You say: “TV isn’t working”

We say: “Have you looked at your website traffic?”

 

If you think your television ads aren’t moving the needle it might be time to look at your law firm’s digital marketing data. Even if TV isn’t making your phone ring off the hook, it doesn’t mean this effort has failed. These days, most people don’t just call up and say, “I saw your ad on TV and I have a case!” This means your television spot may be generating leads in an entirely new way—online.

 

To support the notion that TV advertising is still driving new business, only in new ways, let’s consider an insightful 2015 study by the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB). The bureau compared web traffic to TV advertising for 125 diverse brands. The companies spent a combined $30 billion in annual TV advertising and all pulled in 100,000 or more unique website visitors each month.

 

Of these successful brands, a huge majority—82%—showed a direct correlation between TV advertising spend and website traffic. The analysis looked at both sides—increased and decreased TV ad spending. A 22% average increase in TV spending equated to a 24% increase in website visitors. For the 10% average decrease in TV spending, there was a striking 9% drop in website visitors.

 

The pattern is undeniable: There is a clear correlation between website traffic and TV advertising.

 

The takeaway? Broadcast advertising appears to be calling viewers to take further action online, driving and pacing law firm digital marketing efforts. But rather than people simply garnering general awareness about a law firm or calling an 800 number repeated in a legal TV ad, viewers called to action on the first screen are taking a different path to legal advice via a second screen. Fractured by the sheer number of digital platforms at their fingertips, consumers are increasingly going directly online to learn more.

Television is “activating” digital

Lawyers understand that TV is still the most effective effective medium. In fact, attorneys invested an estimated $648 million last year in TV advertising, and legal services ranked No. 6 in the list of top 20 local broadcast categories. What most law practices want to better understand is how broadcast campaigns can work to drive better engagement online.

If TV is no longer about broad brand awareness designed to reach the masses, today it’s about leveraging commercial messaging to incite people to do more research and take qualified action through digital marketing channels. Think about it – how do you use Google and the internet when it comes to obtaining more information about a product or service?

The web-based part of things can be a little elusive. As consumers become habituated to the anonymity that the Internet provides, and because they can hide behind the screen, they are often more willing to take action undercover, such as posting a scathing online review without their real name.

A prospective client that doesn’t know your law firm might take a similar covert approach, catching your commercial during the nightly news and instantly checking your legitimacy by researching your attorneys, cases, practice areas and reviews through an easily accessible second screen—laptop, tablet or smartphone.

Your job as an intelligent marketer is simply to be there when prospective clients knock at your digital storefront—your website—or engage through some other digital extension, such as a blog, social, networking site or email campaign. Media strategy is no longer a linear equation, and every brand, including businesses in traditional industries like law, are tasked with being available at every consumer “touchpoint.”

But how are lawyers expected to be everywhere and everything to everyone? They’re not. Smart law firm digital marketing in 2016 is about rethinking how TV activates digital and how digital data activates marketing tactics. That means starting to read your website reports in a way that draws links between your TV commercial and your website’s traffic and performance.

 

Here are 10 questions that might help you rethink the connections between your presence on TV and the Internet:

 

• When you launch a new TV campaign or new creative assets are you seeing an increase in traffic to your website?
• When you tweak your call to action on a television commercial what’s happening on your website?
• Is there any online chatter about your television spot?
• When viewers land on your website does it look and sound cohesive with your TV spot?
• Which pages of your website are performing best?
• Where are users engaging most with your brand on your website or online?
• How many different ways (touchpoints) could a person potentially interact with your legal brand?
• Do you truly know your core customer’s decision-making “journey” to investing in your law practice?
• If a person never sees your TV commercial, what you think is his or her first impression of your website?
• How would you rank the consistency (look and tone) of your brand across all platforms?

If you think of TV as the great “activator” of your message, what you’re saying and presenting visually online is just as, if not more, important. Why? Because the digital space is increasingly where you can capture your audience’s attention and keep it long enough to convert them to a paying client. After all, the user has come to your website intentionally, perhaps through a search query or email initiation. This is your chance to really tell your story and engage a captive audience. However, don’t forget that your competitors are just “next door” on the Web, and it only takes one click to go to another attorney’s digital storefront. If your website is not informative, useable and engaging, potential clients can go somewhere else with a click of a button.

As you think about the links between TV and digital initiatives, and ultimately how they work best together, remember these best practices:

Don’t “silo” your advertising efforts. Instead, look at how everything is working together.

Learn what’s driving digital. Consider how your TV advertising creative is driving website traffic.

Create quality, consistency and clarity. If clients are viewing your TV ads, they are most likely also holding or in close proximity to a smart phone or tablet. Therefore branding and messaging must be of the same quality and message consistency to paint a clear picture for your target customers.

Track your customer journey. Use online analytics to understand where your clients are coming from and what they’re doing online.

Don’t forget conversion. Once people land on your website, what are you doing to convert them to clients?

Wondering if your TV and digital efforts are working well together? Find out what Network Affiliates can do for your law firm marketing this year. Speak with one of our experts for a free, confidential marketing evaluation. What are you waiting for? Call us today at (888) 461-1016.

With so much focus on how advertising is evolving online, it’s easy to overlook tried-and-true TV advertising for attorneys. Especially in an election year, where the competition for airtime and consumer eyeballs is tight. For some, it may be a foregone conclusion to spend marketing dollars elsewhere.

Wrong.

We hate to break it to you, but this is the exact opposite mindset attorneys should be cultivating. Spending on TV advertising overall grew from $69.2 billion in 2014 to $71.1 billion in 2015.  It’s predicted to hit $81 billion by 2019. This form of advertising is not going away anytime soon. In fact, lawyers looking for a steady stream of new cases will find it next to impossible without TV advertising.

Data across the board proves that broadcast and cable TV is still the most valuable medium for lawyers. It introduces law practices and helps attorneys draw in new clients via television’s broad, diverse viewership. Remarkably, law firm TV advertising grew six times faster than all other ad spending from 2008 to 2014. In fact, just last year legal services took home the sixth spot on the Top 20 list of broadcast advertisers. The message is if you don’t want to lose market share, you need to be on TV. End of story.

Almost.

While Internet advertising has stripped some revenue from traditional TV, it may be surprising to learn that the effect of new online marketing channels has not been as damaging as one might expect. For attorneys, this makes sense because digital campaign efforts complement rather than replace TV advertising.

Another outlet that’s adding to an overwhelming media mix is online video. It remains to be seen how online TV, a growing sector of consumers who are cutting the cord, will play into lawyers’ TV advertising strategy. But the point is television in all its tangential forms is a rich and visually engaging format that continues to catch the attention of new clients each day.

 

So what does law firm TV advertising look like in 2016?

It’s more targeted than ever before. The most successful law firms are drilling down to hone where and when they place their messages on network, cable, syndicated and spot television.

Law firm TV advertising specialists at Network Affiliates have accurate data-aggregation tools to track, monitor and compare ads in the legal space. Such detailed competitive analysis’ help law firms take a proactive approach and see the effect of targeted advertising in realized ROI.

Let’s review some of the most important tactics for competing in the TV advertising for attorneys space today:

Production: Nothing says “we cut corners” and undermines your marketing message like a poorly produced TV commercial. And given the technology that production artists have, there are few excuses for sacrificing quality. With video in general—think YouTube—taking over Google-ing eyes and market share, law firms that are in it to win it must amp up the quality and sophistication of their TV ad production.

Even though TV is a visual medium, fine-tuning the graphic quality of your commercial is not enough when you’re stacked against heavy competition. Your advertising team should be paying attention to every detail—props, sound, editing, screens—not to mention unusual visual elements that will ensure your lawyers stand out among a crowd of talking heads.

Messaging: If only there was a magic potion that could make every trite law firm commercial jump off the screen. Alas, creativity is the only real secret sauce for making your legal message matter to the masses.  If you remember to keep your message simple and focus on brand attributes that set your firm apart, combined with some clever creative, you can craft something truly enchanting.

Remember, TV is not like middle school. In broadcast advertising, it’s all about not fitting in. We’re not saying you need to take it to puppy-monkey-baby level, but the goal is to set your law firm apart and addresses the needs of prospective clients. What promise can you deliver on better than any other attorney? What if you started focusing on not just getting bigger cases, but better ones? The answer will guide your creative process in creating a commercial that is compelling, actionable, relatable and, most importantly, memorable.

Approach: TV advertising for attorneys is no longer a one-and-done broadcast spot. You can’t make a great commercial and then rest on your laurels while the calls come in. Why? Because at some point the phone will stop ringing. A legal advertising expert can coach you through the most intelligent approach to marketing your law firm now and in the future. The marketing landscape is multifarious, and to compete effectively lawyers must employ a highly integrated strategy. That means all the parts—broadcast, digital, content, social, etc.—will work better together. It’s the sum of these seemingly disparate parts that will eventually move the needle.

When consumers see your legal brand on TV, engage with your firm through your website, talk to an attorney on the phone, and review chatter on social media, your message must be cohesive. What you do—and do best—doesn’t change. Your message may morph per platform, but your essential brand must ring true on every channel. People must see you everywhere as authentic, believable, and trustworthy.  A well-done TV commercial is just prize-winning creative. But you only win if you can see it as springboard for an integrated campaign of marketing messages.

Is your TV presence and approach made up of right stuff? Network Affiliates’ broadcast advertising experts have been in legal advertising and marketing since 1981. We know media, we know messaging and we know what it takes to keep your case load full in today’s marketplace. Call us today at (888) 461-1016 for a FREE and CONFIDENTIAL evaluation of your current media and marketing strategies!

The cost to ask for a low-end case is the same as a high-end case. However their values are vastly different.

Law firms around the country pay top dollar for TV commercials that all essentially say the same thing: Call us now. This generic plea for copious leads is just that: a solicitation for potentially unqualified inquires.

What if you could turn a commercial into a high-quality case simply by changing your attorney marketing strategy? How about surveying the local and national competition to see how your firm can say things differently—to make your message stand out—without paying more for creative?

That’s just the start of smart TV advertising for law firms. You’d be amazed by what you can get when you ask for what you really want—better paying, higher quality cases; happier clients; and stronger, more profitable referrals.

Here are three places to start:

Platform: What is your TV commercial standing on, anyway? Is TV just a highly visible platform for one-upping the competition with more “bragging rights” about big settlements or hotshot attorneys in effort to attract new clients? We’d argue that your platform ought to stand on its own by using brand messaging to tell your law firm’s story in a way that’s relevant to clients’ biggest concerns, which are inevitably about them—not you. How do your attorneys stand out in the area of client service and representation? Why is your approach to law different—and better—than your peers? How can you draw in prospective clients using emotion and empathy? What’s a real-world example of how your lawyers solved an actual legal issue for a client? Show it!

Production: You might be surprised at how far television production quality has come. Thanks to advancements in video technology and digital editing tools, professional-looking TV commercials are easier than ever to craft—and afford. If you haven’t considered how the quality of your TV ad might be impacting the quality of the cases you’re getting, think again. Production can’t be overlooked in today’s competitive legal landscape. Make sure your advertising agency is giving you all the visual and audio upgrades your newly distinguished messaging platform deserves. After that, it’s all about how your video and commercial assets consistently measure up to and pay off every part of your comprehensive marketing strategy—your brand platform, your website presence, your digital campaign, even a client’s in-office experience.

Placement: Now that your law firm’s TV advertising looks like it plays in the national space, make sure that you outfox other firms by reaching prospective clients in creative ways, at inventive times, away from the clutter of competition. While new messaging will give you an immediate advantage against the generic legal ads droning on TV today, placing your commercials in highly targeted ways could garner even greater response. Talk to your media buyer about new times, stations and strategies for getting your ad out to more—and ideally new previously untapped audiences. Sometimes simply showing up where others are not can make your law firm win in the race to be top of mind.

Need more ideas for turning up your TV advertising? Network Affiliates has in-house creative, production and media planning departments to handle all your TV advertising needs. Call (888) 461-1016 today!

Despite what you may have heard, TV advertising is accessible—even for lawyers operating on slim margins.

However, making your advertising dollars go further requires a smarter, more pinpointed media strategy. Since you can’t bully your way into the market by buying up copious ad spaces and airtime, your challenge as an attorney with a small budget is two-fold.

Mastering your message

Hone your brand message so it’s both concise and perfectly targeted for your audience, rather than repeating previously popular but now unfounded tactics of focusing on how superior your lawyers are, how many big cases and settlements your firm was won, and over-generalizing to the saturation point. This will make viewers tune out or turn you off altogether.

Take a deeper dive into understanding your real clientele and mutual pain points. What do prospective clients really care about in life—and in a lawyer? Are they really looking to make history as the biggest payout in the firm’s history, or are they more concerned with finding a lawyer who is going to listen, remain responsive, and make it easy to work with throughout the lifespan of a case? Surprise, it’s the latter.

Work on making your advertising message unique to your firm by defining your exclusive differentiators (what do you consistently do better!) and addressing your clients’ real-world needs. If that message is distinctly different from the competition (even larger firms with deeper pockets) and speaks directly to what your prospective clients might be feeling, grappling with and trying to understand when choosing an attorney, it will quickly take you out of the mediocre legal media milieu and set your firm apart.

Remixing your media buy

Small media budgets require creative, strategic-thinking media buyers who can survey the competition and get your message to the right people right when they’re tuned in to the TV. That might mean focusing on one demographic and one message, or buying a single station in your market and dominating those niche airwaves with a powerful message and local call to action.

Finding the media mix to maximize your limited attorney TV advertising budget will also require tying up lose ends after you get the message out to a targeted audience. Make sure your stations are tracking your exact spend with a post-buy media analysis—how many people you are reaching for what you are buying.

Likewise, what are you doing with TV leads that do come directly from your targeted advertising campaign? Work on buttoning up your firm’s intake process in a more accountable way. After all, even if you get one call, what’s measurable is what your firm made of the call. Did it convert to a case?

Attorney television advertising can be striped down to message and media mix. Take a direct and strategic approach to marketing your firm on TV, and you may find that your budget is can stretch in some surprisingly creative ways.

Find out what Network Affiliates can do for you. Give us a call, speak with an expert and get a FREE, confidential marketing evaluation 303-817-7313 .

After 30 years in the legal advertising business, we’ve worked hard to perfect TV ad placement and buying strategy to get our lawyers the best response rates in the market. Numbers, after all, are easy to track and tweak.

However, where advertising for attorneys gets complicated is in the messaging component. While our clients are often tempted to repeat traditional tactics they’ve seen dominating the airwaves, such as speed-and-greed talk, faked testimonials, and a hyper-focus on the size of firms and settlements, Network Affiliates now steers lawyers away from these communication strategies.

Why? Because they don’t work anymore. There are simply too many law firms shouting out brand messages that are too similar, too firm-focused and too overwhelming to victims in need of authentic legal advice. The legal TV advertising marketplace has become commoditized and generalized, which in turn has led to more TV viewers tuning out altogether, either by changing the channel or skipping over commercials.

TV Creative using the victim’s perspective

 

The key, we’ve learned, is refocusing efforts on crafting a marketing message that works a little differently, that causes viewers to stop in their tracks, and that paddles against the current of traditional legal advertising on television.

One way to begin to hone your message —the brand “story” that makes your firm stand out among the competition— is to ask three questions of your current advertising campaign, message and approach:

1. Who is the best person to tell your story?

In the past, many law firms have used a spokesperson or top attorney with a big personality and big cases behind him or her to “sell” the practice’s qualifications. However, if this person does not appear authentic and chest-thumbs too much on the firm’s greatness and not enough on solving a victim’s problem, it’s going to be a hard sell. We call this the “it’s not about you” reminder: Ads that emphasize lawyers rather than the benefits they provide to a potential client will ultimately fail in delivering quality cases.

To counteract this common advertising practice, it might be time to rethink who tells your story, what your story really communicates to a victim, and whether or not a spokesperson is even necessary. Can you “show” your brand through a personal story, animated character, real-life reenactment, or some other fresh messaging approach?

2. Is your story believable?

This is a real problem on TV today—people don’t actually believe what they’re watching and hearing because lawyers have used too many tricks to try to convince viewers to call right now. For example, we often see attorneys staging actors as real client testimonials. This used to work until people started reading the fine print and taking note of the unethical use of actors to misrepresent cases.

Is this the way to build trust with potential clients? We don’t think so, and neither do duped viewers, who thanks to the Internet and social media, can now call out dishonest lawyers and advertising practices for all the world to see. The point of this illustration is to help you examine the “believable-ability” of your advertising message. Are you using illusions when you could express your firm’s value in a more authentic way that might in turn bring you more reliable cases and clients? It’s something to consider.

3. Are you telling a new story?

One of the biggest downfalls in legal advertising is a majority of lawyers are saying the same thing in the same format. Most put lawyers, settlements and testimonials—themselves—first. What if you flipped that practice and started building a new message around what a victim might be feeling right now, what a victim might need from a lawyer, what questions a victim might have, or what expectations you could set for a victim?

There are countless creative ways to convey a new and memorable message to your audiences. As the legal advertising landscape is flooded, lawyers may have to swim upstream to say something differently and really stand out. This is your chance to develop an ad that’s a little out of the box, a little more provocative—something that makes a victim stop and think—or at least not change the channel.

It’s always an opportune time to tune in to how your commercials come across. If your law practice is not connecting with potential clients in an audience-focused, authentic and unique way, you can’t expect quality results. Let’s try taking a new perspective: the victim’s.

Talk to viewers like you’d talk to a jury

Would you talk to a jury the way your TV ads talk to the pubic? It’s a question worth considering the next time you take a critical look at the success of your television advertising campaign—and quality of cases it yields.

Much like a jury must be convinced by a compelling argument—a real story with real human connection—so too must viewers of TV advertising be convinced about the authenticity of a law firm’s “story.”

Surprisingly, a majority of the legal commercials on TV today don’t take this simple approach. In fact, they do many of things you would never think to do in a courtroom, such as:

• Talk about yourself (or your lawyers) instead of the case at hand—people with legitimate legal difficulties.
• Scream louder than the other lawyer, instead of calmly, rationally explaining the evidence on behalf of your client.
• Default to generalizations, which lose the jury’s attention, rather than specifics, which “sell” the story and make a lasting impact.
• Focus on the end result—the big money, the number of cases won—rather than people’s universal “pain points.”
• Skimp on the presentation of critical “evidence”—the images and visual aids that tell might tell 1,000 words in one picture.

Thinking about the parallel between advertising audiences and juries is a metaphor meant to help you reflect on how your legal firm is asking for cases. If you spend time creating a high-quality, well-researched and strategic argument (TV messaging), your case will be that much more convincing.

If you want quality cases—the kind that lead to stronger results, better relationships and more referrals—you must ask for them in a quality way through your advertising approach. That might require ignoring a majority of today’s legal ads and creating your own signature message, or systemically breaking down some current ads as how-tos on what not to do.

Legal advertising that asks for quick, cheap cases might bring short-term gain, but it is also guaranteed to deliver short-term clients and relationships, as well as to short-change consumers about what your law firm really has to offer.

Like all the strongest legal arguments, it takes a more strategic approach to acquire more valuable, higher-quality cases and clients. Again, think of it like talking to a jury in a courtroom:

• Research what the other lawyer (competing law firm in your space) is doing.
• Focus on explaining the undeniable evidence (your legal brand’s differentiators and story).
• Connect with decision-making jury members (potential clients) by linking experiences they might have had to the ones you’re presenting.
• Appeal to your jury (advertising audience) through emotion and empathy—the places from which all long-term relationships start.
• Help your jury (viewers) see beyond outcomes and settlements to the real community service of law.

As lawyers, sometimes it’s easiest to understand advertising strategy in the context of the courtroom. Next time you question the quality of cases your TV messaging yields, ask first: Who is your jury?

It’s not a stretch to group 95% of all legal commercials aired today in the same category: “It’s all about me.” Too often we see TV ads—even from some of largest firms spending the most money in a given market—that focus almost exclusively on the lawyer or law firm.

Want your legal advertising to stand out among the crowd? Get out of the 95% and into the 5%.

Some of the most successful campaigns in the legal space today flip the egocentric “It’s all about me” ads of the past completely upside down – focusing instead on the victim.

An Animated Ad Twist

The animated commercial below is a prime example of how we helped one firm shift from a message lost in the masses to a new asset that places them solidly in that golden 5%.

These clever and creative commercials thoughtfully reposition real-life legal dilemmas through emotional scenarios that immediately connect with victims. Not only do these impactful “it’s all about you” ads drive new leads and phone calls, they also take the pressure off lawyers to squeeze an entire “biography” into a 30- or 60-second commercial.

It works because viewers are caught off guard. They’re used to tuning out serious legal ads that misuse shock value and scare tactics while also missing an opportunity to talk directly to victims about real problems. This animated ad grabs attention through entertaining visuals and an engaging voiceover while ultimately positioning the law firm as a viable ally when dealing with cynicism and questions about insurance companies.

This is just one example of an ad that’s cutting through the clutter. There are endless ways a marketing and advertising firm can help spin your message away from your lawyers—and toward your potential clients. However all of these modern twists on legal advertising have three essential elements in common:

The 3 Essential Elements of Legal Advertising

1. They are born out of research.

The smartest advertising commercials and campaigns in the legal marketplace today are positioned squarely against the competition. These ads stand out not only because of their victim-positioned messaging, but because they’re saying something differently than every other law firm in the region.

You can’t prove your new creative will work unless you’ve surveyed what commercials are already playing in your market, which firms are using what messaging and how the current leaders are making their mark. The most effectual contemporary ads are the most deeply researched.

2. The production stands out.

Whether your advertising firm is helping you design fresh, eye-catching animation, setting up live action in a studio or onsite, or choosing believable talent that will authenticate your message, stay focused on production.

Don’t get so blindside by crafty creative that you skimp on how that commercial is produced—and therefore viewed and digested by your target audiences. Remember, television is a predominately visual medium. Commercials that create a buzz are the ones that trigger a psychological reaction in a crisp, clear and graphic way.

3. They ask for what they want.

Traditional legal ads might tell a whole story about a law practice’s background, big settlements and go-getting lawyers. But often they leave the viewer in the lurch about connecting all the dots: “Oh, they’re a big, proven firm so I should call them about my legal issue.” While it might sound like an intuitive conclusion, this is simply too much of a jump for a passive viewing audience.

Victims watching TV need direct, engaging and authoritative messages that quickly tap into a problem they’re wresting with right now—and need to solve fast. The most productive ads simply ask for what they want—and what they want a victim to do—through a compelling story line and a complementary call to action.