1635 – Marketing for Elder Law & Estate Planning Attorneys with BamBiz’s Jim Blake

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0:58with us right now it's the founder and ceo of bam biz marketing it is jim blake jim thank you so much for joining us thanks josh for having me happy to be here yes your website is bam biz.net and what is bam biz and that's a good question right what what uh what are we um we actually help elder law and estate planning law firms all over the United States with all aspects of their online marketing. We're most famous for helping them fill live workshops and webinars in their community. We've been doing it for that industry exclusively for over six years now. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about the culture of elder law attorneys.

1:44Now, I will say, full disclosure, I know a little bit about this world, this community. We have a client that we've gone, we've actually been, we were kind of joking, right? That I went to an event last year and we set up a podcast booth there, but the National Association of Elder Law Attorneys, and I was kind of joking with people. I'm like, going to be wild. And truth be told, that is a group that actually knows how to party. Yeah, you know, it's a great group of people. They had the one last year that you were at in Arizona. And then this last year, a couple months ago, it was in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

2:22It was a great time. I think if I were to stereotype attorneys, you know, and I were to put maybe the kind of the PI attorneys, and again, total stereotyping might be a little bit, it's just a different energy, you know. I don't want to say, you know, more Saul Goodman, but definitely elder law attorney community, not at all like a Saul I find that people care very deeply about what they do. Like, this is very, very important to them. And they see that the work that they do just is really vital and helpful for a lot of great folks. How did you settle on elder being able to, you know, kind of working with elder law attorneys?

3:04Right. Yeah. So to be transparent, you know, seven, eight years ago, I had no idea what elder law even was. And so if you would have asked me, hey, Jim, have you ever heard of an elder law attorney? I would have said, I have no idea. What is that? Explain it to me. So my wife, Andrea, actually is an event planner. She actually went out by you. She went to the University of Central Florida. And she is like an event planner, like a corporate event planner. She went to the hospitality school there. And so she was working for the Hilton. And she moved over to a company that does continuing legal education for elder law attorneys all over the country.

3:41And as she got that position, me being her spouse, I went to some of these events. I started interacting with these elder law attorneys. And the really cool thing was like, a lot of them struggled with the, they were brand new, right? So they started practicing elder law, they hung their shingle up right on the door, you know, Jim Blake elder law. And it's like, where are the people? How do I get people to come find me now? You know, I'm an attorney, I'm educated, I can help you. How do I get them to come in? And so I was, my background was in sales and marketing. I'm like, let me just help you with some of this stuff for free.

4:16And I had no idea what I was doing for elder law. I started helping attorneys for free. Eventually, someone's like, they're attorneys, Jim. You should probably charge them something for what you're doing for them because they're getting a lot of clients. And it scaled into what it is today, believe it or not. So it just started by helping people. And now we have this business. We've got seven people and we're helping law firms all over the country. It's been great. Yeah. So you'd mentioned a couple of things right up at the top as we started here regarding marketing, marketing that would be effective for elder law.

4:52You know, again, typically when we think of some areas of law, you know, bus billboards, you know, billboards, you know, I mean, we are in. So I don't know if you want to talk about this because it's kind of unique. Central Florida has some notoriety when it comes to the intersection between kind of the whole legal industry and advertising. Do you mind kind of sharing what we're known for? I mean, I'm assuming you're talking like the Morgan and Morgan. Yeah, yeah. Some of those are real pushing the edge of what is because I don't know. I mean, the legal industry has rules. Yeah. marketing. It's not like if I want to just go do a bunch of stuff with marketing, I can go do whatever I want to do.

5:34And best of luck to me. They have guidelines that they have to follow with their marketing. And yeah, Florida is kind of known for pushing the edge of that. And I mean, some of those firms have a lot of millions and millions of dollars. Yeah. Yeah. My understanding is I think some of the biggest spending attorneys on the planet are based in Orlando, Florida. I could be wrong on that so i won't don't quote me on that but that's just kind of whatever what i can tell you is you know those who do not live in central florida yeah you're going to see billboards everywhere i mean it's either a billboard for disney universal or morgan and morgan right right and i mean those are yeah and we kind of touched on it briefly at the beginning but like you know those ones were like the attorneys rolling up their sleeves i'm gonna oh yeah yeah or the morgan morgan ones where he's like laying on a beach with like a cartoon head yes right right that's not marketing that works for elder law estate planning, obviously.

6:26Yeah, I wouldn't think so, right? So what does work for elder law estate planning attorneys? Yeah, and that's one of the things that I had to kind of refine when I first started this. I mean, it's not like they're an auto dealer, right? It's not like they're trying to get more people to buy pizza from them. A lot of people need their services, and they have no idea that they need their services. Pretty much everyone at some point in their life is going to need the assistance of an estate planning or an elder law attorney, you just don't know it. So the marketing that we do helps trigger those thoughts in their mind when they're, they unknowingly are online, you know, scrolling the feed, right?

7:04And it's like, oh, I need help with this. Oh, that is something that unfortunately my grandmother is going through right now. And then they are able to click on those ads, learn more, get their questions answered, and then engage with the attorney. So it's, it's been rewarding because for us and our team, our marketing for these law firms kind of changes the legacy for people, families all over the country. People say, what's your why? What's your why? The why is we can help thousands, tens of thousands of families all over the country by working with hundreds of law firms and doing this for them.

7:43So it's a feel-good area of the law. Yeah. And you talked about kind of the power of content. Can you share more about that? Like, and you'd mentioned webinars. Is that working? Yeah. So there was this thing called the pandemic, but I'm sorry. I just woke up. What happened? Yeah. So, so when we first started Bambiz, one of the things that we started was like, Hey, let's do the lead magnet thing, right? You give somebody something and they download it, they give you their name, their phone number, their email address. And then one of the attorneys that we were working with was like, hey, I do these workshops.

8:22And so can you get people to instead of download this document or checklist or whatever you want to call it, let's get them to register for a live event where I'm going to be speaking at a library or a hotel ballroom or whatever that may be. And we did that very successfully. We were on a projection, a growth projection. It was unbelievable because we were helping these people get these rooms filled with potential clients. And then March 2020, are we going to get senior citizens in a room, right? And have this conversation. So we moved into webinars, and that kept us pretty much flatline a little bit of growth, but not the same growth curve that we were on.

9:01Now people are pretty much back to doing the live in person events. And the thing is, when these attorneys are able to get real people in a room asking questions and interacting with them, it really builds trust. Like if me and you weren't on Zoom right now, and we were just hanging out in the same room, there would be a different dynamic even to this conversation, right? And so that, especially with the seniors and the baby boomers, that's very important to them. So that still is where we see now within the past year, those events have really skyrocketed again. But there is a subset of people that still want to do webinars for whatever reason.

9:41And those do work too. It's just harder to build that relationship one-on-one with them. What would you say to someone, again, practicing elder law and state planning attorney, let's say they've put on an elder or they've put on an event or just a virtual event, Zoom event, or in person, they put a lot of work into it. They sent a lot of emails, postcards, et cetera. Nobody showed up or maybe one person showed up and it was even more embarrassing. what would you say to them or what questions might you ask to kind of kind of troubleshoot that to see if maybe they can have another go at it yeah i mean the thing is if you are targeting the right people with the right message right and they're and they're actually taking the time if it's online right they stop the scroll they click the ad they went to the landing page they registered for the event they got their confirmation the the the the crutch to all that is following up with people.

10:36And my, you know, we have a whole entire process where we're like, this is the recommendations for you if you want to get 70 to 80 % of the people that actually registered to show up. And that's kind of like the gauge for success for a live. Whereas a webinar, if you're pushing 50, 60%, that's probably, that's probably pretty successful. So those are, those are the success gauges, following up with them and getting them engaged. So for example, if somebody registers for your live event, you need somebody to get on the phone with them from the firm as soon as possible and just say things to them like, thank you so much, Mrs.

11:11Smith, for signing up for our event. What prompted you to actually register for this event? Was there a particular question or issue that you were hoping that the attorney can address? Get them to write that answer down. Okay, I'm going to, you know, if it's the attorney saying it, I'll address this for you at the event. If it's a person in their office, we'll make sure that attorney so-and-so address this for you at the event and then keep them engaged with the process. We're saving your seat. This is limited. If you have to cancel, let us know. And doing stuff like that's going to get you more people to show up.

11:43Now, if you don't have people to show up, that's a bigger issue. And I would say it's either really bad marketing or you just didn't follow up with the people. You were kind of like rolling dice and hoping that either 100 % of the people showed up or nobody showed up. Yeah. Your website is bambiz.net. I would assume, well, yeah, look at that. So one thing, again, it sounds like you're advocating and you absolutely follow your own advice. You have a lot of free resources. Can you talk about why, you know, giving away so much? And again, you know, if I'm going to go, I'm just going to point this out because I think this is really interesting.

12:25So when I hover over your free resources, I get Elder Law Growth Podcast, Unstoppable Growth Book, How to Attract Clients Free Training Webinar, Free SEO Audit, Video Library, Write Emails to Actually Get Open, Lawyer's Guide to Marketing, Newsletter, Subscribe. Like you got a lot of things, you know, again, just resources where people can spend time with you. I don't mean to start leading the witness here, but tell me more about, you know, why it's so important to, you know, kind of what we're talking about here. Why does this work? Yeah, yeah. I mean, those items are there, honestly, to help the attorneys.

13:04I mean, I know that not every attorney that visits our website is going to hire BAMViz, right? But maybe they know somebody. That's a tight group. I mean, you've been to NALA. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a very tight community. You know, so if they get one thing from something that we've provided to them at one point, maybe they've shared that with a colleague and that person ends up reaching out to us, setting up a conference, having a conversation and we're able to help them. But I mean, you can't give away too much stuff. And honestly, I mean, we give away all the secret sauce. There's no secret sauce in what we do.

13:37I mean, I'll tell you exactly what it is. the issue is, does the law firm want to spend the time figuring out all this marketing stuff and implementing all this marketing stuff? Or should we take the time and practice law, right? I don't want to practice law, I want to do marketing, right? I don't want to do HR, right? So I give that to somebody else. And so, you know, we give it to them, there's going to be a subset of that group that takes it and goes with it and has success on their own. And there's going to to be on the other side of them. Well, there's basically three. There's the do-it-yourselfers, there's the people that need the help, and then there's the huge law firms like that, Morgan and Morgan, if they were estate planning, but they have their own marketing team, they don't need us anyway.

14:17So maybe some of their teammates get some inspiration from what we have to offer, and that's great too. Yeah. So say, you know, part of, you know, practicing attorneys research that are listening to our podcast, they stumbled upon this, and well, I mentioned a lot of free things that they can absolutely take advantage of. But talk about how does engagement typically begin? What's discovery? How do you ease into working together? Yeah, I mean, we're really transparent. So if you go on our website, you can literally click on pricing and we don't make you opt in to see pricing. You can see our pricing, you can see what's included and it's there.

14:58If you like it, you can schedule a call with our team. Our team will be happy to discuss things with you and move forward. But really at the end of the day, go and use the tools and the resources that we have. I did release a book recently that you can get on Amazon or you can go on our website. There's a big red bar at the top of the website that says get our book. And so you can click that link and get this copy, Unstoppable Growth. It's kind of like the master guide or like the Bible for estate planning and elder law marketing. It's exactly what they should do for things like paid ads, website, SEO, generating reviews, social media, YouTube, email management, workshops like we had talked about webinars, and just converting webinar traffic, because that's been a tough one for a lot of attorneys personally.

15:46Yeah, I bet. Again, your website, bambiz.net. I mentioned your free resources. What should folks click on? Yeah, so if you go to bambiz.net, at the top, there's a big red bar. Get our free book. That's where I would say start, click that. We do charge$9.99 shipping. If you want to go to Amazon, you can search Unstoppable Growth, Jim Blake, and it's also on there and you can get it right from Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. The book's title is Unstoppable Growth, Stop Wasting Time and Money, Attract Great Clients You Love, and Grow the Practice of Your Dreams. Jim Blake, again, you're the founder and CEO of Bambiz.

16:19The website again is Bambiz.net. It's been a great conversation, Jim. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh, for having me. Have a great day.

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