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WHAT LAWYERS SHOULD KNOW BEFORE ADVERTISING ON TV

by Philip L. Franckel, Esq., President 1-800-HURT-911, Inc.

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ADVERTISING TIPS FOR PERSONAL INJURY LAW FIRMS & ATTORNEYS:

1) Business Mindset.  Advertising is for business people, not lawyers.  Most lawyers went to college, law school and then went straight to work for a law firm or started their own law practice, without gaining experience in business or advertising.  Another problem is that professionals do what they are trained to do.  Trial lawyers focus on trials instead of their business and that's the way they usually like it.  Additionally, personal injury law practices have been slow to incorporate technology and efficiency.  Long-term planning should include a commitment to increasing the efficiency of your office as well as a commitment to a long-term advertising campaign.  The successful lawyers on TV understand how to manage their law firm like a business.  They focus on running their law practice as a business and reinvest earnings back into advertising and to improve office technology and efficiency.  In short, if you're a lawyer, be prepared to conduct your law practice like a business.

2) Long-Term Commitment.  For any business, advertising is usually only effective when done consistently over a long period of time.  According to a report by E. Craig Stacey, Ph.D., The Analytic Consulting Group (page 6), long-term advertising is at least twice as effective as short-term advertising and payout should be calculated over at least a two-year period.  It is even more important for a personal injury law practice than other businesses because there are substantially fewer accidents with injuries, than people who need mortgages, and even fewer accident cases which are financially worthwhile.  For more information on how long you should test advertising effectiveness, see Testing a Lawyer Advertising TV Campaign.  Branding is an important concept in advertising.  Branding begins to take effect only after a year or more of advertising and becomes most effective after several years of advertising.  For more information on branding for law firms, see Branding Your Law Firm vs. Direct Response Advertising, What You Should Know.

3) Exclusivity.  The only way to avoid the inherent risk in sharing lawyer advertising is to have territory exclusivity.  Since there are really very few large cases, if you participate in a group lawyer advertising campaign, you participate in a sort of lottery.  For instance, if there are six lawyers are sharing your advertising market and there are only two seven-figure cases, obviously not everyone will receive a seven-figure case, and it's possible that only one of the lawyers will receive both of those cases.  If you have market exclusivity, you have to receive all the calls including crank calls, hangup calls, small cases, medium cases, and the few large cases.  You should have market exclusivity for your entire TV broadcast market.  You should have market exclusivity for your entire TV broadcast market.  You can see a list of all 210 U.S.  broadcast markets.

4) Office Budget.  Plan your budget so that you can afford to continue advertising, while you're waiting for your new cases to settle.  Keep in mind that as you advertise, you will continue to take in new cases which will require additional capital for case expenses, lawyers, support staff, and office overhead. 

5) Advertising Budget.  Be prepared to spend some money.  The most effective TV advertising for lawyers is broadcast television which is more expensive than cable TV because it reaches more people.  Don't be confused between broadcast television and cable TV.  Most people view broadcast television through cable TV, however, a cable-television station can not be watched without cable.  Cable TV is extremely effective if you're buying national cable TV, however, if you're buying TV media from your local cable television station, expect call costs that are double that of broadcast TV.  Unlike broadcast TV, buying local cable TV is very tricky.  For instance your local cable TV salesperson will probably tell you that they cover a particular county or part of a county but probably will not tell you that many of the households in the county receive broadcast TV or satellite TV and not cable TV, or that your TV commercials will not be seen by all of their subscribers.  Unlike broadcast television, there is no independent company that can monitor your cable TV commercials to make sure they have been aired.

6) 1-800 Vanity Telephone Numbers.  Personal injury advertising is direct response advertising which means callers need to know how to reach you.  Use a 1-800 vanity telephone number for all your advertising.  if you advertise in the Yellow Pages, using a 1-800 vanity telephone number is useful for branding, but obviously not necessary.  If you're going to be advertising on TV than a 1-800 vanity telephone number can result in reducing television advertising costs by as much as 50%, making a tremendous difference in your bottom line.  However, don't even think of trying radio advertising or outdoor advertising (billboards) without a 1-800 vanity telephone number.  A1-800 vanity telephone number can result in 14 times more telephone calls when used in radio advertising.  Conversely, failure to use a 1-800 vanity telephone number in radio advertising will result in receiving almost no calls.  Likewise, outdoor advertising or billboards also require a 1-800 vanity telephone number.  After all, which can you remember after hearing a telephone number on the radio or seeing a telephone number while driving by at 60 mph, 1-800-HURT-911 or 1-800-487-8911?  There is much more to know about 1-800 vanity telephone numbers.  You can read more here.

7) Web Site.  Make sure that you have a professional looking web site that is addressable by your telephone number.

8) Answering Calls.  Make sure that you have personnel who are available to answer the telephones.  Use separate telephone lines for advertising calls so that you know when the telephone rings, it's a potential new client.  Expect hang-up calls, crank calls, small cases and a few big cases.  Use caller ID so that someone in your office can call back hang-up calls.  I know of at least one hang-up call which was called back and resulted in a six-figure case.  Most hang up calls are either wrong numbers or crank calls, however, many real callers have hung up for all sorts of reasons from being interrupted at their business to having fear of talking to a lawyer.  People tend to hang up on voicemail, so use a call center to answer your telephones after business hours.  Make sure that you use a good call center and that they are able to get ahold of you immediately.  1-800-HURT-911 offers free software that any call center can use which allows operators to take the information you need without making mistakes and to instantly notify you by several different means.

9) Accept the small personal injury cases as well as the big ones.  If you want only the big cases, don't advertise unless you have an arrangement with another firm to take the smaller cases and share the cost of advertising.  The smaller personal injury cases can pay for your entire ad budget and more.  Use of personal injury case management software to operate your office efficiently is not an option, it is essential if you want to be able to compete on TV or even without advertising.  If you operate your personal injury practice efficiently, you can actually make more money per hour on the smaller cases than you can on larger cases.  This is because personal injury case management software will allow you to spend as little as one or two hours on a case whereas the larger cases require many hours in court.  I have been using SAGA personal injury case management software which is very sophisticated and can save many hours of work on a case.

10) Accept personal injury cases from a wide geographic area within your entire TV broadcast area.  Make sure you have the personnel available to immediately go out and sign up clients anywhere within your television broadcast area.

11) Work with an advertising agency.  Advertising agencies have advertising expertise which you do not.  Advertising agencies earn fees in a manner similar to travel agencies.  An advertising agency will be able to buy television media, radio media and outdoor media or billboards much cheaper than you can.  The commission you pay should be less than the amount the advertising agency saves you.  A good advertising agency will be able to buy you TV media for less money than another ad agency, and will be able to monitor advertising effectiveness of the various TV stations, programs and times.

12) Ethics.  when you advertise your personal injury law practice, there are two areas of ethics that you need to be careful about. 

First, is the advertising program.  Make sure that the advertising program you participate in doesn't violate ethics by making a referral.  This is a very complicated area and there are quite a few Bar Association opinions that can be found on the Internet about this.  Basically, if you pay a fee for the program and when the telephone is answered, a determination is made as to whether to give the call to lawyer A or lawyer B, than a referral is made.  This can occur when the determination is made as to which personal injury lawyer to give the call to, or even if a determination is made as to whether to send a call to a bankruptcy lawyer, divorce lawyer, or personal injury lawyer.  When a determination is made as to who to send a call to, the receiving attorney may be accepting a referral and the people and company  making the determination may be guilty of practicing law without a license.  Additionally, some advertising programs offer guarantees.  Advertising involves the inherent risk that you may pay for advertising and you will not sign up any clients.  If my advertising agency offers you a guarantee that you will sign up enough cases to cover the cost of advertising or that you will not lose money, this guarantee turns your advertising campaign into an illegal referral system.

Secondly, make sure that your TV commercials and other advertising complies with the ethics rules in your state.  Again, this is too complex a subject to write about here, however, some of the more important basics in many states which you should be aware of are the following:  1) You may not advertise that you are an expert, unless certified;  2) You may not disparage other lawyers in your advertising;  3) You may not make claims that are untrue (this is even barred by the FTC);  4) You may not be able to use an actor to portray a lawyer;  5) You may not be able to use a jingle;  6) You should be careful about the vanity telephone number you decide to use, for instance, vanity telephone numbers with the word "WIN" in it may violate ethics (see: Vanity Phone Numbers Make Your Firm Less Forgettable by Laura Hodes for the ABA Journal).

Distribution Rights: This article may be freely published with the following title and byline: "What Lawyers Should Know Before Advertising, by Philip L. Franckel, Esq., President 1-800-HURT-911, Inc., providing vanity telephone numbers for lawyer advertising and resources for people HURT in an accident at www.1800HURT911.com"

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