Thomas Bradley Legal was already generating serious enquiry volume from paid media. The work was making that volume cheaper, more diversified, and less dependent on any single ad account staying healthy.
enquiries a month across four lead sources
Thomas Bradley Legal was not short of enquiries. It was generating close to 700 paid leads a month across Meta and Google, with a website pulling nearly 10,000 sessions in a four-week window.
The problem was the shape of that volume, not the size of it.
In England, partnership referrals topped up paid performance. Scotland had no comparable referral base. So when paid CPL doubled, England absorbed it and Scotland didn't. Two markets, the same campaign structure, completely different economics, and a blended report that hid the difference.
Enquiry levels were tied almost entirely to Meta performing well. A restricted ad account or an algorithm shift wasn't a dip in performance, it was a stop in new business. Google Ads existed but was underbuilt and returning nothing worth defending.
Years of enquiry data in the CRM, worked inconsistently by email with unpredictable results. The firm had already paid to acquire every one of those records and was generating nothing from them.
24 enquiries a month were arriving through the website at no media cost, the only lead source with no cost ceiling attached, and nobody was actively feeding it.
You cannot fix a blended cost per lead. We split lead reporting and budget logic by market so Scotland's paid deterioration stopped being masked by England's partnership volume. Once the two markets were visible independently, the Scottish CPL problem became a specific, solvable target rather than a vague sense that ads were getting worse.
Vague efficiency goals don't change buying behaviour. The lead plan was rebuilt around a defined target, 857 enquiries at £15 CPL, with pause and reallocation triggers written in, so an underperforming channel stops spending before month end rather than after the invoice.
Google was rebuilt from the ground up as intent-led search, deliberately positioned to hedge Meta exposure and to test whether a lower cost per lead was available on a channel the firm had never properly worked.
The cheapest enquiry is the one already paid for. Structured email and SMS reactivation sequences were built into the CRM and treated as a lead source with its own targets, not a nurture afterthought.
Organic enquiries were the one line on the report that could grow without more budget. Blogging restarted, the site was rebuilt for conversion, and SEO moved from a nice-to-have to a tracked channel with a volume target.
Rather than treating video as a brand exercise, it was produced to feed paid social, email, SMS and landing pages, improving lead quality and cost across all of them at once. Production and editing were brought in-house so output didn't depend on an agency booking.
695 from paid media, 24 organic, with Google, Meta and direct all contributing meaningful traffic. No single channel carrying the firm.
9,957 sessions in 28 days with an 84.7% engagement rate and 9,866 key events recorded. Traffic arriving with intent and acting on it.
24 enquiries a month with no media cost attached, and rising. Organic is the only lead source that compounds — every month of content makes the next month cheaper.
An acquisition asset the firm already owned, now reachable through structured email and SMS sequences at a fraction of paid CPL.
CPL is now tracked by market and by channel against a £15 target, with defined thresholds that trigger a budget change mid-month.
Tell us what the firm needs more of and we will tell you honestly whether we can help.
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