A national workers’ compensation campaign treats a claimant in one state the same as a claimant in another. The statutes do not, and that gap is where a lot of wasted spend lives.
The same profile, different value
Consider a claimant who was injured at work six weeks ago and has not yet reported it to their employer. In a state with a short reporting window, that is a difficult matter. In a state with a longer one, it may be perfectly workable. Identical screening answers, materially different value, and no campaign that ignores geography can tell the difference.
Reporting deadlines, filing windows, waiting periods before benefits begin, rules about employer-directed medical care, and how disputes are handled all vary. Each shifts what a firm can do with a given set of facts.
What this means for screening
Screening criteria that make sense in one jurisdiction can quietly disqualify workable claimants in another, or let through claimants nobody can help. If a single criteria set is applied nationally, it is calibrated to somewhere — usually the firm’s home state — and it is wrong everywhere else by some margin.
The practical answer is to treat the date of injury and reporting question as state-dependent rather than absolute. A campaign covering several states needs its screening thresholds set per state, not once.
What this means for cost
Advertising costs also vary by market, and not in proportion to how favourable the rules are. A state with competitive advertising and unfavourable timing rules is a bad combination that averages out invisibly inside a national campaign. Blended reporting hides it; per-state reporting exposes it within weeks.
Practical consequences
- Scope campaigns by jurisdiction, and be honest about which states a firm is actually admitted and staffed to serve.
- Set screening thresholds per state, particularly anything involving dates and reporting.
- Report per state. A blended cost per lead across ten states is an average of things that should not be averaged.
- Expect uneven volume. Some markets will not support the volume a firm wants at a price it will pay. That is worth knowing before launch rather than after.
None of this is legal analysis, and nothing here should be relied on as advice about any specific deadline or situation. It is a marketing observation: campaigns that ignore jurisdiction pay for it, and the bill arrives as records the intake team cannot use.