Your Marketing Agency Might Be a Sith Lord (Red Flags for Law Firms)

Welcome to Episode 23 of The Legal Intake Experts podcast! For more than a decade, Answering Legal has helped growing law firms ensure they never miss a chance to connect with new leads. Now, we’re pulling back the curtain to share our best strategies for strengthening your intake process and turning more callers into clients.

This week, producer Joe dares Nick and Tony to prove just how big of Star Wars nerds they really are, and neither one holds back. Out come Yaddle (the other member of Yoda’s species), Count Dooku’s days as Yoda’s Padawan, the two very different things the word “Sith” can mean and the cat Nick named Ahsoka long before it was cool. Then the hosts turn the theme into one of the most practical episodes the show has done: a field guide to the bad actors hiding in legal marketing.

Nick sorts the red flags by how well they’re disguised. The Darth Maul version is the agency that won’t let you own your own website, ad accounts or data, and pulls it all down if you leave. The Count Dooku version is smoother: a vendor that runs your ad spend on its own credit card and quietly marks up the invoice. From there, Nick and Tony make the case against single-channel marketing, explain why Google Ads only ever gets more expensive, separate white hat SEO from the shortcuts that eventually bite back, and lay out the Jedi way — a partner who insists you own everything, asks about your goals before selling you anything and follows up to ask how the leads they sent you actually closed.

Check out the episode below. You can also enjoy it on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music.

Topics Covered

• Proving Star Wars nerd credentials: Yaddle, Count Dooku and the two kinds of Sith
• Why “we own your website and ad account” is the least disguised red flag in legal marketing
• Domain registration and hosting under one vendor, and what happens when you leave
• Ad spend markups hidden inside a “Google Ads invoice”
• What it looks like when an agency isn’t actually spending your budget
• Single-channel pitches and the “this is all you need” scare tactic
• Why Google Ads never gets cheaper, and what deep-pocketed competitors do to your market
• Why paid search works better with brand, local presence and community sponsorships behind it
• Specialist agencies vs. agencies that claim one channel is enough
• Great ads, bad landing pages
• Anyone who has all the answers is selling you something
• White hat vs. black hat SEO, private backlink networks and LinkedIn engagement pods
• Why safe link building is slow, and why shortcuts bite back
• The Jedi way: ownership, partnership and starting with your business goals
• The green flag: a partner who asks how your leads closed, not just how many there were
• Lead volume vs. case outcomes, and which metric your vendor is actually paid on

People & Resources Mentioned

• Jared Correia — Red Cave Legal Consulting; co-founder of the Legal Broadcasting Company
• Ron Latz — LegalFenix; previous guest on the show
• Conrad Saam — Mockingbird Marketing; co-host of Lunch Hour Legal Marketing
• Tifiny Swedensky — Sharp Cookie
• John Morgan — Morgan & Morgan
• Bo Royal and Jacob Barufkin — Pareto Legal
• Chris Watson — EverSpark Interactive, where Nick first learned SEO
• Annette Choti — Law Quill
• Gyi Tsakalakis — AttorneySync
• Google Ads and Google’s AI Overviews
• Star Wars — A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Revenge of the Sith, The Rise of Skywalker and The Clone Wars

Got a favorite Star Wars fact? Share it with Nick and Tony in the comments on the YouTube video or in a review on your podcast app.

The Legal Intake Experts is part of the Answering Legal podcast network. Interested in learning more about Answering Legal? Click here to learn more about 400 minute free trial!

Check out the previous episode of The Legal Intake Experts here!

Episode Transcript:

Nick Werker (00:02)

We are back once again on The Legal Intake Experts Podcast presented by Answering Legal. I am Nick Werker. I am presented by Answering Legal and by coffee. Joined as always by my co-host, Tony Prieto. How are you, Tony?

Tony Prieto (00:21)

I’m insulted.

Tony Prieto (00:26)

We have done our audience a disservice.

Nick Werker (00:31)

This is this is I don’t know I don’t know what you’re doing. Okay. I’m I’m playing along. What do we what did we do?

Tony Prieto (00:37)

We are providing them with a service here. We’re telling them about how to improve the intake for their law firm when we could be doing something much more valuable, which is nerding out about Star Wars in front of them.

Nick Werker (00:54)

I think you have captured the interest of probably Jared Correia for sure. Who else is gonna watch this and nerd out about Star Wars? I’m not sure. I’m not sure at all. Well, okay, so do it. Are are are we are we nerding out? What are we doing?

Tony Prieto (01:14)

So this is not a Star Wars episode. It is a Star Wars themed episode. We’re going to we’re going to start here on Star Wars and we’re gonna take that to what we always talk about, which is intake. Now, producer Joe has has given us challenge, and and that challenge is to to reveal something about yourself to prove just how big a Star Wars nerd you really are.

Nick Werker (01:42)

Ooh. Well, I got somebody with this recently that I don’t think I don’t think you knew this. And maybe that’s an insult to you. Somebody was talking about Grogu, who’s baby Yoda, more affectionately. And obviously there’s Yoda. Yoda is an unknown species. If you look it up on like Star Wars Facts or Info dot com, he’s an unknown species. But there is another Yoda or or Yoda species in the canon of Star Wars and it is a female character named Yaddle. So who was the person that didn’t know who Yaddle was that I was talking to?

Tony Prieto (02:23)

This character. Yeah, Yaddle yeah. I don’t know, but the thing that’s funny about Yaddle is that she just speaks I guess it’s galactic basic English, straight. Not like Yoda.

Nick Werker (02:38)

So I didn’t even get you.

Tony Prieto (02:39)

Yaddle just talks like you and me. So clearly Yoda’s just choosing to talk in a way that’s confusing.

Nick Werker (02:45)

Okay, I got one that you would only know if you are a nerd and you watch the Clone Wars comics, is that Count Dooku was Yoda’s Padawan.

Nick Werker (02:59)

That’s I feel like that’s a good fun fact. What do you

Tony Prieto (03:02)

I grew up watching Star Wars, I wore out the VHS tape for A New Hope, which is not the best of those three movies. I mean I I I think that that Empire Strikes Back is the best one, but as a kid, Luke looking to the horizon, trying to leave his house, and his his little h little farm boy life and and h hoping that there was a better life for him a ahead of time really resonated with me. And still I cry when I see him stand and look at the the binary sunset. Which is pretty pretty nerdy. But I think that my fun fact that is that is nerdy is that the Sith, right, the the evil force users are is actually there’s two kinds of Sith. There’s the Sith, like Darth Sidious, Emperor Palpatine, spoilers. And I I guess if you’re starting from the prequels, right? And then and then there’s also the Sith or this like red skinned sort of tentacled alien race that lived on the planet of Korriban, which is the planet that Darth Sidious was trying to take his fleet to when he built them on Exegol in Rise of Skywalker, one of the one of the only movies that made me want to leave the theater when I was watching it.

Nick Werker (04:20)

I will say one more nerdy thing is that before Ahsoka Tano became super popularized in Disney in the last few years, I met my wife. We had a cat. This is while we were dating, and we named her Ahsoka. And I just remember telling her sister, who is really a lot like you, whenever I visit there I tell them all the funny obscure things that you’ve shown me, and then I bring back some things and I show them to you from them. And we were like, we named the cat Ahsoka and she goes The Togrutan female?

Tony Prieto (04:55)

Ha ha ha.

Nick Werker (04:57)

And I just remember being like, Yeah, but also awesome.

Tony Prieto (04:59)

That’s a h human Wookiee f that’s a human Wikipedia right there. Cause Ahsoka Tano is a Togrutan female is the first line of her Wikipedia entry. Well, before we before we lose the the people who aren’t Star Wars fans,

Nick Werker (05:04)

She is she will go The Togrutan female? I was like, What? Yes, but what?

Tony Prieto (05:19)

Our theme Star Wars is about good versus evil, light and dark, and our theme for this episode is that unfortunately in the legal space there are some bad apples you have to wa look out for, some you know, some hidden Sith deceptive people who who are looking to take advantage of of your law firm and and the service you provide. We touched on this a few episodes back during our conversation with Ron Latz. Wanted to talk a go like a little bit deeper on what what you can call, you know, bad actors in the legal marketing space. Let’s start with marketing agencies and how you can tell sort of red flags that show that the partner you’re working for might not be the most trustworthy.

Nick Werker (06:08)

Okay, so in this example, we’re the Jedi. Because I’m not dropping this. This is good. Okay, we’re the Jedi. We decide what’s good. Which is a flaw of the Jedi if you watch the Star Wars series. Anyway, I decide that and these are the easy ones. You are finding a new law firm marketing partner, and you ask them who owns my advertising account and my website. And they say, We do. You say, But do I also? And they say, No. That’s a Sith Lord in disguise right there, buddy.

Tony Prieto (06:53)

Yeah, that’s a pretty basic one. Ideally you if you want to, right you give you give this partner access to your website, you make them collaborators on your ad accounts. If yeah.

Nick Werker (07:06)

Well, okay, so in this example, that one is the very obvious thinly veiled, not even veiled at all, Sith apprentice. That’s Darth Maul. A guy with horns who is red comes running at you with a double edged red lightsaber. He is very obviously Sith. If somebody says, You don’t own your data, you don’t own your account, you don’t own your website, and if you leave, we pull all of that down and you have to start from scratch, that is the the Darth Maul, not veiled at all, not thinly veiled Sith Lord.

Tony Prieto (07:37)

Okay. Yeah, that one’s very obvious. The good version of that is the common sense you add them as a collaborator and they they help you. They don’t own it. I know that like the same thing happens with website registrars, right? Like if you have your d domain name registered with the same service that you have it hosted on, then if they own both sides of that equation, if you decide to just take your website down, they can just keep the domain name and you don’t get support it over. What are some what’s what’s a little bit more a little bit more Count Dooku, you know, a little bit a little bit more veiled.

Nick Werker (08:19)

Ooh, like a smooth talker. I think Count Dooku is known for being a smooth talker, highly educated, very politically minded. What’d you say? I talked right over you.

Tony Prieto (08:25)

Rest in peace, Christopher Lee.

Tony Prieto (08:30)

Said rest in peace, Christopher Lee.

Nick Werker (08:32)

Yeah. He was so good. And his character on the Clone Wars looked so good. His beard, like that long white beard. Aw man, it looks so good. Okay. So we’re gonna go Thinly Veiled, because he’s like very obviously evil. You look at him, and his name is Count Dooku. I feel like the the the sound of that, like the fricative, the the the coo, the doo, like doom, you know, it sounds so thinly veiled. I am gonna say, this might be a little bit more unpopular, but anyone who says that they are going to run the ad spend on their credit card and then just invoice you at the end of the month for the ad spend. The reason being is that there are things out there, and I don’t know how many people know about this, that is like a layer that you can put into like let’s say a Google Ads account that will upcharge a click to the tune of something like twenty percent. And they will just add this pass through fee and call it a Google Ads invoice, and really they are lining their own pockets. And actually I’ve heard of one even crazier, but you said Count Dooku level, and that is my Count Dooku level.

Tony Prieto (09:46)

I mean no, we don’t have to stick that what what was the other crazy thing?

Nick Werker (09:49)

The crazy one was I listened to this on Lunch Hour Legal. No maybe it was Conrad on a podcast and I know exactly who left the comment. It was no, I don’t know exactly who left a comment. Somebody said somebody said that they were talking to their friend who turned off their Google ads. And she said she had no impact on lead generation. And Conrad from Mockingbird Marketing and Lunch Hour Legal Marketing said he knew exactly why. And I had a similar thought, but also I was scared of what he said. He said that they weren’t spending very much money at all, that it might have like gone the lion’s share to brand, and the rest the firm was just like lining their pockets with. They weren’t actually spending the advertising money.

Tony Prieto (10:46)

Right.

Nick Werker (10:48)

Do you want some more? This is like my favorite thing ever. I literally have a file on my phone dedicated to really bad ads and stuff that I know is is just complete tomfoolery. What was my other really good example? I hate this one. Shout out to I don’t really spend a lot of time on LinkedIn anymore. I can’t do it. It’s all AI. It’s a lot of it is performative and I’m not super self promotional and I’m I’m very busy.

Tony Prieto (10:51)

Keep coming. Keep coming.

Nick Werker (11:15)

But I went on LinkedIn today and I saw a person who I don’t know personally at all, but who I think is very smart and very good at her job. She owns a fractional I want to say it’s fractional CMO, but I I I don’t know. She’s she’s a like a law firm consultant, very intelligent, has helped me on a problem before. Her name is Tifiny Swedensky of Sharp Cookie. And she said that, and I don’t wanna misquote you, I’m sorry if I do, that a hill that she’s willing to die on is that SEO is overvalued, and I think anyone who pushes you toward one specific solution instead of a I don’t know, like all encompassing marketing strategy. They’re just like, hey, we do Google ads. We’re gonna get you all these results. It’s just this. This is the only thing that matters. This is the most important thing ever. We specialize in it, so you should pay me double what it would cost somewhere else because I’m a specialist. That sort of thing is what I would call like an overt scare tactic. I’m the expert in this one thing. This is all you need.

Tony Prieto (12:30)

Let’s about that. So, think about the the like Star Wars metaphor here, right? The Jedi believe in balance and communion with the Force, whereas the Sith are all about power, right? Power is the one thing that moves them.

Nick Werker (12:42)

That’s very funny. Okay.

Tony Prieto (12:49)

Why is that Sith approach to marketing, focusing on just one channel, one source, why is that much much less effective than the Jedi way, the bal the way of balance with the Force?

Nick Werker (13:08)

We essentially all are using advertising renting space. Google Ads is a great example of this. And Google Ads are so popular for attorneys because they’re so effective. And I think they get a really bad rap because they’re really expensive, and because they’re so immediate. And I will I will see these battles online of people who will say, it takes a while to see Google Ads results for a new law firm and others that will say it doesn’t take a lot a long time at all. Personal injury is very competitive, right? There’s there’s players like Morgan & Morgan, there’s nationwide law firms, there’s people who have been in the space forever. They have they like there’s always a big player in your market no matter where you are, if you’re the the newer person. But if you pay enough money, you can place your link in a a four spot area or a local result for someone near you based on proximity, you can do it smart enough so that you unearned just pay for that placement and someone has the opportunity to see your law firm on Google Ads. And you can monetize that because you can track it. You can see that they came to your website. You can use call tracking to see that they called you. You can use web form tracking to see that they filled out a form on your site. And it’s so immediate that people will hang their hat on I can get you cases right now. And they’re not wrong. But what happens when that becomes prohibitively prohibitively expensive, right? Acquiring that case or or you don’t have that initial investment to make, right? Your and and and I’ll go even beyond that, right? Your Google advertising will never be as effective

Nick Werker (15:09)

without other marketing channels to support that direct response channel, that that immediacy for people who have the search intent of getting legal help, it will never be as effective as as someone else who is doing all of the things. Right? Someone who’s posting on social media, who is known for social media, who is seen on social media, who is engaging with their community, d posting local content about their community, sponsoring things in their community, showing up, being online and having conversations, handing out business cards. I if you, Tony, were to move here tomorrow and open up a law firm and do Google ads, you might get cases. You really might. If I open up a law firm tomorrow, right? And and someone sees my name, I have I’ve been living here

Tony Prieto (15:57)

Yeah.

Nick Werker (16:07)

for over thirty years. People are gonna know me more than they’re gonna know you. I’m local and I can say I’ve been here for I’m thirty two. I’ve been here for thirty two years. That guy has not. He’s an old carpetbagger. You know what I mean? Like I’m not actually gonna say that. But just this this whole like put your all you put all your eggs in my basket and I will I will triple your money, I’ll find you that 4X ROAS you’re looking for

Tony Prieto (16:24)

Yeah.

Tony Prieto (16:35)

Right.

Nick Werker (16:37)

is not bullshit, but it’s not a whole truth.

Tony Prieto (16:43)

And on top of that, things like Google ads, it’s something that we’ve noticed here on Answering Legal, we here at the marketing department, we have Google ads, Facebook ads, I’m sure you’ve seen them. Google Ads do not get less expensive. You can only ever spend more on it. You cannot spend less and get the same or better results. There’s no way to optim I mean you there’s plenty of ways to optimize and make things better, but in particular the legal space, you have let’s not call him Darth Vader, but John Morgan spending a billion dollars a year on advertising. He has an theoretically infinite budget in your local area to spend on Google ads and Google ads bids work in on a lot of ways, but one of the ways that they work is you know, the top ad, the one that has the best match rate and all that stuff runs out of if it if they run out of budget for the day, then yours shows up and that’s, you know, a win that you get. You do not get that win when someone who is has an infinite budget is just ratcheting that price up year over year. We’ve seen our Google ads budgets double. And and we’re getting a lot of great results from it and you would too, but there’s no it’s not it’s not cheap. There’s no way to make it cheaper, right? And so, it is a it is a an effective channel and it’s a good short term plan but long term. I mean I doubt it’ll get to the point where, right, the average case on a motor vehicle accident is the case value is sixty four hundred. I doubt you’re gonna get to the point where it’s sixty four hundred dollars per click. But

Tony Prieto (18:28)

you’re gonna get to a point where it becomes profitable in the in the grand scheme of things, but on the short term the profit margin’s very small, right? So go ahead.

Nick Werker (18:42)

One of my favorite jokes of yours of of all time is on an infinite timeline, it’ll be sixty four hundred dollars a click.

Tony Prieto (18:48)

Yeah yeah, exactly. It’s it’s you know, it’s and if you get enough monkeys together on a at a typewriter they’ll write Shakespeare. Eventually that number’s just gonna keep going up. But let’s let’s talk about the opposite, right? What does the Jedi way look like, right? We talked about being a local a participator in your local market. A lot of that comes back to brand, right? To being recognizable as a local actor in your community versus your competitors.

Nick Werker (19:23)

Walk back not really walk back so much as add context to my last statement. I didn’t know that you were gonna ask this question, so I get this opportunity now anyway. Hiring a marketing agency that specializes in one thing is not a bad thing, unless they are saying that that’s all you need, right? I’ll give you a very good example. My good friends Bo Royal and Jacob Barufkin over at Pareto Legal are the best that I know of at specializing in paid marketing, right? Google ads, Facebook ads, I can’t even think of anything else off the top of my head. Now it’s ChatGPT. I don’t know if they do ChatGPT, don’t freaking quote me on that. They’re they’re specialists at paid. They they can optimize ads, they know how to layer negative keywords and funnel things. I’ve seen people talk about like like layering campaigns to funnel I’ve seen some crazy stuff that these people know how to do. And they do it with data. They have a phenomenal data department that helps law firm owners make better decisions, right? They show you everything and they go through it with you. But I know from experience that neither Bo nor Jake would tell you that that’s all you need. They’ll say that that’s all they do, right? Because they’re specialists and maybe they don’t want to get into the realm of doing the omnichannel marketing approach. But they would never say don’t do SEO, don’t make optimizations to your website.

Tony Prieto (20:48)

Right.

Nick Werker (21:03)

Don’t engage in local social content. Don’t sponsor a little league team. Don’t hand out business card you know what I mean? Like they would never say that. If someone is saying, All you need to do is this and I’ll get you 150 cases in the next thirty days or you don’t pay me, I would love to see the terms of that contract that you’re inevitably gonna make them sign.

Tony Prieto (21:22)

Ha ha. Hopefully, you know, as a as a a lawyer, as a legal expert, you’ll be able to read that contract and see the the the pitfalls there. But th you can think about it this way, right? You could pay through the nose for Google ads, people click on it, and then they end up on a website that isn’t optimized for people to convert on. F they end up on, you know, home page when they should have landed on a landing page, they end up on a page that is not related to their inquiry at all, and what you’re going to see is a bunch of people clicking on your ads and you’re paying for them and you’re not getting anything out of it. And of course there’s a world where you find the best person in the world for Google ads and you hire them to do just Google ads. And then you find the best person in the world for Facebook ads and you hire them to do Facebook ads. Eventually that becomes, you know, on an infinite timeline, really difficult to manage ’cause it’s a lot easier to manage one relationship with a marketing agency than it is to manage seven. But, if that’s the way you want to do it, ’cause you really love having the best in the world at X, you can go for it. That’s not what we’re saying. What we’re saying is that like there is no I you know, there is no get rich quick scheme, right? It’s all hard work, it’s all going to be a lot of work to get the results that you want, but when you get there it will be by a balanced approach.

Nick Werker (22:45)

Okay, so let’s assume that I am the first trilogy. Not the prequels, the first trilogy, four, five and six. I just now me, Luke Skywalker, Mark Hamill, who I aspire to be my entire childhood, have just defeated Sith Lord Darth Sidious. I save my father from what appears to be going to hell, right, in his final redemption. He’s now he’s a good boy again. We love him.

Tony Prieto (23:20)

Force ghost with Yoda and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon.

Nick Werker (23:22)

Those are my yes, exactly. Yeah. Do they change that? Yeah, they do. I

Tony Prieto (23:26)

Yes. It’s it’s Hayden Christensen in the in the in the the new versions. On the old version it’s the guy who was playing Darth Vader, his name I don’t know.

Nick Werker (23:36)

I have the the VHS tapes. So I I’ve seen it. Yeah. I should get a VHS player. Anyway, so that’s my trilogy, right? Let’s say we defeated my Darth Vader. Now you are Rey, who has no last name. And don’t tell me her last name is Skywalker, because it’s not. You are Rey. Who is your Kylo Ren slash what is that guy’s name? Snoke?

Tony Prieto (23:38)

Yes, the VHS tapes will be the original one.

Tony Prieto (24:03)

Yeah, Supreme Leader Snoke. S N O K E

Nick Werker (24:05)

Snoke. Garbage. Sorry that I made you this franchise. I just I went first.

Tony Prieto (24:14)

Sorry, what was your question? Who’s Kylo Ren?

Nick Werker (24:16)

Who’s who yeah, who do you defeat, right? What are your who’s your who’s your who’s your Sith? What what do we look out for?

Tony Prieto (24:23)

Yeah, what you’re what you’re looking out for, I think I think me, mean personally is is and I I think that this applies to almost every situation, is someone who has all the answers. I think that that, for example, is what Anakin runs into in Revenge of the Sith is is he has all of these problems and he goes to the Jedi and the Jedi say, Well, that’s life, man. You just gotta deal with it and then he goes to his good friend Palpatine, who says, That’s not true. Death can be avoided. Anyone who tells you that kind of thing is someone you know you cannot trust. And and you’re you’ve gotta be you have to be on the lookout for co and constantly analyzing your relationships with everyone to make sure that you’re never on the side of the guy who knows exactly the answer to everything.

Nick Werker (25:22)

I really like your answer because it kind of it it it’s it’s similar to mine in that it’s somebody who tells you that they know and that you don’t need any other information. It’s somebody who’s just full of half truths and isn’t willing to give you the full nuanced answer. So when I was originally being taught SEO by Chris Watson of EverSpark, I think he ended up opening a company named Peachtree, I haven’t spoken to in a long, he would show us like all of this stuff to do about SEO. And he would say, This like you could do this with backlinks. Backlinks are super important. Content is super important. Syndication is super important. Citations are super important. He would show us all of this these things. Technical SEO is super important. And he would show us all of these things that he knew how to do. But he would explain this is White Hat SEO. This is what Google tells you is the right thing to do. This is Black Hat SEO. This is a known or unknown, really undetectable spam tactic, right? You will get away with this for the time being. Right? There is no way to tell whether or not somebody will be caught doing this thing, right? And a and a good example of this is like a let’s call it I’ll call it what it is. A private back linked network. Right? Say you go and you find some SEO person who wants to sell you SEO, and they tell you that all you need in order to achieve great rankings and now is just impressions really, because like what else can you really tie yourself to in the world of zero click search and AI overviews and AI what did somebody email me recently? XEO. They wanted to sell me XEO. They’ll tell you that they’re gonna do it with a backlink strategy. Well if they don’t explain to you where they are going to acquire these links, you can not be certain, I shouldn’t say you should be certain, that they won’t do anything that could be harmful to your business. One of these known things is that people got together back in the day and created these backlink networks that you could essentially pay

Nick Werker (27:43)

to get your website into a network of people who had agreed to post your link onto their website and just like send all of this traffic around. Now people do it on LinkedIn with engagement pods. They try to artificially inflate the algorithm showing them more using this engagement pod. This is the same thing. Tell you that you will receive a penalty in the form of reduced visibility. And so if you are allowing somebody to sell you something that sounds good to too good to be true, you should find out is it how the sausage gets made?

Tony Prieto (28:29)

Yeah, you know, and like I said, this is something I kind of take as a as as a a life motto, which is that life is difficult. I for some people it’s easy, sure. But like like the things that really matter in life are not easy. And if you find someone who tells you that they can make it easy, right, like getting backlinks is the hardest part of SEO. One of the one of the safest ways to do it is to produce good content, share it, so that people share it and then link back to it when they produce their content, a sort of organic version of of what you were just talking about, and that’s really hard. It’s really hard to stand out when everyone’s trying to do that. It’s really hard to put all this time into this content and see nothing happen. It takes a long time. It can take eighteen months, you know. And but that’s unfortunately that is the way that it has to be because everything else, the shortcuts, will end up biting you back. Will you end up again, you’ll end up with the revenge of the shortcut.

Nick Werker (29:33)

You are so good at this stuff.

Tony Prieto (29:35)

So let’s talk about the return of the Jedi, right? Let’s talk about what the good version of this looks like.

Nick Werker (29:43)

Okay. Good version. Glinda the Good Witch. I’m Glinda the Good Witch. There’s something wrong with me. The good version is someone who tells you that you’re gonna own everything. All the data, all the accounts. You are responsible for the payment of the advertising. They want to be your partner, which means that they want to continually make sure that their efforts are being attributed to signed cases and an increase in profit, right? We want profit. We want growth. We want partners who are invested in what your goals are, right? And so if you’re entering an engagement where you just feel like you’re being sold something instead of somebody trying to find out what your business goals are. I’ll I’ll give you a good example. I was on a phone call recently

Tony Prieto (30:22)

Yeah.

Nick Werker (30:42)

on behalf of a law firm with a vendor and the vendor asked what the firm’s goals were. Do you want to expand into this new county, this new municipality, this new territory, a new state? Do you have multiple offices? How are you supposed to sell anybody anything without knowing what their goals are? Right? And so if the answer is, no, I’m not really looking to grow that much, it’s just that my worry is that my case volume is getting really low and I haven’t paid attention to my website or my SEO in a long time, and I know that that’s really hurting my my visibility and my brand awareness. The person who was doing my social media moved. And so now I want to find somebody to really invest in my social media because I know it was doing a good job and I don’t want to let it slip. I I noticed that. What did you notice? What did you notice? Somebody put up a new billboard. There’s a billboard for sale, and I want somebody to run the creative for this billboard. I need a creative agency to help me come up with a good ad. Because I don’t think that me smiling with a thumbs up saying call Tony will be as good. Well, it actually would be. Okay, so you should pay me money for that idea. But somebody who’s invested in what your goals are, not what their version of success looks like for you.

Tony Prieto (32:12)

Exactly. And I think a lot about I mean we were just talking about results and how you know, if if the if the marketing agency is producing a lot of leads and the lead quality is low, it could be the marketing agency’s fault, but could be your intake is bad or your not giving them the right right goal goals. When someone comes to you and says, Hey, how are the leads? I know we’re delivering the leads. How are they doing? Or if you give them access to that and they can monitor them themselves, that’d be awesome. But that question is a really, really green flag because that means that they’re not just interested in providing the results that you’re looking for. They want to make sure that they’re providing the right results. Because I mean a ten percent reduction in leads with a thirty percent increase in close rate would be would look worse for them on in terms of like raw lead volume if that’s the only metric you’re using. But it’s a lot better for you.

Nick Werker (33:18)

With this, I truly believe this, and I’ve said this before, to my friend Annette Choti that digital marketing is every there’s so many scams in the world. So many my friend was just scammed the other day. It was the funniest scam I’ve ever heard of in my life. He was doing a giveaway for his YouTube channel, and somebody won this giveaway, changed their like profile picture, and said that somebody else stole the money by changing their name on like Venmo or whatever it was, stole the money. Everything is a scam, right? Digital marketing is so easily scammable. You can come on the internet and say, I will manage your Google ads, right? And for whatever ethos and whatever you’re a good talker, you convince somebody to do it. I truly believe anybody can build a website and anybody can run Google ads. That doesn’t mean anything. Right? You have to make sure you’re finding the right partner. And so I think the best ones will find what outcomes you’re looking for. And it’s exactly what you said. Whose interest are they serving? Right? What metrics of success are they tied to? Gyi talks about this all the time. Is you’re right. Say your agency is able to cut your costs by ten percent while delivering you thirty percent more cases. Do they take a lesser fee because they cut your costs if they’re billed if they’re billing on total advertising spend? Is that how they’re tied? Or are they incentivizing you to pay more? Right? You have to look at the way that these relationships are found. So like are you tied to case outcomes? Are you tied to wanted leads? Are you tied to lead volume? Are you tied to impressions, right? What interest does that serve? And so

Nick Werker (35:14)

it’s just about finding somebody who actually understands how a law firm operates and how your law firm and you operate. That’s the Jedi way. There’s there’s there’s other you know what I mean? Like if you want to get down to like Yoda meditating floating on a on a thing, like in a dark room by himself and Anakin comes in and he’s like, Don’t worry about it, that’s the Jedi way.

Tony Prieto (36:33)

I’m going to land this podcast with a better send off than Rise of Skywalker and say that we reference Answering Legal a few times during today’s episode. So I just want to let our listeners know that they can head to answeringlegal.com to learn more about a virtual receptionist service. There’s a link in the bio of this episode to get started with the four hundred minute free trial of the service. And if you want to share a Star Wars fact or just talk about Star Wars with us, leave a comment on the YouTube video, review, on the podcast, whatever it is to get in touch with us and we will hit you up.

Nick Werker (37:01)

Tell me your favorite Star Wars fact. I will tell you my most random one as a sign off. I used to drive a 2014 Subaru Crosstrek and it was silver. And if you l squint hard enough at a 2014 Subaru Crosstrek in silver, it kind of looks like the Millennium Falcon. And I I had a bumper sticker. It was a magnet, so it’s not really a sticker, but it was a bumper sticker that said, this car made the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs. And I still think about that. I also had a stormtrooper tow hitch cover for a truck that I drove. So I guess I really am a Star Wars nerd. But anyway, thank you to all of our listeners, and we will see you next time with another episode of The Legal Intake Experts.

Tony Prieto (37:49)

Be sure to follow us to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and the Answering Legal YouTube channel to catch future episodes. And may the Force be with you.