Scaling Smart in Legal Marketing: Lessons from Jonathan Breeden’s 24-Year Journey

Viktoria Altman : Hi, Jonathan. Thank you for joining me on the Law Firm Accelerator. Welcome.

Jonathan Breeden: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to it, Viktoria.

Viktoria Altman : Awesome. Could you tell us about yourself and your practice, and where you’re located?

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. My name is Jonathan Breeden. I’m a divorce attorney in the Raleigh, North Carolina suburbs. My primary office is in Garner, and then we have offices in Smithfield, Andrews, and in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is the state capital. And I’m in one of the fastest-growing areas in America.

I’ve been in business for 24 years. I opened my law firm in the year 2000. We currently have, six other attorneys and, 18 employees total. We service a lot of people here in the, greater Raleigh area with divorce family law. We do some guardianships, simple wills, powers of attorney, adoptions. Anything that affects the family, we do here at the Breeden Law Office.

And for a long time, it was just me, but now we got all kinds of team members and, growing fast, just like my community, continues to grow fast.

Viktoria Altman : That’s amazing. So it sounds like you are doing really well. So my first question is going to be, what have you done with your marketing to get yourself to this point? Something must be working well for you.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. The marketing over 24 years has been quite the adventure. The biggest change was, I had a FindLaw website for a long time. I was with FindLaw from like 2005 to 2016. And that’s just stop working.

I was getting 89% of my business off my website. I didn’t have any social media, and I needed to get a website that was gonna work. I think they were doing some backlinks that maybe Google didn’t like. We were able to make a decision. That’s the key thing, Viktoria, you have to make decisions to do something different. And it’s hard, right? You’re scared, but you have to make decisions. So we made a decision to move on from FindLaw, and we located a different web company. When we made that switch, we went from a website that was not working the way we needed it to having a website that was working.

That was, probably. the single best decision I’ve made in 24 years of practicing law. If you have a site that is working, that has proper SEO that is being updated, Google changes the rules every six months.

Blogs are being written, you’re adding video content, you’re doing the things that Google wants to see. It’s their world, not ours. And you get a site that’s able to work. Then you’re gonna start to have more leads. What do you do with all those leads?

That was really the biggest change for us. After we figured out what to do with this website, for many, many years until… probably the last year and a half was generating more leads than I could humanly do.

I didn’t need to do anything else other than live off this website, In the last couple of years, we’ve now doing, some local service ads and other stuff that has been successful.

And once again, you have to know your numbers. You have to know how many leads you have, how many sets you have, how many shows, how many hires, how many people referring to you.

You have to understand the numbers because almost all law firms have enough leads; they just don’t nurture them properly. And that’s the thing, and I know the hardest thing for marketers about you, Viktoria, is you’re doing a good job. You’re providing leads, and they’re dropping the ball. They’re calling and blaming you when it’s not you, it’s them because they’re not managing the leads properly.

Viktoria Altman : That is an excellent point. So it’s about taking action and making the switch, even though sometimes it’s scary. In terms of managing leads, I run another company called Follow Up Wiz, and what we do is create a system where all you have to do is add the first and the last name, add the phone number and the email, and then you tell us how often you want this person contacted.

We have an automated way for you to text, email, and even leave voicemails for this person for as long as you want. The reason why I create it is because I’m struggling following up with my own leads, right? Because I speak with somebody, I’m excited and then they get busy and this happens to lawyers all the time.

Following up with those leads is super important. Whether you do it through a system like mine or whether you do it because you have a receptionist, even though it’s cheaper now to do it through AI, which is how we have designed, but you can certainly have a receptionist do that stuff.

Now, let me ask you a question. When you picked your agency, how did you know they were doing a good job? Because I do have a lot of people who come to me and say, I was with this agency for a year and I know I was paying for nothing but it felt like they were doing something.

So what is it that you’re looking for when you find yourself a good marketing agency?

Jonathan Breeden: You know, when I was trying to make the decision to switch, I actually got a referral to this agency.

I went to the top 10 sites in Raleigh, and I went to the bottom to see who did the sites. Some of ’em would say, I have a law firm, and some of ’em would say about who actually did ’em. One of the top sites in Raleigh that was owned by a friend of mine was done by guys out of Austin, Texas.

And so we called ’em and we’re like, Hey, you build us a site? And they’re like, no, we gotta non-compete. So we couldn’t build another family law site in the Raleigh area. But they said, we recommend you call this company, and maybe they can help you.

And so we called them. We were also talking to a company connected to the Yellow Pages out of St. Louis, Missouri, This is 2016, so the yellow pages are just about dead. And so this company had rebranded itself as doing, websites for lawyers and stuff.

I was trying to decide between the two. One of the things I did was I looked at the websites they had done for other people. I ran Google searches to see where these sites were showing up, because most people are not gonna come in through the homepage.

They’re coming in through a content page. I wanted to see if these content pages for these other sites were ranking.

There’s tons of online website audit tools that are fairly cheap. That’ll tell you if you’ve got the right meta tags. I have tons of these companies, Viktoria, are always offering me free analysis of my website, which I always take ’em up on because I’m always curious, are we doing something wrong?

I always send it to my website company. Sometimes they say, yeah, we’re gonna fix that. Sometimes they’re like, we disagree. You gotta do your homework and then you gotta be willing to spend some money ’cause it’s a lot of work to have a site that’s gonna do well in major markets. If you’re gonna be in a major market like Raleigh, you’re gonna have to really do some work, and you’re gonna have to pay some money. And you gotta decide, do I wanna pay the money to get this done?

My website costs more than a hundred thousand dollars a year.

Like, holy cow. Right? It’s a lot of money but when you think about the amount of money that we’re able to bank because of the leads it can generate, it’s worth it. It’s definitely worth it.

The other thing is, it’s not just website. The company we use, they do a little bit of everything. They help us place offices. They can help us with billboards, they can help us with coming up with catchphrases, value statements, and all of those types of things that you do need when you’re scaling.

You just gotta be aware and you gotta know your numbers, right? In 2020, I didn’t know any numbers. I didn’t have any idea what you needed to know, but I know now, and that allows you to make strategic decisions.

I love that tip because I get so many clients from checking the bottom of their competitor’s websites. It’s the best way to get clients because then they appreciate your value. Make sure you do your research, make sure you ask questions.

Viktoria Altman : And there’s so much information out there. Certainly there’s good tools out there. Take the meetings, even if somebody just wants to give you advice. Usually it’s not gonna hurt you and you might learn something. Yeah, those are great tips.

So now that we’ve walked through everything you’ve done right and you’ve done so much right, I want you to tell me about what you’re struggling with, because we had a little chat and I know not everything is perfect just yet.

Jonathan Breeden: We’re new to Facebook advertising.

We’ve never done anything where we spent any real money. So what we’re trying to do right now is, can we convert Facebook into active clients? Can you do direct response marketing on Facebook and do it successfully?

And there’s a ton of law firms out there doing it right. We’re about three or four months into this, and we have not been able to have the success we thought we were going to have. The way we’re structuring it is we’ve got some static graphics, pictures of the wife and with the teddy bear in the box moving outta the house ’cause we do divorces. We’ve got some videos where I’m trying to just look like I’m in the lights, and I’m really big on the screen, and I’m like, are you afraid you’re never gonna see your kids again?

We speak to people’s fears, right? What we’re attempting to do is, if we can get ’em to fill out the form,

And get them to self-schedule a call with us to where our intake team can call them and make sure we can help, make sure we don’t have a conflict. We do charge for consults, collect that fee, and see if we can’t get ’em in here.

Viktoria Altman : So we spoke about this and there is a couple of issues here that I’d like to comment on.

When somebody goes online on Google and they put in divorce lawyer, generally that means they are at the end of the buying decision, they’re looking for divorce lawyer, or they’re very close to a hire, right? If they go on Facebook and they’re not looking for a divorce lawyer, they’re just scrolling on Facebook, and you go, Hey, we are a divorce lawyer. Maybe they go, well, I’m not really happy in my marriage, and maybe I should be looking for a divorce lawyer. But are they ready to buy? And most of the time, when a person is ready to buy, what do they do? They go on Google, right? So what you need to do is you’re talking about top of the funnel, bottom of the funnel.

If you are starting with people who are not yet ready to buy, you are starting at the very bottom of the funnel and these people need to be brought into your sphere of influence and educated. if these guys are trying to show one ad and then convert that person, chances are nothing is gonna happen.

If, on the other hand, what they’re doing is, well, if you’re thinking of getting divorced, these are the five things you should be doing in advance before you tell your soon-to-be former spouse. Oh, and by the way, we have a checklist for you. Why don’t you give us your email, and we will send that checklist for you free of charge.

And that’s somebody who is very much at the bottom of the funnel. Just consider it. And then we have their email, and maybe we retarget them on Facebook again. Maybe we go back to how much alimony would you qualify for? Or how much child support would you qualify for? So when we have those emails, we can actually target those people on Facebook, right?

And we can target something called lookalike audiences, which means people who are similar to them. So, other people who might be considering divorce but are not quite there yet. The nice thing is, because you have good SEO. If they see you online, that’s another touch point. The brand is very important because they see you, they trust you a little more than they see on Facebook again, maybe they see a video on YouTube, maybe they even see a billboard, and those are all touchpoints.

But if they’re going straight to conversions, it’s not gonna work.

Jonathan Breeden: You need to work with somebody who understands the entire conversion pyramid and can work on that for you. We do have some Facebook videos. You know, the five things I would do if I was getting a divorce.

We have probably 150 to 200 YouTube videos, where we’re answering common questions, three-minute type videos. I did those for a number of years. Those are really helpful.

I now do those in-house. I have a social media coordinator. I have a studio, I have lights, I didn’t have any of that stuff for a long time. We try to put that stuff out there. We have our podcast,a community podcast, best of Johnston County, where we’re interviewing community members, county commissioners, small business owners.

It’s not really for the business. It’s definitely not direct for spots. So we don’t really put that on the businesses Facebook page, unless we’re talking about divorce.

If we do the legal topics on the podcast, we will put it on our actual Breeden Law stuff. What we’re fighting is all this content that had nothing to do with the law, was knocking down the content that we had, that was about the law. If you came to my Facebook page, you’d see me talking to a dentist. It wasn’t answering your question about divorce. We’ve tried to work on that over the last few months.

Viktoria Altman : What’s important, in addition to the content, is the conversion you ask for at the end. If you are asking somebody very low on the funnel to make a consultation call,

They’re simply not gonna do it because they’re just not ready. However, if you ask them for an email to give them more information, they may do it. And then you have to nurture that lead. Maybe you put them in an email system, maybe you send them a newsletter, that kind of thing. It’s all about what are you asking of people and are they ready to answer that call.

When somebody finds you on Google, they’re ready because they went on Google and they looked for you. So, hopefully this makes sense. I do wanna bring up a couple of things that I found interesting in your website. You mentioned overcoming a scarcity mindset that halted your law firm’s growth. I know this is a very common issue. What are the strategies you’ve used to help yourself get past that?

Jonathan Breeden: Starting to study numbers, studying numbers, and knowing that numbers are repeatable.

For 20 years, I’m doing this and I don’t know how many leads I have. I don’t know how many sets I have. I don’t know how many shows I have.

I don’t know what my conversion percentage is.I don’t know my average case value. I’m just practicing law.

I started every month with business debt, personal debt, no real business savings. I had to go get a number every single month to break even, and I think that number was $35,000 that allowed me to pay for the website. It allowed me to pay myself a little bit of a salary, pay the two employees I had at the time, pay my rent, that kind of stuff.

And so that’s all I could think about on the first of the month, what am I gonna do to bring in $35,000 this month? And that’s the scarcity because I didn’t even know anything about any of these numbers. So when I got the business coach, Richard James, and started tracking the numbers, then you could see a pattern.

And so the way to overcome a scarcity mindset is to gain information. To educate yourself about what is actually happening because I didn’t know, and because you didn’t know, your gut, your innate thing is there’s not enough. You throw in a little bit of anxiety.

You didn’t think you could hire anybody. You didn’t think you could expand because that’s just one more that’s gonna up that number I gotta get every month but once you start studying the numbers, then you have an idea.

How many leads? How many sets? How many shows? What percentage hired me? What’s my average case value? How many people referring people to me? Am I getting paid? Am I getting paid in full? What’s my collection percentage? These are all things you have to know to be able to scale so that you can make a plan.

I didn’t know any of these things until I found my coach, Richard James in 2020. I just started listening to what the man said, and following his program and working with the people in his program and, it really took off from there.

I sit down at the first meeting, I meet a guy named Bert Diener, who’s a very successful attorney out of Wilmington, North Carolina, Diener Law. He does immigration law.

And he is a fascinating guy and he studies leads and holds a CRM and all this stuff and I was like, my website gets, I don’t know, at that time I was getting 12,000 visitors a month.

But I didn’t know the difference between a visit to a website and a visit in my state and he’s like, if you did right by those leads, you could quadruple your business and never spend another dime on advertising.

And I was like, what? You’re outta your mind like whatcha talking about? He goes, you’re not doing the leads right. I didn’t even know what a sciarium was. A client relationship. No clue. I didn’t know anything about retargeting. I didn’t know anything about email drip campaigns.

I didn’t know anything about outbound phone calls, like all these things I’m doing now, we haven’t really done that much more advertising, and we did exactly what the man said. We quadrupled it, and now we’re going past that. The only thing we added is local service ads, and that’s it.

We are still working with the leads off of the website, but now we have team members that make outbound phone calls. I now have a CRM, I have three team members in El Salvador and we’re making five, six, seven, eight hundred outbound phone calls a week to leads that either didn’t book, didn’t show, or didn’t hire.

Follow up with those leads. You are doing the more expensive way to do it by having staff to follow up, but whatever way you choose to do it, whether it’s through an automated system or through humans,

Viktoria Altman : following up is huge. We have clients who just do the follow up system and it’s amazing they’ll convert 25, 30, 50% more people because they’re following up constantly. I think that is probably the best tip I can give anybody who is running a law office, from a marketing point of view, is follow your list.

Jonathan Breeden: There’s so many CRMs out there now. The one I use is called Foureyes, it’s a version of Salesforce, but Lawmatics is out there. Clio Grow has gotten a lot better over the last four or five years. HubSpot is doing a good job. I’m told Salesforce is gonna come out with a legal version, which may make it a lot more affordable than real Salesforce. You don’t have to spend a ton of money to get a good CRM to manage the leads, but I would bet that 95% of the people listening to this podcast right now have enough leads if they would just nurture them properly.

Build a structure to nurture the leads, and then build an intake structure to get ’em in and sell them.

Viktoria Altman : That makes so much sense. Jonathan. I really appreciate you joining and sharing some of your wisdom and success here.

I will, post the links to some of those resources you’ve mentioned in the podcast description. Thank you for joining us.