Lawyer Marketing: Stop Wasting Money on Ads That Don't Work
Direct Answer: Professional service providers grow faster when they combine local SEO, credibility-building content, and strategic positioning to become the trusted choice in their market.
Why Most Professional Services Marketing Falls Short
Many attorneys, consultants, therapists, accountants, and other professionals struggle with marketing because they approach it too broadly.
They try to compete with everyone instead of positioning themselves clearly within their market.
According to Dominic DeJoy, one of the first steps in successful marketing is understanding your position in the marketplace.
The professionals who grow consistently online understand exactly:
Who they serve
What makes them different
Why clients should trust them
How to show up consistently online
Understanding Your Market Position
Are You a Leader, Challenger, or Specialist?
Every professional service business falls into one of several categories:
Market leader
Challenger
Niche specialist
Local expert
Understanding your role helps shape your marketing strategy.
For example:
A market leader focuses on maintaining authority.
A challenger focuses on differentiation.
A niche provider focuses on specialization and trust.
Most small professional service providers win by becoming highly recognizable within a focused niche or local market.
Why Local SEO Is Critical for Professional Services
Local Visibility Drives Local Clients
For professionals serving specific geographic areas, local SEO remains one of the most powerful client acquisition tools available.
Strong local SEO helps businesses appear in:
Google local search
Map results
AI-generated answers
“Near me” searches
Essential Local SEO Strategies
1. Optimize Your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile is often the first impression potential clients see.
Strong profiles include:
Professional photos
Updated business information
Client reviews
Service descriptions
Consistent posting activity
Regular updates improve visibility and trust.
2. Use Localized Keywords
Professional service providers should target location-specific searches such as:
“Estate planning attorney in Miami”
“Chicago business consultant”
“Toronto family therapist”
Localized SEO improves relevance and increases the likelihood of attracting qualified leads.
Why Generic Websites No Longer Work
Personalized Content Builds More Trust
Many professional websites sound identical.
Generic messaging reduces trust because it fails to address the specific concerns clients are experiencing.
Instead, effective websites should:
Answer common questions
Explain the client journey
Reduce uncertainty
Demonstrate expertise clearly
Include FAQ sections
Reflect local experience and understanding
The professionals who get picked are usually the ones who sound the most human and relatable online.
Content Marketing Creates Long-Term Authority
Educational Content Builds Credibility
Professional service providers who consistently create educational content gain a major advantage.
This includes:
Blog posts
Videos
FAQ pages
LinkedIn posts
Podcasts
Case examples
Community education
Platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube allow professionals to remain visible while demonstrating expertise over time.
The goal is not simply visibility.
The goal is becoming the trusted authority clients already feel comfortable hiring.
Differentiation Is the Key to Standing Out
Why Community Engagement Matters
In highly competitive industries, professionals who engage with their local community often gain stronger trust and referral opportunities.
This may include:
Local speaking events
Sponsoring community programs
Educational workshops
Networking groups
Strategic partnerships
People tend to hire professionals they recognize and feel connected to.
Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Marketing
Paid Advertising vs. Credibility Building
Short-term marketing strategies like PPC advertising can generate immediate leads.
However, long-term growth usually comes from:
Reputation
Visibility
Content
Reviews
Relationships
Consistency
The strongest professional service businesses combine both approaches.
They generate leads today while building trust for tomorrow.
The Future of Professional Services Marketing Is Credibility
The digital landscape is shifting rapidly toward trust-based decision-making.
Potential clients are no longer asking only:
“Can this professional help me?”
They are also asking:
“Do I trust this person enough to contact them?”
The businesses that consistently answer that question online will continue to grow.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is local SEO important for professional services?
Local SEO helps professionals appear in nearby searches, map listings, and AI-generated recommendations for local clients.
What type of content works best for professional services marketing?
Educational, question-based content that reduces uncertainty and demonstrates expertise tends to perform best.
Should professional service providers use paid advertising?
Paid advertising can generate short-term leads, but long-term credibility-building content creates more sustainable growth.
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Andrew Colsky (00:12)
Welcome back to another episode of Be Picked, the podcast where we talk with professional service providers about how to build and grow your business. I'm your host, Andrew Colsky, and today we are talking with Dominick DeJoy. He is a B2B paid media agency owner of Osric Digital, and he's got a lot of tips and tricks to share with us today. So Dominic, welcome to the show.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (00:40)
Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me on.
Andrew Colsky (00:43)
So, you know, our audience is small professional service providers and many of them, maybe they're starting their practices, maybe they've been going for a while, but now they're realizing they need to kind of get out there more because they want to pick up more clients and become better known and take advantage of the opportunities that online gives someone like them.
If you could give us sort of just a generalized overview, if someone like that comes to your agency and says, hey, I don't even know where to start. What should I be thinking about? What types of things might you tell them that they should think about? What are some things that are absolutes and what are some things that are nice to have?
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (01:26)
Yeah, I I guess I'm gonna gauge a little bit on kind of like how mature their practice or firm is, right? But I mean, I think on some level you have to think about like, where does what I do sit in the market? As in, not in terms of aspirations, you have to be kind of honest with yourself and be like, how do people perceive me? Both how does...
Google perceive me, like, or like, you know, any kind of search network or algorithm, but also like people I talk to in kind of my community, like, am I like, people perceive me as like number one, in which case I just, I have a good reputation. I need to preserve it. Everyone else is going to be kind of reacting to me, right? That's like kind of the market leader position. Am I someone trying to be number one that can plausibly be seen as a challenger? In that case, I'm going to be trying to counter sell against who everyone perceives to be number one.
and can be like basically attacking, not attacking as in like defaming, but like trying to show how I feel or some gaps that this market leader doesn't fully fill in properly. So maybe for certain people for whom that's important, they should go with me. The third category would be like kind of a flanker. So you're like not number one, you're not number two, but you're kind of in the running and you have some resources to kind of really go at it. In that case, you're gonna wanna try to.
Create a new category or redefine the battlefield, move the fight to kind of like...
how you want to fight the terrain or like most people, are you kind of in the kind of guerrilla position, which is kind of politically incorrect. I'm taking this from a book called Marketing Warfare published in the 80s. So they don't use the exact same terminology exactly, but most people are going to be in
this kind of guerrilla position where you need to find a niche that's kind of small enough to defend. So that's usually where we start. Oftentimes people that come to me, they have very kind of...
speak in very aspirational ways, so I have to kind of like talk them down a little bit. So that's usually useful.
Andrew Colsky (03:31)
Okay, okay. So, so let's follow that through for a second. Person that comes to you, you know, could be a chiropractor. They could be a real estate agent. They could be a bankruptcy attorney. Whatever it may be. So they've got a practice that typically operates in a smaller geographic area, you know, within driving distance of their office typically. And they're hearing
from their colleagues that, man, you you really need to be on LinkedIn or you really need to be on X or you really need to be on whatever, you know, one of multiple different social media platforms and all this stuff. And, and you gotta have a great website and don't forget about SEO. And they're getting hit with all these terms and all these, you know, sites and all these things. Where do they even begin to start? Is there, is there a path that would be most relevant for them? And then,
other things they pick up later or what do you tell them to do?
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (04:34)
Especially if you're local, it kind of makes it easier because your market set is a lot more narrow and you're already niched to a certain extent because you're kind of just providing services in that local area. It means also your competitive set is a bit smaller. I think, you you have to think about what your time frame is. So if your main priority is like transactions, deals coming through right away, then you need to kind of do bot.
what in our parlance is called like bottom of the funnel sort of tactics. So like marketplace sites, for lawyers, there used to be something called law trades for like agencies, there was like Upwork for real estate agents, at least in New York, it's street easy, right? And there you're kind of...
It's brutally competitive. You're pitted against everyone else, right? Because it's bottom of the funnel, transactional, easy, whatever. But it's, you got, you got to do what you got to do to be there to kind of get stuff coming in the door. Next level up from that is like, okay, they've done, these marketplaces have done the work of like creating
or curating an audience of people that are looking to buy. How do they find that? Usually it's Google, either Google Maps or just Google Google.
So then the next thing to focus on is probably local Google search. make sure you have a Google business profile. Make sure it's verified. Make sure it's optimized in the sense of if you have a physical storefront, have pictures of that, have pictures of your team. Make sure the hours of it. You can do a lot with that because you want Google to rank your business on the map pack as high as possible. Try and get reviews.
So that's like the next step up from a marketplace like Street Easy. And you can get pretty far just with that. You don't even necessarily need a website, but it's a good idea. So then the next step above that is having a website. Again, if it's low, I mean, this doesn't really apply as much in like massive cities like New York, but if you're in like a suburb or even like a medium sized city.
One of my clients for a long time is a lawyer in Sacramento, which is like a, it's the capital of California. It's a real city. You know, just probate lawyer Sacramento. like variations of that term were like enough in his organic, his homepage, which is like, it was a little bit more than a landing page, but like a few, a few additional pages, but that was, that was enough.
Andrew Colsky (07:21)
Mm-hmm.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (07:22)
Stuff like LinkedIn, Meta, I would worry about that more if you're like trying to get into like national markets or if, or yeah, if you're just like kind of, if it's, if Google is for some reason too competitive for you or your Google business profile gets banned or something like that. But I mean, LinkedIn is tough and most service providers, I know my temptation when I go on LinkedIn is just to talk about nerdy PPC stuff. Like PPC is pay per click stuff.
And
Andrew Colsky (07:52)
Thanks.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (07:53)
I do get a lot of engagement, but it's all from other like PPC agency owners. It's not the people I want to talk to. So
Andrew Colsky (07:58)
Great.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (07:59)
I wouldn't worry about that too much at first.
Andrew Colsky (08:03)
So, all right, one of the things that you said in there is really making sure that the person is understanding what their particular niche market is and then saying that. So in other words, maybe I am a probate attorney in Sacramento, but I go out there and I create a website about probate law, general, and I, you know, do something else on the web and I again stay very general.
about probate law. In other words, if I really want to be able to focus on a market for me, I need to say that not only that I do probate law, but I do it in Sacramento. And if there's any other modifiers, again, that's going to narrow me to an even more specific niche. And I think some people when they hear that, they think,
but I can do so much more. Why do I want to narrow myself down to such a small thing? What's the realities behind the pros and cons of that?
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (09:03)
Well, the reality is that Google has two different algorithms. They have a local algorithm and then they have a national algorithm. So if you want to, if you go into the national, like it's way easier to rank in the local algorithm. It's much, Google is much more forgiving. So by local, so, but to get into the local algorithm, you just have to use local modifiers. like sacrament, like instead of probate law, Sacramento probate law, right? Sacramento probate lawyer. Then you're in the local algorithm.
Once you're in that algorithm, you can make a lot of mistakes that if you were competing for national keywords, Google would really punish you for. I won't even get into it, like a lot of times if you buy, I'll get into it a little bit. You go on Fiverr and you buy some citations because you read somewhere that like you should submit your site to citations. Google will rank it faster. That's all true. If you buy the wrong kinds of citations, like basically...
from guys that are just selling them in bulk that are maybe offshore. mean, nothing against people that are offshore, but maybe they're just trying to do massive volume and they put you on a lot of spammy sites. The national algorithm will crush you for that, but the local algorithm will not because Google knows these local businesses are not so sophisticated. They don't expect them to really like be very clever about who they kind of get links from.
Another thing I would say about that is that if you go after national terms, then you're competing with people that are like, I'm not even really an SEO, but professional marketers like me who are gonna be like, okay, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna create a niche site around probate law. I'm gonna use all my tricks. I'm gonna build it up over two or three years and I'm gonna sell advertising space to people that want access to my audience. If you're like,
A probate lawyer who's spending 40 hours a week doing probate law, doing a little bit of this on the side, do you want to go against someone like that? Like it doesn't make any sense really. So if you have a local modifier you can add, always do it. You can have multiple local modifiers. So if you have an office in multiple places, then just do the same strategy for every office.
Andrew Colsky (11:15)
Right. Yeah. You know, I one interesting exercise I think listeners can do because I did it once and it was kind of fun. I went on to YouTube and I looked up a term. I don't remember what it was. was it was, you know, like I said, bankruptcy attorney or divorce attorney or something like that. And just videos, videos, videos, videos all over the place. Then I looked up divorce attorney, Washington, D.C.
Totally different set of videos actually. I don't remember what it was specifically that I look for but the thing I look for there was one Person that came up who had videos and videos were not very good But it was the only person
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (11:59)
Mmm.
Andrew Colsky (12:00)
that came up So if I was searching for somebody and I happen to
search that direction Well that person's name is right in front of me and yours isn't right You know if you don't have a video out there your name is not there the other person's name is so
You know, it is really interesting when you when you start thinking local versus global and this is another one that that I read a lot about. There's a lot of attorneys, for example, who are in the personal injury field. So there's huge competition for those keywords and things when when you're looking for ads. Tell us about that local versus national. If someone is a personal injury attorney in Sacramento, California, how could they best
differentiate themselves so that they become more visible.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (12:49)
So personal injury, as I'm sure you know, is probably the hardest, one of the hardest niches in PPC. Certainly you have to go after local terms. The problem is that like the national personal injury law firms are also going to go after local terms in a niche that that's that competitive, right? So you either need to go after things that are like so long tail that
they don't bother, these firms aren't bothering bidding on them. Generally though, they're doing broad match.
Andrew Colsky (13:20)
Define, define long tail for us.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (13:23)
So long tail would just be like very specific versions of a term with like a lot of modifiers. not just like Mesothelioma Lawyer or Sacramento, but like variations of that term that get a lot less search volume. And you bid like kind of exact match.
And then you also really control the bid so that like, if you end up in an auction against one of these like major national firms that's willing to pay, you know, $800 a click or whatever, the algorithm doesn't say, oh, like, you know, let's go for it anyway. So yeah, that's what I mean. I can't, I won't claim to be an expert on personal injury law, PPC. There's like a whole subspecialty of.
PPC agencies that only do personal injury because it's so hyper competitive, but in a broad sense, that's what works. I would also say you can differentiate yourself. The landing pages for these national firms are going to be somewhat generic and probably programmatically generated. So it's just going to be like a, same landing page they use for every other city, but just with the local modifier added.
So what you can do right is you can like, because you probably, probably your listeners only practice in one specific area, like actually pull in like cases you've done in that area, try and get testimonials that are local, make the testimonials look really like people will often buy
a testimony. don't do, I don't even know if it's legal to do in law, but don't do that. Like have people actually talk about their connection to the community. That's a way to differentiate yourself too.
Andrew Colsky (15:10)
So, yeah, you know, in a lot of our other podcast episodes, we talk about the fact that, you know, getting out there in the community in a way that people just get to know who you are and they learn your personality, they learn your values, they see you, you know, maybe they've shaken your hand at the local coffee shop or something, depending on how small or how big an area you're in. But, you know, having
You know, and if you are doing a good job, it shouldn't be that hard to get legitimate reviews that are good reviews, but you have to ask for them. People are not going to typically say, you know, how do I go and review you? But if you say to them, would you mind reviewing us? And here's our link or something. You're going to get a much better chance of getting some, some, you know, valid and good reviews. So, you know, what is the difference for someone who is
They're trying to build their business. Yes, they want clients right away, clearly, but they're also thinking about the future and the long term. What is the difference that they should be thinking about between something like the pay-per-click Google ads and meta ads and LinkedIn ads and all these different types of advertising options where you can put a lot of money out there versus long-term growth? Is there a different strategy between the two?
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (16:36)
I wouldn't say necessarily. mean, I think that the bottom of funnel, the really kind of like bottom of funnel PPC stuff through Google ads and Bing ads and these kinds of marketplaces I was referring to earlier. There isn't, you're not really building a brand, but I mean, you could turn it into a brand building exercise by developing relationships with.
with the customers that are coming in, even if they don't end up choosing you, they can give people with a good, like if you offer like a kind of consultation or talk to them a little bit, you can at least build a kind of, a sort of presence there, they'll remember you. But it is a kind of short term, you stop bidding in the auction and Google is gonna stop showing you. And it's not like you're getting brand, I mean, your name is there, I guess that's good. With advertising.
It's really more about, I mean, there's multiple layers of advertising, but if you're doing kind of like mid funnel awareness sort of thing, sorts of things, not everyone has to do this, but the game is basically to get in front of your ideal customer.
I mean, probably in given market, I do a lot with software, software companies, like kind of B2B software companies where like usually people are in long-term contracts of at least a year. So.
Even though someone's in your target market, can only buy, only 5 % of your target market is actually in a position to change vendors at a given moment. So the game is basically to get in front of them enough times per month so that when that contract comes up for renewal, they like, at least remember that you exist, associate you with that category and potentially consider you. For certain kinds of local businesses, I think that does apply and it could be worth doing.
I can imagine there's a reason why some local law firms or just like their billboards are everywhere and like they're spending a lot of money on TV commercials and things like that and like you have to be making a lot of money to do that. But there's a reason why they do it because a large percentage, it's not just direct response advertising. It's just like a lot of people like, they're like, I was in a car accident and like, let me call the name that I remember from the billboard, you know.
Andrew Colsky (18:53)
Great.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (18:54)
So yeah, and I think a big mistake people make is they expect that those sorts of ads to have the same immediate return on investment that like a Google ad would have. And it's a totally different kind of advertising.
Andrew Colsky (19:09)
So if you're a much smaller practice, maybe even a solo practitioner, and you want to do something that's going to address that, what you're calling the middle of the funnel, being consistently in front of people, keeping yourself there so they can remember that you exist, those types of things, what options are available to you if you don't have this budget for big billboards and other types of ads like that?
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (19:38)
Yeah, I mean, it depends a little bit on where your prospects are. I think if you are...
Like if you're selling B2B and people read trade publications and things like that, and they're local, trying to get in those publications is like, oftentimes you could finagle a way to be kind of like a columnist. Some trade publications, God forbid I've heard, you can maybe work out a deal where you like pay to be a contributor. I don't know, I heard that somewhere. That's a way.
Another way is just buying ads in those things. That can be kind of expensive, but if you're intentional about where you do the media buys, it can make sense. Also producing content, if there is a way to of keep people engaging with your content. But it really depends on who your ideal customer is. Like, I guess in my case, right, I don't have...
relatively small agency. I don't have like a huge budget for top of middle funnel and top of funnel stuff, but I do run LinkedIn ads. I don't spend, I mean a lot of LinkedIn ads agencies would say unless you're spending 5k a month don't bother with LinkedIn ads, but I run them anyway. I spend like a thousand dollars a month and I just have like a target list that I uploaded which is like my kind of like 500 companies that I would like to work with and then
Andrew Colsky (21:08)
Mm-hmm.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (21:09)
I
added additional targeting layers to trim it down to a small enough size that like a thousand to two thousand dollars a month would get those ads in front of people three to five times a month. And that's how I, that's how I did it. If you're doing a local services business, I sell B2B nationally. If you're doing a local services business, you can do the same thing with Meta. So that's also an option.
Andrew Colsky (21:32)
Right. So, so do you see any return on that? Like the ads that you're doing on LinkedIn? Does it pay off? Is it worth it to you?
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (21:42)
sporadically. it's not like Google Ads where I'm trying to get 3 to 4x return on ad spends based on first year contract value every month. LinkedIn Ads is more like, but I'm kind of at the mercy of what comes in, LinkedIn Ads is more like I get one of like a perfect customer once every four or five months from it.
So I'll be in the hole four or five months in a row and I'll be like kind of tempted to turn it off. And then someone who's like really just like my ideal customer and like because they're my ideal customer, they're my reference clients really land much better with them and the whole sales process is way easier. And then I remember what kind of why I do it. So it has a similar return on ad spend to Google, but like not consistently. It's more like you have to look at it over the course of a full year.
Andrew Colsky (22:39)
Right, okay, and then I wanted to follow up on something you said about like being in a trade journal for example, so maybe you are
trying to think of a B2B thing that would have a local trade journal.
I don't know. Something health related, let's say. Let's just say there's a trade journal that's hitting your particular market. So B2B, the businesses that you want to attract, they have a trade journal. You want to get your message in front of them. The difference between you getting an article in that journal or having a regular column versus paying for ads, is there a difference or does it not matter which way as long as you're in the trade journal?
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (23:31)
I mean, I think the organic presence is more valuable. It's tough to kind of quantify, but I'd rather, I'd certainly rather have the organic presence or both. You know, maybe you do both. And then if you can't get your own, if you can't get your own column right away, just like start, you know, feeding that you can be a source. I mean, a lot of these journalists are like, especially for these trade, they don't have a lot of time or like they're part-time or whatever.
If you can kind and they don't have a
lot of time to like find a diversity of sources, if you can kind of get in front of it, if you can build a relationship with them so that it's really easy for them to quote you as a source, they'll usually keep coming back.
Andrew Colsky (24:12)
Okay, and I believe that if you Do purchase a regular ad spend in some of these journals if you just ask will they also post an article that you do or something oftentimes they're happy to do that from from what I hear so you get kind of a double Double whammy there. You know, you're seeing more than just in an ad So so let me ask one other thing for clarification
You know, throughout our conversation, you've referenced this funnel and you've referenced bottom of the funnel and middle of the funnel. Can you just give us the benefit of an explanation? What is a funnel? What do we expect to see at different stages in a funnel and why would somebody need one?
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (25:00)
Yeah, mean, a funnel is like sort of perfect way of thinking about it, but it's just kind of ubiquitous. So I use it and to a certain extent, I think that way. So, and there are different versions of it. think the most basic is top, middle, bottom, but there's also like, I forget the exact, there's like kind of, there's like awareness, basically it's like awareness, consideration, then kind of transactional, commercial, and then transactional. There's different versions.
Basically, are people at the kind of, the people you want to build awareness with are people that are not really necessarily aware they have a problem, but they might develop the problem that you solve at some point in the future. So this is like, and then the people that are kind of a little, at the middle of the funnel, I would say, are like aware that they have a problem, but they haven't really decided necessarily how they're going to think about the problem or conceptualize it.
So like maybe they're having like an argument with their business partner, it's not going super well. They haven't really decided whether they want to hire a mediator, whether they want to hire like a mental health counselor. I mean, all right, let's say they decided they want to go like some kind of sort of legal route, but like they haven't decided where they want to hire a mediator, whether they want to hire like a litigator to sue their partner or like what they want to do. So that's kind of like, they're just researching.
They know they have this problem, but they haven't decided exactly how they want to approach it. And then there's the bottom of the funnel would be people that are looking for, you know, a litigator in Peoria, Illinois, who specializes in partnership disputes or, or, or in mediation or, or, or something like that.
Andrew Colsky (26:47)
Okay, okay. So, all right, let me see. I know, one other thing that I did want to ask you about is today we're hearing all about how AI and AI search is impacting, you know, people's use of the internet and finding people. Tell us a little bit about your experience with that. If you're working with a client and they ask you, do I need to worry about this? What is your response to them?
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (27:18)
So it does matter in general. For local businesses, doesn't matter very much. Again, two algorithms. So Google is not going to crush local businesses by putting AI overviews over transactional local terms. I think that would be bad PR for them, especially, I mean, right now, the Biden administration is over, so they're not getting pursued as aggressively as they were before.
I think it would be a bad look. What it does affect is things like blog content that you used to be able to rank to build a relationship with people. That's just kind of eviscerated now. So at this kind of more informational level, it's kind of a problem. also, I think something that's a little bit out of left field is that the value of information
has dropped quite a lot. So just giving people information that isn't personalized, that isn't packaged through some kind of persona or a relationship or whatever, the value of that has dropped down a lot. No one's giving you their email to get basic answers. I mean, some people are, but the effectiveness of that tactic has dropped quite a bit.
I guess one last thing to be aware of is like, yeah, I mean, it's probably a good idea to monitor who's coming in the same way you'd monitor your position in the map pack or in like the search results for Sacramento Probate Lawyer. If someone searches in Chat Cheap ET, like list me some good Sacramento Probate Lawyers, you you want to be aware of whether the LLMs are listing you. There's some like cheap software that you can use to do that.
But the good news is actually ranking in that is basically the same as with SEO, except it's actually easier to manipulate, which is both good and bad. Something I talk about quite a lot. Google, since they've been doing in search for like more than 20, when did they become dominant? Like basically 25 years ago, they developed very sophisticated ways of determining like who's credible and who's not when people make claims. mean, it's still easy. You can still game it, but it's hard. LLMs just repeat whatever is in there.
whatever they're ingesting. So if
Andrew Colsky (29:39)
Right.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (29:39)
you want to game it, you can just, you know, buy junk listicles, publish press releases about your junk listicles. And then at a local market, I mean, you're going to be there right away. I'm not condoning that tactic. I'm just saying that it's
Andrew Colsky (29:55)
Right.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (29:56)
something that people are talking about. And as of right now, which is like May, 2026, it works. And the LLMs have not integrated any kind of source validation process really.
Really at all. Almost to like a scary extent because people are using it for like medical advice and things like that. And like the sources that are being pulled. Look, if you ask, I mean, if you ask general things, it will generally pull from like NIH and like medical journals and things like that. But then if you ask it, like, okay, like of these products that you've been talking about that are like approved, which is the best one, it's just going to be Healthline affiliate spam articles, basically.
really awful. Anyway, that was maybe more than you wanted, but that's my take.
Andrew Colsky (30:40)
Well, but so just one one more question for clarification. So so if I am a physical therapist and I'm in a particular area, I don't know, Des Moines, Iowa, whatever. And I know that when people go on Google, they typically if they're looking for something like me, they'll say, you know, physical therapist near me. The common term.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (31:06)
Yeah.
Andrew Colsky (31:06)
Now when you go on to Google you get that sort of AI Gemini thing that comes up first before you start getting all the listings. So if I want to do whatever I can in a legit fashion to make sure that I can be found when that comes up, is there anything specific that I can or should do or is it more kind of buying into one of these programs that's going to kind of game the system.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (31:34)
Well, so two things. One is for most terms, if you add near me or a city, it doesn't trigger an AI overview still.
Andrew Colsky (31:45)
okay.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (31:46)
So you're kind of protected there.
Andrew Colsky (31:48)
Okay.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (31:49)
The risk is more if they go into AI mode or if they don't go to Google at all at first and are just using ChatGPT or Clot. So if you want to be listed in one of these AI lists,
The best way is to do media, like I said, it can be local media. And then whenever there's a noteworthy press mention or if you get an award in the industry or whatever, do a press release to feed the LLMs with content about how you were kind of mentioned. So it doesn't have to be this spam stuff. You can do it in a more legitimate way and it will still, especially at a local level, it will work.
If you're in like the kind of, if you're white labeling creatine or like protein powder or something like that, then you need to do the spam tactics. But for this kind of local service provider, you can just do like, get mentioned in two articles a year and win an award every couple of years, do a press release about how you won the award and you should be good.
Andrew Colsky (32:53)
Great, great. All right, well, we are out of time for this particular episode. So this is Dominic DeJoy from Osric Digital. Thank you so much, Dominic. If people wanted to find you, what would be the best way to find you?
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (33:10)
Yeah, so company website is osricdigital.com. There's like a pretty extensive FAQ section about different topics in mostly in digital advertising. I also have a kind of YouTube channel that I'm starting. That's like kind of, generally it's mostly PPC kind of nerd stuff, but I do kind of branch out a bit. And then LinkedIn, it'd probably be the best way. So that's just, Dominic could join my personal LinkedIn.
Andrew Colsky (33:35)
Perfect, perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. For those of you listening, we bring you a new episode of Be Picked every week. We bring you all sorts of experts, like Dominic in this case, to talk about growing and building your business and getting out there and getting seen because without clients, you have no business and we want to help you get clients. So please join us on additional episodes of Be Picked.
and visit our website www.bpict.com. We'll see you on the next episode of the BPIC podcast.
Dominick DeJoy | Osric Digital (34:12)
Thanks for having me on.