134: Cooper Hurley CMO Cassidy Lewis Shares Marketing & Grassroots Strategies and Her Secret for Generating Client Referrals

We have to go out and create these connections with our community, so we do a lot of that segmentation right so that we can talk to that audience as best as possible. So being a very intentional about outstanding customer service. And I always say this, if I ask a law firm, what do you do for customer service or client service? And they say, everybody's really nice. Well, that's not a strategy. What things, what tactics do you have in place that impress your client throughout the entire lifetime of the case, from day one until day 365, what happens for every single client, letting price is low, but I forgot. We make sure that we stay in contact. We have a campaign for Hey, it's been a year since we settled your case. We just want to let you know that we're thinking about you. What we appreciate you. All of our former clients are put into a physical mail campaign, an email campaign. They see us on social media, so we focus on them a lot. Those are on the best ambassadors. But then the other side of that is putting in as many people into our database as possible.

Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time you're listening to the 10 Golden Rules of Internet Marketing for Law Firms podcast. Welcome aboard. Great to have you with us, and thank you for being here. We've got a great guest today. Cassidy Lewis is from the law firm Cooper Hurley. We've chance to work together a little bit, and we've known each other for over seven years, so we're going to probably have some great, great stuff for you on marketing. And Cassidy also has a new product called the CMO Academy, and we'll get in into all of that. If you're a regular listener or a newbie and you like what you hear, do us a HUGE favor and subscribe on the YouTube channel, or give us a five star review on iTunes or pod beam or Spotify and and subscribe over there. It helps us a lot get amazing guests if we have more subscribers and great ratings. So take a minute to do that. We really appreciate it anyways, with that small commercial, Cassidy, welcome.

Thank you, Jay, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here today and to have a good conversation about marketing,

well, let's do that. I mean, let's start with a little bit of your journey and your background and how you ended up at Cooper. Hurley, sure.

So I have been marketing going on 16 years now. I've been in what feels like every facet, so from campaign management to working at Fortune 500 so being in sort of that corporate world, owned my own marketing agency for a bit, and then went home for a few years to be a mommy and decided to get back into the office. And I just, I wanted to be able to work with a company that had a sizable budget for marketing, but most importantly, I wanted to be able to work with a company that really believed in marketing, and in that interview process with Cooper Harry and Injury Lawyers, I felt like they had both of those things. So I started there many, many months ago, many months ago, and it's been a little over seven years now, it's been wonderful working with people.

Yeah, I mean, great guys, and we, like I mentioned, we had a chance to work together, sort of on and off a little bit through the years. Let's get into some of the really good, meaty stuff, because one of the things I really admire about you is you do a great job in marketing. I think you're very adept at the big picture things that you probably lean on an agency or a vendor for, but some of the things I see on your socials, you do a really great job at the local marketing and ground game. So why don't you talk about some of the things that work the best for you and maybe give folks some tips?

Sure, sure. Yes, grassroots marketing, Community Marketing, referral marketing, a few different lanes, a few different titles for it, but those are one our bread and butter at Cooper, Hurley, Injury Lawyers, but also my favorite ways to market. I know we live in a digital age. I know that we all almost worship Google, but the referrals that you're going to get from your community, whether it's a former client or a teacher that just saw your commercials, those are the best referrals that you're going to get. Those are going to be the best cost per lead, cost per acquisition, cost per case, and we've really done a good job over these last few years of focusing on it, even before I got there, Jim Hurley did a good job at focusing on the database and getting referrals from them. I have added a reason to do that since I've been at Cooper. Hurley Injury Lawyers, a lot of law firms are experiencing. And seeing some big shop moving into town, right? So whether it's a big shop in their state or it's a big national firm, some states are allowed allowing non lawyers to own law firms, and that's changing the game. Our only real defense against that is to connect with your community, right? That's our only real defense. Like we can't outspend them on TV, we can't outspend them on digital, radio, billboards, we can't outspend them. We have to go out and create these connections with our community, so we do a lot of validation segmentation, right, so that we can talk to that audience as best as possible. So we are very intentional about outstanding customer service. And I always say this, if I ask a law firm, what do you do for customer service or client service, and they say, everybody's really nice. Well, that's not a strategy. What things, what tactics do you have in place that impress your client throughout the entire lifetime of the case, from day one until day 365, what happens for every single client that impresses them? But after that, we make sure that we stay in contact. We have a campaign for Hey, it's been a year since we settled your case, we just want to let you know that we're thinking about you, that we appreciate you. All of our former clients are put into a physical mail campaign, an email campaign. They see us on social media, so we focus on them a lot. Those are our best ambassadors. But then the other side of that is putting in as many people into our database as possible. So it's like these are clients. That's who we serve, but how do we add to that database? I say this often, we don't own our website traffic. I'm going through something right now. Google's playing a shuffle, right? We don't own our website traffic, we don't own the eyes on our TV commercials, but we can own data, and so we do a lot of Raffles throughout the year, at least one a month, where we're giving away a TV or a gas gift card to make sure that we're able to say that we're able to give back to our community, but also that we have a chance to Stay in contact with them after we get that email, that address, that name, whatever it is. As you can see, I can talk about this all day long, but it really is the thing that we put not the most money behind. It's not the most money but the most time behind. I think you have two resources in marketing, money and time, and it's what we put the most time behind, for sure. Yeah,

no, I love it, and I'm taking notes. And obviously I live and breathe this stuff. But when I hear another expert talk about these things a lot of times, for me, it helps frame it, how to explain it, and also your in house at the law firm. So framing it from the inside out, as opposed to the outside in. From an agency's perspective, another topic that I thought you'd share some great ideas on is how to pick an agency, a digital agency, partner, and vendors in general, and then how to manage them. But why don't you start with what are you looking for in an agency? And if someone's maybe just starting out or maybe hiring that second or third set of web guys, SEO guys. Everyone calls us something different. What are you looking for?

My favorite vendors to work with, no matter the industry, is the ones that care more about what they do. So one of the reasons we love working with Tangos and rules, for example, is while you we work with you guys on SEO, specifically on digital pieces, you care about our full business, right? So what's your cost per leading? How do we get that down coming out and saying, let's talk about what your brand looks like. Let's talk about your unique differences those companies that, whether implicitly or explicitly, offer those wraparound services, even if we don't work with you on that specifically lets me know that you care about my bottom line and that I won't be sold to every time I turn around. That's tough. And I think digital specifically, it's such the Wild Wild West, right? A lot of law firm owners and even marketers don't know what to do, don't know how to code a website, don't understand the algorithm, but whatever it is. And so I think there are a lot of agencies out there that are getting by on that sort of, that mystery, the mystery of it all, but those companies that come in like, Hey, we're going to do a good job for you, and we care enough about your company to say, Yeah, we're your digital partner. But have you thought about this for public relations, or have you thought about this for your client? Or your brand, those are the companies that I want to partner

with. I love it. And then some tips for folks on how to work with an agency, like, how do you be a great client? And how do you get the best product from your agency?

I think that business owners in general, I'm going to include law firm owners, but business owners in general, we hire an agency, and they are supposed to be the subject matter expert, and some of sometimes they are, but we assume that we can set it and forget it, like, Okay, we pay you every month. You guys got it, and you really have to see your good partners as an extension of your law firm. And there has to be management, there has to be partnership. You have to meet with them regularly. You have to let them know what's going on in your law firm so that they can take that baton and run with it. There's a marriage between the different pieces that make up marketing, right? Digital and Community Relations don't have anything to do with each other. Of course, they do, right? And so I think that, again, you have to manage them almost as a part time employee. Hey, look, this is what I expect out of you if you want us to renew our contract in a year. These are the things that I'm looking at, right and teach them or show them how to win the same way that you would do an internal employee. And we do that. I've had to learn that. I didn't always do that, but we got to learn that. And because of it, we are all of our agency's favorite, favorite customer.

I love that line. Show them how to teach them how to win. Yeah, and that's a great perspective, and it's actually a great insight for the agency too. Like we should ask, Hey, how do we win? How do we become your favorite vendor, and what are you looking for when it comes around to make a renewal decision, right? I mean, obviously, look, the numbers don't lie. So it's cases, cases, cases. But I've always heard in the agency business, and I believe this to be at least 50% true, that you can't hide the results, but a lot of times, agencies or vendors get fired for making two or three little mistakes. And I've seen it, we had an intern make a mistake for a client, and it just kind of cast doubt on the agency's work, and then you're constantly fighting an uphill battle to regain the client's trust.

Yeah, yeah. One thing, too late, I think, when you're talking about clients trusts, agencies have to do a really good job at telling us what you're doing, especially, again, in digital, where you guys could be adding schema to 50 pages that takes down. And you think, because we all don't even know what schema is, I'm not going to go back and tell you, yeah, it's a

black box, right? If you don't open it up and share a little bit, yeah, we

got these videos indexed, right? We compressed some images and got your speed a little bit better. They may not understand it 100% but to see, okay, you guys are doing something. You guys are working, I think helps strengthen that relationship.

That's awesome. I love it. I'll probably come back to more marketing insights. Oh no, I did have one more. What's hot like, what's working right now? What's generating cases.

We are enjoying the fruits of our labor in that it's a 40% about 3030, I don't want to lie, so 30 plus percent, closer to 40% of our business is from our database work, from Community Connections, people we need out in the community. Wasn't always one thing, so this is something that you gotta put roots down and and cease in a year, two years, three years, four years. But we are really reaping those benefits digital is, is digital hot for six or seven months at a time, and then you something changes, court date and down for two months. But even still, digital is pretty solid. I am one of the ones where my LSAT are good for two months and down for four

but you know, you're not the only one. We would really upset the apple cart when they introduced the AI for the rating systems in October, November, and half our clients were up, and half our clients were down, and the ones who were down didn't believe us that I know there is a real algorithm change in whatever we were all doing really jumped all over the place. So it seems to have stabilized a little bit. All the numbers I saw from last month were real good. Yeah,

yeah, we have been getting more credits when we're rating leads. So it seems like it's kind of figured it out, because we didn't call about some criminal. I'm like, This is my personal injury, so we've stabilized some I have a lot of thoughts about savings,

but I. The AI is getting smarter. The AI learns, and they basically what they did is they said, You can't dispute calls anymore. You can rate calls. You can still accept booked and archived but the AI gets smarter and smarter and smarter the more feedback you give it. And I think that happens on a micro on your account, but also macro level, like you said, they're listening to 1000s and 1000s of law firms give them feedback and and then the AI just learns and gets better at determining what is a good lead and what is a good match for this firm,

right? Yeah, I like them. I like LSA as a general rule, just not day to day.

Yeah, it wouldn't be a marketing conversation or even a business conversation, if I didn't ask you, if you guys are doing anything in AI,

yes. So one of our to do within the marketing department is to be more intentional about our AIU, so going from write this or make this better for me to help me idea, right? Like, that's really the power. Yeah, that's great, yeah? Like, don't give me one of the prompts that I do. Don't give me any answers. This is the problem that I have. Helped me create the motion so that, but then also things like it helping score our intake calls. There are systems out there for it, but you can also create one using chat, GPT, using so if you have read section, I think read sense, and that call rail has one, I kind of want our own. So yes, we are using it. I want to exchange. We use it regularly, again for emails and social posts. But it that's not using it to its full potential. So that's where we're moving towards.

I love it. I love it. Let's jump over now. I'd love to hear about cmo Academy, your new product, service, offering. This is a Cassidy Lewis, not a cooper Hurley, right? Yes,

yes, even though the partners are so excited about it, which made me feel really good. So I have mentored and coached marketers, specifically legal marketers, for years. I have fun doing it. This is me adding some structure around it. So when I go to a conference, speak at a conference, and I hop off stage, somebody will always ask me, like, how do I get a u like, how do I hire a u like, of a car

unicorn? People here,

right? But it led me to the CMO Academy, a lot of marketers, for whatever reason myself, present company included. We can focus on the tactics. We can focus on the sort of what to do, or the how to do, the Facebook campaign, right, the CTV instead of the why. And so the CMO Academy is a mentoring and coaching service for in house marketers, specifically legal markets where we focus on strategy, right? So why are we doing this? Right? So I talked earlier about we need to connect with our community and our database, because we have to build this defense mechanism up for these big firms coming in. That's the why. And then you get into the how. If you understand a why, there's a million house we can go from there. And then we also focus on the assessing, like a CMO. So those are the KPIs. But beyond that, the reports, like the reports that you need to do once a year, the reports are just out of pure curiosity, like, why is this the way it is? And can is it repeatable? Does data back it up? So those are the three spaces that we focus on how to strategize, like the CMO, how to implement like a CML, on how to assess like a CMO,

I love it. And what's the format? You do some online zoom coaching. And there's a community as well. Is that correct?

Yes, we have in person class, which is via zoom. And then we also have the on demand option, where it is recorded videos. Obviously, the zoom option, the person gets to ask, the student gets to ask as many questions, and it's more tailored to your law firm. The on demand option, no questions get to be asked, but you get to watch it as many times as you like.

I love it. I love it. And I'm just thinking of ideas here, but the one idea I'll turn into an invitation, and I love to you to be my first invite to speak at tgr, live 2026 really nice, awesome. So we'll make that a date, because I know 2025 didn't work out, but yeah, I would love that I'm seeing all this content and structuring a presentation in my mind. So absolutely I would make that happen. This will probably air after tgr live 2025

which is awesome, hitters, you have some people. Will happen to and now I get to say I'm with them, and I'm excited about that, but if my sister was not having a baby that week, I would be there you have, and I have to say this to you, because it's important. And I this is, I'm in house so and I work with, or, know, a good amount of other in house marketers. All conferences are not created equal. So for you to have the people that are going to bring that amount of impact to your audience, it's extremely important, right? And we see it and we appreciate it, so just thank you for putting that together. That's going to be a good one.

Yeah, it'll be great. And for the people listening to this, we'll be publishing some of the the sessions. It's now after tgr live, but even though we're recording before our live event, growth strategies for law firms. But definitely look for that on the website. In 2026

Can you do a recorded option? I will pay for mine right now.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yes, yeah, we didn't get organized with that last year, but maybe this year, that'd be a great idea. We just put out a lot of the great content on this podcast, so it'll be on our YouTube. Definitely be some stuff on our YouTube channel.

Okay, awesome. I look for it. Fantastic.

What's one thing that every cmo should be doing at a law firm, or one thing every marketing person should be doing at a law firm today,

one thing that I want marketers to start doing more of is to find one thing and to dive deep into it, to almost obsess over it. And I say that because as CMOS, or as marketing leaders, we have to juggle so much. We have to juggle so much. There's so many different ways to market, right? But take two weeks, take a month and say, I'm just, I'm going to focus on this and make it as best as you can, create as many SLPs and processes for it, and then launch and then move on to something else. We've got to do a better job at diving deeper into something instead of just sort of saying topical on 50 things.

Now, if you're not just starting out and you're more like Cassidy size of firm and guys are got a lot of stuff figured out, and you got your digital and you got your ground game, give us an advanced tip for someone who's more of a counterpart to

you for CMOS, and this is not marketing specific, I'm going to say if you have 50 person law firm, five person marketing team, delegate for you to focus on The strategy, let your team whether they cannot shadow guards, but let your team focus on the tactics, and you to get into some deep work.

You answered a question earlier, and I was going to comment, but you added some traditional, amazing value, so I wanted to comment now. I said, what's working? And you said, Well, what's kind of like all the hard work we've put in for the last four or five years, and I've had a very similar experience around the same timeline, because I've been doing a webinar every month and a podcast every week for the last four or five years, and it takes time. Like people, you gotta stick with it, because the first couple podcasts you put out, you're gonna have 10 or 20 or 30 downloads, unless you're amazing, famous. But now we're really seeing the fruits of our labors, and every week, or every couple weeks, like I get someone calling me up saying, Hey, listen to your podcast, or I heard your webinar, and I want to talk to you about doing some business, but took a long time and a lot of hard work. So one thing I would share with everybody is and emphasize what Cassidy said is you've gotta commit to it. Do it? Get it on a calendars is one of the ways you make it happen. Make it someone's job. Assign it to someone every week. Social contents gotta come out, maybe every month. Your newsletter, if you're a law firm. Every month, we do a webinar, which is a higher level of thought leadership, and interview smart people like Cassidy and, I mean, we've had amazing people on the webinar, Mike Morris, who's going to be at our live as a matter of fact, a lot of people at the live event, where they all stars from our podcast and our webinars. Oh, okay, okay. Justin lovely. The AI expert is going to be back and Bill big, the culture guru, was a big, big hit at our conference last year. And you don't have to produce all the content. You can just interview folks, like we're doing here today, and get that content out on a regular basis. And it really pays dividends. There's no substitute for a monthly newsletter. Every business has to have a monthly newsletter, and every time I send my note, I get Hey, Jay, we've been thinking of redoing our website. We're not happy with our SEO. I get one or two leads every single month, and someone calls up and wants to interview me on their podcast, or wants to be on my podcast. So thing I'm sure, for your firm, every time it goes out, you get a couple referrals. And. Someone just like, oh yeah, I forgot about Cooper Hurley. They'd be great for my aunt who's in a car accident,

right? Absolutely, that patience again. I can't say I always had it, but Jim Hurley is good for that. We'll do an event, one of our flagship events, vote for a call and like, oh, it's going to suck the first year. Not anything I do. It's not close second. Like, that's gonna suck first year, first two years. I mean, we started off getting three or 400 agents last year. I think we were at 13,000 and this is the fourth year. Like that patience. I have not always had it, but you I always

want to, I always want to enter to win the TV, but I see you have to be a Virginia resident. So

lessons learned. We are not shipping a TV

Those are big TVs. Those are big TVs. You got you guys, don't fool around with your prize giving. That's awesome. Oh, I did want to send a shout out to Jim Hurley, because he's one of the real sweethearts in the business. Did a great attorney. And here's a Jim Hurley lesson that we should all remember whenever he sees my name anywhere, he sends me a personal note, and it's just a great strategy of staying in contact with the people you know, like and trust, sweetheart. So Jim, I hope you're listening this long. This is our test. Well, Jim, here that you know at that point. Alright, so I think this gets us to the quick one line Answers section, yes. And this goes way back. I mean, we asked Gary Vaynerchuk these questions before he had a podcast. He's a famous social media guy, and he was working at his dad's wine store. And we asked Jason Calacanis, who has the number one business podcast in the world today, the online podcast before he had a podcast. So what apps or techniques do you use for personal productivity?

One note's my favorite right now.

And you just keep lists there and things like that. Yeah,

I have so much going on all the time the if you use it the way it's set up, so I can divvy it up, but I can see them all at one time. It is really good on my phone, on my laptop and on my desktop. I want to, yeah, that's a one note influencer. Microsoft hears this, what I want to be a one note influence.

I love it. Yeah, I use Evernote in a similar manner, and they've been building in some AI and some tools, yep, but I still got a lot of paper.

I can't get rid of it. Me too,

yeah, and I go back and forth. One thing that's been great is I used to work a lot at home and work a lot at the office, and now I work from home, at home office, and I used to always find it was a problem, like, because your paper would be at the office and you're at home, I was trying to get everything online, but I still like to write things down. Do you have a personal wellness and fitness routine? I hate

to call it a routine training for a 5k I feel like if you training for something, it'll make you get up because you don't want to waste your money or be embarrassed.

That's a great tip,

not like I'm so disciplined now. Just don't want to get embarrassed at the five days. Just keeping those in the rotation will help.

Here's another pro tip, get shot on a lot of video on an upcoming date. So our events coming up, and I'm working real hard, because last year I didn't love the video of me. The content was great in shining. Best business books,

favorite marketing book, uncopyable.

Who's that by? What's the key learning?

Uh, Steve Miller, and it is tactical, but it's just small things that you do that help stand out. It's not a million dollars, and which I love, because it doesn't have to be you swinging from a mountain for your TV commercials. It's just good, and it's not too thick for all the ADH fears. It's just a really I've read it three or four times now. Love it,

blogs, podcasts and youtubes. When something comes across your stream, stop everything else and switch that one on,

marketing, book, podcast.

Who's that by? Oh, my God,

don't ask me that. We'll put

it in the show notes. Oh, I should know, I've hit you with three or four tough questions. Give us a great answer. Oh,

my I was listening to the podcast for a while, and then I found out he's local. He lives near me. Oh, that's great. I'll think about it. I'll come back

to it. Fantastic. Your NFL or sports team,

go birds. I'm an Eagles fanatic.

Oh, congratulations. You're so cool fan. Winner again. Thank

you. Thank you very much. You.

That's great. And last question, what's a or second last, what's a great introduction for you?

A great intro for me, are law firm owners, and they're in house marketers. So law firm owners that are on this grow path, right? Yeah, ones that are maybe have two or three lawyers and are looking to expound, looking for the additional GEOS in order to need that in house marketing staff, and then those, their in house marketers are looking to grow

and someone injured in a car accident or any kind of personal injury in the state of Virginia,

railroad across the nation, you get injured on a railroad, Amtrak,

or anything like that. Yeah, the story when Jim rang the seven alarm fire bell, right?

What? Oh, God, no. What happened? This

is secret, really good stuff, only for people listening this long into the podcast. Okay? And it might have been John, but I got a text on Super Bowl morning from Cooper Hurley, and they said, Jay, can we ring the seven alarm fire bell? There was a terrible train accident South Carolina, yeah, and we have this protocol called The Seven arm fire bell. And so what we do is we ring the fire bell, and we immediately get into action. And we put up some Google ads. We created a landing page about train accident attorneys. We didn't get gory with the exact details in South Carolina, but we had maybe the background looked familiar. And the next morning, we got a phone call and from the family of a woman who was terribly injured in this accident, broke bones in her back, lost all her luggage in this accident, and Cooper Hurley got a great case out of bringing the seven alarm fire bell. Oh, well, yeah, yes, that was an out of state train accident with a great result for I'm sure, the injured party got great attention from your team, and it

was absolutely, absolutely yes please. Always. Would love an introduction for those listening that you get a railroad case, whether an employee of the railroad or passenger, you don't know what to do with it. Sending a cooper Hurley Injury

Lawyers, yeah. Then the last question, Where can people get in touch with you?

Cooper Hurley injury lawyer, so you can always call me 757-333-3333, LinkedIn, at Cassidy Lewis, and then I will add my email to the show notes. I won't say that. I'll add my email to the show notes.

Fantastic. And how about Chief Marketing Officer cmo Academy? Mm,

hmm. Same way you can do that. You can email me at Cassie at the CMO Academy com, but you can email me at people heard it too. Oh,

so the domain is the CMO Academy. Yes,

please. Cmo academy.com.com,

awesome. Well, Cassie, this is a lot of fun, and I took a lot of notes, which I gotta admit, I don't do that very often. So thank you so much. Very inspirational and very educational. I'm sure everybody loved it. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Shay. Thank you so much for having me and thank you for inviting me to be a speaker for 2026 I am excited about that. You're

very welcome. We look forward to it. Thanks so much.