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What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers, ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team and systems, mastering money issues, and more; then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth-generating law firm? That’s what we do each week on the Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast. Hosted by Davina Frederick, founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer –– every episode is an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve (and will pay you on time), and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love. The goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund, and still have time to enjoy, the lifestyle of your dreams.
Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast. What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers? Ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more. Then take an insight or 2 to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love.
Intro:Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams. Now, here's Devina.
Davina:Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Layer podcast. I'm your host, Devina Frederick. And my guest today is Marilyn Jenkins. Marilyn is a seasoned digital growth strategist with a career spanning back to 1998. As the founder of MJ Media Group and Law Marketing Zone, she specializes in all aspects of digital marketing, including paid advertising, SEO, Google Business Profile Optimization, reviews management, and database reactivation to drive business success.
Davina:With a proven track record of helping law firms achieve remarkable growth, Marilyn has crafted strategic marketing plans that have led many of her clients to exceed 7 figure revenues with some realizing returns on investment as high as 14x. Her podcast, Leadership in Law, features weekly interviews with prominent attorneys and legal service providers. Each episode explores key topics that matter most to legal professionals from driving rapid growth to building a successful and cohesive team. In September 2024, Marilyn authored Profit Driven Digital Marketing, How Law Firms Can Win Clients and Boost Revenue. This book is your comprehensive guide to mastering the online marketing landscape.
Davina:In September 2023 3, she authored the Google Business Profile Training Guide that delves into the intricacies of local search domination by maximizing Google Business Profiles. This comprehensive guide empowers businesses to take control of their online presence and attract more qualified customers. So please join me in welcoming welcoming Marilyn Jenkins to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast. Hi, Marilyn. It's good to see you again.
Marilyn:Hey, Devin. It's good to see you. I'm so glad to be here.
Davina:I'm glad that you're here, because I have a lot of questions for you. We're gonna talk about your business, MJ Media and Law Marketing Zone in particular. You are you've really focused and specialized on helping lawyers make the most out of their digital marketing. So why don't you tell me a little bit about how MJ Media and Law Marketing Zone, how you serve your clients?
Marilyn:Sure. MJ Media is my organization. Right? That's my LLC. My brand is Law Marketing Zone.
Marilyn:And my tagline basically is I help law firms, generate revenue and cases and profit from getting their Internet marketing right. So, most of my clients, we do meta ads or Google Ads. A lot of my clients, we also do SEO for them and really focus on their Google business profile. And I have a couple that we do social media posting for them. But for the most part, we're looking at at fast returns, the, you know, ads.
Marilyn:So we do a lot of automations for them as well to help them nurture the leads, to get them to book on their calendar.
Davina:Wonderful. So tell me your tell me your motivation for sort of focusing on helping lawyers. What led you to decide that lawyers really need this kinda help? They do. Yeah.
Davina:But
Marilyn:What's interesting is I've been doing digital marketing since the late nineties. Right? So I've seen a lot of changes. I've been able to keep up with all the different changes with Google and stuff. And I find that what, when it comes to a digital agency in a law firm, there's a lot of similarities with marketing and with growth.
Marilyn:But also what I noticed that makes attorneys unique is the actual drive to get it done. You know, a lot of small business owners not to not to knock them, but they're like, okay. I've got 5 minutes to do this, and then I have to go to work. They don't see it as something that, okay, you need to be doing this all the time. And I think specifically because attorneys are not necessarily educated in marketing and and actually running a business, they're really, really good at what they do.
Marilyn:You know? It's like when I got a divorce, I didn't do it myself. I need to know that. Right.
Davina:Right. Right.
Marilyn:So I just think, the drive to do a really good job and to build a really good team, it's a a great client to have.
Davina:Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Your I noticed that you really offer a full service digital marketing.
Davina:Because I think, there are a lot of companies out there that focus on SEO, or they focus on websites and SEO, or they focus just on doing ads for Google or just but you've decided to really offer a more comp comprehensive approach. Why do you think that's important?
Marilyn:I think, having one idea like so Facebook ads is what we started with. You leave a lot on the table and you leave a lot to your competition. If someone finds you, say they see a Facebook ad and they go to Google you and you don't come up, they're gonna choose your competition. So it's good to have more than one outreach. And I think SEO, especially with the Google Business Profile base so much more than it used to be Google My Business, it makes sense to have the 2 together.
Davina:Yeah. So explain a little bit more about I I always find Google, profiles conf confusing because it was Google My Business, now it's Google Business Profile. A lot of people don't really know what you're talking about. When you're talking about are you talking about that little thing on the side when you Google and your business comes up? Are you talking about the social media page where everybody used to post things on Google My Business?
Davina:What are you talking about when you're talking about them?
Marilyn:Well, it's interesting that every time they iterate, Google iterates Google business profile, they change the name. So it was at 1 I think the second run was Google Places, and it's it is that box that pops out when you Google yourself. Right? It has your pictures. It has your name, phone number, buttons to your website, and all these different things.
Marilyn:But the biggest thing is is most people think of it as Google My Business as just a place to store reviews, and it is not. Every time they up the game, they've added more features to it. So I equate it to, would you rather spend time posting on Facebook and Instagram or on Google? Now Facebook and Instagram will show your post to 10% of your audience. Google takes your post and all your data that you give them and builds and builds and builds information of what searches you're relevant for.
Marilyn:So when real clients are searching for a real solution, you will come up, not just 10% of the top. Right.
Davina:Do you deal with reviews as well in helping people sort of capture good reviews or manage good reviews or sort of reputation management in that area. Because that's a, that's a big concern for a lot of lawyers. They get that one person who's not a, you know, wasn't even a client. It was probably the opposing parties. I mean, their their clients opposing party go on and leave them a bad review.
Davina:And it can really tank their review score. Is that something you also help with?
Marilyn:We do. And one of the things that, I absolutely coach on is make it a habit in your business process to ask for a review and respond to every review. So when I say to put more information on goop on your Google Business profile instead of Facebook, I'm not saying instead of, but that's more important. Google looks and sees what was the what was the complaint and what was your response. Right?
Marilyn:Your future customers are looking. Because the first thing I do when I look for something, I look at the one stars and see what the reply was. So Google sees that as you are interested in the user experience. And remember, Google is the number one search engine in the world, and they're that because of the user experience is one of their biggest focuses. So you're helping them get their goal.
Marilyn:Right? Reply to every one of those reviews. Now if it's a it could be a disgruntled former employee. It could be someone you never did business with, and it's incorrect. Say that.
Marilyn:Be professional, but reply. You know, I don't know. Yeah. This is I'm sorry. We
Davina:have no record of you.
Marilyn:Exactly. Exactly. Because, you know, when people are reading those reviews, whether they're good or bad, people realize, okay, someone's having a really bad day. Right. Because clearly they're on the wrong law firm or gave the wrong review.
Marilyn:We read the room. We can read the room. Right? Right. Amazon has taught us how to read that.
Marilyn:You know, get used to it and and focus on our views. And so I believe the bad ones are are fine. I think, nobody walks on water, so striving for 5 stars is great. But anything from 4.6 above is is, I think, a very, very good score. When you drop below 4, you get some problems, some issues that you need to handle.
Marilyn:Mhmm.
Davina:Interesting. And and you're so right. I think about it when I look for restaurants. I'm always looking at the reviews and I go down. And if somebody says, you know, they didn't, you know, they'll they'll they'll say something like, I went to this restaurant and they weren't open when I wanted them to be.
Davina:Now to be a one star. And so as a consumer, you were very used to sort of seeing that. And like you said, we can read the room. So I think people get really torn up in knots about bad reviews, and sort of sort of putting into the context. You have written not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 books on the subject of digital marketing for lawyers.
Davina:So tell us each a little bit about each book and kind of how they're different.
Marilyn:The the first book I kinda redid and made it more focused. So, now what I've got is Google Business Profile Training Guide. So that was a book I came out with in, 2023 that really focused on step by step what you need to do to claim, verify, and then maximize your Google Business Profile. So to go further into that, when we started expanding our services, we do offer websites where needed. I do have a team member that works with that that does a really good design job.
Marilyn:I don't really enjoy doing websites. I'd rather do something that's faster, ROI for my clients. So what we did is I put together the profit driven digital marketing, which is the book in the middle there, and that is a full service. It's everything you need to do. Know what to update on your website.
Marilyn:Know what how to do ads. It walks you through Facebook ads and Google ads, everything you need to know, and the Google business profile. With things coming around and being very focused on local visibility, my newest book, I'm excited, I just came out, The 2025 local SEO playbook for law firms. This goes through everything you need to do for local visibility. And that's everything from joining our Chamber of Commerce and training backlinks, you know, sponsoring that t ball team, and everything you need to put on your Google Business profile.
Marilyn:And there's a 90 day plan at the back of a book if you don't know where to start.
Davina:Excellent. Excellent. So that's a good tip. You and I were just talking before about how with our our businesses where we're functioning mainly online and sort of throughout the country, maybe in other countries, some, that the local business, profile doesn't really work for us as well. But for attorneys, that's a real game changer.
Davina:Why don't you tell us the difference between the local service ads and Google ads Google AdWords as we know it? So why don't you kind of explain the difference between this? Because I think that's I think one of the issues with Google is they make things confusing because they're always changing the name of stuff.
Marilyn:I don't get that. I don't get that. Why don't they keep it the same? Yeah. Exactly.
Marilyn:If you're spending money on advertising on Google, the first thing I would do is find out, are local service ads available in your area for your practice area? Right? Because it's one of those things. Every time they, offer a new service, they roll it out nationwide. It's not like they flip a switch and everybody has it.
Marilyn:Okay? Local service ads. So if you look at the real estate of Google and there's local service ads available in your area, those are people that are Google guaranteed. And that's the other silly thing. They call it Google guaranteed or local service ads.
Marilyn:Right? It's just silly. But they'll have Google guaranteed lay a stamp on it. You'll have your head shot on and your information about it, and then you will put a budget per week and these are the very, very top. They're above the ads.
Marilyn:So that's the very first thing people do. So if if you're looking to spend money on Google for for, the particular cases you want and LSAs are available, local service ads, do that. That is above PPC. Depending on location, they'll have a minimum suggested weekly, budget of about $500 a week. As leads come through, you're charged for them.
Marilyn:Here's the other thing about LSAs. If you don't have 247 as that you're available on your Google Business Profile, they do connect your Google Business Profile. If you say you're only open 9 to 5, your LSAs are only gonna show during 9 to 5.
Davina:Oh, interesting.
Marilyn:They want phone calls, and they want booked appointments.
Davina:Right. Very interesting. Now there is, they're recording those calls. Are they not? Explain that.
Davina:So explain that a little bit more because for lawyers, that's a, that's a red flag right there because of the confidentiality and privilege. Right? So if the thought that Google is recording my calls with people can be a little disconcerting, why don't you explain kind of what they're doing with that? What are they recording and what are they doing with that information that you know?
Marilyn:Ask you a question because they've rolled AI in the the whole thing. Right? So one of the biggest thing is is is say you're estate planning. Right? And someone that's in your area, but they want a divorce, they come through your LSA.
Marilyn:Somehow, they should have never shown up. It should not be there. You could dispute that lead because it's out of your practice area. Right? And Google would have to give you that money back.
Marilyn:It's a process, but it has
Davina:So they use the recording for that purpose?
Marilyn:They do now because they have AI rolled into it. So now instead of having a person on the other side of LSAs, the first line of defense is AI. So you can go into and you can in your LSA management portal, you can say reject, and it'll ask you why, and they will review that call to to confirm.
Davina:Okay. So they use it to review the calls to make sure that it they're protecting themselves in that and getting getting the money for everything that's legit.
Marilyn:Exactly. And then if you book somebody, you can go in and say book. But if you're worried about that incoming call being recorded, then what I would do is immediately find out, you know, have your front desk intake person, whoever's taking those calls, where they call him from, some quick details, and then immediately call them back. Make it your call. Okay.
Marilyn:And that way, you know, whatever Google hears, they hear that, yes, you're calling them back. There was interaction. And if you're not disputing the lead, it's not a big thing. Right? Yeah.
Marilyn:Practice area, in the area you can service, Great. Let me have Devina call you right back. Hang up and call him right back.
Davina:Yeah. Right? Okay. And for Google Ads, they don't do that, do they, for Google AdWords?
Marilyn:No. They don't. Because in the Google AdWords, you can have a tracking number or whatever. They're not recording them on that end.
Davina:Yeah. Listen,
Marilyn:just random checks going on. You know, there's all of this stuff and they are, you know, saying the Google guarantee, they're taking kind of the hit that you are, you know, the Legit. You're legit.
Davina:Yeah. So in in an in another effort to ensure sort of legitimacy of businesses, one of the things that Google, one of the issues for people at virtual law firms, virtual businesses, is Google made some changes a while back regarding your address verification. So talk to us a little bit about that, and how that sort of affected people who own virtual law firms.
Marilyn:It's if you're required to do video, which is what we're seeing a lot more people are required to do video. It used to be they'd mail you a postcard with a with a verification code on it. You'd log in, pop in the verification code to Bob's vehicle. Right? Now there's several different ways to verify.
Marilyn:What they're most people that we're seeing across the board to the masterminds that I'm in, all the different agencies is everybody's reverting the video. I mean, they're just making everybody do video. Well, say you're at home and your mailbox or your sign is at the end of your driveway, but your driveway is how long? I mean, I had one client, their driveway was 2 miles long. So your verification video is 90 seconds uninterrupted.
Marilyn:So how do you get from your sign to your front door?
Davina:Well, and you don't have a sign. A lot of people who work from home have virtual there is no sign out front. So how do they verify? What did they do?
Marilyn:What you would do is you have to show that you can unlock the door so the door is yours. And then you go into your desk and you show things that are yours that show you do business and then show I say, confidential areas that a client would not be in an area where a client may be, but it's very difficult. And then then the other kicker is if you say don't show my address, you're not gonna give me searches. Interesting. You know, they want because remember, the Google business profile is really, really focused on addresses.
Marilyn:So it's like, distance, keyword, and relevancy. So that, you know, if you're say, just outside of town or in the suburbs and someone's searching and they're literally 2 blocks from you and your address is visible, you'll be found on that search. But if you said don't show my address, you know, we have the same thing with with roofers and and, service companies that work out of their home or out of the garage, and they don't want their address in there. Well, that's that's gonna hinder you. If nothing else, go rent a desk at a at a attorney's office.
Marilyn:Don't get a a Regus, because way too many spam companies are or not up and up companies are in, use those addresses. And so Google says the address is spam. You know, I've been I've been using a virtual mail service that's handled thousands of companies out of Houston, Texas. I've used it for 28 years, and I can't. Google says it's an invalid address for me because there's been too many not legit companies try to do a Google Business Profile with that address.
Davina:Alright. So it's a lot. So it's a it's something that needs a little bit of work on Google's end. And in the meantime, we have to sort of learn how we can give it a shot and see if we can pass their test to be verified. Right?
Davina:Wanna do local search then.
Marilyn:UPS bots or bots at the UPS store and but not recently. You know, in the past, now I've known people that, like I said, would rent a desk and hang a sign in the front, not outside the office, but say on the, as, receptionist desk. There'll be a sign, you know, and then they take them back to the desk. They show them the break room. They show them a place that the customer can't go, you know, and that works.
Marilyn:But that's showing a legitimate address. So if you could do something like that, you don't have to spend a lot of money. You can get a very small office, and you don't even have to go there, Austin, but you have to be able to show it as an address.
Davina:Oh, interesting. Interesting. Alright. So let's talk about, you have an offer to help people with local service ads. Well, tell me about that offer.
Marilyn:Austin.
Davina:You have a special, like, let me tell you what it is. Tell you the name of what I'm talking about. Maps power boost. Maps power boost. This is the maps where, where you're improving your ranking on the maps.
Davina:How do we get on the map? Everybody goes to the map.
Marilyn:How do we get on the map? Oh, cool. Like I said, when you when someone does a search and think about when you're a consumer and you're looking for a restaurant and you walked around town, you're gonna look it up and then so Google looks and says 60 to 80 percent of the people that search click on the map pack. Right? So we want our clients to be number 1, 2, or 3.
Marilyn:There used to be 7 on the first page, now there's 3. So it's really important that you get there. What we do is we do citations. So we're using AI to literally 8,000 x the times manual citations that you can make over the course of a month. We've taken clients from being level 20, which means you're the 20th in the list of 3, which means you're never gonna be found.
Marilyn:And then, 1, 2, and 3 on average. Remember, around your 5 mile radius, you're gonna fluctuate depending on how close they are and what they're they're searching. So we've been able to, in less than 60 days, get people ranking. And then it just keeps growing because every month, we got more and more citations going out, more and more backlinks going out. So and then our, full on SEO service, we also publish 4 articles a month for you.
Marilyn:One of Weing, Google Business Profile and on your website. So we SEO your website based on your top 25 keywords. And I'm Okay. It would be more near your city. You know, make them or near me, make them longer.
Marilyn:Or chaos.
Davina:So if you're not a lawyer and you don't have lawyers working for you, how do you write articles for lawyers? Website?
Marilyn:We have research teams. And we do and we have started recently doing using AI for part of it, and then the editing team goes through and edits. So we can supply what we want. The, articles yeah. The articles are only gonna be about 750 words, maybe a little bit more.
Marilyn:So just enough to get the point across with some keywords and link back to your home page. So these all act as you got a link on Google linking to your website. That's a high domain authority with backlink. All of the Right. Website handler on your website linking to your home page.
Davina:That's I think that's a stumbling block for a lot of attorneys because a lot of attorneys are good legal writers, and they can't sort of comprehend how, a non attorney can write articles for a a blog or something like a legal blog. And I think there's a there's been a big shift from when blogging was a huge thing and people were writing, and to sort of understanding that blogging is a different type of writing. It's not legal academic writing. And I think that's where maybe some attorneys get caught up in in it. So how do you sort of address that?
Davina:Because I know I know you have had attorneys who are like, I'm a good writer. I don't see how you can write this article for me, because you're not a lawyer. You don't understand my practice here. Or my practice area is unique. You won't be able to write articles for me.
Davina:How do you sort of address that?
Marilyn:I do love it. I'm always unique. Right? That's that's the thing is I had an attorney in in San Diego and,
Davina:like What are you mean?
Marilyn:You know, I spent 6 weeks writing articles, putting all the details together to put an article out. I'm like, really? But who is that article for? And that's what that's what we forget. We've we forget that the articles are simply food for the search engines for our potential new customers.
Marilyn:You're not gonna have a judge come into your website looking to see how your writing is. I mean, let's let's read the room. What are you writing for? Who are you writing?
Davina:So I think a lot of lawyers a lot of lawyers have said to me in the past, well, you know, I'm ready for other lawyers because other lawyers refer me business. But I what I've always said back to them is, my god, like, how many other lawyers do you think are gonna search and read this academic article on your website? Lawyers too. We have we spend all day reading court related documents. Do you think they're gonna go on your website and read your opinion piece on this or that after spending their whole day working reading legal documents?
Davina:The answer to that is probably no. We're gonna we're like everybody else scrolling social media or whatever. We're gonna we're going for the quick hit, the quick dopamine hit of something interesting and entertaining. Right?
Marilyn:Right. Exactly. I mean, and whenever you're, you know, if your website and your posts on your Google business profile are feeding Google all they need to know that your potentially client's gonna wanna know. Right? They're not gonna read a white paper.
Marilyn:You know, if I'm looking to have it worse in, you know, Forsyth County, North Carolina, which is where I did years ago, I'm not even if we had search engine back then, I'm not gonna go look and see, okay, how how detailed and and really fancy and big words did did any use in her article.
Davina:Alright. So you were saying?
Marilyn:I was saying that so think about who you're writing your article for. K? Right. The normal person feels like attorneys are unapproachable because you know so much more than we do about the law. Right.
Davina:You were white papers
Marilyn:and opinion pieces as your blog posts, you're reinforcing that idea. Where everything on your website is supposed to help with that know, like, and trust factor. The same thing that you do on your Google Business profile. Know, like, and trust in educate me. Video Right.
Marilyn:Articles. And our our articles that we write for our clients are keyword rich appropriately enough, and they are on a level that the average person can understand the words and and read and understand the content.
Davina:Wonderful. So let me ask you this. We it what would be your number one piece of advice you would give a small law firm owner who wants to improve their digital footprint? What would be like the first thing that they the first two or three things that they need to do to really improve the how they're being showing up and being found on Google or on other social media?
Marilyn:Well, first, let's go with the Google. Let's assume that you have already claimed, optimized, and verified your Google Business Profile. Make sure your name, address, and phone number is exactly the same everywhere on the web. Everywhere on the web. And, correct at the categories in your Google Business Profile.
Marilyn:You can choose up to 7 in some locations. Choose them in order of priority of the cases you want. Don't ever say lawyer and law firm if there's something better. That is the second most important thing that feeds Google of who you want. Okay.
Marilyn:Fill out your Google Business Profile to every degree that you can and then do something to update it once a
Davina:week. Okay.
Marilyn:And valuable thing to do. And then I
Davina:think the next thing they need to do is reach out and talk to you because you guys provide provide a service. Because really, truly the highest and best use of our time is probably not sitting and filling out, updating stuff on Google and writing these articles. Right? It's much better for us to hire somebody who has expertise in this area. So tell us how we can get your books and how we can reach out to you if we want to have a conversation with you about how you can help us.
Marilyn:Absolutely. My books are available on Amazon. You can book a time with me, a 15 minute appointment. We can just chat a little bit about your goals and how we can help at lawmarketingzone.com/bookacall. It's that simple.
Davina:That simple. Alright. We'll include the links to Amazon to get your books and also the links to where they could book a call for you in the show notes. Is there are there any final thoughts you wanna leave us with before as we're going out facing this digital marketing challenge?
Marilyn:I would say just make sure Google knows everything they can about your business and that you're consistently giving them. That's where your petitionary clients are finding you. You know, make sure your digital marketing is right, and you will see a what four x more ROI on average with your Google Business Profile than with paid Google PPC ads. That's our number. So it was
Davina:wonderful. Marilyn, thank you so much for being here. I've enjoyed talking with you about this topic. I always enjoy our conversation, so I really appreciate you being here.
Marilyn:Absolutely. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.
Intro:If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us at wealthywomanlawyer.com to learn more about how we help our clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.