A Comprehensive Guide for Family Law Advertising

In 2023, the revenue of the Family Law and Divorce Lawyers and attorneys industry reached a staggering $12.8 billion, marking a 1.4% increase from 2022. Given the significance of this field, effective advertising becomes crucial for law firms seeking to thrive in this competitive landscape.

Why is Family Law Advertising Important?

For the general public, legal advertising is vital in improving access to legal services, educating the public, and empowering victims. Effective law firm advertising and marketing not only increase brand loyalty and draw in new customers but also play a pivotal role in measuring overall business success and building brand equity. It’s also essential in achieving several marketing goals and brand KPIs, including: 

Increase Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is the cornerstone of successful marketing strategies. It represents the extent to which consumers recognize and recall a brand, especially when they need a family law firm’s services. 

By establishing a strong brand presence through effective cross-channel advertising and marketing efforts, family law firms can demonstrate their expertise, build lasting relationships with clients, generate referrals, and build trust with clients and potential clients facing significant personal legal matters.

Building Trust

Family law cases often involve deeply personal and emotionally charged issues such as divorce, child custody, and domestic violence. Clients need to feel confident that their attorney understands their concerns, empathizes with their situation, is committed to advocating for their best interests, can guide them through complex legal processes, and represents them effectively in court. 

Advertising is a powerful tool for family law firms to build trust and brand safety. It allows them to showcase their expertise, experience, and successful case outcomes, establish credibility, and demonstrate a capability to handle clients’ legal matters competently.

However, family law firms must ensure that their advertising aligns with their values, ethics, and professional standards. Misleading or overly aggressive advertising tactics can backfire and undermine trust with potential clients. Ultimately, credibility in advertising is about striking the right balance between effectively promoting the firm’s services and maintaining integrity and authenticity in all communications.

Build Brand Loyalty

Consistent advertising fosters trust and loyalty among existing clients, encouraging repeat business and referrals. This is especially important since, according to Harvard Business Review, generating a new customer can be 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. 

Connect with New Clients

Advertising is a powerful tool for reaching and engaging with new audiences. By strategically targeting their marketing efforts, family law firms can connect with individuals who need their services. However, it’s important to note that family law requires a delicate and empathetic approach. Advertising campaigns should reflect this uniqueness by humanizing the firm and emphasizing its commitment to supporting clients through challenging times.

Enhance Brand Equity

A strong brand presence and reputation can differentiate a law firm from competitors and increase its perceived value in the marketplace.

Measure Success

Advertising allows firms to track the success of their marketing efforts, enabling data-driven decision-making and optimization.

Strategies for Family Law Advertising 

Regular advertising is vital for family lawyers to stay top-of-mind for individuals who may require legal assistance. It not only maintains brand visibility but also helps establish credibility. When someone needs a lawyer fluent in family law, they are more likely to consider those whose services they are already familiar with. Advertising also enables firms to extend their reach beyond word-of-mouth referrals. By utilizing various advertising channels, such as TV, radio, online, and print media, lawyers can reach a broader audience and increase their chances of connecting with potential clients.

On average, legal firms invest 49% of their yearly budget on marketing. Let’s break that down. Law firms spend:

• 19% of marketing budgets on print and billboard ads
• 17% on TV advertising  
• 14% on podcast/radio commercials
• 10% on other initiatives

Now, let’s dive deeper into these tactics to see their effectiveness and how a law firm should allocate its marketing and advertising budget.

Print & Billboard Ads

Billboards and print ads are law firms’ most popular marketing tactics and can be practical tools for increasing brand visibility, reaching a local audience, and establishing credibility. However, their effectiveness may vary depending on placement, design, messaging, and integration with other marketing efforts.

It’s important to note that billboards and print ads can be practical components of a marketing strategy. Still, they are often more effective with other marketing channels discussed next. 

Local Television Advertising

Local television advertising is essential for family law firms. These channels typically cover news, sports, weather, entertainment, and other programming and offer a few different advertising formats to reach the local community. These include the traditional 15 to 30-second commercials, and advertisers can air these ads during programs that attract their target audience or when viewership is high.

Advertisers can sponsor specific programs or events, like live sports, or appear on Lifestyle shows with sponsored content to offer a more in-depth look at the firm than would be possible in a 15 or 30-second spot. 

These strategies help increase brand visibility and association with popular content. They can also help lawyers benefit from the halo effect, in which trust in local TV content extends to brands and helps build confidence in regional markets. Viewers often trust news sources, so when they see a lawyer’s advertisement during a news program, they may be more inclined to trust that lawyer with their case.

Streaming Television Advertising

Streaming television advertising, also known as Over-the-Top (OTT) or Connected TV (CTV), offers lawyers several advantages. It provides the same benefits as broadcast TV but with the added advantage of advanced targeting, extended reach, unduplicated audience, and measurable results. These benefits can significantly enhance a law firm’s marketing efforts.

• Advanced Targeting: Capture audiences that can’t be reached through broadcast alone—like cord-cutters, cord-nevers, and those who watch on gaming consoles or through streaming sticks, CTVs, or laptops. With streaming TV advertising, law firms can also narrow target audiences based on DMA or geography, from regions and states to ZIP codes, consumer trends such as interests, intenders, in-market shoppers, and more.
• Extended Reach: When added to a broadcast TV advertising campaign, streaming lets law firms expand their reach to capture audiences that can’t be reached through broadcast alone—like cord-cutters, cord-nevers, and those who watch on gaming consoles or through streaming sticks, CTVs, or laptops.
• Unduplicated Audience: When adding a second platform to a campaign, there may be worry that an ad is being shown to the same audience, fearing burnout. On average, our friends at PREMION deliver 85% unduplicated reach – meaning only 15% of the CTV and OTT viewers also saw the ad on linear TV.
  
• Measurable Results: Linear and streaming TV ad campaign results are now measurable with a tool like TEGNA Attribution. This measurement tool allows our partners to measure the effectiveness of their TV and OTT campaigns by connecting viewing behaviors to engagement metrics, such as website visits, app downloads, and more.  

Video Advertising

Video advertising is a vital part of an effective content marketing strategy and can be used to achieve various marketing objectives as part of a larger strategy. For example, video creation can be relatively low-cost, utilizing a phone and free video editing apps. Videos like these can also appear on several channels, including broadcast and streaming TV and digital channels like YouTube, social media sites, and other websites via contextual or native advertising. 

Combine the Power of Digital and TV

Combining broadcast, streaming, and digital for a cross-channel marketing campaign allows law firms to reach a wider audience, target specific demographics, increase brand awareness, adapt to consumer behavior, optimize campaign performance, maintain message consistency, and capture audience attention in today’s multi-channel media landscape.

• Maximizing Reach: By combining broadcast, streaming, and digital platforms, law firms can maximize their reach and ensure that a diverse audience and potential clients see their messaging.
• Adapting to Consumer Behavior: Today, content consumption is across various platforms and devices. With a cross-channel strategy, law firms can meet consumers where they are and adapt to changing media consumption habits.
• Capturing Audience Attention: Different platforms offer unique opportunities to capture audience attention. Broadcast TV allows for high-impact, visually engaging ads, while streaming and digital platforms provide interactive and personalized advertising experiences. By leveraging the strengths of each platform, law firms can create more engaging and memorable ad campaigns.

Effective Family Law Advertising Examples from TEGNA

TEGNA’s advertising partners have demonstrated innovative and effective marketing strategies tailored to family law. They leverage various advertising channels to connect with their target audience and drive business growth. Let’s take a look at a few examples. 

The Super Lawyer, Reginald Greene
Why it Works: The Super Lawyer, Reginald Greene, teamed with the marketing experts at TEGNA’s WXIA to create an ad that grabs attention, elicits emotion, and includes the firm’s track record of wins by showcasing client testimonials. 

Phillips, Hunt, Walker & Hannah Enlist First Coast News to Educate the Public on New Child Custody Laws
Why it Works: Sponsoring content and appearing on-air with their local news station personalities, Phillips, Hunt, Walker & Hannah, not only benefits from the halo effect, but they build brand awareness and trust with the local community by putting a face with the name and providing valuable public education in a way that a traditional 30-second might now otherwise allow. 

Boudreaux Hunter & Associates, LLC, Enlists KHOU’s Great Day Texas to Help Viewers Understand Family Law for Same-Sex Unions
Why it Works: As we see in the above example, this firm also worked with their local TV news station to sponsor long-form content that can be repurposed for streaming and digital channels for expanded reach and more exposure to create brand awareness. 

Supercharge Your Family Law Advertising with TEGNA

By embracing the power of visual storytelling, legal professionals can improve awareness, establish credibility, and differentiate themselves in a competitive landscape. With the right strategies and a comprehensive approach, video marketing for lawyers can become a cornerstone of a successful legal advertising campaign. 

At TEGNA, we have legal marketing experts at our 64 local TV news stations in 51 markets who can help you build a great campaign to bring in new clients and grow your business. With broadcast TV, streaming, and digital advertising options available with TEGNA, you’ll have plenty of valuable ways to stay top of mind when clients need legal advice. Contact us today to learn how we can help elevate your law firm’s marketing strategy.