Lawyers 101: Riches in Niches
One of the most crowded professions in the advertising field is Legal Services especially in the very lucrative area of personal injury law. Regardless of the city you’re in, you will see personal injury attorney billboards, hear their radio ads, see their on-air commercials and often find them in any variety of printed media.
The nature of that particular business of law demands a regularly filled pipeline of new clients with cases to manage. This means casting a wide-net to get as many eyeballs on your advertisements as possible. Many times there is also an ego-element to the campaign; whoever is the biggest and spends the most is likely to be the most successful (and recognizable). Lawyers are often very territorial in recruiting clients so their marketing efforts reflect that with high competitive spending elements across the media landscape. Typically if an attorney isn’t the “BIGGEST fish in a small pond” as discussed in a previous blog, they will use their advertising budget by spreading it all across a given market hoping to catch a lead or two. Every eyeball that lands on a piece of advertising media is a potential client - perhaps not even right away but a future client.
Instead, an attorney or firm is better suited to identify a niche that the "big fish” have left open through their generic branding. Every time one of those well known PI attorneys runs a commercial that says, “Call me, Chicago” or “One Call, That’s All” they leave the door open for smaller firms to scoop up market share by focusing on a niche. The pendulum swings exposing an opportunity to capture clients.
Let me explain- pregnancy discrimination is (sadly) a common case that continues to happen in the workforce. A woman will be fired from a job instead of being offered accommodations, or, she will be passed over for a job because she’s pregnant in lieu of someone less qualified. Despite all the awareness and laws to prevent such actions, according to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, these cases have increased by over 35% in the past decade alone.
If, unlike those big fish, your marketing budget isn’t diverse and wide casting, there is an opportunity for you to speak to these women directly and win the opportunity from the bigger firms. It may be something as simple as asking, “were you fired at work for being pregnant” then registering a domain name targeted to that particular segment (www.firedforpregnancy.com, it’s available, I looked) for simpler recall.
The point is while the big fish are getting lots of face recognition on billboards, here are still plenty of riches in niches. If your marketing efforts are just yelling a branded message into a megaphone just like everyone else, you and your marketing efforts will be clobbered by the big players. At that point you might just light your marketing dollars on fire. Call Chicago Style Media for more on how to advertise wisely so you can reap the riches in niches without losing your message (and potential clients) to the big fish.
