What Prospective Clients Actually Do Before They Call Your Firm

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Dominate Law Podcast, where we empower attorneys as entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Don Adesha. And today we are asking the question that decides whether your marketing pays off or bleeds out. What are your future clients actually doing right now before they ever pick up the phone to call your firm? A quick note on the setup. Our sponsor is Equa Marketing. And today's guest is Naren Arul Raja, the founder of Equa Marketing and the founder of Dominate Law.

So the person you are about to hear is the person who built the company that sponsors this podcast. That means today is essentially a masterclass straight from the founder. If what you hear resonates and you want his team to take a look at your firm, Equa is offering listeners a complimentary marketing strategy session worth $900 with six hours of pre-work and a full visibility audit against your top competitors. Book it at www.dominatelaw.com slash MSM.

Now into today's episode, Naren is walking us through the three stage journey every prospective client moves through. Find, like and trust. We will look at how AI search is reshaping the find stage, why most law firm websites quietly fail the like stage, and what actually earns trust before the phone rings. If your funnel is leaking clients right now, this is the episode that shows you where the holes are. To guide us, one of the most experienced voices in law firm marketing, Naren Arul Raja, founder of Equa Marketing and Dominate Law.

19 years working with law firm owners across the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand. Let's dive in. What do we need to know about our prospective clients actually do before they call the firm? Can you frame us this topic for our episode? Great, great, great question. And thank you for having me today. And I think it's important we take a minute and think about this because I know lawyers are so focused on taking care of clients, of course, winning cases.

And yes, they do pay attention to marketing, but they don't really understand the secrets of why some people do really, really well and others struggle and end up spending four or five times as much money for very little to show for. So today's episode, I think we're going to unpack how to dominate, how to excel, how to get into the top 5% when it comes to attracting the right kind of clients to your practice. So I think understanding the journey is a good place to start.

Okay, let's understand that journey one step at a time. When an attorney says, I need more clients, what's usually the first question you ask them? You know, that's a great, great, great question. Usually when they say I need more clients, my question is, do you understand how your clients find you, like you and choose you? Right? I mean, at the end of the day, whether you are hiring an attorney or hiring a doctor or getting somebody to redo your house, same thing, right?

First, you have to find them, right? You need to know that they exist, they can help you. Then you need to get to like them, right? We typically don't do business with people we don't connect with, people we don't like. And then finally, we have to trust them enough to give them that project, whether it's a big case or whether it's a remodel or, you know, I'm a cancer patient and I need someone to save my life. Whatever that goal is, we have to trust you first, right?

So getting people to find you, like you and trust you. And then to answer your question directly, when an attorney says, I need more clients, then I say, okay, now that you understand these three steps, let's figure out which of these steps you're doing really well in, which of these steps are weakened. Because usually think of it like a funnel, right? Water is flowing from the wide end of the funnel to the narrow end of the funnel.

There could be a leak in any part of that funnel, maybe the wide end, maybe the middle, maybe the narrow end. Doesn't matter where the leak is, but if there's a leak, water is going to leak out. So instead of getting, let's say, 20 new clients, you're only getting seven, right? The wide end of the funnel. Wide end of the funnel is when people are looking for anything and everything I do, whether it's on ChatGPT or Google or any of the platforms, am I the one they're finding, right?

Remember, people don't like to do business with the ad lawyer because they don't trust you because you ran an ad. So let's say organically, they're looking for someone, they go to Google because today, instead of asking a friend, we ask Google. We don't want to share with our friend all of our private challenges. So we ask Google. So when we look for that lawyer, family lawyer, personal injury lawyer, whatever it is, am I finding you for that kind of a situation?

Let's say truck driving accidents, if you're a personal injury lawyer, or a family lawyer who specializes in custodies. So you're looking for very, very specific things. Step one is, are people able to find you? Whether it's on AI overview, I know there's a separate episode, perhaps we can link to it. You will have to pay attention to AI and I don't want to go through everything we covered there. So whether it's on AI overview on Google or AI mode on Google or ChatGPT, which is another platform or perplexity, are they finding you?

Are you showing up again and again for anything and everything to do with what you do as the recommended number one choice? So that's the first part of the funnel. Are people finding you? Now that they're finding you, do they like you? So they go to your website. Imagine you have a stale website that's not updated. Or you have a website that looks wonderful on a desktop, but doesn't load fast on a mobile phone or loads fast, but I don't even know where your phone number is.

So I'm hunting around and I'm getting frustrated because I can't get the information I'm looking for. So that's the liking part, you know. Have you won any awards? Those awards feature on the website, you know. And then the trust piece, that's where Google reviews come in, you know. Do you get new quality reviews on a consistent basis, paragraph reviews where people talk about how wonderful you are and how much they like you?

If you do, then of course that's going to help other people also trust you, just like the ones who wrote the review. So because remember, they don't trust you because no lawyer is going to say, I suck, please come and sign up with me. They're all going to say, I'm the best, I'm good, I'm this, right? Even the ads are going to say the same thing. But a review from another human being on Google saying this is why they liked you and they gave you five star and they wrote a few sentences, that's worth its weight in gold.

So are you working on getting those reviews? So once you understand how people go about finding, liking and choosing you, then you make sure you have components of your marketing machine attacking each piece. Are you getting more and more people to find you? That's the finding piece. Are you getting more and more people to like you? Continuing to improve the website, keeping up with the standards, continuing to make it run fast, following all the guidelines.

Finally, trust. Reviews is very powerful. Credentialing, like your awards are very powerful. So these are all things you can do to get people to trust you. Now, Naren, what does that journey look like in 2026 when a prospective client actually realized they need a lawyer to the point until they're picking up the phone? What does that journey really look like in 2026? It's a great question. So let's take a particular case.

So let's say, you know, somebody in my family got hit by a car and serious injury and we're trying to be reasonable with our insurance firm, but they're just not playing ball. They're just being unreasonable. We are really frustrated. We are stressed out. We need someone to help fight for us, right? That could be in a family law situation, could be a business situation, doesn't matter what it is, right? So you want somebody to fight for you.

So usually people will start typing in that particular situation and asking Google, hey, who can help me? You know, so that's where it starts, right? So when people start asking these complex questions, are you showing up on AI, on regular search as the recommended answer, as one of the top choices that somebody, you know, the person who has a need needs to look into. So that's where it starts, right? Then they go to your website.

They go to your website and they're like, well, I like what I see, you know, up-to-date website, loads fast, easy to use. You know, I see a lot of other cases like mine. They have one, you know, it talks about the exact case. It talks about how much they have won and the testimonial from the client. And I see dozens of those people like me who have this particular law firm has helped and made a difference for, right? That's key, people like me.

So you have to focus and you have to get them to the right landing page. Even if you do three things, like if I'm interested in XYZ, take me to a page that helps me choose you for XYZ, not everything else. One of the mistakes I see lawyers make is they want to say everything, but they don't realize for that person who had that, you know, specific accident, they only care about situations like theirs. They don't care about all your other expertise and all your other strengths.

So give them what they want, get them to like you. And last but not least, reviews. A, get those reviews and then put it on those pages, the landing pages. If I'm looking for XYZ, those actual clients on Google saying wonderful things and include those and say as seen on Google and even link it back to the Google itself. So they know it's real. This is not made up. This is not some lawyer saying something just to get somebody to buy or choose him.

Rather, this is real. This is real proof. So those are the things I would pay attention to. And, you know, that's kind of how I would think about this. And one last thing, this is where a lot of people go wrong. I have had terrible experiences. I recently needed a lawyer. And, you know, I asked some people, I asked Google, I contacted a few firms. I get an email two days later and saying my assistant will get a hold of you.

She calls me two days later. And of course, who got my business? The one who called me back right away, like in 30 minutes. Because I'm very excited and very stressed out when I'm making that initial contact, not two days later, not three days later. So that how do you respond? You know, ideally, you should answer the phone. You should have someone who knows what they're talking to, to make the client feel comfortable, make the client feel calm and then get that appointment booked.

Right. And a lot of law firms don't even do that. Like it's all email and you're waiting around and the few that get back to you actually answer the phone and do it well, have an unfair advantage. So you could be spending a ton of money on marketing. But if this customer experience, the email, the phone experience is broken, again, you're going to fail. So that's something, unfortunately, we can't directly help you with.

But we have coaching and other things that we do to help our clients, both with Google reviews and to, you know, book those clients and get those clients to come in and see the firm. OK, that's a great segue into my next question, which is most attorneys do invest in being found on Google. But what happens if a prospect find them and then doesn't call? They're going off the path that you didn't go on. What if they don't call?

What's usually going wrong? Yeah, I think if they're not calling you, it could be one of two things. One is there are people who are better than you. So let's say they are Googling around and they see you once in a while and they see somebody else all the time. Of course, they're going to go to the one who is really, really doing, you know, who's omnipresent, who's there all the time for what, you know, when they're doing the search.

So, like, it's not just good enough to just show up for one search term. You need to show up for 100 plus different search terms and phrases. So that gives you an unfair advantage. Unfortunately, our subconscious mind is very biased. When we see something again and again, we think that is the truth. That is, you know, that is the answer, right? I'm sure you've heard this phrase, right? You repeat a lie enough times, it becomes the truth, right?

And we have seen that in politics. We have seen that in real life. So are you dominating? Are you the one who shows up again and again and again? So that's one. Second is, like I alluded to earlier, the website, right? If it's stale, like, oh, I was having all these wonderful impressions because, you know, I kept seeing you, but your website is stale. It's hard to load. By the way, if your website is stale, it's hard to load.

It doesn't work well on mobile. You're not going to rank in the first place. Google will put you in the, you know, in the Google jail, and you won't show up. So usually people who do rank do have good websites. So again, all the standards, all the things that Google looks at. Google looks at 3,000 different factors. And by the way, if you please Google, you're also pleasing everybody else. Because, you know, Google is so far ahead.

They are, like, literally, you know, 95% of the market share when it comes to people looking and finding lawyers. So, you know, if you do well in Google, you're going to do well in ChatJPG. So we do track it separately. Google gives you tools like Google Analytics, so you know how many keywords you're ranking for, what's your position, all of that. The other platforms don't. But we manually check it. We type in those keywords and see which of those keywords our clients are ranking for.

And our clients at least rank for 100 keywords on Google. But, you know, over time, they start ranking for 20, 30, 40 different keywords and phrases and different types of searches, also on ChatJPG and Perplexity. So you want to pay attention to all of them. So that's what I would do, you know, if I were in the shoes. That's a whole lot of work, Naren. How do you keep up?

I know it is a whole lot of work. You know, we have a team of 300 people. We are broken into 14 teams. Nine of them just focused on the search piece of this, whether it's ChatJPG or Google or, you know, all the components of search. And then the other five focused on influencing, right? It's not just about, you know, making the phone ring. It's also about, you know, the website convincing them to pick up the phone and call.

It's also about the way the call is answered and all the metrics and all the systems you have to put in place. So if you work at it, just like anything else, I mean, you know, we know of lawyers who have won, you know, big settlements and have won big victories time and again, time and again on a consistent basis, right? From the outside, it looks like luck, but it's not. It's a systematized way of doing things in an A-plus level every single day, right?

That's what it comes down to. So that's what we focus on. We don't work with all kinds of clients. We only work with doctors and lawyers. So we really specialize in, like, really understanding these spaces and helping our clients dominate. Right. Now, reviews. Reviews came up quite a bit of times in our conversation. What does the research actually say about how much influence they have on whether someone calls or not?

Yeah, reviews are becoming more and more important in the world of trust, in the world of AI, because when AI recommends a particular lawyer, people tend to not ask any questions. You know, I've seen this in medicine. I've seen this in law. So you really, really need to get on the good books of AI. So how do you get on the good books of AI? Whether it's Google's AI overview or AI mode, which is, you know, the biggest game in town, Google controls 95% of search, or the up-and-coming players like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

You want to make sure that people, these search, these engines are recommending you. So they're looking at trust factors. One of the trust factors is reviews. You know, again, how many new reviews you're getting every month. You know, are they deep reviews? Meaning not just, you know, three stars or four stars, but actually paragraph reviews. So the quality of these reviews and the quantity of these reviews matter. So that's number one, trust factor.

Number two is, do you have the credentials? You know, when you write articles, we write a lot of articles for our clients. Are those credentials mentioned the right way? So Google can easily know that you are a qualified lawyer who has a lot of deep expertise in that particular topic. So credentialing and showcasing those credentials is really, really important. And the last piece is, you know, awards you win. And if you're on TV or if you're on internet, you know, talking as an expert, are those incorporated?

And so we want all these search platforms and, of course, people to see you as someone they can trust, someone who's an expert, someone who actual clients, you know, trust. So those are all the components I would work on if I want to totally change the game and get an unfair advantage. The funny thing is, our clients tell us after a while, they used to spend 10 times as much as on ads before they started with us. And in two years, their ad budget goes to almost zero because they get same or better results for one-tenth the cost.

Of course, this is not easy. It takes an year for you to rank 400 keywords. It takes a lot of work to really build a website and continue to improve it. But, you know, I have clients from 10 years ago, 12 years ago. Many of them have become friends. And, like, I like to help people who do a good job. And, of course, they have good reviews. But at the same time, you know, they understand that we can do something that they're not really good at, which is that marketing component.

And, you know, we work together as a team. We do everything we can. And then, of course, they focus on reviews, things they can. And, of course, sometimes answering the phone is key and how quickly you get back is key. And if that's an issue, then, of course, that's the other component we help our clients with.

Right. Now, Naren, for an attorney who wants to understand where their marketing is losing prospective clients before they ever make contact, what's the most useful thing they can do right now? Yeah, I mean, I think they need to find out how they are doing in these three steps, right? Are people finding you? Not through an ad, but organically. Start typing these search terms. If you are showing up more than 100 times for all the different things you do, on the fine piece, you're doing an excellent job.

Do people like you? When you go to that landing page, after you click on that search result, does it have relevant information about that particular thing the person is looking for? Does it have reviews? Does it have, you know, is it easy to use? Does it load up on, you know, different devices quickly? Finally, do they trust you? Are you continuing to get reviews? And are you leveraging those reviews on the relevant pages?

Are you credentialing yourself with the qualifications you have? Are you, you know, showcasing your expertise, your videos, you know, different things you have done to help others? So these are the components, but I know it's a lot of work. And that is a wrap on another deeply practical conversation with the founder of Equa Marketing. A heartfelt thank you to Naren Arulraja for the honesty and the frameworks he brought to this episode.

We covered the three-stage client journey, the water-leaking funnel that costs firms clients they will never even know they lost, the omnipresence principle behind the top 5% of law firms, and the trust signals that turn a search result into a signed client. The moment I keep coming back to is Naren's line about subconscious bias. We think we are choosing rationally, but if we see one firm again and again, our brain quietly decides that firm is the answer.

That is why showing up for one search term is not enough. You need to be present for 100 or more everywhere your future clients are looking. So if you want to see exactly how visible your firm is right now, Equa Marketing is offering listeners the same marketing strategy session Naren described in the episode. $900 in value, completely free. Six hours of pre-work, a competitor benchmark, and a custom plan for your market.

And Equa only works with one client per area, so if your competitors book first, you are out. Grab your session at www.dominatelaw.com slash msm. Before we go, please follow the Dominate Law podcast and share this episode with one attorney who is spending on marketing and not sure what is working. I'm Don Adesha, get found, get liked, get trusted, and keep on leading. We will see you in the next episode.