Episode 132 – The Online Ante Attorneys Must Pay To Play

Today’s episode talks about different Ante’s that attorneys must pay to play the game of marketing, the game of competition and game of getting clients in 2016. Go ahead listen to this short audio below to find out the Ante’s you need to pay to start playing!

 

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs from Speakeasy Authority Marketing. I want to talk to you about Poker, maybe Texas hold them, maybe another forum but Poker. In Poker, there is an ante to play the game. You can’t just come in unless you put in some money. To be an attorney and to have effective marketing, there is also an ante, it’s called Google and Yelp and Avvo and sometimes other things but let me give you a couple of items that are required for you to ante into the game, the game of marketing, the game of getting clients online.

Number one is to have reviews, enough reviews. When I say enough, here is what I mean. On Google+ or Google Maps, if you notice, there are now three spots for attorneys. There used to be 7 for top keywords, now there are only 3. So look at the number of reviews the top guys have; do you have as many as them? Yes or no. If each of them 5 or 6 reviews, well then your ante is 5 or 6 reviews to compete there. If each of them have 20, your ante is a lot higher. But in order to get in the game, you got to have reviews on Google+ and the minimum ante is going to be 5 reviews. The reason for that is you want to get those gold stars next to your listing. Once you have that, your listing will pop out to searchers and it’s a lot more likely they’ll click on you. So that’s what you want to have there.

Another reason to have at least 5 reviews is again hopefully to show up in that three pack; secondly, to draw the eye of potential customers; third is if your website shows up organically for keywords that have maps and you show in maps, you’ll show up twice on the page which is great because again, that gets people to click on you more because they see you on several spots. Now, let’s move over to Yelp. Yelp, very, very important source of reviews nowadays. Again, same process. Look at your top competitors that are ranking, how many reviews do they have? Do you even have a Yelp listing? You got to have one. And again, you want to have the same or similar amount of reviews as the top guys in order to appear in Yelp.

Third place is AVVO, what’s your AVVO rating. Typical ante nowadays is a 9.0 or better. Lots of guys have figured out how to get 10.0s. Make sure you have an AVVO listing. Answer one question a week at a minimum. If you can do one a day, great, or have a legal assistant do it, but get that profile updated, get reviews not only from past clients but other attorneys. Here is a pro tip by the way. Other attorneys can review you on Google+ and Yelp, they don’t have to say their clients but they can say, “I’m attorney so and so, I know Bob Jones professionally. I worked with him in the San Diego Court system. He’s been practicing for 20 years. I see him do a great job for clients. He’s a strong advocate”, and so on. You can put reviews on this on Google or Yelp. There’s no reason why not; a review is a review. It doesn’t have to be from a client. So that may expand your thinking, your universe of how to get into that game and get there quicker.

Other antes. I want you to go to Google and put in your name and your state and the word attorney. So, “John Smith Florida attorney”. If your name is really common, you’re going to have to put the practice area, “John Smith Okaloosa, Florida criminal defense attorney”. What you’ll see is a page with your website, your map’s location, maybe some AVVO and Yelp and other reviews etc. This main page I’m going to call your Google bio page because it comes up when someone Googles your name. And this is yet another ante for the Poker game. When people are researching your site, they want to look for other third party validations besides reviews or an addition to make sure you’re the right guy. So they will Google your name and they will often do it with the state or the city or the practice area. You want to make sure this whole page is all you and it looks good. You can get videos on this page from Youtube, reviews from Yelp, AVVO, Thumbtack, different places. You want to have a fully filled out Google+ maps profile, all that stuff you want to appear on the page, not just nothing or complaints or mush. Again, look at your top competitors what do they have. Tell your SEO guys “Make my page look like theirs”, okay.

So, again, these are not all the stakes but these are most of the stakes to get in the game today in 2016 to compete and get clients. I want to give you one last one which is a real obvious one. You’ve got to have a website. If you don’t have a website, you’re probably not listening to this podcast, you’re far more advanced than that but if you don’t or if you have one that’s outdated sitting there and you’re not adding content, you got to jump on the train and get content done on a regular basis and have a modern website that is mobile-friendly. That is the other huge ante to get in the game nowadays.

The big reason is Google demands it, April 25^th, 2015, they publicly said so. They are going to devalue sites that are not mobile-friendly. Even if you are mobile-friendly, here’s the main reason. Now, mobile is nearly 70% of all traffic. If you’re not in that game, if your site doesn’t look good on mobile, you’re missing out and you can’t play the Poker game, especially the high stakes one where all the juicy clients come. So these are the factors. I hope this helps you. If you want more detailed information on this and if you want a personal analysis of your site, I have what I call a 5 tweaks that any lawyer can make to their websites even non-marketing savvy ones. You can email me Richard.Jacobs@speakeasymarketinginc.com to request that report free, or call us 888-225-8594. Thank you.

 

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