Natalie Fragkouli: Episode 720

Transcript

[0:00:27] JB: As the founders of a bilingual marketing firm, Natalie Fragkouli and Liel Levy, noticed that many of their clients including in the legal world, one of their specialty areas, were not reaching out to Hispanic communities in an appropriate way or were not reaching out to them at all, so they’ve written a book, Beyond Se Habla Espanol: How Lawyers Win the Hispanic Market. On Author Hour today, Natalie discusses how law firms can better understand the variety of Hispanic markets, best practices for reaching these communities, and why it’s so important that the person who responds to leads from these communities goes beyond just speaking Spanish. Hi Author Hour listeners, I’m here today with Natalie Fragkouli, co-author with Liel Levy of Beyond Se Habla Espanol: How Lawyers Win the Hispanic Market. Natalie, thank you so much for being with us today.

[0:01:26] Natalie Fragkouli: Thank you so much for having me.

[0:01:29] JB: Okay, you and Liel are both with Nanato Media. Liel, head a partnership, and you Natalie, head of digital. What is Nanato Media and how did you all become experts in marketing to Hispanic communities?

[0:01:43] Natalie Fragkouli: Nanato Media is a bilingual marketing agency and we’re quite a young agency, we founded the agency in 2018. However, we’ve been working on the legal Hispanic marketing sphere for the past decade, a little over a decade. We’ve been marketing to Hispanics in a different way though. We’ve been building internal in-house marketing teams, not working directly with law firms. However, in 2017 or so, we identified that most of the law firms were ignoring the Hispanic market or they didn’t know how to properly engage with them and also, law firms are also brands, right? There was a big opportunity for them to brand themselves and towards the Hispanic market. We thought we have all this experience, we know exactly how to do it, how to brand law firms to the Hispanic market properly in a cultural, relevant way, which is something that doesn’t happen often. You're most will see often websites and because the Hispanic strategies kind of limit in Spanish websites that are not even properly translated. We thought, we know how to do this, it’s a big opportunity for law firms to grow and we are here now after all these years with our agency, helping many, many law firms across the US that engage culturally with a Hispanic local market.

[0:03:44] JB: Wow, this is good for Hispanic communities as well to have more options, I presume?

[0:03:52] Natalie Fragkouli: Exactly, more options and also options that the Hispanics will feel comfortable with because well, legal cases, right? There are cases that anyone has to feel comfortable and talking about their issues, right? There are legal issues that might be criminal case and immigration case, car accident case or a worker’s compensation case, all these are things that someone needs to talk about them, with a lawyer that they can trust. Someone that can sow empathy towards the situation they’re in and be able to connect, that’s the main thing. Yeah, it’s definitely a good thing for both sides because the lawyers get more business and also the Hispanics get to connect and feel comfortable setting their cases. What happens is that most of the Hispanics in the US for this kind of legal issues, they will search online in Spanish. I mean, having a proper Hispanic marketing strategy online, will help with converting those clients but also, it’s not enough. There’s the intake process too that needs to be properly addressed, to make sure the clients are assigned.

[0:05:29] JB: Let’s start getting into it, like you said, you’re not only helping law firms reach Hispanic communities but also better represent them, but they can’t do the latter unless they do the former. You’ve argued that in the past, most lawyers haven’t known how to approach Hispanic markets because of basically stereotypes. What do you mean, how are they misunderstanding the communities?

[0:05:53] Natalie Fragkouli: Well, they think that just translating a website in maybe Google translate or someone that doesn’t really know how to translate, if not Google translate, that this is enough but it’s not. I mean, we’ve been to many of those websites and we try to figure out what they mean with the literal translations from English to Spanish and we don’t understand what it’s written. Obviously, this is not enough because as Hispanics, we wouldn’t trust the lawyer and we wouldn’t sign with a lawyer, and you wouldn’t sell your case if it was not properly written in English in a non-understandable way to put it briefly. Basically, they thought that this is the way to just have something then and then address in some way in the Hispanic market but no, this is not enough and there’s so much more than that can be done to engage with them.

[0:07:02] JB: Okay, specifically, you’re writing about and focusing on digital marketing and even more specifically, pay-per-click. Why do you argue for these forms of marketing when specifically trying to reach Hispanic communities?

[0:07:15] Natalie Fragkouli: Yeah, what happens is that Hispanics are mobile power users in the US. They are the demographic segment that uses a mobile devices the most in the US. This is something that is not very widely known. However, these are the facts, these are the numbers, Hispanics go online to search for everything. The user mobile phones, more than anyone else and yeah, they don’t care – they want to solve their problem right there and then. They will not really research a lot about who to call when they want their problem solved, when they are looking for legal representation. They will go online, they will probably find the first three ads on the search and the search results engine pages and they will click on the one that is speaking to them the most. Because they will initiate a call and what Hispanics want to do with this, they want to get off the phone quickly and start talking and make an appointment and talk about their issue and go and speak face-to-face with more people.

[0:08:33] JB: They’re engaging with click ads. Even more specifically, you guys really like Google ads, why?

[0:08:40] Natalie Fragkouli: There is high intent in Google ads, if you know how to target the very high intent keywords and you know how to properly write an ad that will engage with that market, the ad will be clicked and then the lead will sign at that moment. Well again, there are many if and buts because everything has to be properly set for this particular market but to put it a little bit more in general, I mean, Google ads, it’s high intent. The user will look for a car accident lawyer or “abogado de accidentes de carro” or whatever, and that is because they are looking for an attorney. The ad will come up, they will click, they will probably sign because they probably had a car accident. Facebook ads for example is a little different. You cannot really know who had the accident because they’re not looking for you or not looking for that. You just have the opportunity to serve them ads and see whether you and then build awareness for your law firm but you cannot really make sure that these person is looking right now for legal representation. Google ads is high intent, it’s quick, and we see very high conversion rates within the Hispanic market with Google ads, so we totally highly recommend that. If Google ads, if they’re done in a proper way, and also they are quite cost-effective instead of comparing with the English market. We have seen situations like in several states around the US that you can have a cost for example say, in Utah, for about extend as the carro or car accident lawyer. It’s $300 per click and then for about as extent as the carro in Spanish, it’s going to be $100, add that to the high conversion rates because the Hispanics won’t do the whole call, they will not research so much the whole call, they will talk to someone and they will probably get signed with this particular attorney. It’s a big win for attorneys if they properly market to them with the digital forward strategy and connect properly with Hispanic clients.

[0:11:08] JB: Wow, okay and then of course, it’s not just about getting them to click through the ad. You mentioned the word conversion a minute ago, how do you advise your clients to make their landing pages more persuasive?

[0:11:19] Natalie Fragkouli: Landing pages, well, they need to be properly optimized for conversions. Again, the click-to-call call-to-action is very, very important to be very prominent and also, to address any questions or concerns of the Hispanics and convince them to actually proceed with the call. What is very important is to address the pain points let’s say in a particular demographic. For example, in that particular case ,or I am not going to give away everything, but the fact that they for example, the personal injury attorney gave them a free consult. This is something very important and it needs to be very well highlighted in the landing page but the person on the landing page is the intake. This is very, very important. Who is going to answer the phone when the client actually makes a call? This is something that has to be properly addressed and what we advocate here for – I mean, it’s not like the attorney has to speak Spanish and have spent five years of their lives to speak properly Spanish and engage and connect with the Hispanic market but what is very important here is the intake team. The intake team and what is their cultural background because I mean there are too many segments within the Hispanic market. One thing that is very important is to understand in your specific market what is the background, the majority of the Latinos? See if you can hire people that represent these cultural background and also, see if you can have people that are native Hispanic speakers not just speak Spanish and make sure they have these cultural background and maybe have lived in the country where the Hispanics in your market have came from. I mean it’s different, I mean with Hispanics, most of the Hispanics that actually searched in Spanish who have come to the US in the past 10, 15 maybe 20 years but they grew up in different countries. There is just a different kind of understanding between people who have grew up and lived in for most of their lives in a different country and a different kind of empathy. It’s a different kind of trust that can actually be built and these are all factors that need to be counted on.

[0:14:03] JB: Some firms, I imagine, will need to expand their teams.

[0:14:08] Natalie Fragkouli: Yes, definitely.

[0:14:11] JB: Once a firm has started creating and purchasing ads to reach Hispanic communities in their area, they need to know whether or not it’s working. They need to know what’s happening. How do you advice your clients around tracking metrics?

[0:14:30] Natalie Fragkouli: That’s an excellent question. Well, as an agency, we have a lead tracking dashboard and we make sure that while all the calls are routed through the lead tracking dashboard and they are all our clients can monitor every single call, hear the recordings and also see what was the search query and the keyword that these call originated from. Then we also ask from our clients to give us feedback on whether the clients have already signed up or not or what happened. We as an agency, track – we don’t track – well, we look at clicks and all the media metrics, right? But what is important here is new business and where these new business is coming from and for each market, it’s very different. Even each firm is very different and we make sure that we actually track the business metrics, the signed clients and where these come from and from what keywords, from what search queries, and optimize accordingly. This is what we advise everyone to do. In general in the book, there are so many tips on how to make the right decisions when you partner with an agency or a freelance or any other marketing professional to do your Hispanic market or marketing in general. We’ve seen a lot of situations that their reporting is based on the impressions and the clicks but no, this is not how businesses grow. Businesses grow with qualified clients, law firms are the same. This is the way to track and this is the way to properly optimize.

[0:16:21] JB: Before we go, what’s one of the most important things you want your readers to take away from what you and Liel have done in this book?

[0:16:30] Natalie Fragkouli: One of the takeaways is that law firms need to wake up to the reality now that the local markets are very, very diverse. The communities are filled with people who don’t necessarily look or talk the same like they do and the sooner the law firm adapts to be relevant to them, the more successful they will be in the long run. Another thing that is very important is to learn to prioritize. Don’t get overwhelmed and try to do all the marketing efforts at once. To start with the marketing tactics that will bring them the most clients quickly in and this is why we recommend Google ads in that particular case, and then grow the marketing strategies in a sustainable organic strategy and maybe radio and TV later on. What is very important is to don’t just focus on the quick returns. This is just to get started, there is a lot more to do and community outreach is something very, very important that we also address on the book.

[0:17:43] JB: Thank you, Natalie. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you. Again, listeners, the book is Beyond Se Habla Español: How Lawyers Win the Hispanic Market. Natalie, in addition to reading the book, where can people go to learn more about you and Liel and your work?

[0:17:57] Natalie Fragkouli: nanatomedia.com, everything about us is there and about the book. Yes, please feel free to come visit us online, and learn more about the book.

[0:18:11] JB: Thank you and, listeners, that’s nanatomedia.com. Natalie, thank you so much.

[0:18:18] Natalie Fragkouli: Thank you so much. Thank you for having us.

[0:18:21] JB: Thanks for joining us for this episode of The Author Hour Podcast. You can get Natalie Fragkouli and Liel Levy’s book, Beyond Se Habla Español: How Lawyers Win the Hispanic Market, on Amazon. You can also find a transcript of this episode as well as previous episodes on our website, authorhour.co. Make sure to subscribe to The Author Hour Podcast for more interviews and insights into life-changing books.