Fix Your Law Firm’s Ads with a Fortune 500 Playbook with Ryan Burch

2025-12-23

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Most law firm ad campaigns fail for a simple reason. They are turned on before the foundation is built.In this strategic and refreshingly honest episode of Counsel Cast, host Karin Conroy is joined by Ryan Burch, founder of Tobie Group, an advertising and marketing consultancy known for bringing Fortune 500-level strategy to small and mid-sized businesses.Ryan breaks down why digital advertising platforms are not magic buttons, why “testing everything” is not a strategy, and why many law firms are unknowingly burning money by skipping the most imp...

Most law firm ad campaigns fail for a simple reason. They are turned on before the foundation is built.

In this strategic and refreshingly honest episode of Counsel Cast, host Karin Conroy is joined by Ryan Burch, founder of Tobie Group, an advertising and marketing consultancy known for bringing Fortune 500-level strategy to small and mid-sized businesses.

Ryan breaks down why digital advertising platforms are not magic buttons, why “testing everything” is not a strategy, and why many law firms are unknowingly burning money by skipping the most important step, defining the right audience before launching ads.

Together, Karin and Ryan explore what law firms actually need in place before running ads, how to diagnose what’s broken when campaigns stall or fail, and why you cannot use advertising to fix a weak marketing foundation.

This episode reframes ads not as a quick win, but as a system that only works when the right inputs, tracking, and strategy are already in place.

📌 You’ll learn:

Why most law firm ads fail before they even launch
The difference between a goal and an actual marketing strategy
Why “audience first, always” changes everything
How throwing money at ads without a foundation creates false conclusions
Why digital ad platforms are powerful and dangerous at the same time
What law firms misunderstand about testing and experimentation
How to diagnose whether ads failed or the strategy did
Why your current clients are not always your ideal clients
How market shifts and new competitors silently raise ad costs
Why marketing foundations must be revisited quarterly
The real reason “it didn’t work last time” is often misleading

💡 Featuring:

Real-world case examples of law firms running ads without a strategic foundation, behind-the-scenes breakdowns of how legacy landing pages, outdated tracking, and misaligned audiences quietly drain budgets, and firsthand stories of campaigns that “failed” only because the inputs were wrong. Ryan shares how ad platforms amplify whatever system already exists, why spaghetti-at-the-wall testing creates false conclusions, and how firms unknowingly sabotage performance through messy websites, conflicting call tracking, and abandoned marketing remnants. Karin and Ryan unpack how Fortune 500-style thinking, clear audience definition, clean analytics, and disciplined systems turn ads from an expense into a predictable growth lever.

Karin and Ryan give listeners actionable tips on: