Lawyer Marketing March Madness Day 3
Today’s match-up:
(5) Seminars vs. (12) Billboards
Keys to this lawyer marketing match-up:
Today’s match-up features the time intensive seminar strategy against the roadside billboard.
(5) Seminars:
Lawyer seminars bring strong personal branding to the table. An effective seminar can be an excellent way to position one’s self as an expert on a particular topic. Being face-to-face with the audience allows the seminar leader complete control of his/her firm’s brand.
The seminar’s weakness is the time investment required to conduct a proper seminar. Preparing effective slideshows, videos, etc. can be highly labor intensive.
Of course, the other risk of conducting a seminar is that it just simply isn’t very good. Being a seminar leader requires a certain degree of skill. No matter how hard some lawyers try, they just aren’t good at it.
(12) Billboards:
Another one of the time-honored lawyer marketing efforts, billboards always seem to find their way into the discussion. Like TV ads and yellow pages, lawyers are drawn to paying for billboards like flies to…a bug lamp. Unfortunately, potential clients are not.
As Seth Godin writes (quoting Jay Levinson), the two best words to have on a billboard are, “next exit.”
Morbidly, the only practical function of a billboard for a personal injury attorney is its ability to distract drivers increasing the liklihood of an accident. Terrible, I know.
Prediction:
After seeing the showing of support for yellow pages, I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised by folks voting for billboards. Personally, I think this one will be a runaway. Seminars, while time-intensive and difficult to pull off, are far more effective than those roadside billboards.
Vote on earlier match-ups:
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Billboards and Seminars serve completely different purposes. Seminars will obviously get you much more respect in the legal community, but billboards will get you more name recognition among the less educated, lower income accident victims. Those potential clients aren’t attending seminars.
While I agree that they serve completely different audiences, segments, etc, in the end, they serve the same purpose, generating new clients.
In my experience, the problem has been that lawyers aren’t aware of the efficiency and effectiveness of their efforts. This is especially true in light of the advancements in marketing mediums (i.e. SEM, social media, online videos, etc.)
Thank you for your comment.