Chris Dreyer:
When you're spending massive budgets on TV and radio, you can't afford to leave money on the table.
Trudy Emlaw:
Do not ever, ever buy just the first rates that you're given. Go negotiate. There's something more that usually can be thrown in.
Chris Dreyer:
Our guest has been on both sides of the table. First, selling ads for Fox Cable and Comcast, and later as the media buyer for Mike Morse, and now the CMO at George Sink, Trudy Emlaw, knows how to get the most bang for your marketing dollar.
Trudy Emlaw:
If something happens to that spot and it did not run correctly, I need a replacement with a steak. I don't want a hamburger to replace it.
Chris Dreyer:
Today, if your media reps are serving up the value menu when you paid for prime cuts, we're showing you how to send it back to the kitchen.
This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the elite performance marketing agency for personal injury law firms. George Sink's Chief Marketing Officer, Trudy Emlaw, joins us to talk about squeezing every drop of value from your ad buys. Why you need specialists on your marketing team, and how to stop blindly, and how to stop blindly spending without understanding seasonality. I'm so excited to announce that Trudy is going to be taken to the stage at PIMCON this October to dive even deeper into building out your own powerhouse marketing team. So make sure to get your tickets now at pimcon.org. Let's get into it.
Hey, guys, I have an amazing guest today. Trudy Emlaw, welcome to the show.
Trudy Emlaw:
Thank you. Great to be here.
Chris Dreyer:
I wanted to start with one, and we briefly chatted about this before, you started on the other side of the media buying table. You sold ads at Fox Cable and Comcast, and then you crossed over to Mike Morse, and you worked your way all the way up to CMO. So you've seen the playbook on both sides, but let me ask you a question that every PI attorney listening actually once answered. How much did sitting on the selling side change the way you built internally and though about the process of coming in-house and how you thought about that design? I mean, that's kind of a loaded question, I guess.
Trudy Emlaw:
Yeah, it kind of is. But I mean, here's the deal, and I tell this with anyone who is starting to dabble into maybe they want to buy TV or radio. There's always some extra added... How do I want to say it? There's always a value that you can get. There's more than probably what you're getting. But more importantly, always negotiate. Do not ever, ever buy just the first rates that you're given. Go negotiate. There's something more that usually can be thrown in. So that's one thing I know. I mean, it was actually the first question I was asked when I got to Mike Morse Law Firm before I had even left selling, was, because I was their rep, they asked, "Is there anything else you could be doing giving us right now that we're not getting from a media standpoint?" So that would be my number one thing, is always negotiate. There's probably some extra added value that you can get thrown in.
Chris Dreyer:
Can we define that? I wanted to dig into that. So I've heard of make goods where it's a defined term, where something doesn't run, or for whatever reason they do... I know the political ads kind of take over and they use make goods, but what would be an example of added value? Would they give you just an extra slot?
Trudy Emlaw:
Well, let's just start with your make good example. So when you get a spot preempted, for instance, political or whatever it might be, that's a great opportunity to try to upgrade what your original spot was. So for instance, if you're bumped out of 10 P news, try to get maybe a placement in sports from that if you can. The thing is the rep, the station, they want that to keep that money. So you now have some power to say, "Okay, if you want to keep the money, I need upgraded." And sometimes the rep can go ahead and do that or the station can go ahead and do that. One of the things I've always been a stickler on is something like the Super Bowl. Obviously, if there's an issue in the Super Bowl, and believe it or not, over my years, I have had multiple times where there's been issues in the Super Bowl.
Or if it's a big national playoff game, that's a steak. Don't give me a hamburger for a steak. If something happens to that spot and it did not run correctly, I need a replacement with a steak. I don't want a hamburger to replace it. So I've always been a stickler about making sure if something falls out of sports, or some premium program, don't give me a bunch of garbage to make up for it. Just because you can make up the points that way, I was in something with a lot of eyeballs, more eyeballs than what would typically be watching TV. So give me that back. That's what I needed.
Chris Dreyer:
Give me the equivalent or more, or even more.
Trudy Emlaw:
Well, in this case, yeah, more, if you can. But yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
That's good. And thank you for those examples. And some of these phrases for you that been in the game, they're so common, like make goods. The first time I heard that, I'm like, "What does make goods mean?"
Trudy Emlaw:
Yeah. No, that's true. I forget about that, but yes.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. We have to define a term because it happens so frequently.
Trudy Emlaw:
Exactly. And it's crazy, Chris. I will tell you, advertising for years and years on TV, whether it was through Mike Morse Law Firm or even now, when political comes in because of how things work with political, you just get blown out, and it's so unfair. It's like I'm here day in and day out giving you my money, they come in, they spend, we get blown out. I mean, yeah, you get more protection obviously if you're a bigger advertiser and been around a long time and a loyal customer of these stations, but it is just, it's the worst.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, that'd be so frustrating. I can't imagine.
Holding stations accountable ensures you're getting maximum ROI on your ad spend. But once those optimized campaigns start flooding your firm with leads, the pressure shifts internally. Trudy realized early on that to elevate her own marketing output, she couldn't just rely on generalists. She had to structure a very specific kind of team to handle that growth.
Let me kind of dig into something you said. You said you had a breakthrough and you started focusing on structure, the right people and solid data, and that's when marketing stopped feeling reactive and started feeling like a growth engine. What was that moment, or just explain to me how you evolved in that thought process?
Trudy Emlaw:
So there's been two big things in my career that have been just game changers for me. One is data, and the confidence that that has brought to my leadership and my decisions on what I'm doing. And then the second thing would be people, and a team, and having the right people in the right seats to be able to execute all the work that needs done. Those two things have been big for me.
Chris Dreyer:
Let me dig into a little bit of this. So you got different evolutions of a firm and their growth. So when you think about that team, obviously it depends in all these scenarios, but what do you think of some of those early critical roles? If you were going to start to develop the marketing team, what would some of those roles be?
Trudy Emlaw:
Yeah, that is a very interesting question. So as I was telling you earlier, I started out, there was no person 100% dedicated to marketing when I got to Mike Moore's Law Firm anyway. So as you have someone in that role, you start realizing there's more opportunity there, more things existed, more responsibilities than what were being done before. So then you get to a point where I started having bandwidth issues. I couldn't do everything. There was all of these things now that we were doing.
So the first role I brought on was a marketing coordinator thinking that was going to solve my bandwidth. There's actually a story about this. I brought on two marketing coordinators, and I found that was not helpful. One was great. It does increase bandwidth, but what I noticed was we weren't necessarily elevating our level of what we were producing. We were producing more, but it wasn't a better quality, because what I had brought in is another generalist like me, so I can do a bunch of different things and know a bunch of things about different things. And so did a marketing coordinator and that was what they were doing.
But our designs weren't getting better, our data wasn't necessarily getting better, because they were more of a generalist like me. So when I started bringing specialists onto the team, is when I really started getting my time back, and we were elevating what we were producing in terms of, like I said, data, design, video content, whatever it might be. It was when I started bringing on more specialists to the team that had actually training and been trained in those fields.
Chris Dreyer:
It's interesting you say that about the specialist. That's how we're designed. It creates more span of control situations, I would say. Communication's even more important when you have all these different roles. But I would say I've noticed that too from just an expertise and elevating the quality of things. The word marketing has all these different definitions. It's like communication of value, everything is marketing. Marketing is just leverage sales. And so I'll toss it back at you when you think of the revenue team, and maybe as that CMO, when you're wearing the CMO, where does that begin? Where does that end? How do you think about it?
Trudy Emlaw:
Obviously, as a marketer, and my department is responsible for bringing in the leads, more importantly, the wanted leads, and then ultimately the cases. We do our job to get those brought in, and it's handed off to intake. And then intake, they obviously frontline very crucial part of the law firm. They are taking that lead and doing everything they can to or client, and hopefully sign this person into a case. And then I think once it gets handed off to our legal team, it's on them to get the maximum value on that case.
And so I guess that's looking at it from the start all the way around and growth of a law firm, it's not just marketing. You're not going to hire a marketer and all of a sudden you're going to have all these cases, and you're going to have this huge growth in your firm. It's all these different steps along the way. It's not just looking at the marketing, it's looking at every single department, and improving it, and fine-tuning it. And that is how growth happens in a law firm.
Chris Dreyer:
I just want to get your opinion on how you think about today, because marketing's changed. Attention's shifting, channel shift... And we're not talking about George Sink or Mike Morse. These are established firms that got the war chest. If someone's got, let's say, a million dollars, which is still pretty healthy, but let's break it down to $100,000 a month budget. In a big city, do you even try to go into TV with that type of budget? Do you stick to more digital? And I know it depends on the market, but how do you think about a budget like a million dollars or 100,000 a month, 1.2?
Trudy Emlaw:
Chris, it's an interesting question. And working, like you said, for big law firms, and coming from a firm where really it was TV that launched the firm. I mean, that was really when it started and has just grown from there. And I would say I haven't been in George Sink that long, but it's the same thing with the TV really being what has driven a lot of the brand awareness.
I think this. If you had a 100 K budget and you're in a really big city, I do think it's going to be very tough to do anything on TV. If anything, when you have a very limited budget like that and you're wanting to try to do something on TV, I think you have to be very specific about where you're going to be. Maybe you can buy one program, and you're in that program so you can build that frequency, but that's not going to get you that far.
So you might be better off doing something like CTV, and YouTube, and still doing video. I think video's still important. And I think video really can drive growth for your firm. But TV might not make sense if you have a million dollars and you're in New York City. No, it's probably not going to work. But I'm a huge fan of TV, and I think I've seen how I still think to this day it's king in terms of marketing and driving growth, but obviously there's a lot of other areas that are becoming much bigger drivers than they ever used to be.
Chris Dreyer:
I love anybody being a search agency, I love anybody that does top of funnel stuff. TV, billboards, I love it, because the bottom of funnel, the capture.
Trudy Emlaw:
Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
It's interesting, today, it's still super low CPMs, and you're hitting a lot of us, most of the auto people you're hitting the target demo that you want. I know there's some missed opportunities, the younger, maybe the cut the cord individuals that you could spread maybe some streaming or whatever into that. But I look at the CPMs, the cost for those styles, thousand eyeballs, and it's hard to beat TV or radio, those legacy older mediums. It's like even YouTube, I looked at our YouTube across all of our spends and it's like six, seven bucks. Well, you're beating that on TV if you're good and you have someone like you. Why is TV king? Why is it still king today?
Trudy Emlaw:
Basically, it gets the most eyeballs the fastest to the right people. So local news, sports, those are areas where I still find it is driving a lot of leads into the firm from those areas. So I think there's also some credibility that comes with being on TV. To me, I think it's pretty easy to record a commercial and throw it on radio, or obviously anybody, can throw an ad on Meta, or throw up a Google Ads campaign. But putting together a commercial and getting it on TV, I think it just adds some credibility to the brand. Hopefully, one of the important things is making sure it's good creative. I mean, if it's bad creative and it's going up on TV, that's a different story and not going to be as effective and impactful. But good creative, put that on TV. I think you still, the amount of eyeballs that you're reaching, and the credibility that you're building with that, really says something about the firm to clients.
Chris Dreyer:
I think well said, and I agree with all that. I had Anajar on a long time ago, and he talked about the holy trinity: TV, radio and digital. And that's kind of the buckets that he did. And he's like, "Billboards is after that," which I think you can get great buys on the billboards. I think everything works. I believe he said, "If you can't be in the top three, you can't be one of the top three, maybe it's not for you." So you said maybe you could dominate a station, but I'm just wondering, if you're early on in the firm, do you just spend more on bottom of the funnel direct response? How do you think about allocating that 100% pie chart and your expectations of how long it's going to take? How do you think about it in time?
Trudy Emlaw:
Yeah. I think, when you're first starting out, you do have to start at the bottom of the funnel. I think it's tough today. I mean, I think ultimately with AI and all the things happening with AI and how it's changing how people search, I think you need to have a seed planted in their brain already that they are searching for you versus just anybody that shows up, you want that seed planted. But that said, when you're first starting out, bottom of the funnel typically is where you would spend more money because you need money in the door and cases in the door faster. You almost earn that ability to spend on brand. So as you start getting those cases in and you're going to hopefully put more money into marketing as you're getting more cases, you would then start, that pie chart would start changing where eventually you'll probably have more in brand than you would have in bottom of funnel.
But that's kind of how I see it. Starting out, more would be definitely on bottom of funnel. And then as you grow, you would take that money and put more of it into the brand piece top of funnel.
Chris Dreyer:
TV creates massive omnipresence, but the landscape is shifting fast. With private equity money pouring into the legal space and AI changing how people search, old playbook isn't enough. Trudy breaks down why building a compounding brand is the only way to survive the coming wave.
We're halfway through 2026 and now you got a ton of PE money, you got all of this MSO chat conversations, and LLMs, and AI. So how are you thinking about the current environment of the capital coming in, the tech coming in? How are you approaching that or implementing the new tech at George Sink? How are you thinking about all these emerging changes in the space?
Trudy Emlaw:
Private equity, AI, there's so much that's impacting the business and law firms right now, that I think, for instance, you can't just have one thing where you're, for instance, showing up well in the Google search results. Anybody can go buy a keyword or do some of that. You need to have built something from the top down. So talking about community events, but building the brand. I want them when they go to search, like I said earlier, I want to have that seed already planted. I want them to have driven by a billboard. I want them to have experienced a community event, have seen a TV commercial. And then when they go and they ask ChatGPT, "What's the best firm to work with after my car accident?" They already have that seed planted. So when we show up, or different firms, multiple firms show up, we're going to be the one that's chosen.
Chris Dreyer:
I think the omnipresence and pulling in that mindshare, being in the mindshare, because I think you and I are different. When I'm driving into the city, I'm keyed in. I love it. I enjoy looking at the billboards. But I would say someone that's not keyed, I don't know if they're paying as close attention to the personal injury billboards. They may joke about it, but they're not looking at the messaging, the creative, like we are. So I think we have to hit them over the head for multiple vantages.
Trudy Emlaw:
Yeah, it's building, like you said, it's the omnipresence. Those are the firms that are going to win. You can't just go in and just do bottom of the funnel. Even if you're a small firm, yes, that's maybe where you start, but you're not going to grow just sitting at doing bottom of the funnel the whole time, in my opinion. But the top of the funnel and building it all mid-funnel the whole way down, I think is where the firms that are going to be around years from now, that's what's going to be going on there.
Chris Dreyer:
I couldn't agree more. I mean, that compounding of the brand gets to the lower CAC, and because it's shorter term orientation, you're going to pay top dollar for bottom of the funnel. I know LSA, there's some exceptions, but in general, it's going to be more costly than the brand. And that's where the lead gen comes into play. I know it's right there, it's very tempting, but the fall off rates, the case quality, no brand equity. Now again, if you're starting off and you need cases immediately to fill up some pipeline, then sure do your thing, but nothing's going to compare, at least in my mind, to the brand and that value.
Trudy Emlaw:
Agree. Agree. When you need it, it's nice to be able to be like, "Let me flip this switch on and add the lead gen." But the GRO or the get rid of rate is definitely higher on those. So you got to take it with a grain of salt.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's do some quick hitters here. So my team's got some teed up some rapid fire questions here. So the first one, and you don't have to rapid, these are just short hitters. So number one, build the brand or buy leads. Where does a firm under $10 million spend its next dollar?
Trudy Emlaw:
Build the brand.
Chris Dreyer:
One metric every firm should track that most don't.
Trudy Emlaw:
I don't know if most don't, but I would go seasonality. Make sure you know your seasonality. Of course, the go-to, the obvious I guess would be wantedlys, but I think people are tracking that. So I would say know your seasonality, because otherwise you're trying to hit goals that you might not even be... I've done this with my own experience. It was first quarter, I don't know what year it was, but we had basically taken and said, "This is our goal for the year," and we divide it out by 52 weeks, and that was the goal. And so I kept missing the goal, missing the goal, missing the goal in January, February, whatever. And it was just like I felt like I was totally letting the firm down.
And so around this time is when I happened to get a data person brought onto the marketing team, and we started digging into the seasonality, and found, no, wasn't missing the goal at all. In fact, I was a little bit above goal of where we would be once we put the seasonality in. But meanwhile, what I had done is gone and started spending a bunch of money to try to make up for it, to make up for the shortfall and grow those cases and leads. So ended up going over budget that year. And it was just this snowball effect of, if I would've only known the seasonality, nobody would've been panicking, including myself. So seasonality, that's my answer.
Chris Dreyer:
I have to ask a follow-up question on that, because I think that's really intriguing. I mean, based upon Arizona, it's a freaking scorcher, and everyone leaves right now in the summer, so there's nobody driving. They all stay at home in their AC. And then you got other locations like in the winters where, I was having a conversation with the big attorney, I thought there'd be more accidents, but actually this individual, at least what they told me, was actually people drive more cautiously and at not as quick a speeds. So actually, when they do get in a wreck, they're not as bad of an accident. So I guess, do you just maintain a steady spin? Do you decrease it during the low activity? You said you increase to try to make up the numbers, but from that information of seasonality, how do you approach that?
Trudy Emlaw:
Yeah. I mean, I believe you fish where the fish are. So if I know the seasonality is not that high, and by the way, back to that story, that is true. I live in Michigan and I would say that's absolutely the case in my experience too, is you do see lower cases in the winters, typically. But yeah, I believe in when the season is high, let's double down. But if it's not the best season, I'm not doing heavy up campaigns, that's for sure, not in a season at a time of year where I know that there's not a lot of accidents happening.
And the other thing that I think is a big factor is school, and kids in school, and people's routines, and them changing. That's always something that, it just messes with the number of cases that are coming in the door on a weekly basis. It's like, you kind of know when school gets out, when the public schools get out, because you'll see it in the numbers typically like, "Oh, why'd we go down all of a sudden?" And it's like, "Wait, when did school get out? Yep, this all makes sense now."
So yeah, just being prepared for those things, even when we're factoring in seasonality, I will have the data person when he's figuring what our goals should be for each week, it's like, "Okay, well, it's 4th of July that week, so keep that in mind." So if we want to hit certain numbers for July, the week of 4th of July needs to be a little bit lower and my other weeks will need to be higher in order to make sure we hit that overall goal. So yeah, it's important.
Chris Dreyer:
I'm glad you said that. That was the exact example that I was thinking of, the 4th of July, being really slow that week, but then maybe the week or two after because they defer action, because they don't want to stay away from the events and their family time. It's like they defer action. And then when they're supposed to go back to work, it's like, oh, immediately you start getting more phone calls.
Trudy Emlaw:
Right. Yes, exactly. If all goes well, that is exactly what happens, is that you get those phone calls on the other side.
Chris Dreyer:
Okay. So they had one more rapid fire here. The skill you tell a young legal marketer to build today if they want your seat in 10 years.
Trudy Emlaw:
I don't know if it's a skill, but curiosity is the number one thing. Stay curious. Don't put yourself in a hole and just think, "This is what I do." I'm curious about everything, everything. As soon as there's something else that it's new in our industry, and there always is, it's like, stay curious, be always learning. We talked about listening to your podcast. I listened to your podcast, I listened to about five or six other podcasts. Your newsletter's great. I mean, you have all kinds of information in there. So continue being a student of this industry, because there's always more to learn. And I think if you do that, you will go a long way.
Chris Dreyer:
I couldn't agree more. It's constantly leveling up. We hear the negative side of that, the Peter principle. It's like, where you promote and they stop learning and stop growing. But if you're constantly curious, pushing the boundaries, trying to grow. And it makes you more valuable at the organization, especially with all these technologies coming to take certain aspects of a job, and then it forces you into other roles and other opportunities.
Trudy Emlaw:
Yeah, I think it's a lot of hard work too. I mean, it's not easy. I had somebody come in that was interviewing, I can't even remember, I think it was a marketing coordinator position. And one of the first questions she asked me is like, "What's the work-life balance here?" And I'm not saying you shouldn't have work-life balance, but you're asking that and you're fresh out of college and you're asking me that question, it's like, "Oh, it takes a lot of work. I don't want to hear work-life balance. I want to know that you're here to work."
And I think also people that are right for at least my team and working with me, they love the job. They love it. They love what they do. And so they don't see five o'clock come up on the clock and they're out of there. They're passionate about the work they do. And if there's a project not done, we're getting it done.
Chris Dreyer:
That's the equivalent. I had a friend, very similar, he texted me, he works at a big bank, and he was trying to make some side money. He's designing a mobile game, he's like, "If this game takes off," and I said, "Whoa, let me stop you right there," and I said some words I probably shouldn't have to pump them up. And I was like, "You're already going to lose when you say if this is going to work. You say when this is going to work." And it's just the mindset of different individuals and how they approach their career. So I agree with you. You're going to be speaking at PIMCON. Individuals want to connect with you in advance, or have questions about everything that you're doing, or just want to connect in general, what's the best way to get in touch?
Trudy Emlaw:
If you want to get ahold of me or reach me, you can reach out on LinkedIn and I'll be happy to answer any questions or help anyone along the way.
Chris Dreyer:
Amazing. Trudy, thanks for coming on the show.
Trudy Emlaw:
Thanks, Chris. I appreciate it.
Chris Dreyer:
If there is one thing you take away from this conversation is that you absolutely cannot accept the first-rate a media rep slides across your desk. You have to negotiate and demand the stake, not the hamburger. When you build a team of true specialists, track your data to understand your true seasonality and fight for that top of funnel mind share, marketing stops being a reactive expense, and becomes a massive growth engine afterwards.
If you want to hear from Trudy and other titans of the PI industry, you need to be at PIMCON this October. She'll be taken to the stage live to dive even deeper into building a powerhouse marketing team. We are bringing together the absolute best in the business to share exactly what is moving the needle right now. Don't wait, get your tickets today at pimcon.org.
I'm Chris Dreyer, we'll catch you next time on Personal Injury Mastermind.
