AI marketing for lawyers: Don’t fall for this new scam

With the emergence of increasingly-advanced AI tools, there’s been an overflow of low-quality content and fraudsters trying to make a quick buck with it.

When your clients are facing a vulnerable situation or loss, who do you think they prefer?

1. A lawyer who understands and seeks to learn more about their unique circumstances, OR
2. A lawyer who reduces them to a settlement value?

They’ll always go for the first option. As a boutique lawyer, you have a deep appreciation for the complexity that each case brings. After all, nobody likes to be reduced to just one more brick in the wall.

Unfortunately, ‘AI marketing’ scammers are treating law firms that way. With the emergence of increasingly-advanced AI tools, there’s been an overflow of low-quality content and fraudsters trying to make a quick buck with it.

In this post, we’re going to explore and explain three crucial things your firm should know as AI content proliferates and brokers of cheap content begin to exploit these new tools.

First, we’ll break down why AI-generated content simply won’t get results, and what the New Age of Marketing demands. Second, we’ll highlight the calling cards of shady content brokers. Finally, we’ll explain how we — and any other reputable agency — are different.

So without further ado, here’s how to not get scammed by AI-generated content.

Contents

1. Why AI generated content won’t rank

• • How SEO content used to rank
  • AI content’s major shortcoming

2. The calling cards of an AI content scam

• • It seems too good to be true
  • They promise immediate results
  • Their own SEO is garbage
  • They make promises about a number of backlinks or traffic
  • They use a proprietary reporting dashboard

3. Who’s most at risk?

4. Why a good agency is better

• • A good agency is your partner
  • Transparent processes
  • A custom strategy is proactive and can adjust to changes

Key takeaways

• Your experience is the most valuable thing to include in content, and AI can’t replicate that.
• AI-generated content brokers will make false promises to lure frustrated or uniformed businesses.
• AI content can’t react, nor can it be proactive.
• Set-it-and-forget-it solutions don’t exist in marketing.

Part one: Why AI-generated content won’t get results

If you see any results from AI-generated content, they won’t be the ones that matter for your firm. Yes, you might be able to rank for some queries that are loosely related to your practice. But if it’s bringing the wrong people to your site, does it really matter?

Now, we’ve made a claim here. “AI-generated content won’t get results.” What reason — what evidence — do we have to back that claim up? Let’s break it down.

Here’s how SEO content used to rank

Bear with us for this background: prior to the release of ChatGPT, the best content from law firms (aka the stuff that ranks) met three criteria:

1. It demonstrated Expertise. WebMD demonstrates expertise by using qualified writers, fact-checkers, and citing their sources.
2. It demonstrated Authoritativeness. Gallup ranks highly because of their in-depth primary research.
3. It demonstrated Trustworthiness. Investopedia ranks highly because people trust it to provide accurate information and be upfront about risks.

Together, these criteria combined to make EAT. And it was broadly a good way to assess and rank content.

But then came ChatGPT.

Suddenly, anybody with access to the internet could generate content that seemingly met EAT. (The keyword here is ‘seemingly.’) So, being the unstoppable juggernauts they are, Google reacted.

In a blog from December 15, just weeks after ChatGPT’s release, Google announced it was adding another E: Experience. They wanted content to demonstrate Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness, and now Experience. Behold: EEAT.

AI content’s major shortcoming: It can’t fake experience

And now we finally return to the AI-generated content that’s being peddled to law firms across the country. AI-generated content is like predictive text on your phone. It’s guessing what comes next based on your input. ChatGPT does that, but at a massive scale.

It’s incredibly impressive. But it’s a little useless for EEAT because it has no experience. It can only summarize what others have already written.

The main reason that AI-generated content won’t perform well is because it has nothing new insights or information to bring to the conversation. And that’s not what Google wants to show in its search results. While there’s no certain way to detect AI-generated content, search engines and your readers can smell it.

AIs like ChatGPT are fundamentally similar to predictive text. They’re better, but still far from perfect. 

Part two: The calling cards of an AI content scam

So, what should you and your firm be on the lookout for when it comes to these AI-generated content scams? You probably don’t need to be told. Like we said, readers can smell AI-generated content, and you can smell a scam when it’s sitting in your inbox. But, for good measure, let’s highlight some red flags:

1. It seems too good to be true

They’ll promise to deliver everything you want and more, and you only have to pay peanuts. It’s the marketing equivalent of the Nigerian prince who just needs a wire transfer of $1,000 to get home and reward you handsomely for helping.

The thing about these scams is that the price will be however low it needs to be to make victims bite. After all, a snake oil salesman doesn’t expect repeat customers.

If a marketing solution seems too good to be true… it probably is. 

2. It promises immediate results

When you work with us, you’ll get results. But it won’t be overnight because that’s not how marketing works. Anyone who’s done meaningful work in the industry will tell you that straight up. Our case studies showcase impressive results, but they’re the work of months and years. Not days or weeks.

Bad actors shilling AI-generated content will tell you what you want to hear. If a firm has been plugging away at marketing for a couple months without much reward, they might be all-too-willing to believe someone who promises immediate results.

Left: What AI-marketing scammers promise. Right: What real results look like: messy.

3. Their own SEO is trash

If a business claims to be ‘experts’ on content, they should probably be meeting the bare-minimum best practices for SEO, right? Yes — we’re not being sarcastic this time. If they’re claiming to be experts, go check it out.

But what if you don’t know how to check? Talk to someone (like us) who does know, and invite us to join a call with the content broker. If they’re legit, they’d be happy to join a call with us. But a scammer will avoid conversations with someone who can call them out.

4. They make promises about backlinks and traffic

The phrase, ‘guaranteed backlinks and traffic’ is kind of like ‘sustainable scorpion bites’ or ‘transparent plane crashes.’ It sounds good until you think about it.

Let’s say that we promise you something that’s out of our control (1,000 site visitors, for example). How could we possibly meet the expectations we set? There’s only one way: by lying.

Bot-generated traffic and backlinks can both be purchased. It’s not that hard if you just don’t care. Not only is this super shady, but it will ultimately lead to your site being penalized by Google, the SEO equivalent of going bankrupt.

In any other setup, it would be pretty easy to determine whether you were getting bot traffic from a fraudulent AI content scheme. You’d just look at Google Analytics or any other reporting dashboard. And this leads us to a final red flag to watch out for…

5. They use ‘proprietary’ reporting dashboards

You know the old adage about how a lie begets a lie, and you just have to keep covering them up? Bot traffic creates that problem for these snake oil salesmen.

First they lie and say they can get you traffic. Then they lie and say they got it. But anyone with an ounce of common sense will ask to see the proof. So, they lie and pull up some random numbers that make them look good.

If you’re working with a marketer and they’re showing you results, you shouldn’t believe a word they’re saying unless they’re showing you data directly from your site. This means it’s from:

• Google Analytics 4
• Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) (this pulls directly from Google Analytics)
• Google Search Console
• Ahrefs or Semrush

Here’s why: you can’t cheat these platforms. They’re recording information on your site, not just making it up. There’s no way to manipulate data in these platforms to make it look impressive when it’s not.

If an ‘AI marketer’ tells you it’s sunny, go to the window and check it out yourself.

Who’s most at risk?

Currently, from our own observations, law firms are the most targeted group by these scammers. However, we expect that these scams will proliferate among highly-competitive, semi-local industries. We’re talking about folks who are:

• Realtors
• Specialty medical providers
• Home service providers

If you have connections in these industries, pass the word along, and be extremely cautious about dealing with AI-content brokers.

Part three: How a good agency is different

Okay, okay, why trust us? We’re an agency, telling you not to use a service that’s a competitor to our services.

If you’ve been approached by an AI content broker, their pitch is probably positioned as an alternative to marketing agencies. And honestly? Fair play. A lot of agencies do work that’s mediocre at best.

But what about a good agency? What differences are there, and why is a good agency better than cheap, AI-generated content?

Good agencies are partners, not mystics

A common feature of shady content brokers is the tendency to mystify SEO and content marketing. Now, there’s a lot to know about SEO, and it can be unpredictable, but it’s not rocket science.

Disreputable businesses will make it seem that way to create fear and exploit uncertainty. A good agency, on the other hand, will help you understand your strategy and the tactics behind it. We want to empower your firm to make better decisions, and education is part of that.

SEO isn’t sacred knowledge. Don’t trust marketers who try to keep you in the dark. 

The working relationship is built on transparency

One of the most important elements missing from AI-generated content farms is transparency. If you work with one of these scammers, you have no way of knowing that the content your firm is getting hasn’t been recycled a dozen times. You won’t know if you’re really getting results, or just being told so.

Those risks aren’t present with reputable agencies. You don’t need to trust them because everything is out in the open. With us, you’ll always have full access to reporting tools.

A strategy managed by humans is flexible and proactive. AI isn’t.

Finally, there’s the issue of automation. In business and marketing, automation is a lifesaver. It makes tedious processes efficient and painless. It saves money. But it can have drawbacks too. Quality often suffers, and automation leads to rigidity. Both are unacceptable in digital marketing.

Your content needs to be outstanding. And your strategy will need to change as algorithms update and begin to favor or penalize tactics that previously worked. AI-generated content can’t give you either of those things, but a good agency will.