Sep 8, 2026 · 27 min · 11 segments
"Strategy beats budget 90% of the time." - Ross Gordon Director of Marketing at The Thumbs Up Guys. This week, Clienting welcomes Ross Gordon, Director…
Ross GordonGuestGyi TsakalakisHost
Yeah, you can't go in and be a top free spender your first year on television or really any medium.
And if you can be more strategic than those bigger players, that have been around a long time may have some bloat in their system where they're not being as careful and they may not feel every single dollar and needing a really strong ROI.
I was talking to somebody the other day about SEO and they were saying, man, Why would I start spending on SEO when there's people who have been doing it for 40 years? I'm not going to, I'm just going to waste money.
If you can really help answer questions that people have, Google loves that and will reward that.
So it's just spending more time and being more careful about the way you approach your strategy and making sure that you track every dollar you spend the best you can.
And there are ways to win in a market that's really competitive when you're new.
Ross, this is great to hear because we are constantly hearing the pressures of trying to out-compete some of these firms.
And there's private equity money coming into plaintiffs, side PI, I think it's coming into more legal sectors.
And so I think a lot of firms are facing a lot of these questions about, do I just try to outspend? And I think I always say is I'm like, there's only one or two firms that can even compete in those spending wars.
Yeah, you can't go in and be a top free spender your first year on television or really any medium.
And if you can be more strategic than those bigger players, that have been around a long time may have some bloat in their system where they're not being as careful and they may not feel every single dollar and needing a really strong ROI.
I was talking to somebody the other day about SEO and they were saying, man, Why would I start spending on SEO when there's people who have been doing it for 40 years? I'm not going to, I'm just going to waste money.
If you can really help answer questions that people have, Google loves that and will reward that.
So it's just spending more time and being more careful about the way you approach your strategy and making sure that you track every dollar you spend the best you can.
And there are ways to win in a market that's really competitive when you're new.
Ross, this is great to hear because we are constantly hearing the pressures of trying to out-compete some of these firms.
And there's private equity money coming into plaintiffs, side PI, I think it's coming into more legal sectors.
And so I think a lot of firms are facing a lot of these questions about, do I just try to outspend? And I think I always say is I'm like, there's only one or two firms that can even compete in those spending wars.
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