Lawyer Yellow Page Advertising - Will the book doom your quality of life?
September 19, 8:16 AM by Dan Jaffe, Law Practice Examiner
A lawyer friend I saw in court last week looked bad. He was stressed out as usual, and seemed about to blow up with frustration at any moment. As we were waiting to speak with the prosecutor about our clients' cases, I inquired about his woes.
Turns out his yellow page advertisements were not paying off. Again.
"I'm in for $20,000.00 per month this year, and some months the ads aren't even doing that," he said, shaking his head.
To put that into perspective, 20-grand is over ten times the size of my yearly law office advertising budget. A solo practitioner grossing 20-grand a month is not doing bad financially as long as their overhead is low.
"That's more yellow page advertising than you did last year," I said, confused. I decided not to ask him what were you thinking?!?
"My yellow pages rep promised me that my problem was positioning. The only way to get better positioning was to pay more. I decided to give it one more try." He shrugged and his voice trailed off.
It wasn't the yellow pages rep that got my friend. It was his fear of the unknown. It was his fear that if he turned off his ads and fired the yellow pages, that suddenly all the other lawyers in the books would get a flood of business that should have been his. So instead of investing in his quality of life and making the sensible decision to eliminate ineffective lawyer marketing, he pressed on, knowing it was futile. He willed himself to believe that this year might be the breakthrough year for him in yellow page advertising. Of course he is delusional.
What is the first step in breaking free of bad advertising for your law firm?
You have to have the freedom to do it. Just as it is risky to commit tens of thousands of dollars to monthly advertising, once those ads are in place, it seems risky to just stop the ads. But it is not risky if they are not working effectively. But before you shut one door behind you, it makes sense to know where you will go next. Assess the more effective ways to get your message out there, such as attorney websites and networking groups. Talk to other lawyers who don't spend a penny on advertising and still thrive in their practice. Give me a call, and I'm happy to talk about it with you.
Next, you have to have a financial plan. If your staff is large because of your yellow page advertising, then you may need to think about scaling down in that regard. What about your office size? If you needed two extra desks for receptionists to answer the flood of free-advice-seekers that yellow page ads attract, you may not need those when you switch to more effective forms of lawyer advertising.
As you "cut the fat" from your practice, you may feel liberated. You may realize that you have been working for the yellow pages and not for yourself. You can take home the same amount of money while grossing 240k less if you cut your advertising budget by 20k per month.
You must first have the will to quite the yellow pages if they aren't working for you. Where there's a will, there's a way. Future articles will address the way.
