Attorney Marketing: Get More Clients with a Better Website
Direct Answer: Small professional service providers grow faster when they focus on strategic, targeted digital marketing instead of overspending on unnecessary features and complicated systems.
Bigger Marketing Budgets Do Not Always Produce Better Results
Many professional service providers believe they need an expensive website, advanced software, or a massive marketing budget to compete online.
That is often not true.
In many cases, businesses overspend on features they do not need while neglecting the strategies that actually drive trust, engagement, and client conversion.
According to Scott Wintheiser, the key is building the “right size solution” — a digital strategy designed around your actual business goals instead of unnecessary complexity.
What Is a Right Size Solution?
Focus on What Actually Drives Results
A right size solution means building a digital presence that:
Fits your business goals
Serves your ideal audience
Maximizes return on investment
Avoids wasted spending
Prioritizes clarity and usability
The goal is not having the flashiest website.
The goal is helping potential clients trust you and take action.
Why Many Professional Websites Fail
They Focus on Features Instead of Client Concerns
One of the biggest problems with professional service websites is that they often talk too much about the business and not enough about the client.
Many websites include:
Large logos
Generic claims
Long lists of services
Technical jargon
But they fail to clearly answer:
What problems do you solve?
Why should someone trust you?
What happens next?
How do you reduce uncertainty?
The most effective professional service websites focus on client pain points first.
Why Simplicity Often Performs Better
Less Information Can Create More Clarity
Many businesses believe more information automatically creates more credibility.
In reality, too much information can overwhelm visitors.
A focused message often performs better than trying to appeal to everyone at once.
For example:
A law firm targeting business owners should speak directly to business-related legal risks.
A therapist specializing in anxiety should clearly address anxiety-related concerns instead of listing every possible service.
Focused messaging creates stronger trust and higher conversion rates.
The Importance of Localized and Personalized Content
Tailored Content Creates Better Engagement
One major insight from Scott Wintheiser’s approach is the importance of creating content that truly reflects the audience’s needs.
This may include:
Local SEO pages
Industry-specific landing pages
Language-specific content
FAQ sections
Case examples
Community-focused messaging
Localized content helps professional service providers stand out in:
Google search results
AI-generated search answers
Local maps
Voice search
Why Strategy Matters More Than Technology
Expensive Platforms Cannot Fix Weak Messaging
Many businesses overspend on:
Large CMS platforms
Complex software
Unnecessary plugins
Fancy design features
Without clear messaging and strategy, those investments often fail to produce meaningful results.
Strong digital marketing depends more on:
Clear positioning
Trust-building
Content quality
User experience
Fast response systems
Technology should support strategy — not replace it.
Why Follow-Up Is Part of Marketing
Great Websites Cannot Compensate for Slow Responses
One overlooked problem in professional services marketing is poor lead follow-up.
Businesses may invest heavily in:
SEO
Paid ads
Content marketing
Website design
But then lose leads because nobody responds quickly enough.
Fast and professional follow-up dramatically increases conversion rates.
This includes:
Answering calls promptly
Responding to inquiries quickly
Following up consistently
Making the intake process easy
Marketing does not stop when someone contacts you.
The Best Digital Strategies Focus on Trust
The most successful professional service providers usually do not have the biggest budgets.
They have:
Clear messaging
Strong credibility
Helpful content
Consistent visibility
Simple user experiences
Reliable follow-up systems
This creates trust.
And trust is ultimately what drives client decisions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a right size solution in digital marketing?
A right size solution focuses on effective, goal-driven digital marketing without overspending on unnecessary features or platforms.
Why do many professional websites fail?
Many websites focus too much on the business itself instead of clearly addressing client concerns and pain points.
Is a large marketing budget necessary for professional services?
No. Clear strategy, strong messaging, and consistent trust-building are often more important than large budgets.
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Andrew Colsky (00:12)
Welcome to another episode of Be Picked, the podcast for small professional service providers where we help you build your business and grow your business. And we teach you all the things that you need to know that nobody taught you in professional school because they don't talk about marketing in professional school. I'm your host, Andrew Colsky. Today we have a guest, Scott Windtheiser. He is the CEO and founding partner of Lightburn, which is a Milwaukee based
digital customer experience agency that he co-founded in 1998. With 28 plus years in digital and e-commerce, he has founded and sold multiple e-commerce businesses and even had a documentary screened at Sundance. In Lightburn's early days, he built a custom CMS and e-commerce platform from scratch because the tools didn't exist yet. Today, Lightburn's 20 plus person team helps mid-size organizations, especially manufacturers with web design.
development, CMS strategy, digital marketing, and e-commerce. Scott's approach is straightforward. Find the right size solution, not the most expensive one. And I love that. And that is how I want to kick off our podcast. So first off, Scott, welcome to the show. And let's dive in. Where did you come up with the whole concept and understanding that you want to focus on the right size solution? Because
We all know the more money you put, the more, the better you're going to get, right?
Scott Wintheiser (01:42)
Right, yeah. It took us a while to get there. I think as we started, you we've been around 28 years. So obviously at the beginning, bigger, we've always felt better. But over time we saw that more and more companies were spending.
they thought that spending more meant that they were gonna get better results. And we just saw waste after waste after waste. And we actually realized that, you know, a lot of times companies were overspending on features and they were underspending on strategy and implementation. So they were just trying to throw as much out there as they possibly could. And spending more actually often resulted in worse results because they didn't have a focused strategy. So we're really trying to help companies of all sizes spend
for just what they need and then add to it over time instead of trying to solve it all with one giant purchase upfront.
Andrew Colsky (02:34)
Right. Right. Well, I'm sure that the listeners are glad to hear that because I know a lot
Scott Wintheiser (02:39)
you
Andrew Colsky (02:39)
of them are working with, you know, budgets that are not unlimited and they they're trying to get the best they can for what they can afford to do. And they realize that they have to spend something, but
you have to spend it wisely, you know, not just throwing
Scott Wintheiser (02:54)
right.
Andrew Colsky (02:55)
it. So so there's so much that that comes from that when we talk about sort of the right size solution.
So because most of our listeners are going to be small professional service providers, maybe an independent person, maybe a group of 10 or less, something along those sizes, when we think about right size solution for someone who maybe has currently no social media, no web presence, no nothing, maybe they have a static website that they built a couple of years ago that just sits there.
Scott Wintheiser (03:29)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Colsky (03:30)
what should they even be thinking about when we talk about right size for someone like that?
Scott Wintheiser (03:36)
Well, I think the first thing is really trying to figure out what the outcome is. What are you trying to get your potential visitors to your site, let's say your website, to do once they get there? And really focus on is the content that you have on the site resonating with them?
making sure that it's very clear that they can self-identify themselves when they get there. So you want a potential visitor to come to your site and realize immediately that, yes, that's the firm for me. They understand my pain points. They understand my problems. And then...
I think the biggest mistake that a lot of people make when they're, especially when they're first starting on a website is this concept that more is better. And so they try to throw out messaging for every possible audience and they try to put it all in one place and it ends up being nothing to everybody instead of something to your target audience. So starting with less, starting with a really focused message and trying to build it over time as you're seeing what's working and what isn't, we find is really the most effective way to start. And it's usually the most cost effective.
Andrew Colsky (04:42)
So right there in that answer, there's a lot going on because you can look at websites out there that have what people traditionally have. They've got a page that has, if they're a lawyer, this is the name of my law firm and here's our cool logo or whatever and maybe our address and the phone number.
And then they'll have an about section and they have a picture of the attorney and this is about me. This is where I went to school and this is what I did and so on and so forth. And then maybe they'll have some small section about a practice area. We practice.
bankruptcy law and in these types of courts and it's really important to have a good bankruptcy lawyer and that's about all they say about it and then how to contact us. So there's a website we're set put it out there. We're to get clients coming to the door. What are they missing?
Scott Wintheiser (05:42)
They're missing the pain that you were relieving for their potential clients. So, you if I were going to a law firm's website, I might be interested in some case history, some case studies, but not thousands of them, not hundreds of them. I don't want a massive amount of it.
But ultimately, I want to know what that experience is going to be like working with the lawyer, because I'm not a lawyer. I want it to be as easy as possible. So I want to know that you can help me solve my pain.
and you understand what...
You know, if it's bankruptcy, obviously you can identify with what my business is currently going through and what pains we have, how you're going to help us and that you understand it. And then what that actual experience working with your firm is actually going to be like. That's what's important to me. It's not, know, law schools are important and a year about is important, but really understand making sure that the firm understands my pain points and how you're going to help me as your potential customer. To me, that's a lot more important of like, I can identify that yes, this is the agency. This is the law firm for
and I'm going to sign up and you know reach out and get started on the process because they understand where I am.
Andrew Colsky (06:53)
So I get what you're saying, but how do they do that? Do they just write a paragraph that says, understand your pain, we're good for you? Do they have to have blog articles? Do they have testimonials? How do they get that message across?
Scott Wintheiser (07:10)
Well, that's a very good question. So a little bit of all that, I think, but the biggest thing is wording it in a way that isn't for the law firm itself. It's for the customer. So the mistake that we see a lot of, especially professional services make, is that they're speaking in a way that makes sense to them because they're professionals, they're professional lawyer. They understand how the lawyers speak. They understand all. Your clients may not, right? Because if they did, they probably wouldn't be coming to hire you in the first place. So.
Less is more, I think, in a lot of ways of just trying to not overwhelm people with trying to show everything you're capable of and all the different areas of law that you practice and all the, you know.
it becomes overwhelming. And so I think having just a very short, concise, why you're different than other firms, how you're make the experience pain free, and in a sentence or two, and really trying to just get enough content in front of them to take the next step. You're not trying to educate them on everything that you know about law, you're just trying to get enough of a...
identification so that they understand, they're a capable law firm. They have a couple of examples and testimonials from people that I may have heard of or companies I may have heard of. That's enough for me to get started. Click the contact button or whatever the call to action is and move on.
Andrew Colsky (08:28)
Okay. All right. So, so on this concept of sort of the right size solution, somebody is listening to this podcast and they hear what you're saying.
And they say, wow, yeah, I really do need to update my website because I don't have any of that type of stuff. But I don't know how to do it or who to go to. But, you know, my friend, my colleague, they just redid their website. So, you know, they know a guy that can do a website because everybody
knows a guy. And so I call the guy because he's the guy because everybody knows him. And he
Scott Wintheiser (09:02)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (09:04)
looks at my website and he says, my God, you got a wow.
you gotta do this and this and here's a proposal for, you we gotta build out the Rolls Royce here, because you're just not hitting it. And he gives me all these things that I need to be doing. I'm curious for you, can you walk us through an example of a client who was about to overspend on their, you know, digital presence that you were able to kind of bring back to sort of this right size concept?
Scott Wintheiser (09:35)
Yeah, so we have a client that has a lot of... They were about to spend a bunch of money on a pretty large CMS platform. It has all kinds of marketing automation tools and all this great stuff that was going to take their pretty sizable contact list and turn it into leads constantly.
So they were going to spend on all these features. And as we were working with the client, we realized very quickly that they were mistaken buying all of those features for their CMS tool, their website platform tool, as having them fully implemented. What they weren't accounting for was all the effort it take to actually keep all of that stuff moving. So what we did instead is we convinced them, instead of spending all their money on a license, spend more money on
In their case, it was spending more money on translating content into additional languages, which is something that they kind of knew they needed to do for a while. It's not work that people ever enjoy. know, usually if you're creating your bulk of your content in English and that's your really the only language you speak, the idea of moving on to providing additional languages gets a little overwhelming. So they push it off. So we convinced them to do spend more money on what they call what we call localized content or translated content.
So now it is available and I think it was three or four languages total. Because a lot of their audience, English wasn't their first language. So by doing that, they spent less money upfront. They provided more content for people that actually needed it. And their lead, the number of leads they were getting went up dramatically because now they're offering, know, they're increased their market essentially. They're not forcing their users to have to respond or have to identify with them in English.
primary language. So the number of leads went up and their total expense of what they thought they were spending on what they thought they were going to see benefit from, which results in marketing automation, the cost was a lot lower and the results were a lot
Andrew Colsky (11:42)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know, and that certainly brings up a particular point here, which is if you're going to put your time and effort into building appropriate websites and appropriate content, and then you actually get the call, answer
the phone. I cannot tell you how many
Scott Wintheiser (12:03)
Right, yeah. Right.
Andrew Colsky (12:05)
professional service offices that I call, and you can't get a person.
And if you do get a person, which is rare, it's just an answering service person who knows nothing about your business, who knows nothing about anything, and all they can do is
Scott Wintheiser (12:21)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Colsky (12:22)
take a message. And so they take the message and then guess what? You never get a call back. Maybe a couple
Scott Wintheiser (12:27)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (12:27)
days later. Maybe I've had it where it's been weeks later. I get a call back and it's like, I don't even remember calling this person. Guess what? That caller, as soon as they hung up the phone, they dialed the very next person on their list.
Scott Wintheiser (12:40)
Yeah, no,
Andrew Colsky (12:41)
That's how works.
Scott Wintheiser (12:42)
that's a great point. And we used to work with a number of smaller electricians a few years ago. And it was the same thing. They constantly wanted to spend more money on putting more stuff on their website about things that they knew how to do and things that they could be doing for people. And they were getting, we realized that we started tracking phone calls through there's ways of publishing phone numbers on your website that you can track how many calls people are getting.
those calls were way, the number of calls was significantly higher than what the electricians were reporting as leads. And the reason for that is they didn't have anybody in the office answering the phone, like you said. So instead of spending more money on the website, they should be spending more money. And to your point of, you have the lead traffic. If you're not doing anything with it, you're just wasting more money on more leads you're not responding to.
Andrew Colsky (13:32)
Right, right. That always kills me. But at least they tell me that my call is very important to them. And it's so important that they have nobody to answer the phone and they don't get back to you. But it's important.
Scott Wintheiser (13:43)
Yeah,
at two o'clock in the afternoon on a weekday.
Andrew Colsky (13:47)
Well
you know we have that unusually high call volume 24 7. So. All right.
Scott Wintheiser (13:51)
Right. No, that's, and that's a great,
that's something we're pretty good at. You know, obviously that's not part of what our agency does is trying to staff your team for hiring a phone call. But when we find points like that, I think it's very important that like you're spending money in the right place. It doesn't make sense to keep putting energy into generating leads you're not responding to.
Andrew Colsky (14:13)
Right, right. So, you know, another thing that you were talking about when you were talking about the website example is most professional service providers, at least the ones that typically will listen to this podcast, they are localized. They serve a local community from where they are. You know, most of them are not doing national, you know, base things. And
They'll put up a website though and they don't put anything in there that really kind of focuses it on local. They're trying to advertise to anybody and everybody everywhere and what good is it if you're licensed in New York and you're trying to advertise to
people in Mississippi? You're not licensed there. What are you gonna do there? So are there things that people can or should do when they're thinking about their website or other web presence?
that helps them to get more focused on a local market.
Scott Wintheiser (15:17)
Yeah, absolutely. think if you're really focusing on a very small enough market, the content on your website should make it very obvious that you're in that market, that that is the market that you care about. You can do that through simple photography, skyline or whatever, photo of...
something from your region. And then also on your ad spending. So if you're spending ads on trying to drive traffic to that, that you're not spending ads on, you know, the state next door or to your point across the country, make sure you're really focused on the area that matters and position yourself as somebody that's part of that community and not just trying to serve that community as one of many.
Andrew Colsky (16:00)
Right and you know, so I guess that translates also into you know, let's say you you delve into the social media world and You do a YouTube video or something?
Scott Wintheiser (16:13)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Colsky (16:14)
You know, there's a difference between You know getting a DUI in Washington DC and getting a DUI in Virginia for example because different
places have different laws and it may not be the same type of defense needed or the same type of rules that the police need to follow, etc. etc. So, you know, if you're if you're doing a video about DUIs versus DUIs in Washington DC, you're going to capture a different market depending on how you, you know, phrase it. So.
Scott Wintheiser (16:49)
Yeah,
absolutely. I think it's easy for a small firm to try to hide that, that they're focused on a small area. And I would highly recommend you make that a benefit. You make that a point of pride in your service and not
trying to pretend like you're this giant international law firm that has 400 offices or whatever. You're not really competing with those firms, so don't pretend to.
Andrew Colsky (17:16)
Right, right. All right, so let's do a little bit of diagnosing here for a second. Let's say that you've got a firm, small firm, they have a website they built a couple years ago, because they had a guy.
Scott Wintheiser (17:30)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Colsky (17:33)
And they come to you and they say, know, we're not getting calls, we're not getting interaction, we're not getting anything from our website, we're not getting the leads or the inquiries.
So if you take a look at their website, give us maybe like the top three things you would check to see what might be going on.
Scott Wintheiser (17:54)
Well, the first thing I would do is I would put myself in the shoes of your best clients. So go to your website, pretend that you're visiting as one of your best clients that you already have, and try to feel like does the content on the website identify with them?
Or are you actually trying to serve a slightly different audience? are you trying to serve too many audiences? And really try to go through your site as, okay, I'm from our best client and I'm trying to reevaluate the firm. And how much does that content identify with them? And really start there. I think you can find a lot of great information about if you just put yourself literally in your client's shoes of would they sign up for us now?
if they were landing on our webpage for the first time today. And then the other thing I think that people overlook is just talking to their existing clients as well. So find your best clients.
you probably have a good relationship with a number of them and talk to them. If they were trying to find your firm today, what would they look for? How would they search for it? Where would they search for it? What channels are they looking on? It doesn't do you any good to be on Instagram if all of your clients are trying to find your firm on LinkedIn. So interview your clients. They'll give you a wealth of information on...
things you're just not thinking of because you're too close to it, and try to figure out, our clients all say they would search for us through friends on LinkedIn, for example. Then put your energy there. then if they're using keywords or phrases or search terms that you hadn't thought of, go back to your site and say, does this website answer those searches? Does it identify with how they think of our firm?
Andrew Colsky (19:46)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Scott Wintheiser (19:47)
That's I would start.
then, and then if you know, when you don't, if you're identifying the gaps of, okay, we're not actually addressing the audience we think
we are, start changing that content so that it better does. Change it, measure it, see if it, if revenue or if leads go up and then just continue that process.
Andrew Colsky (20:06)
Right. Right. So I'll you know I'll put in a quick plug here which is you know I agree with with exactly what you're saying there. And in order for me to help clients one of the things that I did is I created this free assessment tool where they just have
Scott Wintheiser (20:25)
Hmm.
Andrew Colsky (20:25)
to come to the Web site BPIC dot com and answer 15 questions. It doesn't cost anything. And it will give you an analysis of
Where are your strengths? Where are your weaknesses? So that you'll know, you know, here's where I really need to start if I'm going to get out there. And
Scott Wintheiser (20:45)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Colsky (20:45)
a second thing I tell people to do, especially if you're sort of, you know, mostly B2C, but it could be B2B, but, but maybe you're a, maybe you're a landlord tenant attorney and think about when you have
the potential client that you have. Maybe they're a tenant and they've been trying to get something fixed forever and they have no hot water, whatever.
Scott Wintheiser (21:13)
Right.
Andrew Colsky (21:14)
So they're laying in bed at 3 a.m. worrying about the fact that I took another cold shower and I'm sick and tired of it and I can't get the landlord's attention and I need to find out what to do about this. And so they go on their phone in bed, which is the worst thing to do to try and sleep, but they got so much anxiety they got to do it anyway.
Scott Wintheiser (21:30)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (21:34)
And they start searching think about what would they be searching for and then do that search yourself And see
Scott Wintheiser (21:41)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (21:41)
if you come up and if you don't come up. Well, there's an answer for you about your website
Scott Wintheiser (21:47)
Yeah. Yeah. And I would agree. you know, especially for small firms,
don't try to solve that for everything that somebody picked the five or six most important ones, you know, and start there and get those working really well.
add content so that you're being found in search for those. And then once you have those working pretty well, then add maybe a couple more if you need to. But I think a lot of times clients or small firms especially try to put way too much content on and it just ends up creating a website that's full of confusion. The potential prospects come to your site and they can't identify themselves on it. So they don't know where to go or they don't know that you're the right fit and they move on to somebody else.
Andrew Colsky (22:30)
Right, right. All right. So, so Someone builds a website they take this advice into to heart and they they Fix things so that they're better found and speaking to the right client the right way But it can't just stop there. There's got to be sort of continual improvement if they're going to stay fresh and relevant, right? so so
Scott Wintheiser (22:56)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Andrew Colsky (22:59)
Tell us about, you know, what does that look like when when someone finally kind of puts all this into practice and now they have a good website that's doing these things What do they have to do to maintain it?
Scott Wintheiser (23:13)
Yeah, so continual improvements in an area that we are huge proponents of. It's a big part of how we interact with our clients. We think that it's probably more valuable than large redesigns in a lot of cases, especially if your site's not doing too poorly already.
And the process is pretty simple. So for us, what we do is we look at your site, we say, what are you trying to accomplish with it? What are the, you know, are you trying to get new leads of a certain type or from certain whatever, whatever your goals are. And then we look at the site and we say, we're not doing a good enough job in these areas to support those leads. So we spend the next 30, 60, 90 days improving that, measuring it, seeing if it works. And we just continually improve the site.
Permanently. So it's not a build it once and then let it sit for three years and get old. Now it's completely serving the wrong market. Right. It's the language is all for not even your current client you're trying to find. It's constantly improving it, keeping it going. and just identify it, just repeating that process, identifying where are we falling a little short on the goals that we have? What's the simplest thing we can do to help move that measure it and do it again. And it's often.
better for both because a lot of small firms, they don't have time to completely rebuilding the website. It can be a huge process if you're starting from scratch. So by doing that little work, your agency can help you by identifying here are three areas you can be doing better at. Here's the small amount of effort we need from you to help us get those pages done or improved or redesigned or whatever the case might be.
push them out, measure them, do it again. It's a
much lower investment from the firm, both financially and time-wise, and you're starting to get better results. And it stays in line with where your business is going.
Andrew Colsky (25:04)
Right, right. So if they start doing that and they start paying attention to it, what are the pros and cons of, you know, some websites out there will have blogs. So new articles being posted, you know, once a week, once a month, whatever it may be. Some of them will have hook into their own podcast.
or their own YouTube channel. So as new content comes up, it's showing up on the website. Is there any pros or cons to doing something like that?
Scott Wintheiser (25:37)
Yeah, I mean, think all of them work well for most firms. I think the mistake that most firms make is that they try to do all of them at the same time. And so it's that classic case of trying to do too many things poorly instead of trying to do one thing really well.
You know, you have to know your audience. So podcasts might be great for your firm. may not be great for somebody else's firm, depending on who your clients are or how much they need to be educated. But one of those channels is probably going to be good. So again, that goes back to talking to your existing clients, figuring out, you know, if we had a podcast, would it be of interest? Or if we had a blog, what kind of things would you want to learn about them?
And then just trying to put in enough effort on one of those channels long enough, say 90 days at least, to be able to measure whether it's having any success. Are you getting leads from it at all? And if it is, keep going. It's usually a long game. But the biggest mistake that most people make are trying to do too many of those, what we call channels, so too many.
blog, blog posts, LinkedIn and Instagram and a podcast all at once and none of them are consistent or well done. you know, none of, they're just a waste of time at that point. And then you get frustrated, don't do any of it. The website sits for three years and then, and then you have to start all over.
Andrew Colsky (27:02)
Yeah, yeah, no, that's so true. I see that all the time. And I think, you know, one of the most important words there was the word consistency is that if you're going to do something, put your time and effort into doing it right and doing it consistently. Because if you're just haphazardly doing stuff, it's just, it doesn't have the impact or the effect of a consistent thing.
Scott Wintheiser (27:24)
Yeah. Yeah. And the
other thing I would say is do it even when you don't need new leads. So
Andrew Colsky (27:30)
Right.
Scott Wintheiser (27:30)
a lot of firms we see wait until, ooh, leads have dipped. Now we need leads fast. And that's just not going to happen. So if you're consistent with it, even when you're busy.
those leads will keep coming. Worst case, you have to turn them away because you just don't have the capacity at the moment or you have to try to charge a little more and maybe you're too expensive for them. But it's always better to have more than to try to go find them when you really need them.
Andrew Colsky (27:55)
Right, absolutely. So what about, you know, these days we're hearing so much information about AI, because AI,
Scott Wintheiser (28:05)
Okay.
Andrew Colsky (28:07)
it's everywhere, it does so much, it's overwhelming, people don't even know what it does yet. So what is your advice to clients when they're talking about
And they may just generally say, hey, what is this AI stuff? Should I be doing something with it? How do answer those
Scott Wintheiser (28:28)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (28:28)
types of questions?
Scott Wintheiser (28:30)
Well, what we try to get them focused on is what is the outcome you're actually trying to solve? like, adding AI, are you adding it to your site because you feel like you have to?
because everybody else is doing it or are you adding it because it's actually helping you streamline a problem, an actual problem? Because if it's not solving an actual problem, chances are it's just a distraction and it's just going to lessen the experience that somebody has on your site. So, you know, there's nothing worse than going to your site and having the little AI chatbot that'll answer your questions and then it can't answer your questions. I'm just going to close and go to a different firm, right? Like there's no, you're just spending money to drive me to somebody else.
Andrew Colsky (29:07)
Yeah.
Scott Wintheiser (29:09)
What we've found is that AI is really good at taking what you already know how to do and making it more efficient. But it's not really good at trying to solve something that you haven't figured out yet. So if you have a really good process for maybe walking through prospects on whether you are a good fit for them, AI can help with that for sure. But if you're trying to have it solve a process that you haven't figured out yet.
AI is just going to make it worse and you're just wasting time and money.
Andrew Colsky (29:39)
So so basically if if you were to recommend to one of your clients that they Use AI because they have a process that they want to walk someone through. What is that? What does that look like? Is that like a Chatbot that's asking them questions or is it something else that's happening in the background that even know it like what does it actually look like?
Scott Wintheiser (30:02)
Yeah, I mean, it takes a lot of different shapes. I think the most common, especially for like a small professional service firm, would be more of that chatbot. So what you would be doing is you would be, it would be really helpful. Let's say a law firm. You might point it at an amount of resources that you have, say a giant list of cases or some sort of.
large amount of content that you might have about what you do and why you're good at it. And then AI can start to help. You can create an AI chatbot that helps.
You train it on that data. basically point it to that data and then it can answer questions for your prospects based on that data. So it's essentially a custom search engine, right? For your expertise. We find that for a lot of small firms, it's probably a little overkill with AI currently, because it still can get pretty expensive pretty quick. But it does, it is an increasing thing that people should be paying attention to. But I think for small firms, especially it's.
Not necessarily really helping you in any way yet. At least on
Andrew Colsky (31:09)
Yeah.
Scott Wintheiser (31:11)
your web, you know, at least for your marketing and your website internally, that's a whole different game. You know, I'm sure
Andrew Colsky (31:15)
Right.
Scott Wintheiser (31:16)
lawyers are using it all the places, but.
Andrew Colsky (31:19)
No, it reminds me of a story of something that I tried as I was learning years ago about this. And I had a website and I had very common type of question that people would call and ask me about over
Scott Wintheiser (31:37)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Colsky (31:37)
and over and over again. And I had information on the website that answered that, but people just didn't read it or whatever.
Scott Wintheiser (31:43)
you
Andrew Colsky (31:45)
And my phone would ring off the hook and I'm answering the same question over and I just didn't have the time to keep doing that. And this is pre-AI. So there was a chatbot type of thing that was very linear where you could program it to say, you know, what is your question? If your question is this, I need these three pieces of information and then I can give you the answer. So it was very straightforward. Same exact questions I would ask if you called me on the phone. And I'm thinking,
Scott Wintheiser (32:11)
Yeah, exactly.
Andrew Colsky (32:12)
great, this is going to be great.
So I program thing I set up on the website. It's right there. As soon you come to the website all you got to do is answer the question it asks you and it will bring you to where you need to be. Yeah. No not when you're working with the public. The public will not answer the questions being asked. They will ask
Scott Wintheiser (32:32)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (32:34)
their own question. So when it says you know can you tell me your name they'll say I want to talk to someone.
Scott Wintheiser (32:42)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (32:42)
Hello, I want to talk to someone. Can you tell me your phone number? No, I need to talk to a human being. Thank you for
Scott Wintheiser (32:45)
No.
Andrew Colsky (32:49)
that number. And it was just, it was comical. So I just had to get rid of it because had they just answered the question, they would have gotten the answer they wanted, but that is not the way it works out there in reality. And with AI, it's better because AI is much more interactive and you can train in all this stuff. But my point is that if they can break it, they will.
Scott Wintheiser (33:10)
yeah, definitely.
Andrew Colsky (33:12)
So.
Scott Wintheiser (33:13)
Yeah. So for AI, you know, it's, we have some clients that use it very well, mostly for internal process type stuff, not so much in front of their clients.
Andrew Colsky (33:24)
Yeah. And it's also funny all the people who are, you talked about AI and they're very skeptical and scared or whatever, they don't realize that pretty much everything you do today, from your banking to your,
Scott Wintheiser (33:36)
You
Andrew Colsky (33:37)
anything you do, the AI is in there somewhere and in multiple, multiple places. So you're using AI all day long, every day, you just may not know it. So,
Scott Wintheiser (33:46)
Yep.
Andrew Colsky (33:47)
all right, well we are,
at the end of our time here, but I do want to ask sort of a final question here. And my question is this. What is the biggest digital mistake that you see firms make that they could fix today without even having to spend any money?
Scott Wintheiser (34:07)
Analytics for sure. So I think most people know of Google Analytics. It's a free service that Google provides There's some other better ones or additional ones that provide some more information Microsoft has one called clarity Which is similar to Google Analytics, but it also gives you a lot more
actual insight on like where people are getting stuck on your page. example, if people are, you know, what they call rage clicking buttons, which is like you're clicking something and it doesn't do anything. Those tools are great and they provide you with, they're both free and they provide you with a lot of insights on who's coming to your site and what they're doing and why they're leaving. So those are great tools. And then to your point earlier of, you know, AI is everywhere.
If somebody's using, say, chat GPT or Claude, you know, they have the chat tool on their computer, you can talk to those analytics tools. So you don't have to be a data scientist anymore to understand them. You can just ask Claude, Hey, look at Microsoft Clarity. What's going on on our site? are, what can we do to maybe.
streamline this process or what does this data mean and you don't have to understand it yourself and all of that is free. And I think that gives you the insight on, okay, now you know what's wrong with the site, now you can go start a continual improvement process of trying to improve that, remove those pain points and just keep doing that until your site's performing the way you want it to.
Andrew Colsky (35:30)
Fantastic, that's a great tip. Yeah, absolutely. yeah, the fact that it's free and readily available is just a great starting place. So thank you for that tip. So if a listener wanted to get in contact with you, how do they do that?
Scott Wintheiser (35:47)
So our website, obviously enough, would be the best place. That's lightburn.co.
Andrew Colsky (35:54)
Okay, and if they call you, are you gonna answer the phone?
Scott Wintheiser (35:59)
They call me, I will answer the phone. Yes.
Andrew Colsky (36:02)
Just had to check. Alright.
Well.
I want to thank the listeners for listening to another episode of the BPIC podcast. I want to remind you that we do have that free assessment tool available on the BPIC website, is www.be-picked.com. It'll give you lot of insight as to what Scott was talking about today and the things you might need help with. And he's certainly obviously a great trained resource to help you with those things. So don't be afraid to give him a
or check his website and I'm happy to announce that my new book which is called Left of Trust is available for pre-order on Amazon now so don't be afraid to take a look at that you can find that at our website as well and every week we drop a new podcast with great information great guests and things that will help you build your business so be sure to listen in again next week we will see you then visit us bepicked.com thank you for listening