I've recently been having a lot of conversations about marketing software. Most of us love the idea of software doing more of the heavy-marketing-lifting. From marketing automation triggers to call tracking and routing, there's little doubt that the right software tools can make our marketing activities more efficient and effective. But it's important to note that software can't replace human marketing strategy and tactics. At least not yet.
Unless you have access to something like DeepMind, chances are that your software doesn't understand how to communicate the value of your services to your potential clients.
Even the best paid search bid management software still struggles without some human insight and analysis.
Even the best "SEO software," requires a skilled operator.
Of course, you're likely to see read contrary claims from some marketing software providers.
Take WordPress, for example. WordPress is great. We love it.
WordPress will not do your marketing for you.
I've seen folks pedaling "custom WordPress implementations" as a solution to client development.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a custom WordPress implementation. I'm not sure it's worth hundreds or thousands of dollars per month, but maybe it is to you.
But it won't write for you. It won't market your pages / posts for you. It won't engage with your audience for you. It won't build links for you. It won't give you insights and analysis about the value of what you're doing.
All that, at least for now, still requires Homo sapiens.
In competitive practice areas and cities, ROI and ROAS positive marketing takes time, money, and people.
Get results in terms of clients requires a regular stream of new ideas. It requires learning.
So, before you get sold on that shiny "marketing platform," consider who will be coming up with the ideas and executing the strategies that actually generate business.
Over the years, law firm prospects have sent us reports from just about all of our competitors. Unfortunately, even today, some law firm marketing agencies still mislead their clients via "reporting." One particularly egregious example comes in the form of ranking reports. Which prompted this LinkedIn post. To my surprise, I received a lot of […]
John Wanamaker supposedly said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." In an an effort to figure out "what half is working," attribution was born. Coupled with a transition from traditional, offline ads to digital media, attribution became the holy grail for analyzing advertising spends. But […]
I recently asked ChatGPT, "What are some of the top personal injury law firms in Chicago?? Actually, first I ask "who are some of the top personal injury lawyers in Chicago?" ChatGPT couldn't handle that one, so I modified the prompt. ChatGPT listed five very well-known firms downtown. Can you guess the other four? That's […]
If you're like me, you have some degree of AI, ChatGBT, Bard, exhaustion. Now don't get me wrong, this is stuff is remarkable and is changing, well, a lot. But before you hook up the ChatGPT API to your WordPress API and crank out 10,000 pages, here are a few things to think about. Let's […]
If you know me, you know my opinions about links and SEO advice from Google. If you don't, here's the TL;DR: Meh, links! Meaning, all things being equal, links still remain a competitive difference maker for ranking. Take Google's SEO advice with several grains of salt. Google has no economic incentive to help your site […]
The best marketing advice I can give you is to be authentic. Of course, you don't find that very helpful in terms of meeting your growth goals. So, you might decide to game the system. As I'm writing this, one of the more popular ways to gain the system is to pay for engagement. This […]
The following post was written by ChatGPT. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a state-of-the-art language model that can generate human-like text based on a given prompt or context. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that businesses, including law firms, market themselves to potential clients. One way that a law firm could use […]
How long does SEO take? When can I expect to see results? What results should I expect to see? These are all reasonable questions that we field from lawyers every day. And, like many legal answers, the answer is: It depends. Yes, I know that's not the answer you wanted. But it's the most honest […]
And how much time should they spend doing it? I recently had the privilege of chatting with Tyson, Jim, and Conrad for an upcoming episode of The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. If you're not familiar with The Maximum Lawyer community, you should definitely check it out. Jim asked a really great question about who should do […]
