Over the last several blogs, we’ve identified the very real evolutions impacting law firms in today’s ultra-competitive legal marketing environment — challenges both internal and external in nature.

Figuring out what you’re up against it is the biggest piece of the puzzle. When trying to tackle a new problem, there is no better place to get started than the root of it.

After all, it’s one thing to realize that things are changing. But isn’t it much more useful to understand how and why they’re changing?

At Network Affiliates, we don’t believe in abstract goals or pie-in-the-sky plans. Rather, all of our attorney advertising strategies are designed to solve the problems we’ve already identified. A solution isn’t a solution unless you know what it’s solving.

Having gotten to the core of law firm’s frustrations in today’s crowded legal space; we now present some of our essential solutions to these ongoing attorney marketing problems.

Make Up Your Mind

Last month, we wrote to you about what it takes to reach the highest levels of success in legal TV advertising. At the top of our list is your firm’s mindset.

The reality is this simple: your firm can be a successful legal advertiser in your market. You just have to commit to doing what it takes to reach that goal — namely, hiring the right people and giving your campaign the time it needs to take root.

Messaging Matters

Most law firms market themselves with the wrong messages. You know what the wrong message is — it’s the “all about me” rhetoric you hear in almost every attorney ad on television. It’s redundant, it’s cliché, and TV viewers tune it right out.

There is nothing we counsel our clients on more than messaging. You need to stand out. You need to be different, creative, and bold. And most importantly, the message needs to focus on your clients!

Self-lauding messaging is the #1 mistake in attorney advertising. Speak to what your clients need to hear instead.

Know Your KPI Baseline

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicators – criteria you can use to actually measure your marketing efforts’ effectiveness. Examples of KPIs include:

• Cost per lead
• Cost per case
• Conversion percentage
• Overall improvement in your bottom line
• And many more

When it comes to KPIs, we stress three things above all else:

• Focus on intake and conversion. Your clearest path to success is attracting new cases to build your client base.

• Focus on improving the things you’re already doing (rather than spending more on additional, equally ineffective advertising). Too many firms are currently wasting money generating calls/leads that they never properly shepherd into actual cases!

• Make sure you are clearly defining marketing KPIs before you start making changes. We call it a KPI Baseline. That way, you’ll be able to accurately measure your results down the road.

There is a lot to know about defining marketing KPIs. We invite you to learn more by reading our guide to Creating a KPI Baseline to Grow Your Firm.

Diversify Your Audience

In legal marketing, there are three primary ways to diversify your audience:

• Complement the way you’re reaching audiences (try a new medium of advertising, new kinds of messaging as described above, etc.)

• Try targeting new audiences (e.g. Millennials, different ethnic groups, diverse lifestyle demographics, etc.)

• Broaden your law firm’s practice areas (auto accidents, for instance, are not the only thing worth advertising for in the personal injury universe!)

We find that targeting new audiences (in addition to the ones who are already responding to your ads) is one of the most effective growth strategies in all of attorney advertising.

Referrals

Lawyers often look at case referrals as a professional courtesy or as an ethical obligation when it comes to subject matter outside your usual purview.

Those are all fine ways to think about them, but have you considered making case referrals a part of your business model?

While you must be careful to stay well within the confines of your jurisdictions’ ethics rules (something we always take very seriously at Network Affiliates), there is still a lot you can do in the realm of referrals as a means of attorney marketing.

We encourage our clients to create new networks or strengthen their existing ones. Too many firms let their referral efforts fall by the wayside. Is that true of yours?

Strengthening your referral outreach is an easy way to enhance your existing marketing without spending more money.

Hire the Attorney Advertising Professionals at Network Affiliates

Did you know that Network Affiliates put one of the very first legal commercials on TV? That’s true, and we’ve been blazing trails in attorney advertising ever since.

We believe we can fundamentally change your law firm’s rate of growth. To learn how, we invite you to read our latest white paper, A Legal Advertising Survival Guide for PI Attorneys.

Even better, save yourself time by calling and asking how we can start helping you today. Call 877.709.0633 or contact us online — we’re here to help.

Increase performance and find “free money” by consistently monitoring your law firm’s key performance indicators

Attorneys continue to report that they are facing a more competitive market each and every year. With mounting influences from both inside (national and global players, Wal-Mart law firms, non-lawyer venture capitalists, tort reform) and outside (driverless cars, new standard safety features, Millennial driving habits) the legal industry, it’s important to know where your firm stands and how that measures over time.

The only way to do that is to create a scorecard that you can compare and contrast month-over-month, year-over-year, etc. This is what we call a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) baseline.

By tracking these specific pieces of data, you can better understand how your firm is performing in a given area or progressing toward a specific objective. This is a necessary first step in turning abstract goals into measurable plans as you cannot measure success without knowing where you started. Furthermore, the metrics empower your firm to make data-driven decisions that can have a dramatic impact on your firm’s bottom line.

Significant and sustainable growth is attainable – even predictable – when there’s a roadmap for getting there. So, if you have not created a KPI baseline for your firm, we encourage you to get started as soon as possible.

Let’s take a closer look at the important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you need to include in your baseline

General Marketing KPIs are an evaluation of how all marketing and advertising strategies are working to produce leads and, ultimately, cases.

Because law firms often engage in multi-channel marketing efforts, and the modern customer journey is a non-linear, multi-touchpoint experience, overall marketing KPIs give insight into the success of your cohesive strategy. Is everything working together to give you the lift you need? Are you getting more leads? Are these leads converting into cases? Leveraging KPI data allows you to accurately (and objectively) assess your cost of investment vs. ROI across television advertising, radio, print, outdoor, digital, event sponsorship and more.

• Cost per Lead (CPL) – measures the effectiveness of your overall marketing and advertising efforts. To calculate, take your total marketing and advertising spend and divide by the number of leads generated over the investment period.

BONUS: TIPS TO HELP INCREASE COST PER LEAD

• Keep score
• Monitor your results – consistently!
• Maintain brand consistency across all adverting and marketing channels
• Evaluate new marketing channels, adjust budget allocation accordingly

• Lead-to-client ratio – this can also be referred to as conversion percentage. First, you will need to define what you consider a “lead” – a call, website contact form, email, referral? All of the above? Once “lead” is defined, take the total number, divide by the number of clients within the same timeframe, and get a better understanding of how many leads you need to be generating to open your desired number of cases.

SEE WHAT COULD HAPPEN IF YOU INCRESED YOUR CONVERSION PERCENATGE BY JUST 2%!

• Cost per Case (CPC) – measures the efficacies of your marketing campaign and conversion. To get this number, take your total marketing spend, divided by opened cases. Remember: cases opened = future cash flow! This is the most important metric.

BONUS: TIPS TO HELP INCREASE COST PER CASE AND CONVERSION

• Consistently monitor intake
• Hire intake personnel with client service backgrounds
• Incent staff for improved metrics/goals met
• Employ mobile intake for deserving cases
• Understand conversion happens in office as well
• Survey past clients
• Get more reviews

Digital Marketing KPIs measure specific data related to your firm’s website. Here are the ones you should be tracking and what their results will tell you. For a more detailed look at what your top performing web pages are telling you – take a look at this post.

• Number of unique visits – how well people are finding you
• Time spent per visit – how well your current content holds visitors’ attention
• Traffic-to-lead ratio – new contact rate
• Landing page conversion rate – are your landing pages getting enough traffic and, if so, is the page converting traffic into leads?
• Mobile traffic conversion – is your site converting visitors to leads on mobile devices as well?
• Website goal completions – how many visitors are signing up for your newsletter or filling out a contact form?
• Search engine rankings – how do you compete with rival firms for keywords and phrases on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.?

It’s never too late to start gathering data and crunching numbers.

We understand this can seem a little overwhelming. If you would like to jump start the process with an evaluation of your website – complete with insight into the digital marketing KPIs listed above – contact us for a free website audit. Or, download this Digital Marketing Glossary to help shorten your learning curve!

Network Affiliates is here to help you achieve your legal marketing goals. Take your law firm to the next level – call 877.709.0633 or contact us online today.

The legal landscape has never been more competitive. Firms are expending more energy than ever on legal marketing and advertising, and it’s all just to stand out from the crowd.

It’s difficult, though, because lawyers aren’t exactly swimming in free time, nor did they sign up for a second career as a marketing professional.

Still, every law firm is a business, and it’s their business plan that paves a path for growth.

Today’s article is the second in a series outlining the current challenges in the legal advertising space. In Part I, we detailed the many internal challenges coming from within lawyers’ own profession.

Now, in Part II, we look at the external factors that are swiftly changing the whole market — especially for personal injury attorneys.

Network Affiliates is a team of legal marketing experts with decades of specific experience in this niche field. We dedicate ourselves to monitoring trends and zealously advancing our clients’ growth.

Below, we identify your firm’s biggest hurdles, and begin to unveil an effective legal marketing strategy — the very strategy we’ve customized for many of our clients to great success.

We believe your marketing needs to reflect the changing dynamics and new realities in PI. Among other things, that means advertising that appeals to Millennials — not always an easy task. In fact, the very nature of all your cases could be on the cusp of change.

Here’s what we mean:

Fewer Accidents, Lighter Injuries, Safer Vehicles

Cars are getting safer. NerdWallet recently profiled seven significant new-car safety features that are likely to improve driver and passenger safety. They include:

• Backup cameras
•  Automatic emergency braking (“forward collision prevention”)
• Automatic parking
• Lane monitoring / lane departure warnings
• Alertness monitoring
• Blind-spot monitoring

Those developments, alongside better airbags and improved automotive body design, might be contributing to a downturn in accident injury claims.

Indeed, auto accidents are on the decline. With the exception of 2015 (a statistical outlier in which auto accidents went up, due in large part to texting and driving), NTSB charts a sharp decline in overall auto accidents in the U.S. over the last decade.

While many of these features have existed for several years, they are only now becoming standard. Accordingly, it’s probably too soon to say whether better car design is directly responsible for making the roads safer, but it’s undoubtedly a part of the bigger picture.

The Rise of Self-Driving Cars

According to the United Services Automobile Association (USAA), many of the industry’s newly standardized safety features are emerging out of the self-driving car movement, which is already rapidly developing in the United States.

Experts predict that 10,000,000 self-driving cars will be in active operation on U.S. roadways by the year 2020. The potential impact of that trend on the Personal Injury market can’t be overstated.

While self-driving cars haven’t yet established a foolproof safety record, the industry does forecast some 30,000 fewer automotive deaths each year — with potentially millions of other injuries either diminished or prevented altogether.

While that’s a very good thing for society, it also means the PI market needs to take proactive action now.

Millennials Are Changing Everything

Millennials have been the brunt of generational jokes for a long time, but soon enough, they’ll dominate your client base. Since they have a very different relationship with cars than the generations before them, that could mean big changes to your firm’s bottom line.

“There’s a lot of evidence that Millennials don’t drive as much — or care as much for cars in general — as previous generations their own age did,” The Washington Post writes in a recent report. “They’re less likely to get driver’s licenses. They tend to take fewer car trips, and when they do, those trips are shorter. They’re also more likely than older generations to get around by alternative means: by foot, by bike, or by transit.”

Similarly, Time has noted a consistent year-to-year decline in the number of young people obtaining state driver’s licenses.

Consider also that Millennials are staying at home with their parents for longer, meaning they’re less reliant on independent transportation. And once they leave the nest, they’re flocking to urban areas, where mass transit and other public transportation options predominate.

They’re using bicycles more than their parents ever did, they care more about “green living,” and they’re waiting later in life to have kids of their own – all factors pointing away from the car as a mainstay of American adulthood in the future. In short, Millennials are speaking a different cultural language, and “transportation” doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to them as it does to you.

If auto accident litigation is even one of your top five practice areas, this generational divide is something to take seriously.

Moreover, even outside of personal injury, Millennials show widespread skepticism toward traditional attorney marketing, as well as a preference for do-it-yourself online services like LegalZoom.

Knowing how to market to Millennials is an increasingly critical goal. It’s our belief that Millennial outreach and messaging should be a part of almost every marketing strategy for law firms.

Ride Sharing

Uber also occupies a sizeable chunk of the legal horizon, as ride sharing quickly eclipses traditional taxi services.

Coupled with Millennials’ preferences against private auto ownership, ride sharing could change the entire automotive market. Indeed, some experts even predict that Uber-like services will preclude the need for anyone to own a car in the future — we’ll all simply summon the nearest self-driving car with the click of a button (or so the theory goes).

A Future with Fewer Drivers

In the traditional business model, drivers are among the most loyal “customers” in the personal injury “industry.” While no one likes to think in such cynical terms — injuries are not commodities, after all — we do want to encourage lawyers to remember that even the noblest professions must mind their bottom lines.

There are major internal and external forces at work, and the writing on the wall spells “change” for law firms all across the country. These challenges are not insurmountable, and your business is not doomed. But it is wise to start taking strategic action to position yourself as the firm to corner the changing market. We can help you do that.

Network Affiliates: Leaders in Marketing Strategy for Law Firms

Network Affiliates is an industry leader in law firm marketing. We know how to position you against your biggest challenges and produce results. In fact, our agency produced the country’s very first lawyer television commercial. That’s how long we’ve been in the game!

We invite you to learn more about our marketing strategy for law firms by reading our two latest white papers:

• Tips on Reaching Hispanic Millennials in Your Market
• A Legal Advertising Survival Guide for PI Attorneys

Be sure to check back for our next article too, where we’ll offer even deeper insight into how you can overcome these and other challenges in today’s legal field.

Or, in the meantime, simply give us a call and ask how we can start helping you today. Call (888) 461-1016 or contact us online.

Lawyers in smaller markets get stuck in rigid thinking that can be detrimental to the future of their practices.

The biggest issue we see? Thinking “small” just because of the size of your market and community.

There are big benefits of being in a highly localized community. There are so many affordable strategies and tactics law firms in smaller markets can use. There’s a great opportunity because you can dominate for a reasonable cost.

More assumptions that inhibit winning new business include ideas such as:

• Everybody already knows who we are and what we do
• If clients already came to us, they will always come back
• Not enough of our clients use the internet or smartphones regularly

If you can relate to these statements – keep reading! Smaller law firms can and should compete like law practices in large urban centers. Continue reading “Common Legal Marketing Mistakes Series: Small Law Firms”

Not unlike the law firm marketing challenges seen in small and medium sized markets, firms in large metro areas also face their own set of obstacles when trying to effectively advertise their legal services:

• How to spend, but not over-spend in advertising
• How to most effectively hit wide target audiences
• How to focus messages on clients while addressing firm success stories
• How to allocate funds toward support mechanisms like intake and eCRM

Continue reading “Common Legal Marketing Mistakes Series: Large Markets”

Smart social media marketing strategies that pay off for lawyers

Continue reading “5 ways to ensure your Facebook ads won’t fail”

Print advertising used to be almighty—a powerful strategy to capture eyeballs and spread your legal marketing message far and wide. In fact, print was once among the most effective forms of advertising for lawyers. Continue reading “How to Market a Law Firm Series: Print Advertising”

Law firms of different sizes face different marketing challenges along their paths to success. Continue reading “Common Legal Marketing Mistakes In Medium Sized Markets”

How community involvement can – and will – change the perception of your law firm

Community involvement is a pivotal part of how your law firm is perceived. However these days there are a wide variety of ways that attorneys can put purpose before profit by reaching out and giving back. These efforts fall under the category of corporate social responsibility or CSR. Continue reading “Trending: Law firms putting purpose before profit”

Today, 38 percent of all daily media interactions happen on “second screens”.

With annual attorney television advertising approaching the $650 million mark, and a handful of law firms spending over $10 million each on campaigns, there’s no doubt TV ads are still valued as an earnest investment in the legal vertical. But while the reach of TV simply cannot be replicated, the “first screen” is only one “touchpoint” in increasingly essential multiscreen marketing strategies.

TV is traditionally considered the first screen, and people still watch a lot of it, mostly for entertainment value. But they do it differently now. They’re not exactly totally tuned in anymore. Most viewers now watch the big screen with a supplementary device such as a smartphone, tablet or laptop, also known as a second screen, in their hands.

Shifts in consumer purchases and behavior support this trend. The number of devices per person has more than doubled since 2000 and figures indicate that over 60% of Americans now “browse” the Internet while watching some form of video programming. Nielsen has reported that 80% of smartphone and tablet owners log device time while watching TV.

Either way, it’s abundantly clear that people still watch TV, but it’s those who view it with a second screen in hand who hold the key to the future of multiscreen marketing and advertising for lawyers. Synching legal brands across devices is the only way that lawyers can truly leverage initial spend on television advertising.

Unfortunately the digital space is a highly competitive place for lawyers to advertise. In fact, the top 23 of 25 Google keywords used to link search topics to Internet ads are in the personal injury law firm category. That kind of demand translates to higher spending for competitive search terms like the phrase sitting in the most expensive seat right now—“San Antonio car wreck attorney.” It’s a cool $670 per click.

But that doesn’t mean smaller firms or lawyers with limited budgets are excluded from either television advertising or pay per click advertising. It just means law firms need to be smarter and more sophisticated in their approach to marketing on all mediums. It’s about understanding how, when and where consumers spend time on different devices, as well as how to draw the lines between first and second screens to make a bolder impact, separate your legal brand from the competition and increase engagement with prospective clients.

 

TV’s new challenges: from distraction to engagement

So what are people—potential legal clients—doing on all these distracting devices while passively watching TV? Well, mostly surfing for information, often related to what they’re seeing on TV, which could just as easily be your law firm’s ad as an awards show or sporting event. Other times they’re multitasking (reading email, doing work, shopping online, etc.) in an efficient way that at least creates the illusion of productivity. Or they’re simply socializing via text and social-status updates.

Especially among the millennial generation, which has literally grown up on screen time, users are going to the Internet to dig deeper and ultimately engage more directly and personally with brands, whether that’s through social networks, interactive website features, online video or other digital marketing components.

That said, younger users are also smart enough to use their devices to distract themselves during what they deem as boring TV commercials (hopefully not yours). This makes marketers’ jobs ever harder. Attorney television advertising now needs to be more original, more compelling and more memorable than everything else out there to keep a viewer’s attention. Simultaneously legal brands need to be making an impression on the Web when, on a whim, browsers turn their attention to the second screen.

Knowing what trends in technology are allowing for the vast interplay between the first and second screens is critical to building a comprehensive marketing strategy for the future and learning how to reallocate some traditional advertising dollars toward connected devices. The exciting part is new cross-screen platforms and opportunities are coming online all the time and these will only improve how well lawyers can continue to market across multiple screens. As you look to the future, here are a few things keep on your radar.

 

Advertising is only as good as what you consume it on.

Simply put, advertising content must be tweaked for the medium on which it is viewed or digested. What works on TV, while it should similar enough in look and feel to maintain brand consistency, won’t be viewed (and therefore understood) in the same way on a PC or phone.

For example, Microsoft found that people don’t mind advertising as much when it appears on a larger-scale screen like a TV, or even a computer or tablet, but ads get progressively more annoying as the screen gets smaller. You law firm’s ad can feel downright intrusive on a smartphone, so keep that in mind for your mobile marketing strategy.

 

Adjust your digital content for the context.

We know that consumers feel differently about content depending on the device on which they’re interacting with it. For example, laptops, which are traditionally associated with work and productivity, are generally thought of as tools for teaching and informing, before shopping or gaming. Content known to be consumed via laptop, therefore, need to be catered to the context.

Mobile phones, because they are our constant “companions,” are more linked to behaviors like building relationships and communicating socially. Keeping user behavior on different devices in mind when developing content marketing strategies will help your attorneys engage more appropriately and gain better reach—not to mention what putting a consumer’s needs first does for reputation management and brand loyalty.

 

Monitor, measure and morph what’s not working.

The goal of every second-screen marketing effort should be to create authentic, helpful content and deliver it in a way that drives engagement with the user you’ve already hooked. This can happen in a huge variety of ways through a huge variety of tools and platforms, but the ultimate goal is to help users easily discover important information; consume it in a way that feels both palatable and memorable; and gain immediate access to the tools they need to share content with whomever they want.

If you’re doing your job, your digital analytics will show an increased number of active users, opt-ins and longer time spent interacting with content. If website page-performance numbers are stagnant or decreasing, on the other hand, it’s time to mix things up or try a new tool. And, of course, in the second-screen digital environment testing the effectiveness of new marketing tactics is not only entirely possibly, it’s a commonplace practice.

While it’s no longer as easy as signing up for an attorney TV advertising package, digital marketing doesn’t have to be a burden either. Network Affiliates has been staying in front of trends in legal marketing since attorneys were first allowed the distinction of advertising.

To handle each part of the process, we maintain in-house creative, production and media planning departments. Longtime legal clients often call us the “one-stop shop” for law-firm marketing. Call us at (888) 461-1016 to start taking back your market share.