Even though the law firm marketing landscape is constantly evolving, traditional marketing strategies are still vital to your firm’s ability to attract potential clients. At the same time, you cannot afford to ignore digital marketing as it has unique capabilities that are vital to your ability to continue attracting the types of clients you want.

The experienced marketing team at PMP explains the pros and cons of traditional and digital marketing below.

If you have questions about marketing your plaintiff law firm or are looking for ways to attract more clients and build your brand, give us a call to learn how we may be able to assist you. We have been helping law firms grow for more than 15 years.

Advantages of Traditional Advertising For Law Firms

When we talk about traditional law firm advertising, we are talking about offline advertising seen on:

  • Television (linear and cable)
  • Billboards and other outdoor advertisements like bus wraps
  • Direct mail advertising
  • Terrestrial radio advertising
  • Print advertising in magazines and newspapers

Although some of these mediums may seem outdated, they still have advantages:

Broad Reach

Despite the prevalence of smartphones and social media users, television still has broad reach that other marketing channels struggle to compete with. For example, the average American still watches multiple hours of TV every day.

Easy Access to a Large Audience

Television and other forms of traditional advertising also give you easy access to a large audience of people who live near your law office.

Easier to Remember

It may also be easier for people to remember marketing messages they saw in traditional advertising compared to digital marketing. This could be because they may see the same messages over and over.

For example, if they take the same route to work every day and you have a billboard on that route, they are more likely to know what your logo looks like. If they watch the morning news regularly and you pay for commercials during the broadcast, they are likely to see the commercial numerous times.

Disadvantages of Traditional Advertising For Law Firms

While there are advantages to traditional advertising, there are also significant disadvantages.

Limited Ability to Target Your Audience

It is difficult to target the specific types of people you want to reach with traditional advertising. You can get some information about the types of people who watch different TV shows, but it is difficult to know who you are reaching.

There is even less ability to target people with a billboard. On some level, you are hoping the billboard may reach a few people. If they get injured, they may be more likely to remember your firm because of a billboard and TV commercial they saw.

Tracking Impressions

Do you know how many clients you got from a billboard or print advertisement? It can be difficult to determine the effectiveness of your traditional advertising campaign. You may feel that your efforts were successful because the phone at your office has been ringing, but it is tough to get the data to prove just how effective your efforts have been.

Cost

Traditional advertising costs a lot of money. You also need to remember that if something changes at your firm, it costs a lot of money to update your advertising.

Advantages of Digital Marketing For Law Firms

Digital advertising includes:

  • Pay-per-click ads on Google
  • Social media advertising on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter
  • YouTube ads
  • Local service ads

While traditional law firm marketing is still important, digital advertising has significant advantages. For example, the difference between targeting traditional advertising and digital advertising is night and day. You have so many options for targeting the specific types of people you are looking for. You can also display these ads at the exact time when someone is searching for legal help.

Some other pros of digital advertising include:

Ability to Interact With Your Firm Immediately

If someone sees your ad and wants to know more about your firm, they can simply click a link and be taken to your website or a landing page that has been optimized to get a conversion.

Ability to Launch Quickly

It takes time to launch a TV advertising campaign. However, you can launch digital ads very quickly.

Ability to Quickly Optimize Your Campaign

You can monitor how people are interacting with your ads and figure out what works and what does not work. You can quickly make changes to optimize your campaign and improve your conversion rate.

Quickly Determine Your Return on Investment

You can learn down to the penny how well your ads are performing. If you continue to optimize your campaign, you can ensure you are getting the most bang for your buck.

Disadvantages of Digital Marketing For Law Firms

Despite the significant advantages of digital marketing, there are still downsides.

Significant Cost

It is expensive to get the results you want through digital advertising. For example, you need to invest a significant amount of money to get leads from a pay-per-click or local services ad.

You Need to Constantly Optimize Your Campaign

Digital advertising is not something you can simply set and forget. You might get results initially, but the effectiveness of your campaign will quickly wane.

You Must Respond to Changing Trends

You not only need to make changes based on how people are interacting with your ad, but you also need to respond to new trends. Google is constantly changing and if you do not keep up with these changes, your campaign will suffer.

PMP manages traditional and digital marketing campaigns for law firms across North America. We are constantly optimizing our efforts and closely monitoring trends.