Are Digital Marketing and Referral Marketing Contradictory?

In this episode, Danny Decker breaks down a common misconception inside the legal world: the belief that referral marketing and digital marketing are somehow competing strategies. Using real examples and data, Danny explains why these two channels actually amplify each other — especially for solo and small law firms that rely heavily on top-of-mind visibility. He shows how email newsletters, retargeting, and consistent online content can strengthen your referral network and dramatically improve conversion rates. If you’ve ever felt torn between “staying referral-based” and “doing more marketing,” this episode clears it up. 

📌 Key Takeaways:

• Why referrals and digital marketing aren’t in competition
• How digital content keeps your referral sources engaged and active
• The simple digital systems that generate more (and better) referrals

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Chapters

• 0:00 Referrals And Digital Are Allies
• 0:23 Why Some Lawyers Dismiss Digital
• 0:40 Beyond Google Ads: Smarter Options
• 1:00 Stay Top Of Mind With Your Network
• 1:45 Tactics: Email And Retargeting
• 2:10 Referral Conversion Rates And Strategy
• 2:42 Closing And Resource Mention

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Alright, so referral marketing and intelligent digital marketing are not at odds with each other. I I it's funny because I see this conversation and I've been part of some of these conversations. There are definitely attorneys out there, maybe even like you know, law firm marketing consultants out there who kind of put referral marketing in a completely separate bucket from digital marketing. And there are there are law firms out there, I've had these conversations personally where you know the attorney takes great pride in the referrals that they're getting and and really looks down on digital marketing. It's like I would never market myself. I get 100% of my business through through referrals and word of mouth. But listen, they're not at odds with each other. Okay, I can understand if you are very selective as a law firm about the types of clients you want to take on, where maybe a Google ad strategy is not helpful for your firm and does not align with your firm. But there's so much more that digital marketing can do for you besides generate leads through Google. Two simple examples. Let's say you uh have built this referral network over the years, you've got this network of past clients, referral sources, colleagues, attorneys, and other practice areas who refer you work. Well, wouldn't you be able to get more referrals from those people if you kept yourself more top of mind with them? Right? The reality is every single one of us is bombarded with with thoughts, touch points, messages, marketing, advertising every single day. And no matter how much somebody likes you, if you don't find a way to continue to sort of compete for that real estate in their brain, like you're gonna lose track of them, they're gonna lose track of you. So you use email marketing, you use digital retargeting to keep yourself connected to your referral sources, right? So take them out to lunch, send them a birthday card. That's all great, but you can't do that for your whole list every single month. You also need to have an email newsletter that puts your content in front of them at least once a month. You should have social retargeting so that when they log on to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, they are seeing your content, okay? That is how you keep that relationship primed and get more referrals. So a hundred percent, I love referral marketing. I think referral marketing is amazing. We see the data all the time. Clients who, uh potential clients who come to you through referral are going to convert into paying clients, like usually like 65 to 70% of the time versus other types of marketing, that number is lower, right? It might be 30%. So the question isn't like, man, I should just throw out all those other opportunities. The question is, one, what can you do with your digital marketing to get yourself more of the best possible leads, which we just identified as referrals? So don't look at referral marketing and digital marketing as competing, look at them as uh complimentary and ask your marketing person how can we use digital marketing to help us get more?

SPEAKER_01: 2:56

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