What a Campaign Costs
A worked model of a twelve-month personal injury campaign in Denver: what the media costs, what it produces, and what a signed case ends up costing.
This models a commercial campaign: production plus paid media. Corporate video and social retainers are priced differently. See where each starts →
Estimates only, using the benchmark rates set out below. Production is assumed at $25,000 over a 12-month flight. We hold cost-per-lead flat across this budget range — past roughly $50,000 a month in one metro, added spend buys frequency rather than new households, and the maths stops being honest.
01 — Where the money goes
Budget structure
$15,000 moves every month. The $25,000 production budget is spent once, up front, then amortised evenly across the 12-month flight so it shows up honestly in the cost-per-lead and cost-per-acquisition maths below, instead of disappearing into a sunk cost.
Monthly media — $15,000
CTV media is whatever is left after $100/day of paid social — 80% / 0% split.
Production — $25,000 one-time
Covers a :30 brand spot, attorney-introduction and client-story cuts, and a library of social verticals — roughly 72 over the flight. Written to Colorado’s attorney-advertising rules and Meta’s ad policies from the first draft.
Added on top of the media budget for a fully loaded monthly investment of $17,083.
02 — The audience
Sizing the Denver Metro target
A personal injury audience isn’t an income bracket — anyone can be in a crash. So the buy isn’t aimed by wealth. It’s aimed by geography: adults in Denver, Aurora, Lakewood, Westminster and Thornton, rather than a thin layer spread across the whole Front Range.
≈504K addressable households. At $11,958/month and a $30 CTV CPM, the buy delivers ~398.6K impressions monthly — enough to reach an estimated 10% of that audience every month at 8.0× per household. Raise the budget past the point where reach levels off and the extra impressions buy frequency, not new households.
03 — The funnel
From lead to signed case
Three separate conversion stages, not one rule of thumb: a 35% qualified-intake rate (a lead turns out to be a case worth taking), a 85% consultation rate (the qualified lead sits down with an attorney), and a 40% sign rate (the consultation signs a retainer). Multiplied out, that is a 29.8% effective consultation rate and a 11.9% blended lead-to-signed rate.
04 — The cost curve
Cost per lead and cost per acquisition, month by month
Cost per lead starts high — the market doesn’t know the brand yet — and steps down every month as CTV frequency and a steady social cadence compound into recognition. Media-only is what the ad platforms report. Fully loaded adds back the $2,083/month of amortised production, which is the number that should actually drive budget decisions.
| Month | Target CPL | Leads | Consults | Signed | CPL loaded | CPA media | CPA loaded | Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12-month blended | — | 615 | 183.0 | 73.2 | $333 | $2,460 | $2,801 | 6.1× |
05 — The payoff
What $205,000 buys
12-month return
Fees = signed cases × $17,000 average attorney fee. Return = fees ÷ fully loaded investment.
Why cost per acquisition keeps falling
The production spend is fixed at $2,083/month regardless of performance, so as the media buy gets more efficient that fixed cost spreads across more signed cases — pulling fully loaded cost per acquisition from $3,778 in month 1 to $2,393 in month 12, a 37% improvement, with no increase in monthly budget.
06 — Assumptions
How these numbers were built
This is a hypothetical planning model, not a client’s reported results. Every input is either a stated planning figure or a market benchmark, shown here so the maths can be checked — and swapped for real numbers once a campaign is live.
Hypothetical model, for planning purposes only. Actual cost per lead, close rates and revenue vary with creative, seasonality, local competition and live media pricing. We re-run this with real campaign data at the close of every month.
This is the attorney version of the model. For how we write, shoot and place creative for law firms, see Video & CTV Advertising for Law Firms →
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