vitate term, towards expertise. And, again, we're talking about really one dimension of this whole plan, which would be to be a part of those conversations online that people are talking about and and going to the places that they wanna consume this information. I think going and answering questions on forum sites also is really valuable. I was just even in preparation for this episode. I was just doing some basic research on just immigration, immigration forums, immigration news sites, starting to collect those resources and then participate in the conversations that are happening there, building relationship with a journalist who might cover immigration, especially in the context, that serves the community that you're trying to represent. Because guess what? Then you're gonna Gyi media attention. People will actually, like, interview you and say, oh, hey. You know, I noticed that you were talking about this online. I'd love to have you get a quote for you for an article.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I'm doing stuff like that.

James Pittman: So this is this all goes into becoming a thought leader. This is our content marketing. Now two questions. Are we doing so what would we be doing the non content marketing at the same time, working on our SEO and things like that at the same time? Where or what? Are we trying to get our name out there first on the first getting started?

Gyi Tsakalakis: So if if you're just getting started, the 80% should be on the thought leadership building even building relationships also with other, lawyers as well. Because I think professional referrals are probably going to be they're hopefully gonna be, a big part of what you're doing early on. Because, again, I always think about it this way. Like, where where you are in your growth continuum, that's what's gonna tell you, dictate your strategy. And so if you're brand new, you don't have a reputation of being an amazing immigration lawyer. And so you're gonna have to spend a lot more of your resource, your your time capital, and, you know, assuming that you're not spending a lot of money, I guess you're just getting started on starting to build those relationships to start getting the word out of who you are and and who you're trying to help. But I always say this too, those longer term seeds, you know, you're alluding to the SEO stuff and the non brand, direct response stuff. You can't wait on that stuff. Right? Because those that's gonna those are like you know, it's kinda like gardening. Like, you gotta plant those seeds early on, but maybe that's 20% of your time. And so I always say, you know, look. It's a it's gonna be a combination of both of those things at the same time. It's just a matter of, like, how much you're doing of each of those things. So I would still be, you know, having a website that you you know, an owned an owned media asset, your own website. I'm big on WordPress because it you can take it anywhere. You know? You're not beholden to proprietary system. Not that I have anything against proprietary. I say that. People always, like or, like, get upset about that, but I'm very much, like, long term. It's, like, beyond WordPress. Get a solid hosting environment. I I'm partial to WP Engine. Start publishing. You know? There's all sorts of public resources. You know? The government puts out all sorts of resources. Write about the different types of visas that you wanna help people, navigate, like, all the information that's on the government websites. You can recreate that in your own words on your own site and, you know, making sure it's on a technically sound, infrastructure. But, you know, the basics of SEO, it's not that it's not that complicated. I mean, I say that, and, again, I'm I live this stuff, so I maybe I shouldn't say that. But, you know, you spend a weekend learning about some of the basics, you know, the meta tags and site architecture, and you can be up and running with a well optimized site pretty easily. Now that that's what's really truly amazing about it too is the technology costs have gone down to, you know, basically 0, in terms of, hosting and the actual publishing of content online, which is great. It really democratizes your ability to gain share of voice early on. Well,

James Pittman: let's talk about branding a little bit more and go into a little bit more depth. So, I mean, what role does branding play? Like, what are the different aspects of branding? We when we say branding, what are what are the different sort of what falls under the penumbra of branding, and what role does that play in in the success of your marketing efforts?

Gyi Tsakalakis: I kinda think about branding as, like, really twofold. It's kinda reputation and positioning. So I think reputation is the easiest for lawyers to wrap their heads around because it's like, you know, this is what I'm known for. You know, I'm known for, you know, whether it's maybe it's a specific clientele that you serve, or maybe you have a competitive advantage because you're more tech savvy, or your the ability to do something that some of your competition doesn't have. But it kinda bleeds over to the positioning aspect.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And when we think about positioning, we really think about both vertical and horizontal positioning. So I might give you some examples of good and bad. So bad positioning would be, like, I'm an immigration lawyer. Well, you just commoditized yourself. Right? There are lots of immigration lawyers. There's no there's nothing special about what you're saying there. You're you're only slightly better than just saying you're a lawyer because you put immigration in front of it. On the other hand, good positioning that would have vertical and horizontal positioning would be like, we only do this specific type of visa for this for immigrants that are from this specific country that speak this specific language. And if you think about that across the continuum, you go from you know, there's a lot of lawyers that do that to there's very few lawyers that do just this thing. And if you can become known as the expert on that very specific thing, then people are gonna come to you when that specific issue comes up. You stand out in the crowd. Now people always say this too. It's like, well, that sounds great, but, you know, maybe there are only a certain number of, potential clients in that pool. So haven't I just positioned my have I niched myself out of that? And positioning is not about saying that's all we do. It's just what you're leading with that you're known for. Right? So you you might take on a bunch of different clients from different countries, but the the key is that the consistency of your positioning mess message is the James. So that when that question comes up, when that specific type of visa comes up or that specific type of immigration persona comes up, people are gonna think of you as the person who does that even though you do things beyond that. So those that's kind of how I think about branding.

James Pittman: Okay. So besides your message and you're differentiating yourself from your competition, How about some of the other assets in in branding? I mean, some of the the tangible things, like how your website looks and how it's designed and how you communicate with your clients and some of those other things. Do those play a role in branding?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, a lot of those things go into, you know, what I was putting under the reputation umbrella. Right? So, like, do you have a reputation for delivering excellent client service? Do you have a reputation for keeping your clients informed? Do you have a reputation for being accessible? Do you have a reputation for being, you know, tech enabled or tech competent? And, again, where those things overlap with the needs of your clients, that's where they're super valuable. Because, you know, for example, if you don't have, people or ways to communicate effectively in the same language as your potential client, that's gonna hurt your your quote, unquote branding or your reputation. Right? On the other hand, if you can communicate well with them, if you're available, maybe you have some automations in place or some, tools in place that make it easier for them to remove the friction from them communicating with you and keeping them informed about the process and the status of their application if they're applying. Those are all gonna go towards, you know, your, quote, unquote, brand or, you know, the way, again, way I think about is your reputation for delivering, remarkable client service.

James Pittman: Let's ask this question then. How do you take suppose you're doing content marketing and you're getting good at it. How do you how do you take viewers from your your content pieces and turn those into leads?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. Another great question. So the first thing I think it's important for people to remember is you're not it's not realistic to try to think that you're gonna turn everybody that follows you or subscribes to your newsletter into a lead. And I say that because, you know, I I understand that you you know, conversion rate. Right? We wanna convert, attention into paying clients. The problem is is that I see a lot of lawyers in their desire to do that and to increase their conversion. They end up disenfranchising, people that were otherwise following them, and then it, you know, turns people off. And then your actual overall network shrinks because you took some marketing advice and, like, now you're bombarding people with these messages and, trying to convert them into clients. And they unsubscribe or they block you.

Gyi Tsakalakis: They don't wanna hear from you. And so I think for me, the key is is to give people a lot of different options to raise their hand. So and what I mean by that is, you know, you give away for a free ebook or you give away maybe you have some gated video content that people can raise their hand or subscribe to get. And then you make it easy for them to to understand how they interface with you. Right? How do they go? What's the hiring process look like? Do you prefer that they call you? You know, what's your primary call to action? Do you offer, paid consultations, free consultations? You know, make it very easy for people to understand how they can actually engage your services. And and, you know, and I would the other thing I always tell people too is is, like, think about ways you can break your services up. Are there ways to, you know, provide some a la carte? Like, maybe there's, maybe there's a resource you can provide for them to them started on their journey because they're not really ready to hire everything that it is that you do for them, to solve that problem. And so may the the simpler that you make it for someone to raise their hand and request that you actually, you know, represent them, the the higher your conversion rate's gonna be. And you're not gonna disenfranchise those that just want to continue to receive, you know, your updates or, you know, it's other maybe it's other lawyers that follow you, because there's they might be great referrals, or maybe it's like other non lawyer professionals that that are just interested in the topic or interested in you. They wanna get updates from you, but they don't wanna be sold to. I mean, no one likes being sold to. Right? So don't try to convert people who aren't ready to be sold to.

James Pittman: So how important is reputation management? Have we talked about building a reputation? But how about managing your reputation? I mean, how do you handle things like negative reviews? How do you get people to write positive reviews, and where should they put them?

Gyi Tsakalakis: So reputation management is really, really important. And this is the one so even the lawyers that might be listening to this that are skeptical, and they're like, you know, all this SEO stuff and digital stuff is not my thing. The reason that it's really for everybody is because no matter how somebody hears about you, you know, maybe it's a professional referral, an offline referral. People are gonna go look you up online. And so what they when they search, when they type your name into a into Google, when they type your name into LinkedIn, to see information about you, what they find is gonna play a role and whether they even decide to contact you in the first place. And so that that's kind of how I think about the starting point for reputation management. So here's a a few quick wins. First thing is is Google Business Profile. So if you have a physical office location, this is Google's rules, not mine. I would definitely have a Google Business Profile, probably both an office location profile.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And if you're, certainly, if you're a firm owner or a partner in the firm, a practitioner profile, because those are both those are the, assets that are gonna rank most prominently for brand searches or searches on your name or your firm name, or if you operate if you're in a state that operates that allows, you our lawyers operate our trade James, those branded search queries, those that's where people are gonna go when they wanna find information about you. And so I would start so then just the part of your question was, well, where should I send, happy clients? That's where I would send most of my happy clients is to my Google Business Profile to have to have them leave reviews. They're you know, they've got a star rating system. You can also upload, clients that are willing. You can have them you can do video testimonials, and you can upload those to Google Business Profiles. Those are very, very powerful in terms of validating your reputation for excellent client service and client experience. Let your clients sing your praises, on those Google Business Profiles. I think the second place I'd be, strongly considering sending people would be LinkedIn. LinkedIn is probably more effective from a individual practitioner profile than from, like, a firm page. And LinkedIn has a recommendation feature built in. And so getting recommendations on LinkedIn, especially if you serve professionals that are trying to immigrate because they're gonna be looking at their professional network, and a lot of them are gonna be on LinkedIn. And so when you have that validation of, like, mutual connections who are saying, you know, I hired this person to help me or this person's an expert on this subject or you have other immigration lawyers talking about, this is the lawyer that I would be hiring if I was going to immigrate to the US. That kind of stuff is is really powerful. So how do you motivate more people to do that? Well, you improve the you gotta improve the experience. Right? If people are having a bad experience, they're gonna be less likely to leave you a positive review. And, like, I say that, and everybody's focused on, like, what's your system for getting more reviews on Google? And, whatever, I don't care what system you use. I don't care now there's software that can support this bird eye gather up that can help nudge happy clients to leave reviews. But without the remarkable service, none of that stuff's gonna help you. And so it starts with client service, then it's about asking. You know? And and there's the better and worse ways to ask and timing. But, you know, a lot of James, lawyers know you have a client who's like, you just changed my life. You just saved me. You saved my family. What can I do to repay you? It's like, well, you know, my my firm lives and dies by referrals, and so if you'd be willing to say something nice about us, we'd be so grateful for you doing that. People happy clients, they wanna do that stuff. And I would so Google Business Profile and LinkedIn is where I would start. And then the negative side of the house, first, you know, and this lawyers don't like to hear this one too. But the first step is is to, like, listen to what the negative review says. If it's a legitimate negative review from an unhappy client, you know, go look at yourself in the mirror and ask why they had that experience. Now, again, I say that, and a lot of lawyers get frustrated by that and you can't make all the people happy all the time, and that's true. And then it's like, you know, take a breath and have empathy. And the best thing you can do in those when you get those negative reviews that are legitimate is to say, you know, look. I'm really sorry you had that experience. If there's anything that we can do, you know, and you gotta this is case by case. It's not a blanket statement, so I don't want you to go out and and go respond to all these negative reviews that might sometimes it's better just to let sleeping dogs lie. But if it's an opportunity for you to at least respond, show some empathy because you might not convince that person to take their review down or to change their opinion, but you know what you're doing. You're talking to the next person who looks you up, and it's like, you know, look. You people buy stuff on Amazon all the time that doesn't have only 5 star reviews. In fact, when you're shopping, usually people will sort by the negative reviews to see, but people are they realize that, you know, look, sometimes there's just a misalignment, or sometimes someone had an unreasonable expectation. And so how you respond to those negative reviews and whether you respond to them at all, that's a much bigger indicator, of how much you care about your own professional reputation and your next clients. And so, you know, on balance, you know, and a lot of these, review studies that these big companies put out, they show that a mixed positive and negative reviews actually leads to consumers concluding that these are more authentic than if you have 10,000 just 5 star reviews because then they they appear to be fake. Right? So it's another something to think. About.

James Pittman: So you mentioned it a little bit, but the the concept of storytelling. How would you incorporate storytelling into your marketing to engage your potential clients?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. So a couple examples of that. I mean, I think one is, like, the origin story. Right? So, like, why did you start doing what you're doing?

Gyi Tsakalakis: You know? And some people have a great origin story. I mean, you know, in the immigration context, if you're an immigrant yourself and you're telling that story and how it was such a life changing event for you that it drove you into helping others, That's a great story that you should be telling. You know, everybody's got their own story. But the why you do what you do, I think, is a really important story to tell. You know, it purse it puts a human face to, you know, navigating a system that can feel a lot less than human oftentimes. I think having your clients that are willing to tell their stories, you know, getting those stories out there. But it always comes back to the same thing is is, like, how can you differentiate yourself through the stories that you're telling? What is it that you do that other people can't do? Like, what can't be replicated? And who you are, your don't tell sharing your experiences. That's the stuff that other your competitors can't create that because they're not their stories. That's why it's so effective because they're you're sharing your experience. You're sharing your specific knowledge. You're sharing your clients' experiences. And so highlighting those stories, maybe it's interviewing a client, maybe it's, showing some of the, good works you're doing in the community besides just representing clients in immigration context. I know a lot of lawyers, they'll highlight works they're doing in their community, charity causes that they're passionate about. And again, not just like, hey. We donated money to this cause, but, you know, we actually went out and, participated in furthering whatever the cause is. But showing that you're actually invested in the community that you're serving goes a really, really long way, to to telling that story of, like, why you're doing what you're doing and that you actually care about your clients. Because, again, when you're when people are hiring you and when they're referring you, it's about do they trust they trust you. Do they trust you and do they like you? And so when you the more that you can share about who you are and what you stand for, the better the ups that they're gonna have a a sense of why they should be choosing you or referring you to their friends and family.

James Pittman: I wanna talk about our lead funnel and lead nurturing and follow-up and all of that. But before I do that, let's just have some fun. I there are a lot of misconceptions that I think, you know, lawyers, especially new lawyers, might have about marketing. So I thought of some, misconceptions that I've heard before, and I wanna present them to you and have you react to them. So the most obvious one, we don't hear this very often, and I don't I don't at least I don't hear it very often anymore, but but marketing is not necessary for law firms. All you

Gyi Tsakalakis: need is favorite one.

James Pittman: Oh, okay. Is it all you need is your reputation and word-of-mouth.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. I do. And so, usually, the way that that one comes is we like they said, you don't we don't need marketing. We just do great work for clients. Right? All we do is just focus on great work for clients. And I gotta tell you, there are some there are more lawyers per capita in the United States than anywhere else in the world. It is competitive. It is it can be, you know, certain practicers. It can be cutthroat. It's much it's much nastier than a lot of people want to admit. Everything's lawyers. Like, it's all very, above board. And it's and I see great trial lawyers. I mean, we talk to great trial lawyers all the time, like some of the best lawyers in the country. And if you don't get the word out, if you're not doing things to help spread that and and the other thing that's built that's kinda baked into that is I can't tell you how many times we'll be working with lawyers who have you know, they've had a lot of clients in the past, and we'll be we'll do surveys or we'll interview former clients, and they'll forget what the lawyer even does. And so it just goes to show you that, like, you've gotta be regularly communicating the value of your services even to the people who know you, let alone the people who don't know you. And and I'll I'll even say the counterpoint. There are plenty of lawyers that they're right. They're not trying to grow. They're you know, when we go back to the top of the order here when we were talking about the beginning, their objective is not to scale their law firm. They don't wanna grow. They're they're they've got they can just keep their head down, do great work, they get enough consistent referrals that it's, you know, supporting the lifestyle they wanna lead. And I think that's great. And so, again, there's I can't say that every single lawyer needs to do all the marketing stuff that I'm talking about. But what happens is is that as you incrementally want to grow, it gets harder and harder to get that next client, you know, to grow your share of voice, to grow your reputation, that gets harder and harder. And then even if you don't wanna grow, this is what I always tell people I don't wanna grow. You know, your referrals so, like, you might have a bunch of referrals ebb and flow. You might have a bunch right now. But if your referrals if your regular referral sources dry up for whatever reason, you you don't have the same, regularity and consistency and reliability and predictability for your business if you're not doing some kind of marketing. Because marketing will will create much more predictable results over time than just doing great work. You know, doing great work is necessary, but not sufficient often less of how I describe it.

James Pittman: And in that same vein, let let's let's bring out our next misconception. Marketing is just advertising, or marketing's the same thing as advertising.

Gyi Tsakalakis: So I always say this, that's not true. But what I like to say is marketing is just communicating the value of your service. Like, that's all it is. It's just communicating. It's just, talking about what you do, why you do it, who you help. It's not just you communicating. Right? It's your clients communicating. It's testimonials. It's reviews.

Gyi Tsakalakis: It's speaking. But every engagement you know, you might be in an elevator next to somebody and someone's like, hey. What do you do? And then when when you open your mouth to tell them what you do, guess what? You're marketing. Right? And advertising is paid media placements. Right? Advertising is a is a very specific type of way to get the word out about your firm. By the nature of it, it's paid. You just pay money. Marketing, though, is every time you talk about what you do, why you do it, who you help, tell a story, that's marketing. And so, yes, those are definitely not the same thing.

James Pittman: For the record, marketing involves branding, it involves content creation, it involves search engine optimization, social media presence, thought leadership, client experience, and more comprehensive marketing strategy has various elements.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Everything that has has to do with communicating. Anything about your firm, I call that marketing.

James Pittman: How about this one? Marketing's too expensive. Well, that's a great question. I always tell people. I'm like, it's all marketing is

Gyi Tsakalakis: all and advertising too. It's only as expensive as its failure to generate the result that you're trying to get it to generate. Right? So marketing's really an Pittman. And as we talked about earlier, there are 2 resources that go into marketing. Yes. Money is one of those, but time also can be, an investment. And so, you know, I love people that will say, like, oh, well, I'm all my marketing's free. Right? All I do, I just do my own stuff. I spend time. I don't spend a single dollar. And I'm like, every minute you spend has a cost attached to it. So it's you can call it time or money. It's still a resource deployment. And but the expensive part is only it's only expensive if it's not producing the result that you want it to produce, because then it becomes a cost. Otherwise, it's an investment. Right? If you put money in your bank account and you have interest growing, you know, that's not a cost. That's not an expense. That's an investment that you're making. You know? You that you're gonna, deploy that resource in a way to try to generate a return. And so, but, you know, I say that, and I I don't mean to be, you know, surreptitious about it. The the the truth is is that you don't have to spend a single dollar to do marketing. Right? As long as you can get online and communicate with people, you don't have to get online. You can go walk down your street, and it's just the time that you're spending. It doesn't cost anything. Now let's also not kid ourselves because people are might be sitting there rolling their eyes as I say this. You wanna rank for a competitive query in Google, a high volume, low funnel, high converting, search term, that can get extremely expensive because it requires all the things that go into doing that. The content production, the link building, the technical aspects of, like, making sure your site's performing well, the conversion path, the tracking, the nurturing. Like, yeah, that stuff can get expensive, especially if you're gonna hire people to do it if you're not gonna do it yourself.

James Pittman: Yep. Exactly. How about this this next miss misconception? Marketing and ethics don't mix. Marketing could compromise my ethical application.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. Right. Well, you know, I always like to go back to Bates. Right? Like, the supreme court ruled that lawyers have a right to commercial speech a long time ago. And so it's the devil's in the details of how you actually do it. Marketing can compromise. It's very easy to, mark yourself in a way that can violate the rules of professional conduct. I can show you tons of examples of it, but it's not it's not necessary. And in fact, the best marketing, it doesn't even get near broaching the ethical boundaries. Because, again, the best marketing isn't about trying to hard sell people or mislead them or using superlatives that you can't back up. It's about telling your stories, sharing your experiences, and, of course, that when you're sharing your experiences, you still have to be mindful of your, duties of confidentiality. You know, you can't go blow confidences by through your marketing. But the best marketing doesn't even get close to violating the rules of professional conduct. And so, yes, that's definitely a myth that marketing equals bad ethics. Now I'll tell you though, I say that, and I run into lawyers all the time that they're like, yeah. You can't, marketing is, unethical. And I'm like and and and really what I when we start to have those conversations and I dig a little deeper, it's usually because they've had a bad experience with marketing people, and they've, you know, they've been misled to do something that they probably shouldn't have done, or they see a competitor. That's usually where it comes from is they see a competitor doing something that runs a follow of the rules, and they say, oh, that's a you know, that's that's bad marketing stuff. And so, you know, I always tell 2 people, I'm like, you know, my mom's so proud of me because I wear the 2 titles of ambulance chaser and SEO spammer, because that's, you know, I've been a plaintiff's lawyer in an SEO. But, that's all perception stuff. Right? The the devil's in the details and the execution on how you do it. We talked

James Pittman: about this one a little bit. Let's go a little deeper. Negative feedback is harmful. I'm afraid of negative feedback. So some firms might avoid seeking feedback because of your negative comments. But what should you actually be doing with your negative feedback?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. And I I'm gonna quote, I had the good fortune. Rich Barton, who's founded a lot of companies, but he was on the board of Avvo before it sold. Also on the board of, one of the creators of Zillow and couple other companies. But he was at a conferences years ago.

Gyi Tsakalakis: It was one of, Avvo's, Avocating conferences. And his thesis was, if it can be rated, it will be rated. And so to the lawyers that are scared and they don't you know, they're like, I this is stuff. It's it's scary to get a negative review. Let me tell you, there are so many lawyers right now that are just, like, put their head in the sand. They don't wanna participate online, and guess what? People have gone out and left negative reviews, and they're not they don't even know because they're they've they're saying they've taken the I'm not gonna look at it. And so I can't tell you how many times we'll go and do research. Someone will come to us and say, hey. I'm interested in, exploring. And I'm like, you know you know you have a bunch of really nasty reviews online, and they're like, I had no idea. And the impact of that is so devastating. I mean, we've seen TV advertise on the other side of the coin, t a the advertising lawyers who are driving a ton of brand, awareness. And you go and search on their James, and their Google business profile has a bunch of negative reviews. And so they're spending money to spread the word that they don't have a great reputation for client service. And so, you can't ignore it. I mean, that's that's the thing, is that you can you could someone can go leave a review. You probably have a Google Business profile in in many James, even if you don't claim it. You have an Avvo profile. Even if you don't participate, someone can go take out, register a domain of your name.com and write a bunch of nasty stuff about you, and it'll rank for searches on your name.

Gyi Tsakalakis: So it's, you know, it's kind of like being, like, I'm just gonna ignore, like, what's going on in my office. Like, you can't. It's like it's a part of it. You you gotta at the very least, you should be monitoring what's being said about you online. You know, there's a bunch of different tools for that. There's yeah. They call them social listening tools. Anywhere from, like, Google alerts all the way to, tools like Mention. But, basically, they they can notify you when something's written about you or written about your law firm online. You gotta be a part of that conversation to protect your reputation.

James Pittman: Absolutely. Well, those are the misconceptions that I came up with. I wanna talk about the the lead funnel. But before that, let's just talk a little bit more about the actual website experience, like a lawyer website experience. What what are the aspects or, things that you think go into making an excellent user experience on a lawyer website? I mean, does it it's should it be mobile compatible? Should it you know, how fast should it load? I mean, what what are your top must have?

Gyi Tsakalakis: You see, you had 2 of them. So the first the buzzword there is responsive design. Right? So no matter what device someone pulls up your website on, it should respond to that device. So, you if and you can people that did that aren't familiar with this language, if you pull up your website on your phone and you have to pinch and swipe to read it, that means it's not responsive. Right? It should be the experience that it delivers should respond to the environment. So your website should reformat itself whether it's on a desktop, an iPad, a phone. You mentioned speed. Speed is extremely important. There's we could go we could do a whole thing on just on, like, benchmarking speed. But safe to say that if it's not loading in, you know, about a second or so, people aren't gonna stick around. I mean, how many you know, if you can just people are listening, you can ask yourself, do you sit around and wait for slow web pages to close to open? No. You don't. You go back to Google and find another website. And I think it's also important to note on the speed factor that just because it loads fast on your device, doesn't mean it's loading fast for the first time on other people's devices. And so you can't there are all sorts you can go to, there's there's speed. Just simply like website website speed test. There's all sorts of free tools that you can use. But it's important for people to know that just because it loads fast on your phone remember, if you come to your website a lot, your device is storing a bunch of the information and files from your phone or from your site, and so it can load fast on the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 10th time even if it's not loading fast on the first time. And, you know, reliable hosting environment is an important one there. Beyond those 2 that you named, I'm gonna put this all under the, umbrella of reducing the friction to contact. So, you know, lawyers love this idea of, like, well, people that wanna hire me are gonna find a way to get a hold of me. So I'm gonna I wanna guide them to this one experience, like fill out a web form or fill out this long intake form. I mean, you're shooting yourself in the foot. There are plenty of people that are ready to hire you, but they're not gonna go they're not ready to fill out a 50 question intake form on your website, or they don't wanna fill out a web form at all. So, make it very obvious and easy for them to understand how to contact you if they've got more questions. I mean, to me, phone number is a no brainer. People still wanna operate on phone numbers, but give people options. Not everybody wants to call. Some people wanna text. Some people might be, willing to use a chat interface. Some people might wanna email you, and so, you know, provide them the means to do that. But it reduce the friction and then clarify the calls to action, like, you know, who you help, what is it that you do, what is it that you're really good at doing, what are uniquely what makes you unique so that it motivates them to do that, like, get that positioning stuff in there. But those are kinda like the biggies. Right? Fast, responsive, reduce friction to contact, or and then demonstrate your expertise, your positioning, tell your stories. I think video content on your site's very valuable. They're like, the video medium for, communicating, your expertise from a professional service provider really can't be beat. You know, the written word's great, but it doesn't do the same kind of humanization, put a face to you, who you are, why you do what you do, the emotional side of things. I think that's really important. Another one too, if you're serving people in other countries that speak different languages, make sure the technical aspects of your site were gonna serve your content up in their language. I can't tell you how many times people just assume, like, oh, they could just translate it, and it's like, no. It's not exactly how it works. And especially from an SEO standpoint, people don't realize that there are different versions of Google in different countries, and the language matters, a lot. So, you know, you can go research, like, international SEO, technical aspects, but there are some things there to think about if you're gonna serve, a global audience.

James Pittman: You mentioned the chatbot. I think, you know, automating things with the chatbot is a fantastic idea, and the and the technology, particularly now in the age of AI, to use the chatbot to to gain, you know, the contact information of potential leads is is really a no brainer and is is something is really worth doing. I mean, there's an excellent one that we at DocuWise integrate with. It's an excellent one, YotangoBot. I'll just make a plug for that one. But, that is a English and Spanish language chatbot. But there's others, and, it is, it just makes it so, effortless. So, really, having, you know, multiple ways that they can contact you. How about a call to action on the website? I mean, do you do you need a call to action?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. I think so. I mean, because, again, you and, you know, this is a theme throughout this conversation really in marketing in general, but you gotta put yourself in the shoes of your potential client. And so a lot of James, they don't know. They don't know if calling you is gonna cost them a $1,000. Right? And so, when I when I think of calls to action, it's really about educating them about, like, what do you want? What's the next step for them to take? And making it clear if there are costs involved with that, you know. But not all call to actions are consultations. Some calls to action might be download this resource or subscribe to this resource. But making it very clear what you want visitors to do and making it easier for them to understand, like, what goes into that, decision, that's the real key. And, again, it's not just you know, maybe your primary call to action that you have on every page globally is a consultation of some of some type. But give people other options because not everybody, you know, to use your, funnel, kind of a little, foreshadowing, so I'm about funnel. Not everybody is at the end of the funnel. You know, some people are gonna be in the top of the funnel. They're just doing research. They're not ready for a consultation, but they wanna get more information from you. So, make your calls to action guides to download, other resources, subscribe to a podcast, subscribe to a newsletter, subscribe to a tips list, subscribe to an immigration update, email, type of thing. Make it very clear what they're getting, what the terms are of that, what they can expect. I mean, so much of it and lawyers know this. Right? Because lawyers know in the context of client and when they're actually serving clients, expectation setting is a huge part of delivering the service. It's the same thing when you're talking about marketing. Expectation setting through your calls to action and the resources that you're providing upfront so that there's not a misalignment between, like, oh, you know, I thought I was getting this and I'm actually getting this. That's what leads to negative reviews because people, you know, they they're not getting what they expected. They don't think you did what you said you were gonna do.

James Pittman: Should you have terms of service and a privacy policy on your from website? Website?

Gyi Tsakalakis: I think so. I think that's good practice. And, you know, I'm also big on a lot of disclaimers, you know, different states have different levels of regulation on what should be on lawyers' websites. But, certainly, disclaimers about confidentiality, disclaimers about attorney advertising. There's a variety. We could talk disclaimers. But disclaimers, terms of service, privacy policy, making sure you've got there's another, kind of table stakes things for your website. Security is a TSL or a secured socket layer so that, when people are transmitting information through web forms, it's not subject to being intercepted. It's also a trust signal. So if you don't have an SSL, it's very like, people are gonna look at that as a website that's not to be trusted.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Google also they'll show a warning if you don't have a a secured socket layer protocol on your website. And so, the security all the security stuff, you, you should probably have a cookie disclaimer and a cookie opt in. And you should also depending on who you're serving, but if you're serving people that are either castle in Canada or GDPR in, the EU, make sure you have the proper disclaimers and, opt ins on your website for those as well.

James Pittman: Good good advice. Very, very important advice. Let's let's talk about our our funnel. So let's say we're capturing leads. I mean, give me a general methodology for how we're gonna manage our leads funnel. And feel free to talk about what, you know, your suggestions of what tech to use. I mean, should we be using Salesforce? Do you recommend others? Or and and how do how do we go about, monitoring how do we go about conducting our follow ups? How do we go about, you know, assessing our SQLs, our MQLs, and and so forth? And how do we how do we make data driven decisions on our on our leads?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Love this. This is, like, my favorite topic. So the first thing on software choice is, you know, there are immigration lawyer specific, platforms to to choose from. I do think that those can be more intuitive, if you're there are certain practice areas that just lend themselves to a more specified, feature set. Personal injury is another one where it's like, you know, transactional firms, they have a bunch of tasks and processes that maybe are less specific. But, like, a personal injury off the top of my head, like, there's very specific phases. And so if your software supports those phases in immigration context, there there are, you know, softwares are specific bill for immigration lawyers. I would I would start exploring those. That being said, the trade off oftentimes, and this is and I I also have to have a disclosure here. So I'm an investor and adviser to Lawmatics, which is a client relationship management tool for lawyers. It's not practice area specific. But the reason that I that I wanted to qualify all this is that oftentimes in legal tech, and you mentioned Salesforce, there are feature limitations because maybe the technology is a little bit newer. It's in beta. And so it's a it's a trade off between being like, okay. Let let's look at cost plus is this technology going to be around? Is, you know, is it funded? Does it what what features does it have that are essential to me? And then what does it inter what are other, systems in my, practice that it needs to integrate with? So, you know, obviously, I already said, I'm a big fan of Lawmatics. Lawmatics is I think, got a lot of features that are good across practice areas. But to the essential features to me are, 1, it's gotta have something that has, like, the built in, what I'm gonna call, marketing automation stuff. So when someone fills out a form on your website or calls you, you know, you're getting an automated, like, acknowledgement that you received the message, and, you're gonna it's like a Mailchimp that you can subscribe to get, updates. It also should have it should have something that allows you to move prospects through a pipeline. So it had that's, triggered based by stages. So I'll I'm just gonna tell you what what we use because I think it will be helpful in kind of framing the conversation. Again, I'm not not endorsing one specific. There's a lot of different ways to do this. We use ActiveCampaign, at our business. And ActiveCampaign, it has, marketing automation. It has a lot of nice reportings. I think reporting's another big thing. Lawmatics also has reporting. It should have something that will allow you to designate source because you wanna be able to understand where your, leads are coming from. So being able to say, you know, this is from a Google Ads campaign. This is from organic search. This is from a referral. Because that's the only way you're gonna be able to manage and measure the effectiveness of your different marketing strategies. And then you should be able to have a pipeline. So you could you should be able to do a trigger based stages. So initial, inquiry stage or they're just subscribed to the specific campaign. And then once once they raise their hand, then they they turn into a marketing qualified lead. And then once you've so I like to think about things in terms of, you know, you said SQL. Conrad and I was my co host at lunch hour legal marketing who runs a a competitor agency. He likes to talk about attorney qualified leads, which I really like that as well, or qualified consults. Right? Once you have a qualified consult, I think, like, marketing's kind of done its job. And now it's in, you know, quote, unquote, sales even though I know it's a bad word for lawyers. But once you have somebody that's in your that's in your target audience, that's raised their hand to inquire about your services, they're looking for the type of services that you provide, then it's really on you as the lawyer to take them over the line and say, you know, look. I gotta demonstrate why I'm the right lawyer, and now's the right time for you to hire me and get your pricing right and your fees and get your retainer. But your CRM tools so I'm always looking for does it integrate with, we like CallRail for our, call tracking. Because I think, again, understanding phone calls, where phone calls are coming from, using dedicated tracking numbers in Google Business Profiles, so that you can actually source, phone calls. And a CRM that integrates with something like CallRail, that's really, really important. A lot of them have baked in, web form tools, so you can actually, like, use the the platform's web form tool, to embed on your website. A lot of them are also moving towards having, integrations with both the live chat and the virtual receptionist. That's another big thing we haven't talked a ton about, but I think is really, really important, is you're gonna get to a stage where, you know, if you're brand new, you probably are answering all the inbound calls. What happens when you're in court? What happens when you're sleeping? What happens when you're eating lunch? You know? And and lawyers will say, oh, I I handle all the calls, and someone that wants to get a hold of me will leave a message. They won't. They're gonna move on to the next lawyer. And so whether it's a virtual receptionist, some firms will do round robin with, like, who's holding the baton and having to answer the phone, but you cannot miss phone calls. I can't tell you how many times we'll set up a call tracking system on a firm's website, and the the firm will say, we handle all inbound calls. We we don't miss any calls. And after a month or 2 of running that, they're like, you have 50% of your calls are being missed. Like, you're not even picking up the phone. It's really eye opening for folks. So, virtual receptionist is someone who can answer the phone that integrates also. Like, we like Smith AI. There are a couple other, virtual receptionist, companies, that are specific for law firms. Know, another side note, I would I would always be managing any kind of third party vendor you're using. Secret shop them regularly. Like, make sure that they're answering the phone you want the way that you want them to answer the phone. Make sure they're pronouncing your firm's name and your name correctly. Make sure they're doing the call routing regularly. Making sure, like, they're being friendly. That's another the soft skills on intake is everything. You know? If you set a bad expectation, like, don't be surprised. Like, I don't understand. We're spending all this money on Google Ads, and we're not converting any, calls. And then you listen to what's being said on the phone, and you're like, well, no wonder. Because you're answering the phone law firm. Not friendly, not engaging, not any helping guide, or or maybe you don't you don't offer the language that your potential clients speak. Systems that can help you nurture prospective clients from their subscribers on your website to you're sending them a retainer, to they're signed up, and then even beyond that. Right? Then when we talk about client life cycle management, it's another huge missed opportunity, but stay in touch with those clients afterwards. You know, a lot of these systems, you can send out an automated email on their birthday and just want just wanna check-in and wish you a happy birthday. Just wanted to wish you a happy Labor Day. Maybe there are specific anniversaries in terms of, like, their immigration status that you just wanna say, hey. It's been a year since you've, you know, I helped you and became that you you came to the country. Just wanted to check-in and see how things were going. Nurturing, because guess what? Those people know other people that might need an immigration lawyer someday. And so staying in touch with them, staying top of mind with them, and don't assume that they're just gonna remember you. They won't. I'm telling you. They we see this time and time again. Happy, happy clients. You'll you'll you'll call them up or send them a survey, and they'll be like, who? Who are you talking about? Oh, yeah. That lawyer that helped me immigrate to the country. And, it's just the way that it is. You know? And it's not gonna happen for everybody, but the more that you can stay top of mind, you can deliver content, you can empathize, Show your gratitude for their services. That's that's who people wanna refer business to. Gyi, I

James Pittman: mean, we could go on and on, and I I want no. I no. I and I definitely wanna have you back. I mean, we're getting to the end of the hour, but I definitely wanna have you back, because we we really should go into, all of the ways that automation can figure into this process because the tools nowadays for automating this process have just become so sophisticated, and there's there's so much more available. And we can talk about, you know, utilizing AI tools for generating your content and generating your follow-up emails and things like that. So I definitely would like to have you back, for a continuation or part 2 of this discussion. How does that sound?

Gyi Tsakalakis: That sounds wonderful. I've really enjoyed the conversation. I'm I'm so grateful that you had me on, and, yeah, happy happy to do it again, Sanjay, at your convenience.

James Pittman: Okay. Again, thanks very much. This has been, Gisak Lakis, who, attorney sync, founder of attorney sync. And, thank you very much for your time, and join us again for our next episode of Immigration Uncover.

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