Episode 174 – Asking The Tough Questions About Your Marketing Dollars

How many times have you been approached by a marketing company who claims: “We’re a Google Certified Partner”, “Your Website is not Optimized Properly for Keywords”, “Your SEO is not optimized”?

What the heck does any of this jargon mean? It’s meant to confuse you and get you to sign up with a marketing company who, when pressed for details, says their marketing methods are proprietary.

I say, “bullshit”. If a marketing company comes at you with jargon, demand answers and clear explanations. Act like a good lawyer does and cross examine what they’re saying before you invest thousands on hopes and dreams.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Authority Marketing. Today, I want to talk to you about a couple of calls I’ve gotten recently from clients that are being approached by a company that I won’t name but I’ll tell you what they are saying because it’s interesting. So this company is calling them up and is saying that they are going to do all this new kind of marketing for them, so they — my one client says, “Yes, they are going to do target marketing, they are going to look at demographics, they are going to do community marketing and outreach marketing and they are going to do — they are going to put ads all over the place, all over the web and places that you can’t normally reach”, okay, great, sounds wonderful. So I’d say what does that mean target marketing, what does that mean community marketing, what do all these buzzwords they’re saying, what do they mean? Well, I don’t know, you got to talk to the rep but they said that they are going to put all of the stuff out all over the place and okay fine, I’ll talk to them. So we set up a call, I spoke to their rep today and I get the same speech from them, “We’re going to target this attorney’s clients. We’re going to do this marketing and that marketing”, so I said okay, well how are you going to do that? Are you going to use Google AdWords, are you going to use Facebook, are you going to use, “Oh, we do it all, we do it all. We do everything”. Okay, well how much you’re going to allocate specifically to AdWords to do that, are you going to allocate to Facebook, are you buying banner Ads on different websites, what kind of targeting are you going to do, how are you going to do the targeting? “Oh, we’ve got proprietary software that does all that and we target everyone and we know how to get people in all areas” and I said, “Okay, that’s great. You didn’t answer my question. What percentage of the budget’s going to go here and there and what is the budget?” “Well, we can’t disclose any of that”, okay, well how about the targeting, what metrics you’re going to use? “Well, we’re going to use appropriate targeting for the demographic and the psychographic of the clients of that particular attorney”, I said okay, well give me an example. Let’s talk about auto accidents. Who is more likely to get into an auto accident versus another person in any given state or city? “Well, our software does that and we have proprietary models that do that”, okay well, that’s news to me because I have never been able to target specific people that get into more accidents than others. To me, it seems like a pretty random occurrence. So if you’ve figured that out, that’s amazing. “Oh yes, we have these models”, all right, how about DUI? Again, it seems to happen to people from all walks of my life, what kind of targeting you’re going to do? “We have again proprietary model”, I said okay, so you don’t know anything, you don’t have any answers to me. “Well, we really can’t discuss”, and I said okay, what’s the point of the call, what do you need me for? I said obviously you have convinced them, thrown a lot of buzzards at them and they want to do business with you, great. What do you need for me? “Well, we needed to put this code on the website and that code on the website”, okay sure, I’ll do that for you, no problem. So I talked to my guys and they said, “What do you think, pretty impressive”, and I said, “Well, they say a lot of great words, sounds good but when I questioned them and asked them specifics, I didn’t get any. It sounds very much like a political person, they don’t give any specific answers, they just beat around the bush.” So I said it may work, it may not. Are you going to be in a long term contract, is this month to month? Oh, it’s a one year contract, it’s a 2-year contract. Okay, what if it doesn’t work? “Well, no. It’s going to work. They are really good”, okay. Well, I guess my advice for you ends there. I’ll work with the company and I’ll see what they do and let’s see how it works. So, the reason I am telling you this is that this is a very common thing that happens in business. People that are supposedly in the know will throw around jargon and buzzwords and terms meant to confuse you. Unfortunately, some lawyers do this with clients, they’ll use legal terms and that just confuses potential clients and sometimes it wins them over but many times, clients are quite smart just like you are quite smarter than attorney and you see through all that. So next time you are confronted with any rep that speaks to you, myself included, and they are throwing around terms and jargon and all that, make sure you ask them what does that mean. And if they are not able to give you specifics, don’t do business with them. If they are able to give you specifics, well great, now, you’ve got a hope of understanding what they are doing because if you don’t understand it and they can’t explain it, chances are it’s going to be a whole bunch of voodoo that’s pushed on you by some sales rep that in fact knows nothing about the real business. So go for specifics, use your training as an attorney to dig deep and find out exactly what you need to know and how it will benefit you. And this applies again to all of life but especially marketing. You are spending likely good money, quite a bit of money to do your marketing and you want to make sure it works for you. So don’t be afraid to ask these tough questions. I hope this helps.

If you do need help with your marketing, if you are looking for specific answers and details and reasons why courses of action may be good or bad, call us at 888-225-8594, or email Richard.Jacobs@speakeasymarketinginc.com. And don’t forget to subscribe and vote for this podcast. It helps get the message out to more attorneys like you. Thank you.

 

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