In this section we’re going to look at world class law firms in large centers where it is highly competitive, where they’re spending the most money on advertising and they’re spending money on professional services such as search engine optimization. And we stand to learn the most from the tactics that they’re using over time. I’m going to show you how to analyze those tactics so that we can emulate them in your business. Again, we’re using the principle here that we want to be a big fish in a small pond. Whatever market that you’re in, you can stand to learn good lessons from the large law firms in competitive marketplaces who are spending the most money. So we’re going to look at who’s spending money on PPC or paid traffic. And we’re going to look at the organic rankers. And based on my experience with search engine optimization, we’ll do some rod speculation about what it is that is making them rank and I’m going to examine on-page factors as well as what we call off-page factors such as the number of links out there on the internet that are linking inward to them and not just any links they have to be high quality links. It used to be that any link would contribute to your ranking in the search engines, so if there was 120 links out there or websites that were linking to your site and your nearest competitor with exactly the same factors or all other things being equal if they had 100 links you would rank better than they would. And we use this strategy to some excellent effect for some of our biggest clients. But as Google became more sophisticated, it’s looking for more authentic indicators of your value. So we’re going to talk about and speculate about some of those factors. Reason why I say speculate is that Google is not completely open about the way that it ranks websites, otherwise everyone would be gaming Google. Google does provide some very specific information about how you should structure your website and how you should organize your information so that you can get the best possible results. But they don’t talk about the black box. They don’t talk about the search algorithm at all, because that’s top secret. The other thing that I’m going to point out is that if you come back to this module after you finish all of the bass training videos that we’ve provided for you, you’re going to have new insight into the kinds of things that people do that are really working inside of their marketing. You’ll recognize them. When you see them at this point, some of the things might go over your head because you’re not sure what to look for. But as you understand the principles of targeting and developing good sales copy and creating meaningful benefits for prospects, you’re going to see examples of that everywhere. So let’s get into the examples, so in our research we’re interested in looking at firms that are operating in much larger markets so that we can be a big fish in whatever small pond we find ourselves in. We’re not interested in emulating the behaviors and presentation of small firms, we’re interested in figuring out what the big guys are doing and then emulating that in our own modest way, in our small smaller market where it might be less competitive. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to start out with a, we’re going to use a search term here to show us say criminal lawyers Los Angeles California. So what we find out right off the bat here, well we’ve got some paid advertising which is interesting. We’ve got some Google local listings there and we have some natural listings including a listing on Yelp. So what can we find out? Well, if we want to first of all look at someone who’s spending money on advertising let’s look at criminal-lawyer-now and try to figure out what they’re up to. The first thing I can say about this is it’s a good solid design and we’ve got a very strong message right from the get-go. You know exactly whether or not you belong here. If you have got one of these problems, you would definitely know you’ve come to the right place. So that’s a strong message that you want to send people when they land on your website. They want to know that they’ve landed exactly in the right spot. I don’t know if I’m thrilled about this Superman pose but it works for the kinds of people that he’s targeting. What about call to actions? The call to action here: call now, free consultation. That’s a pretty typical call to action in a market where you’re trying to attack people with an immediate short-term need. But I think if I was him, I would be putting it on this side because the eye of the viewer starts in the upper left-hand corner and comes down at least it does in countries where English is spoken. Now we have a call to action here but it has been carefully disguised. Find out now and we’ve got a little micro survey here which helps us see what kind of defense the person has. So that’s an interesting interesting way of tackling the lead capture problem. I’m not making an overtly about lead capture and there’s no immediate exchange here except the promise of more information sort of bring your defense into sharp focus. So I kind of like that approach. That’s very interesting. And so, those are some of the things you can learn from going down the rabbit hole when it comes to lawyers who are operating in more competitive markets than the one you might find yourself in. Let’s look at the criminal defense group. The next paid listing nice clean design. Do they put their call to action somewhere where I can find it? Yes, they do. Although again I would prefer to see it on the left. Here: call now, attorney on call. So this is interesting. It gives you the kind of instant ambulance feel where someone understands that this is a public service, that is available to them 24/7, this is not a call now for more information type thing. This is more about a bat-signal call to action where you know, shine the logo up into the clouds and this guy comes and saves the day. Which I like. The other thing I like is they have gone out of their way to provide some immediate introductory videos. There, which breaks the ice in advance of the call. You feel like you know the person before you even pick up your phone. So these are realms. I presume Eric Chase is one of the partners in this law firm. So if you have anything like that and you don’t have to wait around for a news agency to give you, to film you and to put you on TV, you can do your own commentary on local news items. Provide your own impressions of those and what you would do if you are representing that person in the court system. So let’s move on to the next example in our list. We’ve got: fightthecharges.com. So once again, we’ve got a very simple layout here. We’ve got our call action right up top here, charged with DUI in Ontario. Contact our criminal defense lawyers to fight the charge as well. It’s a little weak but it’s okay. It’s okay. It doesn’t give me the same impression that the other well-written calls to action gave me although the toll-free is that’s a nice touch. And again, should be on the left. Somehow, if you want your logo to be on the left so that people are seeing that first I mean that’s a wasted opportunity. You can always put it you know down the page like this and then have your call-to-action up in the top. That would be the preferable way to do it. We also have an awful lot of ways to contact them here. These are all social channels that I presume they’re using without any clear idea of what I’m supposed to do and I would love to see someone follow me. If I was Robinsons but i mean these are just logos, there should be if you can be aggressively building a social channel as a lead bucket. You should be making it very clear that you want people to follow you or subscribe or connect to you on Linkedin. This really doesn’t tell me what to do next. I mean it’s nice that they have them but as a motivated potential client, I’m not seeing how this helps me. The other thing is with this call to action is i don’t see, i don’t understand what the cost of delay is. So what will it cost me if I don’t call them now? What are the possible consequences of
not contacting them now and getting ahead of this charge that I might have? So I think that needs to be abundantly clear in the call to action. You have to. It’s not enough that the person has an urgent need. You have to add some urgency to the solution as well. And you can do that very naturally by reminding them what the potential consequence of delay is when you’re building these calls to action. All right, well let’s look at some more criminal lawyers Los Angeles. We’ve got the Law Offices of James E Blatt. Now, these folks have done a really good job of getting themselves at the top of the Google business listing which is great. We’re also interested in knowing about what people are doing to get to the top of the search engines. This is a Yelp listing. So we’re not interested in that just ea.com is a directory where you can have your law firm listed. So we’re not necessarily interested in that, that’s not going to teach us anything about search engine optimization or other tactics. And then we have attorneys.superlawyers.com yet another I’m getting a feeling that this is probably another listing service. Yep, it’s kind of like rate your doc I think. So maybe make a note of this and make an effort to get yourself listed with these. What we’re interested in this situation is what a world-class focused marketing system looks like in a competitive market. So Ambrosio y  rodriguez los angeles criminal defense attorney. Nice, nice website. Now, Ambrosio is doing the right thing here: request free consultation. Here’s your call to action on the left side. Nice job Ambrosio. And he’s got some social proof here. He’s introducing his expertise in his personality to an uninitiated visitor, me by showing that he’s been on TV and here he is talking about his clients at about his practice and you’re also getting a sense of what his professionalism and personality is like. So all good stuff, all above the fold and I know exactly what I’m supposed to do next. I was supposed to request a free consultation. He’s also got some really great social proof here. So if humans featured in magazines, if you’ve spoken in front of legal groups or perhaps you have articles published in certain magazines, absolutely include their logos if those magazines are recognizable to your prospects. It’s no good having social proof that doesn’t mean anything to people. And he’s got his Avvo rating right here on the side as well. So again, more social proof. This guy’s doing a lot of high-end stuff: start your free consultation. So Ambrosio is not letting you off the hook either as you scroll down the page yet another opportunity to engage with him. So this is the kind of tactical stuff that we really want to be on the lookout for clear calls to action, social proof, nice clean layouts. We don’t have to go all out to have a glamorous layout so long as we have clear calls to action and people know exactly what to do next. So those just a few examples of how looking outside of your marketplace. You can, see you can discover world-class tactics used by a world-class marketing systems that are in very competitive market places and you can bring those strategies back to your smaller fishbowl and use them to dominate the local marketplace.