Transcript
Al Ludwig (00:00)
Firms that do it are thinking long term. They’re thinking lifetime value. They’re thinking client referrals. You know, I live in Louisiana. Louisiana, the minimum policy limit is 15,000. That’s
Cassidy Lewis (00:09)
Ain’t it ten thousand?
Al Ludwig (00:11)
a very small case. But if you’re a law firm thinking about the future, you’re taking that case every time and working it and doing the best damn job that you can do. Cassie Lewis, thanks for joining the law firm brand builders podcast.
Cassidy Lewis (00:23)
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Al Ludwig (00:26)
Well, here’s what I love about your story. You got your current job through a referral, you interviewed at a law firm, didn’t get it. A year later, that same firm, because they were impressed with you, sent you to Cooper Hurley, which I assume they’re friendly, and now you built a career turning referrals into systems. I know you talk a lot about that on LinkedIn and at conferences. So what do you understand about law firm referrals?
That the rest of the industry keeps getting wrong.
Cassidy Lewis (00:57)
You
came out with a banger. Introduce something else. Okay, the thing that I think I understand about referral marketing that sometimes can be missed. People think that it’s inconsistent. People assume that if I really try to go out and build out all these referrals, one month it’ll be twenty and the next month it’ll be zero. And one month it’ll be they they think it yo yo’s and I haven’t found that to be true.
It’s just it’s not as it’s much more dependable than people think that it is.
Al Ludwig (01:31)
Gotcha. Do you think they think it yo yo’s just because they don’t understand how to properly i implement it and kind of see forward those relationships regularly?
Cassidy Lewis (01:41)
Yes, I think it comes from two things. I think that consistency in any channel requires consistency from the brand. Right. And so we get it with TV, we get it with billboards, right? you gotta be consistent, you gotta be consistent, but you have to apply that to humans also. And then I think there’s a lack of systems, which is actually a part of the consistency, but is important enough to talk about by itself. You have to you have to have a system in part because
Relationship building, referral marketing is burdensome. And if you don’t have a system to support you, you’re gonna fail. It’s it’s going to. I don’t care how much of an extrovert you are. It it none of none of that matters. If you don’t have a follow-up system, if you don’t have a system for when somebody stops referring, if you don’t have a system for when somebody is referring a lot, you have to have a system for all of it.
Al Ludwig (02:32)
So if you’re looking to build a referral partner that you’ve got a warm connection to at this point, but maybe they haven’t sent you anything, what practices and systems are you putting in place to try to make that a regular referral?
Cassidy Lewis (02:48)
Okay. Now there’s two types that I love. Are we talking client referrals, like former client referrals, or are we talking attorney referrals?
Al Ludwig (02:57)
I’m
I’m talking attorney or business referrals right now. Yeah. And then we’ll segue a little bit into the client referrals.
Cassidy Lewis (03:04)
Okay. So if I am talking about a system for attorney referrals, one of the things that we’ve done at Cooper Hurley injury lawyers is what we call next four. Right. And so we I’m a numbered dork. I’m a data dork. And I think that I know that numbers should help us make decisions. So we will look at a list of attorneys that have that used to refer us or that have the capability to refer.
So maybe they just open up their own shop. Or maybe they really do family law and they might get some injury calls and they don’t really do that. They need to send it to us. So I send around a list of attorneys and I tell them to basically to highlight four attorneys. Okay. These four attorneys will be the attorneys that I’m trying to not say the word attorney so much. That that attorney, our internal attorney will reach out to throughout the year. Right. So today you’re an attorney.
You have these four attorneys, these four external attorneys that you keep up with throughout the year. And I tried to make it as easy as possible. So Q1, hey, Al, you reach out. I don’t care if it’s lunch. I don’t care if it’s a text message, right? It can be anything in between. You reach out. Okay. Q the marketing department does something. So we’ve done March Madness gifts. So we’ll send we’ll find their their next fours undergrad school.
And send them a glass or something and say, Hey, happy March Madness. Q3, you reach out again. Q four, maybe we’re offering, we have a minor league hockey team. We send out an email and say, hey, look, would love to come to, would would love to meet you at Admirals game or whatever it is. All whatever it whatever happens, it’s all set up the December before the next year so that there is something in place. And then when they do refer, right?
When they whether it’s an intake or a case, that’s another thing. People get so hung up on the case, the case will come. And you have to teach them how to refer to you. But when they start sending in intakes or cases, there’s a system for that. There’s a gifting system for that. There’s a system for how often we keep in touch with them. All of those pieces. Because people think of the system is just like, yeah, I have to meet you and then you gotta send me a case and I’m gonna say thank you. No, there’s you have to treat them almost like a part of the client.
Right? Are you keeping them updated with what’s taking place in the case? Are you calling them every now and again saying, Hey man, look, we’re gonna we’re gonna go ahead and take this thing to trial. This is why. They’re vested, right? They’re invested. So I think
Al Ludwig (05:45)
Do so the the the attorneys are a part of the process, which I I love. that w when I was in house I deliberately made them part of the reviews process because there was more t we have a bunch of attorneys and they can do more when you put more people on it, they could do a half ass job at it and still do better than one person trying to do it nonstop all the time. Right. at least that was my theory with it. Do the do the attorneys get any type of incentives from i if the the referrals are coming from the people that they are most often in contact with?
Cassidy Lewis (06:17)
No.
Al Ludwig (06:18)
Okay.
Cassidy Lewis (06:18)
I mean, but I mean it and it that gets into how your attorneys are paid. Mm-hmm. Right? Because a lot of times if again, Al is the attorney, I’m the attorney friend, and I refer the case, Al, you may want to work the case. Yeah. You may decide, hey, I’m gonna go ahead and work the case. And what we know to be true at Cooper Hurley injury lawyers, attorney referred cases are bigger cases. Right? So yes, in a sense, but no. And what we
It’s part of their job.
Al Ludwig (06:48)
Yeah. And and why why why do you feel why do you feel or wh wh why do you think the attorney referrals are the better cases?
Cassidy Lewis (06:57)
Data. The data. So there are there’s a lot of conversation about well, you know, because people are now comparing digital cases to attorney referred cases, right? Your cost per case for a human will always cost less than digital TV, billboard, or whatever. So now I’m hearing people say agencies. Don’t you say this? You don’t say this.
Agencies say, well, you gotta pay your you gotta you have to fee share. And it’s a good point until the data shows. When I looked at our top twenty cases for twenty twenty five, ten of them came from attorneys. With the fee, without the fee share, they still would have been top twenty cases. Yeah. You think I’m gonna not accept a twelve million dollar case because it didn’t come from billboard or and or I have to fee share?
Al Ludwig (07:53)
absolutely. And there’s firms out there that will also further along in in those big cases deliberately work with external partners who have been doing this for 30 years and are some of the most respected people in the in in the industry because they know if I bring this person on, yeah, they’re getting a fee split and they’re getting a lot of it. But I’d rather have their intellect in there and just
Sometimes the safety net, right? Maybe it didn’t lead to a much bigger case value, but you’re more confident that you got the case value that you were going to get, even if it you had to work with someone who isn’t necessarily in your firm because you have, you know, the attorneys out there, they have these long term trusted relationships with other top litigators in the state and in their markets that they’ve known for 30 years that they went to law school with, right? And that that they’ve been in the courtroom with. I look at it in a in a similar
manner to that, whereas, well if I’m gonna pay a premium to make sure that I get as much out of the case on the back end by bringing on some co counsel, I’ll certainly do it up front, especially if I know that those cases are going to be more valuable because the people sending them to me are vetting them way better. They understand what we’re more likely to take. And that that’s that’s what I kinda understand from the attorney referrals and the client referral side is the cases typically are better because
They’re sending you people that they’re vetting through the process, whether it’s because the client’s been through the system and they understand what makes a case or, you know, the attorney is an attorney. They sh probably have a pretty good idea.
Cassidy Lewis (09:32)
Right. But and now I’m interested, did you have a formal attorney referral marketing program at when you were
Al Ludwig (09:41)
I I did not run like a an an official one. We had eternal referral partners. It lived a little bit more in intakes and ops than it did in marketing. I was more on the kind of d direct marketing side, the brand marketing, the rest response marketing. But it was always a big a big part of it because I think people forget that even the referrals are tied in into it all because the more your name’s out there, the more likely people are going to refer.
cases over to you, the more likely you probably are a larger firm have more attorneys, have more employees that have more contacts at other law firms across your markets because they they worked there before, right? And you’re you’re creating these relationships just by your growth. And that was a big part of it. We we did a lot of client referral marketing, but we didn’t we didn’t do a ton or like my team specifically didn’t focus too much on the professional referrals. We did create make quotas for it.
But we did that person that was in charge of it consult it with the attorneys in intake more to try to get those numbers up rather than the marketing department doing anything really deliberately.
Cassidy Lewis (10:51)
Okay. Okay. Yeah.
Al Ludwig (10:53)
What are million dollar relationships?
Cassidy Lewis (10:55)
Those attorney referrals.
Al Ludwig (10:57)
Yeah.
Cassidy Lewis (10:59)
Yeah, that was the name of my presentation at PILMA this year. Million Dollar Relationships Building an Attorney Referral Marketing Program. I’m sorry, system. And I went through next four, I went through I think just about everything that we do to make sure that we have a system in place where we’re connecting with attorneys. I talked about the events. I just I talked about all of it.
Al Ludwig (11:25)
How large is your attorney referral network that’s coming into Cooper Hurley, if you can say?
Cassidy Lewis (11:30)
How many referral partners do we have?
Al Ludwig (11:32)
Yeah.
Cassidy Lewis (11:34)
my god, I don’t know if I know that number. And I say that because I know my regulars, right? I know my top fifty. But we get cases or and and or intakes at random. Somebody moved today, somebody moved to the area. It’s a few hundred.
Al Ludwig (11:52)
Okay. I mean that’s that’s really healthy.
Cassidy Lewis (11:55)
Yeah, in our database there are about fifteen hundred to two thousand attorneys that we that are that are our friends that we send our mailings to, our emails to, that we send events to. most of are here in Virginia but a good chunk are, you know, around the nation ’cause we try we try to have an a referral partner in a good chunk of the states. Like I want one in every state soon.
but our surrounding states are the most important. But it’s a few hundred, two fifty three.
Al Ludwig (12:28)
That’s that’s really healthy. How many attorneys do you all have?
Cassidy Lewis (12:31)
Eleven, twelve.
Al Ludwig (12:32)
Yeah, that’s a I mean, that’s a really healthy network of of referral partners for sure. I mean, and that that alone I imagine with the the program you put in place, it’s probably a a a decent chunk of the marketing budget. No? It’s
Cassidy Lewis (12:44)
No. Marketing to do
Al Ludwig (12:46)
not. It’s just the time and effort.
Cassidy Lewis (12:48)
Yeah, that’s the thing. So that you you we’re talking about things that people don’t understand about referral marketing. The resource needed is not money. The resource needed is time. Right? We I can’t it’s difficult for me to spend my attorney marketing budget. It is I I created the line item so that I would spend it and I still can’t get there. We have one, two, three, four, five or six in person events.
Al Ludwig (13:15)
Okay.
Cassidy Lewis (13:15)
And we segmented. So like we have we host two six C L E’s and then this year we created Counsel Her. Counselor. it’s a women’s attorney networking group. they had their own two or three events. We had a webinar this morning with Virginia Lawyers Weekly. sometimes we talk business marketing to other attorneys. today John Baker got on the webinar and talked about special cases. So motorcycle, bike, pedestrian.
you scooter all of those things. But yeah, it it’s difficult to it’s difficult to spend that money. It really is.
Al Ludwig (13:52)
My my brain immediately went to giving everybody on the team a certain amount of money and putting the onus on them to you have to pick one referral partner and just do an absolute shock and all from your perspective and see what that turns into and l and let give them the ability to do that. Have you ever d tried anything like that?
Cassidy Lewis (14:10)
Told them before. And see, it they’re not wrong. And this this has to be talked about too when we’re talking about referral marketing. And I’ve actually heard a speaker talk about this. She was talking about B2B marketing. And she was, well, she was talking about B2B, and she was like, it’s not marketing. She said it’s relationships. And so if I went and bought my best friend a Mavato watch, right? Like some really expensive gift.
She’d be like, Thank you, but what? Like, I mean, dinner would have been fine. Yeah. And so if it’s a real relationship, you know, do the concepts from giftology truly apply? True. And then the question is, was it a real relationship? Like, you know, there’s there’s pieces to this, but they they felt awkward about buying some really extravagant.
Al Ludwig (14:59)
It’s always it’s it’s better for them to have in their head their head that, you know, when they need sponsors for their son’s T ball team, that you’re gonna be one of them, no questions asked.
Cassidy Lewis (15:10)
Exactly. Exactly. And we do it every single time.
Al Ludwig (15:13)
And that’s a relationship thing, right? ‘Cause you know you’re not really asking when when you you just sign a s send it to You’re like, Yep, signed the check. Here you go. Right.
Cassidy Lewis (15:21)
Exact e exactly.
Al Ludwig (15:23)
switching over to the client referrals, which I love that lane. And trying to think of unique ways to stay in front of clients and typically also pretty low cost because your database is only so big. It’s not everybody, which is basically what MVA is, everybody who can get injured, which is everybody, and everybody who drives, which is almost everybody. So tell me a little bit about your process to make sure that the client referrals are always taken care of.
Cassidy Lewis (15:51)
We start you start asking for a referral at intake. That don’t mean you’re actually asking for it, but you start impressing your clients so much at intake that they don’t have a choice but to refer. I told my director of client services that before. I want our clients, our we call them ambassadors after they settle.
I want them to almost feel obligated to refer because we’re just so good to them. Not because we asked a hundred times, right? We’ll ask, sure, but we look to impress and over impress our clients so that those when they become ambassadors and we put them in that hero seat, that the referral is there.
Al Ludwig (16:39)
Is there any specific tracking in place that allows you to understand like the the likelihood of once you settle a c case, that client referring another case to you in the next three years or anything like that?
Cassidy Lewis (16:53)
I’m trying to put this together. We had well I shouldn’t say this. We had another software system before this software system that wasn’t great. I wanna do point of origin referrals. You do you know what that is?
Al Ludwig (17:07)
Tell me about it.
Cassidy Lewis (17:08)
So I think I discovered when I was in real estate marketing. So basically, if is a million dollar client, congrats. And then Al refers Cassidy, right? And Cassidy’s a million dollar client. And Cassidy refers Bob and Bob’s a million dollar client. And Bob refers Sally and Sally’s a million dollar. How much money did Al really help you make? Right?
And there’s other mathematical pieces in there because what I want to know also is what window are you most likely to refer in? Is it while you’re a client? Is it three years like you just said, right after? Or like what like and what what impacts that? Like what, you know, is it just the recency of it? we’ve had people do testimonials and their case was five years old and they still cry.
talking about it. They still cry talking about how much we’ve helped them. Is it tied to severity of accident? Is it tied to the person, him or herself? They’re just an influencer and they have a big C O I. Like what are the real pieces in there? And I have a lot of assumptions, but the data is so dirty right now, I can’t get to it like I want to.
Al Ludwig (18:24)
And I I think it’s a it’s going to be very specific firm by firm because the the likelihood the the the likelihood window and where the drop offs are is going to be different for the billboard lawyer who has 200 billboards in your market and is on TV like crazy because they’re ever present, right? They’re always reminding even their clients that that they’re there without even doing a client reach out, right?
Right. I compound that with doing, you know, email marketing to them, social media campaigns specifically to your clients, and other things like next thing you know, it’s it doesn’t really matter, you know, how far along the journey that they were, the likelihood of the referral just increases across the board. and that’s that’s what I’ve that’s what I found with it. And I said three years because I do really believe in a at least from a trackability standpoint.
Cassidy Lewis (19:17)
Uh-huh.
Al Ludwig (19:19)
You have to cut it off at some point. Because it gets it gets more and more and more convoluted the the further out you get. Yeah. And then also when I bring in a case right now, you know, I don’t know what I’m gonna be doing in ten years. I don’t know where I’m gonna be at. I’m gonna know if I if I was in a car crash, right? So like t having that window of like realistic visibility, I think is in is was very important for me. but I did always try to track and again it was hard, it was murky, track by
The source, how likely that person was to refer someone in the future. So just as an example, lead generation, just bottom of the funnel, lead generation, unbranded unbranded, might be it’s probably going to be the lowest, but still it’s something I want to factor in because I know it’s going to be my most expensive cases to get. It’s probably going to be my least valuable cases. But if it has a 20% additional lifetime value because of that referral rate,
I’m calculating that into my long term projections. Easier to do for an established firm than a than a newer firm. A firm like Cooper Hurley, obviously I think it’d be it’d be it’s super advantageous to to look at it that from that perspective because then you’re looking at it not by the the sheer ROI of something, but also the expected lifetime value and and how you can put money back into the efforts because of that.
Cassidy Lewis (20:40)
Right. So the so I wanna back up ’cause now I gotta interview you. So you did
Al Ludwig (20:47)
I I go off on tangents all the time because just ’cause I I start thinking about the my old world, right?
Cassidy Lewis (20:54)
So you did this and what what impacted the l likelihood of a referral outside of marketing channel, original marketing channel?
Al Ludwig (21:06)
Ask that again.
Cassidy Lewis (21:07)
So let me get the did you get the did you do this at your last firm?
Al Ludwig (21:11)
we did we did it probably probably to a s a similar to what you’re doing doing, right? Where you have all these projects and you’re trying to get juice the best out of them and all that. And there were that we we would pool certain certain areas and figure out, okay, this this marketing medium looks pretty bad right now. But is it as bad as as it really shows? And then you dive into, hey, over the last two years, anybody who came in from that marketing source, what how many
referrals came from them. Right. Twelve twelve percent of those people. Okay, well now I can add the average case case value of my referrals to that at twelve percent. And it starts to look like it makes sense. And it also allows us to start identifying marketing platforms that we’re okay with being more expensive. Because it’s it helps it helps get backfilled. Because the you know the more referrals you get, whether that’s attorney referrals or client referrals, the more you can spend on your marketing.
Because that makes up for that marketing cost. That, you know, that marketing cost might not look so great when you do the one-to-one, but the fact that you now have thirty percent of your cases coming from client referrals because you started marketing 10 years ago is something that you that just has to be factored into it. And that’s what we would always try to try to calculate in there. It was never a perfect science, but close enough that allowed us to make strategic decisions.
Cassidy Lewis (22:35)
Okay, okay. Yeah, okay.
Al Ludwig (22:37)
And we were getting it we were getting it tighter and tighter. And but you know, the with those systems they just take they just take time.
Cassidy Lewis (22:44)
yeah. So it’s so much data. One thing we don’t lack as law firms is data. We have so much data. What what we do with them is up to us. But we just we have so much data. I really wanna get into point of origin and lifetime value. I wanna get into all of those a lot better, but
Al Ludwig (22:59)
How do you you’re talking about all the data? How how do you decide what’s the most important data for you to track? Because that is, I think, for any in-house marketer, even even agencies, is always a tricky thing to judge. And I know how much time I spent retooling dashboards and metrics and things that were most important to me over the years.
Cassidy Lewis (23:23)
Why would you ask that? So one thing okay, okay. One thing that I have let go of is that I can decide to track something and then I can decide I am no longer tracking it. We can do that out. Did you know we could do that?
Al Ludwig (23:38)
Yeah.
Cassidy Lewis (23:40)
I didn’t know I had that option for a while.
Al Ludwig (23:42)
And it’s fun to tell your team that too. They’ve been stress they’ve been stressing over tracking this and building it out perfectly. And then one day you just have an epiphany, yeah, this is taking too much time, resources, and the the the the picture’s too muddy anyway.
Cassidy Lewis (23:58)
I don’t need that part. And then I also have decided that I can’t that I want to keep up with certain numbers, but I need to l I can look at them quarterly or semi annually. I don’t have to look at them monthly. And for me, that helps a lot because you know, what is this last year or two, I mean, the impression gate and c like there’s so many like what the like what’s what’s even happening in marketing right now? Like what’s even happening? So I I think
I’m getting better at okay, what what are the outcomes? All right, what are the outcomes of this campaign? Right. So we’ll do we’ll do attorney marketing, right? So obviously what we want are cases. Before we get cases, there has to be intakes. Okay, cool. What are the things that are needed to get there? And this people would not identify this as a KPI, but I do believe in the age old, what gets measured gets managed.
But how many gifts have we sent out this month? How many lunches have we done? How many events have we gone to, right? And so those are the KPIs that I don’t often see with law firms. You know, how many on the client side, how many client gifts were given out? Like y we want reviews, right? Like that’s a that’s a KPI that we all have. If one of the firms listening right now
says we’re gonna put in a client gifting campaign where, you know, firms do it different ways. you know, each employee has a hundred dollars to give to different clients in different ways. The team that gives the most gifts or gives the most consistently will always have the most reviews.
Al Ludwig (25:42)
Mm-hmm.
Cassidy Lewis (25:43)
Right. So we all we’re really good at tracking the outcomes. I think I have gotten better at also tracking the steps needed to get there. that, you know, like, yeah, you know, we can’t control
How many gifts are sent out or whatever, watch it and then start to make the connections. And then at the farm meeting, you can say, Hey, Momo and Sky, stand up. You guys, they had they sent seven gifts out this month. And they also had eleven reviews. Right. And then talk about the connection and talk about why that matters. And da da da da da da da. So deciding what to track is fluid.
Al Ludwig (26:22)
A hundred percent. I and I I’m a big proponent of review quotas for lawyers and or the legal team. the lawyer, the paralegal, all that. And there being repercussions if they’re not at that quota. And now obviously that ends up having to come from the the the top down with ownership.
Cassidy Lewis (26:43)
For repercussions.
Al Ludwig (26:45)
Cases for a for a law firm that’s been around for a while, it’s marketed and
They know how to bring in cases. Cases are always coming through the door and it does and the attorneys don’t necessarily have to do the work to get the cases in the door. They just get assigned the cases. So taking them out of rotation. If they need to come out of rotation for cases, right? You do that, they’ll get the reviews. But that can’t come from the CMO. Right. That that has to come that has to be everybody everybody has to be on board with that. Yeah.
Cassidy Lewis (27:14)
Yeah.
Al Ludwig (27:15)
And I I’m a big fan of that because
one thing that comes out of it is if you have eleven attorneys, right? There’s gonna be one or two attorneys that just kill it. Right.
Cassidy Lewis (27:24)
Yeah.
Al Ludwig (27:25)
Do a good job. And then every month you’re hopping on every month or once a quarter or something like that. You’re hopping on the calls and you’re retraining everybody. And it’s not just coming from marketing because they know how to create systems or and reviews are important to them. It’s us actually a training from the attorneys that are doing doing it well and showing that there’s no one right way to do it. But hey, what are the
the three nuggets that they’re doing that are getting them a ninety percent conversion rate when they ask for a review versus you who’s getting a a twenty percent. And finding those things and seeing it actually play out, I think is is a a a huge and eye opening aspect. Cause as as I mentioned earlier, I’d rather have eleven attorneys or their them and their teams trying to get reviews every day from all their cases than one person in the marketing department.
doing what I consider cold outreach because they don’t they don’t know the client. They weren’t on their case. They don’t have the relationship. And
Cassidy Lewis (28:22)
I don’t know for eleven months.
Al Ludwig (28:26)
we can implement systems, right? We can implement the review systems and you can use that system and it it will make you do better. But there’s no world in which I can go and get as many reviews as you can from your clients. And the training and and and bashing over the head with it.
rewards or punishments for for people who do good or or don’t do well with it is important because, you know, ultimately what they say about how you treated them is the most important thing for your law firm. Because
Cassidy Lewis (28:57)
Yeah.
Al Ludwig (28:58)
that that’s reputation. And reputation, especially in the personal injury space, where these people’s names and faces are out there, reputation is everything.
Cassidy Lewis (29:07)
Yeah.
Al Ludwig (29:10)
Speaking of brand, how much brand marketing do y’all do?
Cassidy Lewis (29:13)
Well, what do you consider brand marketing?
Al Ludwig (29:16)
Yeah, that’s why that’s why I asked it.
Cassidy Lewis (29:18)
The big marketing debate.
Al Ludwig (29:20)
I I consider pretty much all marketing brand marketing, except except for like unbranded Legion.
Cassidy Lewis (29:28)
Yeah, of course. Of course.
Al Ludwig (29:30)
Until it reaches your intake. And then at that point it’s becoming brand marketing because those conversations they’re having are leaving impr impression on that person. It’s becoming an entity who’s coming to case and you’re marketing to that person for their lifetime now. But yeah, I you know consider kind of everything. But I I would say let’s remove client referrals and an an attorney referral.
Cassidy Lewis (29:50)
Advertising. Okay. So you wanna know we do for advertising. Okay. We do T V, billboards, we do a lot of community marketing and I roll community marketing into sponsorships. Also owned giving where we we are doing a big campaign, like we’re about to give schools in our area fifty thousand dollars and then we do community partnerships of minor league baseball, my I need to sign that contract. Minor league hockey, local universities.
Those are our T V and Billboard are our biggest spends. No PPC. Just turned on Chat GPT ads and LSA. Well, we have LSAs, but just turned on Chat GPT ads, got approved.
Al Ludwig (30:31)
So I guess linking back to no P P C why w where where did that decision come from?
Cassidy Lewis (30:36)
Now let me and let me back up. We have branded PPC. So we we protect our name. We’re not that crazy. We cut it on and off every few years. And every time we cut it on, that cost per case, it just doesn’t seem to make sense. I think that now with LSAs, it’s doing a good job of of scratching that itch for me, where I’m like
Should we have this on? Should we have this on? There’s branding in the in the PPC. There’s there is just a lot of other pieces in there that don’t aren’t represented with the cost per case. But we just the clients didn’t seem to be wonderful is the word I will use today. Wonderful, cost per case was high. It just didn’t seem to do and I see I see a lot of firms pulling out of PPC in the PI world, Carcsense specifically.
Now when I coach attorneys or legal marketers, they if they’re in family, if they’re in anything else, PPC is great. Yeah. If they’re if you’re in anything else other than PI it’s great.
Al Ludwig (31:40)
When it comes to MVA specifically. Yes. It’s become it’s becoming like you have to have some big strategy in the back end of it. like you were mentioning that they’re not always that great, right? A lot of that sometimes is the side effect of you’re trying to be cautious with your budget, right? And so you’re not always going to have the top top of page impression share that you want, right? You’re not going to ha you’re not gonna have the highest click share, but because of that.
You’re now getting the people that are on their second, third, and fourth and fifth click and that already got rejected by other law firms or just weren’t were a mess to deal with, right? And so the the cases when you do take them, they’re typically a little less valuable. Although we it it’s it really does depend on the market. The the but the budget is one of the biggest things. If if you have the budget to really go all in on it, we’re finding huge success with a lot of our clients. But it’s because we’re not getting throttled in certain areas.
that then lead to lower quality leads. But I’m still, I mean, this is a law firm brand builders podcast, right? I’m a huge proponent of building the brand, getting it out there, putting putting a face to it, being on billboards. I mean, I ran a thousand billboard campaign, you know, I was internal as a big proponent of that and the way that they work and T V broadcast especially. A lot of people like to to poo poo on it.
But if you if you run it right and know what you’re doing, it it continues to get the the best reach and frequency of any of the video mediums.
Cassidy Lewis (33:14)
Let me wait, no, we g let’s talk.
Al Ludwig (33:16)
Yeah.
Cassidy Lewis (33:17)
We run broadcasts. Mm-hmm. Stay part. Mm-hmm. All my media buyer, every media buyer I talk to says the same thing. It’s the best way to run T V. Let’s let’s debate. Let’s argue for your podcast.
Al Ludwig (33:32)
Okay, let’s do it. Let’s do it. Let’s unless we agree let’s end it on arguing that probably leads us to realizing we’re saying the same thing in a different way.
Cassidy Lewis (33:41)
All right. So what you just said is the philosophy that I keep hearing. And because I am staying in my lane for once in my life, I’m say I’m not a media buyer. I’m gonna give my opinion. Okay. So the theories that I’ve heard, highest frequency, reach, except and then the one that I probably hate the most is if you are injured, you are at home watching TV. Okay, and you see the commercial. Now let me tell you why I hate that. All right. So frequency and reach, yes.
But even though it is in our contract not to, we are always sandwiched between other law firms. Always. Always, always, always. I will be 100% honest. We don’t have the most unique creative. None of us do locally. we could talk creative in in branding another day, because that’s another hill I like to argue about. I don’t believe people get injured and sit at home. I believe you’re gonna go home and watch Hulu or streaming. Or you’re gonna binge watch something.
But I don’t think we’re at home watching the prices right anymore. And I I do not look at T B as direct response. For for PI. I think that there are some instances where c I look at I look at TB as branding. And so we should show up where the people are using CTV to target, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I say all this, but I haven’t put my dollars where my mouth is.
Al Ludwig (35:04)
Yeah, so tell me why my philosophy is wrong.
Al Ludwig (35:11)
It’s for me, it’s it’s all goal driven, right? But I I I’m gonna look at it through the lens of I’m a PI, particularly MVA law firm that’s looking to grow my brand and become a market dominator. Right. I wanna be one of the top three names that people think of in the market. And and with that, I’m I’m looking at how can I reach as many as po people as possible, as cheaply as possible, right? With creative that is made intentionally.
To drive direct response where it makes sense and have a brand lift. So when I run the numbers, broadcast typically makes sense from from that standpoint because you can get CPMs under $5. You go to C T V, you’re getting CPMs of of $15, $20, $25, $30. And so and so CTV is more fragmented. I can’t reach the ad free people. I’m having to get on more platforms and I and I’m not being guaranteed that I’m hitting the same people.
with broadcasts, I’m getting that that reach and f frequency for, you know, a qu a quarter of the cost. And I’m hitting the same people in the same households over and over and over again. And and by the way, the ones that have YouTube TV, Hulu Live, and other streaming services are still getting my my broadcast insertion.
Cassidy Lewis (36:26)
That part makes me shut up. Now that part does make me shut up a little bit. That part is very
Al Ludwig (36:32)
Another another component of it for me. And again, I’m looking at it through that MVAPI dominator lens because I am a I’m a a broad service that can apply to anybody at any random time of emergency.
Cassidy Lewis (36:46)
Yes.
Al Ludwig (36:47)
And so to do that, and especially to first focus on direct direct duct the direct response aspect of it, I need to be in front of people when they’re more likely to take action.
So that means I’m probab I’m gonna be in front of them Monday through Friday, daytime first, making sure I’m getting the appropriate regional frequency that I want for my direct response messaging that, by the way, has four or five different brand memory devices, what I call them, to help you also remember the brand when you need them. But also that person that who was in the rec that needs to call, just like a social media ad, just like a C T V ad, it it’s a direct response component. And and I’ve seen I’ve seen it work as direct response.
And then I’m layering on the brand, what I call the brand building aspects of it. And I call it the brand building aspects because someone’s not calling me during the football game. Someone’s not calling me during the 6 a.m. news. But one thing broadcast is doing that CTV and and other these other pre platforms can can’t do is attaching me to the local and regional feel of the market. When you’re on that local news, you you you can’t insert there on C T V.
Right. You’re you’re inserting on that broadcast station and those still carry a lot of the weight when it comes to pure brand brandability in a market. And you also get a lot of a lot of bonus and added value and relationships from them that are something that C T V can’t can’t mirror for you. I I love C T V. I love it when it’s when it’s used appropriately and I use it for for many of our clients. Good. But
Cassidy Lewis (38:18)
I hear so many media buyers completely against it. I’m like
Al Ludwig (38:22)
It’s just for p for MVA, I wanna it needs to be for me layered in at a at a at a certain point. Now I say that I say that, but I’ve also known people who use it more and have success with it, right? I don’t think there’s there’s no there’s not one way to do this. But when it comes to the pure building of the brand, that’s one reason I’m a fan of broadcast because when you compound all those things together, it’s not one in any one thing about it.
It then makes that impression on broadcast TV for a broad-based service eight times more valuable for me. Compound that with let me do a bunch a bunch of billboards in the market, have some direct response nature to them, but have a big brand ability to them. You do what I call brand moments on 10% of the boards in your market or or or 10% of the time, whichever makes more sense, depending on the buy. And then now you also have your visibility.
in the market where you need it most when people are in their vehicles and they’re most likely to get injured in Iraq. that’s why those two things still work very well for this particular space. And it’s also why the big players, when they move into a market, they dump money into it because they know I’m gonna I’m gonna be upside down this year, but in three years, even even maybe year two, like this is going to pay off and it’s gonna feel like I’ve been in the market forever. Because of how strong I went in year one.
Cassidy Lewis (39:54)
Mm.
Al Ludwig (39:55)
And that’s I g guess that’s my argument.
Cassidy Lewis (39:59)
I think that I think that we as an industry are attack I it and I don’t hate broadcast. I don’t I dislike day park broadcast. I’m not
Al Ludwig (40:10)
I I used to not six years ago, I was that marketer. I was like, why are we doing this so much? Why are we doing so much years?
Cassidy Lewis (40:18)
They could there’s so many in a in a like I one, when I ask media buyers, I’m like, Hey, how often are you watching Day Park TV? Well, I’m not the client and that’s not true.
Al Ludwig (40:31)
And and the thing and and here’s why I don’t care about that question. What? And the and my most the most important finding I have from all of this is I know numerous law firms that have cut their broadcast TV budgets. Yep.
Cassidy Lewis (40:46)
Yeah.
Al Ludwig (40:46)
And every single one of them
Cassidy Lewis (40:49)
Heard it. I’ve heard it.
Al Ludwig (40:51)
has lost somewhere between thirty and forty percent of their cases coming in during that time. And that’s also for me a clear indicator of the direct response aspect that it does repro provide as well on top of the branding.
Cassidy Lewis (41:08)
Because I’ve heard of the firms cutting TV and going all in and billboard. I I feel like if it’s replaced now, I still believe I’m a marketing nerd. Okay. There is nothing stronger than the visual and auditory signals that a T V commercial can give. Right? You have Billboard as featurable, you have radio as auditory, but with T V combining them. I believe that. Right? But I’ve heard of firms cutting T V. Firms are cutting broadcasts. Yeah. And claim to be doing just fine. I think that other platforms have a numbers problem. I don’t know because like isn’t it like like when you look at Nielsen, they do for a family of four, you do C T V, it’s one person, or they don’t know how I think they have a brand I think C T V has a branding problem. I don’t know. It it’s more expensive. I the the industry is so fragmented. But I’m very interested in buying the consumer. So again, I
The philosophy, it doesn’t make sense, and you can’t say that it does. It doesn’t make sense as to why broadcast works. It’s just that I feel like the data is showing it, so we’re there. And I’m just like, somebody jump. Somebody do it. Like somebody
Al Ludwig (42:22)
Some people have some some people, you know, I’m gonna speak to two things. One, what what I referred to where I I’m talking four or five different law firms that I’ve I’ve known, worked with, or worked at that we made broadcast cuts and the the trend just followed it, right? Yeah. In some cases made the cuts and replaced it with something else, and same thing. It still went down, trend didn’t go up. Now there are law firms out there that went all in on various digital components and do wholesale lead buying and do millions of dollars and PPC and and more and more that. And that’s why I was talking a little bit about PPC working. A lot of times it’s it’s is scale. If you’re gonna do it at scale and you’re gonna adjust your operations so that you’re willing to take any case that has a sniff of being taken, even minimum policy limits, then it makes sense. Most firms won’t do that.
That’s Now the the firms that do it are thinking long term. They’re thinking lifetime value. They’re thinking client referrals. And in and in you know, I live in Louisiana. Louisiana, the minimum policy limit is fifteen thousand. That’s
Cassidy Lewis (43:32)
Ain’t it ten thousand?
Al Ludwig (43:34)
a very small case. But if you’re if if you’re a law firm thinking about the future, you’re taking that case every time and working it and doing the best damn job that you can do because you want that client referral in the future. You want more boots on the ground. There are now your walking talking billboards.
Right. And and that supplements your just big visual billboards. And if you do billboards, do it big. Either get a ton of or do some crazy stuff on Be talked about and make their own thing because you get more impressions because people are now gonna talk about your billboards, right? They’re gonna be in there in the shower thinking about your billboard randomly. And it it will. It’s a funny thing to say, but they will. They’re gonna be taking pictures of them, they’re gonna be making videos about on TikTok. And next thing you know, it’s
It’s millions of free impressions because you you did the marketing in a creative way. And when I say creative, it’s not necessarily the the creativity of the message. It could be the creativity of the media placement and how you did it. So I you I got a little jazzed up just talking about this.
Cassidy Lewis (44:41)
No, this is this is what it’s supposed to I wanna get some of my favorite intelligent marketers that have gone deep. Right? A lot a lot of us have breath, but that have just done the work and argue about because I have many hills that prove me wrong. I don’t care. I don’t care. I know I know we I know our numbers.
Al Ludwig (45:05)
Yeah. And and that’s and at the end of the day, that’s the most important part. I if you as the CMO or the CEO or whoever COO at a law firm know your numbers and you’re happy with your numbers and they’re trending correctly, then like who cares what is the best thing to do? Because nobody knows what the best thing to do. Everybody just knows that their bottom line is doing pretty damn well right now with what they’re doing, or it’s not doing well with what they’re doing. And a change needs to be made.
Cassidy Lewis (45:37)
I’m glad I could get you jazzed up. I don’t know how many podcast guests that you’ve had, but anybody else get you that excited? I don’t think so. We’re gonna say no.
Al Ludwig (45:46)
Thank you, Cassidy. I appreciate you getting me excited to talk a little bit about of about a few things I know a little bit about. Good. Good. I don’t know I don’t know everything about those things either. And that’s why I I always like to like to have that disclaimer. You can do it a ton of different ways. This is how I’ve seen a lot of success. But I know some people who are absolutely killing it that are probably way smarter than me, that are running a massive law firm that I’m not running. So you know, just take
Take me on my experience and my experience only.
Cassidy Lewis (46:17)
Good stuff. Good stuff. I’m glad we could s we didn’t settle the debate, but I’m glad we had it.
Al Ludwig (46:22)
And again, depends on the practice area for me. I have certain practice areas where all I want to do is social media. Really? What like is it? It just has an an outsized return. Mass torts. Immigration. I say I say only social media, but it’s not I mean, I like to do more than just but there’s some places where it’s having outsized returns. Im immigration’s a good one. Immigration mass torts. There’s there’s certain like really niche ones that like it’s it’s not a volume game. It’s like
that that it works well just because you you have to find that audience to create the demand because they have no idea that they have a case going on. and I guess the last one, event based. And when I say event based, something catastrophic happened. There was a plant explosion. There was a yeah there there was fraud at a at a certain place. Things like that. If you can get that be the first one to get that up and running in in that market, ’cause it’s usually constrict it to a a certain radius, you’re gonna blow up. And I love y using social media for that. Okay, rapid fire, and then we’re gonna go. Biggest waste of money in most law firm marketing budgets right now.
Cassidy Lewis (47:34)
No. Bad social media. Bad social media ads.
Al Ludwig (47:37)
Social media. I love it. Love it. Okay.
Cassidy Lewis (47:39)
Go look at the if you run social media ads, you’re not sure if they’re working or not, but they’re signing up cases. Go look at your clothes with no fee rate.
Al Ludwig (47:47)
Close with a no fee rate. I like it.
Cassidy Lewis (47:50)
I’m here to make profit sign
Al Ludwig (47:52)
That’s what
Cassidy Lewis (47:52)
up cases.
Al Ludwig (47:53)
I like hearing that because that’s a lot of things that in in the marketing department sometimes isn’t tracked. it stays in ops and legal ops and all that.
Cassidy Lewis (48:02)
Right.
Al Ludwig (48:03)
Important to bring that back. you know, how how many dumps, how many, no fees, all that. Okay, one metric every legal CMO should know cold.
Cassidy Lewis (48:13)
I’m here to make money.
Al Ludwig (48:15)
You should be tracking revenue. I also believe that.
Cassidy Lewis (48:18)
caught up in web traffic and impressions and blah blah blah. How much money we make? Yeah. How much money? Yeah. I mean obviously like cases and stuff, but money.
Al Ludwig (48:25)
Yeah, I like that. You know, I I had websites that had a hundred thousand plus visits per month, but at the end of the day I didn’t care so much about that because I was looking at the cases coming in the door and the revenue coming from it. And if that went in the right direction, then it’s like, Well, that’s that’s working good enough.
Cassidy Lewis (48:39)
Right. Right. I feel like I’m gonna go to sleep tonight. I’ma text you. You know what? I can I get back on it. I have something else to say.
Al Ludwig (48:46)
All right, last one. What’s true today that would have shocked you when you first started out in marketing?
Cassidy Lewis (48:53)
What is true today that would have shocked me when I started in marketing? Eighty twenty rule when it applies to referrals, twenty percent of our cases being referred by attorneys can make up eighty percent of our revenue or something close to it. Never would have didn’t believe in my first year here.
Al Ludwig (49:10)
and then last one, c curiosity for me. What is the percentage of of the intakes coming in that are referral based for you?
Cassidy Lewis (49:19)
Q four last year we were at fifty percent. Wait, attorney and client. Yeah.
Al Ludwig (49:23)
Yeah, combined, combined.
Cassidy Lewis (49:24)
so Q four, we were at fifty, like fifty plus. We’re teetering around forty something ish right now.
Al Ludwig (49:33)
Do you feel like that is a side effect of all the other marketing continuing to just kind of snowball a little bit, bring in more from those sources? And so absolutely percentage
Cassidy Lewis (49:42)
Absolutely.
Al Ludwig (49:43)
goes down, but not necessarily the number.
Cassidy Lewis (49:45)
Well, the percentage goes up and the number goes up. So, you know, when I got here we were at twelve percent. And obviously we have more c
Al Ludwig (49:51)
Twelve twelve percent for referrals?
Cassidy Lewis (49:53)
Yeah, twelve percent of our cases came from referrals. And now we’re forty seven. I’m gonna say fifty. Can I can I
Al Ludwig (49:59)
Yeah. That’s that’s huge growth. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cassidy Lewis (50:03)
But yeah, so a lot of the systems, all of the things, et cetera, et cetera. But when Al refers, Cooper Hurley injury lawyers, and then Cassidy Drives by the Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers Billboard, sympathetical. They work together very well. So it’s all of the marketing that is working together to increase the number of referrals.
Al Ludwig (50:24)
Cassidy, I appreciate it this. I know people can find you at the CMO Academy, which you you own and operate. I can find you there because I keep getting served your social media ads.
Cassidy Lewis (50:37)
Ooh, you should you should tell me how good they are. I haven’t seen all of my marketing team. But you should tell me how great they are.
Al Ludwig (50:46)
I literally I literally got one this morning. I was like, how timely.
Cassidy Lewis (50:50)
Yes, they can find me there. obviously my day job. I’m the CMO of Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers. You can always email me. Find me on my on CMO Academy dot com if you’re interested in the program or just talk and shop. I love talking shop.
Al Ludwig (51:03)
Love it. Thanks, Cassidy.
Cassidy Lewis (51:04)
Thank you so much, Al.
Al Ludwig (51:06)
All right. And you can just hold on now for a second. It’ll