Client results / Case study no. 04

A room works for one night. The recording works every night.

How a Northeast elder law firm held seminar attendance at nearly double the industry benchmark, then built a second channel that produces leads at a fifth of the cost and never needs a venue, a deposit, or a Tuesday evening.

Practice areas

Estate Planning, Elder Law, Medicaid Planning, Probate

Region

Northeast United States

Partnership since

2017

Results window

Jul 2025 to Jun 2026

One program, running whether or not a room is booked.

564

Workshop registrations

205

Consultations booked

$497K

Revenue generated

8.1x

Return on ad spend

What they hired us for

Educational workshop marketing

Paid social acquisition, registration landing pages and forms, venue and time slot testing across the region, automated confirmation and reminder sequences, and an event-by-event reporting sheet the firm's own staff works from.

On-demand webinar production and distribution

A recorded presentation built into a permanent registration asset, promoted across two paid platforms, with a twenty-one day nurture sequence and a consultation calendar wired to the end of it.

YouTube channel management

About fifty long-form videos and fifty shorts a year, plus scripting support, title and thumbnail testing, playlist architecture, podcast appearances cut into clips, and comment monitoring.

Website hosting, maintenance, and buildout

Ongoing site management plus direct event registration, an on-demand webinar section, a password-protected client care portal, a book bonus landing page, and a full rebuild of both registration pages.

Email marketing

Four to six sends a month across weekly newsletters, event promotion, a welcome series, a book campaign, and list engagement.

Managed social

About sixty posts a month across three platforms, with custom creative for events, book launches, and firm milestones.

Search content and Google Business Profile management

A monthly authority article, on-page work, five to eleven profile posts a month, review response on the firm's behalf, and review generation assets for both the office and the seminar room.

Book launch and client education assets

Launch support for the firm's second book, a bonus resource page and printed QR program, a per-chapter video series, and a client portal carrying trustee training and client care video.

Where they started

The seminar program worked. It was also the only thing that did. Two standing venues, two events a month, and a firm carrying a break-even above $82,000 against a $130,000 goal, all of it resting on whether enough households were willing to give up an evening.

Online the picture was thinner. Paid search was doing the heavy lifting and nobody could prove what it returned. In one representative month, 2,075 of the site's 2,730 new users arrived through Google Ads, and the firm could not tie those clicks to a single call. The video channel was publishing steadily and converting nothing directly. And there was no asset anywhere that could take a stranger from curious to booked without a venue, a date, and a room full of chairs.

What we changed

01

Pulled the paid search and kept the traffic

Google Ads came out in the spring after months of calls nobody could trace. Traffic settled at about 800 new users a month and has held there for a full year with nothing spent on search, while the site kept producing 21 inquiries a month on its own.

02

Built the asset that runs when the room is dark

The on-demand webinar went live in January. In its first six months it produced 194 leads at a fraction of what a seat in a room costs this firm. Every one of them lands in a twenty-one day sequence with a consultation calendar at the end.

03

Tested the market and cut what lost

A 10am event drew 11 households at $229 each and was dropped. An affluent market test cost more per household and returned 93 percent attendance and 73 percent appointments, the best quality numbers of the year. One is gone. The other is back on the calendar.

04

Rebuilt what happens after the room empties

A physical calendar at the back of the room with a team member working it, a three-strike follow-up rule for attendees who left without booking, and a scripted video series pushing every attendee to read the firm's book before the consultation. Appointments now run at 62 percent of attending households.

05

Turned a posting habit into a library

About a hundred pieces a year, retitled for hooks, thumbnails rebuilt around new photography, podcast appearances cut into clips. Monthly watch time rose 38 percent. Two paid course platforms were shut off and the content moved onto the channel the firm already owned.

06

Made the book part of the funnel

The second book launched with a bonus resource page, a QR code printed in the back, a promotion series across email and social, and an easel in the seminar room. The firm credits it with a materially higher hire rate among attendees who arrive having read it.

Twelve months of workshops

MarketEventsRegisteredAd spendCost / household
Primary market, standing venue12320$26,562$83.01
Secondary market, standing venue11217$24,757$114.09
Affluent market test116$2,007$125.43
Morning slot test, discontinued111$2,520$229.09
Canceled, households rebooked232$5,352n/a
Total27596$61,198$102.68

What it produced

Twenty-five events across two standing venues and two market tests drew 564 registered households. Two further events never happened, one of them when a hotel lost power an hour before the doors opened. Those 32 households were moved into later dates with priority seating and a venue credit was recovered, but the money is left in the table above.

Household attendance ran 59 percent against an industry benchmark of 30, putting 331 households in a room hearing the firm present. At one matter per five attending households, a rate below what the firm's own appointment and hire numbers support, that is 66 new matters and $497,000 in case value against $61,198 in advertising. That is $923 to originate a matter the firm values at $10,000 to $12,000.

Household attendance vs industry benchmark

30%59%

Filling a registration list is the commodity. Getting those households to actually turn up is where seminar programs quietly fail. This one runs at nearly double the benchmark, and 62 percent of the households that do show up leave with a consultation already on the calendar.

Registering is easy. Showing up is the whole program.

The second front door

A channel built once, running nightly

The recorded webinar produced 194 leads in its first six months, at a fraction of what a seat in a seminar room costs this firm. The recording holds no chairs, books no hotel, and does not care what month it is.

Views held. Attention grew.

The channel held its publishing cadence all year and monthly views barely moved. What changed is what happened after the click: watch time up 38 percent, the average view lengthened from 1.8 minutes to 2.5, and subscribers added a month up from 35 to 49.

Paid search came out and the traffic stayed

Google Ads had been carrying three quarters of site traffic and could not be tied to a single call. A year after the shutoff the site still produces 21 inquiries a month across form, chat, and guide downloads, none carrying a cost per lead.

The list is an asset, not a chore

6,476 contacts, four to six sends a month, and open rates between 25 and 27 percent against a 22 percent legal industry average. One engagement campaign surfaced existing clients who came back for additional matters.

Methodology and attribution

Figures cover the twelve months ending June 2026 and are drawn from monthly campaign reporting. Case value is calculated from the firm's own attendance and conversion rates at a blended estate planning and elder law value of $7,500 a matter, below the $10,000 to $12,000 the firm reports. Website inquiry totals track live chat availability as much as demand. The site carries no paid search behind it, and inquiry volume is seasonal. 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