Achieving Differentiation through Exclusivity

Notes from the Show

Differentiation can take on many forms and exclusivity in an industry or market can be a powerful differentiator.

In this episode Susan Tatum sits down with Jason Bland, Co-Founder of Custom Legal Marketing. Jason talks about how using exclusivity helps his organization provide a deeper focus to clients and build a stronger marketing plan.

Transcribed by AI

Intro 0:04 You're listening to dare to differentiate a podcast for business owners in crowded industries who want to learn how to rise above the noise. In this show, we focus not on doing everything for everybody, but on doing a few things for the right people with excellence. So if you're ready to leave the herd, then you've come to the right place. Let's get into the show.

Susan Tatum 0:25
Welcome back. I'm Susan Tatum. And today I'm talking with Jason Bland, the founder of custom legal marketing. Welcome, Jason, welcome to the show.

Jason Bland 0:40
Hi, it's good to be here.

Susan Tatum 0:42
So Jason, before we dig in, to give our audience just a little bit of context, would you take a minute or two and just tell us about yourself and about your company?

Jason Bland 0:54
Sure. So I'm actually the co founder of customs legal marketing, we, we started in 2004. And originally started as a digital marketing company that was working with multiple types of industries. Prior to that, I had another company that was in the software space, which I had for about six years. And after, after exiting that venture, I was sort of pulled into this one, by Chris cage with a company co founder, and then sort of spearheaded the legal side from there on.

Susan Tatum 1:26
Did you have a legal background?

James Bland 1:27
No, but I was a, I had a lot of legal connections, thanks in part to the exit of my last one but it was, it was in Tampa, we were found in Tampa, Florida. And there's a real strong legal community in Florida. So a lot of the people that I that I knew through networking from my other companies, or attorneys, so it's kind of a natural fit.

Susan Tatum 1:52
Yeah. makes sense to me. So we're talking about the benefits and challenges of differentiating here. And I think you have a really interesting differentiator that you use with your company. And that is exclusivity. And I haven't seen it used as strongly as you use it ever before. And I think it's really interesting. So tell me a little bit more about that.

Jason Bland 2:19
So basically, since we're doing search engine marketing, there's only so much space on the first page of the search results. Whenever you're going into a market, especially a really competitive market, like personal injury in a major metro area. And you're sitting down with a firm and you're saying, Okay, this is going to be a hard fight. And here's our strategy, here's how we're going to get you to the top, it's a little disingenuous to have that same conversation with that firm and 10 other firms in the same market, you can't really be an advocate and and really fight for, for your client, what you're fighting for all of their competitors at the same time. So we found as we as we started to shift more towards working with with midsize firms, we found that it was something that a lot of a lot of law firms were asking, they're asking for exclusivity. And we really started thinking about it, and realized this really is the only way we should be doing business and just wholeheartedly embrace that concept. Prior to that, like when we when we started 14 years ago, we had a three client rule where you want to work with more than three clients in the same industry. But there was rarely overlap. And it just, it just makes sense to put all of your energy into one client in a market and not have to worry about conflicts.

Susan Tatum: 3:50
That makes sense to me was your three client rule was that based on how many clients you thought how many firms you felt you could do a good job for at the same time?

James Bland 4:00
No, it was it was basically a calculation of like the worst case scenario, from my perspective is that our clients would occupy the top three results for search. So the reality behind that is, well, one things that things have changed quite a bit. So that was also back whenever there was a, there were more local listings at the top, not just three. That was also at a time when, specifically for legal searches. law firms, we're taking up most of the space on the search results page right now, a lot of those positions are shared with legal directories and legal resources. So you have you have like the final directory or Yelp or other that are that are occupying valuable real estate that law firms use to occupy. I say used to, to any 10 years plus back

So it just made sense to based on the environment at a time to say, you know, three, yeah, that's, that's good, they'll do a good job for three. But the reality is a little different, especially now because there's, there's so so few slots, also the competition has gotten better. Your law firms are a little smarter about search engine marketing, and our our law firm marketing competitors have also gotten better. So it's a much more competitive space. So it's even harder for one company, to monopolize the page

Susan Tatum 5:37
progress huh?

Jason Bland 5:38
In some ways, yeah.

Susan Tatum 5:40
So do any of your competitor, or how does exclusivity fit in with your your market? Because So you said that a number of your clients were asking for the exclusivity is that sort of an expectation in the legal industry

Jason Bland 5:58
It is often a an expectation, but not always. And there, there are two ways that law firms Look at this. So there are some law firms that want you know, you don't want someone that's gonna, you know, take everything they learned from from their firm account and apply it to the guy across the street competing against the other side is, if you're a law firm, and you're in a really competitive space, and you see this one company, getting several of your competitors on the first page, that's kind of a proof of concept. So some law firms kind of gravitate towards those, those companies because they can see they can see an action, the results, I'm sorry, they can see the results that they're getting live with their existing clients at that very moment. And by seeing a competitor on the first page, and getting there because of a company that that is currently working with them, then some some firms will look at that company and see that as proof that they know their market, and they know how to how to get them the same results.

But the reality is, you don't typically have, you know, one company with all their clients in the first page. And there are so many factors that go into it. And it's not really a valid way of reviewing a company.

Susan Tatum 7:28
Yeah, I can see where you're coming from from there, because you don't know how they got there, you don't know how long it took them to get there. And the market, like you said, the market is different every time you look at it kind of

Jason Bland 7:41
there are there are other there are other scenarios. Like there's one, there's one company that I'm not gonna name names, but they do very little, but they do have some clients that are well positioned. So if you just go to that website, and you see their logo on the bottom, you might think, Oh, this firm did a great job. But whenever you dig in a little bit more and learn more about the actual law firm, you might find that they have an internal marketing department or a internal PR staff. And so their internal efforts that are being done, that's actually helping more than, you know, what this company is doing to supplement that.

Susan Tatum 8:24
Yeah, that makes sense. So do you find that or law firms pretty sophisticated about having, or they have Modern Marketing Department,

Jason Bland 8:33
it's really a mix, we have, we have some clients that have, you know, a marketing director and then have half a dozen or so people that that are under them that work in, you know, various various efforts be a community outreach, or press or working with. For those that do they do advise, some firms have team members that deal with that, internally, there are others that have kind of someone that serving multiple roles. So they'll they'll be in charge of sort of managing a marketing budget, doing community outreach, kind of being the local public face, and then also working with us and monitoring the progress that we're making on the online marketing side.

So it really with the market that we're working with. It's rare to have a robust internal marketing team, as you get into the larger firms or like the international firms. That's where you're more likely to have a large team that's in house that's going to be handling a lot of these things internally. Yeah.

Susan Tatum 9:42
So then what about with your clients and the recommendations that you give them? I think when we talked earlier, Jason before, I think you said something about you look for clients that have a dedicated a single dedicated practice area.

James Bland 10:00
Yes, so what's driving that? Yeah. So whenever you do a search for any competitive key phrase, and so whenever I'm saying competitive, I'm thinking of things like personal injury or employee rights, bankruptcy, divorce, all these sort of high volume areas of practice. Yeah, whenever you do a search in a populated area, for a divorce lawyer, person or lawyer, Car Accident Lawyer, what you're going to find is that Google is giving preference to the law firms and the websites that are dedicated to that, that practice area. So if you have this website that is covering 150 different types of injuries, then that website is more likely to be more relevant, or to show up as more relevant to Google for that particular personal injury search in that market.

So whenever you come, come to a marketing company and say that, you know, we do some contract disputes and some state planning and some bankruptcy and some personal injury, that's a lot. It's a that's that's a tough case, we have to make a Google to say that, you know, you're the most relevant in your market for all of that, because who they're giving preference to is, is dedicating all of their website content to a particular topic. So it's a it's a huge challenge. And it's not likely to be a success, to have a wide variety of practice areas, being marketed under under one firm, at least look for from our perspective on the the natural search engine marketing. So search engine optimization, if you're looking for a pay per click campaign, that's a completely different deal, because you can separate that traffic quite easily. But when you're on the content side, and you're looking for the organic placement, it's a tough case to make. So we we do, we do take clients that have multiple practice areas, and possibly unrelated practice areas, it's very rare, and a lot of things have to line up for us to look at that and say, okay, we can we can come up with this, I can make this work

Susan Tatum 12:26
you know, I, that's really interesting, because I talked about focusing, and it's more from a standpoint of, I think, the more that you focus on your ideal prospects, your ideal buyers, the more you can get inside their heads and have a good strong conversation with them, the broader you try to go, the more generic you have to be. And that's so these companies that try to be all things to all people, and we see a lot of those, they just can't say anything that's going to gonna grab you in all of the noise that's going on out there. And and then I think focusing Also, I've talked to other business owners, and they've said when they focus their businesses, it's helped them to in hiring, they don't, if they don't have to staff for a whole bunch of different things, they they're just like, they can hone in on exactly what their clients need. And now you're bringing up a completely different reason for focusing at least for these law firms. But I think it would spread or spread across any kind of business that was counting on organic search, and could be found in a lot of different categories is that if that you really do have to focus narrowly in order to command the keywords that you want.

Jason Bland 13:48
That's true, because you're painting a picture of relevance based on not only the content on your website, but also the websites that you're linking out to and websites that are linking to your site. And then from there, it goes into much more, I'm really consolidating that that process.

But when you're focused on one area, then you have you have all of that content that's related to that area. And then you you're linking to other websites and other resources that are related to. In our case, that particular area of law or you know, in another case, whatever your your your key product or services, you You're, you're linking to reports and studies that relate to your specific service,

Susan Tatum 14:38
right, yeah.

Jason Bland 14:39
And at the same time, you're also you're also getting links, you're publishing reports, you're doing internal studies, and you're getting links from other related sites that are related to your your particular area or particular practice area. And you're you're getting recognized you're getting, you're getting awards, you're getting affiliates. And you're getting those from, like with our clients, Trial Lawyer associations or defense lawyer associations and all of that all of that input that they've googled to see all those connections back to your website to Google and seeing is painting a picture of what exactly what exactly you're relevant to. And so whenever you are trying to be everything to everybody, you're giving sort of a diluted message

Susan Tatum 15:33
Yup I see that all the time.

Jason Bland 15:42
There's a reason there's a reason why the mass of law firms do not perform well on organic search.

Susan Tatum 15:42
So if they happen to be any of our listeners are maybe starting law firms or have law firms they're trying to build, then focusing on and I'm no expert in this area, but focusing on a single type of practice or service area would seem to make sense.

James Bland 16:04
Yes, or at least at least on the organic side. So if you're somebody, I understand that there are a lot of firms that have especially larger firms that have multiple departments, and you have the legal teams that are specialists in in their field. And they of course, need to have cases coming in from all sides. So your organic, your organic effort, efforts should be zeroed in on the most valuable cases. And then you can use other channels like like paid media to feed into some of the others. But take your most valuable one in and fight in the organic space for that. And then use other forms of advertising to see the additional practice areas.

Susan Tatum 17:00

So does that mean that you would have to focus your homepage on that one that you chose that practice area that you chose, because when we were talking before, I think you said, one of the Google maybe one of the local things that they do, they go to the homepage, you can't direct them to look at an internal landing page or or mini site inside the other site.

Jason Bland 17:25
Right, whenever, when your Google My Business listing is showing up in in the map at the top, generally, at the top of the page, under the map listings are sprayed see like the the rating, the review rating, and, and the location and phone number, if you click on the website icon for one of those listings, you're only going to go to the home page. So unlike the listings that are below the map, where you can have your secondary pages and your your more detailed content ranked on the first page, if someone is getting to you from from the map, then they're going to your homepage. And we have seen a correlation between homepage copy and how you how you're ranked on the map. So you would have to dedicate a significant portion of your your homepage copy to that main practice area. And from there, it's really a design challenge on how to present the message for your other practice areas in a way that you don't alienate them. But you're also you're also giving your organic target the amount of space and attention that it needs.

Susan Tatum 18:35
that's a lot of juggling, isn't it? So would there be? Or would there be certain types of law where that's more important that you're showing up on that map than other types where maybe that showing up as a local presence? Doesn't matter that much? Or maybe those companies aren't that concerned about search engine optimization? I don't know. I'm just curious.

Jason Bland 19:06
So a lot of your a lot of your more common practice service. So things like personal injury, consumer target, so first 100 reports. But

Susan Tatum 19:18
yeah, yeah,

Jason Bland 19:19
you're having that local presence is is very important. Because aside from the top placement, it's also important, you know, to see that that rating to see the Google reviews, right from the start next to the firm's name. When you get into more complicated areas of law. That's not to say that those are not complicated cases.

I don't want to get a lot of nasty emails from clients. But when you get into areas that are not marketed to consumers, so things like business litigation, or intellectual property, or also in complex mass tort, you typically get someone who's going to be doing a lot more research and they're going to be looking for something beyond a few glowing reviews. So that particular clientele is more is more likely to scroll below the map and do a little bit more digging. So they're not just they're not just looking for, you know, hey, this, this firm has had, you know, 105 star reviews, I'm going to talk to them about an injury that I had at work. If you're looking at either either your business is sued or you're in a contract dispute or got a multimillion dollar real estate deal that has a lot of moving parts. A map isn't where to start.

Susan Tatum 20:48
So fair to say your strategy, your strategy for your client changes depending upon what type of law they're in.

Jason Bland 20:49
Oh, yes, definitely.

Susan Tatum 20:51
Interesting, very interesting, Jason, this is this has been great. Thank you for sharing your, your experience with us today. And I know that there's a lot of value out there for the people in our audience that want to connect with you or learn more about what you're doing, what's the best way for them to do that.

James Bland 21:06
So the best way to reach out is through email, Jaybland@clegal.us. I monitor my inbox religiously. And then we of course, put out a lot of a lot of really solid information through our social media, so you can find us legal marketing on on Facebook and Twitter.

Susan Tatum 21:36
So can I put your email address in the show notes? Is that okay?

Jason Bland 21:36
Sure.

Susan Tatum 21:37
All right, excellent. Well, I guess that about wraps it up. And thanks again, Jason. Appreciate you coming here today.

Jason Bland 21:46
Thank you.

Susan Tatum 21:47
All right, take care.

Outro 21:48
A consistent flow of new business prospects is vital to the growth of professional services firms. The conversion company helps you find and engage those who are most likely to become profitable new clients, and avoid those who are not. To learn how we do it. Visit the conversion company.com you've been listening to dare to differentiate. To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time