There are a great many online businesses which spend much of their advertising budget, if not the bulk of it on TV advertising to bring traffic to their websites.

TV viewers are quite familiar with some of the largest online advertisers, Vonage.com, Monster.com, Ameritrade, Netflix, Scotttrade, LendingTree.com and Ditech.com. In fact, your knowledge of these brands probably emanates from TV advertising.

Recently, in an effort to attract more potential clients to their website, Lawyers.com began advertising on TV and joined the list of other website companies to advertise on TV. I’ve been saying for a long time that online directories can work well for lawyers, but they are usually overpriced and cannot produce a large enough stream of clients for the price.

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Lawyers have a lot of common sense. It’s probably the single most important trait of a lawyer, but when it comes to issues outside the scope of a client matter, some lawyers get lazy and put away their common sense.

I was at a seminar on May 20, 2008 about attorney advertising on the Web, where FindLaw was the featured speaker/presenter. FindLaw was presenting some useful information about websites and website advertising, but they also were promoting FindLaw websites for attorneys.

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On March 3, 2008, Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s anti-spam team made several predictions for 2008, one of which was, “A top-level domain (TLD registry) will offer domains for under $4. The result will be another TLD blighted by spammy domain registrations.”

Because of the low cost of .info top-level domain names, they have been used by spammy web masters. What are spammy websites? That’s a topic for another article, but basically they are worthless websites, designed only to make money for the webmaster and which Google has no interest in presenting to their users. You can read about some of the characteristics of spammy websites here.

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Do you know how many potential clients you are losing because their e-mails are returned undelivered? I believe lawyers don’t really need new clients because eliminating spam e-mail seems to be more important.

I do TV advertising for personal injury lawyers and marketing for criminal lawyers. I often send e-mails to lawyers who request information or with attached files, such as an agreement. My e-mails are frequently returned as suspected spam or virus content.

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Many lawyers tell me that they would like to try TV advertising or billboards for a month. If it’s working at the end of the month, they will continue. When these lawyers consider if their advertising is going well, they look at the number of calls they received and want to see that enough clients were retained. Many of these lawyers will be disappointed and go away happy that they cut their losses, never realizing that they really cut their profits.

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Many legal practice consultants advise attorneys to cross sell legal services to their existing clients. For example, I, as a personal injury lawyer, could let my clients know that my law firm also represents clients for immigration, divorce and bankruptcy. It sounds like a good way to generate new business. Even if you don’t practice in those fields, you can refer these clients to other lawyers and get paid without doing any work. But it’s actually counterproductive.

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Lawyers are often as afraid of advertising as playing Roulette. Try it for a month and if there’s no winnings, cut your losses! The casinos aren’t worried. To them it’s all business. They know they will lose big every now and then, but overall, they know, and control, the exact percentage of profit on each game.

Just how much of a return on investment should you earn from advertising? Do you expect to spend $12,000 a month on advertising and earn $50,000 every month? After watching the CBS News “Sunday Morning” show about drug advertising, I decided to take a look at what their happy with.

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The first rule of both marketing and advertising is to make it as easy as possible for your customers, or clients, to contact you, yet some law offices are actually turning away new clients.

Last week a large personal injury law firm, interested in advertising on TV, found my other website and sent me an e-mail requesting that I call with more information about 1-800-HURT-911. I called them from my private phone line, instead of my office phone line. Because my private line has caller ID blocked, I heard “Your call has been properly delivered but the party you are trying to reach is not accepting calls from callers who do not allow delivery of their telephone number.”

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Today, a friend who is a collection lawyer in New Jersey, told me a story about a woman who he represented for free. The woman was previously represented by a New York lawyer in the Bronx who stole her entire $25,000 settlement. The client, on her own, obtained a default judgment against the lawyer but was unable to collect any money. My friend successfully obtained reimbursment for her from the New York State attorney-client fund.

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Strict new lawyer advertising ethics rules are being proposed in New York, I suppose to improve the image of lawyers in the eyes of the public. The rules will become effective November 1, 2006. Will new lawyer advertising ethics rules have any effect on shaping the look of lawyer advertising or improving the image of lawyers? It depends upon the creativity of the lawyer or the advertising agency.

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An e-mail was just sent out to advertisers participating in Yahoo! Search Marketing, formally known as Overture, advising of the proposed class action settlement for bidders advertising during the period of January 1, 1998 in July 31, 2006.

Affected bidders should submit the Assertion of Right to Participate in Additional Claims Review Process form by November 20, 2006, indicating that you intend to file a claim form for Yahoo! advertising credits and give up your ability to sue Yahoo! over the subject matter of this case. The Assertion of Right to Participate form is available for download at
www.checkmatesettlement.com.

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When there is little competition, business is easy and brute force advertising, using lots of money, works. But, when the going gets tough, brute force is destined for failure.

When the competition intensifies, differentiation decides success or failure. A few large companies may survive by increasing brute force, but most will fail. Companies that differentiate themselves and their service or their products will not only survive, but will succeed.

When the first IBM PC came on the market, there was little competition and IBM had the funds for brute force advertising. When the competition got tough years later, brute force advertising stopped working and instead of differentiating their product, IBM simply pulled out of the PC market.

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It may seem like a good idea. You can save the 15% advertising agency commission and you can save a lot more than that if you end up with an unscrupulous advertising agency that substantially marks up the media time and then charges a commission on top of that.

The truth is that buying your own TV media time is a huge mistake, unless your law firm is large enough for an in-house professional media buyer. Buying your own TV media time is equivalent to your client being his or her own lawyer. Not only does it require experience, knowledge and services you don’t have, but it is much more work than you think, requiring time you don’t have.

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Yesterday, Imus was interviewing George Carlin on MSNBC. Joking about some future catastrophe, George Carlin said he expected to wake up some morning and see it on CNN. He could’ve said that he would expect to see it on MSNBC, especially since he was appearing on MSNBC, but he said he would expect to see it on CNN because CNN is the dominant brand in his mind.

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It has been reported that Cellino & Barnes, a law firm in western New York, has approximately 150 billboards advertising their law firm. Of course, the law firm name of Cellino & Barnes is prominently displayed on the billboards. Recently, one of its principal attorneys Ross M. Cellino was suspended for six months from the practice of law.

The Appellate Division, 4th Department said that an attorney who is suspended cannot hold himself out as a lawyer. Consequently, the law firm changed its name to The Barnes Firm and and will now have to change every one of its billboards. At a cost of approximately $1,000 in printing and installation costs to change a large billboard, this will cost the law firm just a few dollars to change approximately 150 billboards.

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