Billboard advertising is one of the top marketing channels used in the legal industry today. As a legal practice, your goal may be to own every billboard on every corner in your community in order to build brand awareness. But do you know if this channel is effective?
In all honesty, billboards have been proven to be an extremely effective channel for building brand recognition in a local community. The majority of us can probably name two to three firms and slogans for top firms our cities - all as a result of the in-your-face billboards.
But who exactly is looking at these billboards, and how many new and current customers can your law firm attribute to these advertisements? This question may be unanswerable which is a huge flaw for law firms looking to acquire quality clients.
Billboard Advertising: Pros vs. Cons
Billboard advertising costs roughly $1,500 to $4,000 a month in small-to-mid-size U.S. cities, and can reach $20,000 or higher in larger markets. While this may seem like a lot, compared to TV, radio or newspapers, billboards can be a less expensive option.
But before you make that huge advertising commitment, here are some pros and cons of billboards to consider:
Pros:
- Boost brand awareness
- Reach a large audience (Impressions)
- Visual and eye-catching
Cons:
- Can’t target a specific audience
- High cost
- Quick exposure time for viewer
- Only provides limited information and one single message
- No way to track exactly who saw the billboard
- Media companies can only provide vanity metrics (such as traffic data - vehicular and pedestrian)
- Almost impossible to follow-up with potential leads from billboard
To sum it up, billboards provide high visibility your law firm’s advertisement, but no way to target your ideal client or follow up. Because the billboard is only viewed for a few seconds as a driver passes by, the message has to stay simple and most likely attract the viewer with a large image instead of quality information.
Another thing to consider: How is the potential lead going to get in contact with you after seeing the billboard? They drove by so quickly without having the chance to write down your phone number or website. (And they were driving after all!)
For the amount of money that a billboard costs, this does not seem like the best option for law firms looking to grow their business and attract high-quality clients. But with so many other channels to advertise your brand, where should your legal practice focus?
How to Generate the Results With a Much Smaller Marketing Budget
If you’re active in the legal industry, you are well aware that the legal marketing world has been disrupted by new technology and trends. While at some times this may seem overwhelming, it really is a step forward for acquiring high-quality leads for your firm.
If you’re looking to acquire new clients (instead of just boosting brand awareness), paid online advertising and customer acquisition marketing automation are the way to go. These strategies offer an easy, and most importantly, effective way for law firms to generate and nurture high-quality leads.
Paid Advertising
If you’re ready to grow your firm, paid online advertising should be one of your law firm’s secret weapons.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
Pay-per-click advertising allows your firm to advertise to an extremely specific audience. The best part is that you can target people that are actually interested in your services, instead of casting a wide net like you would with billboards.
The key to PPC advertising success is the fact that you are targeting an audience that is already searching for your services. In other words, your law firm can create text advertisements based on search queries that your ideal client is likely to be searching.
For example, if you are looking to acquire more personal injury cases in the Atlanta area, you can target keywords such as:
“Personal injury lawyer in atlanta”
“Car accident lawyer atlanta”
“Best car accident lawyer in atlanta”
When someone searches one of these phrases in Google, your ad will show up at the top of the search results. Because the search intent is already there, this person will be more likely to click your ad for more information.
👉 How this is better than billboards:
Right off the bat, you are reaching an audience that is in need of your services. Billboards are only visible to those who drive by, and it is likely that the majority of these people don’t even need your service.
Be warned though - PPC can end up being very expensive. With such high competition from big firms with big budgets, the cost-per-click of a PPC ad can get very high. If set up correctly and used to push leads through your funnel, PPC can generate a large ROI when you start to sign up new clients.
Facebook Advertising
Facebook advertising is another form of paid advertising that allows law firms to reach an extremely specific audience. There are a few different ways you can target and segment these audiences, including:
- Lookalike Audience: If you have a contact list of all of your clients, you can upload this list and Facebook will show your ad to people who are "similar" to the list you uploaded.
- Contact List: If you have a list of prospects, leads or clients, you can show specific ads directly to each group.
- Demographic Targeting: Facebook offers a large variety of demographic targeting options including age, gender, interests, occupation and more.
- Location Targeting: Within Facebook you can put a radius around a specific area, and target everyone who lives in or passes through that area.
- Retargeting: Using the Facebook Pixel, you can show ads to people who have visited your website or landing pages.
👉 How this is better than billboards:
With Facebook, audience targeting options are endless. Once you've captured a prospect or lead's attention, you can also continue to stay in front of them using retargeting ads. The opposite is true for billboards - the billboard viewer (who could be anyone) drives by and then the journey simply ends!
With so many ways to segment your firm's various audiences using Facebook and PPC, you can show specific messages to each audience based on where they are located in your client's buying journey. This means that your firm can use Facebook to generate a pipeline of leads, customers and even advocates!
How to Increase Conversion of Your Paid Ads
Once a prospect clicks your PPC ad or Facebook ad, they should be taken to a dedicated landing page that uses targeted messaging based on the ad's message. This allows your firm to provide more information on the service that the prospect is interested in, and show value to convince the prospect to choose your firm.
The goal of the landing page is to get the prospect to fill out the form on your page so your firm can collect their contact information to become a lead.
👉 How this is better than billboards:
1) Law firms can create different landing pages for each service offered. This allows you to provide a message that is specific to the needs of the people visiting those landing pages. With billboards, you can only show one message to your entire audience with no way of narrowing it down.
2) Landing pages use forms to collect your leads’ contact information. There is NO way to collect contact information with a billboard!
Once you have the lead’s contact information, what do you do next? That’s where the fun part starts...
Nurture Your Law Firm’s Leads Into Clients
Using a client acquisition marketing platform for law firms, your firm can set up automated customer journeys that nurture your leads until they are ready to choose your firm. These journeys will drip emails that show the value of your firm, based on the specific service that the lead is interested in.
By following up with the lead and nurturing them throughout the decision process, you can keep your firm top of mind and increase your chances of the lead choosing your firm.
👉 How this is better than billboards:
This process is automated so you never have to worry about forgetting to follow up with a lead. You can also see exactly where your leads are in the journey as they get closer to making a decision. With billboards it is almost impossible to attribute your leads to the billboard and there is likely no follow-up process in place.
To put it simply, law firms that have an automated customer acquisition marketing strategy in place are very likely to outperform their competition. For one, these strategies reach a much more specific audience than billboard advertising. Second, by automating the nurturing process, law firms are able to convert more of these leads into clients.
If you’re ready to switch from outdated billboards and automate your marketing, click here to request a demo of RocketLevel - a client acquisition marketing platform built specifically for growing law practices.
