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ENTERPRISE & PE · $50M+ IN REVENUE

Platform the category.

At platform scale, marketing is a capital-allocation function under a board, not a growth hack. Category leadership, M&A integration, brand share of voice, and exit readiness all sit inside the CMO’s P&L. The bench has run marketing inside firms this size, and your first hour is free.

Book your first hour free Read the playbook
Annual marketing spend$10M–$50M+capital-allocation scale, board-grade reporting
Marketing headcount5 → 15+CMO, paid, SEO, content, brand, ops, intake, analytics
Law firm mergers · 202559by Fairfax Associates’ count, 86% of them mergers of equals

HOW WE SIZE A FIRM

Size is the business,
not the letterhead.

A six-lawyer firm signing 500 cases a month and a trial firm taking five big cases a month have both outgrown their headcount. Go by whichever number is biggest for you.

Revenue
$50M+ a year
Signed cases
300+ a month
Lawyers
Usually 50+

THE REALITY

Marketing is capital allocation
under a board.

At platform scale, marketing decisions are reviewed at the board table. A $30M annual budget is $30M of enterprise value at stake, and the partners, the sponsor, and eventually the next buyer all expect a capital-allocation narrative, not a list of campaigns.

The work has almost nothing in common with the work one tier down. M&A integration is a standing workstream. Acquired-firm brand migration is a 12-to-24-month dance. Board reporting has a rhythm: monthly financials, quarterly strategy, an annual plan the whole firm can see.

The platforms that navigate this tier treat marketing as enterprise-value creation. They win category leadership, build brand moats competitors cannot buy around, and when the liquidity event comes, marketing is a diligence asset instead of a question mark.

Board-table decisions
Every major marketing decision gets a capital-allocation narrative. Campaign lists do not survive the room.
Integration is a workstream
Acquired firms can lose 20–40% of case flow in the first 180 days without a marketing integration plan running from day one.
Category, not campaigns
Share of voice, branded search growth, and organic intake share matter more than any single channel’s cost per case.
Multi-vertical complexity
PI, mass tort, workers’ comp, and employment under one brand means four marketing motions with four economic models.

WHERE THE MONEY GOES

$10M to $50M a year.
Allocated like capital, reported like capital.

At this scale the mix is less about channels and more about the three jobs the budget has to do at once: defend the category position, feed the intake machine, and protect the value of what was acquired.

$20M a year

Want it by signed case? The Channel Mix Calculator turns a budget into a plan by channel and a cost per signed case.

Open the free calculator
  1. Brand and category$6M–$8M

    TV, streaming, outdoor, and sponsorship at share-of-voice scale. The moat competitors cannot buy their way around.

  2. Demand and intake$8M–$10M

    Paid search, LSA, social, and the intake infrastructure that turns it into signed cases across every market and vertical.

  3. Integration and infrastructure$2M–$4M

    Acquired-firm brand migration, data and attribution, marketing operations, and the team itself.

Ranges are Firmatics industry estimates for enterprise consumer platforms, not audited spend.

THE BOARD DASHBOARD

Category leaders track
different numbers than lead-gen shops.

At platform scale the dashboard is not about campaigns. It is about category position, brand moat, acquisition-cost discipline, and integration health. An illustrative month for a well-run enterprise function looks like this.

  • Brand share of voice · top DMAs18.4%up 2.1 points on the prior quarter
  • Branded search growth+34%year over year, firm-by-name queries
  • Blended cost per case$3,2406% under plan
  • Acquired-firm retention96%case flow retained 90 days after integration
  • Organic intake share41%up 3.4 points, brand-driven
  • Marketing as % of revenue11.8%flat to plan, inside the guardrail
  • Practice-mix health4 of 6verticals at or under cost-per-case target
  • Exit readinessA–marketing diligence pack current

Illustrative figures for a well-run function, not a client’s results.

WHAT ACTUALLY GOES WRONG

Four problems every
platform has this year.

The tier where marketing is either a diligence asset or a question mark.

  1. Category leadership gets reported like a campaign.

    A platform this size needs to track share of voice, branded search growth, organic intake share, and competitive position, not just lead volume and cost per case. Most boards are still handed the campaign report.

  2. Acquisitions lose 20–40% of case flow in the first 180 days.

    Without a marketing integration playbook running alongside operational integration, acquired-firm intake collapses. Referral partners get confused. Google Business listings break. The brand migration nobody planned takes two years.

  3. Sponsors bring BigLaw expectations to legal-industry infrastructure.

    The PE board walks in expecting marketing-mix modeling and board-grade dashboards, calibrated by healthcare services and dental platforms. The legal marketing stack was never built to produce them.

  4. Multi-vertical complexity outruns the team.

    PI, mass tort, workers’ comp, and employment under one brand is four marketing motions with four economic models. One CMO cannot go deep on all four, and the budget has to know which one it is funding.

THE PLAYBOOK

The playbook
for enterprise and PE-backed firms.

Run marketing like the capital it is.

  1. Put the category on the dashboard.

    Share of voice, branded search growth, organic intake share, cost per case by vertical, and integration health, monthly, in the format the board already reads.

    Talk it throughBring this to an operatorFirst hour free

  2. Run integration as a marketing workstream from day one.

    Brand migration plan, referral-partner communication, listings and reviews, intake routing, and a 180-day case-flow target for every acquisition.

    Talk it throughBring this to an operatorFirst hour free

  3. Model the mix. Do not argue it.

    A marketing-mix model the CFO and the CMO both sign, refreshed quarterly, so brand versus demand is a decision with numbers instead of a debate with anecdotes.

    Free Do it withChannel Mix CalculatorUse it free

  4. Staff the verticals, not just the channels.

    Each practice under the brand gets an owner for its economics. The channel team serves them. Nobody averages four businesses into one cost per case.

    Talk it throughBring this to an operatorFirst hour free

  5. Build the diligence pack now.

    Marketing is a value driver in the sale. Keep the numbers, the models, and the integration record current so the next buyer reads an asset, not a question.

    Talk it throughBring this to an operatorFirst hour free

AN HOUR WITH AN OPERATOR

The questions enterprise and PE-backed firms
bring to the bench.

Coaching is 4 private hours a month with any operator on the bench, and your first hour is free. Bring your team or your agency. These are the conversations that happen at your size.

  1. INTEGRATION

    How do we keep the acquired firm’s cases from walking?

    An operator who has run brand migrations on the 180-day plan: partners, listings, intake routing, and the numbers to watch weekly.

  2. THE BOARD

    What should the sponsor see every month?

    Building the one-page marketing pack for a PE board, from operators who have presented to one.

  3. MIX MODELING

    Brand or demand, and how do we prove it?

    A data scientist who has built marketing-mix and incrementality models on what your data can support and what it cannot yet.

  4. TV AT SCALE

    Are we buying share of voice or just airtime?

    An operator who has run eight-figure legal television across many DMAs on flights, creative, and measuring brand lift honestly.

  5. VERTICALS

    How do we run four practices under one brand?

    Structuring the team, the budget, and the reporting so each vertical’s economics stay visible inside one brand.

  6. EXIT

    What will a buyer’s diligence team ask about marketing?

    The questions, the documents, and the numbers, from people who have sat on both sides of the table.

Dan JimmersonBlair WarnerErik KullenbergPaco BlancoAmanda JudgeDavid RyanMatt PrinceHayden HaskinsIvan Rodrigues

Any operator on the bench, any of these questions.

Book your first hour free How Coaching works

COMMON QUESTIONS

Straight answers for enterprise and PE-backed firms.

We have a full marketing team. What does coaching add?

Peers who have run the same decisions at the largest firms in legal, available for the ones that cannot go to the board half-formed: the integration plan, the mix model, the TV commitment, the diligence pack. Many CMOs use the hours themselves.

Can we bring the sponsor or the CFO?

Yes. The hour is private to the firm, and the questions at this tier usually belong to more than one seat.

Is Firmatics an agency?

No. We never run your media and we do not sell leads. Coaching backs up whatever you have, an agency, a freelancer, an in-house team, or you, with a second opinion, a plan, and a read on the numbers.

What does Coaching cost?

$2,000 per firm per month for four private one-hour credits with any operator on the bench, month to month. Your first hour is free.

What about a Fractional CMO?

A Fractional CMO is one operator embedded in the firm, running the marketing: on the plan and in the leadership meeting. It is currently full, and the waitlist is open.

YOUR FIRST HOUR IS FREE

Ready when you are, at your size.

Your first hour with an operator is free. Bring the integration plan and the board pack.

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