Case studies / Legal
Family law · South FloridaSame cost per lead in three counties. The leads weren't worth the same.
Segarra & Associates, P.A. ran $2,500 a month across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, producing about 50 leads a month at roughly $50 each. The acquisition cost barely moved between counties. What the resulting cases were worth moved considerably, and in divorce work, that's the number that matters.
A South Florida firm advertising across three different markets.
Segarra & Associates, P.A. handles divorce and child custody matters across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, three adjacent counties that are convenient to describe as South Florida and behave very differently as advertising markets.
We were brought in to run Google Ads across all three counties, structured so each could be read on its own rather than blended into one regional average.
Divorce work scales with assets. Cost per lead doesn't.
Two divorce clients can have the same charge sheet, so to speak, and entirely different files. One has a rented apartment and a shared car. The other has a house, a business, retirement accounts, and a spousal support dispute. The second matter involves far more work, and the advertising that produced both leads cost the same.
Fifty leads at fifty dollars.
A clean, consistent number that looks identical across every county in the campaign. It tells you the advertising is working and tells you nothing at all about which of those leads turned into substantial work.
- Measured Cost per lead
- Varies by county Barely
- Case complexity Invisible
- Decision it supports Almost none
Fifty leads, unevenly valuable.
The firm reported that matters originating in Palm Beach tended to involve clients with more substantial assets, and correspondingly more substantial cases. Same acquisition cost, materially different work, a difference only visible on their side of the funnel.
- Measured Case value
- Varies by county Considerably
- Case complexity Visible
- Decision it supports Where to spend
Three counties, treated as one market.
Segarra & Associates, P.A. handles divorce and child custody matters across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, three adjacent counties that are convenient to describe as South Florida and behave very differently as advertising markets.
Four things shaped the account.
A modest budget across a large population
$2,500 a month covering three of Florida's most populous counties. Spread evenly, that's a thin presence everywhere; concentrated, it's a real presence somewhere.
Family law is a long decision
People research divorce for months before acting. Nothing here is urgent, which changes the messaging and means the same person may see the firm repeatedly before making contact.
Divorce and custody aren't the same enquiry
Someone deciding whether to file and someone in a custody dispute are at different stages with different fears, even when they eventually become the same client.
Case value lives outside the ad account
Nothing in Google Ads knows what a matter will bill. Without the firm telling us which enquiries became substantial cases, county level budget decisions would have been guesses.
Four decisions on $2,500 a month.
Three counties is a lot of ground for this budget.
Separate the counties from the start
Each county given its own campaign rather than one South Florida target. It costs nothing extra to structure this way and it's the only way to see whether the three markets behave differently, which, as it turned out, they did.
Three readable markets instead of one blended figure.
Split divorce from custody
The two practice areas given their own campaigns and messaging, so someone considering filing and someone already in a custody dispute each saw something written for where they actually were.
Messaging matched to the stage of the decision.
Accept both calls and forms, properly
Call tracking alongside form capture, with both given prominence. Sixty percent of leads came by phone and forty percent by form, a far more even split than our criminal defence accounts, because family law decisions are made over weeks rather than in a night.
Both routes measured, neither assumed.
Ask the firm which leads became real cases
Lead volume and cost per lead came from the account. Which enquiries turned into substantial matters came from the firm, and only the combination of the two says anything useful about where the budget should sit.
A county level finding the ad data alone couldn't produce.
Palm Beach produced better work at the same price.
- Monthly budget $2,500
- Phone calls ~30
- Contact forms ~20
- Total leads ~50
- Cost per lead ~$50
Those figures held reasonably steady across the three counties. What didn't hold steady was what happened after the enquiry, the firm found that matters originating in Palm Beach tended to involve clients with more substantial assets, and therefore more substantial cases.
In divorce work the file grows with what there is to divide. Property, a business, retirement accounts, spousal support, each of those adds work that a straightforward separation simply doesn't involve. A lead is a lead. A case isn't a case.
Which makes geography one of the few usable proxies a family law firm has. You cannot target by household assets, and you shouldn't try. But you can observe which areas produce the matters your practice is built to handle, and weight the budget toward them.
Why this only works if the firm tells you
No ad platform knows what a case bills. Cost per lead by county is available to anyone within about thirty seconds; case value by county exists only inside the firm's own files.
A campaign optimised purely on cost per lead would have split this budget evenly and reported success every month. The three counties cost roughly the same to advertise in, so nothing in the account would ever have suggested moving money.
It's the same point our Haque Legal account makes about practice areas, arriving from a different direction. There the value difference sat between two services. Here it sits between two postcodes.
County level performance is reported here as the firm's observation. We don't publish per county lead or case value figures, we don't hold them.
Four things about geographic value.
Split geographies at setup
Adjacent areas are convenient to target together and behave differently. Separating them costs nothing and is the only way to find out.
Equal cost per lead isn't equal value
If your work scales with the client's circumstances, assets, size, complexity, two identically priced leads can be worth very different amounts.
Tell your agency which leads became clients
Without it, budget decisions get made on the only number available, which is usually the least informative one.
Weight toward the work you want
Once you know which areas produce the matters your practice is built for, an even budget split is a decision to ignore that.
What went into it.
Five of our services, over one year.
Is your budget split evenly across your service area?
If it is, that's a decision made by convenience rather than evidence. Give us read only access and tell us which enquiries became real work, we'll show you whether your areas are earning their share. Findings are yours to keep either way.
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