Client results / Case study no. 02

Nine rooms, one system, and a $974 cost per signed case.

How a multi-office estate planning, elder law, and probate firm turned a single-market seminar program into a repeatable acquisition engine across six markets.

Practice areas

Estate Planning, Elder Law, Probate

Region

South Central United States

Partnership since

February 2023

Results window

Aug 2025 to Jul 2026

The firm already knew how to fill a room. What they needed was a system around it.

617

Workshop registrations

94

Consultations booked

$149K

Revenue generated

-38%

Cost per acquisition

What they hired us for

Educational workshop marketing

Paid social acquisition, registration landing pages, venue-level campaign management, and automated multi-channel confirmation across email, voicemail, SMS, and AI voice follow-up.

Advanced local SEO

County-level optimization across satellite markets, monthly long-form legal content, location page architecture, and schema.

Email marketing

Four consumer newsletters and one professional referral newsletter every month.

Managed social

About seventy posts a month across three platforms, every piece routed through the firm's state bar approval workflow before publication.

Review generation and Google Business Profile management

Independent review programs and profile management across four office locations.

Guide and podcast lead capture

Two evergreen download campaigns plus podcast promotion, each with its own nurture track.

Where they started

In 2024 the firm ran eight workshops, nearly all of them in one metro, at a blended $32.33 per registered household. Events were clustered in evening slots, which meant weather routinely cost them half a room. Attendance was tracked loosely. Appointments were chased by phone in the days after an event, when interest had already cooled.

The program produced clients. But nobody could say what a workshop was worth.

What we changed

01

Built a hub and spoke venue rotation

Instead of repeating one room, we rotated across six markets on a planned calendar. Three of those markets had no firm presence when we started. Two now have offices, and workshop demand is what justified opening them.

02

Rebuilt the creative around the client they actually wanted

The original ad video was pulling a mixed audience: renters, fixed income, simple wills. We swapped in presenter-led creative aimed at higher net worth households. The room got smaller and considerably more qualified, and the questions in the Q and A got more sophisticated.

03

Moved the events off evening slots

After a run of storm-hit evening sessions, we tested mid-morning and matinee times. Attendance rates stabilized. The strongest performing event of the year was a 10:30 am session.

04

Set appointments in the room, not after it

This was the single biggest lever. Moving consultation booking into the event itself, paired with a limited-availability close, took the appointment rate from the low teens to a high of 78 percent of attendees at one event. Across the year it averaged 59 percent.

05

Made the follow-up impossible to fall out of

Registrants receive an automated sequence across email, voicemail, and AI voice calling. When the state tightened its telemarketing rules mid-engagement, we rebuilt the SMS layer to stay compliant rather than switching it off.

06

Layered organic underneath the paid program

Local SEO, monthly content, and per-location review generation in every market where a workshop was running, so the firm shows up when an attendee goes home and searches the name.

Twelve months of workshops

MarketEventsRegisteredAd spendCost / household
Flagship metro4232$4,528$19.52
North suburb3158$4,936$31.24
West corridor394$3,915$41.65
Lake market238$2,086$54.89
New market test130$930$31.00
Rural expansion165$1,141$17.55
Total14617$17,536$28.42

What it produced

From 617 registered households the firm booked 94 consultations and confirmed $148,550 in closed case value across 18 signed matters. Average case value came in at $8,253, consistent with a practice mixing estate planning and elder law work.

Against $17,536 in total workshop ad spend, that is $974 to acquire a signed case, or twelve cents of acquisition cost for every dollar of case value. Twenty-five consultations from the most recent events were still open at the time of reporting, so the confirmed figure is a floor rather than a ceiling.

Acquisition cost, flagship market

$32.33$20.19

Blended cost per registered household in the firm's largest market, 2024 compared to 2026. Same city, same venue, same offer. A 38 percent reduction while volume held.

The room was never the problem. The system around the room was.

Beyond the workshop

Organic search

New users from organic search rose 22.9 percent and engaged sessions rose 24.2 percent year over year. The website now generates 640 consultation requests a year on its own, entirely separate from the workshop program.

Reputation

The flagship office passed 635 Google reviews, with per-location review programs now running in three satellite markets that had none at the start of the engagement.

Email

Newsletter open rates run 26 to 29 percent against a 22 percent legal industry benchmark, with a separate referral newsletter keeping the firm in front of financial advisors and CPAs.

Evergreen lead capture

Two guide campaigns and a podcast funnel add 75 to 80 new contacts every month at a blended cost in the high teens.

Methodology and attribution

Figures reflect the twelve months ending July 2026 and are drawn from monthly campaign reporting and firm-reported case values. Closed case value reflects only matters the firm confirmed as signed and attributed to a workshop. Consultations still pending at the time of reporting are excluded, as are matters the firm did not report back. Cost per registered household is blended across all six markets. The cost per acquisition reduction compares blended cost per registered household in the firm's flagship market in 2024 against the same market in 2026, holding city, venue type, and offer constant. Client identity withheld by agreement. Full attribution available on request.

What would this look like in your markets?

The numbers in this brief came from a program that gets reviewed, adjusted, and rebuilt every month. If you want to see what that same system would look like against your practice areas, your geography, and your case values, that is a conversation worth having.

Let’s run your numbers

More client results