Here we discuss the details Personal Injury vs Car Accident Lead Generation, converting Spanish speaking auto accident leads and good follow up procedure for legal leads.
PPLM Rep: Tell me a little bit about your practice; are you all personal injury law, do your workers compensation, what’s your geographic reach, etc?
PPLM Rep: Have you, or are you currently doing car accident lead generation as a way of marketing your practice?
Lawyer: No, I’ve done all sorts of personal injury marketing, but I’ve never done lead generation for car accidents before. I’ve been practicing for forty-five years. I’ve done every form of marketing you can think of including the mass TV advertising years ago, but car accident lead generation is new.
PPLM Rep: Okay. I don’t know if it’s gonna be a fit for us right now because I’m gonna be honest with you, if you’ve never done lead generation in the past; I would want to start you off on an car accident lead generation campaign rather than testing us out with general personal injury leads…and at the moment, all of our auto accident volume and pretty much all of Southern California’s spoken for… and you don’t do anything up in Northern California, huh?
Lawyer: What’s your definition of Northern?
PPLM Rep: North of probably Santa Barbara…that area.
Lawyer: I could handle cases up there. I don’t get cases right now there but I could. But obviously, Southern California would be a lot easier to deal with as far as getting them signed up and everything. You start getting out there then you got to figure out how you’re going to get them signed up.
PPLM Rep: Yeah, I mean a lot of our firms do DocuSign and then get people over the phone but I do understand.
Lawyer: I find that a very weak way to get clients signed up. We have other ways we do it, but you start relying on clients to do that; first of all, a lot of clients don’t even know what the hell all that means and don’t have the computer skills to do some of that stuff so I find that not reliable.
PPLM Rep: No, I understand. So, when we’re talking Southern California you’re talking a little north of where you’re located, and all the way down to the border?
Lawyer: Yeah. We handle cases clear up past Palm Springs, San Bernardino, Riverside, Antelope Valley, Victorville, I’m talking about up North up to Santa Barbara.
PPLM Rep: So, if you’d be willing to do that, I can probably get you in a rotational, and so auto accident stuff. So, do you want me to kind of go through how we generate the leads and cost and things like that?
Lawyer: Sure, go ahead.
PPLM Rep: Okay. All right. So, the way it works is this, it’s a little different from most other marketing that you’ve probably done in that we only charge when we send you a qualified lead. Now, keep in mind a lead is a lead, right. It’s not a case. Most leads are not going to turn into cases, but we at least are willing to use our own advertising dollars and take the risk of converting a client and doing some sort of basic screening; all via computer. We don’t ever have anybody talk to these people.
But what you get coming from a service like ours is a little less of the crap in general. Not to say you’re not going to get some crap, you certainly will. It’s still marketing for car accidents and it sounds like you’ve done your fair share of it. But what we do is at least weed out kind of the people who are outside of statute, the people who weren’t injured at all, the people who were founded false; things like that.
Lawyer: I did read your stuff here. Do you also ask them whether or not they know if the other party is insured and they are insured?
PPLM Rep: Negative.
Lawyer: Okay. Now, tell me why you don’t do that? I’m curious.
PPLM Rep: A lot of times they might not know if the other party’s insured, sometimes it’s a hit and run. It’s still a billable lead because the questions that we ask are; were you injured in a car, truck or motorcycle accident; do you have an attorney for this incident; were you found at fault and what was the accident date.
Keep in mind from our perspective, we’re in the business of generating volume. I’m in a volume business I only make a couple bucks per lead, so the more questions that we ask, the less volume we do. So, generally speaking we try to keep it to the basic screening questions and then we’ll let our law firms kind of follow up and take it from there. So, as I mentioned so criteria would be were you injured in a car, truck or motorcycle accident, would have to be yes. Do you already have an attorney helping you with this issue, would have to know. Were you found at fault for the accident, would have to be no and we ask the accident date which would have to fall in line with California statute of limitations for car accidents.
And then obviously, we ask them for name, email, phone number, city, state, zip. We use zip code to match up the person when they’re qualified with the law firm in that area. If and when they answer the questions correctly and have a zip that matches just your geographic area, we would send that lead over to you via text message and email. You would then follow up, give them the free consultation they’re looking for, and if you want to take the case and they want to hire you, great. We don’t take a percentage fee or anything like that.
But again, probably 80 to 90% of them are not going to become cases – for any number of reasons. You can have people who choose not to call you back if you leave them a voicemail, you’re gonna have people who are injured and whatever the injury isn’t worthwhile for you to want to take the case. You’re gonna have people who on paper look like they have a great case but they decide not to hire you for whatever reason… people who hear your fee and them decide to talk to insurance themselves so they flake on the appointment, et cetera. But generally speaking, if you average it out, if you’re converting – 15%, our cost per lead is $250. So, if you’re doing one out of let’s call it six yeah your cost per client – is going to be about 1,500 bucks.
Lawyer: Do you have any idea assuming we do this, how many leads I would get in a space of let’s say a month, is that possible?
PPLM Rep: Yeah I can give you, I mean it’s gonna fluctuate but I do have another client in Southern California so let me give you an idea what they did last month. So, last month, my other SoCal – we’ve got somebody– it fluctuates here a little bit. So, last month it was 40, the month prior to that it was 76. So, I would say probably if you were selling the leads in the same geographic area you probably be looking at 25 to 40 a month give or take.
Lawyer: No, I’m just curious, I’m just curious. I don’t know if we’re talking–
PPLM Rep: Maybe on a lower end because it seems like volume trended down a little bit from April to May with these….
Lawyer: For some reason summers always slow up. I don’t know what the deal is with that.
PPLM Rep: Yeah, people are traveling, not working as much, stuff like that. I’ve noticed that myself.
PPLM Rep: Tell me… are you the guy making the phone calls, do you have an intake team; do you have a call center…deal with that?
Lawyer: No, I would say I think it’s always important if I’m available and I’m not in court or something. It’s always important to have the attorney make the call.
PPLM Rep: I would agree.
Lawyer: They want to talk to the attorney so most of the time I’d be making the call. As I said unless I’m stuck in court or something or in deposition or whatever. But I would try to make most of the calls and I think it’s important to do that. They want to talk to the attorney and I want to talk to them and find out what’s going on too. It’s better than–
PPLM Rep: Right. Nobody’s gonna vet the case as well as the attorney.
Lawyer: Exactly. So, I generally speaking always talk to the clients first and then we decide if everything looks green we go ahead and get them signed up and I’ve got a very good system of signing people up. We try to go to their home or their wherever they want to personally and get them signed up. Then as soon as it’s in the course in the Southern California area. If it was out of that then we’d have to figure out if we’re getting some localized area that we might have to get another sign up person up there or other sign up persons up there depending on what we’re talking about.
PPLM Rep: Yes. So, like how many calls; so let’s just say in the instance you are in court or you’re in a deposition and you can’t make a call for six hours; do you have somebody who can call?
Lawyer: I’ve got eight very experienced paralegals that work for me in the office.
PPLM Rep: Very good, very good.
Lawyer: Another question, how many of your leads are Hispanic only speaking, just out of curiosity?
PPLM Rep: Not many. Maybe 5%.
Lawyer: Because all my staff speak Spanish. I Lawyer’t.
PPLM Rep: Yeah, most most people in Southern California I think at this stage of the game probably do. Yeah, we Lawyer’t get it often. We don’t advertise in Spanish. Everything we do is searched based our space and all the keywords we bid on are in English…by default – we’re getting somebody who’s 13 year old kid is filling out the form for them kind of a thing. Usually we Lawyer’t get people who are at a bare minimum somewhat bilingual.
Lawyer: Yeah, about half our clients are Hispanic.
PPLM Rep: Oh, is that right?
Lawyer: Oh, yeah. Well, that’s the community we’re all in and so we get a lot of Hispanics. But again, if I can’t speak to them in English then my staff will speak to them in Spanish so that’s no problem.
PPLM Rep: Sounds like you guys are pretty dialed in on that. Do you have like a reasonable because the reason I keep asking you is like one underlying thing that you have to keep in mind is the people who fill out the forms that we advertise, they have no—think about it this way… most people if they’re going to get in a car accident, they’re going to either ask a friend or maybe they’re going to call the bar association or they’re gonna Google around and read some reviews and look at an attorney’s website, maybe their bio, see where they’re located, things like that.
The people who fill out our forms do none of that. They’re just clicking on the first Google search result that pops up as they’re typing a question into Google or type in a phrase into Google that has something to do with auto accident law. So, they’re not taking the time to ask a friend, they’re not taking time to read a review, they’re not taking the time to even look at who the attorney is, where they went to school, where their office is located and say okay, this is my guy.
All they know is I had a question about a car accident, so I typed something into Google. This website says that I can get a free consultation with an attorney, so I filled out the form. And so there’s two things that you have to keep in mind when following up with these guys. Number one is that they have no idea who you are until you make the call. So, it’s not like a referral or even like somebody who looks at your website and at least knows where you are and who you are and whatnot. Number two, they filled out my form not knowing any of that so the chances that they filled out another one or another two or another three forms is a little bit higher. So, number one, calling early and calling often on these things and number two kind of explaining who you all are, doing a little sort of sales.
Lawyer: No, you’ve got to close them but it’s not sales, it’s called closing.
PPLM Rep: Exactly, exactly. So, just wanted to sort of make sure– I always sort of give that disclaimer to anybody who’s never bought legal leads and I don’t think you’ve done a ton of marketing and you get it, you’re pretty dialed in.
Lawyer: It’s pretty simple, you get the lead, you’ve got to call them right now because the opportunity for them to go find somebody else is always there and you got to close them. You got to speak to them courteously, with knowledge you got to convince them that you’re going to be the best choice for them. That’s an all day long event for us.
PPLM Rep: I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Lawyer: That’s all day long, our event. We get in about – on average about 10 to 12 new clients a day so we we stay busy. But someone mentions your name to me the other day; not your name but the company’s name obviously. And…I’d call in and inquire.
PPLM Rep: Oh, good. Always nice to hear people say good things about us.
Lawyer: Okay. Well, that’s good, very good. So, I’m interested. So, what do you think about you telling me that you’re gonna look around for, you’re going to get back to me or what are we doing?
PPLM Rep: No, we can– it sounds like you’re pretty dialed in on it and I think I’d be okay running the test in Southern California with you. I’d probably start pretty small, thinking maybe like 20 leads to start out with and we’ll deliver that. It’ll probably take us less than a month but let’s call it a month just to be on the safe side. You work leads as they come in once we get down to the last let’s call it five reads or that first 20, I’ll touch base with you. It sounds like you probably keep pretty good records of what’s coming in and what’s turned into cases and whatnot. So, about point you should know how many of those 20 or 15 at that point in time that you’re looking to turning into cases or you have turned into cases and whether or not those cases are good and decide if you want to continue on from there or not.
Lawyer: All right. No, I can tell you we keep track of just every client that comes in, where the hell that client came from for multiple reasons. And so that’s that’s a normal event also. Do you besides the fact you send me a text or an email which is fine, do you at the end of the month also provide a summary of those clients?
PPLM Rep: Generally we don’t, but if you want we certainly can. We have some clients who we work with very closely, they’ll share the status of every lead we’ve sent, which turned into cases, which were returned, which were turned down, etc.
Lawyer: I was just curious.
PPLM Rep: We can provide a lead report. We can give you access to our dashboard if you want where you can kind of login anytime you want and see leads we’ve delivered, leads returned, I didn’t mention that. We do have am a pretty flexible return policy. So– what’s that?
Lawyer: I saw that. I read your webpage.
PPLM Rep: Okay.Oh yes, and with the email so you’re going to get, you can see which leads were returned, anything that’s been approved for credit, things like that and yes, you want to download a thing of all the leads we provided we can do that. Alternatively, you can call me or email me anytime if you ever need anything and I can handle anything that you want too.
Lawyer: No, I just I always like to double-check things. If you give me a bunch of emails and stuff obviously, we’re gonna print those out or text either way and then call the people and we’re gonna keep our own list naturally as I do on everything.
PPLM Rep: Yeah, but if you ever if you want, I mean there’s there’s a number of options right. You can always shoot me an email once a month, quarterly, whatever… and just say hey can you give me a leads report for the last 30 days, the last week, the last quarter. Alternatively, I can just get you a login to our system where you can just log in or have one of your paralegals log in and just see how many leads we’ve delivered over the past seven, thirty, sixty days, how many of those were returned etc.
Lawyer: Okay. I’m just curious. I like to keep a good list. I think it’s important for everything. All right.
PPLM Rep: I agree as I’m sitting here staring at four of them.
Lawyer: Interesting. So, what’s the procedure to go forward if we decide to do that?
PPLM Rep: So, if you wanted to go forward I would set up an account for you in our system in the car accident lead generation vertical, I’ll send you over an invoice, I’ll send you over a credit card authorization form for the initial 20. You fund the initial 20, you tell me once that’s taken care of, you tell me what email addresses and if you want text messaging, what phone numbers you want the lead sent to. Usually, we get that turned around within 24 hours then we go live. We owe you 20 leads that’s will be generated probably over the course of three or four weeks. You’re going to follow up as you get them. You’re gonna returned leads as if you call them and the number’s disconnected or something like that. So, will sort of be in contact throughout with that and then once it gets down to usually the last five from the leads of that initial 20, I’ll touch base and just say hey, it looks like we’re almost through our first batch what are your thoughts on renewing. And at that point if you want a list of any leads or a list of returns or whatever the case may be; I can provide that to you. You can then evaluate on your end and decide if you want to continue on it it not.
Lawyer: I will get back to you. I’m going to think about it, talk to my staff, think about overnight but I’m encouraged… I like the idea.
PPLM Rep: Okay. Yeah no, I mean it sounds like you’re good at follow-up. So yeah, usually if you know how to talk to people and you got a good system for sorta calling early, calling often, send – some text messages – conjunction; you should do pretty well. We’ve been doing car accident lead generation for a long time, so we know what we’re doing too.
Lawyer: And we do a good job for people, we’re very diligent – I’m touting my own horn, you don’t know me but I’ve been doing this a long time. I have a very good staff and we do a good quality job for people which is nice. And we like to take care of our client.
PPLM Rep: No, I mean I can usually tell talking to somebody whether or not they’re good…kind of similar to you. I’m the owner of the company, I have had multiple sales people at various points and at the end of the day like I tried to do what you do, me or my partner try to do sort of all of these initial calls because vetting people is incredibly important in my business because leads can be very– they can be great if they’re oversold let’s call it, they can just lead to problem down the road because then the client– oh well yeah, this didn’t turn into cases and…it’s still marketing, it’s just– So, yeah me sort of vetting everybody and giving…applicable disclaimers; it sounds similar and you sound like somebody who would do well with this. So, I’d be interested in trying and I think you’d do well.
Lawyer: All right. I’ll get back you. I appreciate your time sir. Thank you.