Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Cassidy Lewis, Chief Marketing Officer at Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers, joins us to discuss prioritizing profit over calls. Cassidy will be speaking at PILMMA Super Summit 2025.
This episode and the next several will feature PILMMA speakers in our “Spotlight on PILMMA” podcast series.
In this episode, Cassidy discusses her role at Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers, some of the marketing campaigns they run, KPIs, profitability, limitations to profitability as a metric, assessing profitability, ROI, and what she is looking forward to the most at PILMMA Super Summit 2025.
Visit Cassidy online here: https://cooperhurley.com/our-staff/cassidy-lewis/.
We’ll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/.
See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/.
Transcript:
Welcome to the personal injury marketing minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world.
I’m your host, Lindsey Busfield. In marketing, we tend to focus on a handful of KPIs to evaluate the performance of any campaign we’re running.
In SEO, most of our clients want to know what keywords they’re ranking for, how well they’re showing up on the local map, and how many phone calls are coming in from the web.
Of those, the number of calls tends to get the most attention. After all, what better metric is there to demonstrate the success of an uptick than an uptick in the phone ringing?
Continuing our Spotlight on PILMMA series, Cassidy Lewis, the CMO of Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers, joins us today to talk about her upcoming diploma presentation, Prioritizing Profit Over Calls.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Cassidy.
Cassidy
Thank you so much for having me, Lindsey.
Lindsey Busfield (optimizemyfirm.com)
Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers.
Cassidy
Sure. So I have been the chief marketing officer here for seven years, a little over seven years now. When I started, I was a one-man band, and now we are a team of five and a half.
So we’ve come a long way. My day-to-day changes, I don’t have anything that I do twice in a week or sometimes even a month, but I focus a lot of my efforts on high-level strategy, right?
So how to make the phone ring, but how to make the phone ring with the right calls, with the clients that we want.
Prior to this, I think I’ve been in every facet of my… So I got my start in politics. used to run campaigns.
And then I worked at two Fortune 500s, one at headquarters, one locally, done some nonprofit work, some sales, own my own marketing firm.
Just, I came to Cooper Hurley with, I feel like, a good amount of experience. And I always tell people that, not to brag, but to say, legal marketing still kicks my butt.
Lindsey
It is a whole different level than anything else out there. So, yeah, but I’ve been here a little over seven years and we’re having a blast.
That’s excellent. sounds like you guys have had, you know, tremendous amount of growth to be able to grow it from that one man band to, you know, having, you know, several more people on staff and to be able to draw in the business support and scaffold that growth is fantastic.
Clearly, you’ve had some success with the marketing campaigns that you’re running for your firm.
Cassidy
What types of campaigns do you guys run? So we definitely have the multi-channel approach where we do some of the advertising pieces like TV, billboards, bus ads.
And we do social media, but not social media in the way you think. We don’t look for cases on social media.
We use that as branding. We talk a lot of community. We talk a lot of our employees. We use social media to meet our clients, to meet our future clients, right?
And then we focus a lot of efforts after the phone call. I always say that’s where the most money can be made is after that phone call.
After the phone rings, that’s where a lot of money can be made. So we do a lot of referral marketing, both attorney and client.
We focus a fair amount of money. efforts on our client. right Experience, right? So if we want to submit that referral, we need to make sure that we are giving them the client experience that is above and beyond.
But we check most of the boxes. We don’t do any PPC. We do do LSAs. We have a strong SEO campaign.
And then we have been doing a lot better in public relations these last maybe two or three years.
Lindsey Busfield
And clearly public relations goes hand in hand with a lot of those things. mean, from an SEO perspective, public relations is a huge piece of that.
But it sounds like you have a lot of irons in different fires, all with kind of the goal of bringing in new clients, but also meeting them and continuing that relationship after the client has done their business with your firm.
And that’s a great way to approach this. It’s a very wide net approach that meets that potential customer or potential client.
At every point in the journey. And with these campaigns, clearly, in order to be successful, you need to evaluate the success of the different campaigns that you’re having and making sure that each of those is profitable, and giving you a good ROI and meeting the KPIs that you have in place for the metrics of success.
So when you’re evaluating these campaigns, what are some of those KPIs that you’re looking at to assess the performance of what you’re doing?
Cassidy
I can tell you my KPIs. And I will, but I also want to make note of how important it is to really remain curious.
Sometimes when that phone rings, we’re happy as marketers, we feel like we’ve done our job, right? And it cannot, if you want to grow, if you want to increase profit margins, you have to remain curious.
And finding out the why, right? So the why a lot of times is the marketing channel. The mode of communication, right?
So are we getting these via chat, via form, via call? Which of those has the highest conversion rate? Why?
Why? But we have to remain curious after that phone rings, right? So the title of the presentation, Prioritizing Profit Over Calls, it came because I also own CMO Academy, and it’s a place where we build marketing leaders.
And so I get to open the hood up on a fair amount of law firms and talking to their marketers.
And we would see, and this was a number of firms where they would get the calls from social media specifically.
They would get the calls. They would even a lot of times sign up the cases. And then we find out.
Within six months, those cases have been dropped, closed with no fee, right? And as the marketer, the marketer struggling, well, we’re making the phone ring, we’re making the phone ring, we’re making the phone ring, but is it with the right calls, right?
And doing that for each of your campaigns is extremely important. And so that’s the platform from which I rise when I’m building out KPIs because I could have a KPI this month or for the next six months and say, okay, I don’t need to track that as closely anymore.
I’ll look at that quarterly or I’ll look at that annually now that I’ve put some things in place. I do believe that KPIs are very fluid and they depend on the campaign.
They depend on the team members. They depend on a myriad of factors. So again, my biggest thing is to remain curious, but, um, conversion rate is a big one.
And being as specific as possible. So looking at the conversion rate by marketing channel. But then after the phone rings, looking at the conversion rate by intake member, right?
Marketing and intake have to work closely, very closely together. Conversion rate and in as many spaces as you can put it into is extremely important.
That’s my, if I had to give it, if I had to put it in one sentence, conversion rate.
Lindsey Busfield
And clearly that is huge because if you are getting that phone to ring and hopefully, you know, during the intake process, you’re not signing up those clients that are going to be dropped off, you know, six months down the road or who are found to be at fault or really just don’t have a case or don’t have any opportunity to seek financial recovery.
That is something that I would imagine needs to be communicated through the marketing and intake as one of those unifying factors where they’re looking at the same goals there.
And so… I can absolutely attest that that’s a great KPI to use. And that goes hand in hand with what you’re talking about with profitability.
If you’re getting the phone to ring, but it’s not turning into a case, if it’s not converting, then that profit factor is being ignored.
And it seems like a no brainer that profitability should be a high priority. But in a lot of the conversations that I have with attorneys, that’s just not a metric that they have considered.
And so why do you think it might get overlooked by law firms when they are developing their KPIs for their strategic marketing performance?
Cassidy
I think why it gets overlooked in marketing by attorneys is because the industry, and I’m trying to think of a diplomatic way to say this.
Because we are thought as marketers to make pretty campaigns. to make pretty graphics. And the best marketers do concern themselves with the growth of the company.
And so we’re going to ask the questions, why is this case worth more than this case? And should we be getting more of these cases?
And why did this do this? Just really remaining curious again. So I think that there’s a separation between almost the ops operations of the firm and the marketing of the firm.
And especially because we’re usually one of the top three spenders, right? After, you know, payroll or like, so we have to be a part of those operations conversations.
We have to set, we have to understand that TV makes a phone ring, but it’s our highest cost per case.
What do we do about that? You know what I mean? Am I pressing my vendors to make sure that we get more cases that come in?
Am I cutting it? Am I reducing it? What am I doing about that? And I don’t think that the attorneys look at us in that way sometimes and that the marketers truly understand their impact or their power and that they need to be asking those questions to the attorney if they don’t offer that information.
Lindsey
Right. Yeah. I mean, asking basic questions like which types of cases provide the highest ROI and then internally looking at our different strategies and saying, OK, here’s the cost per lead.
Here’s the cost per conversion and looking at those different metrics along the way for those high priority cases. And it is a metric that I have seen get overlooked time and time again because there’s so much data.
That has to go into informing that one KPI. And it’s data looking at how many calls you have per month.
It’s data looking at the cost per lead. It’s data looking at the cost per conversion. And there’s a lot of that that has to get pieced together in order to inform that one profit piece.
And then there’s a communication of that, like you were saying. And so it does get overlooked just because it is a complex question to answer.
So I think that you’re spot on in the need for lawyers to be communicating the importance of the different case types that are the priorities.
And it’s an important conversation for marketers to be having, you know, internally with their firms. And it’s an important conversation for law firms to be having with any fractional marketing company that they are they’re working with as well.
Cassidy
They should be sharing those KPIs if they have them. It’s another thing when they’re working with a vendor. They don’t share.
Sharing profit. I’m sharing revenue goals with my vendors.
Lindsey
I’m sharing numbers with my vendors.
Cassidy
Hey, look, this is where we are. This is what didn’t do well. This is what did do well. Can you make it better?
Yes, you’re SEO, but can you help in this?
Lindsey
Well, and it’s important. It’s an important conversation that we have with our clients because we need to know, yeah, what are the highest value cases?
And of course, those are going to be your wrongful death cases and your catastrophic injury cases that are resulting from car accidents.
But you also need to be filling that funnel with lots of cases and not just focusing on the high dollar value.
And so it’s a blend of that. And as marketers, we need to be strategic in making sure that we’re padding with enough cases to have a constant influx of money, but also attracting those higher value cases and marrying those together.
But of course, those are conversations to be having throughout that process. And so, you know, we’ve talked about kind of the complexities and some of the limitations of using profitability as a metric, just because it does have so much data behind it and so much conversation that needs to happen as a part of it.
But we, when looking at the different campaigns, you touched on this a little bit, but how often should you be assessing the profitability of the individual marketing campaigns?
Cassidy
Monthly. Yeah, so, and what I mean by that is, okay, so when you look at profit for an injury law firm, you can have a terrible month, and the next month it’d be wonderful, right?
So I really look at, like, profitability at the end of the year, okay? What are our profit margins, okay?
Still, every month, I know what my goal costs. per case is for me to hit those revenue and essentially those profit goals, right?
So if I’m looking at cost per case and TV is really high or digital is really high or whatever it is is really high, we have an issue that will affect the profitability that we run in December.
We have an issue now in April that we need to get fixed before it has a big impact in December.
So it, you know, like you said, there are so many things that go into that number, right? And so you have to look at that monthly.
Now there are, there are some reports or things that I look at annually or even every other year. And I’m going to talk about this on stage.
This is another thing that, that blew my mind. Legal marketing breaks marketing rules. I have both my undergraduate. Master’s degree in marketing, and it just breaks rules and it upsets me because I got student loans, but it breaks a lot of marketing rules and that you really can’t have a target market.
Like you were saying, anybody, any demographic, any psychographic can be injured in a big car accident.
Lindsey
Right. Exactly.
Cassidy
That’s the end of the sentence. And then you could kind of play with psychographics like, oh, well, they’re, you know, more trusting.
They’re more likely to hire. Yeah, but a lot of that stuff goes out the window when you had a really bad accident.
But one of the things that I look at, I try to do it every other year. So I have a sample size large enough, but I look at our top cases over the last three years.
Top. Moneymakers, 50, 60 cases at a time. When I compare it to our typical client and Lindsey, they are opposite.
Lindsey
What? Wait. Let’s it. They’re opposite.
Cassidy
And it frustrates me so much because these keep the lights on, right? Our typical clients are, you know, B, C, D level cases.
They keep the lights on. They are referring us cases. They are doing all the things. But I mean, they literally, my top cases look, right?
These are women. These are men. These are African-American. These are white. These live on one side of the water.
These live on the other side. They are opposite. And so, I mean, that’s something, again, that we just were like, what do our regular cases?
Do they match our top cases? I don’t know. And, you know, you do a deep. I did a deep doc for like a month and just found that out.
So I look at, I think that’s a long way to answer it. But I look at that, the cost per case every single month by marketing channel.
But there are other things that I do, like I said, annually or every other year.
Lindsey
Well, and this goes back to what you said earlier, where you have to. And it’s not just curious about the why of what particular marketing campaign is working, but it’s curiosity about other types of data and metrics.
And so, you know, looking at your top performers versus your bread and butter and really diving into that. There are so many numbers that are at our disposal when it comes to marketing, that you can ask questions and get so much information, and misinformation and confusing information that does break all the rules.
But just having that curiosity, and kind of figuring out every piece of it that you can, and testing it and playing with it and seeing what works better, and not getting discouraged by the nose.
But you know, constantly being in search of, you know, kind of what is this perfect situation, which clearly does not exist in personal injury, because anybody at any time could get hurt.
And the unifying factor about that is these, you know, your targets and Regardless of age, gender, race, location, they’re in panic mode and they are looking for someone who is going to support them and hold their hand and get them the best possible outcome and get them back on their feet and looking for life.
And so from my experience, looking at the unifying factor is not necessarily where they’re coming from, but what they want out of this.
Cassidy
And that informs a lot of that marketing strategy where, yes, you want to meet them where they are, but you want to get them to that commonplace, which is just as close to life being restored as possible.
Right. That’s right. Exactly right.
Lindsey
So let’s talk about PILMMA for a second. I know we are excited to get out there. It’s just a couple of weeks away.
It’s, as I told you before we started recording, it’s, you know, Denver’s where I’m from. So I’m really excited to get back out there.
But what are you most looking forward to about the PILMMA conference this month?
Cassidy
Learning.
Lindsey
Yes.
Cassidy
Learning. That’s it. So I’ve missed one PILMMA conference since I started working here. And I was like having a baby or something.
was something kind of important.
Lindsey
Yeah, something like that.
Cassidy
But I learned the most here. I am excited to speak. I’ll be speaking twice this year on Tuesday. I’ll be on stage.
And then on Thursday, he has, Ken has breakouts. And so there’s no agenda, but I’ll be talking grassroots marketing, my favorite.
So, you know, they can come in and just ask questions about, you know, what you’re doing in your community marketing, your referral marketing, your attorney to attorney marketing, those things.
But I learned so much at PILMMA. Ken does a really good job at finding speakers that aren’t going to sell us on stage.
They are going to teach us something. I’m like, you should be charging me for this. So 100% hands down learning.
Lindsey
Excellent. Excellent. I love that too. Just going in and… Seeing what everybody has to say, meeting great people along the way.
Well, thank you so much, Cassidy, for joining us on the Spotlight on PILMMA podcast series.
Cassidy
And I can’t wait to meet you out in Denver. Looking forward to it, Lindsey.
