The Most Human LAWYER Wins

THE MOST HUMAN LAWYER WINS.

A Manifesto.

What's not going to change in the next 10 years?

That was the question posed by Jeff Bezos in the book "Marketing Rebellion."

For lawyers, what's not going to change is that people want to be able to trust, and relate to, the attorney they hire.

People...do business...with people.

Your potential clients, want to know that you ACTUALLY care.

"We cannot love a logo...but we can love a person."

Be Human.

In 2020, there will be 2 main tactics to becoming more human and winning in lawyer marketing.

1) Talk about your life, and sometimes your business, on video, weekly.

---This will be as simple as

----(a) Going live on Facebook the same day every week.

----(b) Going live on LinkedIn the same day every week.

----(c) Going live on Instagram the same day every week.

---Just picking up your cell phone, and talking to the smallest of audiences about your life, business, and getting some engagement, no matter how small on social media.

---And boost you winners. You get a few comments on a video (comments are the only metric that matter, not likes, not shares, comments) then boost that particular video with money.

2) User Generated Content.

---(a) Google Reviews: Get as many as you can. Then contact the Clients who took the time to review you on Google. Hold a dinner for them, hold an offline event for them. Have an Instagrammable background there for them to take photos in front of and tag you in. Get their permission to post their reviews to your social media, tag them in the post, maybe they'll share it, get them on video, post the video everywhere. MAKE IT HUMAN, NOT ALL MARKET-EY. Send them FREE, AWESOME, stuff in the mail, make sure it is Instagram worthy, with your brand on it or a card with your name on it so they can post it to Instagram.

---(b) Turn your office into an Instagram studio. Every visitor should be able to stand in front of a wall, a background, that has your brand in front of it, where they can get a cool selfie, holding some awesome gift, like a Divorce Survival Backpack, where they can tag you and add your hashtag, "So cool to recieve this #divorcesurvivalbackpack from my lawyer @dustinsancheztv, he's the dang best. #blessed #newbeginnings"

----(i) Roll out the damn RED CARPET, literally, for every office visitor, you'll know you're doing something right when they pull out their cell phone and start capturing it on video to upload to snapchat.

----(ii) if at least 1/2 of the people who visit your office, including your employees, don't snap or film a selfie of some kind, you're doing it wrong. Get on this tomorrow. Walk into your office, give someone a budget, and tell them to make this office Instagrammable...make people who visit here want to post it to IG, and be sure you ask them to tag you, be sure your brand gets in the pic.

---(c) The User Generated Content Associate: Someone at your law firm needs to be in charge of facilitating User Generated Content. They follow up with every client personally, asking for a review, even going as far as scheduling a monthly free lunch with this month's and last month's clients. There is someone at this lunch taking pictures. There is someone at the office who texts every client/visitor before they leave with a link to review the firm on Google. That same person takes a pic of the Client/Visitor in front of your Instagram background, then TEXTS the pic to the Client's cell phone so they can upload it right from their Phone to Facebook/Instagram (make all this stuff easy).

----(i) You get someone a giant WIN, you ask them to come on Facebook live this week to talk about the case. Or you ask them to make an IG post about it, or even better an IG Story about it (VIDEO IS ALWAYS BETTER), you ask them if you can download that video and upload it to your IG story. You ask every employee at the firm if they wouldn't mind doing the same, or at least sharing the post to their social media.

----(i) Every month you need an employee of the month. You personally write an honest glowing recommendation about this person, how they are helping the people in your community (that's what lawyers do, we freaking help people, if you're not helping people, then get out of this profession, if you are helping people, and you're not telling anyone who will listen, then you need ask yourself why)...anyway, you take a pic with this person, in front of your IG backdrop, you upload the pic, and your glowing recommendation to your personal social media, and the firm social media, you tag the employee in the post...they share it to their social with one of those "so honored to be..." blurbs that everyone is so fond of.

Listen. I'm going to say one more thing about User Generated Content and move on.

IT'S ABOUT THE CLIENTS.

NOBODY CARES THAT YOU "WON" SUPERDUPERLAWYER this year, again.

Nobody cares that you were "selected" Top 100 Litigator this year.

It's about the CLIENT.

Tell the Clients' story. The Clients care about themselves. They will share a story about themselves. And they can do it shamelessly if YOU make the story. Now, they're not talking about themselves. You are talking about them. You've just made the Client the hero. Everyone wants to be the hero. (and they want a dang selfie to commemorate it). Make this happen for your clients.

"As we move slowly...toward an ad-free world, this is the new advertising: Stories that serve, inspire and entertain. Meaningful events that demonstrate true caring, compassion, can create community involvement." Page 86.

"The best companies on earth don't own customers. They own a space and help customers belong there. The greatest companies are fans of their fans." Page 86.

LAWYERS AS HOUSEHOLD COMMODITIES

In 2020 you must de-commoditize yourself.

Does anyone really care which divorce lawyer they hire?

Does anyone really care which car accident lawyer they hire?

Right now, the lawyer that gets hired by the general public is (1) whoever came up first in the google search results, and (2) offered the lowest price.

This relentless focus on human impressions via video and user generated content will stop you from getting price shopped, it will de-commoditize you, and pull you off the SEO treadmill.

Think about it.

Would you rather have someone searching Google for "houston car accident lawyer," where you can be 1 of 10 possible lawyers on page one, or would you rather have them searching for "Rasheed the Lawyer," where you are the ONLY lawyer on page one.

All of this is about building community. Making your clients feel like they belong. This creates advocates.

This is why I'm saying something as simple as monthly client appreciation dinners or some kind of monthly non-internet event will work for you. "Magic happens in a community when you bring people together face-to-face" Page 101...and provide branded selfie opportunities...and video the thing in memorable 15-45 second clips, and upload it all to social media...and put the best stuff...the most human stuff on the home page of your website to show that you are a human, not a lawyer...the most human lawyer wins. Also, it turns a lot of the marketing over to your fans (Clients).

Make your customers the star. Hire a videographer to tell the story of an adoption success. Or film an exonerated defendant walking out of the court house in slow motion to The Ghetto Boys, Damn It Feels Good to Be A Gansta.

Be LOCAL.

Local is human. Localism.

Do a Pop Up Law Firm where it's needed in the community. Alert the local press, partner with an Instagram semi-celeb. Offer FREE legal advice for 3 hours somewhere, make it instagrammable, backdrop, branding, videographer, the works.

"Today, marketers can't just be in a city. You have to be of the city."

Run a Google search for Attorney Daryl Longworth and read his Google reviews. The guy is an ex-Houston law enforcement, and he's got some 50+ review talking about how he volunteered here, helped out there, I've known Daryl for 20 years, Daryl assisted me with this, Daryl volunteered for that, blah blah blah," they can't stop talking about this guy. But it does show that he is LOCAL. He is a part of the community. Now he has to capitalize on this. All of those reviewers already raised their hand, took the dang time to log in to Google to leave a review. If you've ever tried to get a dang Google review, you know that this is really saying something. Now someone at the firm needs to individually reach out to these people, ask for a video review, ask them to attend a dinner or happy hour or some fun non-commital offline event sponsored by the firm, have pics taken and posted and video too, and also try to get all of these people into Daryl Longworth Fan Club Facebook GROUP, not page, Group. The organic reach is off the chart in Groups, especially if u make weekly videos there, and these ppl have already proven that they will share you stuff. Be Local.

EMBRACE MILLENNIALS & GEN Z

You know what really matters to millennials?

Being local. Being IN the community. Doing Good S##%

This is one thing that generation really got right.

Millennials will pay 10x for a cup of coffee because you used local sourced fair wage labor.

Do good in the community and tell the story.

-Did you save an innocent person from prison?

-Did you help a woman avoid spousal abuse?

-Did you make a drunk driver pay when they injured your client?

What are you doing in the community that has meaning? Why aren't you telling the story?

Where Does This Leave Us?

As a lawyer marketing expert, am I telling you that law firm SEO is dead? Lawyer Facebook Ads are dead? My flagship products and all of marketing tech is dead?

NO.

But too many people come to me and they think that technology is the easy button.

The smart lawyers, the ones who will excel in the coming years are going to start swinging the pendulum back the other way. Becoming more human.

Using technology to show how human they are, and to become more human in the eyes of their community.

If your marketing "tech" isn't being used to become more HUMAN, then you're using it wrong.

For example, one of the stupidest things in lawyer marketing is the lawyer email newsletter.

Lawyers want this for no other reason than they think they are supposed to have one. NOBODY wants to read your bland legal blog articles. Nobody. Not a dang person on your email list woke up this morning with a burning desire to read a law firm newsletter. Stop annoying people with your dumb newsletter. DO YOU EVEN WANT TO READ IT????!!!

If you can find a way to use your email newsletter to make you more human, to serve your client, really SERVE them, then sure, do it, do a newsletter. Because, I'm bringing it back to Jeff Bezos now, but what's NOT going to change in the next 10 years, is that nobody wants to be annoyed by a boring bland law firm newsletter that they never subscribed to in the first place. Sure, technology will change, email will shift to chat bots, facebook ads will give way to facebook stories, Instagram will be killed by tik tok, but the most human lawyer will always win.

Of course, I'm interested to hear any thought you have here...I mean really am I just crazy or can anyone one else see the shift happening in not just lawyer marketing, but marketing in general?