How was your summer? Hope you got a nice tan.

Sorry for our vacation from this newsletter that maybe 6 people open…We’ve been heads down on a lot of amazing projects and enjoying the summer.

🏗️ Verticalize 

At Palo, we’ve been ‘veritcalizing’ since 2016. This is a nice and shiny buzzword that a lot of people throw around or defines differently but we have a clear concise way to describe this to someone…”building systems, media and people around a single industry”. This has been how we’ve been able to make large waves in each industry we touch and how we’ve been able to determine if we’re rushing into a new vertical too quickly. It’s usually a whole lot of building and less talking/promoting. 

We’ve verticalized in two industries, insurance and legal with legal being the industry that has required the most building compared to any other industry we’ve touched. 

Back in 2016 we used to be very heavy into the behavioral health space and we had built in a way that we thought was verticalized but it was only one facet. We thought because we had a strong buyer base then we were good but that was just one facet of the overall equation. We had great buyers but the media was either outsourced too much or we were too top heavy in one media channel. When all you have is a seesaw of value and one seat gets knocked off, you’re kind of fucked. Well Google stepped in after too much fraud in the space and put a set of restrictions on who can market. Overnight, our media side of the business was essentially dead. Only rehab clinics could market on Google and Facebook and there was very little way around this MOAT. We hadn’t built in a way that allowed us to have evergreen scale. But there was one asset that we decided to purchase that ranked organically and continued to rank after google updates (this will be important later). Why I’m saying all of this? It’s giving context into how things were built improperly and how we learned moving into new verticals. 

Now, we build things differently and we see the best marketers in our space doing the same thing. Some really great leaders in our space can be seen on Corey Quinn’s podcast who focuses exactly on this. 

It’s not just a division, it’s essentially an entire business.  We have to take the approach that tackles every aspect of legal. From media strategy, all the way to how we strategize on conferences. this is what separates a $1m a year generalist marketing agency to a $100m a year vertical focused marketing agency. 

People

Who oversees the strategy of that vertical? 

Do they understand how the clients operate, make money, and what is scale for them? 

Do they know how to instruct media buying to meet the industry needs? If you only have media buyers primed on Meta but you focus on MVA, you’re missing an entire huge channel to find the best audience. 

Systems

If you’re running mass tort and it’s high touch, do you know how to manage a call center and QA it to ensure they’re retaining properly? These law firms want shit done soup to nuts and you need to deliver the right way. 

Marketing

Like I said above, are you setup on the right channels? Do the media buyers truly understand what a client goes through when choosing a firm? Is law primarily call focused vs lead? 

Remember that asset in rehab? It was a high ranking asset that can’t be affected (easily) by regulation. We took this and added to our blueprint to ensure we aren’t at risk of our entire business failing due to one pillar crumbling. We now own sites that rank, channels that are diversified and media buyers who don’t manage all the chips. 

~ 80% of your revenue should come no more than 20% of each asset you have. Don’t be top heavy. 

Overall

You can see how choosing a vertical and operating THE RIGHT WAY, can really change how your entire business runs. You’re essentially building a brand new business and learning what it takes to be in your clients shoes. 

From the people to the systems to the branding, you need to be dialed in if you want really be a game changer within a vertical. 

On the next newsletter I’ll cover our exact system and process. No BS. 

💎 Ryan Trahan Marketing Nuggets

Some Father-Son Bonding over YouTube?

This summer my son and I got flat out addicted to Ryan Trahan’s 50 state road trip. Every night after dinner we threw it on. Twenty minutes of chaos. New state. New challenge. New brands sneaking their way in. And it didn’t feel like some boring fundraiser. It felt like a reality show you actually gave a shit about. Two weeks in he already blew past a million bucks. By the end of it he raised $11mm for St Jude. Watching that counter spin up night after night was insane. And it smacked me right in the face how much marketers in our space could learn from this.

Why this worked when most marketing doesn’t

Ryan and Haley weren’t doing polished brand deals. They were crashing at Airbnbs, riding around on e bikes, spinning a Wheel of Doom, and just figuring shit out as they went. Each video pulled millions. It wasn’t slick. It was raw. It was the same outfits, same music, same dumb jokes, and because of that it became appointment TV. Fans weren’t watching ads. They were watching a story.

The donations weren’t just donations either. They were basically built in ad units. A thousand bucks got your logo at the end. Five grand got your name said out loud. Fifty grand spun the wheel and made Ryan do something random. $100k let you pick the punishment. And brands lined up because it was cheap(er) and it was real. Ryan wasn’t selling. He was just saying thank you.

The brands that got it right

Lectric e-bikes

Day two they throw a hundred grand. The next day they show up with a bike and promise another ten grand every time he rides it. That meant the bike was in every single episode. That’s 200 plus million impressions. They spent half a mil total and got exposure worth millions. Fans weren’t pissed off. They were rooting for the daily bike ride.

Airbnb

They cut a quarter million check. Ryan was already staying in Airbnbs every night so it just fit. Every episode felt like a free commercial for their weird treehouses and farmhouses. Zero friction.

Dollar Shave Club and Kia

Ryan dared razor companies to sponsor his beard. Dollar Shave Club paid him to keep it. Hilarious and on brand. Kia tossed a hundred grand and got to send them on a detour. Perfect fit for a car brand. Even small players like a random café in New York saw a cameo and turned it into fifteen thousand new followers. That’s free growth.

The ones who blew it

Ryan called out certain brands and some of them ignored him. Olipop being the worst. Fans roasted them all over Reddit and X. That’s the danger. When a creator with millions of eyeballs invites you in and you stay silent, you look like a clown.

The lessons you should steal

1. Put the story first and the brand second.

2. Gamify shit. People love spinning wheels and unlocking punishments.

3. Scarcity sells. Fifty episodes only. You had to tune in.

4. Social proof. Every night you saw other people donating and it made you want to donate too.

5. Purpose matters. People wanted to help sick kids. Brands tied to that got trust points.

6. Speed matters. Early movers won. Late ones blended into the noise.

7. The conversation spilled everywhere. Reddit. X. Everywhere people talk.

8. The smart brands had a plan for after. Like the café that launched new drinks off their cameo and rode the wave.

The real takeaway

Most agencies in our space are obsessed with shoving a lead form in someone’s face and praying they pick up the phone. Ryan’s series showed how different it can be. Fans didn’t hate the brands. They rooted for them because the story was bigger than the ad. Lectric turned half a mil into exposure worth seven figures easy. Airbnb turned their product into the stage. A café turned a 20 second cameo into thousands of followers.

So here’s the blunt truth. Stop treating your audience like they’re just a number on a spreadsheet. Build shit they actually care about. Work with creators who fit your brand instead of just chasing followers. Tie your campaigns to a purpose and the story will sell itself. And have a god damn plan!…don’t just take your mention and run. Extend the story.

The future of digital marketing is authenticity and storytelling. Ryan Trahan gave us the blueprint wrapped inside an e-bike road trip. Don’t be the brand that misses the boat.

🔍️ Some Ad Insights from PALO

We decided to overhaul our MVA program on Facebook and completely change how we create angles, qualify users, and the types of cases we're pursuing. We realized that targeting a standard car accident on Facebook is simply too difficult due to saturation and the prevalence of misleading ad angles. This made it hard for us to find our niche. As a result, we incorporated more Google ads into our strategy, relying on them for the majority of volume while specifically hunting big cases on Facebook. This means we've shifted our approach to use Facebook mainly for catastrophic and commercial events, such as truck accidents. This allows us to identify highly qualified cases while maintaining a certain quality level that Google Ads provides.

Current Metrics from Facebook Ads (As of 9/15/2025)

• CPM: $107.95

• CPC: $9.11

• CTR: 5.21%

• Average CPL: $250

• Current ROI: +9%

~ FOR PALO, FB IS FOR HIGH-VALUE ACCIDENTS ONLY NOW

🛠️ Tools We’ve Been Loving.

🤖 Telnyx: Yup, it’s the same old bullshit…what AI tool is the hottest? Well relax, I’m not here to tell you about another “HOT NEW TOOL 🔥!”

We’re just outlining some of the experimenting we’re doing here and our results. 

We had been testing VAPI and it was running pretty good but the cost was getting a bit too high for how much we used it. It also required us to connect our twilio account and it created a bit of a mess when it came to tracking cost. 

We’ve since switched to Telnyx. They have a native AI tool built in and since it’s also the telecom platform, it’s much more affordable and honestly…way more advanced that a lot we’ve seen out there. The API is strong and overall their team has been very supportive. We use it as a call triage now and are quickly moving it to outbound rep as well. 

It’s worked incredibly well and we’ll most likely continue to build here since it’s not black box. We own the building and we own all the training data. 

MTD Stats (not every campaign uses the AI)

• Total Calls Qualified: 16k

• Total Call Minutes: 11k mins

• Average Call Duration with AI: 41.4 seconds

• Total Cost: $1,009.25

If you need an introduction or for us to point you in the right direction, just email me at [email protected], and I’d be happy to do so.

📼 Content We’re Loving

🖊️ Closing

• Are you constantly swinging the sword and not sharpening it?

• Are you taking time to learn something every day or blocking off a larger amount of time to learn every week?

I'm very guilty of not doing this and I'm still working on it. I want you to try. Go to your calendar and find the best day of the week where you can completely turn off everything and dedicate time to strategy and learning so you can keep doing what got you into this industry in the first place and less firefighting.

Do it.

~Love Tony 🥦