Case Study: How We Generated 25 Personal-Bankruptcy Engagements in Moscow in January 2026 at ₽20,443 per Engagement in One of the Toughest Niches

The personal bankruptcy market stopped being an easy performance niche a long time ago. High competition, overheated auctions, expensive clicks, a highly sensitive audience, and legal restrictions make this one of the most demanding verticals for marketing.

In a niche like this, it's not enough to just "run ads." You need to build a controllable system where you can see not just the cost per lead, but the entire path to the appointment, consultation, and signed contract.

That's exactly the challenge we tackled for this client.

In January 2026, the system delivered (by the time of writing, we had been working with the client for 2 years on paid advertising traffic):

• 492 leads;

• 130 scheduled appointments;

• 47 consultations;

• 25 signed contracts;

• ₽20,443 per engagement.

What Changed in the Market and Why Old Approaches Stopped Working

Over the recent period, advertising in personal bankruptcy law became noticeably more complex. Mandatory disclaimers and stricter creative restrictions played a significant role.

In practice, this meant:

• familiar ad formats and "non-standard" creatives lost their ability to capture attention;

• CTR started declining;

• clicks became more expensive;

• part of the audience started dropping off more often before even submitting a form;

• the old tactic of "pump more traffic and make up volume" started hurting the economics.

• The share of low-quality ad placements burning budget kept growing due to Yandex's continuous expansion of its auto-targeting algorithms in YAN (Yandex Advertising Network).

The problem wasn't that traffic disappeared. The problem was that the economics of the old advertising model stopped adding up.

If you simply keep buying leads the old way, the business gets:

• more noise;

• lower quality inbound leads;

• a drop in appointment show rates;

• weak sales team manageability;

• a distorted picture of performance.

That's why we needed to rebuild the entire traffic logic from scratch.

What the Objective Was

The client had three direct goals:

• generate a steady stream of qualified leads;

• reduce the cost of client acquisition;

• increase the number of signed contracts.

But internally, we framed the objective more sharply: not just to collect inquiries, but to produce an economically justified number of signed contracts.

This is a crucial distinction. In bankruptcy law, there are plenty of "cheap" leads who never show up, don't qualify, or aren't ready to sign. On paper, marketing like that can look great — for the business, it's worthless.

That's why we deliberately tracked not just leads, but also:

• appointments;

• consultations;

• contracts;

• conversion rates between stages;

• the actual cost of a fully signed contract measured against marketing spend.

The Situation Before Our Rebuild

Before we started, the core problem looked like this: traffic could be obtained, but quality wasn't controllable enough.

Projects like this usually show the same symptoms:

• non-target people coming through ads;

• lead forms collecting too little information;

• the sales team wasting time on obviously weak inquiries;

• advertising evaluated by CPL (cost per lead) instead of CAC (cost per signed contract with advance against ad spend);

• no visibility into exactly where the funnel is losing money.

This was the main risk. When you can't see the path to a signed contract, marketing starts optimizing in the wrong direction.

What We Did

We built the work around three core pillars:

• a new advertising strategy adapted to current market restrictions;

• lead qualification before handoff to the sales team;

• end-to-end analytics across the entire funnel.

Here's what each of those meant in practice.

1. Completely Rebuilt the Advertising Strategy for New Market Conditions

We didn't try to "tweak" old ads. The approach was different: rebuild advertising from scratch so it remained effective even with mandatory restrictions and disclaimers.

In practice, this included:

• redesigning ad creatives;

• adapting offers to current legal realities;

• updating campaign logic;

• selecting more viable creative and keyword combinations;

• shifting emphasis in ad copy.

Why this was necessary:

• to maintain decent click-through rates despite worsening ad delivery conditions;

• to avoid attracting random or spam audiences;

• to reduce the share of weak "emotional" inquiries that never reach a deal;

• to stabilize the top of the sales funnel.

In bankruptcy law, advertising must be simultaneously:

• legally compliant;

• clear to someone under financial stress;

• compelling enough to make them take the next step;

• direct enough to lead the client to sign a contract.

This is fine-tuning. That's exactly where the difference between a formal launch and a working system lives.

2. Added Lead Qualification Right at the Application Stage

One of the most common mistakes in this niche is collecting the shortest possible form for volume, then manually trying to figure out who actually qualifies for the service.

We deliberately went the other direction and added qualifying fields to the form. Specifically, we asked:

• total debt amount;

• city of residence;

• willingness to come in for a consultation;

• the nature of the debts (not all debt types qualify in this niche);

• current level of solvency.

Why this mattered:

• not every lead is equally valuable to the business;

• some inquiries don't meet the qualification parameters;

• some people are just "interested" but have no intention of moving forward;

• the sales team doesn't need a mass of contacts — it needs applications that can be worked substantively.

After this, far less noise came through at the top. Yes, a form like this often cuts some volume. But in this project, that was a feature, not a bug — because we were optimizing not for leads for their own sake, but for results down to the signed contract.

Essentially, we shifted part of the qualification work from the manager's hands into the marketing system.

3. Set Up End-to-End Analytics from Lead to Signed Contract

This was one of the most important blocks in the project.

We structured the analytics so we could see not just:

• how many leads came in;

• what they cost;

but also:

• how many appointments were scheduled;

• how many people showed up for a consultation;

• how many consultations resulted in a contract;

• exactly where conversion was dropping;

• which stage actually drove CAC.

For this project, we tracked the entire chain:

• lead;

• appointment;

• consultation;

• contract.

Why this was necessary:

• to stop confusing "cheap applications" with effective marketing;

• to see the real cost of a client;

• to quickly spot where the economics break down;

• to make decisions based on data, not gut feeling.

Without this analytics layer in bankruptcy law — or any other niche — it's impossible to systematically manage scaling. A business might think advertising is underperforming when the real problem is appointment show rates. Or conversely, celebrate a cheap CPL while missing the fact that contracts aren't being signed.

We eliminated those blind spots.

Challenges We Encountered

Challenge 1. Legal Restrictions Degraded Audience Behavior

Mandatory warnings in ads reduce creative appeal. That means the old creative approach stops working.

We solved this through a complete rebuild of ad messaging and campaign structure adapted to the new reality — not by trying to squeeze more out of old combinations.

Challenge 2. It's Very Easy to Buy a Lot of Weak Leads in This Niche

If you focus only on volume, you can quickly get a beautiful CPL and terrible revenue results.

We solved this through upfront lead qualification and a strict tie between performance evaluation and contracts — not the number of form submissions.

Challenge 3. Funnel Losses Were Previously Impossible to Explain Precisely

Without stage-by-stage analytics, you can't understand where the business is losing money: at the traffic quality stage, appointment show rate, consultation, or sale.

We solved this through a full-funnel setup with clear intermediate metrics.

Challenge 4. We Had to Maintain the Balance Between Volume and Quality

If filtering is too aggressive, lead volume drops. If it's too loose, the funnel floods with non-target contacts.

We built the system to maintain acceptable volume without sacrificing quality down to the contract stage.

The Numbers

By the end of January 2026, the project delivered the following results:

• ad budget (ex. VAT) — ₽418,917;

• ad budget (inc. VAT) — ₽511,078;

• leads — 492;

• CPL — ₽1,038;

• appointments scheduled — 130;

• cost per appointment — ₽3,931;

• conversion lead → appointment — 26.42%;

• consultations — 47;

• conversion consultation → contract — 53.19%;

• contracts — 25;

• cost per engagement — ₽20,443.

These numbers matter as a complete picture. They show that advertising didn't just collect a flow of inquiries — it moved a substantial portion of traffic to a commercially meaningful outcome.

Why This Didn't Happen on Its Own

If it were simply about the market, the client would have already been achieving this economics consistently. But the market actually got harder.

The result happened because we systematically changed three critical layers:

• adapted the advertising mechanics to new restrictions;

• built in filtering of weak inquiries;

• made the funnel fully transparent down to the signed contract.

We didn't wait for "the sales team to somehow figure it out" with whatever traffic came in. We raised the quality of incoming leads upfront and ensured that marketing was accountable for business results — not just the number of form submissions.

What This Delivered for the Business

For the client, this means more than just 25 contracts in a month.

It means:

• a more controllable CAC;

• a transparent funnel;

• the ability to scale what's working;

• less time wasted on weak inquiries;

• tighter alignment between marketing and sales.

When a business can see the entire path from click to signed contract, it stops arguing about "which ad is better" and starts making decisions based on facts.

Takeaway

This case study makes it clear: in bankruptcy law, you can't rely on top-level metrics alone.

Without our work, the client would have had:

• expensive and poorly controllable traffic;

• opaque lead quality;

• manager overload;

• a weak link between CPL and actual revenue.

What we did:

• rebuilt the advertising strategy;

• embedded qualification into the funnel itself;

• set up end-to-end analytics down to the signed contract.

What the client got:

• 492 leads;

• 47 consultations;

• 25 contracts;

• ₽20,443 per engagement in a tough legal niche.

If your marketing is bringing in inquiries but not the right clients, reach out to IGM. We'll identify the growth levers and help you attract projects that actually move the needle on revenue and profit.