Ep. 232 – Stop Marketing to Everyone

What if your marketing isn't failing because you're spending too little—but because you're trying to reach everyone?

In this episode, Ben Glass explains why the most successful law firms don't market to the masses. They know exactly who their ideal client is, build lasting influence through trust and relationships, and create systems that keep clients engaged for life.

Ben also shares why referrals consistently outperform paid advertising, how influence compounds over time, and why fixing your firm's internal processes may be the highest-return investment you can make.

Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com

What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?

In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers. 

One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.

There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.

Transcript

The Core Question Framework

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Here's more from the renegade lawyer Ben Glass. This is what you put on the t-shirt. This is what you write down. This is the entire framework. How do I attract and keep the attention of my ideal client for life? Real quickly, I'm going to give you three and then we'll go deep into as many things

Choose One Ideal Client

SPEAKER_00 0:15

as we can. Most lawyers don't know who they're really going after as an avatar client. And I know, like I'm in a small town, you don't understand ban, I need to advertise for across different practice areas. I can only tell you now, 20 almost 20 years of experience with great little marketing with my own practice, is that the clearer you get on who you actually want to see walking through the door, the clearer your message is going to be. And for that person who's walking into your door, like they're going to know that you are the one for them. So working get hard at that. We'll come back to that in

Referrals And Human Media Win

SPEAKER_00 0:47

a second. The second is that attention is earned through media. So a lot of what we do, a lot of what we talk about, a lot of what we put on the stage, is about, you know, digital marketing and advertising. That's where we started teaching advertising to uh planet's personal injury lawyers. I think the real money is here. We've proven it. Brian gave you a stat, which I think is roughly 65% of our new cases come in through human media. Somebody, a human being has made a direct referral to us, and over about 75% of our money comes from human media. So my question is if that's true for you and you'd only know it if you actually track it well, and that's where technology can come, it really helped you track that. Then why aren't we taking every dollar and spending 75 cents of that dollar on human media? All right. And then how do you keep attention for life? All right, because some people will default. They go, well, you know, they just had the auto accident. I settled their case, they're better, they're they're out, like they're out of my life. When you have humans who remember you and think that you're interesting, they will remember that forever. And it's and there's two things that are going to impact your ability to do that. Number one is perfect processes, and second is great people. So we'll come back and talk about that in a second, but that's how you keep attention for life. Perfect processes run by great people. All right. So again, the thing on the t-shirt is how do I attract and keep the attention of my ideal client for life? The fear that comes from you identifying the perfect client for you, who might be like a wealthy person who's who's been charged with um, you know, some traffic offense or DUI or something like that. Like that's who you work best with. That's who pays you the most. I'm telling you, the clearer that you make that message known to the public in your marketing, the better off you're gonna be, and the better off that person who is wealthy and needs you as their lawyer is gonna be. We have we we fear prevents us from doing that. I get it. I did uh a few months ago, I looked at a whole bunch of GLM websites. And I was I was a little shocked to see of member websites. I was a little shocked to see how many websites still had like 17 different things that they're advertising for, and all that shouts to the public is I'm a generalist. All right. That's

Influence Comes From Being Interesting

SPEAKER_00 2:50

not us. We're not generalists. And I'm gonna really, really encourage you to be brave enough to figure out who that perfect client is for you and now craft messaging that just talks to that perfect client. All right, being an influencer is just so important. Ads disappear. You get somebody who knows you, likes you, and trusts you, and then you stay in their life through interesting content, interaction, whatever interesting service to the community. That doesn't go away unless they move out of your area or die. Influence comes with trust built-in. So when I was at Funnel Hacking Live a few weeks ago, um, and I met the young lady I told you about, who's got 175,000 followers on LinkedIn, and she was kind of wondering like what she should do next. I said, I know the guy. I know the guy who can build the technology that you need. And I walked her down to my friend Jason, and like they're they're now doing business together. She didn't have to go research. She trusted me from our short conversation because I'm a very trustworthy guy, I guess. And I like Jason. I was enthusiastically recommending Jason to her. Um, and you know what? She's gonna tell somebody else about Jason. And so human beings expand your influence geometrically, where ads really never will. And again, you find if you if you have anecdotally, you probably would all say, Yes, my best clients come from referrals. I'm telling you, once you install software uh and technology that actually proves this to you, you'll be even more convinced and you'll be even you'll be asking yourself even more, gee, why am I spending a disproportionate amount of money chasing anything other than human media? All right. It's hard to create and it's hard to keep. Kennedy has written a bunch of stuff on influence. There are many, many great works on influence. Influence is not about talking about yourself. Influence is about being an interesting person. And I'll show you some ideas here. So this is how I this is how I do it, right? And again, everybody has a superpower. My superpower is I'm here on earth to inspire you, right? I'm here on earth to inspire others. It is actually both a superpower and a crutch because my team will tell you like every person I think I can make into a superstar, and I think I can get to not just like level two, but level 10. And that's objectively not true. But here's how I do it. Number one, being the most curious person in the world. I gave you the question yesterday, what's your superpower? Asking people about themselves. Everybody likes to talk about themselves. I'm the most optimistic person in the room. So on a scale of one to ten, I'm a 15. I get it sometimes that that I'm the guy, and my my team was high. Like anytime there's any freaking issue, my brain default, and I wasn't born this way, is this learned. My brain defaults to the five different opportunities we have arising out of that adversity. For me, if you've read my stuff over the years, you know I take a very strong position on living a principle-driven life in the United States of America, which is a land of unlimited opportunity, where the number one thing, the number one rule that everybody should know is that like if it is to be, it is up to you. So I take firm, hard positions on that. My newsletters get put up on people's refrigerators. I know that because my the folks that I write to, the parents, they tell me, I'm sending my newsletter to your kid, to my kid in college. I'm putting up on the refrigerator. I love this stuff. Now, that might not be you, but there's something that you have that you can be interesting about, even if it's just documenting the journey. And the fact, and the last one is giving without expecting to receive. Andy spoke here. Andy is, quote, a competitor to ours. I spoke of Richard James. He spoke for me. At the top, we're all collaborating. Like for years, I've had mastermind members in my highest level group in Northern Virginia who are PI and disability lawyers in my group, right? Showing them every I'm showing them everything they I do. They're showing me everything we do. I fundamentally believe that that's the way to live the world. In every instance where I have someone whose life is not like full of energy, this is a big thing. If they think that it's some friggin' competition, some zero-sum game where they have some secret that they cannot share. I will tell you that that is wrong. So devote more marketing and dollars

Perfect Processes And Superstar Teams

SPEAKER_00 6:59

to hours and dollars to people who can help share your story. This last part, like you could walk away from this conference, I think, for most of you, and work on nothing for the next year but perfecting every process in your law firm. Again, not buying a single marketing widget, not in not uh instituting a single marketing idea, not attracting a single new client because most of us have broken systems. And you can start with your marketing and sales processes, the way clients are onboarded, the way you produce whatever legal work you produce, and the way you hire and fire people. And so that again, like great legal marketing. I'm coming from a marketing conference. But the reality is what good is it to bring in one more client into a into a bad or an imperfect experience? So taking some time, I know a lot of you like staying over and like, oh, all these marketing ideas, taking some time, saving some time and starting to evaluate each step of the process from the time somebody hears about you, either by referral or they find you on the internet, to the time that their case is ended and beyond, and asking us, asking yourself, is that process pristine? So, you know, most doctors now you go in there and you get in a new doctor, and the first thing they do is they send you these adobe forms, right? That are uh 10 pages long asking 98% irrelevant questions for the problem you have. That's a really bad process, which makes me want to go, like, all right, I'm not gonna like spread your name around. So you could spend really the next year just working on this and perfecting this and then going out and getting the superstars, right? Because the worst thing you can do to your firm, to your brand, to your customer service, your client service is to have people on your team that are less than superstars. People want superstars want to work with superstars. We end up as business owners spending way too much time trying to fix people who are not a perfect culture fit to all to us. You either don't have the ability, don't have the capabil capacity, or don't actually want to be there.

Keep The Conversation Going

SPEAKER_00 8:59

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