Attorney Advertising - Personal Injury TV ads

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Testimonials in attorney advertisements are a powerful, free tool that you should be taking advantage of for some very basic psychological reasons.

The words of real people, actual clients, carry more weight than any of the advertising copy your potential clients know was carefully and professionally crafted to impress them. It is an automatic reaction to be more impressed by something that sounds natural and spontaneous than something designed to sound good.

People find what others say about you to be more believable than what you say about yourself.

Testimonials can say things that you cannot really say yourself. When your clients sing your praises or gush about what a great person you are and what a wonderful job you have done, it sounds like you must really be a great attorney and a great person. If you say those things about yourself, you just sound like you are tooting your own horn. If you talk about yourself with the emotion that gives testimonials their real punch, you will sound arrogant and maybe a little nuts.

Testimonials are tangible, specific, and meaningful examples of what you and your law firm can do for your client rather than abstract possibilities. They speak of the personal impact not just dollar amounts. Sure, a million dollar settlement or award sounds good to most people, but hearing about how it changed someone’s life for the better is what touches a nerve, makes it personal, and really gets people to fantasize about the benefits your services could translate to in their lives.

Proof of a past accomplishment is better than a promise. This works in two ways. To your prospective client, it is not just a possibility; it has already happened. For you, it is a way to demonstrate to the prospect what you can do for them without making specific promises or implied guarantees that might get you in trouble down the road.

To learn about how to ask for testimonials gracefully and how to use them in your advertising legally, please contact the legal advertising experts at Network Affiliates today.

A relatively new wrinkle to Google’s search algorithm has involved a feature called Google Maps. Google Maps is a feature of the organic search results that displays local businesses on a map that are close to the localization that you are searching. So, for example, if you search “personal injury lawyer minneapolis,” the following results appear.



As you can see, the map results appear above any of the other organic search results. What this means is that the Google Map feature is a very, very important part of search engine optimization because it is the first thing a user sees when performing a search on Google. Results in Bing are the same. Here is a quick screenshot of the same search but on Bing.



Again, Bing displays the map listings above the other organic listings.

What does this mean for your law firm? This means that if your firm isn’t ranking well in the local sections of Google and Bing, that your firm could stand to improve its SEO.

How do you rank well on Google Maps and Bing Local? Here are a few steps you can take to ensure your law firm is making the most of its local listings.

Register for Google Local and Bing Local

Do a search for your firm on Google and Bing. Does a map listing pop up in the organic search results? If so, your firm is listed in Google and Bing local. If not, go to these two pages and register your firm.

Google Local
Bing Local

There are step-by-step instructions to register your business for the above local search services. Once you have registered, your website should begin appearing when you search for your own firm. Now, the next step is to get your website to rank for larger keyword searches.

Add content to your local listings

Google and Bing both look for content as a ranking factor for your local page. Adding videos, pictures, descriptions of your business amongst other things help your business rank for local searches. Let’s take a look at a well-optimized Google Maps listing and what sort of content is included. I did a search for, “new york personal injury lawyer,” and these were the results for the Google Maps section.



So, here is what the Google Maps page looks like for the number one ranking PI lawyer in New York City.



As you can see, this law firm has updated their Google Maps page with pictures, video of their law firm, and a keyword rich description of their practice. Let’s take a look at their details page so you can see what type of information search engines like.



The details of their firm have keywords in them, but they follow the basic rule of SEO in not stuffing descriptions areas with nothing but keywords. Instead, the description gives the user a great overview of their practice in few words and with relevant keywords. This details page also pulls information from SuperPages.com and findlaw.com, which will benefit your firm if you have information on other websites such as these.

While this firm has a great Google Maps page, there is one area where it can be improved.

Reviews

One area that can help immediately boost your firm’s rankings on Google Maps is a review of your firm on a reputable review source. I discussed some of these outlets in a previous blog post, but as you can see in the picture above, four of the top seven lawyers on Google Maps in New York City have reviews for their firms. In competitive markets, this is very important and will help your other organic SEO efforts as well.

If you need any assistance with your internet marketing strategy, please contact us at Network Affiliates today. We would be happy to discuss everything about your internet strategy from your website all the way down to your Google Maps efforts. We look forward to speaking with you soon.

Federal and state regulations on advertising affect everyone. Attorneys face even more challenges in advertising trying to comply with state bar rules. The laws that apply to other types of businesses help to protect against fraud and misleading claims. Some state bar rules go much farther placing restrictions on the use of spokespeople, testimonials, endorsements, use of verdicts and settlements. Some state bars even require specific wording in all of your law firm’s advertisements. Each state is different, and if your firm operates in more than one state you may find that your advertising must comply with multiple state bar advertising rules.

Many of these rules are dated and do not reflect the reality of how law firms advertise today or the sophistication of consumers. Unfortunately, we are stuck with rules that differ in each state, are constantly changing, and often are unclear in their wording. Some state bar rules can be cost prohibitive, requiring that even online advertising be reviewed, for a fee, before it can be launched.

Changes to Florida state bar rules made in January regarding attorney websites are the latest and most talked-about problem right now. Attorneys in Florida have until June to bring their websites into compliance.

Attorney advertising is not optional in today’s world. You cannot avoid these issues by choosing not to advertise or by simply shooting for what seem like the “least risky” advertising methods, which may or may not truly be in compliance and will certainly not be competitive. To keep your edge in advertising without violating the bar rules, you need to work with professionals whose job includes keeping up with the changing rules.

Because we work with advertising attorneys throughout the country, we are familiar with the legal advertising rules in each state. We also have the experience to tell you how to remain in compliance while still running an effective ad campaign that generates business for your law firm.

To find out more about how you can stay competitive while staying in compliance, please contact Network Affiliates today.

The roundtable discussions at our recent attorney networking meeting in San Francisco included some of the most illuminating discussions yet. After Tammy Kehe reviewed the results from the Key Performance Indicators survey, the attorneys chimed in about what was working and not working for them.

One of the themes had to do with big cases. We heard from several of the attorneys that while their business was profitable from the standard auto cases, it was a few big cases that turned 2009 from a good year into a great year. When asked about where those "big" cases came from, the response was simple - "referrals". Even after paying out a 1/3 referral fee, these cases still made the difference between a good year and a great year.

So, the question came up, how do you generate the referrals? Following are a few of the responses and some ideas to chew on:

1. Start by being a great lawyer. You will never get big case referrals unless you can establish yourself and/or your firm as being able to handle the bigger, more complex, cases. You have to start with a track record of success.
2. You have to network with potential referring attorneys - lawyers who are in your jurisdiction who either don't have the expertise or the resources to handle big cases, and lawyers in other jurisdictions who might be looking for a lawyer or a firm to handle a big case for them in your jurisdiction.
3. Develop a reputation as the "go-to" lawyer or law firm for the big case by giving seminars, writing articles, publishing press releases on successes, highlighting your verdicts and settlements on your website, etc.
4. Send out e-newsletters and collateral marketing material to noncompeting attorneys -and to your client database. Network presented several case studies on how these efforts led to a very high ROI in both leads and referred cases.
5. Become active in your state AAJ society.
6. Pay to be included in the AAJ Leaders Forum.
   

If you want other lawyers to refer big cases to you, you have to invest the time and energy to develop those relationships. Yes, it's a lot of work, but the payoff is well worth it. Some of it you have to do on your own, but not all of it . At Network Affiliates, we can help you build your referral marketing. Call or email us today to find out how.

We recently completed another of our semi-annual networking sessions with our clients. The meeting - at The St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco - was attended by a number of clients, both old and new as well as Network Affiliates' staff and experts in a range of areas including law firm marketing, media buying for lawyers, TV advertising, internet marketing for attorneys and more.

The meeting included presentations on media buying opportunities for law firms, case studies on successful collateral marketing strategies, and mobile websites. Our TV producers also presented some excellent concepts for the next round of TV ads. The concepts were critiqued and honed by the attorneys in the room and we are excited to see how the new creative comes out. Look for that at our next meeting.

The feature presentation was given by Michael Smith of SBC & Associates. It was entitled "Strategically Positioning Your Law Firm in 'Good Times' and 'Not So Good Times'". Michael elaborated on six things to help you make your firm stronger:

1. Learning to work on your practice instead of in your practice
2. Recruiting, hiring, retaining and motivating the "Right Staff"
3. Strategic planning
4. Professional management - Hiring a COO
5. Targeted marketing and business development
6. Developing and maintaining a dashboard of key performance indicators

Obviously, each of these items was dealt with in depth and many great ideas evolved from the presentation and the participation by the attendees. This presentation was a refresher to many of the attendees, but everybody came away with some good ideas to implement in their own practices.

Think about that question for a moment. Is your law firm everywhere? I don’t mean literally everywhere, but is your law firm making the most out of its marketing efforts? Anymore, it is important to think about your law firm from a holistic perspective. Before, it was easy to just put an ad on television and wait for the phone to start ringing off the hook.

Now, that sort of thinking doesn’t work. Lawyers have become very savvy marketers. Very savvy marketers with deep pockets, nonetheless. And while your law firm might have a website, a polished TV campaign and a great staff, which law firms have survived that don’t have these things? The answer is probably not that many, which means your law firm has to elevate its game in order to compete.

So, how do you compete? By being ubiquitous and by having a comprehensive, holistic approach to your law practice. That means having an Internet campaign that dovetails with your TV ads. That means sending your clients home with relevant, informative collateral material that leaves them with all of the answers they could ever need. That means becoming educated about everything that is going on in the legal world as a whole.

Ubiquity is the new normalcy. So, to tie this all up, answer the question in the title of this blog post. If your answer is anything other than a profound, “Yes,” perhaps it is time to re-think your practice. Even if it is a yes, is staying pat going to yield consistent and sustainable results in the future?

If your firm needs with creating a comprehensive marketing campaign, contact Network Affiliates today.

Do you know what your Cost-Per-Point is? Do you really know why you are buying what you are buying?

Media buying for your law firm needs to generate both short term and long-term value for it to be effective. You have to calculate the true value of each buy, and utilize strategies to build and maintain your brand.

Cost-Per-Point
Before you can know what your cost-per-point (CPP) is, you have to know what CPP actually means. You probably have the general idea that CPP is the cost of reaching a certain number of people. Cost-Per-Point (CPP) analysis is used by most media planners in developing and allocating market budgets and setting rating point goals. It is defined as the cost of reaching one percent of the target audience within a specified geographic area.

This is not to be confused with cost per thousand (CPM). Cost Per Thousand (CPM) is the cost of reaching 1,000 homes or individuals with a specific advertising message. CPM is a standard advertising measure to compare the relative cost efficiency of different programs, stations, or media.

CPM is relatively easy to determine. CPP is more complicated, but it is the number that you need to know the real value of the negotiated rates. For instance, if you were offered a very low CPM to place a Workers’ Compensation ad on a program that is primarily watched by people 65 and older, it would not be a good value because only a small percentage of the viewers who see the ad are in your target audience. The CPP for the same ad during the same program would be much higher, and provide greater insight in the efficiency and value of running in that program.

Do you know the true analytics behind your current media spend?
You need the right software and media knowledge to analyze the real media costs. If you don’t have this information or effective evaluation tools, you might as well be placing your media dollars on the craps table.

At Network Affiliates we use media planning and placement tools and specialized buying software that allows us to evaluate the targeted demographics and ratings, as well as the cpm's and cpp's for each program and time period considered for each campaign.

How you buy is just as important as what you buy. You have to know how to work around crowded TV markets. And, you have to go beyond television to market effectively. Building a recognizable brand through TV advertising and exploring and including a careful mix of secondary media is both an art and a science.

With over 28 years of experience in attorney marketing, Network Affiliates knows how to bring all this together and help you make the most effective and efficient media buys within your budget. Please, contact us today.