CASE STUDIES › BECK, LENOX & STOLZER
Estate Planning and Elder Law Marketing Case Study: How a Firm Pivoted from In-Person Seminars to Digital and Grew Revenue 35% in Under a Year
$16.47 Cost Per Lead | 35% Revenue Growth | 89 Webinar Calls | 542 Website Booking Calls
Rudy Beck leads Beck, Lenox & Stolzer Estate Planning and Elder Law, LLC — a St. Louis firm with decades of experience in estate planning, elder law, veterans’ benefits, and special needs planning. The firm had built its client pipeline on in-person seminars: 3 to 4 per month, consistent, predictable. Then COVID hit, and that pipeline went to zero overnight.
Rudy also had a longer-term goal: transitioning more responsibilities to younger attorneys in the practice. That transition required the firm to build systems — marketing automations, digital lead flow, coaching frameworks — that could run without depending entirely on Rudy’s personal presence and relationships.
IMS rebuilt the firm’s marketing around an evergreen webinar funnel, targeted Facebook ads, website optimization, and a sales and coaching program for the firm’s attorneys and marketing director. The cost per lead dropped from $220–$245 per seminar attendee to $16.47 online. Revenue grew 35% in under a year.
The Challenge: When the Seminar Pipeline Disappeared
For years, Beck, Lenox & Stolzer built its client pipeline through in-person seminars — 3 to 4 per month, a proven model for estate planning and elder law firms that rely on education-based marketing. The seminars worked. They were expensive (attendees cost $220–$245 each to acquire), but they produced clients.
COVID ended that overnight. Public gatherings stopped. The seminar calendar went to zero. The firm needed a new way to generate leads — fast — and it needed that new system to be as reliable as the seminars had been, not a temporary patch.
Rudy also had a second challenge that predated COVID: he wanted to transition more of the firm’s day-to-day responsibilities to younger attorneys. That required building systems — marketing automations, digital lead flow, coaching frameworks — that could operate without depending on Rudy’s personal presence at every seminar. The digital pivot and the succession planning goal turned out to be the same problem: the firm needed to stop being dependent on any single channel or any single person.
The Estate Planning and Elder Law Marketing Strategy
IMS designed a three-part strategy to replace the seminar pipeline with a digital system that could generate leads at scale, run consistently without Rudy’s direct involvement, and support the firm’s longer-term succession goals.
Website Optimization and Syndicated Content
The firm’s website was overhauled to improve both search visibility and the experience for visitors who arrived from ads or organic search. On-site SEO improvements raised the firm’s rankings for estate planning and elder law keywords. Syndicated blogs and newsletters kept the site fresh and gave the firm a consistent content presence — positioning Beck, Lenox & Stolzer as a trusted authority in its market without requiring the attorneys to write content from scratch.
Evergreen Webinar Funnel and Facebook Ads
The seminar model was rebuilt as a digital evergreen webinar funnel. Rather than hosting live events on a fixed schedule, the firm now runs a webinar that prospects can register for and watch on their own time — which means the lead generation runs continuously, not just on seminar nights. IMS drove traffic to the webinar through highly targeted Facebook ads, reaching the specific demographic most likely to need estate planning and elder law services. The result: leads at $16.47 each, compared to $220–$245 per seminar attendee.
Sales Mastery and Marketing Coaching
To support the succession goal, IMS provided sales training and ongoing marketing coaching for the firm’s younger attorneys and marketing director. The coaching sessions gave the team the skills and frameworks to convert the digital leads the new system was generating — and to manage and grow the marketing program over time without depending on Rudy to drive every decision. As Rudy noted in his review, the coaching sessions “once implemented, have added to our bottom line.”
The Results
Cost Per Lead Dropped from $245 to $16.47
The Facebook ad campaigns for the evergreen webinar funnel reduced the cost per lead from $220–$245 per seminar attendee to $16.47 per online lead. That’s not a marginal improvement — it’s a fundamental change in the economics of the firm’s marketing. The same budget that used to produce a handful of seminar attendees now produces a steady stream of qualified prospects.
89 Webinar Calls and 542 Website Booking Calls
The webinar funnel generated 89 calls directly from webinar engagements. The website optimization produced 542 calls from website bookings — visitors who found the firm through search, explored the site, and converted to a consultation request. Together, the two channels created a lead flow that operates continuously, without requiring anyone at the firm to host a live event.
Email campaign performance data showing engagement and lead flow results.
35% Revenue Growth in Under a Year
Under IMS’s guidance, the firm saw a 35% increase in revenue in less than a year — and was experiencing the best start to a year it had ever seen. The revenue growth reflects the combined effect of the new lead flow, the improved conversion rates from the coaching program, and the compounding value of the digital infrastructure that was now in place.
What Changed for the Firm
Beck, Lenox & Stolzer went from a firm that was entirely dependent on in-person seminars to one with a digital marketing system that generates leads continuously — at a fraction of the cost. The succession goal that Rudy had been working toward became more achievable because the marketing no longer required his personal presence to function.
“This year (2024) we are off to the best start we’ve ever been off to, and I think IMS has played a big role in that for us. The shift to internet marketing has made a huge difference, not just in lead generation but in our overall approach to client engagement and firm growth.”
— Rudy D. Beck, Beck, Lenox & Stolzer Estate Planning & Elder Law, LLC
“Our firm has been with IMS for almost 4 years now and without a doubt, IMS helped us pivot from doing no public presentations in 2020 & 2021 [when we had been doing 3 to 4 a month] to not doing any public presentations at all unless invited by different organizations. Further, the coaching sessions have provided tips for our lawyers and staff that once implemented, have added to our bottom line. I would encourage any estate planning firm that wants more business with less marketing effort [time spent by the attorneys in the firm] to give IMS a try — you’ll be glad you did.”
— Rudy D. Beck · Google Review ★★★★★
Hear Rudy Tell the Story
Rudy shares how the pivot from in-person seminars to digital marketing changed the firm’s approach to client engagement, lead generation, and long-term growth.
What This Case Study Demonstrates
The Beck, Lenox & Stolzer story is about more than a COVID pivot. It’s about what happens when a firm that has been doing education-based marketing for decades finally builds a digital infrastructure to support it. The seminar model worked — but it was expensive, labor-intensive, and entirely dependent on in-person attendance. The digital version of the same model is cheaper, runs continuously, and doesn’t require the lead attorney to be in the room.
The coaching component also matters here. Lead generation is only half the equation. If the attorneys who receive the leads don’t have the skills to convert them, the marketing spend is wasted. The Sales Mastery and coaching program addressed that directly — and the revenue growth reflects both sides of the equation working together.
This is the pattern IMS calls the Estate Planning Reset™. For more examples, see the full IMS case studies library. If webinar marketing is the channel you want to explore, the IMS Webinar Marketing service page explains how the program works.
If Any of These Results Sound Like What You’re After, Let’s Talk
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If it’s a fit, we’ll talk about what that looks like. If it’s not, we’ll tell you that too.
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Results described on this page reflect the experience of a specific client under specific market conditions and are not a guarantee of future performance. Individual results will vary based on practice area, market, budget, and other factors.