Takeo Kiuchi and the engineers at Honda F1 racing were the first to apply data collection points on their car and around the track. This data allowed them to measure the progression of the car and look for small inefficiencies or deficiencies that they could manage; thereby increasing the speed of the car — by small increases as small as tenths of a second.
This is thinking differently.
At Kirkpatrick Creative we like to think differently, and we want to encourage all of our clients to think differently as well. The perspective with which the Honda team employed toward their racecar should be applied to the way you “engineer” improvements in your marketing for law firms and client prospect response. Conventional thinking in racing is, “The way to increase speed is to increase horsepower.” In attorney advertising conventional thinking says “To increase leads throw more marketing dollars into more media outlets with more frequency.” By thinking differently—taking a F1 engineer’s perspective…a car manufacturer can increase speed most efficiently by reducing drag and improving aerodynamics. With this perspective, a law firm can “reduce drag” and increase leads by:
- Improving the efficiency of the media buy to increase frequency only in places known to generate leads.
- Improving the creative quality and “ask” to increase the likelihood of lead conversion.
- Improving the quality of digital media to connect with and inform potential and current clients to get more leads, and better cases.
Apply an engineering perspective toward advertising your law firm. Improve the EFFICIENCY of your Media Buy
Improve the efficiency of the media buy to advertise your law firm by price negotiation and media tracking
- Negotiate your media buy, hard, from the start.The media sales reps want to get as much for their programming as possible and they will always start high. There is always wiggle room in the pricing, but you will not get it if you do not ask for a discount.
- Track every day, every station, every spot, every hour and every program. After the progress has been tracked, then improvements and refinements can be made—based upon the data collected. You’ll see it in the numbers. You can make very strategic refinements because you hold the data.
The Kirkpatrick Creative advantage is that we have the dedicated software system to harvest marketing for law firms. Our proprietary analytical process has tracked viewer response for our law firm advertising over a span of thousands of days, stations, spots, hours, and programs. We know what works best for law firms. We don’t guess. It’s in the data… “We know where to pick up those tenths of a second.” We know what works best and we can prove it.
Improving the Creative Quality in the Advertisement Itself
The second way to reduce drag is to improve the creative quality in the advertisement itself. Testing your commercials against themselves — simple A/B testing will yield valuable information and increase the likelihood of conversion for law firm prospect response. Again, we have run thousands of spots with all kinds of creative variations. We hold proven techniques that increase call conversions.
- These techniques are key factors in measuring the effectiveness of a media buy and a commercial: it’s simply in how many conversions, or prospect leads, that it produced.
- It does not matter how many people saw it or liked it, if it did not produce case-prospect leads @ an efficient cost it is worthless. If your spots are generating leads, but the cost for that lead is high, you have wasted the firm’s money—and you may have been consistently misspending it for years.
- We do not waste money. We deeply respect the value of the investment our law firm clients are expending when they trust us with an advertising budget. We know our spots generate more leads and we can prove it.
Improving Digital Media
Lastly, we push digital media to connect with and inform potential and current clients. Digital or online media is not new, but is the fastest developing medium available. Through television and other traditional media we drive potential client prospects online to research our firms. These prospects can be further educated and connect with the firm further. After the conversion, we want to keep the client connected to the firm through social media, which will increase referrals. Digital media is an invaluable tool for lead conversion—turning advertising prospects into clients and cases for the firm. We know the way to drive more visitors to our client’s sites and we know how to convert them into clients for the firm when they get there.
Shaving the Corners
When we first began this process we were originally looking for one place that produced 100 leads. We did not find that—but what we did find was more valuable. We found 100 places that produced one lead and equally important 100 places that produced zero leads. Immediately we can tell where money is being spent producing leads and where money is being wasted.
None of this is glamorous… picking up one more phone call for a truck wreck, one more internet lead for a personal injury case, one more chat lead for a bankruptcy client. But refinements pick up leads that in the aggregate, ensure consistent growth for your law firm through advertising planned and refined with a database process.
The process will build your firm’s caseload.