Darin Swayne: Organic Organic search will never completely go away, but it's going to morph. It's going to be completely different in 5 years, because traditional search engines, I don't think are going to be around.

I think it's going to be all done through AI search. And so knowing how AI, you know, how, how to rank an AI, how to, get On there as a resource in AI, or even cited in the AI, searches and stuff, so that is, I think probably the, biggest opportunity and one that shouldn't be ignored, the people that are working on it right now.

Are the people that are going to be the biggest in 5 years, people aren't working on it right now are going to be forgotten and lost.


[00:00:00] 


Introduction and Guest Welcome 


MPS: Hey Law Firm Owner, welcome to the Your Practice Mastered podcast. We're your hosts, I'm MPS. 


Richard James: And I'm Richard James, MPS, another fantastic guest today. We're going to be hyper focusing on the digital marketing arena, such an important quadrant inside the lead generation, quadrant for law firms. Darin Swayne from Advantage Attorney has been doing this for over 20 years. He and I have gotten to know each other, and I consider us friends as well as he's a wonderful partner of ours, not only for our firm, but many of our members' firms. 


So, I know what he's capable of, I've witnessed it personally. So Darin, thanks for being on today to share some wisdom as to what's going on in the legal space. But also, a little bit inside as to your own journey as an entrepreneur. I appreciate you being here today. 


Darin Swayne: Glad to be here. 


MPS: Awesome. 


Darin Swayne's Background and Journey 


MPS: Darin, to kick things off, would love to learn a little bit more about you. What's something that maybe not everyone knows about you? 


Darin Swayne: Let's see, something not everybody knows about me. I was once a professional bodybuilder. 


MPS: [00:01:00] Ah. 


Richard James: I did not know that about you. 


Darin Swayne: For about 10 minutes. Then I realized I'd never make it, that was it. But yes. 


MPS: That's good. 


Richard James: You know, my favorite part about bodybuilding, Darin? 


Darin Swayne: Not watching it? 


Richard James: No, the cheat days, I just jumped right to the cheat days. I'm like, Hey, I'm a bodybuilder, I'm doing the cheat days, right? Just because it's every day of the week, does that matter? It shouldn't really matter, should it? 


Darin Swayne: You can get the cheat days. 


Richard James: People listening to this podcast know by now, I'd rather be found with a dead on the side of the road with a cheeseburger in my hand, than I would be with running shoes on. That being said, at 53 years now on this planet, I can tell you, I feel better if I get a little bit of exercise than if I do nothing but drink bourbon, smoke cigars, and eat cheeseburgers. Maybe a little bit of bodybuilding wouldn't do me all that much disservice. 


Darin Swayne: Anybody that looks at me can tell, I haven't touched the weight in a long time. 


Richard James: You wouldn't be both, brother. All right, today, we're going to break into some more of the story about your journey. MPS, where do you want to go from here? 


Challenges and Insights in Legal Marketing 


MPS: Yeah, just that, I'd love to learn a little bit more about your entrepreneurial journey. You've been working with law [00:02:00] firms for, I think, you said, 25 years now. So, what did that look like? How did you get here? 


Darin Swayne: If you really look back, I've worked with law firms my whole life, my entire family are attorneys. It goes all the way back to Noah Haynes Swayne, who was a US Supreme Court Justice. My dad's attorney, my grandfather was an attorney, his grandfather was an attorney, I'm the black sheep. But I became an attorney marketer. 


But yeah, I've worked with law firms forever. I grew up in my dad's law firm, worked my way through college, working for my dad. He was a bankruptcy family law guy, he started his own Bail Bond company, and I worked as a bounty hunter and all sorts of stuff for him. I run the whole gambit when it comes to law firms. I think I've done every job there is to do in a law firm, and I know it from a intimate standpoint. Because growing up with my dad, I saw him struggle. 


I saw him trading firewood for people who couldn't afford to pay their [00:03:00] bill. And he'd come home with a dozen chickens, especially when we were in a rural part of Idaho. There was a lot of people that just couldn't pay their bills the normal way, so it was a bartering system. At one time, I think, 50 cars in our backyard, we had a big backyard, but people would trade in cars. 


My dad would just take anything for it. I think I feel the pain of law firm owners, especially right now with the recession on, and wages going up. And I remember my dad struggling with all that stuff, and I can really appreciate that and understand where they're coming from. 


Richard James: I've known you a long time and I did not, I knew some of that story, I didn't know that whole story. But for future reference, when somebody asked you what they might not know about you. You might want to lead in with, I was a bounty hunter at one time. That was fantastic, I'm like, Oh no, I had no idea. And I can relate, I remember when I built the law firm in Phoenix, it was before non attorney [00:04:00] ownership was allowed, but I was still theoretically a non-attorney owner and somebody paid us with a car for our services, cause that's all they had. 


And it was like a 2002 or 2001 BMW two seater convertible. And it had couple of hundred thousand miles on it or whatever. It wasn't worth a whole bunch, but that's really all they had, and they paid for our services with that. And I remember, me and the managing partner, we would swap off weekends, and he would take it and I would take it until finally, I think one day we sold it. But yeah, the bartering system is a real thing. 


If there's a law lawyer listening to this, if they're in any of those fee-based practice areas, especially, if they're in a rural area, it's likely they've been paid in guns, cars, or chickens, or some combination of all three. And in some ways it's a very cool part of the business, because it's a human part of the [00:05:00] business. But it's not the only part of the business, is it? Michael? 


MPS: No, it's not the only part of the business. Obviously, there's lots of different systems in the business. By the way, I remember that BMW. 


Richard James: Cause it was probably around when you were 16. 


MPS: It was a little earlier than that, just a tad bit earlier, but I do remember it. But Darin, I think that there's several parts of that story that I did not know that I actually find very interesting. But now, you're shifted, you're on the attorney marketing side of things. 


The Importance of Tracking and Measuring Marketing Efforts 


MPS: So, from your perspective, what would you say is the number one mistake law firms do from a marketing perspective? 


Darin Swayne: Not measuring what they do, not tracking what they do, or relying too much on some marketer to tell them, yeah, this is how you're doing and trust the marketer to give them accurate information. I think, that's where most attorneys go wrong, is they'll come to me and they'll say, I don't understand why i'm not getting any business, what's going on? 


My marketing guy says, I'm [00:06:00] doing great, and he's got a vested interest in telling you that too. So, that's probably the biggest thing, is they just don't track and they don't know exactly where they're at in terms of lead generation and that kind of stuff. 


Richard James: So Darin, you've been doing this a minute, did you always understand that as a digital marketer that they needed to measure? And then you came into our world, and I suspect, it was refreshing that's some of the stuff we talk about? Or did that morph over time to see just this conversation about conversion and measuring and numbers and all that stuff, where was that born for you? 


Darin Swayne: It's something that I've always known, and it's something that I've always hated about our field marketing is just full of a bunch of snake oil salesmen, people that don't tell you the truth and it's unfortunate. It makes my job much harder. But I really started to come home when I started going to Partners Club and seeing how [00:07:00] it affected the attorneys really on a real basis, where I got to actually press the flesh with them, meet them, talk to them about their experiences. 


I can tell somebody that's been to Partners Club without them even telling me that they're a member. Just because the first thing they start saying is, how are you going to measure it? It's really good, it's refreshing, if they really know how to do it, it makes my job easy. Because one of the most difficult things, is when people don't really understand how to track marketing? What marketing is supposed to do? And then try to explain that to them, and they're so full of nonsense from all of these sales people who have misled them, unfortunately. It makes my job tough. 


Richard James: I will tell you, 2008, 2009, when I started to work in the legal field and I started building that law firm, the yellow pages were still a thing. It wasn't dramatically popular, it was the only ad we had when we started that business. Because the partnership broke up, and so he got to keep [00:08:00] the yellow page ad, and it produced business. To the point when I saw the numbers, I actually invested the inside back cover. And I could tell you, whether the back cover, or the inside of the front cover, or the full page ad inside the yellow pages produced better results for us because I had unique tracking mechanisms on every single one of those ads. 


And so, I could tell you to the click on the landing page or to the dial on the phone, which one generated more interest. And then I could fully track that all the way through to tell you which one generated more clients and fundamentally had a stronger Return On Investment. That being said, speaking about the snake oil salesman. So, here's a product that actually was a really good product for us. It generated a considerable amount of business for the first couple of years of that practice's life until it didn't. 


But I remember that salesman would walk in when the numbers were starting to die, [00:09:00] and they started to guarantee me X number of leads at Y number of dollars per lead and I said, you can't make that promise. How do you know? And I pulled out all the math, and I put it on the whiteboard in front of him, and he just packed up his little portfolio, walked over to me, shook my hand and walked out the door, and I never saw him again. 


Because I was like, look, your guarantee is nothing but a guaranteed pile of crap in a bag, it's worthless to me. I understand, and look, you come from a family of lawyers. So you probably understand this too, that not a lot of lawyers actually love arithmetic, is that a fair statement? 


Darin Swayne: I would say, that's pretty fair, yeah. Not a lot of them like spelling either, but that's another subject. 


Richard James: At the end of the day, we don't need them to get into calculus, right? It's just basic arithmetic. [00:10:00] So, MPS, with that in mind, understanding that Darin's answer of, if they could just track, it would help them beat back the snake oil salesman. Where do you want to go from here? 


MPS: Yeah, first off, I couldn't agree more, knowing your numbers. And I would tell the law firm owners that at the very base, just having a baseline understanding of how marketing should work in your law firm, make an argument, you should have even more than a baseline understanding. But for nothing else than to know if your vendor is actually producing you results. 


Because so often, they'll just hand it over with no real understanding on whether or not that vendor's performing. I think it's vital to know your numbers, Darin. I think you're spot on with that being probably the number one mistake. I'm gonna flip the script from mistake to opportunity. Right now, where do you see the biggest opportunity for law firms from a marketing perspective? 


Future Opportunities: AI in Legal Marketing 


Darin Swayne: I think, right now, AI is probably [00:11:00] the thing that they should be, I don't know if I should say focused on, but it should be a big part of what they're thinking about when it comes to marketing. It's going to be completely different in 5 years. Because traditional search engines, I don't think are going to be around. 


I think it's going to be all done through AI search. And so, knowing how to get on there as a resource in AI, or even cited in the AI searches and stuff. So, that is, I think, probably the biggest opportunity and one that shouldn't be ignored, the people that are working on it right now are the people that are going to be the biggest in 5 years, people aren't working on it right now are going to be forgotten and lost. 


Richard James: Yeah, the guys and gals who bought LawFirm.com or whatever, right back in the day, and just started building out content, even though they might've been doing it wrong, they were the ones that got ahead of the curve. And [00:12:00] right now, the curve is so big, if you're just starting and you're going to try to compete with a guy who's been putting content out there for 10 years. And you try to compete just on the content game, it can be done, but the hurdle is large. 


Darin Swayne: Yeah, it's definitely tough. You've got a brand new website and you're competing against somebody who's been there for 20 years, it's going to take you 15 years to catch up to them. 


Richard James: But with this brand new technology, that may not be relevant today, as much as it's going to be relevant 5 years. But 5 years from now, as you said, and we don't know if it's going to be 3 years or 5 years or whatever. But at some point in the future, this is going to be so relevant that those who did it today are going to be the ones that are leading the way. 


So theoretically, somebody starting today could lead the way in AI while the guy who's been doing it for 20 years, or the gals have been doing it for 20 years, decides to stick their head in the sand and not do anything about it. 3, 5 years from now, the guy who started today, [00:13:00] even though the other person will be at it for 25 years, they'll be ahead of them because they focused on the newest way that search was going to happen. And that's the real point, correct? 


Darin Swayne: That is definitely the point, and right now it's not easy because Google's still trying to figure it out. Bing is still trying to figure it out. Google oscillates like they had gotten to the point that they were favoring all these organic searches in the AI stuff. Because AI turns up at the top of most search results, it was cutting out the paid advertisers. 


So, Google was losing revenue, the paid advertisers weren't happy because they weren't making any money off from it, and Google had to change that. And now, it tends to favor the big spender. So, the big brands and the people who are spending money on ads and it's not quite shutting out organic, but it's getting there. It's going to be interesting to see what happens in the next 6 to 12 months, [00:14:00] because Google's going to have to change something. It won't work if it's just focused on paid ads and big brands. 


Richard James: Alphabet is about the numbers, not the letters. 


Darin Swayne: Yes, that is right. 


Richard James: And by the way, I just came up with that. 


Darin Swayne: You need a trademark pending. 


MPS: Yeah. 


Richard James: Copyright, all right. So, MPS, I don't know how you feel, and I'm curious about Darin's opinion about what you're about to say. I'd love to see this conversation unfold. So Darin said, what's opportunity we're looking forward to, and that's great, and we should definitely pay attention to that. But whilst we're paying attention to that, Michael, what have you seen after working with firms that you feel? And Darin, I want your opinion on if you think this needs to change. Are some of the big rocks of the digital marketing space that law firms need to be paying attention to, or have in place right now before they start messing with going down the new opportunity of AI? 


Foundational Marketing Strategies for Law Firms 


MPS: So, I'm going to bring all of that full circle because I think that's a good point. I fully agree with Darin on AI being the future in firms needing to allocate at [00:15:00] least some knowledge and resources there to learn that. The same time, they got to be careful not to get caught up in the bright shiny object syndrome too, and not maximize what they already got, which is the other side of it, or even maximize maybe something they don't have. 


And put the right marketing systems in play. I have found that, what seems to be working really well is, paid ads on Facebook and developing a very strong Facebook and paid ads strategy and funnel. We've tested that out with a few firms on our end, and it's been working very well for the firms that implement it and use it. 


And so, I think that's definitely a path to look toward, but I think the fundamentals is the key, right? I think, at the end of the day, everything comes back to measuring your marketing, and then understanding the basic framework of your marketing, your message media market. And identifying those three [00:16:00] pillars and knowing how to start building lead generation machines, or we like to call them oil wells. So that way, you've set yourself up and once you've got your oil wells that are consistently producing you results, now you can start to allocate some of your time and your resources to developing future oil wells like the AI space. 


Richard James: I love that point. I think that sets Darin's answer up really well. Darin, I'd love to hear, speaking of the oil wells in your world and the digital space, besides the Facebook paid ads. What are some oil wells or big rocks that you see are necessary for law firms to have to build a foundation for themselves? 


Darin Swayne: Before I'd even start, and this is what I tell every client when they come to me. Before I even start pushing you down going to paid stuff, I want you to get your organic and your website squared away first. You've got to have a good presence, you've got to have good content, you've got to have things set up so it's capturing the leads. Before you start driving [00:17:00] traffic to it, get it right. And that's really where we start with our clients, is we tell them, let's get you a nice website, let's make sure that it's converting. 


And it's not about necessarily how the website looks. The ugliest websites in the world are some of the best converting ones. It's really more about how it's structured, how your funnels are set up, and doing that kind of stuff, those are the most important things. And before you start wasting money on driving traffic with paid ads to your website, you want to make sure your websites' in order, and it's going to do what it's supposed to do, which is convert leads. So, that's probably step one in my book. 


Now, it's come back around where Google's changed some things, and it's gotten a little bit easier to meet their qualifications, and all the things you have to do. And to set up the funnels and so, things are a little bit better now, and we're getting back to pushing the paid [00:18:00] stuff again But again, we don't even start down that road until your website's squared away and ready to accept new leads. Facebook's great for some things, I don't know that it's good for everything, but it's definitely good for many practice areas, I think it's a good lead generator. 


Richard James: There are no absolutes in marketing, right? That's the truth, right? The family law firm in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the stuff might not work the same as it is in Bakersfield, California. The bankruptcy firm isn't going to work necessarily the same as the estate planning firm. The fundamentals are the same, but there are nuances that have to be messed with and tested to make sure you get it right. 


Google My Business and LSA Ads 


Richard James: What about Google My Business, GMB? It feels like it should be a strong player and trying to get ranked in whatever it is, 3 pack, 5 pack, I don't know what they're doing these days. But whatever that is, I think that's still an important foundational principle is you put that under the organic label? 


Darin Swayne: Google My Business is tied to your website. Even Google Now, as you add new content to your website, they'll automatically go into your Google My [00:19:00] Business profile and add services for you, add things that you've mentioned on your website. 


It'll be on there as a recommendation. They're so interconnected, you can't really separate them. The average law firm still probably 60 to 70% of their calls are going to come from Google My Business. And more so than paid stuff or any other avenue, they're going to get most of their calls from Google My Business, it's still something that's very much in play. 


It's more important now than it ever has been, I think, just with the way that AI is working. It's something that you have to pay attention to, you have to really understand it too, because Google uses algorithms way too much now with GMB. And what will happen is, you make the wrong change on your GMB and your GMB gets suspended. 


And then it's a nightmare to try to get it back. So, it's important that you really understand it and you know what you can change, what you can't change. The things you shouldn't [00:20:00] say and understanding the impact of every word that you put on that GMB profile is really important. 


Richard James: So valuable, just real quick, just as an educational point, talk about value bombs that were just dropped, don't go messing with your GMB page, your Google My Business page without having an expert help you because bad things can happen. I've seen firms with 800 Google reviews go to disappear overnight, because one small little mistake was made by somebody. So, that's lesson number one. 


But also just as an educational point, I've actually run into a few firms. I've said, Hey, are you running LSA ads? What are you doing? They're like, what's an LSA ad. So, just for those people who maybe are under a rock and still don't know what this is, you talk to them about an LSA ad and are they still effective or what's going on with them? 


Darin Swayne: LSAs are great. In fact, I usually tell most local law firms, the guys that aren't the big names out there, I tell them to start with LSAs before they get into PPC just to see [00:21:00] how the LSAs will perform for them. But they have to follow the rules of the LSA. So, they have to know the procedures, they have to know what's going to make a difference in how the LSA performs. 


If they're hiring a firm to service their LSAs. They're probably wasting their money in more than one way. So, what they're doing is they're paying somebody to monitor their LSAs to dispute the leads. But really to make a difference there, the way that you rank in the LSA, and there's a whole ranking system, it's based on a few factors. One is, how well Google perceives your servicing, the leads they're sending you? 


So, the only way they gauge you is by how quickly you react to them in the LSA dashboard? So, you got to move them from one funnel to another. And how long it takes you to do that is what's called the responsiveness score. And that is [00:22:00] probably 50 or 60% of how well you're going to perform. The other 40 or 50% is reviews, and you have to get the reviews through the LSA system. 


That's how those reviews become a verified review is because they're all done through the LSA system itself. That's probably the 2 things that always get done wrong is, nobody pays attention to the LSAs, they just let them run. I'm getting leads in, then they start complaining about the leads not being very good quality, about the cost of it, etc. And every time somebody's come to me and said, I'm getting leads, but they suck through the LSA. 


I can go back and I can look at it and say, they suck because you're not doing what Google wants you to do. So, you're ending up with the leftovers, you're ended up on searches, instead of being on family law attorney, which is a great search, right? That's a good term you want to be on, it's a high intent [00:23:00] word, somebody actually looking for a family law attorney. 


You're ending up on something like child support calculator, or child support services. It may be related, you might get leads off from it, but that's not the kind of person that's going to convert. So, you have to do the things that google wants you to do or you're just not going to perform well. 


Richard James: MPS, yet again, it comes back to this same concept, right? 


MPS: It always does. It's the lead conversion system, right? Making sure that you've got the proper procedures in place to be able to adequately speed the lead, get to the leads quickly, and then convert those leads into set appointments, get those appointments to show up, turn them into paying clients. 


We could screen this at the rooftops, it always comes back to the same thing. And many times, companies like Darin, who do a really good job for their clients, get called out for not having good leads. When in reality, sometimes there are such thing as bad leads, but most [00:24:00] of the time, it's back to the system that you use to actually convert those leads and how well you do that. 


Richard James: And in this case, it's Google's game the system. And if you don't play by Google's rules, they're punitive. They just said, fine, I'll just take my ball and go home. But you got to play by Google's rules, they're yet another value bomb. So, if you're listening to this, and you're like, where can I get leads? How can I get leads? Okay, here it is. Obviously, we want all the other things we talked about in place, but let's start with LSAs, and then let's follow Google's rules. 


So put somebody in charge, maybe you, if you're the only person on your team, somebody in charge of paying attention to LSAs, and moving them through the LSA machine from one funnel to the next, as quickly as possible, once the lead gets in. And after you get that client to be a client and they're satisfied, make sure you direct them to give you [00:25:00] a review through the LSA platform so that it becomes a verified review through Google and it continues to boost your credibility with Google. 


Google will then put you further up closer to the front of the line and get you better and better leads, because you're being more and more responsive and proving to Google that you're serving your clients well. You can eat off of that plan, if you're a small law firm, you could literally survive. I don't know the exact numbers, but it wouldn't shock me if you couldn't do a half million dollars a year, all by yourself, keeping 50 percent of it to the bottom line by just focusing on Google LSAs. 


Not that you shouldn't do everything else, but if you just did that one thing really well, you could be a game changer. And if you're a 10 million law firm, you know what? My guess is somebody is ignoring that on your team. You're so darn big that you're just not even paying attention to it. 


MPS: So powerful. 


Conclusion and Final Thoughts 


MPS: Darin, you dropped a ton of value [00:26:00] bombs in this episode. What's got you fired up and excited? Could be business, could be personal, could be both. 


Darin Swayne: These days, just getting out of bed, it fires me up, I'm alive another day. I'm really excited about AI, and the things that we're going to be able to offer people in terms of AI, something rich, I just wanted to mention is that all of our clients, you may not have to be a client, if you need training on the LSAs, they can contact me. 


It's a 30 minute training, it'll save you so much money by doing it, and it'll get you so much better leads that I would really recommend going through the training. Even if it's not with us, if you're at least with Google, although Google is Google, and they're going to push you to do things that will make them more money, but it won't necessarily make you more money. 


But I have no interest in it, we're not charging anybody for LSAs. We don't charge any client to manage LSAs. So, it's just something that we offer because we think it's important. But yeah, but things that are exciting me. 


Richard James: That's what I love about you, Darin, you're a giver. 


Darin Swayne: I'm a giver and I'm just a terrible salesman. [00:27:00] I don't find ways to monetize things like I should probably. AI those really got me excited, it's really where everything's going. We're working on right now an AI answering service that will be able to offer. We're working on AI Chat, which we've got several versions of that are already out there working right now. That's real AI, it'll look at your website, and provide answers for clients, and convert the leads and do all sorts of stuff. So, AI is definitely the exciting new thing that's happening in our world. 


MPS: I love it. I think it's terrific, AI is exciting all across the board. And Darin, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for taking the time to be on the podcast today. Thank you for bringing the heat with all the value that you did. And to the Law Firm Owner listening, look, we appreciate you watching or listening, depending on where you're doing that. 


If this isn't your first time around here, make sure to hit that subscribe or follow [00:28:00] button. And then show Darin some love down in the comments below. This was such a value filled episode. So, Darin, thank you again. 


Darin Swayne: No problem, I'm happy to be here. 


Richard James: Hey, Darin, you know, years ago, when I invited to be a vendor at Partners Club, I asked you to make me a promise that you wouldn't bring on more clients than you could adequately serve. And you made me that promise, because I wanted to keep satisfied PPC members as a vendor of Partners Club, and you have kept that promise. And I know you've grown significantly over the years and not just because of us, of your own fruition as well. And you do a really great job of serving our members. 


I never hear a complaint about your overall client satisfaction. So, thank you for being a great firm for our world to work with. Thank you for dropping value bombs and having a heart of giving. I wish you were a better salesperson, you know that. But that being said, I love you for who you are, I appreciate everything you do for us, and [00:29:00] thank you for being here today. I appreciate you. 


Darin Swayne: Thanks guys. I appreciate it. 


MPS: That's the pod.