So if you're thinking about delving into the digital marketing world, if you're someone like me, who's, you know, not going to be completely all in, but want to start. I mean, the reason we started is I was dipping my toe in, that's how we kind of started. And then I kept putting my foot in a little deeper and deeper, and we got to the point where I was now getting the cases. I think it's really important to have a professional who understands Google, understands digital marketing, you know, I, I, I don't want to be a digital marketer. I want to be a lawyer, and I want to be a law firm owner, and I want to be, you know, boss and an entrepreneur, and we all need help. I can't learn everything.

Welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast featuring the latest strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into clients. Now here's the founder and CEO of 10 golden rules. Jay Berkowitz,

good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing webinar this month I can do in the podcast intro, but this month, I'm really excited. My friend and client, Steven Goldstein, is here with a live case study, and we're going to talk about how a small law firm absolutely blew up, signed 62 new clients in the first five months of the year. Stephen, I'm going to introduce you in just two minutes. And the biggest thing, things that worked really, really well for Steven, first of all is he got ranked at the very top of Google with the local service ads. Some people call it Google screened with the check mark. He's also doing really well in the Google Maps, and the phones are absolutely blowing up. And he's had a really, really awesome year. So we're going to talk about the role we played, the amazing role that Steven played in making this happen. So here's the tracking of the clients. We got to 62 clients by the end of June. We turned it down a little bit the last couple months because Steven's dealing with this growth. And we're going to go through the data analysis. We see here that these 62 clients came at a cost of only $657 per client. So we'll go through that in detail and talk about it. Now, if you want to grab a quick screenshot, a quick scan here, I'm going to show this a couple times so you'll get it in a minute. But we have what we call our secret algorithm for dominating the local service ads. So that's available free at this link, or you can go to 10 golden rules.com/lsa_ebook, LSA, like local service ads. Underscore ebook. So without further ado, I want to introduce Stephen. Welcome to our monthly webinar series. Thank you, Jay. Happy to be here. Steven's background. He went to the University of Albany, New York Law School, and this one's the one with really good stories. You worked at Madison Square Garden in the boxing department. How did that come about?

Then, 27 years ago, you founded Goldstein and handworker, and you're a Personal Injury and Criminal Law Firm, and that those are your specialties, but you know, talk about the history of the firm.

30. All right, and next up is this guy, Jay Berkowitz, I'm your host. Stephen is was going to introduce me a little bit. So

how do I introduce Jay? I met Jay at one of the legal marketing shows. I was drawn to him because he seemed very genuine. And those of you lawyers who like me, who have no idea of what goes on in the digital marketing world, we are at the mercy of companies like Jay but I met him, I talked to him. There was just something about him that I trusted, and we hit it off on a personal level. And I have to say, him and his people have been fantastic. And honestly, when I went to him, I was not looking for these kinds of results. I was really looking to, you know, I would be happy if I was getting two or three cases a month. And he basically laid out the map for me, simple stuff. I actually did what he told me, and it just took off. And Jay and his team at 10 golden rules, I highly I actually talk them up. I joke for Jay that when I'm done as a lawyer, I want to be a sales rep for his company, because I truly believe in what they do and how they treat people like me who really don't know much about this sort of thing, but are looking for results. That's

awesome. And you know one thing, couple things about your story that you know I'm probably made a mistake. My mom told me, like I should take typing. And I said, Mom, I'm gonna have a secretary. I'm not going to have to learn how to type. And so I see that typing worked really well for you, and I've struggled, you know, I've actually written four books, and I can barely, you know, I can type pretty good now, like this, I cried. My dad said, my dad said I should go to law school. I probably should have listened to him too, because now I work with so many lawyers who do so well, but pride himself

on the fact that I never had a secretary or paralegal whoever typed faster than me. You

I I've obviously read the book over and over.

Thank you so much. So, you know, we'll get into the case study. But you told you were you told me earlier, as a matter of fact, we shot some other video, and you were telling the story about you. You know, you you'd had previous digital marketing firms, and you met us, and you held off and you hesitated. You know, talk to me about previous relationships and what came about and why you decided to hire us.

My story is probably the equivalent of almost any law firm owner with my knowledge of digital marketing. You get promised this. Promised that very hard to reach people. What I love about you guys is we do monthly meetings and we go over everything. And if I want to tweak, it gets tweaked. If I want to slow down a little bit, it gets slowed down. If I want to step it up, it gets stepped up. There was really no follow through. There was no accountability, and it seemed like they every one of these firms, they seem to just be chasing the next client, and that once they got you, you kind of would fade into the background. Now, thankfully for me, digital marketing was really only a small part of the way I was acquiring cases. So I kind of put up with it for a while. But then, you know, I realized that, you know, wait a minute, I'm still getting cases the old fashioned way, but digital marketing could be another great sort of compliment. You know, it was never meant to be. My be all, end all. And, in fact, there's a lot of digital marketing that I don't do, that you guys recommend, and that's because, you know, I think every law firm owner has their own sort of goals. Is what they're trying to do. I've been practicing for 33 years. I'm not looking to build the Empire right now. I'm looking to maintain a lifestyle, maintain a case flow. But not, you know, I want to stop and smell the roses a little bit. And so I've, I don't do everything, but what I did do worked phenomenal.

What was an average month before? How many cases were you signing? And where did those cases come from?

So So typical month was like five or 10 cases, five, five criminal, five, pi, five lawyer referrals and five past client referrals, something like that. Yeah, yeah. Okay, great. First, I want to jump into the we'll talk about these local service ads. And you know, the biggest change is that there used to be two on the mobile and three at the top of a like a desktop screen, and now Google's flip flopped it for whatever reason. So when you're coming up at the top of these mobile results, these are great because people can just click to call you, and then, obviously, on the on the page, they can message you or call you, but, you know, talk to us a little bit about, you know, taking those calls, and the difference of getting calls versus getting people to your website.

So my website presence is, I don't do any SEO, and if I get a case off of my website, that's a very rare occurrence. But when covid hit, like everybody else, I had to shut down my office in Manhattan, and I went to a remote answering service, which I still use to today. And I. So that's who picks up my calls. So I was able to route the calls. The LSA calls would go to my answering service. They would screen them. If it was worthwhile, it would then get forwarded to me or a member of my team. It's super duper important that those calls get picked up, not even that there's a message taken, my closing rate, if there is a legitimate case from those calls, is probably over 90% the only time I wouldn't close a case if it's a legitimate case is people are afraid to use their insurance to pay for medical bills. But what you find is these people are usually not shoppers. They will take, most likely, the first law firm that they call, if you sound friendly competent, listen to what their problem is, and take immediate action to sign them up. I do not wait if it's a case. I have an in house investigator who will get to them within an hour, if it's a legitimate case, he will then follow up. He will call them, follow up with them, and they will be signed within, definitely, within two hours of the phone of the first phone call through the lsea.

And I think that's part of the secret of success with this program, is is, you know, you've got to treat these leads as gold. You've got to answer the phone. We'll talk about this a little bit more. And you've got to jump on them right away. I mean, you're obviously in, if not, the most competitive market for this business in the world. You know, top three for sure. And you know, if you don't, if you don't jump on it, like you said, Get get your investigator out to see them, get the case signed, or or Doc, you sign them, you know, good luck, right? So it's like a bloody red ocean, right? Like eight other guys will be on, you know, if they call someone else, they'll get out to see them, right?

I mean, the key is, you must give them a reason not to call anyone else. And the best reason is, you sound like somebody. I could help. Somebody will be seeing you within an hour or two, and you've now taken all the stress off of them. Because, remember, in personal injury, we're not right. You know, they're not shopping price. Most people are shopping. Am I connecting with the person on the other end of the line? Is this a person or a firm that I want to work with, and I try and really jump on that very early on, especially if I'm taking the call.

One of the valuable things about this program, I talk a lot about the local service ads. It gives the small guy a chance to compete, because in a lot of markets, our clients will be literally won two with Morgan. And Morgan, you know, the biggest personal injury firm in the country, and so it gave you as a smaller firm, as you know, solo lawyer. You answer the phone, you help people out, send your investigator out to see him right away. They don't differentiate between you and the firm with 200 lawyers. So this is great. The reason we're doing this, this webinar with you, is so

thank you again for doing this. Because I often get the question from the startup, from the small firm, like, you know, how do we go about this? How do we compete with the big guys? So the second thing that you did really well in our team coached you on, is you've got to get into the back end, and you've got to disposition those leads. This is an extraordinary This is, I think, our biggest client. They'll get, like, up to 200 leads a month. They're in a smaller, less competitive niche than personal injury, but talk about the back end of the system and the feedback you give to Google.

So it is important for my own internal bookkeeping as well as Google. Google wants to see that not only have you answered the call, but that you've noted it interacted. And I have no idea if it helps their algorithm or not, but when I was doing. As consistently, and I was getting cases I wanted, I was getting those types of calls more and more. So once I finish up the call, because I'm taking notes on the call anyway, I'll just immediately go into the back end, type in the name of the person, their phone number, what kind of case it was, and if it's a case I'm interested in, and I have no idea how the Google algorithm works, that's what you do, but apparently, the more you do that, the happier Google is, and the happier the local service ad gods are, and they give you more leads. I mean, it's kind of as simple as that. I know nothing about digital advertising or the technology. I just know Jay tells me to do it, or his team tells me to do it, and I do it.

but that's atypical, right? Yeah, that that

So I teased earlier that we would share our secret algorithm for how you know what the part we played, and frankly, Steven played an equally important part. So that's our what we call our secret algorithm, or the secrets behind dominating the local service. AD, again, you can scan it and get a copy of the document. But the first thing I always talk about when I talk about this topic is there was an urban myth, or maybe it was reality, that there was a red phone in the White House, back in the Reagan White House in the days of the Cold War, and when that red phone rang, it only had one extension at the other end. It was the Kremlin. It was Russia in the middle of the Cold War. And so when the red phone rang, you had to urgently pick it up. You know, we were on the verge of World War, and you had to pick up that phone. And so I say that, you know, when you're running this program, this local service ads program, it's similar to the red phone. You've got to pick up your phone, and you've got to answer all calls within 15 seconds, and Google's even measuring how many times you miss a phone call. So it's mission critical now that you answer the phone. Now that's on the local service ad program, but all through the years, with Google, whenever they've introduced a new product. When they introduced YouTube, it became very beneficial to put videos on your website and to do YouTube videos. When they introduced Google Maps, and it became very popular, the better you do in Google Maps, the better you do in SEO. So nobody's officially stated this from Google, as far as I know, but they're measuring how quickly you answer the phone now, and it's part of the Google algorithm that they've told us is the case, but they haven't told us that it's connected to your regular SEO. But I believe that when Google tracks something, they put it in the algorithm. So answering the phone is not only important for the local service ed program, but even if you're not running this program, you've got to answer the phone quickly and no missed calls. Stephen, you want to talk about how important that's been to you

again, so I have an answering service, so these calls are routed directly to them, so they pick up the call within one or two rings, because they pick up all my calls within within one or two rings, they are instructed in order to reach me. There's only a handful of calls that they're supposed to send to me new case or an adjuster calling to settle a case. Those are the number one and two things. Even like judges take a you know, are not as high on the list as those two things. So when I see my answering service calling me, it's like the it is like the red phone. I pick that call if I can listen, obviously, if I'm in court on the middle of something, I don't. And then they are instructed to take a message, and then I get a text, and if I can't return the call immediately, my investigator will, but, but

in terms of the algorithm that Google's measuring, and they're measuring a bunch of factors, reviews, proximity, how quickly answer the phone, how you deal with your clients, your you know the star rating on your reviews, but If you're answering machine, you're answering services, answering immediately. You've got the checks, both checks from Google. They're answering the phone, and they're not missing any calls. That's what that is, what happens. And one of the other things we've learned the answering machines or the phone trees, like press one if you're a new client, press two, if you're an existing client. Those things are hurting this program. So you want to get rid of the answering machines the recorded messages after hours. You definitely want to go to an after hours phone service. Next thing in our secret algorithm, we want to set bidding to maximize leads. And Google goes back and forth on this a little bit, but that seems to be the best way to go right now and then designate all calls immediately in the back end of the system. So when, when you log in, like, if you, if we clicked on one of these, this is just a picture. It's not an actual it's not, we're not live on Google, obviously. But if Steven gets this, he clicks on it, he goes in there and he says, this was a good lead booked. You know, it's like Google's terminology from the days of the air conditioned guys in the plumbers. They booked a meeting. They're going to go out and give give the consumer a quote or archived archiving, meaning this wasn't a good lead. This guy's looking for a divorce attorney, and we do personal injury. So Stephen hops in right away and does those. And then, you know, the phenomenal role he's played in this program is getting one to two new reviews per week. So I'll let him talk about how he's he got the reviews. But we, if you saw in the data, in this year, in this calendar year, he's gone from 50 reviews to 103 reviews. So. So here's the total reviews you hear. They're all five, five stars. So he's asking folks who love them. But Steven, the other thing is very important is you want to get one to two new reviews per week. So a lot of people will, oh, I need reviews. They'll give an incentive to their paralegals. They'll get 30 reviews within two weeks, and then nothing for weeks or months. So it's very, very important that you do it on a regular cadence and you get one to two new reviews per week. Again, the Google reps have told us that that really boosts the algorithm. So, Stephen, how did you do so great with 50 new reviews this year.

So a it became the most important part of my marketing strategy, especially once we started working together. And for every personal injury lawyer, there is one point in the case and the relationship with your client when they are the most happy, and that's when you're handing them a check. I make every client come to see me to get their check, and we will then talk about how the case went, and some clients I will jokingly say, you know, part of the retainer says you can't get your check unless you write a Google review. And then they laugh. But the real key is is you want to ask for these things. I find you must do it in person. I'm not set up. You know, where they're like, if they leave my office without leaving a review and they say, Oh, I'll do it when I get home. 99% of the time it's not happening. I think it's really important to ask them while you're sitting there and they're at their happiest. I mean, I've gotten Google reviews on my criminal cases literally right after the disposition of the case. I mean, there's no criminal defendant who's happier with their lawyer than when they walk out of court and the case has just been dismissed,

and they get their phone back, and then they get their phone back right,

simple thing and one sophisticated thing that the simple thing is this is the Google a picture of your Google Maps, or what Google calls Google business profile the consumer. We would just call it the maps. And if you click on your maps, your listing that came up in the maps, this is what you see. So these reviews from Google Maps are the ones that we see in the local service ads. So that's a simple thing, but just so everybody knows, you ask people to review you in your maps or your Google business profile, and that is the exact it's linked to local service ads. And that's what people see in the local service ads. The other thing. Thing that you've done really, really well. And I know our team gave you this tip is, you see here, this firm was great at getting my car accident case settled. They really know what they're doing. I highly recommend Steven staff for anyone injured in a car accident. And getting keywords in those reviews is super valuable as well. So is that something? You give them a little tip when you ask for the review,

you know, I, what I usually do is, I ask them in the review is if there's any if they could tell a little story, as opposed to just saying, this firm was great. I think what I found is people, when they read these reviews, they seem a little they're more believable if there's a little bit of a story behind them, as opposed to just these people were great. They got me a lot of money. And I will tell them. I would ask them, you know, in your review, can you just at least describe what kind of a case it was and what you were happy about? And, you know, I, I don't try and, you know, feed them the exact words, because I want it to sound natural, but I do ask them, you know, in the review, if they could just put in what kind of a case it was. And they do,

I started my practice in Manhattan. I moved out to New Jersey. I opened an office here, probably about eight to 10 years ago, when I realized I was growing my practice in Jersey and it made no sense to do a court appearance in New Jersey and then travel two hours into Manhattan and waste all that time, I made a conscious decision to really focus more on my marketing in my New Jersey office, for the reasons of my New York office is located in Midtown Manhattan, and I was getting a decent amount of cases from having been there for 25 years. And went through my networking and referrals New Jersey. I didn't really have that sort of setup. And my mindset was, you know, in Manhattan, I'm really compete. Now. I'm competing with the Giants. Forget about Morgan and Morgan. There's probably 20 firms just within five blocks of my office in Manhattan that are probably spending 100,000 a month on SEO and 100,000 a month on, you know, Google ads or whatever. And I said, I think every dollar I spend there is kind of like I'm throwing away. So I really focused on my New Jersey location, but I did. I also have the same strategy for Google reviews for my New York office as I do in my New Jersey office. And I would, you know, ask people if it was a New York case. I would ask them to review. You the New York office. And you have to be kind of specific about that, because when, if somebody googles me to write a review, I think depending on where they are, either my New York office or my New Jersey office will show up. So, you know, they could live in New Jersey if it was a New York case, I have to tell them, you know, when you do it, you know, please make sure you're reviewing the New York office as opposed to the New Jersey office.

And one thing I was going to ask you at the start, you got some really big cases, right? Like these are not just small, soft tissue cases.

I remember one of the first calls I got off this program. It was a woman, and she said, you know, my husband got hit by a tractor trailer about eight months ago, and he had surgery. Is that something you'd be interested in? And the first question I asked was, am I really the first lawyer you're calling? And she said, Yes. So what was also interesting I called Jay is that, you know, this really took off for me at the beginning of the year, and I'm starting to settle those cases now. And it's really interesting because, again, I was driven mostly by referrals and very, you know, old school type marketing, but I have gotten good cases. And I don't even know why this is, but it almost seems like the quality of the cases I'm getting are better than I was getting through other means. Now, to me, it may just be that these people are more motivated because they're actually searching and then picking up the phone. They're putting in effort, but I found that the quality of the cases I'm getting through the local service is probably better. There's better insurance coverage. The people have better coverage themselves than I've been getting. You know, then I would get in other ways that. And so it was actually really interesting. You're also,

thank you. You're also taking the message leads. So this is relatively new in the program, and I'm responding to them, yeah, and you responded immediately, right? Super important,

those go straight to my cell phone, where they will specifically say, you know, do not call. I will text them, and I have my own template to get them interested in calling me. My rate of people calling me after the first message of them saying, Please don't call me is about 90% based on the message I send back

to them. So you send them a text and say you're going to become a text. But it's kind of worded in a way that, listen,

I'm not threatening. I'm not looking to because a lot of these people, I think they're afraid that they're going to be sold hard. And, you know, I just say, look, I, based on what you texted me, I think I could help you, but I really need to talk to you. If you're uninterested in really in talking to me, that's not how I operate, and you might be better off going somewhere else. And like human any human nature is as soon as somebody says, you know, I may not be interested in you, that drives up there interested in me. I mean, that's just basic human psychology. So let them know that I'm happy to talk to you, but in a nice way, I really don't need your case. And, you know, I can't, I don't work that way. So if that's the way you need to work, somebody else is probably better for you. And it works that way too. When I with my criminal cases, especially in the criminal which is different than the PI, you do get a lot of price shoppers. And as soon as I get a Price Shopper on the phone, the first thing I say is, Listen, you're charged with a crime if you're if price is your criteria, I am not your person. You have my number, but you're probably better off than calling somebody else 75% of the time. When I do that, they invariably call me back, and they'll retain me at a higher price, because again, at this stage of my career, and I think it makes you less needy and less desperate. You know you've got to stick to your guns. If you're worth X amount, I believe you can't really then you're racing to the bottom, which is not good for you financially or for your own self esteem. And again, human nature, I don't do free consultations on criminal cases, because in my mind, if somebody calls me and I say it's $500 to sit with me, and they call the next guy, and he says, No, you can come in. I'll talk to you for free. As much as it makes no sense. They're going to believe I'm a better lawyer for no other reason except that I you need money to see me. Now I could the other lawyer could be 10 times better than me, but that's just how human nature will work.

Couple other new things going on in the program. You can add multiple photos now, so we're adding multiple images. And Google's announced that they're not going to accept disputes anymore, that the artificial intelligence that listens to the calls is going to do all the disputes. Have you seen it that way? And you're saying. Up, Stephen, I

don't think they're doing too good of a job, because they made me pay for a divorce call, but I guess they're working on the kings. But I will say I was not a big disputer anyway, because I kind of wanted to be the guy who didn't give Google a hard time. And I don't know if that that

was definitely a positive factor. Early on, you can select service areas. So we've been switching around some service areas for Steven. And then the last thing is, we have a program, and I did a whole webinar on this. You can find it on the 10 golden rules YouTube channel called help. I've fallen and I can't get back up, because many, many people tell us we were in the top three. We were always coming up in the top three, and then we fell out of the top three. And so the heart of that program is you're going to completely reset your local service ads, you're going to change your bidding strategy, change your geography, you're going to open up a bunch of categories, maybe even take general leads. And so there's a whole webinar on that, or we're happy to consult with you. If you used to show up here in the top three or top two, and now in the screenshot and your leads have gotten down to a trickle, we can help you get back in the top three. So once again, here's that link, if you want to get a copy of the secret algorithm, learn a little bit more about these strategies. So, you know, the great news for Steven is he got signed 62 cases this year. You know, it is been an influx, right? Like you've really been pressed. Personally, I know we had a call with your your investigator, and he was like, Can you please turn it off? And he said it in much more colorful words, but you know, talk about managing the influx of the cases, and you know how you've adapted the firm and how you're dealing with them.

So quite honestly, I had to reach out to another law firm to help me, and what I did is I asked them to help me with cases that I had already had in litigation, and they're helping me with over 150 of those cases. And I re sort of constituted my staff to deal with these new cases. I mean, with the new cases, you know, once you get them set up, once the people are going to the doctor, it's kind of, there's not really a lot of heavy lifting unless, until you have to put the case in suit. So I have a virtual assistant, you know, virtual paralegal. And I myself, I use a lot of freelance paralegals and help when I have this on project basis. But I have my virtual paralegal is really only does He inputs the cases, helps me get the client set up to the doctor, sends in all the the forms you need, if it's an auto case, and then my investigator has one or two days a week, he specifically just calls people new cases and says, How are you doing? Are you going to the doctor? Any problems we can help you with? And you know, that has helped me tremendously. And you know, like I think I said before, I am not looking to grow to 10 lawyers in 20 states at this stage in my career. I've been at it 35 years. I make a good living. I am not looking for one of these people to grow, but obviously, I'll take the cases, and what I'm doing now is I'm developing relationships with other firms, and if the caseload gets too big for me, you know, they're more than happy to help me with the cases that I'm getting through. You know, the LSA or other means,

so you've got another firm helping with some of the hard, heavy lifting, and you've virtualized some of the some of the things. One thing you said in there that's not subtle, because I hear this over and over again, the number one complaint about personal injury cases is my lawyer doesn't get back to me, doesn't tell me what's happening with my case. And so you've got your investigator calling every couple days. How do you manage that? Like, do you have a schedule? Do you have a list?

He, you know, we have a software that we use for case management, and literally, he goes from, you know, I'll give him okay. Need you to call these 20 newest to oldest, and he literally just goes down the list and just, you know, understand, they don't necessarily need to hear from me. They just need to hear from somebody. And you know what I you know, they're instructed in the beginning of the case that, look, I'm going to be really hard to get a hold of because I'm working on cases. However, all it takes is a minute. It's just just a quick phone call. How you doing? Oh, good. You're going to your doctor. Great. You need anything? We're here, and hang up the phone. He probably blows through anywhere from 25 to 35 calls a day, just on clients. And then what happens is they develop. Relationships with your paralegals or your investigator, and I've had now where, when they want to refer a new case, they don't call me, they call my investigator, they call my paralegal. That's great, and it's, it's but again, I'm small, you know, I'm not and I don't have turnover, so the people that have been with me have been with me. I've won paralegal been with me for almost 28 years. Another 123, another 116, so they know us. They know us, especially from you know, when we had their case. But

this is not subtle, by the way, Steven has 103 five star reviews. And I think a big part of that, I mean, obviously you have a personal relationship. You do a great job for these folks, but unquestionably, you reach out to them proactively, and they know what's happening with their case. They know who to reach and not frustrated like I, unfortunately, case I got rear ended, and I kept calling, you know, my attorney, like, what's happening, what's happening, what's happening. Unfortunately, I didn't use one of my clients. I used a guy from my networking group, but I wouldn't make that mistake again.

Yeah. I mean, it's also what I find is, again, I'm a little more old school. I believe you pick up the phone as opposed to an email, and I tell the people that work for me, and I tell and I'm a believer, if it's if it's important enough, it's not a text, it's not an email, it's a phone call, and a simple two minute call to say, how are you doing is just does wonders for the relationship. And again, at the end of the day, I've been at this a long time, everybody wants to get as much money as possible, but if the clients feel that they've got a relationship with the firm, where, when they pick up the phone, the lawyer's office actually knows about their case. It's amazing. What it does for the relationship money almost becomes secondary. And with the people that I have the relationships with, it's very rare. They will then it also leads to a lot of trust. So when I recommend and say, Look, this is probably a good thing for you to do, as far as taking a settlement, obviously, I have to really believe it, but I don't, I find I don't get as much pushback where, you know, you'll get, oh, this other person, I know this person, they had a case, they got, you know, a million dollars. You're telling me whatever it is. And again, to me, I think that's the number one driver of my repeat business. Is not the results, it's more of the relationship.

So we started doing a couple other projects, and Steve mentioned he's not doing everything with us, but we started doing a little bit of work on the Google Maps. This is a tool that shows us where you're coming up on the Google Maps. So we want to see as much green, which is in the one, two and three. If we go back here, this was position 123, we click More businesses. They're going to probably show 30 or 40 different listings. And so you do really well throughout this area. Here this, these are different search terms doing pretty well around your your location and a little bit to that Northwest. So some of the things we do is, you know, update the Google Maps, putting updates in there, get it, getting the whole thing set up correctly is very, very important. And adding the updates are very valuable. The other things we do is we get links, local area links, or what we call citations, to the map location. That helps. And then we we do a thing called nap, name, address and phone. You've got to be really precise that if your name is in Google in the Google Maps listing is Goldstein and handworker. LLP, you've got to be super consistent with your address, your name, your address and your phone number everywhere you're listed throughout the area, and then, frankly, Steven's done the biggest job with this, which is getting those Google reviews on a consistent cadence. Stephen, anything else about the maps from your side?

Well, just although it looks like a lot of red, the areas of green are where I basically told you guys to focus as I as I said, I'm not looking to expand so far from where my office is. And so there's a lot of, I guess, orange and red. Obviously, we always want to get better, but there's more than enough

green. Actually. Those are very good results for a competitive market, like, if we're in, like, a super small town, like, not not New Jersey, New York. And then the other thing we're doing is some video, and I teed one up here.

Here's a situation I've had. Client gives me a call, says I don't know what to do. I just got a call from the police. My spouse has been arrested for a DWI. What do I do in New Jersey? Thankfully, a DWI is not a crime, so unless somebody has committed someone. A crime, the person will be let go from the DWI for a future court appearance. So this video may be more of social science advice than it would be for a legal advice. So

I think you can go to Steven's YouTube channel and see more of that. But the reason why we do these videos, and reason why it starts with a question, is that when we do Google searches these days, we're asking questions something we don't know the answer to. So what you know? What do I need an attorney if the insurance company won't pay for my car accident repairs? What do I do if my spouse gets a DWI so Steven's answering these questions. We've done our first series of videos, and those will go on YouTube. Google owns YouTube, so it's part of the algorithm, and then we'll put the videos on blogs at his website and use them throughout his social media. So we shot those you were actually down in Florida here with our local videographers, but we shoot all across the country. What was the experience like for you? And what did you learn? I would

like to say that you guys flew me down and put me up in the hotel, but I had my wife and I rented an apartment for a month down where Jay was, and it was great. I think videos, that was really the first thing. I had been doing videos for a while, but I was doing them very simple of my paralegals. Son was in video videographer school, and I would throw videos up in pretty much the similar manner. I would ask questions. These obviously are a lot more professional looking that that Jay is doing, but part of my marketing strategy is so I've done videos of how to prepare for a deposition, and when my clients are told they have a deposition, I will direct them to go watch the video first. But there's a lot of questions that we get on a daily basis that it's easy to tell the clients, watch the video and then we'll talk. And I have had clients in the past say I called you because I watched the video again. I was in utter disbelief. But people do do it, and just because it's not the way I would retain somebody or hire a company doesn't mean that other people don't do it. And that's that's the hardest lesson I learned. I learned it thankfully a while ago, that not everybody purchases using the same criteria I do.

So next up, we've done a couple of these case study webinars, as I mentioned, and I call this the how to be a great client and how to be a great agency section. So I'll go first and success with a digital marketing agency. The agency's got to be good, but frankly, the client's got to be good. You know, we've worked with over 100 law firms now, and you know, no matter what, like, if we do everything right, we still don't get the results if the client doesn't play their part. So the first thing is, you've got to be responsive. So like, if you're frustrated with your agency, we need you to approve things. We need you to show up for meetings and go through the programs we're recommending and take our advice. Like a lot of times, we recommend to clients to add chat to their website, the little chat bot, but that pops up on the website, and we've seen over and over and over, that increases leads about 20% so, you know, I have pretty, pretty darn good proof. Now, you know, about 80 of 81 cases it's worked well, so, and I have it on my own site. So that's an example of, you know, I've got proof that these things are working well. The local service had some people still don't, don't want to do them. The next thing is, track everything. My mentor says, what you measure and inspect improves, and so you saw the detail of the data that we go through with Steve. But we need Steven and his team and all our clients to give us feedback. Which leads became clients, which leads were good leads and didn't become clients, which leads were bad leads, and what were the sources of those leads? And what can we learn about it so that we can spend our efforts and our money in the right either practice area, geography, keywords and things like that. If we're running a pay per click program, the Google reviews, that's one thing that's a little bit out of our hands. We came up with these gift boxes, the VIP boxes, that we're sending out for some of our bigger clients. But, you know, he saw Steven's doing a great job getting the Google reviews, and frankly, a great job being a good law firm, right? Like, you're not going to get five star reviews. People are just not going to do a review if they were dissatisfied the whole time, they couldn't get a hold. You know, they were calling you all the time to get updates on their case, and then they're dissatisfied with the amount they got in their settlement. There's, it's much less likely they're going to do that, do a review at all, and much less likely you're going to get that five star review. And then the final thing I say is intake, intake, intake. You got to answer the phone. You got to answer the phone quickly, and you got to do a great job. In converting those opportunities into clients, which Steven clearly does a great job. Because, you know, there's only so much we can do if we're sending the leads over. We we have a client. We just sent over nine recordings of great leads they got last night, last month, that they didn't convert to cases, they didn't answer the phone. So, you know, those are the things that we appreciate in working with Stephen and some of our other clients, Steven. Anything you want to add on that

I would definitely add another bullet point would be, be realistic and be patient. So I've learned patience as I've gotten older, and one of the things for me is, you know, when we started in honestly, I mean, it worked a hell of a lot faster and better than I thought it would, but I was realistic and patient to say, well, you know, if we could generate three or four cases a month, that's also fun. So, you know, part of this is, as with anything it's, I did not expect that off the bat, things would be, you know, moving at 60 miles an hour. And I think if, when you're working with an agency, it's really important if you trust them, which I did, that eventually things would come around. But, you know, it's a long game. It's not a short game. And I was prepared for the long game. Now, it happened a lot faster than maybe even Jay, you guys anticipated, but it happened, yeah,

and, you know, it's like the old TV commercials results, not typical. You know, it's, we can't generate 20 cases a month for, you know, a solo with a small, a small law firm every single time, but typically we will get, you know, some ramp up with these local service ads in the first few months of the program. Then, if you do the right things, Google will continue to give you just about as much love as they gave you. But Steven, maybe talk a little bit about, you know, your perspective, what makes a great agency? You

know, I think it's probably the same thing that makes a great law firm or makes a great any professional service. And again, I don't even put results first. I would put responsiveness. So I'm a client, but, you know, I have somebody dedicated to me. She sometimes thinks I'm a pain, but she's very nice to me.

She's never said that.

You know, responsiveness, it's answering questions that I may have, having patience with me because I don't understand things, but really it's um, what I found best with you guys is the laying out the things that I needed to do, and then I had to trust that if you're telling me to do it, if I do do it, you know, again, there's no guarantees in life. All we're trying to do is improve our odds, and by following the steps you gave me and then every month, sort of holding me accountable, I think that helps. We all need to be held accountable by somebody, and the monthly meetings, the responsiveness and the accountability are a big factor. And again, the if I have a question, it's answered. If I have an email, it's responded to. Again, I don't expect somebody to respond to my phone call within five minutes, but you know, within a reasonable time, a day, two days, I'm patient. I understand we're all busy, but you know, there's also that feeling of, you know, you just have that gut feeling that the people you're working with are worthy of your trust. And, you know, I don't know if it's luck or whatever it was, but I was lucky to find you guys, and lucky to somebody that I find, somebody that I do trust. Again, I'm at, I'm at the mercy of the agency. I have no idea, you know, of the algorithms and things like that. And it's been, you know, great so far. And I honestly do sing the praises of the agency to friends of mine that are in the market.

Thank you so much. All right. Well, with that, you know, maybe I'll give you the last words. You know, we got from, you know, you got from five or 10 cases a month to adding, you know, additional 15 or 20 from the digital marketing program. What would you say to someone who's, you know, on the fence, like, yeah, I remember you said you wished you called us six or 12 months sooner after we met.

You know, at minimum, it's if you're thinking about delving into the digital marketing world, if you're someone like me, who's, you know, not going to be completely all in but want to start. I mean, the reason we started is I was. Dipping my toe in. That's how we kind of started. And then I kept putting my foot in a little deeper and deeper, and we got to the point where I was now getting the cases. I think it's really important to have a professional who understands Google, understands digital marketing. You know, I I don't want to be a digital marketer. I want to be a lawyer, and I want to be a law firm owner, and I want to be, you know, boss and an entrepreneur. And we all need help. I can't learn everything, and the All I can say is my experience has been they're extremely trustworthy. They will do what they need to do to make it work. And again, Jay, you never made any wild guarantees to me, not that I ever asked you, but part of the trust factor comes with, listen, I know it's advertising, it's marketing, it's, you know, again, anything we do to improve is just to improve our odds. There's no guarantees. And when somebody, I think you guys, were the first agency that did not sell me a guarantee in the sense of like, oh, you're going to get 20 cases a month, it was more of like, you know, listen, it may take a while. You're going to have to do certain thing. And then if it's not working, we'll tweak and see how it works. So I think if you're in the digital marketing, if you're thinking about it, I absolutely think if you've got the money and you've got the motivation, you absolutely must work with an agency. And obviously these are the guys I like

so much. So we got a few questions coming in. If anyone has any questions for Steven or myself, you can do it in the Q and A or the chat, and Alyssa is sending a few over from from the LinkedIn. We're live streaming on LinkedIn as well. So Barry asked, How do you get penalized by Google for not answering the phone within a certain time frame? My answer, steamo first is there's an basically a mathematical algorithm, and Google's calculating everything you know, they're calculating how quickly as the phone, how quickly you respond to people on the message app, how, how many reviews you're getting and what, how quickly you're putting information into the back end of the the operating system of the local service ads. So they're calculating how quickly answer the phone. And I think it come, you know, it comes down to Google said, said this in their public disclosures, and they're like, patent filings and things like that, that they're they're looking for websites and companies that are helpful to people like essentially, what Google is is people are asking questions. They're trying to get answers, or they're looking for help, air conditioning, plumbing, lawyer to, you know, to get them the money that they deserve for their car accident. So if you answer the phone quickly, Google's going to show you more frequently than someone who doesn't answer the phone quickly, so you know that's the most important thing, and then you know also not missing any calls. Next question comes from Liz. Do LSAS require you to serve a specific mileage outside my location? Well, Steven, you've rejiggered your geography a little bit. Why don't you take that one?

So I think I had asked you initially to just go within five miles of my office, and I think we could have gone further. That's where we started. And then when it started growing, I think we grew maybe to 10 miles. And then what happened, which I didn't know how it happened, you can maybe explain is I started getting calls from 30 miles away for areas I wasn't even telling you to advertise, and they were going that far out, and people were calling me and saying, you know, you're all over Google. And I was like, How in the world am I all over Google? I'm not doing the SEO. I'm not putting content on my website every other day, but that was the feedback I was getting. So I don't understand how it happened, but I just know that it happened. But initially I would just wanted to be again, the big fish in the little pond, and that, in my mind, was probably the most efficient way early on, you know, to spend my dollars. So

proximity is good. You know, like Google says proximity is part of their algorithm for the maps and for the local services. But in some cases, people are going statewide with the LSAs, and they're they're working great. And like I said, if sometimes, if it's not working great, we do a reboot. So we'll go more concentric to the office, or we'll go broader if we weren't wide enough. And I think the other part of the reason is, you know, cell phones are inherently mobile, right? So people could be driving, they could drive by your office on their commute to work or something, and then Google flags them as a prospect. Or they could even, you know, go for dinner closer. To your office and Google see the movement of their phone. But I'm not as an expert on exactly that question from Joe. How is the cost per lead determined by Google? Well, I think cost per lead is really just a calculation. So we saw on Steven's chart. You know, if you spent $1,000 in a month and got five leads at $200 a lead. And if you sign three of them, that's $600 a case, right? Three Three times 200 that the actual cost per lead is not really determined by Google. I think what Google is is determining is, you know, they're, I believe they're trying to maximize the revenue so as many advertisers as they have, they're going to increase the cost per click to the point where it makes sense for the advertisers to keep advertising. They pay per click is a pure auction. You know, if I say I'm willing to pay, you know, $300 a click, I come up above the guy who's going to pay $200 a click with some other configurations about how, how efficiently your ads perform. But this system is more about seems like Google spreads the wealth a little bit, and then if you answer the phone quickly, they give you these calls, and we saw that those leads were coming in. You know, 150 $200 per lead. Mary asked, what's the minimum amount spent on LSA in order to for them to work? There's not necessarily minimum spend for them to work. There's a minimum spend that Google will allow you to put on your program. So in most of the markets, it's, you know, around $500 a week. But if we would just

answer that quick. Yeah, sure. So for the summer, I told Jay, we'll do minimum spend and pick it up in September. And I'm getting cases. Now. I'm not getting 20, and I'm not I wasn't looking to get 20 leads a week, but I'm still getting leads. Not that I would recommend it in the beginning. Again, I'm just kind of in a slow, you know, I turned it off a little bit. I'm turning it on back in September. But I got two cases this week that we signed, and it's what it's Wednesday on the, you know, where we kind of are, you know, I guess it's almost like when you close the house up for the summer or the winter, and then, you know, we're going to go back. And I got two cases this week signed through this Yeah,

you got a great personal injury case this week, right? Yeah, Lauren asked, we're a small firm, and I don't always have one to two new clients to ask for reviews each week. How do we work around that? Well, Stephen gave you one great suggestion, and I have learned this in my business too. You know, he said, a lot of times you get calls for someone whose case you can't take it, just not a fit for your business model, but you give them free advice. You tell them you either refer them to someone else, you tell them where, what to do, how you know, how to file a small claim or whatever. So a lot of times you help people out on the phone. You can ask them for a review. I get the call the time from someone's nephew who's starting an internet business, and they want my help. Again, we only work with lawyers, so I'm not going to take that kid on as a client, but I can't ask him for a guru. I

will tell you another thing I've done, and this may be a little out of the what is it out of the box? I have reviews from adversaries. And, you know, I, you know, if you're a plaintiff's lawyer and you've been doing it for a number of years, and you're not a complete jerk, usually, you should be developing relationships with the lawyers that you see on the other side. And I have, and I have had lawyers that I have a good enough relationship. After a case, I would ask them, you know, do you mind putting up a review of what you thought of me as a lawyer? And these are not reviews from clients. Now, I want you to imagine how powerful it may be if you are a new you know, if you're looking for a lawyer, and the review, and there are reviews coming from their adversaries. And you know, the best reviews are, I've had reviews from adversaries who have put on I thought Stephen was so good that I referred a case to him. So it doesn't have to even, you know, you can get reviews from all over the place. It doesn't necessarily have to be a client. It could be somebody who made a phone call. It could be even a vendor. You know, I've asked, you know, vendors, you know, you know, can you give me a review on what you know, what you think you know? Dealing with me has been like, there's a whole host of other people and entities that you could ask for reviews. But you know, I've told people about getting reviews from my adversaries, and sometimes they look at me like I'm crazy. But you know, again, over the years, I've developed relationships with defense lawyers because, you know, they're good people. And you know, great point. You. And, you know, listen, it's not always about fighting. You know, there's a lot of times in the case where you've got to do a solid for the other side, because we're all human, they may make a mistake and you don't want to take advantage. And when you do that, and they owe you one, it's always nice to be able to say, look, you know, remember, you missed that motion date and I gave you the adjournment without a hassle. You know, maybe you could just write something nice about me. So you know, if great suggested, you know, it's only limited by your creativity as so if you don't have one or two clients that you're giving checks to a week, there's a whole host of other people that have dealt with you and can say nice things about you.

Well, Steven, this was awesome. Thank you so much for your time and your trust, and frankly, congratulations on your success.

You got it. I appreciate it.

All right. Well, with that, we'll wrap up. If you enjoyed this and you're watching on YouTube or listening on the podcast, you know, please give us a five star review on YouTube or on the iTunes app or Spotify wherever you're listening. And take a minute you know, search Goldstein and handworker and give Stephen a five star review. We really appreciate it. Thanks everyone, and have a great rest of your day. Thanks Steven.

Thank you for listening to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. Please send questions and comments to podcast at 10 golden rules.com that is podcast at t e n golden rules.com you.