In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Adam Arkfeld discuss:
- Sales and marketing working hand in hand.
- Diagnosing what is happening in your marketing.
- Who pay-per-click works best for.
- Tracking the data of your marketing campaigns.
Key Takeaways:
- Measurement creates integrity – the numbers don’t lie.
- You have to have clean metrics that you can rely on to understand what is happening with the marketing campaigns.
- Targeted and paid marketing changes rapidly, anything more than 6 months ago and it really is a different world.
- YouTube is an untapped market for most lawyers.
“The nice thing about running paid advertising is you can measure everything, and you can make every decision based on analytics and data. It’s foundational for what we do and I think it should be foundational for all marketing, to be honest.” — Adam Arkfeld
Connect with Adam Arkfeld:
Website: https://www.growwithprevail.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamarkfeld/
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: The Ambitious Attorney: Your Guide to Doubling or Even Tripling Your Book of Business and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, lawyers, marketing, attorneys, lead, spend, agency, personal injury attorney, business, pay, law firm, marketers, work, money, ad, b2c, clients, campaign, click, creates
SPEAKERS
Narrator, Steve Fretzin, Adam Arkfield
Adam Arkfield [00:00]
For us, the nice thing about running paid advertising is you can measure everything. And you can make every decision based on analytics and data. And so you know this, that’s the world I live in. So for me, it’s sort of like, how could you not live in that world. But it’s foundational for what we do and I think should be foundational for all marketing, to be honest.
Narrator [00:20]
You’re listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer, coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin [00:43]
Hey, everybody, welcome to be that lawyer. I am Steve Fretzin, as the announcer just mentioned, and I hope you’re having a lovely day. Look, it is time to get serious about building your book of business and looking at all the different channels that can be business development, that can be marketing, that can be branding, whatever floats your boat, you’ve got to continue to play the game, you’ve got to continue to stay on the field and build that business, build that book. And it’s all about being that lawyer, someone who’s competent organized in a skilled Rainmaker. If you’re interested in learning more about Fretzin, Inc, and what we do here every day, please check out my website@fretzin.com and see what we are all about. Also, you can follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, et cetera. And the quote of the day today, and then I’m going to bring my guest in is if you can’t measure it, you can’t measure it. And that is a Peter Drucker quote. And my guest today is Adam arc Feld, who is the founder of prevail legal marketing, what do you think about that quote?
Adam Arkfield [01:43]
Well, in our industry, luckily, as as a benefit measurement is at the core of what we do, you know, and other types of marketing, a lot of feeling with a lot of brand studies, or like, you know, talking to people about their opinions. But for us, the nice thing about running paid advertising is you can measure everything. And you can make every decision based on analytics and data. And so you know, this is that’s the world I live in. So for me, it’s sort of like, how could you not live in that world. But it’s foundational for what we do, and I think should be foundational for all marketing, to be honest. So I picked a good quote. Yeah, that quotes, like, I’m actually going to start putting it on my proposals. That’s exactly what we do every day.
Steve Fretzin [02:23]
Beautiful, beautiful and in with business development to it isn’t just go out and network and go out and meet people and check in with clients. I mean, I have my clients working on on activity journals, where we’re tracking how many meetings they’re having, how are they converting to second meetings, and all that stuff. And it all what it does is it allows us to make changes, it allows us to, to adapt and improve what we’re doing. And if you’re not measuring it, then it’s very hard to make those changes and make those improvements. So whether it’s marketing or business development, I think that quote really resonates. So Adam, give us a little bit of background, obviously, we’ve picked up on on what you’re going to talk about today. And that is, you know, marketing a law practice primarily focused on Pay Per Click, but give us a little bit of your background and your history.
Adam Arkfield [03:07]
Yeah. And also, just one quick comment on that, quote, measuring also does is it forces you to be honest, because a lot of times we think that we’re doing certain things, and we think that we’re making so many calls, and we think that we’re putting in all this work. And then when we get in the week, we only made 13 calls, you have to reconcile and look at yourself and be honest with it. So yeah, that’s the other part of measurement is that it creates integrity. And the numbers don’t lie, right? Numbers don’t lie. numbers do not lie. Yeah. So, you know, my path to marketing is a little bit. You know, I look at it as a path of, you know, lack of intention to be quite honest. When I was in college, and when I was younger, I was in hospitality. I worked at the Ritz Carlton, you know, I was a valet there. And then I served tea in the tea room, like gloves and a suit. So that was, that was a really interesting experience. But it taught me how to how to be strong at customer service, what people valued. What it meant to create loyal customers was Carlton is a very loyal customer following. After college, I got into commercial real estate for a bit. And then when the market crashed, a buddy of mine just said, Hey, you want to build websites? Because I had a computer science degree? And I’m like, Yeah, sure, like I made $0 In the last 18 months, so let’s make some money. So parkour was an agency that I founded at the time. We built websites for five years, then we switched into paid advertising. And that’s where prevail, Legal Marketing came about. So my background is computer science, also kind of, you know, reflects the quote that you had had started the show with, but we’ve been doing paid ads, Google ads, Facebook ads, Yelp, LinkedIn, whatever the case may be for the last seven years. And that’s really our bread and butter and where we live and die right now. So probate, legal marketing is just for attorneys. And we work on a performance basis where we’re paid per lead instead of a retainer
Steve Fretzin [04:48]
is one of the main concerns that people have when they get involved in pay per click. It’s just hey, give us a big retainer every month and let’s let’s just let it fly.
Adam Arkfield [04:56]
Yeah, lawyers are severely taken advantage. In a job by marketers, I mean, and the reason lawyers and a lot of businesses don’t like marketers is because they get taken advantage of it’s not like the marketing industry is 100% sincere and pure. And lawyers are getting a bad rap for having a negative outlook on on the marketers, just like you have young marketers, you have inexperienced marketers, you have companies that don’t have any accountability, charging law firms a lot of money, or having a law firm spend a lot of money with the advertising networks. And the results just aren’t there. To show for the effort, the ROI makes no sense whatsoever. So that leaves a lot of lawyers with a bad taste. And so the retainer amounts are high that that marketers say lawyers have to spend, which is just simply not true in a lot of cases. And then the results aren’t there, because they’re either inexperienced, or there’s issues with tracking or, or honestly, the attorney is not closing deals, which is, you know, where you spend a lot of your time and, you know, a marketer to say, hey, you know, what about your sales process, it feels like marketing might be a little defensive. But in all honesty, it’s sales and marketing, they have to work hand in hand. Sometimes the sales process on the lawyers side isn’t, isn’t strong enough to support inbound marketing. So there’s a lot of variables there.
Steve Fretzin [06:12]
Yeah, I mean, I’ve worked with a number of pay per click, and I don’t do any, any of it anymore. But for a time I was working with someone, and you know, the ads weren’t really working, and the results weren’t there. And I’m in a tough I’m in a tough spot too. Because, you know, most people don’t want to talk to a sales coach, I’ve often said that. My audience is like, if I’m a physical fitness trainer, my audience are obese people eating Twinkies, and that represents the lawyers who the last thing they want to do is think about building a business or not my audience, of course, but everyone else, you know, thinking about building a book of business and hiring coaches, like, you know, scary, scary stuff, and there’s money involved, oh, my God, and all that. But I think I think for me, I was just very rubbed. I was rubbed raw, because an A, the results weren’t there and be, you know, just there weren’t changes being made to make improvements. And I was like, how are we just letting this run? You know, and so it just was, like, frustrating. And I’d have all these conversations. And the person also wasn’t an expert in marketing to lawyers. And I think that was also a struggle, he kind of was a, an expert in everything, supposedly, but not, in my, in my humble opinion, not really an expert at getting in front of lawyers. So I think I had a number of challenges. These are all my problems. But what are some of the things that you’re seeing lawyers come to you with that they’re complaining about? And obviously, we’ve, you’ve hit a couple, but what are some of the other challenges that they’re having to grow books?
Adam Arkfield [07:38]
Well, it’s those challenges that you’re describing. Right? So, you know, when you say the ads aren’t working, that’s often that is often the case, we talked to a lot of attorneys where the ads, quote unquote, aren’t working. Now, it could either be the advertiser, the marketing company, or the Freelancer there, which just isn’t doing a good job. So that’s a problem. You know, if I would say the court, like my kind of thing about how to like diagnose, like, what’s going on in the marketing space, like if you’re, if you have a campaign right now, that’s not working. And you’re sitting there thinking, like, alright, this is not working, what do I do? The very, very, very first thing is to have clean metrics that you can rely upon. That’s just number one, it just has to be there. Because you can point fingers at each other all day. I’ve been in instances where I’ve been running a killer marketing campaign that I know is rock solid. And my client doesn’t have the metrics on their side to attach value with my marketing campaign. And we’ve been let go, even though I know the marketing campaign is doing quite well. And we’re improving. So the metrics need to be just very clean on both sides, the client side and on our side. So I’d say that’s, that’s number one.
Steve Fretzin [08:42]
But real quick before you move on, and we did an example of that be that the leads are actually being generated, but their website isn’t converting or that the website is converting, like getting forms filled out, but then they’re not doing a good job at, like connecting the dots like doing what’s the the onboarding or the, the, you know, getting them on the line and actually having a call or scheduling a meeting? Yeah, that’s
Adam Arkfield [09:05]
a really, really good question, you know, sort of what you’re describing as a marketing funnel. And so it’s understanding which part of the funnel is breaking down, right? When we place ads, it’s pay per click. So we place an ad on Google when someone clicks the ad, and that’s a visitor and then you pay Google for that, so that they’re at the stage of the funnel, where they view they hit the landing page, they see the landing page, then they need to convert on the landing page into a lead. So that’s a lead, then you need to determine if they’re a qualified lead or not a qualified lead. So if your personal injury attorney form is submitted, no injury, no insurance, not a qualified lead, so you can’t even close that deal. It’s just not a qualified lead, right? But it’s still a lead. So you just need to know that number. And then you look at the closing into a new client acquisition. So you start looking at some of those numbers and you say, okay, and this is purely math. This is just a math equation. And the math equation can be really easy. You say, Okay, I’m running a personal injury campaign. My cost per lead is $100 per lead. So I got 10 form submissions, I go through my email, and I’m like counting. Alright, I got 10 forms this last month, and my ad manager said we spent $1,000. So it’s $100 per lead, very basic. And then you say, Okay, how many of those were qualified? You go through the forums? And this is the basic rudimentary way to do it. Sure. And you look at the forums, and you say, Okay, well, five of those are actually potential cases. So my cost per qualified leads now $200, right? How many of those did I close? I closed one. So I had I, my cost per acquisition was $1,000. So now you can use that data and say, Is this campaign actually working for me, there are a lot of personal injury attorneys that would kill for $1,000 cost per acquisition. There are a lot of bankruptcy attorneys that would turn off a campaign tomorrow at $1,000 cost per acquisition tomorrow, because it’s way too high. So what that also does is it highlights which part of your marketing and sales is breaking down. If your cost per lead is $500, then that’s too high for bankruptcy. So it doesn’t matter what you close at, like your you know, it’s just too high. So they know that the market is broken, or their campaigns broke, then you fire that person to find someone else to bring it down. If their cost per lead is $75, and you’re getting a ton of leads a cost per qualified lead 150, and you can’t close them, then that’s something to look internally, just be real honest with yourself. And that’s where the measurement creates integrity, creates integrity for the marketer creates integrity for the law firm. And then you determine where you need to spend your time and focus. And maybe that’s
Steve Fretzin [11:33]
where we collaborate, right? So your job is to get people to lead to get the people to the landing page to get the conversion. Then when they go into the law firm, how the law firm is managing those inbound leads? How are they following through email phone call? How are they setting up an appointment? How are they getting someone in the door to have that conversation about the injury, for example, that’s my job, right? That’s what I that’s where I’m trying to get them over the hump. So we need to work together to put marketing and business development, you know, to make sure that things aren’t slipping through the cracks, because you don’t have a good process or you don’t have a good way of approaching it. And you’re just burning through money. Yeah, and,
Adam Arkfield [12:15]
you know, the, you’re totally right sales market have to work together. And what I think is most important is when an attorney or whoever’s running the marketing, as a general mindset of, you know, this marketing does work. And it’s a matter of me just figuring it out for my firm, I talk to a lot of attorneys and marketers where they’re just, they’re so skeptical of pay per click, that they, they they expect it to fail. And then when they expect it to fail, they’re looking for all the reasons that it’s going to fail, instead of expecting it to succeed and looking for all the reasons it’s going to succeed. And the way I think about that is we have a an attorney here in town that spends roughly $100,000, a month on bankruptcy leads bankruptcy marketing, not bankruptcy, bankruptcy marketing. And so if your bankruptcy attorney in my market, and you’re looking at pay per click, and you’re like, I don’t know, if they pay per click works like it doesn’t seem like it works. You know, I’m not going to do pay per click, like, well, you might want to consider the fact that someone’s spending $100,000 a month in your market, and which is clearly a very large firm, the Pay Per Click does work. You just haven’t gotten it to work yet. That’s not knock. That’s just again, facts and, you know, truth, you know, kind of that integrity thing. It’s just that’s just the data. The data is there are people killing it.
Steve Fretzin [13:31]
In people, Adam, lawyers, pay per click isn’t for everybody. And I think there’s a maybe a misconception about pay per click that that, you know, it doesn’t work for something that works for others. There are particular industries or practice areas that are better for Pay Per Click than others. So if I’m a big time litigator, working with general counsel’s at big corporations who are never going to use Google to find a lawyer, pay per click isn’t for me, right? I wouldn’t want to spend a nickel on it, let alone a million dollars. So who would you say a pay per click works best for?
Adam Arkfield [14:07]
But our experience pay per click is best for b2c b2b. It’s much more difficult. And I’ve seen that in other industries as well. Sure. So like you said litigators, you know, no business lawyers, I would say no contract lawyers, real estate attorneys, those types of things, I would say no, where we spend the most time is criminal defense, bankruptcy, personal injury, obviously, you know, those, you know, immigration, employment law, those are where you’re finding high volumes of people and getting it out there. When it’s a b2b relationship. That’s just not really how you can you can make a little money it’s not that it’s not the generally relationships, right, like it’s just not the primary way to find this. Yeah,
Steve Fretzin [14:47]
maybe there would be some social media marketing and I don’t know if you get into that, but there you know, there are people that do highly targeted social media marketing, and that might be okay for b2b Because you’re targeting other lawyers or you’re targeting Gen Con I suppose or CEOs or people in areas or places around the country in different positions, but I think I think Pay Per Click Yeah, I mean, you’re you’re looking at the b2c and and then if you if you’re not doing it, you might get left behind. I guess that’s the kind of the trick.
Adam Arkfield [15:15]
You know, it’s just depends on what people’s goals are right? I believe we are one of the most, we’re generally one of the most expensive forms of marketing, when it comes to your cost per lead and cost per acquisition are clearly more expensive than referrals are generally more expensive than SEO. However, we have the benefit of being able to scale, typically. So it depends on what your goal is. I mean, if you want to build a firm that’s going to scale rapidly, I think paperclip generally has to be in the mix, especially if you’re b2c. If you’re not really needing business, you’re kind of trying to supplement, you don’t want to really double your ad spend and like really hone all your energy on getting this to work, it’s probably just going to limp along, and maybe not be a big contributor to your business. Because it’s just not the focus, it does need a lot of care and attention. And things change all the time, which is a whole nother conversation about one thing that worked, you know, I hear all the time, four years ago, I was doing this, and I’m just like, four years ago, like Facebook increased their ad costs 30% In just the last year, let alone all their targeting is like out the window like for like four years is an eternity, six months ago is as much as I’ll listen to because more than six months, things just change way too much.
Steve Fretzin [16:31]
There are about someone that has a 10 year old website, I mean, you might as well have a 10 year old computer at this point, right? Yes, yes. So what are some other marketing tips and tricks around, you know, websites business, I’m sorry, pay per click, etc, that you either do or that you suggest to people to help increase conversions or to help increase you know, lead flow?
Adam Arkfield [16:50]
Yeah, I would say the one, one area that we’re spending a considerable amount of time in, which has a little bit of a higher barrier to entry is YouTube advertising. So to create a little bit of context, Google has about 1 billion, excuse me 5 billion searches a day. On YouTube, they’re about 5 billion views a day videos. As you know, most everybody talks about Google search. And rarely people talk about YouTube. But there’s tremendous inventory. And what people also don’t know is the targeting is exactly the same. You can target based on keywords and YouTube, which is a little bit counterintuitive. I don’t mean searching on YouTube. I mean, if someone goes to Google, and they search for personal injury, personal injury attorney, you can actually target that person on YouTube, and show the ad to them. Even though you didn’t buy an ad on Google. Sometimes when you put in the word attorney, it gets a little complicated, but the concept is, you’re able to target people on YouTube, just like you can on Google. So I think YouTube has been and will continue to be an untapped resource and people that are willing to make the investment to make it work, you have to create videos, you have to spend some money on it, we’ll have an entry into a market that most other attorneys are not tackling.
Steve Fretzin [18:06]
And I think the video the barrier to entry for videos changed significantly too, right? I mean, I’ve done videos that were multi camera lights, I had makeup on, I mean, things like that back, you know, 1015 years ago, and today, I think I’m willing to watch a video of of someone just talking at me on the camera, if it’s a topic that I’m interested in, and maybe there’s some prompts, or there’s some, you know, he’s using a whiteboard or something like that, but I’ll you know, have some graphics thrown in. But it’s it’s, it’s pretty cheap and easy, wouldn’t you? I mean, is that what you’re saying?
Adam Arkfield [18:38]
Yeah, and, you know, if you’re willing to get in front of a camera, and you can speak relatively fluently with good lighting, you need good lighting and sound, you can knock out a video in 30 minutes, right? I mean, a two minute video you can you can take care of in an hour. And if you’re not comfortable in front of video, you can hire a script writer to write a script, hire someone on Fiverr to record it for 100 bucks, and then hire an editor on Fiverr for 50 bucks, and you can get a video created for less than $500 that, you know, that’s simplifying everything. That’s the production process and the time you know, you need a level of expertise to like know what to do. But from it but you’re not spending 5000 hours on a video a commercial on YouTube doesn’t work, right? Someone is watching a video and when the pre roll ad comes up. If it’s a commercial, it’s a commercial like you don’t touch your TV screen when a commercial comes on because there’s no real call to action like maybe call our phone numbers something on a YouTube video you have someone talking to the consumer you say hey, have you been injured in a car accident? Are you do you think you might have a claim you know, but you’re not sure? Bla bla bla and you’re just talking and you say if you’re interested in a free assessment, click the link below. You’re going to see a survey put in a couple of details. Tell us about your case and get a free case evaluation. So you get money so you’re just talking to them. Not saying we are this we did this we are this that doesn’t work. You have to speak to them. Like you’re like you’re selling a person In real life, yeah.
Steve Fretzin [20:01]
And what’s the phone anyway, I don’t even know who’s using who’s calling a number at this point. I just I know what’s happening. But I don’t think my phone rings more than a couple times a week at this point. It’s all text and email and in, in direct messaging and all that kind of stuff. So we’ve, we’ve turned a corner. I mean, I think I used to have to worry about my phone going off all the time in meetings, I don’t even turn the turn the volume off anymore, and just they just let it sit. It’s quiet.
Adam Arkfield [20:29]
I’ll tell you what, though, in consumer advertising, there’s a lot of phone calls. Yeah, or agency attorneys like we use. So another sort of, like, you know, tip or trick that I think’s really important is using a call tracking software, especially if you’re in b2c, we use call rail, we like call rail a lot. And what it does is it allows you to track so you know, kind of back to the metrics of is my campaign working? It’s like, okay, well, we went through this scenario before you got 10 leads for $1,000 100 ollars. Lead, but maybe you weren’t, maybe don’t have a tracking phone number, and you actually got 20 leads, but you just didn’t have a tracking number. And you got these calls, and you’re like, Oh, hey, great. Oh, you’re calling about bankruptcy. Great, I’d love to talk to you. But 10 of those came from your ad campaign. So your cost per lead actually wasn’t 100, it was actually 50. And your cost per acquisition wasn’t actually 1500. Or, you know, any variation in between. That is huge. That’s a massive difference. And that’s why I say sometimes the marketing campaign can be working, and the law firm doesn’t even know it. Yeah, it’s just as bad for the law firm to think that you’re underperforming, or for you to be over performing in the law firm not know it and to be underperforming. Right. I mean, you just need clarity of data, and a call tracking platform really helps with that.
Steve Fretzin [21:41]
Yeah, I mean, every single client that I sign up, or that works with me, I know exactly where they I always ask, or I always know where they came from. Because there’s a thank you that has to go out, there’s a gift that needs to be sent, there’s tracking involved in knowing that, okay, now, x percent of my business 50% of my business are coming from referrals and 25% are coming from, you know, web web leads. And you know, you need to know that because that helps you determine, you know, where you should continue to spend your time and energy and money and people aren’t doing it. They’re just kind of letting the lead and the year happened, come and go. And that’s not going to give you the data or the information you need to make better decisions in 2022.
Adam Arkfield [22:22]
Yeah, that’s totally right. I mean, without the data, don’t even start a campaign if you’re not willing to track it. Just don’t even waste the time. Yeah. Got it.
Steve Fretzin [22:31]
So when you’re select when someone’s looking to select an agency to do pay per click, and there’s I’m sure at this point 1000s out there, how what should they be doing to make sure they don’t get the the agency or the individual that doesn’t have the right experience? Or doesn’t have the right talent? or doesn’t, you know, that they don’t make a misstep? Is there a way for them to sort of validate who the ones are that they should be talking to?
Adam Arkfield [22:58]
Yeah, this is a great question. I really think it’s, it’s incredibly important for attorneys and law firms to know how agencies work. So the way agencies work is, typically someone starts an agency, and they’re really good at one thing, they might be really good at PR, they might be really good at website development, they might be really good at something else, they do a good job, then their clients say, Hey, can you do social media? Or can you run ads for us, and then this agency starts to grow. And they go, oh, yeah, we can do social media for sure. Like they want to grow, they want to take the business, right. So they go from being very good at one thing, a freelancer and small agency into a full service agency, or they’re offering many services. Now, what’s important to know is if you have a agency of 20 people, which is a pretty decent sized agency, your full service, you might offer aid services, website development, SEO, paperclip, PR, content, writing video, whatever, I just listed off six and harsher. Now you have some leadership, you have some management, that means you might have one or two people that oversee each of those services. So what you get is a very diluted experience base in each of the services. So like Jack of all trades, master of none is basically what’s happening there. So that’s a full service agency, I believe strongly and I have since I started in specialist agencies, which are, you know, having a company that just does pay per click or just as website development, or just does SEO for personal injury attorneys, because you will have, if you have 10 people half the size, just doing pay per click, you’re going to have seven or eight Pay Per Click experts operating, working together collaborating, building legal campaigns, little bit of management, little bit of leadership, which is three times as many experts in the full service agency that’s twice the size. So as an attorney, you just hammer the agency on, on how their company works and what they’re good at where they started, how many people they have in a role. I think it’s totally legitimate to say, How many people do you have running ads in your agency? Well, we have three okay. How long have Each of them been there. Well, one’s been here for five years. one’s been here for a year one’s been here for six months. Okay? If I hire you, do I get the five year guy? Because that’s a lot different than the six month guy. And they’re gonna be like, Well, yeah, sure. And it’s like, okay, well, then you get the five year guy, and then nine months, and they say, we’re going to transition your account, like, right, how much time has that guy had? So asking those questions, and just digging in and challenging the agency, I think is really healthy. Because what that does is it it illuminates how the agency works and, and how it operates with our model, the way that we work is we guarantee a certain lead price. So what I wanted to do was I wanted to take a lot of that uncertainty out of the equation, and just say, Listen, even if I hire someone new, and they work on your account, you’re guaranteed a lead price. So if they bombed the account, it’s going to cost me money. So someone might say, I want to spend 5000 a month in advertising, I might say, Okay, for this practice area, $200, we’re going to guarantee $100 per lead, you will not pay more than $100, I’m going to try and generate the lead for less than that. So I have a margin. That’s how we make money. By bringing a crappy advertiser, and your cost per lead, go to $125, the law firm is still paying $100, I will literally lose money on that account. So it’s a risk mitigator. And it, it just creates more well, it reduces risk in the relationship and allows us to operate like I do need to bring in new people, every agency does. But I don’t want that to negatively affect my clients. So
Steve Fretzin [26:31]
to keep but you’re kind of keeping your eye on everything to make sure that your clients are happy and successful. And even if they’re working with someone new, it’s not like they’re on their own with that new person, you’re going to make sure that that it’s profitable for everybody. Yeah, and,
Adam Arkfield [26:47]
you know, the way that we operate is when we bring in, you know, so this is kind of aside from that, what when we bring in someone new, we actually don’t assign them to accounts on their own. So this is just kind of an extra then because we’re not because we’re on a margin basis. But, you know, we we need to keep the accounts performing. Like I cannot afford to have accounts not performing. And my clients can’t afford to have accounts not performing. It’s like neither of us can afford it. And so what I want to do is balance the scales and the responsibility. And to give you an example, August or excuse me, October when we’re filming, this is like the worst month my company has had in like, a year. I don’t know what’s happening in October, but lead prices are garbage. And our entire model is just like destroyed this month. But you know what, our clients are still getting that leads. We have some campaigns I’ve started losing money somewhere the margins really compressed. I think it’s kind of a back to school, sort of like saying before the holidays, I don’t know, but maybe maybe
Steve Fretzin [27:50]
it’s a sober October. So we need to get people drunk again.
Adam Arkfield [27:54]
I didn’t know that is a thing that’s sober October.
Steve Fretzin [27:59]
So sobering. Well, listen, it sounds like you’ve got a great gig over there and a really interesting model. And I hope that you, you know, continue to build it back up and thrive. Let’s do this. Let’s transition over to the three best of and you were in Chandler, Arizona, which is right near Scottsdale, and Phoenix and all that. So I’m coming out to visit you which I would love to do. I used to live out in Flagstaff for a little bit after I graduate I used to go down to Scottsdale and Phoenix and study in Sedona and all that beautiful all the beautiful country out there. But what’s what’s like your favorite place the so I’m going to take you out for dinner. Where are we going?
Adam Arkfield [28:36]
Well, favorite place. There’s a place in downtown Phoenix called perception. You spell it really oddly, it’s like PRCP Shi En, it’s like, it’s not how you spell perception. That place is incredible. So that’s like that’s more of a nice dinner. It’s not like super fancy, but it’s like a chef. Yeah, however, Mexican food is like the jam here in Phoenix. And so we recently discovered this place called expos by Chandler mall, where we just we just moved here sort of recently in this part of town, and it is really exceptional. It’s kind of a hole in the wall ish but amazing Mexican food. Great.
Steve Fretzin [29:14]
I’m all about that.
Adam Arkfield [29:15]
I’m all about that. Super good.
Steve Fretzin [29:16]
So before we eat, because after we eat, I’m going to need to take a siesta. But if I’m coming out your way, what’s gonna something that is exciting for someone from out of town, you’d want to say hey, we have to go see this or do this.
Adam Arkfield [29:30]
If this is you know if this can if I can choose the time someone’s coming golf, they’re coming at the end of January. The Waste Management open is a is a famous golf tournament here in town because the 16th hole is like a sporting event. Have you seen Have you seen anything about the system? No, I
Steve Fretzin [29:46]
don’t know about that. No. Okay, you should google it. Everybody
Adam Arkfield [29:48]
should Google it. 16 total waste management open. Okay. What they do is it’s a par three they put stadium seating around all 16 and it’s rowdy, it’s cheering. I mean it is It’s aggressively rowdy. It’s like a sporting event. And there’s no other whole likening golf in the entire golf tournament is a party. I don’t think golfers particularly like this tournament because it is a party. But is an amazing week of golf and fun. And I mean, it’s just it’s a great, it’s really fun.
Steve Fretzin [30:17]
Okay, so not happening in sober October,
Adam Arkfield [30:19]
just not having the opposite drunk January,
Steve Fretzin [30:24]
January. All right, perfect. And what are the locals into other than drunk January? Hole? 16? What are people doing every day? You know that, that they’re just loving about the area?
Adam Arkfield [30:35]
You know, Phoenix is all about the weather, right? The summers garbage here. So in the summer, people are leaving. So they’re going to San Diego in California. But I think really what people are doing is people are coming down here to golf, they’re hiking down here. They’re staying at the pool when the weather’s crappy throughout the rest of the country. They’re visiting resorts, and they’re just outside. So even when it’s cold here, it’s not that cold, you know, it’ll get down to 40 or 50. Yeah, but for for here, it’s all about the weather. And you know, people just talk about being outside and then there’s an influx of snowbirds from other parts of the country come, you know, January in particular.
Steve Fretzin [31:11]
Awesome. Awesome. Well, Adam, thank you so much. If people want to get in touch with you and hear more about your business, prevail legal marketing, how do they get in touch? Yeah, I
Adam Arkfield [31:19]
would just go to our domain is grow with prevail.com. You can type in prevail legal marketing done, we have an ad that comes up, that’s the best place to learn about what we do. You know, we do performance based marketing. So we’re only incentivized when we actually do well. And that’s sort of our position in the market. And, you know, we primarily work with b2c attorneys. So you can visit us there, fill out a form and I’ll be the one to talk to you.
Steve Fretzin [31:39]
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for spending your time and sharing your wisdom and giving us an education on Pay Per Click best practices. I know for some attorneys out there, they’re just curious about it. Others are wondering, you know, they, whether they should you know, get themselves in the game or not. So, I think think this was this was highly informative for my audience. I appreciate it. Great. Thanks
Adam Arkfield [32:01]
for having me, Steve. Appreciate it. Yeah. And hey, everybody,
Steve Fretzin [32:03]
thanks for listening today and spend some time with Adam and myself. And listen, it’s all about being that lawyer someone who is competent, organized and a skilled Rainmaker. Stay safe stay well. We’ll talk again soon. Bye bye.
Narrator [32:19]
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer. Life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website fretzin.com. For additional information, and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes