Maximum Lawyer

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE


Law firm owners are constantly looking for marketing strategies they can actually track. But what if one of the most effective strategies is something many people assume stopped working years ago?


In this episode of Maximum Lawyer, Tyson Mutrux sits down with Ryan Webber to break down how his law firm is using Facebook ads and live webinars to generate estate planning clients with a measurable return on every dollar spent. Ryan shares how one webinar generated more than $55,000 in estate planning revenue from less than $2,000 in ad spend and walks through the entire system behind those numbers.


From Facebook ads and landing pages to reminder sequences, live presentations, offers, consultations, and follow-up, Ryan explains exactly how the funnel works and why webinars can help law firms educate potential clients while moving them closer to hiring.


They also discuss why simple ads often outperform complicated creative, how branding impacts conversion, why live webinars may outperform recordings, and the biggest bottleneck Ryan discovered once the marketing started working: having enough capacity to handle the new business.


Listen in for a practical conversation about building webinars that convert, tracking your marketing from ad spend to signed client, testing your funnel, and creating a predictable system for generating new law firm revenue.


What You’ll Learn
  • How Ryan turned $1,900 in ads into $55,000+ in revenue.
  • Why webinars still work for law firms.
  • How to build a simple webinar funnel.
  • Why live presentations can convert better than recordings.
  • How reminders improve attendance.
  • Why simple ads can outperform complicated creative.
  • How to test offers and improve conversion.
  • What happens when marketing creates more demand than your team can handle.

Timestamps
00:00 — $1,900 in ads to $55K+ in revenue
03:23 — Tracking marketing to signed clients
06:21 — Could webinars work for other practice areas?
09:10 — Building the webinar funnel
12:47 — Follow-up and reminders
15:35 — Hosting the live webinar
18:15 — Building the presentation
20:07 — Creating the offer
22:21 — Testing and improving the funnel
24:49 — Live vs. prerecorded webinars
28:44 — Ryan’s biggest webinar lessons
31:17 — Final takeaways


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Maximum Lawyer helps law firm owners build businesses, not jobs.


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Creators and Guests

Host
Tyson Mutrux
Tyson is the founder of Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers and the co-founder of Maximum Lawyer.

What is Maximum Lawyer?

Maximum Lawyer is the podcast for law firm owners who want to scale with intention and build a business that works for their life.

Hosted by Tyson Mutrux, each weekly episode features candid conversations with law firm owners, business experts, and industry leaders sharing real strategies and lessons learned in the trenches.

If you're ready to grow your firm with less stress and more support, this is your next must listen. Subscribe today.

Tyson Mutrux (00:00)
So you're telling me you've made $55,000 off $1,900 in ads?
Ryan Webber (00:06)
Yeah. Webinars are not dead, nor are Facebook ads.
Tyson Mutrux (00:12)
Okay, that's wild. That's wild to think.
Ryan Webber (00:17)
Yeah. We've been a real estate law firm for years, and probably the easiest thing would have been to mine our existing real estate clients for estate planning work.
But I thought, that's not as fun for me from a marketing standpoint. I want to run ads and see if I can get actual leads to convert into paying clients.
Tiff went to a conference in Florida at the beginning of the year and talked to all these estate planning attorneys. No matter how big they were, whether they were $300,000 firms or $7 million firms, they all had one thing in common: they were doing some sort of webinar or seminar.
I thought that was interesting. They all had their other strategies and tactics, but every one of these firms was doing this one thing.
So I said, okay, I know how webinars work. I know how seminars work. Let's reverse engineer this. Let me find a couple of these firms and essentially funnel hack them.
Tiff told me the two she really liked. I clicked through, signed up for their seminars and webinars, and saw what was happening. I thought, this is so simple. This is literally what I was doing running ads back in 2016 with my gym.
So why not try it?
We didn't start this funnel until April. So far, we've spent about $7,500 in Facebook ads and gotten just under 1,000 people registered. That's translated to $82,000 in estate plans directly from those webinars, and I haven't even added in the fourth webinar yet.
Once we add that one in, we should be around $125,000 off $7,500 in ad spend.
Tyson Mutrux (02:20)
I'll take that any day of the week.
Here's what I love about you. There's a lot to love about you, really.
Ryan Webber (02:28)
What's not to love, Tyson?
Tyson Mutrux (02:31)
What's really cool is that you send me the breakdown of the numbers.
I can't tell you how many people I've talked to on this show who say, "I do this marketing thing," but they can never connect the dots from what they're doing to actually getting clients.
You send me spreadsheets and screenshots. I'll be mowing or doing whatever, and suddenly I get a screenshot from Ryan Webber with all the numbers.
You're able to connect the dots from the webinar to the lead and ultimately to the actual case your firm signed.
I think that's incredible. Is it because these are ads that you're able to track it so easily?
Ryan Webber (03:23)
Yeah. I've never been able to do this with any of our other law firm marketing, and that's why I'm so excited about it.
I'm a very data-driven marketer. The numbers are what tell me what to do.
I've never really been able to track our other marketing. I'm big on social media and YouTube. I love digital marketing and videos, but it's difficult to track.
You basically have to ask: Did more people call? Did sales conversations get easier? Did you make more money?
If the answer is yes, you know it's working, but you don't necessarily know exactly how.
With this, I know.
For example, I pulled up the spreadsheet from our May 27 webinar before this call. I spent $1,961 on ads. We got 202 people registered for the webinar, which was a $9.71 cost per lead, so just under $10 per registration.
We had 85 people actually attend the webinar, which was about 42%.
From there, 37 people scheduled what we call a vision meeting. It's essentially a consultation, but we're charging $100 for it now because if all 85 attendees signed up for a free consultation, it would be impossible for our team to handle.
So about 43.5% of attendees scheduled a $100 consultation.
That alone generated $3,700 in revenue. My ads were already paid for, and I almost doubled my ad spend just from the consultations.
From those consultations, 17 people have signed estate plans so far. That's $55,250 in revenue.
Our return on ad spend for that webinar is currently 30.1.
For every dollar I put in, I made $30.
Tyson Mutrux (05:22)
That's incredible.
Ryan Webber (05:23)
And those numbers aren't done yet.
We still have three or four people who haven't had their initial meeting or who are waiting until they're done traveling for the summer to come back and do their estate plan.
So that number should go even higher.
Tyson Mutrux (05:40)
When you talk about those leads at the beginning, the top-of-funnel leads, are most of them qualified?
Ryan Webber (05:48)
The ads are calling out a specific problem.
If this is something you're worried about or something you're trying to accomplish, we're saying, "We have an estate planning webinar where we're going to cover these specific things. If that's what you're interested in, register."
We're having 80-plus people show up, and then roughly 40% of those people are paying the $100 to take the next step.
We're seeing about a 40% conversion at each stage right now.
Tyson Mutrux (06:21)
Do you think something like this could work for personal injury?
Ryan Webber (06:24)
I've talked to you about it. I've talked to Brooks and Derek. I'm trying to figure that out because I think it could.
The way I look at a webinar for a law firm is that there's a knowledge gap.
You have the knowledge. The potential client doesn't.
They also don't always want to jump straight into a consultation because that can feel like they're walking into a sales conversation.
Maybe instead they go through a longer webinar or seminar, learn something, and get to the point where they're saying, "I trust this person. I like this person. This is somebody I might want to work with."
Or maybe they realize, "I didn't know I needed a lawyer. Now I do."
For personal injury, for example, you could do something like "Solve Your Own Car Accident Claim."
Tyson could host a two-hour seminar walking people through everything the insurance company is going to do.
At the end, you could explain that if your injuries are under a certain amount and these other conditions apply, go do it yourself. I probably can't make you more money.
You're essentially doing what you would normally do in a consultation, but you're doing it with a group of people.
Then you say, "But if you have these other factors, it's free to talk to an attorney. We have people here who can schedule a one-on-one meeting."
Because the attorney answer is always, "It depends. I need to look at your case before I can tell you what I can actually do to help you."
I think there's an opportunity there.
You could run an ad saying, "If you were injured in a car accident in Missouri within the past few years and haven't collected insurance money, we're hosting a seminar where we'll walk you through how to handle your personal injury claim without an attorney and keep more money in your pocket."
Tyson Mutrux (08:42)
We actually have a five-year statute of limitations in Missouri.
We practice in multiple states, and Illinois is two years, which feels really short compared to Missouri. So in Missouri, I could potentially go out five years.
But I want to back up because I've got a lot of questions.
I want to go through the actual process, if you don't mind.
Ryan Webber (09:07)
Yeah, absolutely.
Tyson Mutrux (09:10)
Pretend like I know nothing about webinars or ads.
Where does all of this start?
Ryan Webber (09:20)
It's really a simple marketing funnel.
At the top of the funnel are Facebook ads.
For estate planning, we go Facebook. We don't even really use Instagram. We tried Instagram and it didn't work as well.
Our estate planning audience is 35-plus, and the people actually showing up tend to be closer to 55-plus. That's Facebook.
There's also less competition. Everybody is trying to be on Instagram, so Facebook has been an easier platform for us to run ads on.
We start with paid Facebook ads with very specific creative.
Graphic ads worked better for our first three webinars. On the fourth one, we had a video that crushed.
I'm constantly updating the creative to see if the new ad can beat the previous winner.
I'll continue running the winner, then put a new test against it and see if I can beat it.
From the Facebook ad, they go to a landing page.
The landing page reiterates what the webinar is about.
One of the most important pieces is the title of the webinar. It has to be compelling. It has to sound interesting. It has to sound like something they actually want.
Ours is simply "Estate Planning Made Simple."
Tyson Mutrux (10:44)
That's it?
Ryan Webber (10:45)
That's it.
It's tried, true, and proven.
Our first one was called "Three Simple Steps to Protect Your Stuff." It was simple, but maybe a little confusing.
So I simplified it even more and called it "Estate Planning Made Simple."
They want estate planning, and they want it to be easy.
On the landing page, we talk about the three or four fears or concerns they're trying to address. You want to make sure your family is protected. You want to make sure your assets go where you want them to go.
From there, it's a simple form where they give us their information.
Tyson Mutrux (11:23)
Let me stop you for a second because I want to make sure I understand all the different pieces.
What's interesting is there are a lot of pieces to this, even though you make it sound very simple.
Ryan Webber (11:33)
Yes. It's in-depth.
Tyson Mutrux (11:35)
You've got the presentation itself. You've got the Facebook ad. You have the title.
And now you've introduced the landing page.
Is the landing page independent from your website?
Ryan Webber (11:57)
Yes.
It's not even on our main website. The only way you get there is through the link.
Our law firm website is ThomasAndWebber.com, but our estate planning landing pages are under LawAtTheLake.com.
We have different URLs and landing pages for the different webinars and seminars we're running, depending on the audience we're targeting.
Tyson Mutrux (12:32)
Got it.
So back to the landing page. You're collecting their email address. What happens from there?
Ryan Webber (12:47)
I'm not going to go super deep into why the landing page works or every element of it, but you have to send people somewhere that's not your regular website.
There should be nothing else for them to click.
They can't click over to your website. They can't click "About Me." There aren't a bunch of other buttons.
The only goal I have is for you to sign up for this thing.
So the form is incredibly simple. I try to ask for as little information as possible. First name, email, and phone number.
Once they fill that out, it triggers a seven-touch follow-up sequence before the webinar.
They get an immediate confirmation saying, "You're registered. Here's what to expect."
The next day, they get a longer email, usually with one of our YouTube videos and some additional information about estate planning.
Then we send reminders 24 hours before, one hour before, and five or ten minutes before the webinar, plus a couple of other touches.
Tyson Mutrux (14:24)
What are you using to send all those reminders?
Ryan Webber (14:29)
I use GoHighLevel for all of it.
The landing page is on GoHighLevel because it has the automations built in, the payment portal, and pretty much everything I need to do this easily.
Tyson Mutrux (14:40)
And you can connect Claude with GoHighLevel now. I saw something about that very recently.
Ryan Webber (14:45)
I didn't know that. That's good.
Tyson Mutrux (14:54)
Why do you like GoHighLevel?
Ryan Webber (15:01)
It's what my agency was already using, and it keeps everything in one place.
I hate going between multiple platforms.
If I want a landing page, mass emails, automated emails, and all the other pieces, I want to be able to do it in one spot.
It's not necessarily an easy platform. It's pretty complicated.
But I've figured out the few things I need to do in it. It can do so much more than what I'm currently using it for.
Tyson Mutrux (15:32)
Is that where you host the webinars too?
Ryan Webber (15:35)
No. We host the webinars on StreamYard.
Tyson Mutrux (15:38)
Okay, so you're doing the webinar on StreamYard.
Ryan Webber (15:41)
Yeah.
Again, it's because that's what I've always used.
I know GoHighLevel has webinar capabilities, but I haven't tried them because I know how StreamYard works. It's easy for us. I know how to load everything and how the chat works.
When someone registers, we send them the StreamYard link.
Tyson Mutrux (16:04)
When they click that link, are they watching a recording or a live person?
Ryan Webber (16:10)
It's Tiff live giving the presentation.
She's going through a PowerPoint with somewhere between 80 and 120 slides.
It's a lot of slides because we want them to feel like they're getting a lot of information, and we want the presentation to keep moving.
Tyson Mutrux (16:30)
Wait, how many slides?
Ryan Webber (16:33)
Somewhere between 80 and 120.
Tyson Mutrux (16:36)
Wow.
And for anyone who doesn't know Ryan, Ryan is Tiffany Webber's husband.
So Tiffany is the boss of Ryan.
Ryan Webber (16:45)
Yes.
Tyson Mutrux (16:45)
Ryan is just helping run things.
Ryan Webber (16:48)
That's very accurate.
Tyson Mutrux (16:50)
When it comes to sales techniques, is the presentation full of sales tactics, or is it pretty basic?
Ryan Webber (17:03)
The webinar gives a lot of value.
We go over the basic things you'll need in an estate plan and the common questions people have.
Tiff tells two or three stories from her personal experience throughout the presentation, and that makes her relatable.
She's very good at explaining things in simple English. People don't feel like she's using attorney language or talking over their heads.
She keeps everything very clean and easy to understand.
There's also a live chat going on, and we tell people there will be a Q&A where they can ask an attorney questions, which most people don't normally get the opportunity to do.
Throughout the presentation, she's asking people questions and having them type into the chat to keep them engaged.
The presentation itself takes about 40 minutes.
Then we get to the pitch.
At that point, it's essentially, "Based on everything we just talked about, you have a goal for your estate plan and what you want to happen to your assets. Here's what we can offer you."
There is a little more to the pitch, but that's the basic transition.
Tyson Mutrux (18:15)
Before we get into the pitch, is there any magic sauce to the actual slides?
You've talked about stories. There's a pitch at the end. Tiff is demonstrating her expertise.
Did you take a course on how to design this?
I'm guessing there are people listening right now thinking, "This sounds complicated. I don't know how to put together a sales presentation."
Is there anything magical about it?
Ryan Webber (18:53)
We ripped it from another attorney who is already doing this really well.
Tyson Mutrux (18:56)
Okay, nice. Very good.
Ryan Webber (18:59)
Then we made it our own.
You shouldn't feel like you have to invent this from scratch.
It's the same with anything. You got into personal injury law, saw another law firm doing things a certain way, and took some of those elements and made them your own.
Webinars have been happening since the internet started. There's no reason you need to recreate the entire concept yourself.
Find something that's already working, whether it's in law or something adjacent to law.
Maybe you watch a wealth advisor's webinar that's getting great results and say, "What if I replaced his topic with my topic and followed a similar structure?"
It's really just education.
What questions do people already have? What do they need to know? What questions don't they even know they should be asking?
How can we move someone further along the buying journey until they know that this is actually what they want to do?
It's simple marketing and sales.
Tyson Mutrux (20:07)
All right, let's get to the pitch.
What are the person's options at that point?
Ryan Webber (20:17)
We're using a Hormozi-type technique with scarcity and an offer.
We give them the option to do what we call a Family Protection Audit.
If you called us off the street, that's normally $1,000.
Because you attended the webinar, we offer it at a discount. We take $900 off, so you can get the meeting for $100.
But you have to sign up within the next two hours or the offer goes away. If you call us tomorrow, it's $1,000 again.
We also have a limited number of spots available.
So you have scarcity, a discount, and the opportunity to sit down with an attorney and get your questions answered.
We've tested different versions of that.
On our first webinar, we charged $450 for that meeting. It was still a $550 discount, and seven people signed up.
We made more money on the front end, but we had fewer opportunities to close estate plans.
The second time, we lowered it to $100.
Instead of having around nine people sign up, we had 40.
Tyson Mutrux (21:40)
Wow.
Ryan Webber (21:41)
And we still had the same closing percentage.
Instead of having nine opportunities to sell an estate plan, we had 40, and 17 of those people bought estate plans.
Tyson Mutrux (21:51)
So why not make the consultation free?
Ryan Webber (21:54)
Because each meeting takes an hour.
If we had 85 hours available, maybe we would. But we don't.
That's actually our bottleneck right now. We don't have enough time to do all these sales meetings.
On the last webinar, we tried shortening the meeting to 30 minutes.
We had four people cancel after paying the $100 because they were upset that it was only 30 minutes. They didn't feel like that was enough value.
Tyson Mutrux (22:20)
Really? Interesting.
Ryan Webber (22:21)
It's all testing for us.
We've only done four of these. We're not experts.
I took something somebody else was already doing successfully, we made it our own, and now we're iterating on it.
What I do know is that our percentage from lead to webinar attendance is higher than almost anything I've heard from other people.
Our percentage from the webinar to eventually closing clients is also higher than most of the numbers I've seen.
Tyson Mutrux (22:51)
Why do you think that is?
Ryan Webber (22:53)
I think it's because we have a brand.
We've done so many real estate closings in this area. Tiff is all over the internet. People see her face and trust her.
We have a big presence that a lot of firms don't have.
The other firms I know that are doing this successfully don't necessarily have a big social media presence. Some of them are much bigger estate planning firms than us, but for us, I think branding is a big part of it.
If you've already seen Tiff's face everywhere, then you attend her webinar and she delivers on what she promised, you trust her.
It doesn't feel fake.
Tyson Mutrux (23:31)
Do you think this would still work for an average law firm that doesn't have that brand?
Your numbers are insane, but even if you cut them in half, you'd still be making a lot of money from those ads.
Ryan Webber (23:46)
Absolutely.
Right now, I think we're around a 24-to-1 or 27-to-1 return on this webinar strategy.
But I've seen firms doing really well at around 9-to-1.
Those are firms without a huge brand or a 100,000-subscriber YouTube channel.
Would you put in $1 to get $9 back?
Tyson Mutrux (24:16)
Every day.
That's a no-brainer to me.
Ryan Webber (24:22)
The question people ask me is, "Why aren't you doing more of these?"
We don't have time.
I'd love to do two a month. I'd love to do them every other week or even weekly.
But we literally don't have enough time to handle all the sales meetings.
Then someone says, "Just hire someone."
Okay, law firm owners, how easy is it to go out and hire somebody right now?
That's the challenge.
Tyson Mutrux (24:49)
I've heard of people recording webinars and then just playing the recording.
I'm guessing you don't recommend that?
Ryan Webber (24:58)
I think there's something powerful about it being live.
Someone asks a question in the chat, we can put it on the screen, and Tiff can answer it right there.
After the pitch, we do a live Q&A. She'll sit there and answer questions for as long as people have them.
The whole webinar is usually about 65 minutes max.
Tyson Mutrux (25:19)
Do you ever replay them or use those recordings for ads?
Ryan Webber (25:28)
I haven't yet.
I do want to test a VSL, essentially a prerecorded version.
Tyson Mutrux (25:34)
A video sales letter, for anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about.
Ryan Webber (25:38)
Right.
It would essentially be the webinar recorded as a video and placed directly on the landing page.
They would watch the presentation and then get the opportunity to book the $100 meeting.
Maybe they have to watch the whole thing to get the code they need to book.
My concern is that we could get more unqualified leads because there's no scarcity or urgency. It's not happening live at a specific time.
So I don't know whether it will perform as well.
But it could help alleviate the capacity issue.
Ryan Webber (26:15)
Because for us, I know the math.
If I can get 60 people into these meetings with attorneys, we have a million-dollar estate planning practice just from webinars.
If I get 60 meetings, I know we'll sell about 25 estate plans.
At an average of around $3,000 each, that's $75,000 a month.
It's just math.
If I can consistently get 60 meetings and sell 25 plans every month, that's a million-dollar practice.
Tyson Mutrux (26:46)
When you say VSL, are you talking about the old-school version that's mostly text, or are you talking about an actual video presentation?
Ryan Webber (27:06)
An actual video.
The original VSLs absolutely crushed years ago, but that's not what I'm talking about.
It would basically be the same presentation as the webinar, just recorded.
There's no Q&A, no scarcity, no urgency, and it's not timely.
I don't think it will perform as well, but I don't know.
I'm a marketer. I'm going to test it and see.
The crazy thing is that Tiff's actual effort for the webinar is about one hour.
She doesn't have to do the planning or setup. She sits down, gives the webinar for an hour, and that's it.
All the work happens afterward when we have to conduct all these sales meetings.
We already have three different attorneys doing those meetings, and we also do 125 to 150 real estate closings a month during the summer.
We're just out of hours.
Tyson Mutrux (28:10)
Yeah, this is incredible.
Let's wrap it up there.
Is there anything else I should have asked you about webinars?
Especially anything you didn't expect when you started doing these that people should know or keep an eye on?
Ryan Webber (28:44)
One of the biggest things I've learned is that the ads don't have to be as good as you think they do.
They need to speak to the right person who has the right problem.
Problem-focused or avoidance-focused ads work really well.
Essentially: "You don't want this bad thing to happen. I'm going to teach you how to make sure it doesn't."
That's a lot of what law is in general.
Our graphic ads for the first three webinars killed it.
I couldn't believe that a simple graphic with Tiff's face saying, "Free Webinar: Estate Planning Made Simple" would convert as well as it did.
It wasn't fancy.
You need to test a lot of ads and see what works. When you find a winner, double down on it.
The second thing is that the name of the presentation is incredibly important.
That's what people are signing up for, so the title has to appeal to the audience you're trying to reach.
And the last thing is that when you think you're sending too many reminder emails, send one more.
The gold isn't getting people to register.
The gold is getting them to actually show up.
People have so many things happening in their day-to-day lives. They forget.
You need to remind them over and over again.
Most people start worrying that they're bothering people. They think, "I can't send another email."
I currently send seven touches, and I think I could go to nine or ten by adding text messages.
Right now, those seven touches are getting more than 40% of registered people to actually show up to our webinars.
Tyson Mutrux (30:53)
I'd be willing to bet adding text messages would increase that significantly.
Ryan Webber (30:58)
I think so.
Those are really the three things.
The webinar itself is important. You have to be good at what you do.
But you also need something appealing enough that people actually want to sign up, and then you have to remind them to actually show up.
Tyson Mutrux (31:17)
Ryan Webber, thank you so much.
Check out Webber Marketing.
Thanks for doing this, Ryan. I really appreciate it.
Ryan Webber (31:23)
Always.