How to Turn A Small Local Law Firm Into a National Giant

After generating 700,000+ leads for online universities and legal firms, we’ve seen a number of miracles happen over time.

One firm (that shall remain nameless) went from being worth a couple million to over $500 million in a few short years.

After 700k leads, 5,000 marketing tests, and 100,000 ads – here’s an exact guide to growing your law firm as large as you want.

The aim of this article is to give you complete control over how many clients you get, and how fast you get them.

If you don’t have time to read this article and just want us to take care of growing your law firm for you, then you can 

As a lawyer, you really are a cut above the rest. The average lawyer is smarter, richer, and more intimidating than the average American – whether people like it or not.

You understand things about the world that most people don’t. Why else would 60% of the elected officials in Congress be lawyers? It also means you are about to understand the words on this page better than anyone.

#1. The last opportunity for growth in the legal sector

All the big law firms are fighting over the same Fortune 500 companies.

They go after huge hundred million dollar cases and suck all of the Ivy League hopefuls into their jaws.

Since most big law firms are busy playing with the big fish, it presents a very unique opportunity to smaller law firms.

As a coffee shop owner, you have to compete with Starbucks (near impossible), yet as a local law firm you are most likely competing with another local law firm.

The playing field is relatively level (apart from a small number of exceptions).

And this is an easy game to play. For example, a small company here in Arizona came to us with a set marketing budget.

They were getting about 3-5 new inquiries per week. They were desperate for more.

After just one simple tweak to their marketing campaign, they got a 700% increase in leads without increasing their marketing budget.

I’ll reveal what the tweak was in a minute. In the rest of this article, I’ll reveal exactly how you can use simple ‘local techniques’ in order to build a huge law firm that you can sell for tens of millions of dollars when you want to retire.

#2. How to dominate one area of practice at a time

The key is to dominate one area of practice at a time – even if you do a lot more than one thing.

Let say you get 700% more leads than before with the same marketing budget. That literally has the same effect as spending 8 times more on marketing than your competitors.

Now imagine focussing all of that spending on something like personal injurycases. You will soon become the ‘go-to’ law firm for personal injury in your local area.

Then, you move towards leads for Family Law, using the same system. After all, you have the secret to getting more leads for a lower price.

Most smart law firms generate traffic to an offer page. That captures 10-20% of the people who respond to sales pitches.

They make their money from these guys and call it a day.

However, the really smart law firms don’t let go of the 80-90% of people who DON’T respond to sales pitches. They use technology which allows them to present a different pitch.

We call this a “Return Agent.”

A return agent is a specific piece of content tailored for people who hate sales pitches. THIS is the secret weapon that brings 80-90% of the people you could have lost back into the fold.

Once you know that secret, you’ll be able to afford to pay ten times as much for a lead and still make money.

While your competition are scratching their heads, you’re going to be taking on more clients. More on that in a little bit. First, let’s dive into how you can acquire those initial customers.

#3. Acquiring local leads who are ready to take action

So far we’ve said that you need to go after local leads and you need to focus time and money on one area of law before moving onto another. Now I’m going to show you how to tap into a source of traffic that is ready to take action.

We’ve tested over 5,000 variations of lead generation pages. The one thing that stuck out like a sore thumb during those tests was the disconnect between the number of leads generated and the amount of revenue they produced.

Just because a particular page gives you more leads, doesn’t mean it is going to translate into more money in your pocket.

How many times have you called upon a lead and they had no idea what you were calling about?

Times have changed.

80-90% of people don’t respond to sales pitches.

So you need to make money from the 10%, and cultivate the other 90% with a series of specific content pieces that are designed to be “non-salesy.”

More on those in a bit.

First, let me show you how to get your hands on the 10-20% of people who are ready to respond to your sales pitch now.

Most lawyers think Google Ads are too expensive. That’s because they don’t know what I am about to reveal to you. Look at these two ads:

What’s wrong with this picture?

Well, the top one is what most lawyers do, and they are wasting their money.

It states “Family Law Attorneys. Speak with a Family Law Specialist. State Bar of Nevada Certified.”

What a waste of space. I’m pretty sure that all law firms need to be “certified.” So that is NOT a selling point.

Compare that to the bottom ad.

Firstly, it states “Affordable Family Law” – they immediately give the prospect a positive benefit.

Secondly, it pre-frames them to take action. “Aggressive & Affordable Attorneys. Call Now For a Free Consultation!”

So when the prospects click on that link, they’ll be under no illusion about what to do next – they are going to call for a free consultation.

This alone could seriously reduce your cost per lead, and I’ve barely scratched the surface.

Quick tip: The best placement for your ad inside of Google is spot number 3. With good copy, you can get the same number of clicks as spot #1, yet pay much MUCH less for them.

#4. Crafting an offer they can’t refuse (online)

I mentioned a little while ago that we’ve tested over 5,000 variations of ‘offer pages’ to find the best one.

This was an especially big challenge because we didn’t want to test “how many” leads the page got, but rather “how much revenue” each page generated.

So we tagged every single user into a CRM and measured the results.

Finally, after years of painstakingly complex work and 5,000 variations, we have the offer page that generates the highest quality lead.

I personally think it is ugly, but who cares if it brings home the bacon?

By the way, by using this offer page we were able to generate 700% more leads (and higher quality) for that company I mentioned earlier. This was our secret weapon.

Across the board, this layouts wins.

We’ve tested it for:

IRS Attorneys
DUI Attorneys
Personal Injury
Family Law
Foreclosure Defence
Immigration Attorney
Bankruptcy… and so on and so forth.

Every single time we test it, it works.

That’s why my team has created a bunch of these templates ready to deploy.

Remember, this page still only gets the 10-20% of people who respond to sales pitches.

If you look at the example below, you’ll see that the whole page is one big fat sales pitch.

#5. 80-90% will still say “No”: Here’s how to get them back

Now we’re going to get into the good stuff – the stuff that will separate you from the pack.

Smart marketers do the few things I just mentioned. However, the top 0.1% of marketers – the high earners – do what I am about to reveal.

You don’t ever want to waste a marketing dollar.

Once someone goes to Google and types in “I want a lawyer for [blank]” and they click on your ad, you know that they want and need a lawyer.

Think about it.

Someone got off their lazy butt and searched for your service. They are in so much pain that they were seeking you out.

Just because that individual doesn’t respond to a sales pitch doesn’t mean they aren’t going to do business with another lawyer. Luckily, technology has been made available to us to catch them almost every single time.

Here’s how you do it. 

Tag “you’re it.”

When someone lands on your offer/landing page, there is a small piece of code you can put on there.

This piece of code is called a “Custom Audience Pixel.” It comes from Facebook and allows you to place ads in front of people when they start using their Facebook account.

Big deal. These people don’t respond to the sales pitch.

That’s why you introduce them to…

The perfect passive Return Agent.

Now that you know this person is interested in finding a lawyer, and you know they hate sales pitches, you send them something different.

We call this a “Passive Return Agent.”

It gently nudges them back to your business.

The trick here is to hit your prospect with a new and different return agent every single week. The more times you can do it, the better the result.

A return agent is a specifically tailored blog post which is designed to relieve some of the pain they are feeling. Since you already know what they are looking for (they typed it into Google), your return agent will give them small nuggets of information to help them solve that problem.

This positions you as the expert and you become their confidant. All without speaking a word to them. Pretty sneaky right?

Can you see how this is so much more powerful than other forms of marketing? Especially for law firms? If you would like us to just take care of this for you.

Source: big mouth marketing.