Predictable Estate Planner - Heath Rost

Empowering Lawyers To Independently Scale

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The difference between a short term and long term marketing strategy as an estate planning attorney wanting to grow their practice in 2025

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So one thing most estate planning law firm owners don’t understand about their marketing strategy that I wish they did…

“The difference between a short term and long term marketing strategy as an estate planning attorney wanting to grow their practice in 2025”

A large portion of law firms that approach me every day wanting help with their marketing and lead generation for their law firm are in “leads-now” mode. They’re focused on the short term actions they can take that will show them the result they most desire.

These aren’t the ideal clients we like to work with. But I believe it’s mostly because they’re not educated on the behavior of their ideal, qualified, prospect.

 

Short Term Lead Generation Works For Short Bursts Of Qualified And Unqualified Leads

The reason you’re not getting any leads–qualified or not–right now is because your messaging sucks. There I said it. Even if you paid $10,000+ for a website and professional copywriting, 99.9% of marketing agencies don’t understand what actually converts prospects looking for help from an attorney for estate planning.

It’s more than copywriting though, its branding and credibility.

An advertisement and a website will convert prospect into leads, but if you’re stopping there and not implementing any sort of long-term nurturing strategy, not implementing any sort of pre-selling strategy, you’re not going to see

– consistency of leads flowing in
– increase in quality of leads booking appointments
– an increase in the quantity of leads reaching out every monthly

 

Long Term Lead Generation Pre-Sells Your Prospect And Comes From A Confident, Poised Place

The Predictable Estate Planner Marketing (EPLP) System(tm) uses a simple 3-step method to attract and convert website traffic into pre-sold, nurtured, qualified leads.

1) The Conversion Website portrays your business in such a way that your brand is optimally represented. Effective in converting qualified prospects quickly if they’re already educated and want to speak with an attorney right away. This is the beginning of an effective short-term marketing strategy.

2) An online conversion mechanism or “OCM” builds upon the nurturing followup after a prospect becomes a lead. This really is the first step in re-engaging the prospect. Your website is the beginning of your OCM.

3) Pre-selling your prospects through your personality, and educational and purposeful content on your website. This is where the real work with me and my team begins after we get your lead-generation website and OCM automations set up. The first 2 steps get people into your funnel, this third step is ever-changing and evolves with your business.

Things our clients will tell you this solves for their business:

-They can leave for vacation for 2 weeks, cut off all contact with the business, and not worry about things falling apart while they’re gone.

-Prospects have better questions when they eventually sit down with you.

-Prospects have a clearer picture of how you can help them before they even sit down.

-this list goes on but you get the point

 

The One Thing I Wish All Estate Planning Law Firm Owners Knew About Their Marketing Strategy

The behavior of your ideal, qualified, prospect matters. I’ve been empowering estate planning firm owners for the past decade. The truth is in the analytics, the numbers, and the bottom line.

Your practice area of estate planning is Grounded in your Long Term Pre-Selling Marketing Strategy.

If you ever desire to have a never ending stream of qualified leads banging down your door, if you want to be the go-to estate planning attorney in your city, state and region, if you’re tired of wasting time meeting with unqualified leads, if your work-life balance is so out of whack that you’re pulling your hair out,

There is an easier way. I can help.

What Is Lead Generation?

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Increasing your volume of leads is a byproduct of what occurs after a new attorney begins working with a company for lead generation.  For the purpose of this blog I will cover what lead generation is, and how to set yourself up for success when working with one.  Taken from our homepage:

Simply put, lead generation is the product of attracting, converting and delivering live calls and appointments with people seeking your services where you live. Online advertising through search engines and social media, and setting up the proper retargeting channels are all parts of this process.

But what does a lead generation company do?

Successful lead generation for an estate planner not only includes online advertising, but also encompasses advance nurturing directives including procured landing webpages, calendar integration, lead delivery, tasteful lead followup, and other technical intelligence to make your law firm known and easily approachable.

That is how Estate Planning Lead Pros defines lead generation for attorneys.  If this is your first time working with a lead generation company, or you are just doing research before you do, there are a few things you should understand right now.  The long term goal with any lead generation company your law firm works with is to form a bond, a win win relationship that extends far beyond the terms of your initial agreement. Unless you get off on the right foot with your lead generation company you’ll never build that long term relationship and thus, you won’t have time to adjust to your “new normal.”

How to work with a lead generation company

You should have a general idea for how to work with your lead generation company, which is the subject of this blog.  I promise if you adhere to the next three structured bullet points it will save you a lot of time, money and headache. 🙂

1) Don’t jump to conclusions about lead quality

If you’re working with a new lead generation company, I encourage you to be patient with the leads and with yourself, especially regarding lead quality.  The market will fluctuate and change every day the types of people who are seeking your services and your lead generation company doesn’t have control over that.

2) Adjust your sales process to your leads

Your lead generation company that set up your landing page and your ads will determine the entire flow of this process.  It is your responsibility as the attorney to recognize this process, and adjust to the way your lead generation company is able to produce leads for you.

Do not expect your leads to:

  • Have their wallets open with thumbs on their credit cards the instant you connect
  • Know what you want them to do
  • Sell themselves
  • Answer the phone for you
  • Call at a time most convenient for you — yes you might be on the toilet ?, answer the call anyway!

❗️Website-Only Offer ❗️

For any estate planning attorney that books a call right now, I will provide a personalized hour long training session to you and your team covering how to book more appointments and close more sales. Free of charge when you book!

Your lead generation company should share how the leads will get to you, and help you understand the process your leads went through in order to find you.  That should put you in the right headspace when you do your initial followup with the lead, and whenever you answer a live phone call.

Lastly, have a plan devised and outlined ahead of time for how you will move new prospects (leads) from your starting position–the moment they become a lead–until their new estate plan is signed, sealed and delivered.  If you aren’t accustomed to the volume of leads you start receiving, be patient with yourself.  You aren’t going to close every prospect–every interaction you get when you first get started.  Practice makes perfect, and the more experience you get with prospects the more fluid you will become with your conversations, and ultimately the more estate plans you will get paid to write.

3) Don’t request significant changes to your campaign

Especially if you’re interested in working with a boutique or specialized lead generation company.

This is a big one, perhaps the biggest one!

From experience I can tell you that changing a single design feature or a single line of copywriting can produce drastically different results in a campaign. If you want a true assessment of any lead generation company do not make too many asks outside of what the company has already set up. They know what works best. Further, it’s also why you’ve hired them.  Be kind to your business by reaping the rewards of working with your lead generation company in the manner they produce the best results for their clients.  The better you can be to them the better results you earn from your campaign.

At Estate Planning Lead Pros we are a boutique lead generation company for estate planning attorneys. For 10 years we’ve studied the psychology of converting prospects on your website into leads, how to convert the right prospects into leads, and how to nurture the interaction before and after they become a lead and a client.  We know the language to use and the process that works best for helping estate planners increase their leads, close more sales and grow their practice.

So to wrap this point up, if you’re thinking of working with a specialized lead generation company please do not approach the relationship the wrong way.  Trust their process, and make certain you are hold up your end to make your campaign a success.

Finding the best lead generation company for an estate planning attorney

Not every attorney we talk to is going to be the right fit, just like not everyone is going to get along with each other.  Before we can determine if we would be a good fit we need to have a chance to get to know one another.  We need to meet, and ask each other questions that will help us decide if we can make this work.  So with that I invite you to set up a call with me by clicking the ‘Schedule Now’ button below.  I look forward to connecting.

? Onward and ? Upward,

Heath Rost
Founder, Estate Planning Lead Pros

Why Blogging Is So Valuable For Estate Planning Lawyers

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In today’s blog I’m going to write about a topic I am quite fond of, blogging.  If you don’t know me or this is your first time coming to my website I’ve been working with estate planning attorneys to write blogs on their website for nearly a decade now.  I’ve seen the benefits of having a great blog that come from both an organic and paid search and I want to share three quick reasons why blogging is so valuable for estate planning lawyers.

1) Your customers are asking more questions in this area of law than perhaps any other area

There are a couple reasons for this.  First they may have never worked with an attorney before and want to be more educated before reaching out.  Second is this area of law requires them to do an inventory on their financials and investments prior to meeting with you, so they want to know as much as they can as well.

2) They don’t know how to ask the right question

People are more uneducated when it comes to estate planning than any other area of law (arguably).  The point I want to make here is that they don’t know how to ask the right question, so they have so many different things they will type into their search bar.  That means the pool for you to write a blog that addresses exactly the question being asked is much larger than other areas of law.

3) The more you answer your customers questions they more they know, like and trust you.

The more comfortable customers are with you the more likely they are to fill out a lead form on your website, book and appointment or call your law firm directly.  You want them to spend more time on your website, and the more questions you’ve answered for them the more invested they are in you and your law firm.

That about does it for this blog.  If you’re an estate planning lawyer and you need a high-converting website and/or lead generation I would love to speak with you.  Schedule a call with me by clicking below.

Why A One Page Website Is Really All Your Law Firm Needs (To Get Started)

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One of the mistakes I see law firms make when building a new website is going all-in from the git-go. I believe it is a mistake when you’re building a new website to have more than 1 page max before adding on additional or new content.

That may sound a little blunt, and maybe you completely disagree with me–but hear me out.

The primary reason, and overarching reason a one page website is really all you need is because if your website doesn’t convert leads from one page, what makes us think it will convert leads when it has more than one page? Here are my followup arguments and points:

#1: What you can measure you can manage.

If you have nothing to measure from one page, what are you able to measure from two pages, three pages or more?

Analytics tell you everything you need to know starting with how people find your website and gaging the interest level of those people based on how they found you.

#2: Analyzing user behavior

When you have one page on your website to start, you learn how website visitors (your prospects) use your website. You can track everything about the user experience, study that data and learn from it.

When you know how people find your website with interest levels that are high, you learn the bigger picture, direction and vision for how you should make adjustments to your landing page. You analyze so you can adjust.

#3: Adjusting your 1-page landing website

After studying the data and learning what you can from what it’s telling you, you can make adjustments to your landing page to achieve the outcome you desire. Until you achieve that outcome, there is no reason to add more content to your website.

Start with what you know works, and build from there. That’s the strategy.

#Wrap-up

Using the strategy of starting from a 1-page website and building from there will give you the strongest foundation possible. The less business analytics to analyze when you first launch your new website the better. Having too many analytics to measure from the git-go could leave you spinning your wheels, so play it safe and start small. Lets discuss your website and find out if a 1-page website is the right place for you to (re)start. Book a call with me today.

What Is Lead Conversion?

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To understand how we can go about increasing conversions on your law firm’s website we first need to be on the same page about how we delineate what a conversion is.  For the purpose of this video and blog the types of conversions we’re trying to increase are:

  • Prospect clicks on your phone number on your website
  • Submits a contact form
  • Schedules an appointment

So how do we get more of these types of conversions when prospects visit our website?  We do this using one simple strategy.

Blogging.

Why Blogging To Increase Conversions On My Website?

Especially for estate planning attorneys, it’s important to your prospects when they visit your website that you give off the appearance that you are a patient business to work with.

People want to be educated and they want to learn.  Especially as an attorney it’s important that you be willing to educate them and be patient with them.  If prospects that visit your website don’t know that then they are going to be less likely to reach out to you and become a conversion.

A typical law firm website that is using paid ads will attain conversions from 1%-2% of their website traffic.  Over the past 10 years working with estate planning attorneys we’ve identified a trend a correlation between conversion rate and the number of pages and posts on the law firm’s website.

This means simply that the more blog posts and pages you’re creating, the more likely the prospect is to become a lead.

Why We Encourage Blogging

In terms of organic SEO and paid ads when you have more pages and posts on your website it’s going to result in higher conversion rates.  Higher conversion rates mean that the more people you have visiting your website the larger return on investment your law firm is going to see in the long run.

The Difference Between A Virtual Estate Planner And Mobile Estate Planner

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I love this topic, because for an estate planning attorney the way you market yourself makes a huge difference in whether or not a prospective client becomes a lead for your business.  The way people can work with you tells a huge story about whether or not you’ll have success in growing your law firm, and growing it through your digital marketing efforts.  In this blog I’ll do my best to compare and contrast the two, from a marketers perspective.

 

Mobile Estate Planners Have It Made…. Sort Of

First off, what the heck is a mobile estate planner?  For the purposes of this blog, an estate planner is a licensed and practicing attorney that writes estate plans, wills, trusts, powers of attorney and all the necessary estate planning documents anyone requires in preparation for their demise.  A mobile estate planner is an estate planner that will travel to meet with clients where they are be that in a residential home, nursing or senior-living home, hospital or coffee shop.  A mobile estate planner is not limited by their physical location within the metro area or city they reside and practice in.

As you can probably tell from my description of a mobile estate planner that by marketing yourself as mobile you give yourself a leg-up on your competition as an estate planning attorney.  Not only that, there are several things you can do, depending on your metro area, to gain an organic search advantage through the use of multiple mailing address or offices where you can meet with clients at.

Why is this important? 

Because people like to support local, and with something as personal as managing their estate after their passing they like to know that the person [the attorney] they choose to work with for their estate plan is local, and can be contacted in the event they need to make a change or someone they name in their plan has a question for them.

On the downside, most people don’t know that an attorney that is licensed in the state can write an estate plan for them no matter how far away they live from them. Writing and publishing blogs and making your messaging clear on your website are great ways to overcome this.

Additionally, most people think their county has specific laws and rules that an estate planner that lives outside of their territory will not understand, and therefore something could be missing in their estate plan.  Blogs and great messaging again are the answer here.

 

Virtual Estate Planners Have More Disadvantages Than You May Think

A virtual estate planner is an estate planner that does not meet with clients in-person, ever.  They only meet over the phone, audio and video conferencing.  This can be a big factor in whether or not a prospective client will choose to reach out to you and become a new lead through your digital marketing efforts.  People want to meet in person, they want to know you live near them and understand the lay of the land as it pertains to their estate.

On the upside, if you are solely a virtual estate planner for your metro area or city you practice in, but you also live in that area, you need to make that clear in your messaging or else you could miss out on a lot of business that would convert into a lead through your website and digital marketing efforts.

If you choose to practice estate planning as an attorney in a city you don’t live, you might consider setting up a mailing address within that city, and connecting that with a Google My Business profile.  That will give you an element of trust with prospects that live there, even though you don’t.

Lastly, through your digital marketing I encourage you to make the fact that you’re a virtual estate planner clear up front.  One of the first things your prospects are looking for is a yes or no answer to “are they local?”  If you can answer that question, along with questions like “are they an estate planning attorney” then you’ll be well on your way to converting that website prospect into a lead.

 

Virtual Estate Planning Vs. Mobile Estate Planning: Which One Is Best?

Wrapping up it really depends on how you like to practice law and what your process is.  After converting a prospect into a lead, a lead generation company’s role with your company is not to create the process for you, rather it is to help automate it and free up your time for you.  Depending on what your law firm’s digital footprint looks like currently will determine the best way to go about marketing yourself more effectively as a virtual or mobile estate planner.  If a conversation about that is warranted, I invite you to schedule a call with me now.

? Onward and ? Upward,
Heath Rost

Attorneys: How To Get More Qualified Leads Through Your Website

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What marketing strategy can law firms can use to increase the quality of leads they attract through their website as well as increase the quantity through their legal marketing efforts?  In this video I broke down three huge topics which I’ll do my best to unpack in future blogs and videos.  This was a very high-level question to answer.

How to get more qualified leads through my law firm’s website

1-You MAKE them qualified

The way you communicate with your prospects after they become a lead is how you warm leads up to working with you.  The closer they feel to you and your process the more likely they will be to not shop around for attorneys, as well as to actually signing to work with you.

2-Great website copy & design

This is where you make your true first impression with your prospects.  Saying things the right way is vitally important in order to achieve conversions through your website.

3-Answering your customers questions

The more your prospects are educated and you are the one educating them the more they will know like and trust you.

How To Say Just Enough On Your Website To Get More Leads

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What attorneys should not to say on their website

Worst thing you can do: treat your website like its a filing system where you keep track of what services you provide.

What attorneys should say on their website

  • Pamphlet example
    • Your mindset for what to add to your website so it’s “just enough” to achieve the outcome you want is to design it like a physical pamphlet.
  • Cold Email by Eric Finnigan (building a foundation to start from before you scale).
    • Do the work to personalize each cold email.
    • You would never scale that cold email until you have a solution that you know works.

Call to action

  • I encourage you to take a look at your website and see where you can say more by saying less.
  • Pull out a notepad and hand-write what each section of your homepage and each page on your website is supposed to do, and how it feeds into the overall end result you hope the page will achieve.

How we can do it for you:

This is where the value of a great copywriter and a great website designer can play a huge role for you.

At EPLP we’ve already done that, we have the perfect formula already for estate planning attorneys to write more estate plans. We start everyone from a single landing page that converts, and we make sure its completely separate from your existing website so you don’t have to lift a finger to get started working with us.

Top 3 Mistakes Of Estate Planning Online Marketing

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Whether you’re a solo attorney or a law firm looking to grow, there are certain mistakes most attorneys make when trying to generate more leads through their online marketing efforts.  In this blog I will cover the top 3 most glaring mistakes they are making.

Mistake #1: Sending traffic to your law firm website

The conversion rates on your law firm website will not be anything close to a tested and highly focused page stating clearly what you offer and what the next steps are.

Mistake #2: Not having automated follow ups

Often a potential client has found your page and is busy at work, or with their family or other activities. Tasteful automated follow up will continue the process of connecting and educating your new clients so you’re there when the time is right.

Mistake #3: Working with a “generic” agency

Winning with online marketing requires a great deal of understanding of your legal niche. Generic agency’s that work with multiple legal niches typically don’t have the focused energy to get you the best possible results.

EP Attorneys: 3 Things Your Digital Marketing Needs Today

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Estate Planning Lead Pros started in 2019 after seven years of running my website company, Personable Media.  One of our very first clients was for an estate planning attorney, whom we worked with to build, host and maintain their website and for just $35 per month.  After nearly 10 years and over 100 blog posts later that client is still with us, and his website generates anywhere from 100 to 200 leads every month for estate planning.  When we saw the success we were able to obtain for this client we decided it was due time for our beloved website company to rebrand and focus our energy on working with estate planning attorneys and their marketing.

As we approach the final quarter of 2021 our company has grown leaps in the past year.  I’ve seen all the struggles estate planning attorneys go through when attempting to do their own marketing, so through this blog (and the blogs to follow) I hope to shed some light and inspire estate planning attorneys how to realign their focus with their digital marketing.  In today’s blog I’m going to discuss the top 3 high-level components to any marketing strategy that estate planning attorneys need to know.  The first one is about attorney websites, and the feeling that prospects have when they’re on your website. 

 

1) Website user experience that takes users on a journey

Imagine the satisfaction your website brings to your prospects when the next page they click to looks and feels exactly as they expect it to be. ?

This establishes a strong relationship with your prospect, right from the git-go. You have to get your prospect used to the way you communicate, and that starts with the way you communicate with them through the experience they have of you on your website. Your website should not only feel conversational, when your customer clicks on a button to navigate to a new page, they should see exactly what they expect to see. Psychologically you begin to train your prospect how to work with you and communicate with you. Implementing this principle throughout your website and web design will lead to more conversions and ultimately more business and grow your bottom line.

Great website design isn’t something you can achieve through choosing a template and hoping for the best.  There are even companies out there that lay claims to specialize in building websites for attorneys.  From what I’ve gathered from these [nameless] companies is that they do their best to provide the back-end interface that suits the needs of attorneys.  The thing these attorney website companies are missing though is the look and feel of the website from the prospects perspective.  It’s great that they’ve built a tool that is somewhat easy for an attorney or law office to adapt to, but the experience of building a high-converting website with great copywriting is something left to be desired.  Your best bet is to find a company with proven success in driving conversions through the website they’ve previously built for a solo attorney or law firm.  If you want to take it a step further, study the website and why it converted so well!

 

2) Get your website in front of the right people

Do you know we are entering the largest transfer of wealth in our nation’s history? Estate planning has never been a bigger industry, and with the Covid-19 pandemic the morbidity of your customers has never been more prevalent to them. Do you know how your customers try to find you? A general rule to follow is the more places they can find you, the better!

Search engines are a great place to start.  The places you can advertise your estate planning practice in 2021 include (in no intentional order) Google, Yahoo, Bing, Youtube, Amazon and Yandex. Setting up a new advertising account and directing traffic to your website through any of these mediums is a great idea to help you get the right eyes on your website. Some networks have more daily searches than others.  Consult your ad specialist before making a decision.

Social media is another great place to start. The places you can advertise your estate planning practice in 2021 include (in no intentional order) Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TicToc, LinkedIn and Pinterest.  Like search engine advertising some of these social networks don’t have many of the types of customers you are looking for.  For example, the age demographic for TicToc is teenagers to early 20-somethings.  These type of people aren’t looking for estate planning.  Again, consult your ad specialist before making a decision.

 

3) Set up drip campaigns that nurture your prospects

A proper drip campaign is a fancy way of saying automated follow up. Once your website is getting in front of the right people and it’s converting leads you are doing great, but your work doesn’t stop there. Failure to have a proper drip campaign can and will absolutely result in higher no-show rates on your appointments. Not only that, it can drastically effect the way your prospect communicates with and works with you.

The only thing worst than having no automated follow up is having bad follow up. There is a right way to do automated follow up as an attorney. Great drip campaigns when executed correctly will result in lower appointment no-shows, cancellations and reschedules. Great drip campaigns will change the way your prospects communicate with you, and strengthen your relationship with them. Who knows, it may even change a prospects mind to work with you if they were shopping or on the fence.

 

Where to find estate planning attorney marketing that works?

Finding the right marketing company to work with your law firm doesn’t have to be a trying process. If you value results and transparency and you want to grow your practice now, schedule a call with me by clicking below.