Chris Massaro:
... and when you do that, you can really get all things churning and grow your firm.
Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. Each week, we examine how the best in legal industry go from good to GOAT. I'm Chris Dreyer, Founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the legal marketing company the best firms hire when they want the rankings and trafficking cases other law firm marketing agencies can't deliver.
Here at PIM, we don't just talk about it, we are about it. If you're ready to dominate the personal injury arena and champion your firm, join me at PIM Con, the first ever official PIM Conference. Conquer marketing, network with titans, celebrate excellence and go for the gold this September in Scottsdale at the five star Venetian resort. Secure your place among the elite. Reserve your all-access pass into the Winner Circle at PIMCon.org. That's P-I-M-C-O-N.org, where we take you from good to GOAT. All right, let's get on with the show.
If you don't evolve, your competition will. Chris Massaro offers a fresh take on digital marketing that your firm needs to stay ahead. Chris leads The Search Engine Guys, aka TSEG. Over 520 firms have trusted The Search Engine Guys team to evaluate their online presence and dominate their market. With over 10 years of experience, Chris has honed his skills and mastered the science of law firm marketing.
He's got some great insights for you. He explains how to look beyond cost-per-acquisition, or CPA, for a complete understanding of your marketing spend, and why a skilled intake team is the best way to reduce costs. And he reveals a risk-free way to get mailbox money from mass torts by capitalizing on your existing SEO assets.
Here's Chris Massaro, CEO at The Search Engine Guys.
Chris Massaro:
I played baseball in college. Sadly, that was probably my focus. I was a baseball player first, college second, but clearly switched fast. What's funny is I was waiting tables at Dave and Buster's. I had just graduated college. I was like, I want to do something in sales, something in business. I have no idea what, but the owner of the company at the time, Joe Devine, still is the owner, he comes in for a celebratory thing for his sales reps. They hit, I think their like 2000th client or something like that.
Tuesday morning, I was not supposed to work at all. Truthfully be told, I was extremely hungover. They ran up a gigantic tab at Dave and Buster's. I was sprinting around the whole place and he said, "Hey, you should come in for an interview." I was like, this seems like a fun company. Why not? Came in for an interview and then it's kind of history from there. Moved up through the company and been in this industry for 13 years now.
Chris Dreyer:
We got a lot in common besides just the names. I did sports, I was a waiter, kind of did the same thing. I had a history degree, not a business degree though. Just got into space kind of by chance. For those listening that aren't familiar with The Search Engine Guys, or TSEG for short, what is it that you guys do? Because a lot of agencies, they'll have a different mix of services and cater to different even areas of law. What is it that you guys do? What's your core competencies?
Chris Massaro:
We started out initially as just an SEO company. We grew from there out of a necessity, so we grew into a really full service agency, is the easiest way. We do a lot of paid ads, a lot of SEO still. We also do a ton of mass tort advertising that's really picked up over the past few years. I'd say the easiest way to describe us is we're very much so like, hey, a lawyer comes to us and "Where do I spend my money?" That could be SEO, that could be paid ads. "Where are you going to get the most cases?"
That's really how we manage our clients. We don't have a lot of one-off clients that only do SEO or only do paid because in our opinion, it really has to work together to have long-term success. The easiest way is we're a law firm's partner, digital marketing partner. We don't do any TV or anything but anything internet-wise, digital, we're handling it.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's say you're a small personal injury attorney maybe in a very competitive market, but you do want to invest in advertising. What would you kind of tell that individual? Where would you point them to get started?
Chris Massaro:
There's firms out there that are super happy with, "Hey, I'm getting most of my clients through referrals, but I want internet presence, but I only want to spend $5,000 a month and I'll be happy with that." That's not really a client that I would want to take on or partner up with because we're very into growth. Hey, what's working? Let's double down on that.
When we start with the budget, I think as long as you're willing to grow, you can make that budget work. You got to start on the website first. You got to have a place for people to see you, put yourself into it, put your money in there and then start introducing things like SEO and a little bit of paid and work your way up that way. You have to be a little bit more strategic if you're budget-limited.
Chris Dreyer:
I think it's a perfect answer, and even myself, it's like you want to look for those that want to grow and want to share the transparency. In terms of... Let's just say just general numbers, like what channels... When you're doing it at scale and you're actually in the mix and fighting, what are some of the best channels in terms of a cost perspective? Because there's just so many out there. There's paid social, there's LSA, there's OTT, there's Google Ads, there's a number, geofencing, a different form of Programmatic.
What in general do you see as the 80-20 of people that are really doing great work?
Chris Massaro:
Yeah, it always goes back pretty much to SEO and the best cost-per-case. I tell this to people a lot, the minute SEO stops working, I don't want to do it anymore because it's a pain in the ass. I'm sure you can attest to that. It's difficult. It's not easy. At the end of the day when we're looking at our clients and we say, "Hey, let's look year-over-year what your best cost-per-case was, your best cases too," because we look at case value a lot.
We're not just saying, "What's your best cost-per-case?" It's your best case value. We're still seeing the big six figure cases coming through SEO because they're doing the research, they're looking at the firms in the area. You're coming up first and they're looking at your reviews, they're looking at your presence, they're looking at everything. Those typically are a lot higher value cases than the people that just click first on an ad and sign up, which has a place, but it always does come to that.
I'd say the caveat to that is different funnels. At first, if you're not existent anywhere on the internet, your best cost case is not going to be SEO. It's going to probably be paid because that's direct response. You have to really invest in your site and firm for that to switch. It might be 4,000 a case the first six months you're doing this, but we see all the time below sub 500 per case for SEO, which is really unheard of in this industry, when everyone's kind of looking at a Mendoza line of 2000 to 3000 a case, "I'm happy." Obviously, the ROI along with that, but still every day we're seeing the best ROIs coming from SEO.
Chris Dreyer:
I agree, and I'm a little biased, so I like hearing that because we're an SEO-first agency too and you guys do great work and I've seen your guys' clients rank really successful in a lot of markets. With that number, we have these clients that you get grandfathered in or getting the $500 case per acquisition. Just in general across the US, from what I see, $2,000 a case from basically any channel is a decent mark.
Now granted, if you're in Maryland where the cases aren't worth as much and there's different jurisdictions that are better than others, is that kind of just a general ballpark number that you think would be fair in terms of the single event auto type or do you see lower?
Chris Massaro:
I see lower. I see higher. It comes down to ROI. It comes down to their average fee. It comes down to increasing it. It really it comes down to their intake. Intake changes that number dramatically, and we go through this with some clients. Every couple months, their cases are crushing and then all of a sudden they get half as many cases or two thirds as many cases and they're like, "What went wrong? What's happening?"
A lot of the times, it is an intake problem that we have to identify and fix because they're growing, they're hiring. It's not easy to manage your intake team, or we call them their sales team because they really are selling for the firm. It's not easy to micromanage. You have a firm to run. You're a lawyer. You need to hire someone that you trust to basically keep them in check every single week because the minute you don't, it's going to start sliding.
I've seen just intake alone drop the cost-per-case in half. From a market-to-market, California is obviously going to be a little bit more expensive, but if your average settlement is 35,000, you're probably going to be willing to spend a little bit more. I always tell my clients, why not? Are you going to lose money on this source for $3,500 a case? Are you losing money? "No, but I'm getting better on SEO." Okay, well unless you want to open up three more offices, SEO may not scale the way you want it to, so why not do both and look at the numbers on an ROI basis rather than a, "This source sucks because it's 4,000."
Okay, well is your average settlement 35,000, 40,000 there? Are you making money? Is it going to hurt you to keep that source going? I mean that's kind of the glory of this industry. The ROI is so great that it's easy to push the envelope and just increase the budget as a whole and you're going to end up making more money at the end of the day.
Chris Dreyer:
I agree, and I think those individuals that have the super low CPAs are probably belly-to-belly spear influence. They're networking, so they've got the super low cost and then once you start looking at scale, it's like you got to look at the channels because some channels are more effective at scale than others. I agree with you. It's so interesting when they are getting the good lifetime client value versus the cost step for acquisition, but it's like they start having these "or" conversations when it's not an "or" scenario, it's an "and".
Chris Massaro:
There's so many firms that are so spoiled out there, and I see this in the biggest firms in our industry. The most successful firms in our industry, their expectation is just wrong. They expect just because their overall cost-per-case of their firm is 700, that's what everything needs to be, and if it's not, it's not going to work. I think every firm really needs to have their own expectation per platform.
Your paid acquisition costs can't be the same as your acquisition cost from your brand that you've been spending 10 years building. You really have to look at them separately. When you do that, you can really get all things churning and grow your firm. We always have to think, hey, if I'm not spending on this platform, are my competitors just getting my cases? Or is my great brand that I've built just going to someone else? Is someone just thinking... Because it happens.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, and that's fair. I like what you said earlier, they kind of compliment each other and it does come back to sales too. Especially when you're looking at things like LSA and response time and booking rate on the platform, and if you miss a call, you're in the graveyard. Focusing in on that because when we're talking about search engine marketing, not SEO search engine marketing, which would be LSA ads, local and organic, at the very, very top is local services ads.
If there's a personal injury attorney listening, what's just your general advice on how to make LSA to optimize it the best to get the best results from LSA?
Chris Massaro:
One missed call, two missed calls, a bunch of short calls can completely trash your profile and you may not ever get it back. Google's really wanting interactions with their profile. We have an entire team that we've hired, five, six people, that their one job is to immediately when the call comes in, transcribe it, mark it as booked, put the names on there, actual names, actual summaries, like not dummy information immediately. If you have messages on there, which we recommend because it works, you reply to them instantly.
They're tracking that time. Really you have to either, in my opinion, outsource it to a company that does that or hire a couple of people, assign that to your team almost like a Slack like, "You need to respond to this immediately. You need to be going in there and interacting with this profile because once you don't, you're gone." That's one of the best paid cost-per-acquisitions platforms out there, if not clearly the best.
Chris Dreyer:
I know many firms are probably batching these platforms and booking them all at the end of the day. That's a big no-no when it comes to LSA. You really need to have that person dedicated to that platform. I really appreciate all of that and that's really awesome to hear that you have this full dedicated team of X amount of employees that are just crushing it there.
Chris Massaro:
Yeah, we have them on weekends too because you can't just log back in on Monday and try to get action with it because your competitors are doing it. There's also a way to set up email notifications and we've started doing that for all our clients, so it's just a nonstop inbox because a lot of people just work out of their inbox. That's the quickest way we found to get to all of them.
Chris Dreyer:
You guys are really in the mass torts game. We just recently had Darren Miller on the show, and he's very involved in it. He talked about it as a method of diversifying kind of your cases and diversifying your firm and looking at it as kind of an investment strategy, a long-term strategy. For those personal injury attorneys listening that are the auto MVA, maybe they've got a good vault of cash built up and they're looking to invest into another area of the law, what would you recommend to them from a mass torts perspective?
Chris Massaro:
I mean, even without a vault of cash, I tell people this all the time and no one listens. You have an asset on your website, people are coming to your website, you're investing in it, you're ranking for other things. Why are you not putting mass tort content on your website and handling it a little bit different? Obviously you don't want them calling you, but there's a way you can literally put mass tort on your website that you're already paying.
You're going to get traffic. Local traffic will still come to you when they're Googling Camp Lejeune or Tylenol, or whatever mass tort is out there. You need to have a system in place to sign and refer to affirm like Darren Miller or [inaudible 00:14:04], or one of the litigating firms. Not only is that going to be free, besides the content cost, and obviously you have to pay to get the page added to the site or whatever.
You're not investing a ton, but you're starting to learn a little bit about it. You're getting, oh, I have five Roundup cases over the past few months that came through my website and I referred. What do you have to do to refer that? You have to make a relationship with a litigating lawyer that's handling that litigation. So you're making a new contact, potential referrals, potential new strategies you can get from them, just increasing your reach that way.
But you're not spending a lot and you're figuring out, okay, wait, I might get a check in the mail one day just because I just signed and referred something through my website. Most people, they either won't put a page of content on their site, missed opportunity, or they will, and then they get a call and their intake people says, "We don't do Camp Lagoon, sorry," and they don't refer that case.
That's something everyone needs to be doing because you're investing in your site. Why not take advantage and create mailbox money on every mass tort? You don't have to know about it. Just get a team to write about it and set up a flow the right way so that you can just refer that out and move on. You hear about Ozempic litigation, which has been in the news a lot lately. Why not add it to your site? Refer it out.
As far as people who want to actually invest, and I think that first step is a good stepping stone because you start to get some cases and talk to the lawyers handling them and say, "Hey, when do you think this is going to pay out? Are you excited about this? What are the barriers in this paying out? What are the steps in the process?" That'll tell you, "Oh wow, he's very excited. This could pay soon. Maybe I should actually put some of my own money in this."
I'd say this is really step two and handled really completely different, at least the way we do it. We will run ads everywhere, just try to sign as many cases for you as possible. If you really want to do it for an investment standpoint only, you can. You don't have to touch a thing. You give an agency like ours the money, we put the ads out there, you get to see everything going on, all the leads, all the cases. We can sign, get all of the necessary secondary information and then send them to the referring firm for you while at the same time you have all the insight to everything going on.
From a straight investment standpoint, you can literally say, "Here's my money. I want X amount of cases. Please drive as many cases as possible."
Chris Dreyer:
Let's say they had a large investment, would you recommend a portfolio approach, like a risk management? Maybe you got some AFFF in there. Maybe you got some Tylenol, a little more risky. We don't really know what's going to happen there. How do you approach that conversation?
Chris Massaro:
It's funny you say that. We're working on a big, big portfolio option that would include exactly what you are talking about. It's hard to do that when you have a million dollars. It can't be well invested into 10 different mass torts with a million dollars. So I mean, we're looking at really a minimum like $30 million portfolio to do this the right way, which includes an R&D fund where a new tort like Ozempic comes out, they're super cheap to get right now we pick up 2000 of those, shut it down and wait. Then the cost goes crazy. Guess what? You already have 2000 cases. That's the crazy thing about mass torts is that it's so first to get them right.
When Camp Lejeune came out, we were one of the first people to advertise and we were getting them subbed 300 a case. People are happy with 4000 to 10,000 a case now, depending on their criteria. The way the portfolio would be so successful is that when you have that insights, you go and get them. When the cost goes up, you shut it down. So great strategy. I think firms that really want to come in from just an investment standpoint, they could probably pull 10 to 15 law firms money, get a good investment, and then you're well invested in all.
The ROIs on these are great. We're factoring in a 60% fail rate, four of 10 of mass torts being successful. Even the numbers on that are fantastic. Definitely from an investment standpoint it makes sense, but you have to be very, very careful on what you're doing. You don't want to just blow a bunch of money and all of a sudden Zantac fails and you're left with nothing. So yeah, I'd definitely say even if you're not doing a portfolio, be diverse in what you're investing in and who you're sending the cases to.
I'd be very careful on saying, "Hey, I'm going to spend 10 million and I'm going to send all of them to one firm," because that firm may be great, but let's say they don't handle the cases properly. You could be really screwed.
Chris Dreyer:
Speaking with someone like you and your company, you're going to know who the most trusted people are, the most experienced, and you could act as a good connector. I know some individuals think about whether they're going to try to originate cases themselves or go through an agency, and I think one perfect reason is because you're connector, but also you got the data.
Like you said, you're saying, "Hey, 30 million minimum." We're talking about big spins on a lot of data that is a competitive advantage. I kind of wanted to just talk about the future. Let's just kind of brainstorm here. You guys put together a nice video on the future of Google, kind of What's happening there. Where do you guys stand? Are you guys doing some R&D on the AI side? Just overall, your thoughts there.
Chris Massaro:
Yeah, we looked a ton into the generative AI thing that Google's going to put out there, kind of like Bing. I think like everything, it's going to be one thing that Google releases and then we'll have 50 changes to, just like LSA. LSA was the Wild West when they released that. People that jumped in, did amazing on it. I think the AI is going to be a lot different because it's not a new ad platform.
Every test we've done is it's really a glorified version of the local maps that are already so important. Everybody that's doing a great job on the local maps right now is going to benefit on this. We saw that reviews were a huge factor, just like it is on local maps, blogs, information on your actual business profile. The AI is actually pulling all that information and just making it a little bit cleaner for the person that is searching.
So if they really choose to let generative AI tell them the results, that's what they're pulling from, and the rankings are very, very close to local. I think reviews mattered a little bit more on this, but it's one thing that I think they'll release and then we'll have to make adjustments here and there. I think to really get ahead of it, focus on your local maps and consider opening more offices across the state. That's a strategy we've been talking about. I know you talked to your clients about that.
That's really the way to get local everywhere if you do it the right way, and that'll get you a huge jumpstart. When you do that, you're starting at zero reviews, zero information, so you really have to focus on that profile and beef it up before it's going to show up.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's a great piece of advice, and I hear a lot of people talking about how AI is going to eat up the top of the funnel questions, those investigative queries. They already do. It's called rich snippets. Those are zero click scenarios anyway, so it's just going to be more of that. From what I saw, it looks kind of like an Amazon shopping page where it's just a whole bunch of business listings as compared to the three or four that's in maps right now.
So I agree. I think the reviews are just going to continue to play a huge importance. I'm just wondering, are the FTC going to come in and start smacking people around for false reviews or what's going to happen there? Who knows? The fake reviews. I guess that we'll just have to wait and find out for that.
Chris Massaro:
The person has to select the AI search results. It's not going to be a part of every search result result, at least in the beta, so we don't know how many people are actually going to use it. We know some will, and that'll be an impact just like everything Google does, but I think what they're really doing is they're trying to make it easier for the end user, which is not them going to your website.
Obviously, you want to have a great website, but it shows the importance of how much your just internet presence as a whole plays into this because a lot of people are just calling you. Same with LSAs, same with maps. Many of them aren't going to your website. They're just click and call, or they're clicking message right then and there, and they get their-
Chris Dreyer:
That's a really good observation. It makes me think of social media advertising. When you do paid social, your click costs, and when you're keeping them on platform, your advertising costs are super low, but when you drive them off platform, they go a lot higher because they want to keep them on platform. It wouldn't be surprising if Google did the same.
Where can those that are listening that want to learn more about TSEG, The Search Engine Guys, and what you guys do, where can they go to connect?
Chris Massaro:
Go to our website, TSEG.com. You can email me directly. It's just Chris, Chris@TSEG.com. Or happy to give you my cell. I text with most of my clients and partners. Happy to give my 2 cents if it's helpful.
Chris Dreyer:
Thanks so much for Chris for sharing his wisdom today. Let's hit the takeaways. It's time for the pinpoints. Case value is king. Don't get stuck evaluating marketing channels on cost-per-acquisition alone. For a more complete picture, look at the case value each channel generates. Adjust resource spending accordingly.
Chris Massaro:
We're still seeing the big six figure cases coming through SEO because they're doing the research. They're looking at the firms in the area. You're coming up first and they're looking at your reviews. They're looking at your presence. They're looking at everything.
Chris Dreyer:
Better sales equals better marketing ROI. Marketing sales go hand in hand. If you scale your marketing without the right intake team to back it up, you'll drive your CPA through the roof.
Chris Massaro:
It's not easy to manage your intake team, or we call them their sales team because they really are selling for the firm. It's not easy to micromanage. You have a firm to run. You're a lawyer. You need to hire someone that you trust to basically keep them in check every single week.
Chris Dreyer:
Make your SEO investment work double time, turn existing SEO equity into mailbox money. Add a few mass tort landing pages to your law firm's site. Even without litigating these cases directly, you can tap into valuable search traffic that refers clients to specialist partners. Costs are minimal, while benefits are plenty. More cases, more commissions, and more diversification. Start capitalizing on what's already working and watch the mailbox money pile up.
Chris Massaro:
You have an asset on your website. You're going to get traffic. Not only is that going to be free, besides the content costs, but you're starting to learn a little bit about it. You're getting, "Oh, I have five Roundup cases over the past few months that came through my website and I referred." I might get a check in the mail one day just because I just signed and referred something through my website. That's something everyone needs to be doing because you're investing in your site. Why not take advantage and create mailbox money?
Chris Dreyer:
All right, y'all, that's it for today, but before you go, I want to extend a personal invitation to PIM Con, the official PIM Conference, September 15th through 17th. I've been recording this show for over two years because I genuinely want you to be your best. With that said, I would love you to join me at PIM Con to learn how to conquer marketing network with titans, celebrate excellence, and take your firm from good to GOAT. We've got early bird pricing for a limited time. Lock in your spot with the PI Elite at PIMCon.org. Link is in the show notes. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind with me, Chris Dreyer, Founder and CEO of Rankings.io. See you next time.
