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.

 

Transcript

Hey there! I’m Emily Frickey and I’m here to keep you up to date on all things digital marketing.

Today’s topic is about the importance of online reviews. I’ll be giving you three tips to help your firm get more reviews and three tips on review strategies you need to avoid.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Online reviews are important for not only your online reputation but as a ranking factor as well. Over the last few years, reviews have grown to be one of the top ranking factors in SEO right behind links, a claimed Google My Listing and on-page optimization.

Even outside of the SEO arena, reviews are a powerful tool to convert potential clients. According to Bright Local’s annual local consumer report, more than 84 percent of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. And 90 percent of people formed an opinion of a business after reading less than 10 reviews.

If a potential client searched for your firm’s online reviews right now what would they think about your business? Think of it as word-of-mouth marketing.

How To Get Reviews

Here are a few tips to get you meaningful reviews for your firm.

You will never get a good review if you don’t ask. So when you have a happy client ask them to leave a nice review for your firm. Train your intake staff to follow up and ask for a review. Consider following up with an email through your CRM platform.

Most clients will pick their favorite place to leave a review, but if you can ask them to leave one on Google, Avvo or Facebook. Google rewards good reviews and it can help your SEO strategy. AVVO is an industry-specific review site that also ranks well in search engines. And Facebook has the largest active user base out of any other social platform and is often a top traffic referral source to your law firm’s website.

After getting a review make sure someone is going to respond to them. This is a powerful way to show potential clients that you care and how great your customer service is.

How Not To Get Reviews

Here are a few tips on what to avoid.

Avoid using a review station at your office.  Sites see the reviews coming from the same computer and could decide that the reviews are fake.

Paying a third-party to post reviews as customers or setting up customer profiles to aggregate reviews. Getting too many reviews all at once. This could trip filters that review sites have set in place, which could cause the reviews to be deleted.

Law firms can’t afford to ignore online reviews. They are part of your SEO strategy and they’re are how potential clients are deciding who to hire.

If your law firm needs help with online review strategies, or any other marketing needs, please reach out to Network Affiliates. We are committed to providing quality legal messaging that speaks to the integrity of your attorneys, the greed of the insurance companies, and the hope of victims everywhere.

Ask any marketer for their best piece of advice, and they’ll probably say, “Know your audience.”

It’s an old pearl of wisdom relayed and repeated nearly to the point of cliché, but banal as it might seem, it’s still sage advice.

Mark Zuckerberg has a few billion dollars to attest to the value of audience information. Advertisers pay Facebook big bucks to better understand the lifestyles, backgrounds, and behaviors of their prospective customers. They do that because the information is both beneficial and hard to come by.

Sure enough, if you’re managing a law firm, you might wonder how to get your hands on that kind of information within your own market.

Most law firms market themselves at the local or state level, so it’s easy for attorneys to picture their advertising audience as “everyone in my state” or “all my neighbors” — and then pitch a one-size-fits-all message to the masses, hoping it’ll stick.

If it were that easy, though, your incoming leads would look just like the community as a whole. That probably isn’t the case. Responses to broad messaging are almost never perfect cross-sections of a broad audience.

So how can you figure out who is currently seeing your ads, who is actually responding to them, and (perhaps most importantly) who you aren’t currently connecting with?

In this article, we explain how to create a target audience profile, how to break that profile down into individual personas, and how to ultimately use those profiles and personas to get more business for your law firm.

Using Google Analytics: It’s Only the First Step in Target Audience Analysis

Google Analytics is one of the best free web analysis tools on the internet, and it’s a great way to get a preliminary perception of exactly who your audience members are.

The Google Analytics software will help you identify the keyword searches that bring people into your website, track your traffic rates, and determine which content items perform most strongly (among other things).

You can even get some preliminary demographic information that will help you see your audience as actual people — real injury victims or grieving family members — instead of as raw data.

That’s what we call a target audience profile. It’s more specific than “every TV viewer in Colorado,” for instance, and specificity is a good thing. But you can press even deeper than that with a “next-level” audience analysis strategy we call persona identification.

How to Identify the Different Personas Who Make Up Your Target Audience

While target audiences may share certain common traits, they are not homogeneous. Your audience is comprised of many different people — individuals and families of different ages, genders, backgrounds, socioeconomic status, and religious faiths.

They live in different parts of town and all throughout the state. Some of them are super tech-savvy; others are not. They might prefer mobile devices or desktops… Chrome or Safari… Mac or PC. And they come to you with different needs (car crash victim, wrongful death relative, nursing home resident, medical patient, mass-tort consumer, etc.)

All of these things matter.

By using this information, much of which is already at your fingertips, you can create fine-tuned client personas — detailed descriptions of the types of people who ultimately convert into cases.

In building a persona, what you’re really looking for is: who responds to what, and how?

For example, in addition to the basic target demographics, a persona must answer these types of questions:

1. Do these kinds of people ultimately become clients?
2. If so, what’s the last thing they saw or did before “pulling the trigger?”
3. What kinds of cases do these people usually have?
4. Do they generally have a good understanding of their legal rights, or are they looking for answers?
5. On an emotional level, what are they really looking for?
6. Do they come to you from television or the web?
7. What kinds of technology do they use, and how do they use it?
8. Did they consider (or interact with) other brands or firms before yours?
9. What causes them to hesitate before signing with your firm? (Money, time, confidentiality, communication concerns, distance etc.?)
10. Are these kinds of people ultimately good for your business? Do you want more or fewer cases like theirs?

Through this process, what you’re ultimately doing is layering your audience. It isn’t an exercise for its own sake. The whole point is to grow your practice. Bigger and better cases — that’s what it’s all about.

How Target Audiences and Personas Help Your Bottom Line

Attorneys are exceptionally bright people, but they cannot predict the future. None of us can. It is possible to predict behavior, though. And that power is really at the heart of our profiles-and-personas practice.

By studying your audience, your firm will come to understand who responds to its current marketing efforts, how they respond, why they respond, and whether you want those same personas to respond again in the future.

The answers to those questions then inform your next steps in TV and digital advertising.

Talk to Network Affiliates About Your Law Firm’s Target Audience Profile

Legal marketing is truly a strategy, and strategies benefit from research and insight.

But gaining insight doesn’t have to be a dizzying or time-consuming ordeal. The expert legal marketers at Network Affiliates are ready to help you size up your target audiences and put that data to work right away.

Give us a call today. Dial 877.709.0633 or simply use oureasy online contact form. We’re here to help you grow.

Between strict bar association rules and the general public’s skepticism toward attorneys as a whole, legal marketing has never been the easiest undertaking. And, as we’ve covered before, reaching Millennials is especially challenging.

So, if you’re running a law firm that advertises on television, we advise you to rethink your talking head strategy— especially if you care about clients under the age of 30.

Here’s why.

Younger generations have grown up surrounded by rapidly evolving technology and the creation of countless new media channels on a semi-regular basis. They are what we call “digital natives” and their understanding of advertising is unlike any other generation before them. They can spot conventional or contrived branding from a mile away, and they don’t like being “sold to.” Instead, Millennials respond to authenticity. They gravitate to service providers who they believe (A) tell the truth and (B) are in it for the right reasons.

Generally speaking, they see talking heads in TV ads as the equivalent of a carnival barker — just another person talking at them in the hopes of getting money. With decades of ardent television viewing behind them, they have grown immune to what was once an effective sales pitch.

So if you want to become the local law firm that your community’s Millennials trust, you need to speak to them from the heart.

Below, we explain why advertising doesn’t work when it’s disingenuous — and how you can revitalize your efforts by earnestly reaching out to Millennials.

If Not a Talking Head, Then What?

When choosing the spokesperson for your law firm, the easiest choice by far is simply to put your senior partner in front of the camera. As is so often the case in life, though, the easy path isn’t necessarily the wisest one.

It was only in 1977 that the U.S. Supreme Court opened television airwaves to attorneys for the first time, and law firms found early success with the old “talking head” strategy. In fact, Network Affiliates’ founder, Norton Frickey, was one of the first attorneys to deploy this strategy on TV; something he then helped other lawyers and law firms do across the country.  And, that’s when Network Affiliates was born.

However, as the legal advertising space has grown more crowded — and viewers have grown overexposed and more cynical — the old playbook has grown tattered and dated.

Today’s attorney advertising demands a more creative approach, and that means your firm’s spokesperson might need to do more than just talk. They need to set a tone, convey a personality, and take part in a story.

Ultimately, you’re looking for inspiring, engaging, and emotionally accessible conversationalists — dynamic and organic personalities who young audiences find themselves drawn to naturally.

There are no limits on what or who that might be: a lawyer, an actor, a client, a community member, a celebrity, or even a character.

In this example, we created an ad that relays a personal injury client’s narrative by way of narration, followed by a brief and personable call to action from a real attorney at the law firm (one of our clients) at the end. While the talking head appears, you can see that he isn’t the “star of the show.” The star here is the client:

The Traits of a Modern, Multifaceted Law Firm Messenger

While there is no “one size fits all” guide to choosing the right messenger for your firm, when it comes to Millennial advertising, there are at least a few traits to keep in mind:

• Sincere passion for the law firm’s work and the pursuit of justice
• Outside-the-box creativity
• Subtle, subject-appropriate sense of humor (or irony)
• Cool and calm under pressure
• Reasonable
• Honest
• Never “salesy”
• Is able to talk with the viewer and about the viewer (rather than talking at the viewer about the lawyer)

Whether it’s an on-screen personality or an off-screen narrator, you want to find a law firm messenger who resonates. The ultimate question is whether the viewers connect with the message.

If they do, you have a direct path toward growing your business, and that’s the whole point of legal advertising to begin with.

Millennial Advertising Is All About Authenticity

We talk a lot about authenticity in legal advertising, but what does that really mean?

It isn’t enough merely to adopt the appearance of authenticity. (That wouldn’t be very authentic at all!)

In addition to looking and sounding authentic, there also needs to be some proof in the proverbial pudding.

If your ad prompts a Millennial to visit your website, for instance, he or she needs to find at least two things there:

• High-quality content that is consistent with the messaging and tone they found in your TV campaign

• Evidence that your firm is truly the passionate and sincere service provider it purports to be

Toward that second criterion, law firms are increasingly incorporating Community Social Responsibility (CSR) into their practices.

CSR refers to any and all efforts your firm makes to become a better citizen of your community. It might include pro bono service, diverse hiring practices, attorney community service, free resources you make available online, or mentoring in local schools, etc.

We’ve written a guide to CSR in the legal services space, including the very real business benefits it can confer on your firm. Among those myriad benefits: the major selling point CSR becomes when reaching out to Millennials.

Talk to Network Affiliates About How to Market Your Law Firm to Millennial Clients

Now that you know why the talking head strategy isn’t as effective anymore, you can take strategic steps toward a new kind of law firm branding.

Network Affiliates is a team of legal marketing experts determined to keep our clients at the front of the pack. Reach out and ask us how we can help to craft modern legal messaging that gets results for your firm. Call 877.709.0633 or contact us online today.

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.