Case study · Paid social · Diagnostic + Rewrite
The Coverage Map Problem
I find where your marketing is creating extra work for your sales team, and fix it at the right layer.
A strong ad held back by a visual that sent the wrong first signal.
I’ve kept this ad and brand anonymous to protect the business and its owner. This was an unsolicited review, meant as an honest critique, not a takedown.
The Ad
A legal marketing agency promoting a free competitive benchmark for law firms on LinkedIn: see where your firm stands against your competitors in about 60 seconds.
The Diagnosis
The copy was the strongest part. It opened by telling the reader nobody else in the space had this, because the agency built it themselves. Direct, confident, and a real reason to keep reading. It also had a great idea buried in the middle: you might find out you’re right where you should be, or you might find out you’re falling behind.
The visual was working against all of it.
When I first skimmed past the image, I didn’t think of a competitive benchmark at all. I thought of cell phone coverage.
A red map of the United States covered in glowing dots looks a lot like the coverage maps carriers like Verizon have used in their advertising for years. That’s a big deal. The first association the visual creates, before anyone reads a word, has nothing to do with law firms or how they compare to their competitors.
The copy also made the reader wait. Seventeen studies, 500+ markets, all 50 states, ten practice areas. All of it builds credibility, but it came before the reason to care. A firm owner wants to know what the report says about their firm, not how many datasets went into it.
The Rewrite
I didn’t rebuild it from scratch. The opening and the free benchmark stay. The “right where you should be, or falling behind” idea moves up and becomes the spine of the ad, and the credibility details shrink to one line after the reader already cares.
No other legal marketing agency has this. I know because we built it ourselves.
Most firm owners know their caseload. Very few know how it stacks up against the firm down the street.
Are you right where you should be? Or is a competitor quietly pulling ahead, and you won’t notice until the phone slows down?
Our free benchmark shows you in about 60 seconds: where your firm stands in your market, and how visible you are on Google and AI search.
Built on 17 benchmark studies across 500+ legal markets.
Free. No strings attached.
Find out where you stand →
The Visual Direction
The new visual asks the reader’s own question before they read a word. Instead of showing where the agency operates, it shows what the reader is actually wondering about: the competition, and where they stand next to it.
Why This Matters
When the first thing someone sees sends them the wrong signal, the copy has to work twice as hard just to get back to zero. Most people scrolling won’t give it that chance.
The fix wasn’t more copy or a bigger budget. It was making the visual and the words say the same thing, so the reader understands the value before they decide whether to read.
Read the full diagnostic (PDF) ↗Read the full diagnostic (PDF) ↗
Spec diagnostic · Not commissioned