Ideas in the Wild: How Jason Hennessey Aims To Help Lawyers Find a Dependable Competitive Advantage
Lawyers can’t rely on success alone to stand out in today’s market. They need an advantage they can depend on, a digital marketing expert or agency they can trust. Unfortunately, without industry knowledge, hiring one is not as simple as trusting a list of credentials.
That’s why Jason Hennessey wrote Law Firm SEO: to shares the proven SEO strategies he’s used for two decades to earn more than $500 million in new cases for his clients. The world of digital marketing is complex. It’s easy to hire the wrong team and lose valuable time and money. Jason shows readers how he has reverse-engineered the Google algorithm with practical tools and techniques and without technical complexity. I recently caught up with Jason to learn what inspired him to write the book and how he’s applied the ideas he shares with readers.
What happened that made you decide to write the book? What was the exact moment when you realized these ideas needed to get out there?
It’s no secret that in our industry specifically, there are a lot of bad practitioners out there, which creates a lot of confusion. We work specifically with law firms, and even if somebody came to us that was highly recommended by somebody that they trust, the client usually still comes to us very skeptical. I understand why. In most cases, they’ve been through this song and dance before. SEO has been around for 20 years, so it’s not a new industry.
The people they’ve worked with have probably over-promised and under-delivered. If they’re talking to us, that means they’re again looking to make a change. So, they’re just skeptical, and rightfully so. Because in some cases they’ve been burned and people might’ve taken advantage of them because this can be a confusing industry. In other cases, maybe the agency that was working on the campaign had good intentions but just couldn’t deliver the actual results.
Against that backdrop, this was the book that I’ve wanted to write for over 10 years. When COVID happened, I was forced to be in my office and I wasn’t traveling a lot anymore. So, I just took the initiative to write it and I wanted to get the word out there so that people can be both educated and empowered to make good decisions with hiring a digital marketing agency, but to also hold people accountable for getting the results they’re promising to deliver.
What’s your favorite specific, actionable idea in the book?
This book was written to basically read once, but then to keep at your desk to reference it. As you are working to implement some of the strategies in the book, or as you’re working with an agency that’s implementing the strategies in the book, this book can be your guide. The whole book was written to be actionable because the ideas are meant to be implemented.
What’s a lesson you’ve learned from writing this book? How have you applied it to your life?
My personal motto is “action creates results.” So as I’m on calls all day or on Zoom meetings, I scribble down notes, and at the end of each week, I summarize my notes into an action item list. That list used to be like 17 pages, but now I’ve got it down to just two pages and it’ll never go more than two pages. The way in which I structure this every Sunday I sort the action items by “now,” “next,” and “later.” I also have some personal items on the list, as well.
This list keeps me accountable, and that’s what I want this book to do for readers. It’s written to hold yourself or your agency accountable, and most importantly, to take action so that you can get results: getting more cases for your law firm using a proven SEO strategy.
