CASE STUDIES › THE WERNER FIRM
Probate and Estate Planning Marketing Case Study: How Optimized SEO and Paid Ads Drive Consistent Lead Flow Across 10 Offices
26 New Leads Per Month | 88,900 New Website Users | 219 Conversions | Top 3 Rankings for Probate Keywords
Troy Werner runs The Werner Firm — a probate and estate planning practice with ten offices across Southern California. When he came to IMS, the firm already had the infrastructure: the offices, the attorneys, the operational capacity. What it didn’t have was a marketing system that could generate enough leads to keep all of that running at full capacity.
Troy had been with another full-service marketing agency. The lead flow was underwhelming — not meeting the firm’s revenue goals, particularly in probate. With ten locations to support, the gap between what the marketing was producing and what the firm needed was significant.
IMS built a targeted strategy around probate-specific SEO, local search optimization, and a dual paid ads program. Within less than a year, the firm was generating 26 new leads per month from paid ads alone, had attracted 88,900 new website users, and had achieved top-three rankings for its most competitive probate keywords.
The Challenge: Lead Flow That Couldn’t Keep Up With Ten Offices
The Werner Firm had built something most law firms never achieve: a multi-location practice with ten offices across Southern California. The operational infrastructure was in place. The challenge was filling it. The firm’s existing marketing — managed by another full-service agency — wasn’t generating the lead volume needed to support the firm’s revenue goals, particularly in probate.
The probate market in Southern California is competitive. Ranking for terms like “probate attorney” and “probate lawyer” requires a disciplined, sustained SEO effort — not generic legal marketing. The previous agency hadn’t built that foundation, and the paid ads weren’t targeted precisely enough to capture the high-intent searchers the firm needed.
The goal was clear: build a marketing system that could generate consistent, qualified probate leads at scale — across all ten locations, not just the flagship office.
The Probate Marketing Strategy
IMS designed a three-part strategy focused specifically on probate — not generic estate planning, not broad legal marketing, but the specific search behavior and intent patterns of people who need a probate attorney in Southern California.
Probate-Specific SEO, Google Business Profile, and Local Citations
IMS optimized the firm’s online presence around probate-specific keywords — the terms people actually search when they need a probate attorney, not the broad terms that attract general legal traffic. This included optimizing Google Business Profile listings for each location, building out local citations to reinforce geographic relevance, and launching a custom blog content program focused on probate topics to build the firm’s authority in search. The goal was to make The Werner Firm the most visible probate practice in every market it served.
Website Optimization and Syndicated Content
The firm’s website was optimized for both search performance and conversion — improving the experience for visitors who arrived from organic search and reducing the friction between a first visit and a contact form submission. IMS also syndicated blogs and newsletters to maintain a consistent content presence, positioning The Werner Firm as a thought leader in probate law and driving sustained growth in organic traffic.
Google Search Ads and Local Service Ads
To generate immediate lead flow while the SEO work compounded, IMS implemented a dual paid ads program: finely-tuned Google Search Ads targeting high-intent probate searches, and Local Service Ads to capture the “near me” and location-specific queries that drive calls directly to the firm. The two channels worked in tandem — Search Ads for broader reach, LSAs for high-intent local capture — and together produced a consistent stream of 26 new leads per month.
The Results
Top 3 Rankings for Probate Keywords
Within less than a year, keywords including “probate attorney” and “probate lawyer” climbed to the top three positions in search results. In a market as competitive as Southern California, those rankings represent a significant shift in visibility — and they translate directly into organic traffic from people who are actively looking for a probate attorney right now.
Probate keyword rankings climbing to top-three positions within the first year.
88,900 New Website Users and 219 Conversions
The combined effect of SEO, content, and website optimization drove 88,900 new users to the firm’s website — and 219 of those visits converted into a meaningful action: a contact form submission, a call, or a consultation request. The conversion rate reflects both the quality of the traffic (high-intent probate searchers) and the effectiveness of the website optimization in turning visitors into leads.
Website traffic and conversion growth across the partnership period.
26 New Leads Per Month from Paid Ads
The Google Search Ads and Local Service Ads program generates a consistent 26 new leads per month — a reliable, predictable stream that the firm can plan around. For a ten-office practice, that consistency matters as much as the volume: the marketing isn’t producing spikes and droughts, it’s producing a steady flow that supports operations across all locations.
Consistent monthly lead flow from Google Search Ads and Local Service Ads.
What Changed for the Firm
The Werner Firm had the capacity to handle more clients. What it needed was a marketing system that could deliver them consistently across ten locations. That’s what changed.
“Partnering with IMS has not only met but exceeded our expectations. The increase in probate leads across all our offices has been a game-changer for our firm’s growth and has directly impacted our revenue goals positively.”
— Troy Werner, The Werner Firm · Google Review ★★★★★
Hear Troy Tell the Story
Troy joined the Marketing Lawcast to discuss his key strategies for building a successful multi-location estate planning and probate practice — and what the shift to a disciplined marketing system meant for the firm’s growth.
What This Case Study Demonstrates
The Werner Firm is a different kind of case study from the solo practitioner pages. This is a multi-location practice with real operational scale — and the marketing challenge that comes with it. You can’t run a generic estate planning campaign and expect it to generate leads across ten offices in a competitive market. You need a strategy that’s specific to the practice area, specific to the geography, and built to produce consistent volume rather than occasional spikes.
The probate focus matters here. Probate clients are often in a time-sensitive situation — they’ve recently lost a family member and need to move quickly. That urgency makes them high-intent searchers, which is exactly why the combination of SEO (for organic visibility) and paid ads (for immediate capture) works so well in this practice area.
This is the pattern IMS calls the Estate Planning Reset™. For more examples, see the full IMS case studies library. If Google Ads is the channel you want to explore, the IMS Google Advertising service page explains how the program works.
If Any of These Results Sound Like What You’re After, Let’s Talk
Every firm on this page started with a conversation. Not a proposal, not a pitch deck — a 30-minute call where we looked at their situation honestly and told them what we thought would move the needle.
The Discovery Call isn’t a sales call. It’s a diagnostic. We’ll look at where your firm is right now — your rankings, your lead flow, your referral dependency — and tell you what we’d do differently and why.
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.