Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to Gold Medal Moments on Personal Injury Mastermind. This is a special mini-series that highlights my favorite lessons from former PIM guests. Each of these trailblazers and thought leaders will speak live at the inaugural PIMCon, the Personal Injury Mastermind Conference. Trust me, you don't want to miss them live. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer. Over the next few weeks, we'll be sharing can't-miss insights and bite-sized pieces to help get your firm from good to GOAT.
Grassroots marketing often serves as the foundation of a firm's early success. It drives authentic connections and builds trust within specific communities. This approach, when integrated effectively with digital and traditional strategies, creates a powerful marketing flywheel and generates consistent, high-quality leads well into the future. Few understand this synergy better than Dave Thomas, VP of National Business Development from Law Tigers. With over two decades of experience, Dave has pioneered a marketing philosophy he calls infinite marketing, where community-based initiatives form the core of a multi-channel strategy.
Under his leadership Law Tigers have deployed a network of 42 regional marketing managers across 32 states, embedding themselves in local motorcycle communities and driving an impressive 40 to 50% of the firm's case generation. Dave's innovative approach demonstrates how grassroots marketing, when executed properly, can transform a niche legal practice into a trusted community-centered brand. To get Dave's insights live at PIMCon, secure your spot at pimcon.org. Use code PIMDAVE for $200 off your ticket. Let the gold medal moments begin.
Dave Thomas:
My responsibility is to grow the brand across the country, membership, onboarding of Law Tigers. And so it's an exclusive membership, Chris. So once we go into a market, and it's really aligned to DMAs, and I know you get this and it's more so TV buys. So there's some states that have multiple DMAs such as California has four in Southern California and two in northern California. We have states like Georgia that has one or Louisiana that has one as well. So once we identify a true partner in that market, it's off the table. We won't sell it to a competing firm. So they own rights to the brand. And obviously, we market into Law Tigers, and they adopt our mixed marketing team here. We have a highly comprehensive team of digital advertisers and our senior buyers for traditional, and our grassroots game is one of the most complex offerings that we have.
I think that we often identify it as a secret sauce. It's something that is very hard to replicate and it would take years to really get it tuned into where we've gotten it thus far. So I can jump into that a little bit later. But our grassroots is our market managers are on the road every day and they're winning friends and influencing people. They're meeting with Harley-Davidson dealerships, tow companies, parts stores. They're supporting community drives, healthcare, first responders. It's a pretty cool role, and that's what I feel, in my opinion, is what gets us over the hump and put us at a true competitive advantage.
Chris Dreyer:
One thing that makes Law Tigers unique is their grassroots marketing. They have 35 regional marketing managers across the country working directly with the motorcycle community in a given area. I wanted to know, how do these grassroots marketers fit into the overall strategy and what's the advantage of having boots on the ground?
Dave Thomas:
Yeah, they are the face of the program. So if you're a rider, if you're a non rider, they're the first point of contact in the community. Now their role, they do have to ride, and so they do what you just mentioned. They're at local rallies, regional rallies, national rallies. They're at a lot of community relations events. They are really out there, and I know you read this book, but Winning Friends and Influencing People, grass root efforts make up of 40 to 50% of our generating cases. So that's a huge push. Yeah, it's a huge number. It's one of the most important pieces to our infinity marketing strategy, if you will.
But yeah, these guys and girls that we have, 42 stretched across the country, we're in 32 states, 47 markets, and we're growing. It's at the core of what we do. What I'd like to just mention to you is I know we'll touch on digital and traditional, but it's really a true infinity marketing when you talk about the multi-channel media approach, they all support each other.
Chris Dreyer:
I see you guys' brand everywhere around where I'm at. The billboards... I just see it. And so it's just really top of mind memorable. I know exactly what Law Tigers represents. The billboards have that one key message. Let's talk about digital marketing. You knew I was going to go there next, and I looked up your guys' site on some competitor analysis tools. You're doing well with SEO. I imagine that all the content, all of the messaging is catered to one persona so that when you type in those motorcycle keywords, you guys have a strong chance to show up.
Dave Thomas:
Yeah, that's correct. So we have a team that are experts in that area. I don't claim to be, but it's what you said. It's kind of a flywheel approach. We spend a lot of time on marketing, automatization and SEO, PPC. Anything that falls into the digital realm, we do it in-house here. We have content specialists, content writers. We have videographers that are on the road. They're shooting day in the life at our firms across the country. They'll show up at a bike build. And so it's really true and its truest form of being authentic to riders.
And so digital is a huge push, you know it as well. I follow you on LinkedIn and other platforms, and I can consider yourself as a hero.
Chris Dreyer:
Thank you.
Dave Thomas:
And our team here, that's really pushing the needle as we go into many markets, digital has really shown to be a quick start for us. And what I mean by that is that the impact on generating paces is at lightyear speed competitive to some other mediums. Don't share that with other teams that represent other mediums.
Chris Dreyer:
From a local SEO, the map pack standpoint, just keying on that for a moment. It's broken down into three factors. Relevance, distance, and prominence. Well, you couldn't be more relevant when all of your reviews are talking about motorcycle accidents, the types of cases, the safety initiatives, the grassroots, the relationships, just everything is just talking about motorcycles.
Dave Thomas:
Yes. That's the key. And that's the true form of the definitive guide to niche marketing is that we have an advantage, right? Because we play in one small sandbox. And I use other narratives, you've probably seen some of my posts or talks around, I look at In-N-Out Burger, or you look at Sinclair. If you can niche down, I always say that you're going to be in front of your competition. Because a niche will beat out a generalist any day. And I think at all marketing mediums, we're all trying to develop trust and win over, right? Win over the trust of our future clients.
And so we are able to do it more so at a grassroots level that really builds that likeability and understanding that we're one of you and we're all together and we're family. Like I said, we have a leg up in that respect, but it's still a lot of work to get in front of these riders and for them to trust in the Law Tigers brand across the country.
Chris Dreyer:
That wraps up this gold medal moment featuring the GOAT of grassroots marketing, Dave Thomas. Visit pimcon.org to go from good to GOAT and join us live in Scottsdale, September 15th through 17th, where we will conquer personal injury marketing, network with industry titans, celebrate excellence and become the greatest of all time in personal injury law. Tickets are limited so secure your all-access pass today. Okay head to pimcon.org, that's P-I-M-C-O-N dot O-R-G. I'm Chris Dreyer, thanks for listening to these gold medal moments and I hope to see you in the winners' circle at PIMCon. For $200 off use code. PIMDAVE, that's P-I-M-D-A-V-E.
