If you’re still thinking about TV advertising the way you did five years ago, you could be missing out on some major opportunities for your brand.
You might assume, for example, that TV advertising is too expensive or complex for your personal injury law firm. After all, with streaming services, cable, and on-demand, the way people watch TV has fundamentally changed. With this fragmented landscape, it’s natural to question whether TV advertising can still effectively reach your target audience.
Recently, the PI Playbook team chatted with Laura Hudson, VP of Media Services at cj Advertising, about the state of TV advertising. Click below to listen to the whole episode, and read on to glean some of the conversation’s top-level insights. Listen today.
The New TV Landscape
When COVID hit in 2020, it shifted how people consumed all forms of media, including television. Hudson explains that the pandemic “pushed the entire industry forward by probably a few years,” accelerating changes that had been building since 2016. But here’s what most people get wrong: streaming’s massive growth during this time doesn’t mean “linear” TV died off.
In reality, the numbers show a 50-50 split between linear and streaming viewership. But here’s the key difference that matters for your firm: that 50% watching linear TV represents a consolidated, targetable audience, while the streaming 50% is fragmented across a huge array of platforms, shows, screen sizes, and devices. As Hudson puts it, “You’ve got so many platforms. The number of platforms rivals the number of cable networks. And then within each platform, you’ve got so many options.”
For personal injury firms focusing on TV, or what Hudson calls “the biggest screen in the house,” streaming’s fragmentation makes linear television’s strengths more obvious. While streaming whispers to small, scattered audiences, linear TV remains “a very loud megaphone” that can reach substantial numbers of people with the consistency needed for effective brand building.
Busting the Daytime TV Myth
Perhaps no misconception about TV advertising is more costly than attorneys’ aversion to daytime television. The problem, Hudson explains, is simple: “They avoid it because they don’t see it. They don’t watch it. Their friends don’t watch it.” So, it’s easy to assume that no one is watching it.
But while you’re at work running your practice, a different audience is at home watching TV. This audience is, coincidentally, an audience that is more likely to be the people who need your services. “You’re not sitting at home watching TV. You haven’t been injured in an accident,” Hudson points out. “But that’s where the people are that need you.” This creates what Hudson calls “high-intent viewers.” Daytime TV has lower ratings than primetime, but it reaches exactly the audience a personal injury attorney needs.
More importantly, daytime TV is accessible to smaller firms. Says Hudson, daytime television is “pretty inexpensive to reach a lot of people,” making it an ideal starting point for building your brand, getting new leads, and generating goodwill and word-of-mouth advertising.
Strategic Approaches to TV Advertising
Maybe now you’re convinced that TV advertising has a place in your marketing strategy, but you don’t know where to start—your digital marketing strategy doesn’t necessarily translate to linear TV perfectly. So, how should you approach it?
According to Hudson, the difference between digital and linear TV advertising has to do with persistence and consistency. In other words, consistency on a long-enough timescale wins; that means committing to three to six months of consistent presence, even if it doesn’t seem to work at first. “Don’t give up after a month if you haven’t seen something,” says Hudson. You’ve got to give it time to really get its claws into the market and work.”
TV advertising also works best as part of an integrated approach. Hudson points toward internal data showing spikes in branded search when clients add morning news to their media mix. The branded traffic that TV drives to your website—the most valuable kind of search traffic—makes your digital marketing arm more effective. That’s why Hudson emphasizes that a strong brand that’s consistent across all channels matters: “Whether that’s your spokesperson, your phone number, whatever your branding elements are—make sure they’re consistent across all media so that they all complement each other.”
Ready to Explore TV Advertising for Your Firm?
This summary only scratches the surface of Laura Hudson’s insights on the evolving TV advertising landscape for personal injury firms. To hear the full conversation, including her thoughts on streaming targeting capabilities, specific daypart strategies, and what she wishes every PI attorney understood about TV today, listen to the complete episode of the PI Playbook podcast with host Stephanie Koehler.
If you’re ready to explore how TV advertising might fit into your firm’s marketing strategy, our brand strategists can help you develop an approach that maximizes both your traditional and digital marketing investments. Contact us today to get started.
