When every expert is trying to sell you something, how do you really know what your firm needs - or what you're wasting money on? In this episode of Personal Injury Mastermind, John Schroeder, owner of DeFacto Digital Consulting, reveals what he's learned from auditing PI firms spending anywhere from $5K to $100K monthly on marketing. From intake gaps to SEO failures, John shares the brutal truth about where most firms are hemorrhaging money without even knowing it.

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As founder of DeFacto Digital Consulting, John built his business on a radical premise: providing unvarnished, data-driven analysis of law firms' marketing performance.. In this candid conversation, he reveals the common blind spots he finds when analyzing firms across the country - and why most firms don't discover these issues until they're "$50K in the hole." If you're investing in marketing but unsure about the real ROI, this episode gives you the framework to evaluate what's actually working.

We discuss:

John Schroeder is the owner of DeFacto Digital Consulting, specializing in unbiased audits of law firms' digital marketing performance. After years in legal lead generation and agency work, John founded DeFacto to help firms get honest, objective analysis of their marketing effectiveness without trying to sell additional services.

Chris Dreyer is the CEO and founder of Rankings.io, the elite legal digital marketing agency. 

00:00 Intro 

00:51 The Truth About Legal Marketing Audits 

02:07 What Actually Drives PI Cases Today 

03:17 Evaluating Intake Performance 

04:58 Common SEO Mistakes and Solutions 

08:10 Google Ads: Manual Control vs Automation 

10:11 In-House vs Third-Party Intake Teams 

12:21 Origins of DeFacto Digital 

13:45 The Audit Process Explained