← Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
314: Why Traditional Media Still Belongs in Your Legal Marketing Mix - TV Exec + Multi-State Personal Injury Firm Owner, Michael DePasquale's Success Story
00:27:04
If you're struggling to balance your marketing mix between traditional channels and legal SEO or planning your expansion strategy, this episode provides expert insights from someone who's mastered both the media and legal worlds.
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- [00:04]
Chris Dreier
Today's guest grew up in the TV business. He spent his afternoons hanging with the TV station sales teams, studying Nielsen ratings and learning the media business from the ground up. Years later, he helped run a 40 station broadcast network before launching his own personal injury practice. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreier, your host and founder and CEO of Rankings IO Mike Deep. Pasquale brings a rare insider's view to legal marketing and he puts in the work to building a firm across multiple states. Explains why broadcast television in secondary markets is still a very strong option for growing firms.
- [00:38]
Mike Deep Pasquale
Television is still a really good way to reach mass audiences. Now you don't have necessarily the, the, the modern targeting that you know your, your pitch with OTT and I, you know my deal with things, marketing back up here. Sports were a big part of my youth growing up and I played football through college and one thing I learned through sports had a ton of failures in sports, more failures than successes, but was that the teams that I was on that did good, we really focused on what I'll call like the blocking and tackling. So the football example, if you can block and you can tackle, you're gonna win games. So I kind of, I apply that to marketing and I feel like the blocking and tackling of our space is still the traditional side television, outdoor radio, and then on the digital side again, the blocking type and the basics, the SEO, the, the under the SEM arena, pay per click. I've tried so many different things over the years that would be considered exotic. And I can tell you most of the time I've not seen the success with those that I have using the, the holistic playbook of, you know, the traditional blocking tackling and the digital blocking channel. That's just me. I, I, that's my experience.
- [01:50]
Chris Dreier
You got to give me some of these examples of the exotic. Are you doing like guerilla marketing?
- [01:54]
Mike Deep Pasquale
I was convinced was going to, I was like this is going to be the biggest thing we ever did probably six, seven years ago. I'm like, hey, why don't we drive a little car out on the screen, you know, her text with a short code mobile. Now you know, short code on there, like this thing. No one wants to make phone calls anymore. This is my one man evidence. Right. Which is a terrible idea. This thing's gonna kill it. We got a grand total. We ran this for a year. Maybe one individual text came in through this. We're driving the little car out on the street. Didn't work. Okay. Not saying it's not gonna work in the future because sometimes in my opinion with marketing, you're into things too. Like the time's not right for it. Okay. There was a time when, you know, the phone book was so prevalent. Well, there were other forms of marketing that today might be se. Let's SEO. Well, at one point when people had dial up modems and the first guys were optimizing their websites, it may not have been returning to the degree that it is today. I don't know is that true or not? I'm asking you, right? The first guy was doing it. It just wasn't. The timing was right and someone declared that a failure and they were wrong because it's not a failure. I know you can't dip your toe into TV or you can't go put one billboard up and try. Didn't expect to see success. You can't do with SEO. You got to commit to it. And when you commit to it, it's A, the money side of things, but B, yourself and your team and, and, and putting the efforts in to make it work and taking your time.
- [03:19]
Chris Dreier
I couldn't agree more. I think the capital's huge. You gotta have enough distribution and saturation for the memorability and just reaching people at the right moments and, and all those things. You know, the one, the OTT is interesting. I'm, I'm right there with you. You know, a bunch of our clients have experimented with OTT and, and some of the larger firms and, and it's the same thing. It's like, well, I think it's working right? You do a blended analysis or you do some incremental testing on a different dma. But it, it, it is more challenging, you know, outside of like your CTV stuff where you can track it a little bit better, the connected tv. But you know what I find really interesting? As much as you want to talk about this, it's like you just went through a big rebrand, right? All and you had a ton of capital on TV with D. Pasquale and more and you made a decision to, you know, DM injury law. You know, talk to me through that moment where like, hey, I know we've invested these dollars here, so number one.
- [04:18]
Mike Deep Pasquale
Let me say I hope it works because, you know, we just did it. The reason we did it was, I will tell you that. So my last name, deepest quality. I think there's good things and bad things about having a name like my name. Number one. I'm not aware of any other injury attorneys who have my last name there so it's a unique name, but with the unique name, it's a hard name. And I'd walk through our call center and I'd hear that the people worked in there, you know, pronounced my name. Occasionally flubbing up a bit. I, you know, I get recognized in public. And it was always Mike, Mike, Mike. And. And then it'd be 19 different incarnations of my name. Because, as you know, our tagline, where I still think our big brand is, is Mike's got this. Okay. And so I said to myself, now with our marketing team, I said, our brand is. Is probably. Mipe is probably the main thing. And then the name, Deepest quality, more, whatever is number two. And every law firm is name, name, name, name. It's. It's a name, name, name. So we said, let's do something different and just try to deviate from it. Hired an agency in town, and I said, what do you guys think? And they did all their research and they came back. I said, we think you should try this. And I told myself, it doesn't work. I'll switch back. I don't want to do it. But.
- [05:26]
Chris Dreier
Well, yeah, and tough decision, right? Were there any conversations about, like, hey, it's Mike's got this dot com. I'm sure you have, like a redirect.
- [05:35]
Mike Deep Pasquale
We still use Mike's got this dot com. You know, I think the. I think the dm, put this way, one thing we've noticed is this is a good thing now. It'll probably change some over time, but since we really launched the DM, which has been mid, mid 24, our branded search is increased. Everyone's still searching. Mike's got this. Everyone's still searching. Deepest quality more. Mike Scout. This was number one. Deepest quality more still being searched at the same clip. But now we've added this other funnel of dm. DM law, DM injury law. And I think that over time, it'll be easier for people as we, you know, spend another 10 years from now. It'll be in the past. But I would be lying if I said I'd not have some sleepless nights while making the change, because change is scary.
- [06:16]
Chris Dreier
I think everything you just told me, you know, on the mark on. On the receiving end. I think it's logical you've built that brand recognition and your path, the DM injury law, you know, it's fascinating your. Your big law to television, then back to PI. So talk to me about this route, this, this direction, this detour that you had, and, and talk. Talk to me about the Past.
- [06:37]
Mike Deep Pasquale
So I, I graduated law school in 2006. I get a job at, you know, consider like a big law firm in Kansas City. I worked there for a couple years. And mid-2007, my dad calls me. My dad was in the media space. He calls me and he says, hey, listen, we're buying Clear Channel Television. Clear Channel was a large media company. Radio, broadcast, you know, digital properties, outdoor everything. And so they were publicly held. And so someone came and bought all the radio. My dad's company, he came and carved off all the TV stations. And he said, hey, if you want to come work for me, you know, quit your law firm, come work for me. Probably sell this company in five or so years, and we'll go from there out. The end of 2007, before this deal had closed, we agreed to buy these things and call it mid-2007. FCC had to approve it. It's going to be nine to 12 months. The economy starts to crater. Okay. So the first thing that some businesses, I don't think smart businesses. We can talk about this later. Because this is kind of an inflection point. My business, they start to do. What do they do? They cut marketing. So we're trying to close this deal to buy the Clear Channel TV stations. And every week the revenue is going tick, tick, tick, tick, tick down. So the value of the company we agreed to pay is no longer what it was at. I mean, revenues were down 30, 35%. Long story short, we get a big, big dispute with, you know, Clear Channel lust lawsuits, both directions. Eventually closed the deal in early 2008. And, you know, we're plowing through well again, the ad market's still going down and down and down, both in broadcast and in, in the digital side, our digital properties. And I remember at that point there were some, some companies that were running, going out of business sales with us. They were, they were furniture stores. Remember my dad said to me, or it was yesterday, he said, hey, listen, if they had just stuck to their, their advertising game and not deviated from the plan, they wouldn't be going out of business. They'd be, you know, gobbling up market share from their competitors. And it was kind of put in one ear and it didn't go out. But I kind of, you know, stashed in the back of my mind. So at the same time we launched the television company. I, I need a little extra money. Cause I want to get, you know, I want to get married to my now wife. And so I started a. Just a personal injury firm on the Side, I was just taking a handful of cases. Cause I had done defense work on, you know, big injury cases before. And I'm like, hey, how hard can this thing be? So I started doing an injury case here and there, a referral or something like that. So Fast forward to 2013. We 2012, 2013, we sell a company and I'm like, you know, I love the law. Like I love trial work, I love litigation. There's parts of the law I don't like. Like I would be an awful states and trust lawyer, business lawyer, et cetera. But I really like the injury side of things. So light bulb moment, like, hey, all these injury lawyers are spending all this money on our broadcast stations and our digital properties. Let me go down and start investigating this. This is something I want to do. So I called up a couple guys in Mobile, Alabama, Green and Phillips, David Green and Wes Phillips, I think it's Wes. And they were nice enough to let me go down there and just spend a day or two with them and see how they did things. And I walked out of that meeting very appreciative of my time spent with them, but also thinking, these guys are good dudes, good lawyers and they're just like good people. Like that's something I'd like to do. So I called up more, so deepest quality, more dm. It's kind of like Burger King and BK I guess, right? And I asked him to meet me at a bar, grab beer and we grab beer and I say, hey listen, I'm going to take my little referral based firm and we'll start spending some money on TV commercials. Because that was all I was really thinking at this point, this is 2013 and start a law firm, want to be partners. He was a partner at another firm. He quits that firm. I didn't have a job, so I didn't have any risk. We sold the company and you know, started up and I don't even think we had a website day one. This isn't that long ago. We're talking, you know, 10, 12 years ago. Really small TV budget, zero digital budget. And like I remember, man, I remember the first two calls were from the guy who cut my grass. Just, oh my God, I saw your commercial. And then our nanny, one of our kids nannies. And I'm like, I guess this works. But then I don't think I had a call for a week after that. So I was freaking out. So that's kind of the story of how we got to start this thing. It's probably different than most lawyers that do what we do.
- [10:51]
Chris Dreier
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- [11:53]
Mike Deep Pasquale
Yeah. I grew up at TV station. I can remember when I was in middle school looking at Nielsen logs ratings and transferring over by hand to, to, for, for one log to another and I would hang out with the sales guys, thought they were the cool guys in the state, the sports guys and the sales guys are the cool guys. So I'd hang out with them and then I worked in that space and when I was in the TV business I, I was one of the lawyers for the company. But I also oversaw some properties just due to my experience on the sales side of things. And you know, I'm not the best in the world, but I know more than, than at least the time than that I thought most lawyers do. And so that was definitely the driving force.
- [12:32]
Chris Dreier
You know, another question, you know, that I've just on how you think about this is like the, the expansion, right. Kansas City, you know, you moving into multiple markets, you said yourself like, hey it's, it's capital intensive and the brand compounds over the, over the years. So it's like, you know, the, your con, your economies and your case acquisition costs, you know, year three might be cheaper after that brand's established. So you know, how do you make that decision? Like we're gonna go Kansas City. Kansas City and St. Louis are kind of, you know, but like into these other markets like now you're all the way, you know, in the west in Colorado and like. So how do these decisions play in on expansion?
- [13:17]
Mike Deep Pasquale
Yeah, so kind of just going back to my past, you know, when, when I was it Was a kid, was my dad was a general manager TV station. He had a little bit of sweat equity. I sold it, made some money. He took that money. This is 1989, 1988, 89. And he, he didn't buy one single TV station in Wichita, Kansas. And that's where I spent most of my years growing up, which I was born in Buffalo, New York. I moved to Wichita when I was nine. And he, then he would, he'd take that, take a station we felt, he felt was on performing. He'd fix it up and then sell it. It was like a house flipper, so to speak. So he, he had that one station, they sold that, then they had two stations, then four stations, et cetera. And when they sold the last company, I think they had probably about 40 broadcast stations, 40 stations and maybe 22, 23 markets. So I saw a company I grew up with seeing a company operated from, you know, starting at one that's growing. I saw a company operating from headquarters first in Wichita, Kansas and eventually Kansas City, Missouri is a company group where we could operate businesses using synergies, accounting, marketing, et cetera, from a homepage base. So saves us money. And then I also saw we weren't in all the sexiest television markets. We weren't in LA and New York. We were in cities like Wichita, Kansas, Little Rock, Arkansas, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Good cities, the good people, but not, you know, the big markets. So I saw that you can run a viable business in what I would call small to medium markets. And that's where we've focused is, you know, the Kansas cities, the Oklahoma cities, the Wichita, all the cities we're in now, St. Louis, those are, those are like good solid markets for what we do. None of them would be market. None of them would be in states that are labeled like, you know, home runs for the personal injury space. There's been great deals of torque reform in all these states. There is good competition in all the states, like good homegrown competition too. And people from other markets, like I go to Oklahoma City for instance, although I spent a lot of my youth in Oklahoma, I have a house in Oklahoma. I, I'm not from Oklahoma, right, but I'm licensed in Oklahoma. I literally spent three months, two, three months a year, every year there since I was 14, 15 years old. But I just know, like in those markets we can be successful. We don't have to be in the Los Angeles is the world, the Phoenix, etc. That'd be great. But to your point, imagine what the cost per acquisitions are in those markets, and as you know, in our market, some of them are through the roof. I mean Wichita, Kansas, I dare anyone to find me a market that is more competitive than that market. It is hyper competitive with really good law firms in that city. And why? Because many years ago, Brad Pistotnik, who's a really good personal injury lawyer, he started advertising in the phone book and on TV in the 80s, another guy's copycatter. And I decided cause I grew up there, might as well put an office there. Well, well, so far it's, you know, I'm wheeling money out in my front yard, burning it every. But you know, we'll make it work there.
- [16:14]
Chris Dreier
I'm sure at some point I was intrigued. You got an all trial attorney model, right? So it's, you know, especially at this scale. So I was just curious, you know, you know, this question always comes into play. You are, you always hear like, oh, we're the pre lit or, or we're the trial lawyers. Like now you're a big advertiser, so you know, what goes into play for, you know, case selection and you know, these thresholds and just how you think about that.
- [16:42]
Mike Deep Pasquale
So we, we do both. I've been told I'm crazy for litigating cases and I should just send them all out. I might be, I could be totally wrong. But to me it was important that we had people here. Like I worked doing litigation and trials at like a big firm, like representing big injury cases. And I really liked it and I still do like it. And for me I was like when we got, when we first started the firm and I'm you know, answering the phone, handling all the cases, cleaning the toilets, playing paralegal, being the cmo, all that stuff. I was pre lit work comp case came in. Sure, I'll figure it out. So it was important to myself and Jason Moore that we were going to have our own standalone litigation department. We do have a pre litigation department here, but we have a litigation department as well. That's, you know, I don't know, 10, 12, 14 lawyers. I think we're mid-60s lawyers right now that those folks in there are all experienced litigators. Numerous trials under their belts, you know, wins and losses. You can't win them all. We, I just, it was, it was. Ego is not the right word. It was more of a pride thing. I wanted to have that department at my firm. And again, there's guys who are very successful who I'm friends with who said you're crazy and I haven't listened to them yet. We're going to keep litigating cases, we're going to keep trying cases. It's important to me. I think it makes for a well rounded firm.
- [18:02]
Chris Dreier
I 100% respect that. And that goes back to the college days and you competing. Right. And that's the way to compete in trials. It's a zero sum game. There's a winner and a loser. So, you know, I appreciate that. How do you think about, you know, finding good talent, recruiting good talent, keeping. Keeping your A players just on that labor side.
- [18:22]
Mike Deep Pasquale
Man, you know what that's is like any business out. That's something that I thought about when I thought about getting into this space. And the things that I thought were going to be my issues have not been my issues. And the things that I didn't even think about have been my issues. Like lawyers. For instance, when I graduated from University of Kansas law School in 2006, we had about 165, 170 kids in my graduating class. They're down to about 120 per class. And that's intentional. And that's kind of been. All the law schools we recruit from have kind of declined in enrollment, but it was, it was intentional. So we're dealing with a smaller talent pool, or I would say a smaller pool of lawyers than we were X amount of years ago. That's hard. You know, being in the personal injury space, we do face the stigma of like, you know, ambulance chaser. Because when I was in law school, I, I don't know if I knew what a personal injury law firm was like. I wasn't cognizant really of that until I started, you know, working at a law firm and defending cases. And so I think there's still something. When you go to law school most places, your goal is to go work at the big white, huge law firm, get paid as much as you can be able to brag to all your buddies you're working at this firm or that firm. The firms that people are like, ooh, they are, okay. Well, the general public doesn't generally ooh and ah over they're working at a personal injury firm. Okay. Cause they just don't know any better that it's a great job. You get to help people out. It's fun. Like, I love coming to work every day. I didn't love coming to work every day when I worked at a, you know, the more traditional law firm, silk stockings, white shoes firm, whatever you want to call it. So it's hard for us to find lawyers, we've had to broaden and go to many different places. We've also kind of pivoted from what we do with our, a lot of our pre lit lawyers, not as much. The lit is we like to hire people straight out of law school and train them as opposed to hiring lateral hires. Not saying a lateral hire won't work because I was technically a lateral hire, but we feel like if we, and we also increase, we'll pay our first year lawyers. We wanted to get in. We were competing with the silk stockings firms for those attorneys. So we, far as I know, pay our lawyer, our first and second, third year associate types more than they would get most personal injury law firms out of the gate. I don't make it out of the gate as, as as much of an eat what you kill model. That kind of develops later as you've been around a while. I don't want to chase people away after six months because they're worried their, their salary is going to go to, you know, 25% what it was after their first year. So that's a chat. That is nail the head. For me, it's my biggest challenge is the people. I don't care what business you're in. It's the people, the people, the people, you know, that I mean you guys have really built up what you guys do and you went and brought in like experts in other areas and I think that's, they're great of you guys to do that.
- [21:02]
Chris Dreier
Thank you. Thank you. Everyone thinks they have great people in the beginning, right? And then you get 20 people and you get a hundred people and then, and then like your standards continue to rise and then we're all searching for those definite A players and then like what an A player was in the past. Like that generals that can do everything when you become more specialized isn't an A player anymore. So yeah, that's, that's the biggest challenge.
- [21:25]
Mike Deep Pasquale
When you mentioned that. Well, I, I, I, I determined that one of our biggest A players was an A player in some things, but like a C player in others. And you're talking to him. I learned a lot about myself as the firm grew. I thought that I, I literally was an expert at everything. And as we, as we grew, I realized I was just an idiot for thinking I've been, It's, it's a fool. Anyone who thinks they know everything's a fool. There's some things that I'm, I think I'm pretty decent at, but there's a whole lot of things that I'm not great at. And I've, and there's probably ones I think I'm good at now and are yet I'm not good at it. And I've been able to hire people who are a lot better and really good at the things I'm weak at. And I think that's been like a huge for us is not wearing as many hats and being able to do what I'm good at. And then the things that I'm not good at get people in who are really good at that. That's been, it's not easy to do. It's hard. And as you said, things change. Like departments change. What was once worked in as your, your bookkeeping role, your firm grows. You don't need a bookkeeper anymore, you need a controller and then you need a CFO and a controller and you know, things change.
- [22:32]
Chris Dreier
You gotta evolve. That, that's the name up, name of the game. And like you said, like the, the controller, the cfo. You know, at the beginning I just thought, hey, you had a director of finance, they cover it all. But, but oh, this controller and capacity and utilization. What's this?
- [22:44]
Mike Deep Pasquale
You got to rely on those people too and trust them. Like you can't like meddle in everything because it's, you know, you're a founder of a business like I am, there's you know, some, a little bit of a pull to get in there and like, you know, dig around and you're going to let good people do good things and I think that's important.
- [23:03]
Chris Dreier
Mike brought us a rare view of legal marketing for both sides of the fence. From running TV stations to building a multi state law firm. His focus on mastering the fundamentals while staying humble enough to know what you're not great at. That's the kind of insight that helps firms grow. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. With me, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings IO. Thanks for hanging out. See you next time. I'm out.