Chris Dreyer:
You've read the books, you listened to the online gurus, and you followed the exact advice you're supposed to. You're told to find an empty blue ocean to avoid competition. You're told to diversify your marketing right out of the gate so you aren't relying on one channel. You write the checks, you execute the plan, but instead of seeing explosive growth, your firm is stalling out while the guy down the street eats your lunch. The problem is that most conventional business wisdom wasn't built for the cutthroat reality of personal injury. Today, I'm sharing some of my hottest contrarian takes on firm growth. We're tearing down the standard advice that's quietly sabotaging your budget.
I'll explain why sometimes doing the exact opposite of what the gurus tell you is how you actually carve out market share. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, a legal marketing agency for elite law firms specializing in personal injury. We help firms sign more auto and truck accident cases. Let's get into it. There's a book called Ready Fire Aim by Michael Masterson. That's a pen name. He's a billionaire that I've read. It's one of my favorite business books. He sets out some general guidelines from zero to a million, one channel, one product or service. From one to 10, it is one channel, multiple services or multiple channels, one service.
Then above 10, it's like you got to do everything. I think the lesson here is focus. I just listened to a podcast this morning by Sam Altman. It was on the invest like the best. They said one of the biggest mistakes that they had with OpenAI and why they're losing to Anthropic right now is because of lack of focus. They're trying to do too many things as opposed to focusing on the main thing, making the main thing the main thing. I've said this also to agency owners where I was invited to speak to agency owners, where these agencies want to offer every single service. I said, "You have to imagine that there are certain agencies that your additional service that's barely supported, maybe another agency's owner entire focus, their entire company is about that."
You got to be very careful when pursuing different lanes. I'll emphasize this. In the personal injury space, it is very capital intensive. If you are sub a million, you need to find one thing that you can pile your limited capital into. Let's just assume that you're like most people and you're not backed by venture PE. Let's assume that you're bootstrapped and you're living off the cashflow. You have to throw it into one area. If you throw it into TV and you don't have enough money, it's not going to work if you try to do a whole bunch of things. If you throw it into radio or SEO or Google Ads or LSA or even lead gen, it's just not going to work if you spread too thin.
I think from one to 10, it's like focus. Here's where my opinion differs from Michael's. I think most of us throttle ourselves. Something's working and we're like, oh, I see somebody else doing social media or I see somebody else doing search or Google Ads or TV or radio. You take the thing that's working and you immediately try to explore another channel. It's research and development, and explore if that's working. When what you should do is you should pile the money into what's working until you reach or hit diminishing returns, until you have enough dry powder to really shell it in and take these other swings at the plate. I think that's where many people in the PI space go wrong.
I think that's sub 10 million what you should do. That's very contrarian. Above 10 million is where you can really... you have the capital, right? You have the budget to really diversify in your channels. I think I'm going to get some hate maybe here, but I think you only have a few options early on. Let's just assume you're doing the belly to belly stuff, the grassroots and things like that. Let's assume that I'm making assumptions here because there are exceptions everywhere. Let's just assume that you are not the influencer on social media and just have the ability to be very funny and take off and generate cases like that. You understand the hooks and all those things, which if you're a younger attorney and you understand those channels, then by all means.
I think though, if you're like most people when you're trying to explore the first channels, in my opinion, you have a few. One, local services ads, pay-per-lead, cheap, open up your categories. You got to have a great reputation. You got to be able to get reviews consistently, but that can be an amazing channel. In terms of virtual real estate, and we talk about location, location, location, it's at the very top of Google. Number two, I would say is Meta Ads. Meta Ads, you can be very precise with your targeting. It functions as brand and bottom of the funnel direct response. It's why you see a lot of lead gen and affiliates use Meta Ads, is because it doesn't cost a ton of money to be successful.
You can deploy a lot of capital into it, but you can be very successful with a limited budget. When I say limited, most of the time in the personal injury space, you can't even discuss anything sub $10,000 a month. That's just the nature of the beast. When your cost to acquire a case is 3,000 or less or 2,000 or less for an auto, you got to have some swings at the plate. I would say LSA and Meta Ads. Then I would say Demand Gen would be my third one or Performance Max. I would probably put Demand Gen on Google Ads ahead of Performance Max because essentially what it does, even though you may not bid on a competitor's brand, it's going to choose to bid on some of those keywords.
It's going to bid, choose to go to a location where there's not as much competition and could deliver some leads. Now you're going to get a lot of junk. That's the nature of the beast when you do broad advertising. You have to have a filter mechanism. You got to filter the leads. There's a lot of litigators, I only want catastrophic cases. Well, if you're going to advertise, you have to go for volume. You have to sort through leads to get those Marlin big cases, okay, so those are a few. Those are where I would start. I would not start with TV. I would not start with billboards. I would not start with radio. If I'm on a limited budget, those are where I'd start.
The other one that I would consider is lead gen. I'm an agency owner. There are some really bad issues with depending upon lead gen for the long term. But early on, they already have economies of scale on the buys. They have a proven funnel. You can get $2,500 or less CAC. The thing that you have to watch out for is the drop rates and the quality of the cases. Your drop rates will be significantly higher. It's because they're older cases sometimes. Sometimes they're not as sticky because they're not brand related typically. There may be large gaps in treatment, they may be older. They may be at fault. There's a variety of circumstances that go into lead gen, but I would say those would be the four if I was really working on a light budget today.
It could change, but that's what I see today. I just had an interesting conversation with Ross Gordon and we were talking about, I'm going to contradict myself, even my own opinions, there is under-capitalization where you just don't have enough money. There are certain thresholds for every single channel that you need to meet and exceed. I have my opinions and other people have their opinions on that. It's based upon the competition, the saturation, the TAM, total addressable market, the population, the density, seasonality, the practice type. There's all these things. Having said that, with a great strategy, you can carve out an opportunity with a lower budget.
You don't have to be the top three on say TV, CTV, Facebook Ads, and like in one market, let's just say everybody's goofy and comical, and you come out with a no gimmicks type of just through and through, I'm a trial attorney. That could stand out if everybody else is goofy. Someone could want that. But then let's take it to flip side. Let's just say everyone's serious, books in the background, and then you're the goofy person. Well, you're going to be memorable. I think that, and then there are strategies around maybe you have data and you can look at your zip codes where you have cases and you can really hyper-focus your spend. That could be on different practice areas. A great strategy can carry its weight.
The other thing I'll tell you too is a lot of firms, a lot of PI attorneys, there's a marketing kind of. If you put things into categories, you have paid media, owned media, and earned media. A lot of people can go pay for media. That's every PI attorney. You can go buy TV spots, you can go buy paid ads, whatever. There's owned media, that's your search engine optimization, your reviews, maybe your email newsletter. That's an asset that you can deploy, and that's another opportunity. But then there's the earned. The earned media is the word of mouth, the back channel conversations, the virality. When I think of earned media, I can give you a lot of examples, and I think there's a ton of opportunity because it's free advertising.
When most people do billboards and they're boring, injured, question mark, blah, blah, blah, you're never going to get earned media. You may get paid and owned, and it will build a brand, you will get authority, but the media and the news is not going to write about it. There's a reason why John Morgan will graffiti his own billboards. The news talks about it. They talk about on TV, they talk about a newspaper, people talk about it. It's that purple cow moment. Another, you see the jokes with the Fa-la-la-la-la and the Santa Claus and size matters. That's earned media. TopDog Law did an amazing single billboard strategy. He bought a billboard, it was in Philadelphia, and there was nothing on it.
It was making fun of Houston because they had the cheating in baseball. It was like something about had a billboard, but Houston stole it or something. I can't remember exactly what it was. I would encourage you guys to look it up. Well, all the news wrote about it. Everybody local loved it. They picked it up and he got a ton of attention, back links, news, press, that was a single billboard. I think that's the reason why some firms, I know Shenara has done this, I think Mike Morris has done this, where they celebrate the teachers and the people that have an influence in the market. That's just, I just focused on billboards. It could be a lot of things.
It could be a different type of grassroots marketing. It could be with goodwill and community. It could be with your Facebook ads and being funny and using humor. I think that's a big opportunity that's missed when you have a limited budget. I want to say one final thing about this. There's a lesson here from, he's not with us anymore, but John Ruhlin, amazing human, he wrote the book Giftology. One of the principles was like, why would you gift during when everybody else gifts? You're going to send a Christmas card during Christmas? You're not going to stand out. You're going to send a birthday card. They're getting birthday cards. I think right now, I think there's a big opportunity for personal injury attorneys.
If you Google right now, there's probably 10 holidays, you've got bear day and coffee day and pizza day and this and that. We all choose to celebrate Christmas and the main holidays. Why couldn't you own maybe in your city pizza day or donut day? Just choose that as one of your lanes. You're going to stand out because nobody else is owning that day. It's something the media's going to write about because it's different. By the nature of being different, you automatically stand out. I'm going to give a little preview of my conversation that I'm going to bring awareness to for PimCon. Here's the gist of it, and this is just a small taste. Everyone likes to think about this difference between marketing and sales, marketing and intake.
There are attorneys that are very involved in the marketing and they're not involved in sales. They hear this word and it brings a discomfort to them and no one likes to be a salesperson. I want to tell it a little secret here or share something. Everything is marketing and everything is sales. Let me explain. All marketing is is leverage sales. Let's define what it is. It's a communication of value. When you do marketing, it is not one-to-one typically. It is one to many. There are some exceptions, right? When you do Facebook Ads, it's to the thousands, with TV, to thousands. When you do sales, typically there are exceptions, right? It's one-to-one. That's all it is. You're communicating your value to many people or to one person.
I think that once PI attorneys come to grasp that, they understand how important it is, why you should be communicating your value at all phases of the life cycle, even after someone becomes a client. Because then it comes back in the flywheel for referrals and reviews and all the things. That's what we're doing every single day. Most PI firms, they think of sales as taboo, but every single one of you run a sales organization. Yeah, I got another one that really riles me up, but I'm going to try to stay even keel Chris. Everyone's like, you hear all these consultants, you hear all these fractional CMOs that have never been a CMO. Everyone says, "You got to go to the blue ocean. Go where there's no competition."
Hey, dummy, there's a reason why there's no competition. There's no opportunity. We're not freaking Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Most of us aren't that. The creating OpenAI and new technology and blah, blah, blah. You want to go to the red ocean. You want to love it. Love the competition. Go where the bloodbath is. Why? Because competition, because there's opportunity. I'll give you a perfect example of this. Everyone's like, "Oh, maybe I should start a practice area outside of auto." Okay. Go to your random small... What type of firm are you going to build? There's no opportunity there. Why does GEICO and State Farm and all them talk about auto insurance?
Because there's a lot of people that drive and have auto insurance, and a lot of people get in auto accidents. I think it's very poor advice. It's said so nonchalantly because they read it in a random book and they heard it from Reid Hoffman or one of these billionaires to go to the blue ocean. I would say go to the red ocean. Love the competition. Think about how you're going to destroy your competitors every single day. I think it's foolish, by the way, where people are like, "Oh, I just focus on myself and I don't worry about my competition." First of all, most of your asses are lying. I see you looking at my LinkedIn profile. You have to care about the competition if you're in the market that is a bloodbath.
Okay. If you're creating some rando tool that's never been created, congratulations you found a blue ocean. Your Elon and you're making robots, but that's not most of us. Go to the red ocean. Don't go to the freaking blue ocean. It doesn't exist. Let me tell you a little story to emphasize this. I am in so many of these agency masterminds and they're like, "Go to the blue ocean, find this niche. Go do work for lawn care and these sub 10,000 TAMs." You can't build it. There's no competition. If I was going to specialize in trademark law marketing, well, how many trademark attorneys are in each city? There's just not a lot of opportunity, and that just is what it is. Also, you got to think about what the consumer wants.
Does a trademark attorney who has no competition really need marketing versus a family law attorney or criminal defense or personal injury? I'm a big Seth Godin advocate. I just read The Dip, Purple Cow, This Is Marketing. I think his daily content is so good. You hear John Morgan reference it for Purple Cow. These are a lot that stem from him. I was listening to a podcast and he was talking about being remarkable. That's what a Purple Cow is. How do I be remarkable? I thought that it would be very challenging to be remarkable for everyone, and so I needed to focus. That's why we chose personal injury. Now here's the thing about personal injury. There's a ton of competition.
You want to talk about red ocean? It is a complete and utter bloodbath. Well, most people don't want to compete in that or they're competing and maybe they're dipping their toe into it. But I wanted to go all in because with competition it demands expertise, with the rising costs, case costs it demands expertise, so there's opportunity. That just articulates a point here that I'm not targeting and going after all of law. Now, there are practice areas that we can absolutely help with the same strategies that were designed originally for personal injury, because they're the kings of advertising. But that just articulates my point where there's so much opportunity in the red ocean if you have the grit and determination to be the best in that space.
Stop taking generic advice and trying to force it into the most competitive vertical on earth. The prize pool is biggest where the fight is the hardest. If you want to scale, you have to run towards the bloodbath, concentrate your resources, and build a machine that's built for the red ocean. That's it for today's episode. Personal Injury Mastermind is powered by Rankings.io, a legal marketing agency for elite law firms specializing in personal injury law. Every month we earn your business. No locking contracts. We handle everything from SEO to paid ads to your website so you don't have to think about it. If you want more auto and truck accident cases choosing you instead of the competition, book a complimentary growth audit at Rankings.io.
