Ep. 27 - Is Your Marketing Agency Ripping You Off?

In this episode, I kick off a three-part series on digital marketing agencies with the question most lawyers are afraid to ask: Is my agency ripping me off?

I break down the red flags that too many attorneys miss. From agencies hiding behind vanity metrics like clicks and likes, to those promising guaranteed rankings on Google, to firms that simply do not understand the strict ethical rules that govern attorney advertising, I show you how to spot the danger signs before they sink your firm.

I also explain the difference between agencies that are clueless but well intentioned and those that deliberately mislead you. Both can hurt your practice, but the second group is especially dangerous because they count on you being too busy to notice.

If you have ever looked at an invoice from your marketing agency and wondered what you are really paying for, this episode is for you.

Tune in now to learn how to protect your firm, your budget, and your reputation from shady marketing practices.

Want to learn more about how our agency can help your law firm grow? Speak with John Rizvi ☎️

Transcript

The Law Firm Growth Professor 0:00

This is Pod Popy Life, Podcast for the People. That's my name.

John Rizvi 0:13

Hi, and welcome. I'm John Rizvi, the Law Firm Growth Professor. And for my regulars, welcome back to the show. For my new listeners, it's always great to have you. In my podcast, I share the strategies for growth that have worked for me and growing my law firm from a startup with just me, a laptop, and a cell phone operating out of a spare bedroom to where we are today, a team of 60 professionals generating over 10 million a year in revenues from our 10,000 square foot headquarters. This episode starts something new that I'm trying, a three-part series about digital marketing agencies and what you should expect from them, and what they should expect from you. But how can you tell if you're getting what you expect if you don't know what doing it right or wrong looks like? That's the question we're going to tackle in the next three episodes, starting with this one. It occurs to me that I've overlooked a major detail in the last several podcasts. That detail is one simple fact. A lot of this stuff you probably think you don't need or want to know. You're probably looking for somebody who can do this stuff for you. That's the entire point. You don't have time to learn all this stuff from a standing start. Why should you? You've got a law practice to run. That's why you're looking for a marketing agency in the first place. They're supposed to be the experts, right? The problem with that mindset is that you just can't take what the agency chooses to tell you on faith without having some way to verify that what they're doing is going to get you where you need to be. And that means you need to at least have some idea of what you're looking at so you can tell whether they're up to uh is a good thing or a bad thing or indifferent for your firm. How do you do that? How can you tell? So today we're going to start with one big scary question. Is your marketing agency ripping you off? Okay, that sounds kind of aggressive. Maybe even like I'm being needlessly dramatic. But unfortunately, it's also true. For every marketing agency that works hard to do the right things, there's another that's just there to make money by any means necessary, and the consequences to their clients be damned. It occurs to me that I've overlooked a major detail in the last several podcasts. That detail is that a lot of this stuff you probably don't need or want to know, and you're looking for ways to find somebody who can do this stuff for you. That's the entire point. You don't have time to learn all this stuff from a standing start, and why should you? You've got a law practice to run. But the problem with that is you need to at least have some understanding of what you're looking at and know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing or indifferent. How do you do that? How can you tell? Well, I've given you a lot of background to draw from, but today we're going to focus on some signs to look for so that you can see for yourself if your marketing agency is ripping you off. And the fact of the matter is that there's a lot of ways that they can do this. Now I want to be real clear here. I'm focusing on marketing agencies that deliberately or intentionally do the wrong thing. They know they're doing the wrong things, but they're counting on you being too distracted or too unknowledgeable or just too busy to care. If your marketing company is counting on you to trust them unilaterally without any questions asked, that's a problem right off the bat. And it's something you need to be aware of. Just to be clear, there's a world of difference between this and a company that really does have your best interests at heart, but is clueless on how to meet your best interests. They don't know what ethics rules govern attorney marketing in your state. They don't know whether or not they're uh falling outside of ABA section 7.1 or 7.2 rules. They're perhaps used to marketing uh for other industries and people who don't have such rigid standards about what they can and cannot do and say in their marketing. There's a difference between being clueless but well-intentioned and being actually malignant towards your law firm. But it can be a very subtle distinction that only turns up once you get to the stage where you're reading the latest invoice and wondering what the hell they're you're even paying for. The kind of marketing agency I'm talking about here is all about making money off your firm. They think they can get away with murder, and the problem is they often do. Why do they do this? Because they count on an uneducated client who doesn't know what they're doing. They look for the sort of client who feels like they have to trust and take at face value that your marketing agency has your best interests at heart and is going to take care of you the way they should. And because their model is based on recurring monthly revenue, they can continue growing as long as they take on more new clients than they lose. What are the red flags that you should be looking for? Well, one of the biggest red flags is that you can't see eye to eye with your agency is uh the impact of the ideal KPIs and the definition of what they are. They might swear for you that clicks on your website and social media are the way to go. You get clicks and the money will follow. And you're going, okay, but how does that equate to cash in my firm's bank account? You're looking at the books and they're making uh shadow puppets on the wall and trying to get you to look at the cute bunny that they made instead of focusing on the most important metric for your firm. That's not how this works. And it never has been, never should be, and never will be if you monitor them correctly. But this is what an agency like this will try to do misdirect, redirect, avoid, and if worse comes to worse, flat out deny. Oh, we never talked about that KPI, or we never said this, we never discussed that, we never agreed to this, except that if you're smart, you do have it in writing, and you can say, you know what, you did. That's one way you can tell. Another way to tell is that if you ask your agency for something uh that any reputable legal marketing firm should know, like for example, my firm operates in three different states. Can we actually say whatever we're saying in these ads in all three states? And if the agency just says, oh well, we've never had that problem before, we've always done it this way, uh, well, that means uh that they're not doing their job. And you're the person with the license is the one at risk, and then you're back to the same problem. They're throwing it back on you and saying we know better than you do. However, it's your law firm and your reputation on the line. Uh, but if we screw up, we're not the ones left holding the bag, you are. That's essentially what they're saying. When I advise a client on a course of action for a patenting matter, I tell them exactly what the strategy is and what legal precedent and standards make that strategy viable. I'll sit down with them or jump on a Zoom or phone call and explain the options. And I'll spell out why these options are on the table and why they need to be considered. Then we would come to a consensus on what to do. But you've got this marketing guru telling you to accept behavior from them that you'd never advise your own clients to tolerate. So it is to your benefit to be aware of what your marketing agency can and cannot do and call them out if you see them doing something that doesn't sound right or that doesn't sound like it aligns with your specific state's ethics rules governing legal advertising. You need to stop that right there and say, wait, how do you know this is okay? And if they can't give you chapter and verse right out of the state ethics rules to show your marketing is in compliance, then you have a problem and you need to be looking elsewhere. Another major issue with many marketing agencies is that they don't prioritize success the way that you do. They uh point to things that look uh and sound as great on their surface, but they don't really do much to move the needle in terms of attracting the kind of attention you want and the kind of ideal clients that you need. One of the biggest offenders uh that I've seen is vanity metrics. A lot of agencies will think vanity metrics are the holy grail. These are places that are all about likes and clicks and visitor counts uh and time on page. All of these things are important. I'm not saying they're not. However, you cannot trust a vanity metric to sell you the whole story. If you have 8 billion people visiting your website, but your firm isn't making one penny more than uh when you started, you're losing money. Agencies who prioritize these vanity metrics are sooner or later going to have to figure out a way to explain how these clicks and these visitor counts translate to actual money in your firm's bank account. You're getting clicks and likes, and your visitors are spending 20, 30 minutes on your firm's website. Okay, sounds good. But can you tell me how many of those clicks and likes and visitor minutes actually helped my firm? Chances are they can. In this situation, you're uh they'll probably try to punt and say, well, you know what? It's all a numbers game. If you get 100 visitors and three of them decide to onboard as clients, you've got a good conversion rate. Then they'll try to convince you that a thousand likes on Instagram means that you should be averaging between 20 and 50 new clients. But that's not necessarily the case, especially if you're aiming for a 5 to 10% conversion rate. If you're aiming for five and you only get three, something isn't working, and your marketing agency should be able to explain why. If they can't do that, and they have, then you have a problem already. This comes back to another common uh practice that shadier marketing agencies use. Overpromising. John Mueller from Google says the biggest reddish flag any agency can wave is guaranteeing their clients fast results and above the fold uh rankings. On page one, SERP rankings on Google, they can't do that because they don't have access to every signal that Google looks at. If your agency says, give us a try, uh, give us a month, and we'll be at the top of Google, that's a guaranteed result. Oops. See, we as attorneys are specifically barred from promising clients a given result. We don't know who the opposing counsel is. Uh, we don't know what they're going to do. We don't know what the jury's going to decide. We don't know if the judge or the patent examiner had a bad day before and they got to work and are looking for a reason to be unreasonable. And that's in a relatively controlled environment where precedent, law, and policy are clearly spelled out. But you've got an agency promising you that for the uh right price, they can guarantee you'll get the results that you're looking for. If that's the case, one of two things is happening. They're either yanking your chain or they're using black SEO tactics that will eventually be found out and get you and your law firm in trouble. Uh, we've talked about black uh hat SEO before. So let's see what unvarnished claim yanking looks like in that situation. Your agency will tell you something like, okay, we're going to do this and this and this. We do those things, and then next month your firm will be number one in your area or your practice field. So you say, okay, sounds good, do it. Then the next month rolls around. You check your firm's website listing in Google's organic search. Instead of top three on the page, you're down at the bottom of page one. Okay, that's not awful, but it's not what you paid for. It's not what you were promised, and it's not what your agency told you that they could deliver. Shockingly, you'd like to know. I'll bet you $20 that's somewhere in the explanation, and here I go with the air quotes again when I say explanation, they're going to say something like, Yeah, Google rolled out an algorithm change and it screwed everything up. Give us another month and you'll see. Uh that and they're hoping you know just enough about Google and how its algorithms work to say, okay, that makes sense. Here's another check and not dig too deeply into it. They don't want to treat a uh, they don't want to teach a masterclass on Google, even if they have the knowledge uh base and even if they have the skills to do so. They're relying on your own mind to take what you've picked up here and there and fill in the blanks for them so that they don't have to. So another month goes by, and guess what? Here comes another excuse. Last month it was the algorithm. Now Google seems to be arbitrarily dinging every website whose highlighted links show up in a certain shade of blue. Oh look, it's a fashion uh problem. Or oh look, it's a design problem with your site. We need to go into the back end and fix that. If we do that and keep doing what we're doing, everything should be fine next month, except it isn't. They've been overpromising and under-delivering, which is the exact opposite of how that's supposed to work. And they're still hoping that now you're so committed to paying for this work with their agency, and you're so worried about losing the money that you've already shelled out that you'll just write another check without asking them many awkward questions, and another, and another, until they're out of excuses and you're out of money to throw down the never-ending rabbit hole. Black hat SEO, of course, is always a threat, but most marketing agencies, even the shady ones, are now hesitating to touch those practices anymore. But it still happens far too often. Many agencies rely on social engineering half-truths and leveraging most lawyers' ignorance about how search engines really work at the infrastructure level to get away with these maneuvers. The problem is they do, and it's a huge part of the reason why 90% of all advertising budgets are wasted. When you talk about a $420 billion a year industry, that's a lot of money that's flushed down the toilet. Now, this may leave a bad taste in your mouth. Maybe it's even got you looking around uh for the Tums, thinking about the last invoice you got from your marketing agency and how many of these excuses you've heard before. You may have been wondering uh why the hell you even bothered with a marketing agency. Surely it's better to do it all yourself. So at least you'll know who there is to blame if your marketing agency tanks. Except that it's not a solution for most law firms. I know this uh episode has probably rattled some cages and ruffled some feathers. Good. It's important to know that we think about these things uh and we understand how and why they happen. If you don't know the warning signs, uh we can't catch these practices earlier and stop shady agencies from uh ripping all of us off over and over again. That being said, it's also important to remember that not all marketing agencies are created equal. There are agencies out there who really do want to do the right thing for their law firm and care about things like ethics, integrity, and delivering on what they said they can do. So before you decide to share your contract, your existing uh uh marketing agency contract, let's take a breath here. Let's ask ourselves what uh where have I seen my marketing agency do things like this? Did they promise me rankings and did they walk uh back on them? Am I seeing warning signs that maybe I'm not getting what I paid for? Don't be afraid to point uh later to ask pointed questions of your marketing agency. And if you don't uh like the answers, don't be afraid to walk away before uh and from the table and leave that contract. Once again, I'm John Rizvey, the Law Firm Growth Professor. Before you leave today, I'd really appreciate you subscribing and clicking that link button. Oh, sorry. Back that up. With uh I'm John Rizby, yeah. Once again, I'm John Rizby, the Law Firm Growth Professor. Before you leave today, I'd really appreciate you subscribing and clicking that like button if you think this episode was helpful. Better still, feel free to share this episode with your colleagues and friends who might find this useful too. Be sure to come back next week for part two of this mini-series where we dig into an equally important question. How do I know my agency is doing it right? After this episode, you might think there's no such thing, but there really is. Tune in next time and I'll show you how. We'll see you then.

The Law Firm Growth Professor 18:39

So when a new idea pops into your brain, call the patent professor. That's my name. I'm a law school professor. An engineer too. I think math is fun. If the patent office says your idea's not new, that's just what they're cut, right? So when a new idea pops into your brain, call the patent professor. That's my name.