The 7 Essential Questions of Great Marketing

Allison Williams: [00:00:11] Hi everybody, it’s Allison Williams here, your Law Firm Mentor. Law Firm Mentor is a business coaching service for solo and small law firm attorneys. We help you grow your revenues, crush chaos in business and make more money.

 

Allison Williams: [00:00:25] Jordan Ostroff is a visionary entrepreneur, the president of Legal Marketing, the managing partner and CEO of Jordan Law in Florida and host of the Exhibit A Attorneys. And Let’s Get Up to Business podcast. He is also the chair of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Central Florida. So Jordan manages his own law firm, as I said before, and his law firm is focused on business law, personal injury and civil litigation. And his firm uses the latest technology and automation to provide top level legal work with a low volume of cases, but a high touch level of care and compassion. And the great thing about Jordan is that he took his personal experience being the son of a postal worker and a substitute teacher, being a first time lawyer, starting a business and being taken advantage of by a variety of different marketing companies that were really just in it to sell him something. And, you know, he was ignorant of marketing at the time and just bought what he thought he could afford. And next thing you know, he realized he had spent tens of thousands of dollars on marketing that just didn’t get him anywhere. So he went about the business of actually learning it for himself and then took that expertise and started LegalEase Marketing and LegalEase Marketing. Jordan approaches his his marketing business as a holistic lawyer focused on a marketing company, which is both a part full service marketing company as well as a part business consulting firm. Jordan prides LegalEase on treating his marketing clients the same way those lawyers treat their clients.

 

Allison Williams: [00:02:02] They come first. They own their own file, no conflicts of interest, and he is always out for the best interests of his client, be it his law client or his marketing client. Now, Jordan is one of those few individuals that I have heard the name of many, many times in our small ecosystem of law firm owners who are also in the business of consulting and helping lawyers to do the same thing that we do ultimately effectively grow our businesses. And I had heard his name before, but I didn’t really get to know him until quite recently. And then all of a sudden, everywhere I turn, he’s there. So he was there at the Law Firm Growth Summit hosted by Moshe Amsel. So he and I have had occasion to be in some of the same Facebook groups and we got to know each other. And I just I think Jordan is such a solid guy. He has a beatific smile. And I told him that at the start of our podcast episode that wasn’t recorded. But I share that with you because I get to see my guest. You don’t get to see my guest because we don’t use the video currently in our podcast. But I really, I take pride in bringing you resources that I myself can can have a level of confidence in. And even though I don’t currently use Jordan’s marketing services, I can tell from the way that he speaks about his clients, his mission, his goal, his objective in actually doing the, doing the good work that he promotes, but also in helping lawyers to achieve their business outcomes that we’re very much aligned in that regard.

 

Allison Williams: [00:03:35] So I have a lot of, a lot of pride in bringing him to the community. But I also, I want you to listen out for in this episode, my conversation with Jordan about some of the marketing hacks that I think are out there. And by marketing hacks, I’m not talking about people. I’m Actually talking about some of the strategies that you may have heard about that are a little bit hokey science and a little bit bullshit. If we’re just being honest and I try to get Jordan to debate me a little bit because, you know, I’m a lawyer who who consults with lawyers. He is a lawyer who consults with lawyers. So, of course, we both have that natural adversarial spirit in what we do. But it turns out, every time I threw something out there I thought was thought provoking and asked him to comment upon it, thinking that we would get into a loggerheads turned out not to be the case. We actually one hundred percent agree on just about everything, but it was still a great conversation. Jordan gave us a lot of insights. He has a division of his company that is fractional CMO. So you’re going to learn about that term and what that means. And we dive into some critical strategies and marketing that I think are kind of glossed over when you’re talking to a lot of marketers because they’re selling one specific thing. But Jordan really has an integrated approach that puts everything together in one cohesive strategy. So I think you’re going to learn a lot from this episode. Without further ado, Jordan Ostroff.

 

Allison Williams: [00:05:08] Jordan Ostroff, welcome to the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast,

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:05:13] Thank you so much for having me.

 

Allison Williams: [00:05:15] So I have the pleasure of actually seeing you because we’re in Zoom land, but our audience is only going to hear your dazzling personality, which I’m sure is going to come through the recording today. But I’m really excited to talk to you Jordan, because I’ve had the pleasure of knowing your name for a really, really long time, but not knowing the human behind the name. I just heard that there’s like this really cool guy that is both a recovering lawyer and a marketer. And I have another really good friend, Seth Price, who is also a lawyer and marketer. But it’s rare that you find one that I think has the level of skill that you have and kind of the background. So I want to talk to us. I want you to share with our audience a little bit about that. How did you become LegalEase Marketing and legal marketer to the stars while also being an attorney?

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:06:00] So one, any time I’m compared to Seth Price in remotely favorably, that is a huge compliment. So thank you. Well, the interesting thing for me is the more I look back, the more I realize I was a CMO of my law firm before I was anything else. Like ultimately, you know, you start your firm and your goal is to get the phone to ring, to get clients to come in to hire. That puts you as a marketer. And so I realized that I can find other people that were as good or better than me as attorneys. And I just couldn’t find the right marketing fit for myself. And so I kept setting myself down that path of learning, of actually learning marketing, of actually learning what I was doing, and then realized that a lot of those skills were transferable, one, to other lawyers or two, for other lawyers to put them in a position to have that time, that time freedom and flexibility and not be desperate for cases and not be shaking clients down for money and actually be able to have a practice that funds a life that they want to have.

 

Allison Williams: [00:06:55] Yeah, that’s a lovely thought. The idea of creating a practice that funds a lifestyle that you want to have, I think a lot of lawyers are aspiring to that, but haven’t quite got there. So the fact that you have gotten there is going to be definitely inspiration for the topic that we’re going to cover today, which is the seven essential questions of great marketing. So let’s dive into that first. Who who am I marketing to? I know that that is question number one. Talk to us about that.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:07:21] Yeah. So I think a lot of people lose sight of who the marketing is geared towards. So especially when it comes to social media, a lot of those posts that you’re making really are geared towards referral sources or they’re geared towards prior clients just as much or more than they’re geared towards potential future clients. And so you really have to sit down and think about who am I marketing to in that respect? But then also, what are the demographics of that person? What what’s the life situation that they’re going through? What’s the issue that they’re having? The more that you have that, we call it an ideal client avatar in mind, the more you can answer all these other questions correctly, because the more that you think like that person, the more you can think about how to market to them.

 

Allison Williams: [00:08:03] Yeah. So sounds like psychographics, right? Kind of how the person thinks, what’s under the hood, all that stuff that leads them to take action and ultimately make a buying decision.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:08:12] Psychographics, demographics. I mean, just the more clear that picture is the better. And so if you’re sitting here thinking, my client is anybody who walks through my door or anybody who has a car or anybody, you’re not going to be able to craft a message that resonates with anybody.

 

Allison Williams: [00:08:31] That is so brilliant that you say that, because I’ve heard a lot of lawyers say that my my ideal client is a person who pays the bills.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:08:38] While it may be a good client that cannot be your ideal client because otherwise you might as well just go up to the tallest building in your city and just chuck business cards into the wind.

 

Allison Williams: [00:08:48] Well, that’s true. And unfortunately, I think that is the way that some people think about marketing, is kind of like I just say something to someone and people will find me. But of course, we want the right people to find us for the right service, right?

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:08:59] Yes. And I always tell people, think like a magnet. You know, you are going to piss people off, you’re going to repel people, but you want to repel the ones that aren’t the right fit because that will help you attract the ones that are. And so you get these really vanilla marketing campaigns that don’t do anything because they don’t want to rock the boat, whereas something that actually took a stance would get you so many more clients because people would actually latch on to something in there.

 

Allison Williams: [00:09:25] Ok, so let’s say we have the ideal person, right, we know who this person is. We we have their demographics, we know their age, their race, their gender, their their marital status, household income. Then we know they’re psychographics. We know how they think. We know where they shop. We know what they spend their activities on. We know what their values are. We know what their political affiliations if that matters. And we have this person really dialed in. What do we do with that ideal client avatar? What’s the next major question that we need to ask in order to be effective with that information?

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:09:54] So I always like starting their question to being what’s the best way to communicate my existence or message or brand? And from that standpoint, I mean, like, are we doing written ads? Are we doing audio visual? The most obvious example is if you’re targeting people who are deaf, you don’t want to do audio. But like but take that same concept for everybody. If you’re an estate planning attorney and you want to work with people in their 60s who have above five million dollars worth of revenue or worth of assets, you’re going to market in a much different manner and in much different locations than if you’re trying to target some twenty five year old that just launched their macaroons out of their garage business. And so really think about what sort of, not just the platform, but what sort of way to communicate your message is going to resonate the most with that audience.

 

Allison Williams: [00:10:41] Yeah. So if we’re talking about the way to communicate the message, you know, I’ve heard this this kind of maxim recently and I don’t know how you feel about it, but I’m curious the idea that video is now the way that we communicate because the American attention span is so short that we need to have the video, the visual and the audio stuck together so that somebody can immediately have an impactful experience of someone. What are your thoughts about that?

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:11:06] So I’m a huge fan of video and or but one of those to the benefit of video is you can pull audio from the video, you can pull images from video. You can’t do the reverse. And so, like, when we do our, I don’t do a podcast, I start as a Facebook live show and then we go to a podcast, because that way I have a video, I have the audio, and I can give people the way that they want to go forward to listen to us or watch us. But from the standpoint of marketing, you, I’m not going to pay to push the audio version of it. I’m going to pay to push the video version of it or or vice versa, depending upon who I’m trying to target. And so you really have to think about what makes the most sense to that ideal client. Are you pushing them to a podcast or are you pushing them to a written newsletter or are you pushing them to a YouTube channel? Are you pushing them to, whatever it’s going to be? Because that’s going to impact how you spend your money in marketing.

 

Allison Williams: [00:12:04] Yeah, so there’s some gold in that. I love the idea that if you start with video, you have the image and the audio versus if you start with audio, you just have the audio. And I think there is definitely value to that that perspective. And I know that that a lot of people in our audience are terrified of video and they don’t want to go off script. They don’t want to be seen that they don’t want to have the opportunity for trolls to pick up the size of their teeth or the way that they say certain words. You know, what would you say to somebody who’s kind of at that, you know, I think I need to stay in my lane and be over here and lawyering, world, not not out there playing broadcaster out in the in the Facebook streets.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:12:41] So this is the downside of us doing this audio. People can’t see me. Like I do video all the time. I have like an eighteen hundreds Cavalry beard right now that will eventually get trimmed. But like I look like this and nobody cares. And I know I have, I have heard that it is different for women and I can’t I can’t even begin to speak to the trolls that come out in that manner. But like nobody’s watching the videos because I’m pretty. They’re watching the videos because I’m providing good value. And you have to think the same way. And if you do get trolls, I love the Gary Vee thing of like here’s somebody that took time out of their day to just try and crap on your morning. And I’m like, I’m almost, I’m so saddened for those people that have nothing better to do than write like, you’re, you’re unattractive or you have a big forehead or whatever they’re going to write. So be it. You know, at the end of the day, I think you’re going to find that you’re going to get ten times as many positive comments or more. And the more that you just sort of, I don’t want to say pity, but like the more you feel legitimately bad for the people that are wasting their time trolling, the more you’ll just focus on the people that are getting great value out of whatever it is that you’re doing.

 

Allison Williams: [00:13:46] Yeah, well, I definitely have heard that it is different for women as well. I interviewed one of my clients one time and you know, the number of comments that came out, they weren’t they weren’t negative comments. They were inappropriate sexual comments, I hear. So I hear a lot of women going to detract from that. And, you know, it’s an unfortunate part of the process. But I mean, I’ll tell you what a comment is, a comment. Right. Those comments are like the algorithms, for what it’s worth.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:14:11] That is very true. If you get if you get ten thousand death threats, your video is going to be seen by that many more hundreds of thousands of people based upon those comments.

 

Allison Williams: [00:14:19] All right. So we’ve got our ideal client avatar and we’ve considered what is the best way to communicate, so what is the mechanism that we’re going to use, video, audio, written, etc.. What do we next need to ask? What’s the next essential question that we have to ask in order to get our marketing dialed in.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:14:34] So next becomes where are our ideal clients or where are the target of our marketing or are they going to be? And remember, we want to filter this through the context of what manner in which you’re pushing the message out there. So what I mean by that is if you are going, if you’re going text heavy, you’re not going to be marketing on Instagram because that is not a text based platform. If you’re going video heavy, you can push it almost anywhere. I guess maybe not Twitter, but so think about it from that perspective. What platform are my ideal clients using? A what platform are my ideal referral sources using if I’m marketing to them? And then is that a platform that’s going to make sense with the context of my ad being just a video or just audio or written or whatever it is along those lines?

 

Allison Williams: [00:15:20] Yeah, well, you know, this is one of the first times I think a marketer is actually said, you know, think about the demographics of your platform because, you know, there’s a different user for Facebook than for Twitter or Instagram or Tiktok and even Clubhouse. And I think a lot of people are kind of of the mindset of where let me go to a place where I’m comfortable. But you really have to think about where your people are and go for, go where your people are. Right. If the people are on Clubhouse, that’s where you need to be versus, you know, I like to be on Facebook, so that’s where I’ll stay.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:15:51] And I’m OK with splitting the difference. Like take where they’re going to be and take what you’re comfortable with and then try to find ideally some sort of an overlap there. I think the most interesting one is business attorneys. So you’re a business attorney, you’re working with business owners and business owners are going to be in a couple of different places depending upon what your niche is. The more you’re working with these more old school companies, with these higher level executives, larger companies, the more that something like LinkedIn, the more it’s those younger creative companies, those new startups, whatever it is, the more it might be Instagram or Clubhouse or something along those lines. And so that’s why it’s it’s interesting to think about the platforms where your client is or where your ideal referral sources are. If that’s a platform that fits the way that you want to market your message.

 

Allison Williams: [00:16:37] Yeah. And, you know, I just kind of a, kind of a corollary to that is you also have to think about how many people that you actually need to reach in order to achieve your financial goals, because you might be able to even if all of your people are are localized in one location, but you’re also in another place, you may be able to drive enough traffic from both of those platforms to ultimately achieve the financial goal that’s it. That’s really the point of marketing in the first place,

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:17:00] Which is, which is amazing to me, how how many people don’t follow that point. Because at the end of the day, like, you might need 10 clients a month. That may get you where you need to be, and so if you’re doing something to get in front of a hundred thousand people who have a zero, point zero zero one percent chance of hiring you, then you hit your numbers.

 

Allison Williams: [00:17:23] Well, OK, so that’s very smart. But I will, since you since you went there, I’m going to, I’m going to dig at you a little bit as a marketer, because one of the things that marketers do a lot is you guys talk about impressions and I tell people, you know what, impressions don’t mean a heck of a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, because totally, if a million eyeballs see your message, but none of them are in your target market, then a million eyeballs is really zero. (Yep.) So, like, you know, when we when we talk about, you know, you’ve got to get to that point zero zero zero zero one percent. I think that really is an appropriate statistic for really talking about lead flow and not necessarily impressions when you’re buying marketing or when you’re considering how much time, money, effort to invest in a particular marketing strategy.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:18:07] So, yes. I mean, we’re going to go, I mean, we can jump up to question six now, because that goes right in what you’re talking about here. Or we can circle back to this then.

 

Allison Williams: [00:18:15] So you guys can tell this is not scripted. I didn’t mean to, like, jump ahead of the question. I just, you know, you say some, you say some very insightful things. And sometimes the first thing that comes to mind, it just kind of like it comes out of me. That’s that’s kind of how we roll over here.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:18:28] So great minds think alike. We are both on the same page that that is definitively a factor to consider when you’re paying for market, when you are marketing, period. Certainly when you’re paying for it.

 

Allison Williams: [00:18:37] Yeah. All right. So then let’s say in the wonderful cue of the great questions that we have here, so we have covered having your ideal client avatar, making sure you identify the best way to communicate with that person or the image of that person where those people are. Where are my people is definitely one of the things we teach here at Law Firm Mentor. What is the next thing that has to be considered the next essential question of great marketing?

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:19:01] What problem am I really solving? I promise you, not a single one of your clients really wants to hire a lawyer. They want to get money for their accident. They want to not have a criminal record, impact them for the rest of their life. They want to know that their family is covered when they pass away. Nobody coming to you actually wants to hire a lawyer. They don’t want to give you their money. They want a problem to go away. And you really have to find what your true, what you are actually selling.

 

Allison Williams: [00:19:32] Yeah, I think that is brilliant. And I think it really goes to something that a lot of lawyers struggle with. Right. Because we are so infatuated with what we do. Right. We love to talk about the trial, the jury, the the cross-examination, the evidence rules. And we think about the logistics, the features and benefits much more so than the outcome that people are really hiring us for. So if somebody were to say to you, like, I don’t even know where to start to to go from selling the complaint and the trial and the the motion that I’m going to facilitate to get to that outcome, to switching to talking about the outcome, how do you even go about that process of analyzing that for someone and guiding them to changing their their messaging?

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:20:15] So follow through these questions. So now we already have the person in mind. We already are thinking about where they are or where they’re going to be. So now it becomes why are they going to be there? If you’re doing Google ads, why what are they going to Google for? They’re going to Google to find an attorney who does what. You know, if you’re if you’re pushing referrals, why are they going to that referral source? Why are they contacting their financial advisor to make sure that something is lined up to make sure a problem goes away? I think the easy fallback for attorneys is we sell peace of mind. I think that’s sort of the catch. All that will cover ninety nine percent of our opportunities. But it’s not the best one. It’s not the unique one to us. It’s not the core function. But potentially, if you start there, you can find your specific, I don’t want to say sales pitch because that’s not the right way to look at it. But your specific problem that you solve, your specific benefit to their life or their business or their finances or whatever it is that you are really helping them through, because most people are coming to an attorney in their biggest time of need or to prevent being in their biggest time of need for anybody who’s working proactively to do contracts or whatnot. It’s to avoid a really terrible situation.

 

Allison Williams: [00:21:28] Yeah. And, you know, since you, since you reference that, you know, when you’re talking about who the people are that you are selling to, one of the things that the lawyers have a lot of resistance to, but that is an easy fix for me. it’s just simply to ask the people that you’ve served. What was it that you wanted when you came here? What was it that you got out of the process? And what was that ultimately that you would say was your biggest takeaway? And when you ask the people that actually hired you, you’ll find the answers to exactly that. What was the outcome that they wanted and how did you help them get there? That’s kind of the punch line, if you will, of having a great consultation with someone.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:22:02] Yeah, and and to take that a step farther, the other thing I would do is read reviews that people write for your firm or similar firms to you. What is it that they are explaining? Ideally, a lot of them are going to talk about how great the experience was and you can try to work that into the process. But also a lot of them will talk about how that affected their life or how that impacted them going forward. And that’s what you’re truly selling, is that positive impact for the rest of their life.

 

Allison Williams: [00:22:26] Yeah, absolutely. And it is a life change. Right? I mean, for all of the negative jokes that are out there about lawyers, we are really the glue of society. So when you think about the fact that something is either happened to you that you want to address or you’re trying to prevent something from happening, or you’re trying to create something in society that requires the rule of law, we facilitate that. And so when you think about it from that perspective, it is asking yourself, what is it that we’re actually doing? Like what are we helping people to accomplish for their lives, not just for the legal moment that they’re going to hire us.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:22:59] Absolutely. And the more that you really figure that out, the more you craft that into the messaging of all of your marketing.

 

Allison Williams: [00:23:07] Yeah, sexy stuff here. All right. So let’s keep going on our, on our magic list of essential questions. So once we know what solution that we are creating for a person, what is the problem that we are solving? What is the next essential question that we have to ask for our great marketing?

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:23:23] To me, the biggest one is then, am I marketing to a reactive need or a proactive need? Because that’s going to change how we get that message across. And for example, if you were doing criminal defense or personal injury, ninety nine percent of your clients or more are going to be reactive. They just got injured. They just got arrested. There’s something going on. They need you, ASAP. Whereas if you’re doing estate planning or if you’re doing business formation, for the most part, people are coming to you proactively. They don’t necessarily need it now. But the sooner it happens, the sooner they will avoid whatever problem would be if they don’t have your work and that will change where you market, that will change how you market, that will change what you say, that will change your timeline of follow up. That’s a huge thing to think about that I think most lawyers don’t focus on when it comes to marketing.

 

Allison Williams: [00:24:10] Yeah. So, you know, I know marketing and selling are different. One of the things that we do, we like to do is connect those two pieces so that people see the continuation of a marketing funnel into the sales process. And when you talk about reactivity versus proactivity, even when someone someone’s being proactive, you know, our goal is still to get them to the place where they are reacting to some need that they have in the moment so that they make that buying decision today and not three weeks from now, three months from now, three years from now, because it’s a non-issue. Because if you think about it, especially with estate planning, right. You know, a lot of people are like, well, if if I don’t have my my trust documents in order now I’m forty eight years old. I’m in relatively good health. What’s the big deal if I wait on this until that person walks out and gets hit by a bus tomorrow? Well, that was actually a need in your mind that caused you some urgency to come in that you didn’t respond to. So we really have to be careful when we think about proactive and reactive that we allow ourselves to see that there is a reactive need, that the person is just not necessarily as tapped into when they come see us well.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:25:13] But a lot of times to take that a step further, a lot of times that puts goes back into the marketing. So, too, that 40 year old I want to tell a story about somebody that looks a lot like them from a demographic standpoint who got hit by the bus. You know, like I would market that story to them as part of this to be like, hey, you think you can wait until you can, whereas on the reactive side, they know that they need something. It’s a question of getting in front of them faster, getting in front of them quicker, getting in front of them more to the point of why they need you A.S.A.P., because there may be a statute of limitations issue they may have to treat in a certain time to get certain coverage. You know, there’s all sorts of things that they could legitimately make a mistake out of thousands of dollars if they don’t talk to a lawyer ASAP. Whereas on that proactive need, I want to educate my client on why that is a need that needs to be addressed now and can’t be put off.

 

Allison Williams: [00:26:06] Right. And that’s why someone would need a really good marketer like you, Jordan, somebody that can actually take what seems to be something that can wait and create an urgency or tap into an urgency that frankly, because people don’t people don’t just pick up the phone and call a lawyer just just cause. Right, like, oh, I got some free time. I’ll reach out and call a lawyer and buy something. You know, it’s very much driven by their perception of need. So, you know, marketers are really very beneficial, if not necessary and essential in that particular area to make sure that that need is felt by the prospect.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:26:38] Yeah. And, you know, I always love to talk about this from the standpoint of estate planning, the difference between somebody doing a will or a trust package versus having to do probate on their estate, that’s your reactive versus proactive. And so when you’re trying to target that new family that just had a kid that probably for the first time in their life is considering getting an estate plan, you know, then you market to them, hey, the twenty five most important things to know now that they have a kid. Yes. He’ll get this tax credit and you’ve got to look at schooling and this and that and also get your estate plan as opposed to the probate stuff where somebody passed away and people have no idea what to do in terms of getting the assets moved or or whatever it’s going to be in the different states, then you’re going to have to craft that message much differently because you may have to give one specific direct answer as quickly as possible versus giving twenty five points of value, one or two of which involve your legal services.

 

Allison Williams: [00:27:28] Yeah, and that’s another reason why, frankly, I love people like you and Seth. The fact that you you might not necessarily be a lawyer that practices in all different areas, but having someone who’s in our world and understands all of the minutia of being a lawyer and and is able to then marry that to what I consider to be the creative art and science of marketing, I think there’s both involved. There is I think this is critical. And I’m not saying that as a sales pitch for you, Jordan, but just in general, that’s my my personal perspective. I love working with lawyers because. Lawyers get lawyers, right?

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:28:00] Well, my my ideal my dream would be to turn marketing into a science, but unfortunately, it’s an art. And so the best we can do is what’s worked in the past, an understanding of psychology and understanding of the platforms and combine those together in a way where we remove as many variables to make it as close to a science experiment as we can. But at the end of the day, when you’re dealing with people, there’s always going to be some art to it.

 

Allison Williams: [00:28:24] Yeah, well, I mean, so here’s here’s where I’m going to disagree with you just a little bit. So. (OK) I know. He got really excited. Like let’s have a fight. Lawyers love to debate. So I love the idea of art in marketing. Right. It’s very clear. It’s about the graphic presentation. It’s about the messaging. There certainly is a lot of creativity involved in it. But the science aspect is the fun. If you think about it like the when you start talking about how many people do I need to be in front of and how what percentage of those are going to be my leads and how many of those leads are viable and how many of those viable leads can I, through my messaging internally in my office, get them to schedule appointments? And how many of those through my strategic orchestration, can I get to actually show up for the appointment and then convert to a client? All of that, I think, is very much about skill and about tactic and strategy, which I would refer to in the realm of science, as opposed to some of the more visual presentations and understanding the psychology of humans and what to say to them. What do you say to that?

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:29:25] I totally agree with you. But…

 

Allison Williams: [00:29:27] We’re supposed to be disagreeing Jordan!

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:29:28] You, but if you look at that funnel. So you have art at the top of that funnel, and then we go into data and then we go into science. But like we do still have that one band, you know like, the same ad is not going to work the same for everybody for a million different reasons. But you are so correct. Like, the more you have that data and those numbers and that intersection on the the buyer’s journey, the lower end of the funnel, the sales process, whatever you want to call it, the easier it is to make any changes. Because the issue that I have found is you’ll get attorneys who are not busy one month. So they call all their leads back 15 times and they set their second consults and they sign up eight clients and then they’re super busy the next month. And now they don’t call anybody back and they don’t get the second consults. And now they’re like, well, why do my ads suck? You’re like, you know, the ads didn’t change. You changed the entire bottom part of all those numbers that feed into it. And so, like, a big thing of what we’ve had to do is, is systematize and standardize that intake process so that you do actually know the numbers that back the ads based upon consistent work from the attorney side.

 

Allison Williams: [00:30:29] Yeah, well, and I think that’s kind of the brilliance of it. Like the, there is, unfortunately, I think the passivity of lawyers when it comes to marketing, because we don’t understand it and we already feel overwhelmed running our businesses so we don’t take the time to really learn it. So we just kind of say, here, marketer, here’s a check. You go do what you do and you ask me some questions and I fill out some forms and then you go create and then all the responsibility is on the marketer. And I think where that is missing is the marriage between what’s actually happening in the law firm. Right. All of the how many people are calling, how frequently are you calling them back? At what percentage are you converting to just getting appointments on first call versus second call versus third call? How how long are they in the funnel before you get to an absolute know when they step out of the funnel? All of that has to be shared with the marketing team so they know is it likely the ads flow, not just are we getting fewer clicks, but are the, are the clicks not meaningful because the people that are being responsive to them are not ultimately your ideal client. They’re not responding the right way. It is a partnership.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:31:31] Absolutely. So I, I am of the belief that marketing should always be done with you. It might be ninety nine point nine nine nine percent the marketing company and whatever is left you. But there needs to be some sort of back and forth because ultimately, you know, we talk about funnels, but I like to think of it as a chain from this perspective. If you have a weak link in that chain, the entire chain isn’t that strong. So the more there’s a conversation in both directions to figure out why you have that weak link, the easier it is to fix that. Maybe it’s bad ads, maybe it’s a bad intake person. Maybe it’s charging too much. Maybe it’s charging too little. Maybe it’s a bad landing page. You don’t know unless you really have all of that lined up in a way where you can check the information going in and the information coming out or the impressions going in and out or the leads going in and out or the calls or the consult, whatever it is.

 

Allison Williams: [00:32:22] Yeah, which is another reason why I don’t know if this is your philosophy, but I always tell people I used to be very, very skeptical about long term contracts. Right. We don’t want to get locked in. We want to be able to walk away when we want. But then I realized it takes a minute to really get the right relationship and to have all of those pieces working in tandem. So you’ve got to have the right communication coming into the firm. Then you got to have the right person on the phone or the right people on the phone saying the right things in the right way, getting people scheduled, and then you got to have the right person who can actually close them. So it’s a marketing, marketing accounts versus …. And I’m just kind of all over the place right now, but it’s a marketing communication leading into a phone sales communication, leading into a consultation which all of, all of those players have to work together in order for it to work.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:33:16] Absolutely, but here’s, here’s my one thing on that I, I love Netflix, and what I love about Netflix is Netflix doesn’t have to sell you once. Technically, Netflix has to sell you every 30 days so that you keep the service going and every subscription is going to be the same. And so I have had the experience of locking myself into some sort of long term contract that I hated and I regretted the entire time. And I dropped it immediately. Whereas the companies that have been willing to do shorter contracts or 30 days or no contract, I’ve found to make a million other decisions to make that process great the whole way through. And so we do have some contracts with some people based upon it gives them a cheaper rate based upon we finance a larger project over a period of time. But ultimately, from the standpoint of ads, from the standpoint of SEO, from the standpoint of anything where we’re providing say the same thing over and over again, like I want us to be just as invested in keeping you happy as you are and being happy with it in both directions.

 

Allison Williams: [00:34:18] Yeah. All right. So we have now, like, meandered a while. And of course, this is me kind of like riding off the plantation here. But I want to make sure that we cover all of the essential questions. So just as a quick recap, we have talked about starting with your ideal client avatar. We’re now going to know how to communicate the best way to communicate with that person or people where those people are, which platforms we’re refining them. How can we get a hold of them? What problem we are solving is number four. Number five, am I marketing in reactive mode or proactive modes so my messaging is succinct and created consistent with either of those needs. And then am I looking for. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding type of lead. And that is number six.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:35:02] Am I looking for quantity of leads or am I looking for quality of leads? And this goes to your impressions that you brought up beforehand. This is a huge thing because you are going to market differently if you want numbers and you are going to market differently if you want a higher or I guess I should say, number of impressions or number of leads versus higher close rate. And ideally, you want to balance those two things. But the more that you think about how successful do you want the plan to be or what success looks like, the more you’ll know where to go.

 

Allison Williams: [00:35:34] Ok, so when you talk about number of leads, I think there is a balance between quantity and quality, right? Especially when a firm doesn’t have their marketing all dialed in because, you know, I got to pay the bills. Right. So I might want the ideal client who is the man in his forties with a family and assets of five million dollars or more. But I might take Suzy, the homemaker, who is in her 50s and recently divorced, who has assets of under a million dollars because I got to pay the bills. So how do you balance the quality quantity question as you are designing your marketing strategy?

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:36:11] So for the most part, you want to start with quality of leads and then work to adding more of a quantity for the most part. And so, like I always tell people, we look at marketing from three different avenues. There’s awareness, there’s consideration and there’s intent. And so awareness marketing billboards are going to be your most common example. You are never going to get a cheaper impression than a billboard, because I guess maybe not during a lockdown, but during normal times. Thousands of people are driving past it. You have thousands of eyeballs on it all the time. But is a billboard going to be more effective than Google ads where you you may only have 20 people look at your ad, but if 10 of them clicked it and five of those became clients, one, those are insane numbers. But ultimately you’re going to get a lot more potential clients out of that because that’s somebody intending to go on Google, intending to find an attorney, intending to get somebody to help them through their case and then considerations in the middle. So those I think of more like Facebook ads lead magnate’s something where they may not be aware of you. They may not be aware that they have a need. They’re going to be somewhere in the middle. They may not want to purchase just right now, but there may be some value or information you can get to them. And so usually we are looking at intent and working our way back as you have a larger and larger budget. That’s not going to be the case every time, but that’s when in doubt, I would say that’s the way to go.

 

Allison Williams: [00:37:30] All right. So we know now that we have to start with quality and work our way up to quantity in most circumstances, and that we have to consider both of those when we’re building out our marketing plan. So we have covered now the top six questions. We need to now get to the fast and final, but certainly not least important. Question number seven. And what is the seventh essential question of marketing?

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:37:53] So this is what do I want somebody to do after seeing this marketing? What is my call to action? What is my CTA? Am I trying to get people to subscribe to our YouTube channel or am I trying to get them to sign up for my newsletter so they can stay in my wheelhouse? Am I trying to get them to book a call? Am I trying to get them to download our course or our free ebook? What do I want them to do after seeing this? Because you should you should have that in mind for everything that you do. A lot of times it may be commenting on a social media post. The only thing you may want them to do is like that post or add a comment to it. But you should have something in mind that you want people to do on every piece of marketing that you’re doing.

 

Allison Williams: [00:38:30] Yeah. So in terms of CTAs, we know, like you just said, you gave us several of them. Sometimes it is getting content from us, sometimes it is engaging with our content online and sometimes it’s booking a call. So how do you and I would imagine that most lawyers would say every time that they see anything that I market, I want them to become a client. So how do we, how do we decide between kind of the getting someone into our funnel and being able to warm them up and nurture them, that cold traffic to warm versus the warm traffic to hot, i.e., somebody who’s in our funnel. We’re sending out a message to them we want them to buy now.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:39:05] So that’s where we kind of go back to that reactive, proactive standpoint, the more that you are dealing with people who have proactive needs, the more it actually might be worth it for you to build a relationship with them. So if you’re doing business law, if you’re doing estate planning, having somebody sign up, if you’re doing a monthly newsletter or biweekly newsletter or whatever it is that may actually have more value than in booking a call with you on day one, because they may learn of 15 other things that you can help them with that they need as they are reading through your newsletter or through on your YouTube. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, something along those lines, whereas if it’s proactive, that person’s already found a lawyer to solve the problem that they have. So that’s not going to be as worthwhile of a call to action for you.

 

Allison Williams: [00:39:45] All right. So we’re going to end with a call to action. And of course, I know that everyone loves the call to action at the end of the Law Firm Mentor’s podcast, where we ask you, of course, where can someone get a hold of you if they want to know more about LegalEase Marketing or how to ultimately go about the process of answering those seven essential questions of great marketing.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:40:05] Sure. So you can go to our website, LegalEase marketing dot com, or you can like our Facebook page. But ideally I would say follow me on LinkedIn. There are two Jordan Ostroffs. I’m the only one who’s a lawyer. Only one with a beard, whatever it is. You’ll find me on LinkedIn. O S T R O F F And so I try to post free information on LinkedIn every day. If you like everything I’m posting, we’re probably a good fit to work together. If you think I’m an idiot or you disagree with it, then you can find somebody else, probably. And that goes back to my turning yourself into a magnet. I try to walk, I try to walk the walk, walk what I walk, walk what I say,

 

Allison Williams: [00:40:40] Walk the walk, walk the talk. Something along those lines. Something along those lines. OK, well, I did not know that there was more than one Jordan Ostroff. I found you right away on LinkedIn.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:40:51] I didn’t know either until… He gets a ton of job of job offers. A ton. So he is doing something right and I keep telling them that it’s me, not him. And a bunch of them don’t believe me. And I’m like, all right. Well, I don’t know what to tell you.

 

Allison Williams: [00:41:02] All right. Well, you got a whole, you got to hook up with Jordan in, like, make sure that the the funnel from Jordan to Jordan is built out so that you’re getting all those opportunities that are going to the other Jordan.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:41:14] If if other Jordan Ostroff listens to this, connect with me man. I’ve tried to send you all those job opportunities. I don’t know if it’s worked.

 

Allison Williams: [00:41:20] All right. Now, I’m going to send other Jordan Ostroff a copy of this podcast.

 

Jordan Ostroff: [00:41:24] There we go.

 

Allison Williams: [00:41:26] But in all seriousness, thank you so much, Jordan, for being with us. You, of course, have always been a great wealth of knowledge. I had the pleasure of following you and consuming some of your content before we were formally introduced, even though we’ve been in the same circles for quite a while together. I have a lot of respect for what you do in fractional CMO work, and I think a lot of lawyers will benefit from knowing the seven essential questions of great marketing. So thank you for being our guest today to share that with everyone. And everyone, I am Allison Williams, your Law Firm Mentor. Thank you as always for tuning in to the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. Have a great day.

 

Allison Williams: [00:42:14] Thank you for tuning in to the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. To learn more about today’s guests and take advantage of the resources mentioned, check out our show notes. And if you own a solo or small law firm and are looking for guidance, advice or simply support on your journey to create a law firm that runs without you, join us in the Law Firm Mentor Movement free Facebook group. There, you can access our free trainings on improving collections in law firms, meeting billable hours, and join the movement of thousands of law firm owners across the country who want to crush chaos in their law firm and make more money. I’m Allison Williams, your Law Firm Mentor. Have a great day.