether it be courses or their services and like, oh my God, the sky is falling. A couple things, look, the biggest issue was LSAs, and the fact they went from easy money to hard to get, you know, it’s hard to get your spend up, the fact that you really have to be careful, particularly outside of PI as to whether or not you’re getting ROI, because in the fee for service area those people that have a higher dollar offering in the LSAs, very often it’s tough because smarter money is researching, where’s the guy pushing at the top is looking for the $1,000 will. And so, in that place in particular, you have a lower dollar widget, works really, really well, higher dollar widget, you know, it you really should be testing, but the big, you know, I believe what is one of the things that was out there, which really doesn’t seem that significant to me, was, for a number of years, Google was intermittently showing ads as part of the three pack, there’s a three pack and then there might be an ad or two above it, you know, those ads, which came with…
The three pack is the map, the postings on the map…
The map pack, right, and that, before the map pack, you would see an additional ad, sometimes two, usually one slotted in up there, right? And that was something that when it first started was extremely clunky, it could bid on itself as a separate bidding system. It was, and it was like, it was frustrating, impossible goal. It was awesome, but it was, you could barely get it. Then, for the last several years, it hasn’t been something you’ve been on independently, it’s something they gave you as an ad if you were spending money, and instead of just being at the top, they would like layer an ad down into the three pack. Yes?
And I found that I showed in that three pack when I had my location extensions active in my pay per click.
Anything that you do, that was what, you know, there were many different things. I saw that with people with great spend, if they’re trying to get your spend up, they put on their location, etc. All that stuff. Yes, yes and yes. But it was something that you couldn’t control particularly well. You could say, I want my ad there and only there, it would get there and like, you get what you get, you don’t get upset. You know, I believe one of the clickbait stories that’s going around is it appears that, you know, click, the buying of Google ads, you know, is disappearing, and that the GMB, the local service ads are gonna get a spot or two there. That’s what we’re seeing. We’ve seen, it’s not in many search results, we’ve seen it in some, I believe that’s what some of the clickbait is talking about. Is it interesting? Yeah, it’s interesting. If you’re like, if you’re not doing LSAs or pay per click is not going to affect you at all, meaning it’s like the death tax, my old Professor Ben Franklin’s created the death tax, half of middle America voted against Democrats on the death tax, not, you know, whether they realized or not, it was a $20 million threshold at least today’s standards, you know, that if you’re under that, this is, doesn’t affect you, but people were literally choosing their candidate based on the fact that the death tax was a thing, when it was an inheritance tax, which, frankly, do want, you know, Elon Musk kids to get all of his money without any money transferring. Anyway, I digress. So, you know, is it something significant? Yeah, if you’re doing pay per click, it is a change, but is it a monumental change? It’s basically, potentially more inventory. And LSAs are one that were, you know, for RPI clients and for Price Benowitz for all the BluShark Digital clients where we’re, all we’re doing is fighting for more inventory. I think Google is saying we don’t have enough inventory to sell, where can we, where can we throw some more up? It’s okay, stuff at the top did fine but not enough. Let’s try to like trick some people do, you know, do no harm Google says but they basically want to trick people into not recognizing that these organic results, now they’re gonna layer some more paid opportunities in. Sky falling? I don’t think so. Should you know about it? Yes. Should you be following it? But Google also has pivots, and that’s part of it, that we watch it and we’ll see what ends up happening. It looks, it makes sense, and so, it’s not a crazy next step, but at the same time, it’s one step at a time, we look at it day to day, week to week, month to month, and continue to pivot based on what we’re seeing.
You know, it’s really interesting to me the whole AdWords pay per click platform. You know, it’s been around since November of 2002, so now we’re getting into its 20th anniversary, I can remember some of my first clicks that I bought, were, you know, two cents, five cents, and now we’re spending hundreds of dollars per click.
What bothers me is like your name, to me, there should be a rule that if you’re buying your own name, should be $1. The fact that we’re paying, you know, real money for our own name.
$15 for a click on my Ruane address.
And when you look at it, and your branding that, now I do all my own attorneys so that those someone, some guy… And two reasons, mean people that are using buying your name, and secondly, it’s Google, which knows that Jay Ruane is associated with Connecticut DUI, so if they, somebody types that name, they’ll very often try to sell that, just like we were talking before, where they were just basically stuffing more ads, whether it be Google ads, or now LSAs when they, when you stuff additional opportunities, you know, when they see Jay Ruane there, we can sell ads based on that, and unless somebody puts a negative keyword, which nobody does for Jay Ruane, it’s going to, it’s going to, no, no meaning people who don’t want to be seen as that, when somebody calls me, one time, when somebody calls, says you’re bidding on my my name, I’m not bidding on your name. But we have so much money being spent, they couldn’t spend it, so they put it for this guy’s name, because they know it’s associated with something, I put a negative keyword, it stopped. The other thing that we saw was within GMB, within the, within your profile on Google, there are lots of different bells and whistles, right? You know, both you and I, spent a ton of time on Google Plus back in the day that went belly up, right? We spent a ton of time, you know, we’ve had posts, and those posts, you know, for years we did them, didn’t really see much from them, and eventually, now they’re getting indexed, we see some benefit to doing them, right? There’s like mini websites you can create within the Google environment that are interesting. We’re testing them constantly, and if they really move the needle, we’ll put resources into them. What I’m always looking at is not the anecdotal because everything you do has a time value of money, right? So, even as an agency, we have people paying us X amount, and you have to allocate those resources. To me, many of the people chasing the bright, shiny object and silver bullet are in fact missing. Hey, if you did 10 more pages of content and five more high quality links, that’s going to move you exponentially. All these other pieces, you know, generally are incremental change, so, to me, many of our clients are in the three pack, and we’re doing things to get them up there. Are there things that you continuously want to test? Absolutely, but this idea that like, if you’re not doing this one thing, it’s malpractice. Like, there are opportunities, there are probably 5000 things that we can do for clients on any given website, and you’re constantly tinkering, but it’s a combination of does it really work, A, how much, you know, is it that big of a deal? And how many resources do you want to put in? You’re constantly balancing all of that, and there’s nothing, you should be challenging yourself and trying, but once again, I feel like, it’s the equivalent of like a consultant who knows one more thing than you and then uses it to show you, oh my god, your whole process is wrong. I don’t know if I told the story before, but somebody relayed this and I loved it, which is if you’re number one in a market, you’re crushing it, and some guy is telling you that, hey, you’re missing this one factor on your GMB that, and you’re like, you know, Rick Harris was in a meeting, and he’s one of my favorite guys out of Las Vegas. He runs his amazing, amazing practice, does more referral work than probably anybody in the country that I know of, and he was at a mastermind, and this woman was saying, you know, you’re doing this, you’re not title tagging this right, and this and that, and she’s really given him a hard time, and his reaction to hers, I’m going to, you’re right. I can’t take this anymore. I’m just going to pack my bags, get on my private jet and fly home. And the idea that like, you know, we are, if somebody finds one little piece that you may, that should be done, check it out, test it. You know, there’s a good chance that BluShark’s already testing it, but the fact that is it going to make or break your life? Absolutely not, be careful what’s being done for sales purposes versus what is going to get you actual ROI.
It’s interesting to me, I know you have people in BluShark that, that focus on the Pay Per Click space. You know, it’s interesting to me that we’re in New York, we were at the 20-year mark and a little bit, you know, shorten it with pay per click, and it sounds to me, and seems to me, that Google really is trying to push out all of these Pay Per Click specialists to some degree with some of the things that they’re doing, their recent release out of beta, that performance max where you tell them what you’re looking for, form fills, views or calls, and they’ll then automate a campaign for you across all of their properties, video, and blogs, and Display Network, and that type of thing, which I’m curious how it’s going to work with display since they hate putting lawyers on display. You know, I’m wondering, you know, they’ll take the money from lawyers for search, but they don’t necessarily want their ads of lawyers following people around.
Look, I gotta wrap up today, I got to deal with some stuff, but look at the AI, the sort of AI piece of Google is part of what we’ve talked about in prior episodes, where Google is pushing it hard, you understand completely right, but what that also means is, they’re looking to put, they need to get enough inventory for somebody or enough test through, which is why we’ve started to really shy away from less than $3,000 a month Pay Per Click budgets and may at some point have to raise that because what we’re seeing is that Google, because they’re forcing this so hard, if it doesn’t have enough data points, that doesn’t work. And so, you know, they are really doing everything they can to not allow, it used to be you and I could put 50, 500, 750 to something and we could test it, I always told people, don’t just build a website, test and see what’s there with just a small budget, and that just doesn’t work the way it used to. You really need to have a more substantial budget in order to get a true sense of what’s possible.
Yeah, I think that’s one of the biggest challenges for small shops. Now starting out is that, you know, the spend that they’re looking for is in the 1000s for them to really gain traction and put you out there, and some, for some people that budget just isn’t available. So, we’re going to talk on future shows about what to do if you don’t have the bigger budgets, I mean, I’m spending 15 grand plus a month on Pay Per Click between, you know, all the different things that I’m spending it on, and, you know, I can remember starting, and I was, I was afraid to spend 500 a month. It took me a while to get to this point. But folks, that’s gonna do it for us this week on Maximum Growth Live. As always, you can catch up with Seth and his BluShark or Law Firm Insider shows, both are available on his BluShark YouTube page. If you want to catch up with me, please catch up with me in my Systemizing your Law Firm for Growth Facebook group. But for us, he’s Seth Price, I’m Jay Ruane, thank you so much for being with us. It’s great to be back, and we’ll see you next week on another edition of Maximum Growth Live. Bye for now.
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