How to Create a Killer Law Firm Ad
Long ago there was much debate about whether or not lawyers should advertise at all.
It’s clear today, however, that legal advertisements are becoming part of the norm. Even the most respected and largest international law firms place advertisements in well known national publications.
The good thing is that a quality print advertisement does not have to push the limits of the legal ethics envelope. The goal is not to convince potential clients that your law firm will win their case no matter what. If you simply want to let potential clients know that you’re out there and that your law firm provides quality legal services, then this article is for you.
With that said, in today’s competitive market, advertising really is a necessary part of building a successful legal practice. There are a variety of ways to get your name out there and to let potential clients know about your law firm. One of the most common is the printed advertisement. In an ideal world, you would simply hire someone to design an advertisement for your small law firm or solo practice. In the real world, your law firm may not have the extra cash to do this.
If this is your firm’s situation, then you’ll need to design your own advertisements from scratch. The good news is that you don’t need a degree from design school to come up with a killer advertisement for your law firm. With Photoshop and even some of the more advanced features in Word, you can often create the general look of the ad yourself and then work with a freelance designer to get the layout in the formats required by the publishers you’re working with.
Even if your firm can afford to hire someone else to create your ad, you should still know what makes the perfect advertisement. Read this two part series to learn about how to create the Killer Print Advertisement.
What Is the Goal?
Before you do anything, you must know what you want. If you want your law firm’s advertisement to simply get people in the door, that’s fine. However, spend some time to see if you can get a little more creative and specific with this goal. If there is stiff competition in your area, then you may want to highlight something your law firm offers that you know other firms don’t.
Use the print advertisement to drive traffic to your website. The space in a print ad is often very limited. If you have more to say than the print space allows, then try to find a way to get readers to come to your website. There, you can go into more detail about your firm, its attorneys and their achievement.
Think about your target demographic. What types of messages will be the most effective at getting through to them. Consider their average education level. Think about what is important to your potential clients. Are you advertising to people who may be in legal trouble or to people who need an attorney to handle estate related documents for them? Write as if you’re talking to potential clients one on one.
Where to Advertise
One of the most important decisions you’ll make is where to place your law firm’s advertisement. This decision will be based on a variety of factors like cost and the demographics of your target audience. If you decide to advertise in the newspaper, here is what you’ll need to consider. If you live in a large city, there are probably several newspapers for you to choose from. There may be a large paper that covers the entire metropolitan area, and regional papers that cover the smaller cities, and then even newspapers that cover certain neighborhoods. Consider each paper individually. Look at cost, the demographics of their readership, and more.
If you advertise in your metropolitan area’s large Sunday paper, your ad could get lost in all the coupon clutter. However, more people read their Sunday paper than the ones they receive during the week. You’ll also have to decide if you want a large ad that you can only afford to run a few times, or do you want a small ad that you can run for several weeks. Keep in mind that you may want to make changes to the ad based on the responses you get.
Advertising in magazines is another excellent opportunity for law firms to gain exposure. Your firm may not be able to place an expensive ad in one of the large, national magazines, but there are countless local and trade magazines that may be just the fit for your firm. Look online to see what magazines and newspapers publish in your area and contact them for their rates. Not only will they be able to tell you about the demographics of their readership, but they will also be able to advise you on when and where to advertise within their publication.
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EmailDon’t Interrupt: Ask Before You Advertise
Law firm marketing as we know it has changed radically. While the landscape may look the same, certain forms of advertising and marketing your firm are simply no longer as cost effective as they used to be.
Traditional law firm marketing relied on interruption based marketing models to get the word out. Times have changed. Permission based marketing is now one of the most effective ways to market a small law firm or a solo practice. Understanding these two marketing models can truly make all the difference in how successful you are at marketing your law firm and its attorneys.
There was a time, long ago, when potential clients had no choice but to listen to a law firm’s advertisement. However, with massive technological advances, the world of law firm marketing has changed and it has changed dramatically. It used to be that a powerful, far reaching ad campaign had to include television, radio, and print. Today, however, the Internet has provided law firms with a myriad of marketing options that include ways to speak to potential clients without annoying them. This is good news for solo practice law firms and small firms, because many of the new marketing models can be fairly inexpensive to utilize.
All forms of marketing, including law firm marketing, used to rely heavily on interrupting the consumer. To really understand the value of permission based marketing it’s important to understand how traditional marketing models worked and why.
As the name implies, interruption based marketing is a way of communicating with customers at times when they may or may not want to hear from you. For example, television ads are interruption based marketing because most people watch television for the shows not the ads. Commercials interrupt what the potential client is trying to do. When television advertising first became popular, people were more likely to watch a commercial in its entirety. This was due in part to the fact that there were so few channels to choose from, and also because people were not bombarded all day with advertisements.
Today, most people have several hundred channels to choose from. DVR’s like TIVO have also made it tough for television advertisers to get their commercials seen. Most people zip right past the commercials, only stopping if they recognize the face of a favorite actor or see a product that they want additional information about. With television ads getting more and more expensive every day, you may not get the most bang for your law firm’s buck in today’s market because people are less likely to let your ad play through to the end.
Radio is another form of interruption based marketing that is starting to lose its value. If someone is listening to a radio station, they usually don’t want to have their programming interrupted by advertisements. That is one of the main reasons why more and more people are deciding to spend a few extra dollars for satellite radio. With well over 100 channels to choose from, more and more consumers are making the switch to satellite, which happens to be commercial free.
Even print ads are interruption based. When you turn the page of your magazine or newspaper, you are looking for a story, not an advertisement. Online articles are also interrupted by advertisements that cut into the text to get their message across.
The more that companies and law firms relied on interruption based marketing, the more that consumers and potential clients found ways to avoid the noise of too many commercials and advertisements. One of the main problems with interruption marketing is that it’s everywhere. If you drive in your car you see advertisements on billboards, benches, and buses. If you’re on the Internet there are pop up ads banner ads, and more. People have learned to simply tune them out.
What is the solution?
Continue reading to learn how to get out of the dark ages of interruption marketing and into the wonderful sun of permission based marketing.
An Attorney Makes An Offer in Her Advertising and Secures More Clients
Marcy is one of the most successful attorneys in the state but it hasn’t always been that way. For almost 10 years she held down a mid-level position in an established law practice in town.
I remember many conversations with Marcy during those days and I can attest to the fact that she wasn’t very happy with her job. Then something interesting happened. Her neighbor Ed, who happened to be the publisher and editor for our local newspaper, became involved in a real estate dispute.
The dispute was an issue of adverse possession. For years, the publisher of the paper had allowed one of his neighbors to use part of a driveway that sat on the border of their property. Without getting too technical, the neighbor felt he had a legal right to continue to use the publisher’s driveway because he’d never been challenged on the matter. Since he wanted to sell his house, he was positioning himself to file for an easement on the property that would ultimately weaken the title held by the publisher.
Ed came to Marcy for help. At first she told him he’d need to take the matter up with one of the senior partners in her law firm. Ed didn’t want to go that route because he felt it would create too much attention in town. He appealed to her for another option.
The option that Marcy proposed lead not only to her becoming a rainmaker at her firm – it lead to her starting her own law practice and becoming a very successful solo practitioner.
Here’s how:
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