Episode 148

In the latest episode of the Texas Family Law Insiders Podcast, Holly Draper welcomes Amanda Sexton to the Texas Family Law Insiders Podcast.  Amanda is the founder of FocusWorks Marketing, and she has spent nearly 20 years helping law firms turn marketing into a measurable source of new business. Amanda unpacks what may be the biggest shift in legal marketing in a generation: clients are increasingly finding and vetting lawyers through AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude rather than through Google alone. She explains why firms that have leaned entirely on Google Ads and Local Services Ads should start diversifying now, since AI tools pull from a much wider set of sources — directory listings, reviews, social platforms, and thought-leadership content — to decide who to recommend, and why consistency across all of those sources matters more than any single one of them.

The conversation turns to reviews and reputation. Amanda explains that recency now matters as much as volume — a firm with 200 reviews but only two in the last three months is in worse shape than one steadily gathering new ones — and that spreading reviews across multiple platforms, not just Google, helps AI tools see consistent, corroborating signals about a firm. She and Holly also discuss how content is evolving: static website pages on divorce or custody still matter, but AI increasingly rewards firms that tell specific stories about the clients they serve, and that show up consistently across LinkedIn, video, and other channels rather than relying on one source of truth.

Amanda dives into the practical mechanics of AI visibility: why LinkedIn is worth the time investment even for attorneys who rarely post, why Facebook content largely isn’t being pulled into AI answers the way public LinkedIn content is, and why directory consistency — identical firm name, address, and contact details everywhere — is one of the fastest ways to build AI trust. She also addresses newer developments like paid ChatGPT ads, cautioning that it’s still early and firms should treat it as a low-cost experiment rather than a proven channel.

They close with practical guidance for firms at every stage: how to differentiate from competitors who all claim to be “responsive” by getting specific about what that actually looks like, which KPIs matter when AI-driven attribution is hard to track (closed cases by channel, consult-to-close ratio, and speed to respond to leads), and Amanda’s advice for young associates building a personal brand — posting consistently on LinkedIn and pursuing guest publications to get their name into the sources AI is already reading.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

•       Why relying solely on Google Ads and LSA’s is increasingly risky

•       Why recency matters more than volume for reviews

•       Why storytelling is becoming a must-have rather than a nice-to-have

•       Why LinkedIn is worth the time even for attorneys who rarely post

•       How to measure the effectiveness of your marketing

•       How young associates can build a personal brand from scratch

Mentioned in this episode:

• Marketing
• Google
• Platform
• AI
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Yelp
• Business
• Strategy
• GEO
• SEO
• Claude
• ChatGPT
• Visibility
• Blog
• Content
• Reviews

Transcript

Episode 148 | Amanda Sexton: Marketing in the Age of AI

Amanda Sexton: If you think about, you know, how many networking events we all attend and we’re trying to stay in front of people and stay top of mind, and how much time that takes and what your time is worth, you know, over an hour. If you write a post and you reach 600 people for that and that took you 15 minutes, how much is that worth to you?

Announcer: You’re listening to the Texas Family Law Insiders Podcast, your source for the latest news and trends in family law in the state of Texas. Now, here’s your host, attorney Holly Draper

Holly Draper: Welcome back everyone to the Texas Family Law Insiders podcast. I’m your host, Holly Draper, and I am welcomed today by Amanda Sexton, who is the founder of FocusWorks Marketing, where she helps law firms grow without the guesswork, turning marketing from something firms fund and hope for into a reliable, measurable source of new business.

For more than 15 years, she’s worked with managing partners and CMOs across the country, and she’s been focused on what may be the biggest shift in legal marketing in a generation. Clients are starting to find and choose lawyers through AI, not just Google, and most firms have no idea whether they’re showing up or invisible.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

Amanda Sexton: Yeah, thanks for

Holly Draper: having me. I’m so excited to talk about this. So why don’t you start and just tell us a little bit about yourself?

Amanda Sexton: Yeah. So I’ve been doing this… As I was listening to you read the description, I went, “Oh, no, it’s probably closer to 20 years”

Holly Draper: that I’ve been doing this, which is crazy to say out loud.

Amanda Sexton: But, you know, I’ve had the agency since 2018, and we started working with more and more law firms, and we kind of went all in from there. One of the things, you know, that we really do and I love to do is I always say, like, if people could talk to our clients for two minutes, they would hire them, and our job is to figure out how to get them to feel like that before they even have that phone call and outreach, and now with AI, that is drastically changing.

I feel like when the internet came out and then social media came out, that changed everything about marketing, and now we’re in an whole new world that is basically the Wild, Wild West, and we’re all trying to figure it out together.

Holly Draper: Yes. I know, you know, as a law firm owner, and I talk to lots of other law firm owners, the go-to for so long has been to put your money into Google Ads and LSAs.

And, I mean, for years, I have felt like no money I ever spent was actually getting me a return, Google Ads or LSAs, but it has still been seemingly the gold standard for what law firm owners do to try to generate business. But that may be kind of going away or at least changing. Where do you see that going?

Amanda Sexton: Definitely changing. I think it’s a case of where if all your eggs are in that one basket, it’s time to start thinking about other places that you should be marketing. And it, it is hard because you had this reliable stream for so long, but now we’re seeing it kind of broken apart to where people are searching in other places.

So they’re less reliant on Google. And if you’ve used Google at all lately too, you know what that looks like when you search and trying to actually find something that you need an answer to is a little bit more challenging these days. So people are vetting on a lot more platforms, so it’s not just one spot that they’re looking anymore.

So it’s AI, but they’re also going on social channels, and AI is pulling from all of these other channels also in a way that SEO didn’t always historically. It’s, you know, certain things like a PR campaign, you know, it’s a nice-to-have. It would help your SEO, but it wasn’t a necessity. And now with AI, there’s so many different components that it looks at that it’s certainly changing.

And I think even the LSA ads, that there’s an element of distrust. I think we’re kind of in a trust- Environment where people are really looking for something that’s more credible. So they see ads, you know, people have had so much ad exposure that they’re really looking for validation across other platforms too.

Holly Draper:: And I know as a consumer of many things, my searching has really gone away from Google, and I might, if I need just a super quick, very simple answer, I might Google it. But if I want anything more in-depth, I’m going to Claude. Used to go to ChatGPT, but I’m a convert to Claude. But I know everybody has their favorite AI platform, and I’m sure that I’m not alone in that shift.

And as a law firm owner, I think about reviews and how for years we have, and I know everybody else out there too, has focused on getting those Google reviews to the exclusion probably of every other source of reviews out there. And now I know I kind of panic a little bit of, “Oh, shoot, what do I do now?”

Because all those reviews are in Google. What do you think about this?

Amanda Sexton: And reviews too, even for family law firms, are historically hard to get. You know, it’s not necessarily something people are gonna be talking about online, so it’s hard enough to get them as it is to have them spread out. Those reviews, I mean, yes, the more you can get them on other platforms.

At the end of the day, the more people that you have talking about the firm and giving feedback, that’s what’s most important. You know, on the AI side and LLMs, they’re going to check other platforms. They’re going to see. What they really wanna see is consistency across the internet from a bunch of different resources.

So it is helpful if you have reviews on other platforms, but if all of the reviews are saying one thing and you’re also maybe getting written up in articles in law.com, and then maybe you’ve won some Super Lawyers or Chambers awards, all of those things point to the same, okay, this is what this firm does, this is what they specialize in, and this is who should hire them and why.

So as long as those reviews are consistent and ongoing, that’s what’s important, and recency is so important today. I think a lot of firms will have a giant push in the beginning, okay, we’re gonna reach out to all of our past clients, and we’ll put a light process into place, and we’ve collected 50 reviews, and now we’ll just get a couple here or there.

But the biggest thing now is recency, so within those last three months, how many reviews have you gotten? And you might have 200 reviews, but if you’ve only gotten two in the last three months, that’s not great either.

Holly Draper: So does it matter, you know, if we’ve historically been getting the reviews on Google, and now we’re like, oh, you know, this one crazy client left a bad review on Yelp, I guess it’s time to start focusing over there.

So then you start focusing newer reviews on a different source. How important is it to s- be switching up the sources or to be getting new ones on all of those different sites?

Amanda Sexton: Good question, and I think one of the hard things now with what’s coming out with AI is that we just don’t know what’s going to happen, so we’re trying to preempt some of this.

So we don’t know that when someone searches, “Hey, I need a family lawyer for this complex divorce case. Who should I hire?” They might come back with, hey, saying, “Oh, well, here’s on, you know, Google, this is what people are saying about this firm,” or if they’re going to vet your firm, “Here’s what people on Google are saying, but on Yelp, this is what people are saying.”

And it’s just one review, and that’s all the context that they have to pull from, so then we don’t know if that’s going to happen, and we d- that could happen. So preemptively, you know, we try to take a more conservative approach, changing your marketing strategy completely overnight and just saying, “Oh, we have to get a…”

You know, kind of the panic approach isn’t great either. But if you want to get ahead of that, be a little bit more diversified and at the very least, making sure that every platform you have o- more positive than negative, that’s the approach that I would take. So if it’s a little bit net neutral right now.

And we also don’t know what is going to be weighed more heavily in the future than another platform. So in that sense, yes, it might be great, but we’re kind of going by what AI is telling us, similar to how we’re responding a little bit to the Google algorithm, and we used to do that in the past. And now we’re doing that on the AI side too.

So now it’s pulling in LinkedIn newsletters and YouTube, you know, subscriptions and podcasts, so that’s where a lot of people are focusing on that end a little bit more than the review side.

Holly Draper: So talk a little bit about what potential clients seeking family law attorneys, how have their, has their searching changed, and what should we know about what’s happening right now in that world?

Amanda Sexton: Yeah.

Holly Draper: So it’s definitely changed in the sense that

Amanda Sexton: if you think about what people, what happens, you know, before someone even reaches out to a law firm, there’s a lot of questions. What happens to my house? My spouse owns a business. What will happen with the children? Who gets custody? They’re searching for all of those questions online, and they used to have to click into a, you know, a law firm website.

That’s why those information articles were really great. Now they’re just getting an AI overview from Google. They could decide if they wanna click through to that or not. But they’re really going to more of those ChatGPTs and Claude and having that because it’s a conversation, right? It’s nuance. As soon as you ask that question, you have 9,000 more questions, and you wanna know the next step.

And that’s a little bit more private too. I know sometimes we have cl- you know, some of the family law clients we’ve talked to that s- say, “You know, I don’t wanna search online because I’m not sure if I’m now g- now going to get ads for a law firm, and I don’t want that to come up either.” So they’re having those conversations, and they’re going through that.

And when you think about it too, there’s so much nuance when it comes to a family law matter. It’s really particular to that individual client. So they get to ask all of those questions, and that’s where the content that you have out there is incredibly helpful because it, you know, we look at most family law sites.

Historically, it’s okay, we have a pic- you know, a page on child custody, a page on child support, a page on divorce, and we’re not really talking necessarily about stories or types of clients that we’ve helped with. So when someone goes online and they’re on AI, and they’re like, “Oh, I need a family law attorney,” for the most part, AI is looking a lot at the chambers rankings, at the best of, at super lawyers.

I actually just asked it a couple days ago, “What’s the best family law attorney in New Jersey?” And it gave me back only chambers. So I was like, well, that’s not the only reason that if, you know, that someone qualifies, but that’s what it’s kind of looking at. But if I said, “Okay, I have two children and a house and a business, and this is a little com- complex, and maybe I have a narc- narcissistic husband.

Who should I talk to?” That’s a different thing. And so those kind of nuances are where law firms and their websites and the way that they’re talking about themselves can get themselves more clients through AI.

Holly Draper: So, you know, in terms of talking about, you know, stories and whatnot, we might see that on a website in form of testimonials or something like that, but they’re usually pretty short.

Do you recommend completely overhauling the way that we’re doing websites with those pages on custody or divorce, or is it about having a newsletter or social media? Where do we put that story?

Amanda Sexton: Honestly, and this is the, the challenge in marketing and how it’s changing, it used to be, “Oh, for SEO, you know, we’ll just put pages on our website, and that’s good enough.”

And now it’s, it has to be everywhere, not just one spot. Because it’s not using just one source of truth for that, so it wants to see that you’re talking about that. It wants to see that other people are talking about you, so those are where the, where the reviews come in, that other people are saying those things also, but that you’re saying it maybe on LinkedIn, and people are reciprocating, “Oh yeah, that makes sense.

That’s what you guys do.” As an overhaul for the website, I mean, there are changes to the website. I’d always say that’s one of the first things that people should do if you’re going the route of kind of GEO or many acronyms New acronyms in our marketing world. But if you’re getting away from kind of your LSA and your ads, and you wanna focus more on the AI side, you probably already have a ton of content on your website, so before you go and do a whole bunch of new things, that’s a great, great place to start.

But the stories are, at this point, critical. I mean, we’ve… Our trademark is content that converts. We’ve always been a storytelling house, and, like, that’s one of the things that we’ve always stressed with our clients. And, but again, it used to be, like, a nice to have, and now as we’re seeing that transition, it’s almost going to become a must-have.

Holly Draper: So does the AI see social media? Because I’ve heard kind of conflicting things about, you know, I, I have a lot of content out there on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok, and it doesn’t seem like if I’m running a search on something on Claude or ChatGPT that it is getting into those types of places

Amanda Sexton: Yeah, so we’re actually, we’re seeing Instagram captions get kind of pulled in, which is interesting.

And we don’t really know sometimes what happens behind the scenes. You know, you see it says thinking or fathoming, and it’s working in the background, and so what, what’s actually included in that. But it definitely is looking at those pieces. We’ve seen more on the personal LinkedIn side and LinkedIn newsletters as well, because those are tied to personal.

And part of it is that, you know, AI has done its mass search online. It’s, they’ve taught all of their LLMs already, and so now they’re looking for the new pieces, the thought leadership, and w- that where does that exist? So that’s where they’re looking for that, and a lot of that is on social. Like I said, YouTube, podcast transcripts, it’ll scour those, too.

And it might not tell you, “Hey, this is where this information came from,” but it will say, “Oh, this person is an expert on this because they talk about it all the time.”

Holly Draper:: So let’s talk a little bit about LinkedIn. I have a LinkedIn page that I’ve had for 20 years, but I hardly ever go on LinkedIn, and I know that I’m not alone ’cause I’ve talked about this with some other family law business owners.

Is LinkedIn somewhere that we need to be investing some time?

Amanda Sexton: I even, even pre-AI kind of banged the drum a little bit. If you’re out there and you’re trying to bring in business, LinkedIn is where you should be. If you think about, you know, how many networking events we all attend, and we’re trying to stay in front of people and stay top of mind, and how much time that takes and what your time is worth, you know, over an hour.

If you write a post and you reach 600 people for that and that took you 15 minutes, how much is that worth to you for how many events you would have to go to to be in front of those 600 people? So a lot of it is just staying top of mind and w- both on the referral source side, I think more so than you’re necessarily going to get direct clients.

But we’re now that seeing that translate into it helping with some of those, that search engine piece, too. So it’s more twofold. So I think… I mean, and I’m always just surprised that LinkedIn is still free, a personal LinkedIn account, for how much reach you get and what you have to pay on Google and everywhere else.

It’s incredible what you get, and I say that as the cobbler’s child. I mean, I struggle to keep up with it. I could tell all of our clients, “You should be doing this,” and I can commit to one day a week. So I have it on my calendar. I have one day a week for 15 minutes. That’s all, that’s all I have in me to fit in.

Holly Draper: Well, I think it’s interesting that AI can see what you’re doing on LinkedIn, because if I wanna go search somebody up on LinkedIn, and I, I have to friend them for, or connect with them, and if we aren’t connected within a certain number of people, then it’s hard to do. But it sounds like AI can see what is going on there even without that internal connection.

Amanda Sexton: Yes, and I, I think it kind of goes back to what’s best for LinkedIn. On the, you know, side of being able to see someone’s profile, that’s LinkedIn’s way of providing incentive for if you wanna see this, you now have to sign up. We have one more user. But on the indexing side, that’s beneficial to them because, one, they’re now getting their audience more exposure, and two, if people know that that’s something that they should be doing, they’re going to be more likely to come to LinkedIn and use it more frequently, too.

Holly Draper:Is it the same across other platforms like Facebook, where, you know, I share a lot of things on Facebook, but that’s on my personal page, and yes, I have a couple thousand followers, but it’s not public. So can

Amanda Sexton: AI

Holly Draper: see that?

Amanda Sexton: I haven’t seen any instance where that’s being pulled in yet. Um, the profiles or, you know, my one wish list would, item would probably be that it would include the Facebook groups because then I could just ask that script for all my rec- local recommendations, and I can ask Bob for that instead.

But I haven’t s- we haven’t seen any instance of that yet, and I think that is due to some of the privacy concerns. I think when you’re posting on LinkedIn, there’s an element of it’s for business, and yes, maybe people who don’t have an account can’t see it, but it’s intended to be public for the most part, whereas, you know, Facebook private accounts are it’s a different situation.

Holly Draper: So if we are big on something besides LinkedIn, say Facebook, for example, and we want to be seen by AI, you know, the search engines, do we need to have public content, or does it need to be on a business page, or is it a waste of our time?

Amanda Sexton: So public page or business page for sure, but again, we haven’t seen a lot of input that or any research that shows that it’s really being pulled in.

So I don’t think it’s worth a whole separate strategy. I think if you’re already posting to LinkedIn or posting to somewhere else, you can probably repurpose some of that content knowing it’s a slightly different audience on Facebook. But I wouldn’t, don’t think it’s worth the spend or the time investment to create a whole new strategy for that.

Announcer: This episode of the Texas Family Law Insiders Podcast is sponsored by the Draper Law Firm, providing family law appellate representation for non-parent custody cases, jurisdiction issues, property division, standing, conservatorship, possession and access, termination, parental rights, and grandparent access.

For more information, visit draperfirm.com or call four six nine seven one five six eight zero one.

Holly Draper: So if someone is just starting their law firm or they’re, you know, a solo or small firm, haven’t really invested anything in marketing and they want to start showing up across these AI platforms without a very big budget, what are some practical tips for those people?

Amanda Sexton: I mean, honestly, I’ve heard of someone, and I haven’t even really explored this yet, but they just asked AI what they should do, and they said, “Give me a 12-week plan,” and then they followed the plan, and then they showed up. So at the end of the day, I guess the platform will know best. But the biggest thing, I mean, is again, just to, one, secure all your directory listings, so Martindale, Avvo, all of the major directory platforms.

That’s one of the biggest things, and making sure that everything is consistent because, again, it’s not looking at what’s on your site. It’s making sure that there’s consistency across those pages, so your address is exactly the same, the business name is exactly the same, whatever email address you’re using, and that helps reconcile in AI’s mind legitimacy and trust.

So that’s one of the biggest things. Go and grab all of your profiles to make sure you have the website and to make sure that the way that you’re talking about your firm anywhere online is exactly the same.

Holly Draper: How often should we be going to those various sites and updating?

Amanda Sexton: I mean, we want it to be up to date and we want it to be consistent, so, you know, it’s not a set it and forget it.

I would say most firms, but, you know, between the individual attorney profiles and bios and also the firm’s, you know, kind of mission and over- overall about us and what they stand for, that’s not going to change so much over a year. It’s a good idea year over year to go and check that and make sure it’s updated.

That said, if there’s any awards that someone wins, it’s worth going back and adding those in and on the bio page on the firm’s website also, just because, again, it’s interesting. Awards used to be kind of pay to play. They kind of used to be a, “I don’t know, do we really need to do this?” kind of thing, and now it’s becoming something that’s worth evaluating just given, again, the importance of recency and what other people are saying online and how it indexes that, which is a big difference, I think, even just from a couple of years ago.

Holly Draper: That’s an interesting point about the pay to play and awards. So certain awards, like we’ve got Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers are two examples that are pretty well known, where you don’t pay to get on the list. Now, how you get on the list might be up for debate, but if you get on the list for something like that, is it going to help your AI credibility to then pay for premium profiles?

Or I know both of them now, if you want a good badge, you gotta pay for it just so you can stick it on your website, and I’ve always kind of been like, “I’m not paying for your stupid badge. I’m just gonna write that I got the award.” What do you think about that?

Amanda Sexton: Again, haven’t seen any evidence that it’s worth paying for the badge, only for your own personal marketing.

But when you ask AI, it says, “Here’s who’s named to the list.” They’re just looking for who’s named, not whether or not you purchased the, the premium profile.

Holly Draper: One of the things that used to be really big when it came to kind of marketing 101 for lawyers was blogging, and I feel like it’s gone, gone away.

It’s not as big of a thing as it used to be. And maybe people switched to video instead of written blogs. Are blogs still important? Is it gonna catch video if we have video out there? What would you recommend there?

Amanda Sexton: So new content is always going to be important on the site. I think the, again, the way that people are searching it is a little bit different these days.

So if you’re answering just some of the, the basic questions, always good to have that, but it might not get the same traffic. That doesn’t mean that it’s not important or relevant. And the one thing we always suggest, if you’re a law firm that’s open to doing video, start there and use that for everything else.

If you have video, you can turn that into a LinkedIn newsletter, into blo- blog content, into social posts. You can use that, an email newsletter. You can use that for everything across all of your marketing. It just starts from that one video, and that can go on, if you’ll have a YouTube channel, you can take a 30-minute video and break it into individual questions that people might be asking also, and that’s a good way too to get more content and to have that specificity that can talk to, “Oh, here’s the type of clients that I could work with or how I could help them.”

Holly Draper: Do you recommend using the same content across the different platforms, or do we need to be focusing on, okay, for YouTube, this is the type of content I should be putting out. For Instagram, it should be this. For Facebook, it should be that.

Amanda Sexton: I mean, in an ideal world, if we all had a $5 million budget or infinite budget, every strategy would be different and custom and magical, and we’d ex- you know, it’d be incredible, but we, most firms just don’t.

And so for the sake of that, I do think that it’s worth repurposing the content, and that’s a big difference, too. Kind of with SEO, it wanted unique content and all different pieces, and with AI, again, it’s more about that consistency. So you can use that content and be making the same points over and over again.

That’s actually going to help you

Holly Draper: So a lot of law firms, espec- you know, if we’re just looking at family law firms that are roughly the same size, roughly the same price point, a lot of what they put out is going to be very, very similar. So what can we do to differentiate ourselves so that maybe we’re gonna be at the top of that list for AI?

Amanda Sexton: So I think the thing you can do is get a little bit more specific and a little bit more under the hood. I think a lot of the firms kind of say, “Oh, we’re responsive,” or, “We return calls quickly,” or, “We don’t charge for a consult.” But to talk about what that looks like. Okay, when you answer the phone, we’re, we have an attorney that’s ready to speak with you in 30 minutes, or maybe some firms have a therapist on staff, or maybe there’s a different way that they handle some of their pricing, or maybe they have payment plans, or, you know, there’s a whole bunch of different ways that family law firms are differentiating themselves today.

And if you even just sit down and look at your approach, hey, this is how we approach things. This is our philosophy on how we talk to clients or how we deal with clients, and maybe it’s less about responsiveness but more about we recognize this is really difficult, and we’re gonna connect you with a financial planner if you need one.

We’re not going to just let you kind of figure it out on, all on yourself. We recognize that there’s a lot more components to this process, and we’re gonna help you with each of them and connect you with the right person. And so just those little nuances, and there are things that the firm’s probably also doing, and I, uh, I find every time we talk to a new client, when you talk to them, they’re like, “I don’t know.

We, we just, you know, family law.” And it’s sometimes hard to differentiate what that is, and then it’s like, okay, well, walk me through your intake process, and then you can say, “Oh, that’s really different from another firm because X or Y.” So really having those pieces laid out and understanding them and written down can go a long way

Holly Draper: So I know one of the really important things, especially if you’re going to be spending money on marketing, is having KPIs, having metrics that you can tell if your investment is paying off.

How– What are some metrics that we can look at, specifically if we’re trying to focus on improving our AI visibility, are there any metrics for doing that?

Amanda Sexton: AI’s so tricky. Not quite, and that’s the hard part, is that a lot of the attribution doesn’t come through AI. So someone will be asking the question, and they’ll be recommended your firm, but then they’re going somewhere else to vet you.

So they are going to Google to search for you. They are going on LinkedIn. Maybe they’re asking a friend. So it’s really hard to tell what traffic is coming through from AI. And even when those click-throughs come from AI, there’s also not a lot of transparency on kind of the Google, you know, Search Console backend or analytics.

So we really don’t have some of that short of on a phone call saying, “Hey, where did you find us?” So that’s one of the challenges of AI, but I will say we are hearing reports that AI, at least when people do reach out, because they’ve done some of their research on AI, the conversions are much higher than they are from Google.

Holly Draper: So I have to imagine that the Anthropics and the Open AIs of the world want to get into the monetizing business advertising game. And I have heard somewhere about being able to pay for ChatGPT ads. Where are we now on something like that, and where do you see it going?

Amanda Sexton: Yes. So those did just come out a c- couple of months ago, so we have some clients that are running them c- to kind of test and see if it, you know, it’s always good to see if it’ll be another market.

I think some of the good part about the way that it displays some of those ads is it’s just a single attorney where i- for example, if you have LSA, there’s a whole bunch that are there. So the downside to that is it is still an ad, and so it diminishes some of the trust and credibility that comes with just a here’s a recommendation of three.

So we really don’t know what that’s going to play out to be. I would imagine it’s gonna be very similar to LSA ads, where they were inexpensive to start because they’re trying to get people to adopt them, and over time, the more people that sign on, there’s more competition, and they’re just going to get more expensive.

So it could be a good play now to trial it while they’re still on the cheaper end to see if it’ll work. But I think that’ll be definitely dependent on both practice type and market.

Holly Draper: Are you seeing it anywhere yet other than ChatGPT?

Amanda Sexton: Not yet, and I think part of it is that, you know, people, th- there’s different philosophies for each of the models about, “Hey, this is what we want our model to be.”

Again, that could change. ChatGPT, you, you know, OpenAI used to be a not-for-profit, and now that has changed, so we really don’t know what’s gonna happen over the next six months with that.

Holly Draper: So as a business owner, law firm owner, what are the top things we should be looking at to see if our marketing is paying off?

Amanda Sexton: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think typically people aren’t quite tracking some of the ways that their leads are turning into cases and those case values. So I think, you know, looking at the number of closed cases per which, which of the channels where they’re coming in. And it really depends, again, on the capacity for the team, what, what we have available to you.

Depending on whether you have a closed AI system or not, the beauty of that is you can now feed it a lot of data and say, “Help me reconcile what my most valuable cases are.” So we would, for example, we’ve, we recently had a client that we came in and, you know, he had a gut feeling. He’s like, “This area’s not really geographically great for me, and I also don’t like this practice area.”

And we had to point out that actually all of the best, most profitable leads were coming from that practice area and that region, and that the ones that he thought were great, the realization rate on those was incredibly low. So kind of, you know, okay, how do we adjust our marketing for that? Because at the end of the day, we kind of have a gut feeling, but is that actually what it is?

And I think one of the other things that firms kind of miss along the way is great, we had all of these leads, but what’s our kind of consult to closing the deal? What’s that ratio? And also, how long… What’s our time for answering and getting back to leads? Those are two important things. You can get all the leads in the world, but if you maybe just spent a little bit more time in those two sections and increase those, you could als- We’ve seen firms almost double their revenue from that.

And that’s just from answering the phone faster, getting back to people, figuring out what was making people not sign, because you’ve already paid all this money to get them in the door and to reach out to you. So how do you… What are those little things that you can do? Why are they falling off in that gap?

Holly Draper: A lot of our listeners are not law firm owners. They’re young associates who want to build a career. Maybe someday they would like to open their own law firm. Maybe they just wanna be a partner in the firm that they’re at, and to do that, they’re gonna need to build their brand, build their rainmaking skills.

What tips do you have for the lawyers in that situation?

Amanda Sexton: I would say just to get out there, just to get your name out there as best as possible. If there’s guest publications, I know, for example, like law.com will let you co-write an article with someone or just have an article. If there’s places where you can submit content that will be pulled in, that’s a great way to do that.

I mean, r- you know, remaking in the other capacity is, of course, like networking and building your reputation, having a LinkedIn profile. That’s one of the biggest things that you could start doing, is just start adding everyone that you know and just posting once a week. That alone will go a long way ’cause a- again, as an associate where you’re starting to build your network, that’s still fairly new for you, and, you know, you’re meeting one person here or there.

But if you follow them online, the more you’re interacting with them… It’s very interesting. It’s called the parasocial phenomenon. It makes you feel like you know someone. It makes someone feel like they know you, so that way later, whether you’re looking, you know, maybe for referrals for someone, maybe you’re looking for your next move, that person is gonna feel like they know you, even though maybe you only talked twice over the last five years, but they’ve been seeing your posts.

Maybe you’ve been liking their posts and interacting, and they’re like, “Oh, great. John needs a job. We should definitely talk to him. I know he specializes in this. We would love to have him on the team.”

Holly Draper: So obviously, you own a marketing company. So give us your pitch about what types of people you would like to help and how they can reach you.

Amanda Sexton: Yeah. So the people we love to work with are honestly the people that want to grow, so they’re really active in growing and they’re really clear about what their firm does and how they’re great. Like I said, all of our clients are fantastic at what they do, and that’s who we love working with. We only take one firm per practice area per market, and that’s really because we don’t wanna make anyone compete against each other, and that helps us know that we’re working with the top kind of firm in that practice area in that market, too.

And that brings us, I mean, brings me and our team a lot of joy to kind of see them grow over the years. We’ve had a lot of firms that have scaled that we’ve been working with for a while. So if anyone wants to reach me, you can follow on LinkedIn, Amanda Sexton.

Holly Draper: I’m putting it on my… It actually already is on my list to get on LinkedIn more and to start actively doing it.

So I will, when I do that, go follow you on LinkedIn and connect. But we’re just about out of time, but if you had to leave family lawyers with one piece of advice about marketing in this AI surge era, what would it be?

Amanda Sexton: I would say to be open to new channels and to maybe hop on ChatGPT under a new account, ’cause it already knows about you probably, or Claude, and ask it what it thinks about you or your firm, and then just see how you can improve that over time.

Holly Draper: I love the idea of asking AI to help you use AI.

Amanda Sexton: I feel like that’s half of what I do. I’m like, I, I, “Here’s what I wanna do. How do I do this? Please help me.”

Holly Draper: Yes, yes. Love it. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. For our listeners, please subscribe and leave us a review so you can enjoy future episodes.

Announcer: The Texas Family Law Insiders Podcast is sponsored by the Draper Law Firm. We help people navigate divorce and child custody cases and handle family law and appellate matters.

For more information, visit our website at www.draperfirm.com.