2016 was a bad year for drivers in the United States… the deadliest in nearly a decade.

That news came as something of a surprise when numbers were released earlier this year. After all, for some time now, the expert consensus has been that the roads are getting safer.

Advances in safety technology, urban living trends, increased carpooling, tougher laws on careless driving in some jurisdictions, the advent of self-driving cars — all these things were supposed to drive down the number of collisions and fatalities. And perhaps in the long term, they will. (Indeed, that’s one of the reasons PI lawyers need to think about adapting to a new landscape for long-term survival.)

But technology can be slow to catch the majority. Most people still aren’t driving cars with advanced safety features. Self-driving cars aren’t a practical reality. And while laws can punish negligence, they can’t prevent it… human nature is immutable.

Of course, the biggest factor contributing to motorist deaths in 2016 is one we didn’t see coming ten or twenty years ago: the use of cell phones behind the wheel.

Distracted Driving is the biggest and scariest threat on the roads today. It’s enough to unnerve anyone with a loved one who drives. Its death toll is staggering, and there’s no real indication of hope on the horizon where driver behavior is concerned.

With that in mind, what can we expect from the 2017 traffic accident statistics? Are we in for another tragic uptick in fatalities? And if so, what might that mean for your firm?

We’ll see some of these answers for certain in a few months. The 2016 stats were published in February, so we expect this year’s stats will be released around the same time.

For now, we look at the current trends on the roadway and how they might inform your legal marketing efforts as personal injury attorneys.

What the 2016 Stats Showed

The New York Times pointedly summed up the situation in their February report:

Over the last decade, new cars have gotten electronic stability control systems to prevent skids, rearview cameras to prevent fender benders and more airbags to protect occupants in collisions. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on campaigns to remind the public of the dangers of drunken driving, failing to buckle up and texting while on the go.

Despite all that, more Americans are dying on roads and highways than in years past, and the sudden and sharp increase has alarmed safety advocates.

According to the National Safety Council (NSC), 40,200 people died in U.S. car accidents during 2016.

That’s a 6 percent rise over 2015. In turn, 2015 had seen a 7 percent  rise over 2014. In other words, we now have two years of consecutive, significant increases in fatalities on the record — a total rise of 13 percent over two years, the largest in more than half a century.

In fact, 2016 marked the first time since 2007 that more than 40,000 people lost their lives in traffic accidents within a single year.

In accounting for the discomforting new numbers, the Times and the NSC point to several factors:

• An improving economy, which has more people spending more time on the roads
• Distracted driving (where the primary distraction is the smartphone)
• A downturn in actual enforcement of seat belt, speeding, and DUI laws
• Budget cuts in highway patrol departments

“It’s still the same things that are killing drivers,” Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, told the Times, “…belts, booze and speed.”

Your Clients Need to Know

In terms of your digital content, one of the best community services you can provide your current and future clients is informing them about current traffic fatality trends and providing meaningful, worthwhile perspective on the situation.

The benefits of blogging about traffic accidents, statistics, and trends are myriad:

• Generating top-of-mind awareness for your firm
• Creating a forum for you to demonstrate your authority on the subject matter, building trust among your readership
• Creating high-quality content for search engines to crawl, thus boosting your SEO and making your firm easier to find online
• Connects you with your community (when blogging about local stories or news)
• Empowers your clients to keep themselves and their families safe by becoming aware of the current dangers

Talk to Our Experts About Your Digital Content Marketing

The 2017 traffic accident statistics are just a few months away. If they’re relevant to your practice areas, your firm would be wise to cover them on your website, in your social media, and across other digital platforms. Traffic stats are just one of many hot topics you can blog about to build your brand and increase client awareness.

We can help. The legal marketing experts at Network Affiliates have more than 35 years of experience in using television and digital platforms to help law firms grow.

Want more ideas for creating content that will connect you with future clients? Give us a call at 877.709.0633 or simply contact us online. We’d love to chat.

You simply cannot create demand for your legal services. And, on the flip side, because of ethics rules in most states, you can’t directly solicit clients even where demand already exists.

The demand is out there, though. Plenty of people in your area need legal representation and advice. But for the most part, they have to be the ones to find you.

The process by which they (A) come into need for legal representation, (B) search for such representation, and (C) hire a lawyer is what we call The Client Journey.

If you want to be a part of that journey, then your firm needs to be visible at every step along the way. After all, people want to find a good lawyer, but they’ll only invest so much effort in the hunt.

The law firms they see during commercial breaks on the day they’re injured, or on the billboard overlooking their accident, or on the very first page of Google results — those are the firms they’re most likely to consider and hire.

In other words, you need to be where your prospective clients are — at each stage and step along the way. So where are they? The Client Journey is your map, and it should guide your attorney advertising strategy.

The Client Journey is evolving all the time. Today’s journey looks different than it did ten years ago. Technology forges new paths for accident victims and other prospective clients.

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Below, we walk through The Client Journey as it looks today, and we consider what it means for the law firm looking to compete in a crowded legal advertising space.

Before They’re Ever Injured – Top of the Funnel

Consider a hypothetical in which 27-year-old Annie is severely injured on December 1^st by someone texting while driving in your town, where she’s grown up. Annie has never needed a lawyer before, nor has she ever given them much thought. But she’s been hearing the names of local law firms her whole life.

She’s caught their ads on TV, heard them on the radio, and seen their logo on banners at community events (as recently as November!). Now that she needs a lawyer, those handful of firms are the first ones that spring to mind. Next, she’ll head to the internet to search for them and give one a call.

Annie’s story perfectly illustrates the first step of The Client Journey: life before injury. Even there, before she becomes an accident victim or a prospective client, you need to speak to her (and people like her).

In the advertising world, this is what we call the top of mind awareness. It’s broad familiarity of your brand across multiple platforms and throughout the community.

Top-of-funnel touchpoints include:

• Law firm television commercials
• Digital marketing
• Radio spots
• Billboards
• Outdoor signage in visible areas
• Event sponsorships
• Community involvement
• Coverage in local news
• Publishing blogs and/or editorials on topics of local interest

The goal is to create content that engages people at whichever step of their journey they happen to be on. Here, at the first step, the best content will engage even those who aren’t yet injured and don’t currently need a lawyer.

The Next Step: “I Need a Lawyer, But Which One?” – Middle of the Funnel

This is the middle of the funnel, or the evaluation phase. You have two goals here. First, you need to be among the law firms selected for evaluation. Second, you need to survive the process of elimination.

A well-timed television ad remains the single most powerful and effective way to grab a prospective client’s attention. The modern trend is for an accident victim to see an impressive law firm TV commercial shortly after their accident, to then search for the law firm online, and finally to make contact if they like what they find online.

Of course, many people will simply run a Google search for attorneys in their area, using a variety of potential keywords, which is why you have to be easy to find online.

The overwhelming majority of search users will never click past Page One, so you are automatically out of the evaluation phase unless your digital marketing and SEO strategy is firing on all cylinders.

Sealing the Deal

Having evaluated a handful of law firms, the prospective client now moves to the bottom of the funnel, which you might think of as the moment of truth.

Here’s where they make contact with your firm. That can happen in any number of ways:

• Calling your office
• Coming by your office in person
• Sending you an email
• Using the contact form on your website
• Chatting with a representative of your firm using your site’s online chat box
• Sending you a text message (if you have a “text to contact” feature on your site, which you should)
• Very rarely, by sending a letter in the mail

Perhaps surprisingly, given digital trends, studies show that most clients ultimately make a phone call before hiring a lawyer. That call may come after other kinds of contact (chat, email, text, etc.), but it’s extremely important that your firm be prepared to covert the client over the phone.

We’ve written extensively about the many ways law firms struggle with client intake and conversion. Don’t neglect this step. It’s a crucial part of The Client Journey, and if the client feels inadequately nurtured — because they were put on hold for too long, didn’t get a call back, didn’t have their questions answered, were treated rudely, didn’t feel like the firm really cared, etc. — they will go back to their evaluation phase and contact one of your competitors instead.

Tip: even if the case isn’t right for your firm, you can still capitalize on contacts at the bottom of the funnel by referring them to other firms.

Let Us Help You Make The Client Journey Work for You

Strategic marketing at each step of The Client Journey is a practical and effective way of competing against the other law firms in your area. The most successful firms engage the public at every stage.

Network Affiliates can help you do the same. We are a team of legal marketing experts with more than 35 years of experience in this field. We specialize in cost-effective marketing for attorneys, from television to digital and beyond. To learn more, call 877.709.0633 or contact us online.

Plugging into your community and giving back can yield real, demonstrable business growth — the kind that puts you ahead of your competitors. And it’s something you can do without huge monetary investments.

In fact, it is the honest conviction with which you take part and give back — not how many dollars you donate — that makes the difference here.

Today, we look at how a humanized brand cuts through the law firm mold and speaks directly to the potential client trying to choose between your firm and another.

Lawyers Have an Image Problem. Community Involvement Can Fix That.

Nobody loves a lawyer until they need one. You’ve heard that before.

The stigma isn’t your fault. You inherited it from generations long ago. Nevertheless, people expect you to counter it. In other words, to overcome inherent skepticism and distrust among your prospective clients, you need to proactively demonstrate that you and your firm aren’t like “all the rest.”

Getting involved in your community is one of the best ways you can do that. But here’s the thing: your community engagement must be authentic.

The goal is for people to see that your community activity comes from the heart. The best way for them to see that? Do things that actually come from your heart!

Talk with the partners and leaders in your firm and ask yourselves: what does our local community really need, what matters to us, what’s an area we would really feel passionate about being a part of?

This Matters a Lot to Millennials

Millennials show a strong preference for companies and service providers that model Community Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR refers to all the ways your business participates in initiatives that benefit society.

They aren’t just paying lip service to the idea, either. Studies show that Millennials put their money where their mouths are, supporting businesses that seem to have a conscience and a heart.

As we illustrated last month, Millennials are becoming the single most powerful part of the population. Their preferences matter a lot, and they prefer businesses that truly seem to care.

Additional Benefits of CSR

Making your law firm a responsible and active steward of its community has other benefits too, including:

• Setting you apart from other firms (the legal services market has been one of the slowest to adopt CSR, so you have an opportunity to stand out!)
• Top-of-mind awareness for your lawyers
• Many employees (especially Millennials and those with many employment options) prefer to work for firms that take care of their community
• Tax write-offs
• Each time you get involved with another organization, they’re likely to link to your website on theirs (this is great for SEO)
• Picking up mentions in local news (or even national headlines)
• A greater sense of purpose and satisfaction for the attorneys working in the firm
• Lawyers often struggle with what to tweet about, but community activity is great fodder for social media!
• When you work with outside organizations, those people are more likely to refer others to your firm

How Your Law Firm Can Implement Corporate Social Responsibility

There are many ways to integrate your law firm within your community and model authenticity. A few ideas might include:

• Volunteering with local organizations
• Weighing in on issues of local importance in editorials
• Providing pro bono services for people in need
• Emphasizing work-life balance in your employment policies
• Making charitable donations (but don’t think that writing a few checks every year will impress anyone on its own!)
• Blogging about your activities and writing from the heart about why they matter to you
• Simply being present at community functions

Often, the best ideas for community involvement will spring organically from the people and problems in your city, county, or state. Take the time to schedule a meeting with your staff and brainstorm creative ways to get involved.

In all these things, remember that authenticity is key.

Let Network Affiliates Help You Humanize Your Law Firm’s Brand

A lot of this is human nature. People naturally respond to honesty, compassion, and commitment. The more your firm looks and behaves like a caring person rather than a profit-driven organization, the more the public will be naturally drawn to your brand.

Network Affiliates is a team of legal marketing experts with more than 35 years of expertise in law firm branding. Let us help you humanize your brand in a way that pays off. To learn more, call 877.709.0633 or simply contact us online.

Doing something is better than doing nothing. But doing the right thing is even better.

In our 35+ years as a legal advertising agency, we’ve seen many law firms miss opportunities that could bring in more leads, better cases and a lot of money.

Among those who do manage to make an effort, if the wrong strategy is fueling the execution, results can be underwhelming.

Today, we look at four common legal marketing mistakes. Take a good look – are any of them happening at your firm? Continue reading “Knowing What Not To Do Can Boost Your ROI”

It’s the fear of every mom-and-pop shop, small business, and boutique law firm: a major player with national name recognition enters your area and begins offering exactly the same thing your business does, investing more money and resources in advertising than you could ever dream of.

Sound familiar?

In fact, earlier this year, we identified national power players entering your market as one of the biggest challenges in the legal advertising space in 2017 and beyond.

Multistate practice is a hot trend in the Big Law world, and these firms are able to pour much more into advertising than their local competitors.

The internet has become something of a national power player itself, too. From LegalZoom to new services like Dentons’ Nextlaw Global Referral Network, it’s becoming more challenging to stake your claim as “the local lawyer.”

So what do you do if a national power player enters your market and you can’t match their marketing budget? For some of you, that’s a terrifying hypothetical. For others, it’s already reality. But either way, it’s important to realize that not all hope is lost.

In fact, there’s a lot you can to do to effectively market yourself regardless of how big the competition’s budgets are, and it all comes down to messaging and strategy. Below, we present the first prongs in a strategic playbook.

Big Bucks vs. Brain Power: How to Play It Smart When Your Competitor Has Cash to Burn

When you can’t outspend, outsmart!

Big national law firms aren’t inherently better, smarter, or more marketing-minded than yours. In fact, in today’s age, when affordable media production is more accessible than ever, you have the power to craft creative messages that will outshine theirs.

Remember: the average personal injury client doesn’t know the first thing about the world of law schools and law firms.

They don’t know which law firms are big or small, new or old, good or bad, or whose J.D. is the most impressive. Nor do they really care. That isn’t their language.

Their language looks more like this: “I’m hurt. I’ve been wronged. My financial situation is a mess. This isn’t right. I can’t afford a lawyer. What am I supposed to do?”

The specifics of their language will depend on which practice area they fall within, but the point is this: the only effective legal advertisements are the ones that directly speak to the client’s needs and concerns. You need to speak to those issues in a way that stands out.

That’s where creative, outside-the-box ads come in.

You don’t need an enormous budget to make a law firm commercial campaign that stands out from the crowd. You need creative vision and a distinctive message.

The most effective, appealing campaign is the one people will respond to, regardless of whether the firm behind it is a small-town boutique firm or a national player.

Knowledge (Read: Data) Is Power

There’s no substitute for an in-depth understanding of your market. Fortunately, that’s information you can actually get your hands on.

By referring to a market analysis or media audit for your area, you can identify key areas of opportunity in your market.

Are there dayparts with ideal audiences that your competitors haven’t tapped yet, for example? A practice area no one’s targeting? A rival’s campaign that doesn’t seem to be working?

The more intel you have, the better equipped you are to make strategic, data-driven decisions that can deliver results.

Incidentally, we’re going to take a closer look at market analyses and media audits later this month, so be sure to check back for a deeper dive into how these resources can make a difference for your firm.

Let Us Help You Make Better, Smarter Law Firm Television Commercial Campaigns

If a national firm has dipped its imposing toe in your local market, now is the time to prepare your plan of attack. Don’t sit idle.

With creative advertising that gets to the core of what clients really need, you can run highly effective ads on a targeted budget and remain competitive.

Those are exactly the kinds of ads we help to make. Network Affiliates is a team of legal marketing professionals, and we’ve been creating innovative law firm commercial campaigns since day one (literally — ours were among the very first when the U.S. Supreme Court first allowed them!). We know what works and what doesn’t, and we can put that insight to work for you.

To learn more, call 877.709.0633 or simply fill out our easy online contact form today.

The Best Endorsements Come from Those You Have Helped – Your Clients!

A common mistake we see across the legal marketing industry is lawyers who often times highlight the wrong things – degrees, years in practice, millions recovered for clients, etc.

Yes, all of those things are impressive, and there’s definitely a place for them on your website. But if they’re at the core of your messaging and television marketing campaigns, you may be missing the mark.

Why? Because prospective clients primarily care about what you can do for them. And while your accolades and awards may speak to that, they tend to say more about you than what you do for others.

Your law firm’s messaging needs to resonate with victims, with those in pain, fear and in need of your help.

Authentic client testimonials can do as much for your messaging as any powerfully written marketing copy. They also have the added benefit of allowing your prospective clients to see themselves and hear from people you’ve actually helped.

After all, they engage with your creative content (TV, web, outdoor, etc.) and then decide if you are the person who can help them. What better way to answer that question than with real stories told by real people in situations similar to theirs?

The Power of Life Stories

Since the dawn of human communication, storytelling has served as mankind’s tool of choice for making sense of the world around them. Many communications theorists believe there might be something hard-wired in humanity that makes us responsive to story. That would certainly explain the power of literature, song, and film in culture. Even many sacred religious texts impart their lessons by way of narrative device.

Client testimonials are stories. And, they absolutely can strike a similar chord.

That’s because a client testimonial, when done in a tasteful and respective manner, belongs to perhaps the most powerful literary genre: the story of a life changed.

Whether your clients are drivers suffering from catastrophic trucking injuries, parents caring for negligently injured children, patients facing the horrors of medical malpractice (a fear every patient can connect with on some level), or young people who made a mistake and are being excessively charged by aggressive prosecutors, you – the lawyer – are ultimately a character in a story that people find compelling.

Accidents, injuries, and bad decisions change lives. Skilled attorneys come in and fight to change them back for the better.

Victims looking for a hero can find one in your client testimonials.

Avoiding “Testi-Phony-ials”: What We Mean by “Authentic”

Notice that our headline refers to authentic testimonials. In other words, testimonials that are not:

• Heavily scripted
• Read off a teleprompter
• Excessively polished
• Performed by an actor
• Inclusive of slogans and “marketing speak”
• Low-budget or gimmicky

We’ve all seen them. There are plenty of law firm commercials on the air each and every day featuring interviews with “clients” who do not come across as authentic because of aforementioned reasons.

The irony is that many of these testimonials cost more money to produce – yet deliver lesser outcomes. Why pay for an actor or a low-budget melodrama when raw, candid comments from actual clients would yield better results?

Real people connect to real people. So your testimonials should come from real people. Period.

Without compromising confidentiality or violating ethics rules, of course, you want to provide enough detail for the reader or viewer to tap into the emotion of this success story.

The client’s story should always focus on their experience, from beginning to end, and how their life was forever changed by this experience.

Honor Your Clients

As a lawyer, you do many things for your clients. You protect their rights against violation. You help them get justice. You help them get ahead.

But there’s also an emotional facet to what you do for them. You give a voice to the voiceless.

In the face of injustice from an insurance company, a major employer, or even the government, what else can “the little guy” do but rely on a lawyer for help.

In that sense, attorneys are a kind of empowerment. Authentic testimonials are a great way of educating people about that.

Honor your clients and what your firm represents. Let them tell others what you did for them. No other message can command such power.

Good or Bad? How to Tell the Difference…

How to distinguish an effective law firm testimonial from a dramatization? Watch them side by side! Check out our reel of the good, the bad, and ugly below:

Talk to Our Legal Marketing Experts About How to Get Better Testimonials

Getting great client testimonials might seem like an easy exercise, but it’s something many law firms struggle with. We can help. Network Affiliates is a team of legal marketing professionals who specialize in creative, out-of-the-box branding and messaging that produces actual, measurable results for your law firm’s bottom line.

Reach out and learn more about how we can help you. Call 877.709.0633 or simply fill out our easy online contact form today.