How to Draft Advertisements For Solicitors

By Nicholas Jervis

Advertising is easy. If your advertisements are not producing results, change them. If they continue to fail, stop them. This is the simple rule of advertising that if you practise, could save your solicitors practice literally thousands of pounds in wasted advertising revenue every year.

So if you want to change your advertisement to improve it's response, how will you do this?

1. Know What You Want To Achieve

"You have to have a goal to score" says Sir Alan Sugar. If you know what you are trying to achieve you have a chance of success. If you do not set out what will be successful, you will never know if the money you are spending on advertising your solicitors practice is providing any return on your investment. Ask yourself what you are trying to achieve. For most practices the answer is simple: to attract new clients. If you are trying to attract new clients, you have to completely put yourself in the shoes of your potential client, identify a pain or need for them, and then communicate in their language.

If this is the case, and it is, why do so many solicitors' advertisements have their practice name prominently placed at the top of them?

e.g. -

ABC & CO SOLICITORS

We solve all your legal problems:

Conveyancing

Personal injury

Employment

Address etc

If your advertisements look anything like this, please immediately change them as I guarantee that you are wasting your budget. If you are not a multi national practice with a huge marketing budget, you must only focus on Direct Response Advertising. The only action you should be looking for is making your potential clients contact you to ask about your services. If you can get an instruction immediately, all well and good but that will not always be possible. But if you offer something of interest to your potential clients they will contact you. Once they do that and give their permission to hear from you, you can keep in contact with them month after month until they have a need for your legal services. It should be easy, so follow the formula below and your advertisements will improve. If they do not, you may be using the wrong publication for your target audience.

Follow the basic advertising formula AIDA:

Attention

Interest

Desire

Action

Attention

The headline must speak of benefits and grab ATTENTION,

e.g.: "Discover How to Move House the Stress Free Way!"

Interest

Once you have set the tone, you need to develop the INTEREST of your prospects and highlight their fears around the service you are selling,

e.g.: "Moving house is one of the most stressful experiences you will ever experience."

Desire

Now we have to create the DESIRE to interact with you and to take things to the next level. This part is critical, you must play on the fear and provide an answer to allay your potential clients fears.

eg. "We have prepared a 15 page booklet which takes you through the process from start to finish, warning you of all the potential pitfalls and how to avoid them. This booklet uses our experience gained by helping over 5000 people move house in the last X years."

Action

The all important action part. If you have done your job properly up to this point, you have no reached the easy part. Provide them with a call to action to secure your new relationship with you potential clients.

"Request the free guide now by calling us on xxx or emailing xxx"

This can be any call to action, e.g. by emailing, telephoning, or even better visiting your website where they will see how else you can help them.

Summary

If you do nothing else on marketing your solicitors practice than follow the advice above, you will dramatically improve the marketing of your solicitors practice. If you leave your advertisements as they have been for the last few years, you can expect the same, and often worse, results. Make the change today!

For a free marketing guide for Solicitors "Solicitors Guide: 8 Ways To Instantly Increase Your Profits, visit Legal Marketing. Nicholas Jervis is a solicitor (non-practising) and a director of Samson Consulting, a legal marketing consultancy for solicitors.