Chris Dreyer:
Is your ad spin actually compounding or are you just feeding the machine? You've got leads coming in, you've got calls, you've got reports but, once budgets get big, the math changes and a lot of firms don't realize they're leaking money until it's painful. We've got another great episode today and I want to get straight into it. This PIMCon keynote from James Helm gets into how ad dollars behave at scale. Tickets for the next PIMCon are on sale now and I'd love to see you there, grab yours at pimcon.org. Let's get into it.
I've seen a ton of legal marketers, I genuinely think James is at the top, the number one and I don't say that lightly. I think what he's doing from a marketing perspective on how to stand out, how to be different is unique and I'm excited to talk to James.
James Helm:
Thanks for having me here. What's up, friends? Excited to be here.
Chris Dreyer:
You're leading one of the largest intake operations, you got more than 70 intake specialists, we're going to talk about marketing, how to stand out. You're spending upwards of tens of millions of dollars in advertising, testing, scaling, pushing, pushing the envelope. You shared pieces of your journey before but I think, for those that don't know you, don't know who you are, let's take it back just a little bit and your story and your own words up to this point.
James Helm:
Sure. So, I grew up outside of Philadelphia about 20 minutes outside of this city, I was an only child which I feel like is pretty relevant because I don't know if anybody else is only children, you definitely get a stigma growing up and had a lot of pressure to succeed which I think pushed me but also I think that pressure culminated in 25. I actually had to go to drug rehab which was the lowest point of my life and it was really those next two years I built up myself again just through ... People say, "How do you get self-confidence?" I think it's from keeping the small promises you make to yourself and I had two years of just building that self-confidence and building that self-confidence. And then, finally, when I got out of law school, I decided to launch my own firm and this has been a six-year journey of going from right out of law school, no cases, I had $187,000 from sales commissions, I made selling pay-per-click and SEO to lawyers into building TopDog to what it is today and the journey's been a lot of fun.
Chris Dreyer:
The early days, getting the momentum going, the cashflow cycles, how do you think about starting up those initial investments to try to get the phone ringing?
James Helm:
The hardest thing for anybody starting a PI firm and, if you started your firm and I know a lot of people in this crowd have, you've been through it, is the initial cash flow problem. I have thought that the cases were going to take six months or a year to start to turn over and, in Pennsylvania where it's a tort threshold state, it was two years and so it was that initial cashflow burden. I had no money to advertise, no money to pay my people and so the strategy I came up with in 2019 was to be an Instagrammer. To just do Instagram content, to do funny skits, to do rap videos, to do anything I really could to get attention and that organic Instagram strategy I started in 2019 ultimately got up to 500 cases a month. Just doing that, no ad spend, just being consistent about stories, videos, making super viral content.
And sometimes I look back on it now and I'm like, "Man, I would've had no marketing expenses, I would've been living good," but it was also the world. It's 2019, lawyers weren't really doing content, that seems to have changed a lot today.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's lean into marketing, let's start with a couple definitions. I would love to hear your perspective on this, brand versus performance, how do you think about that?
Why marketing at scale exposes hidden inefficiencies in PI firm ad spend
James Helm:
I think in short brand marketing is getting people to search for you. A lot of what Chris talked about a second ago with AI or what you're doing with pay-per-click or any type of search marketing is you're trying to capture people who are searching for a lawyer, a car accident lawyer, a personal injury lawyer, a criminal lawyer, whatever it is and it's that space is expensive, it's super red with competition, you are going to basically put up whatever dollars the auction is requiring to get those cases. And so, brand marketing to me is saying how can I avoid that situation altogether, how can I get people, when they're looking for a lawyer, they don't even go searching around, why, because they know your brand.
And so, for me, I always have leaned heavier into brand marketing because I want people to search for TopDog, I don't even want them to search for a lawyer. And the easiest way that you can measure is your brand marketing working is to look at your branded search, look at your data and see, month over month, how many people are searching for you. And if you're investing in your brand, you should see that month over month branded search continue to grow. And if it's not growing, then I think you have to look at your branded marketing and say, "Hey, is this brand stuff really getting people's attention? Is the marketplace really seeing my brand?"
Chris Dreyer:
Let's talk about timing on that. Do you earmark a percentage of your marketing budget out of the gate for brand or do you just go all in on performance before this check start flowing in? How do you think about allocation of the investment?
When brand investment outperforms lead generation in high-budget PI marketing
James Helm:
I think it depends on what stage of growth you are. So, if you're a firm and you're just getting your journey started, you're in your first year or if you're doing a couple million dollars in revenue, maybe your marketing budget is less than $1 million, so a $1 million budget a year is 80,000 or so a month. If that's the stage you're at, you probably want to invest heavier in performance marketing. It's probably buying leads, it's probably working with agencies because it's not enough budget to really push into the marketplace. Things the last couple years in terms of brand marketing have gotten super competitive, in most major DMAs, there's a handful of advertisers spending 10 million-ish, Morgan spends 20 in some markets.
So, I think if you have $1 million, putting that money into brand is really, really tricky because it's like, "Hey, do I have enough money here to really make a dent or am I better off putting that money into performance marketing that's going to get me cases now? And then, here's what I'm going to do is because I'm at that size, I'm going to personally get involved with all these cases and I'm going to get them to refer their friends, their family, other people are in the accidents." I missed out on that opportunity today, when I was at that stage, we were really good about turning one case into two cases or three cases because they had your personal sell, they really knew you, they trusted you. Invest in performance and then build cases off of that. I think, once you start to get into a marketing budget of three, five, 10 million a year, then it's really like, "Okay, how can I invest my money in my brand to start to penetrate the market?"
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's fantastic. I want to take a step back. We heard Rosalino yesterday talk about how to invest in brand and he was talking about trade names and the DBAs and he mentioned maybe starting a brand Kick-ass Lawyers. And you chose TopDog Law and I was wondering if you could tell that story, just how it came about how you thought to use a trade name.
James Helm:
Yeah. So, I was in law school and you guys can picture this who were in law school. I was the kid in the back of the class where we were supposed to be doing the reading, I was sending out mass emails trying to sell lawyers advertising. And I didn't really know why I was doing it, I was just blasting emails, I liked the money of it, I liked the hustle of it and, if even to law school, you don't have to do half the readings or at least I ... You just had to learn the outline in time for the test. And so, I'm sending out these emails and I'm closing deals and what I realized is this one guy I won call closed out of Dallas called Lawboss, Michael Uvalle. And I remember I called and I sold him a pay-per-click deal and I realized, I'm like, "This guy calls himself Lawboss, that's crazy. He literally calls himself Lawboss and there's billboards that say Lawboss and his number is 1-800-Lawboss." And I thought about it and I'm like, "Man, that's the most egotistical thing."
And then I kept thinking about it and kept thinking about it and, two weeks later, I was convinced he was a genius. I was like, "This is the smartest thing ever." All these other law firms I'm emailing have four lawyers' names and so, you ask a random person, you say, "Who's your lawyer?" and they're like, "Oh, let me find the card and I don't know," meanwhile, Lawboss is my lawyer. And so, it was like this aha moment where I was like, "Okay, I knew I was going to start my own firm but I needed to do something with this branded strategy." And I think what you've seen since then, it was 2019 when I did that is there's a ton more branded law firms out there and I'm a big believer in it especially if your name is easy to say, easy to spell and easy to remember, I think it's just easier for clients to get you those word of mouth referrals than if you're pairing a bunch of last names together.
Chris Dreyer:
Why do you think your brand is successful specifically your brand? What do you think it makes it successful?
James Helm:
I think the name is a big part of it. I think TopDog, TopDog is easy to spell, easy to remember, it's those things I said. But then it's obviously how we go about the advertising. Advertising at its core is about getting attention, it's about how do you become remarkable to somebody. And I think our industry, if we're being honest, is really, really bad at being remarkable. If you look at the billboards that are just like, "Injured," question mark, it's you don't even really know who posted that, one of hundreds of law firms could have posted that. What I try to do when we put TopDog out in the market is for people to be like, "Oh, that's a TopDog ad, I'm going to remember that," and that to me is the biggest thing. It's not about necessarily whether they like it or whether they associate it with expertise or whatever, to me, the baseline is just getting them to know who you are, to remember it.
And so, we have meetings where we think about, hey, how can we do funny because people always love funny. So, it's how could we do funny, how could we do memorable, how could we do catchy, I think those are the things that any law firm owner hear when they're thinking about brand, and you don't have to do it how I do it or how TopDog does it, I think that would actually be worse if you're just imitating other people. I think you need to find your own version of catchy, your own version of Remarkable because those are the advertisements that people are going to remember and it's going to be attributable in your ROI from those creatives. We see whether it's social media, whether it's radio, doing a TV streaming shoot tomorrow, the creative makes a huge difference. I think a lot of people under-index on how important the creative is. If you have really good, memorable, attention-grabbing creative, it's going to be a huge differentiator in all of your marketing.
You try stuff out, right? We didn't know that the parody raps were going to be a hit, I just did a parody rap. And trust me, listen, when I did my parody rap, I was not the guy in the cipher session in high school trying to rap, trying to figure it out, that scared the crap out of me to go behind the mic. I still remember the first time, I don't know if I've ever told you this story, the first time I was in this studio full of 20 people. So, I think I'm going to go record this parody rap and it's just going to be me and I get to this studio, there's 20 people hanging in the studio, smoking, all this stuff and I have to go to the mic and do my lines. And I remember going to that mic, I was so terrified and I came out after giving my lyrics and everybody in the room was laughing at how bad I was. I still remember that. And you contrast that with the feeling of they auto tune it, they spice it up, you do it 3,000 times and then it comes out and you hear it and you're like, "Oh, my God, that's me, that's awesome," and then we put it on the internet and people loved it.
And so, then, once you figure out your formula, whatever your formula is to be successful, just figure out how do I duplicate it, how do I iterate on it, how do I keep doing the same thing over and over that people loved.
Chris Dreyer:
So, we hit on the radio a little bit but I want to go tactical. So, just some freeform tips just in general on radio and then we'll move over to Facebook and organic and stuff like that but just some thoughts on how to be successful on radio outside of the creative maybe or maybe it is focused on the creative.
What omnipresence means in personal injury marketing and how firms measure it
James Helm:
Yeah. I think a lot of it is creative, a lot of it is repetition. And I think, with any of your brand marketing, radio included, you have to just try to be omnipresent. So, my goal is I want them to see us on a bus and then hear one of our radio spots and then open up their phone and see a Facebook and it's how many times can I hit them with branded content across different mediums so that, again, that accident happens. I'm not trying to catch them in between the time when the accident happened and when they need a lawyer, I'm trying to get in front of people and have them know who we are so that, when invariably an accident does happen to them or it's a friend of them or it's a family member and they think I need a lawyer, they think I need TopDog.
Chris Dreyer:
One of the things, just to emphasize what James says, we're going to talk about Facebook ads, one of the things I find interesting and I get peppered by James probably because I've had him on the pod, do things together, I get his ads a lot and I see the comments and they're talking about his radio, they're talking about different things so it reinforces that omnipresence. But I guess, Facebook ads, a lot of people in the crowd are not successful Facebook ads. What's the key to success with Facebook ads?
James Helm:
Facebook ads are my favorite. So, I started with organic social media, I told you guys that was obviously hugely successful, the only problem with organic social, and this is to anybody who does social media here and I'm sure pretty much everybody does, is it's a treadmill, you have to keep cranking. And I just realized after a while that, one, I was exhausted. I had been doing it for three or four years, I don't know how the guys like Mr. Beast and whoever else, Logan, the Paul Brothers are still pushing out content, it's a whole thing to keep creating organic content. And then you think about, okay, well, if I can do an ad and I have the money to invest in it, I can make one good piece of content and I can get that in front of 30 million people and how many organic posts do I have to make to get that kind of reach.
And so, I think you can think about Facebook ads two ways. The first way you could think about it is you could think about it as brand marketing. If you do Facebook ads and you're having them know that this is one of your ads and you're making it like we talked about, engaging, memorable, attention grabbing, to me, the phone is the TV. So, the same way people would sit in the living room and watch the TV, if they're watching your Facebook ads, even if you're not seeing any type of conversion action, you're still getting that top of mind awareness.
The second thing that's great about Facebook which they never had about TV is they're the direct link so you can also measure your direct attribution. And so, we do that heavily where we look at every single Facebook ad we're running, every single audience, how many of those are turning into leads, how many of those leads are pre-qualified and then what's our conversion rate on those leads and you can back into what's your cost per lead and your cost per case. And I think what you'll find is that Facebook is pretty competitive relative to your other mediums, Google, TV, radio, whatever else.
Chris Dreyer:
One of the things I wanted to lean into that I've heard you say is, when we're talking about social media and we've heard a lot of tactics on how to, you talked about the treadmill, just the grind of creating content, I've heard you say you should hire creators not social media managers. So, what do you mean by that?
James Helm:
Look, I think when most people get a social media manager in legal, they feel like they're checking the box. It's like, "Hey, I know I should be doing social media, Let me hire this person out of school," and what are they going to do? They're going to go around the office and say like, "Hey, it's X holiday, let's get a post up," or something like that and the chances that that's remarkable or engaging to your audience are just so slim. And so, I've always thought, well, what if instead of that money, 50,000, 60,000, maybe it's a lot more than that for that social media manager, what if you could take that same budget allocation and what if you could invest it with people that are actually going to create content?
What if you're doing content around the fever for the WNBA, how do you invest around creators that create content involving your firm and involving the WNBA? And I think you're going to be much more successful taking that budget allocation and putting it into actual creators that have an expertise in content than you are one employee that is going to do the best they can with the limited resources that they have but it's really not going to move the needle for you.
Chris Dreyer:
Is that the influencers? How do you find these creators?
James Helm:
I think they're young. There's a lot of creators, whether it's on TikTok or Instagram or whatever, that have the eye for content. TikTok is so trend-based. We've struggled on TikTok and we just made a big hire of someone who's proven they're good at TikTok. What I look for with people who are going to help us create organic content is I want to see their platform expertise. All right, you're great at TikTok, what pages have you built to 300,000 followers? Okay, what are your ideas for how we can do that here? And then, like you mentioned, there's also influencers, what market are you in, who are the local influencers in the market.
There's this concept called the Dream 100, Russell Brunson talks about it in his book Traffic Secrets and it's basically who are the 100 people that your ideal client looks up to. And rather than you trying to go out and get every one of your ideal clients in the world, how can you get one of those 100 people to affiliate with your law firm or your brand? Because if people already trust them, people already follow them, people already engage in their content, is it possible for you to do a collaboration with them and, all of a sudden, you're associating your law firm brand with something they already know, like and trust.
Chris Dreyer:
That's amazing. 2026, what's the marketing mix look like? I know different jurisdictions have different saturation points but just how do you think about some of the best channels and a marketing that just throwing the softball up, letting you take it?
How law firms can measure real demand created by brand marketing at scale
James Helm:
I'll go back to what I said earlier, I think it depends on where you're at. I know a ton of businesses that are based referral only. A lot of our partners are referral only and they're killing it because they're getting referrals from everybody in their market. Then there's some other degree of, hey, I'm going to do a referral only and I'm going to do some performance marketing, lead gen stuff. I'm either going to buy cases, buy leads, do some type of Google ad strategy or Facebook strategy where I can know exactly what my cost per case is because I really want to manage that. And then at some point you're going to have to cross the chasm, you're going to have to say, "Okay, I really want to own my market, I want to be the first law firm people think about in my market." Maybe you got a big settlement or maybe you've grown your revenue two or three times and you can invest in the brand marketing and then you could say, "Okay, I want to put" ...
We're up to about three-fourths of our spend is in our brand marketing and one-fourth is in performance marketing. Once you look at that brand spend, I think about 75% of people's brand dollars today are still going into television which I've always questioned, we haven't done traditional cable television. I think you can see the data around cutting the cord and to see 75% of the legal advertising dollars going there seems like folks are probably a little behind to cut it. I know our strategy is we try to do things different so it's social media native, we want to lean into YouTube, we want to lean into streaming, we're big on the radio, we want to do a lot of outdoor and, ultimately, you can build a media mix model. So, that's what we've done is we basically build a model that, whenever we launch a new advertising medium, we can look at what is the incremental cost per lead and what is the incremental cost per case from this new spend.
Because that becomes a real challenge in brand marketing is, if you've hit someone 18 different ways because you're omnipresent, how do you figure out what part of your marketing is working and what isn't. And so, there's some of these advanced tools like a marketing mix model that can try to help you figure out, at least on the baseline, look at a certain spend and say, "Hey, we got no lift from this spend, we need to cut that."
Chris Dreyer:
If this hit, it's because, once you scaled spend, marketing intake stop being separate conversations. One creates demand, the other decides whether that demand turns into signed cases, that's exactly what the next PIMCon is all about. Real marketing, real intake and how the two behave together no matter how much you spend. Tickets for the next PIMCon are on sale now. If you want to be in the room with operators who are comparing real numbers and real systems, grab yours at pimcon.org, that's P-I-M-C-O-N, dot, O-R-G. I'd love to see you there, thanks for listening.
