Overheard a junior lawyer scoff at the idea of print ads last week

I was at that Legal Marketing Association lunch last Thursday and caught a young associate saying print is dead for law firms. He was talking about how his firm cut their Yellow Pages spend to zero last year. But I've got a family law client who still sends out those quarterly brochures to past clients and gets two or three retainer calls from each batch. It's not about print versus digital for me anymore. It's about knowing what your actual client base reads and trusts. Has anyone else found a niche where old-school ads still pull their weight?

3 comments

3 Comments

piper7791mo ago

My dentist still mails out those little appointment reminder cards and his waiting room is always packed. People say print is dead, but in my experience a physical thing sitting on the counter can get a look that an email never does. Your mileage may vary, but I think some folks just trust something they can hold in their hand longer than a screen.

hill.margaret1mo ago

physical thing sitting on the counter can get a look that an email never does" - that's exactly it. My buddy runs a little plumbing company and he was banging his head against the wall with Facebook ads. Dude was about to give up and then his wife suggested he mail out those fridge magnet business cards with the calendar on them to every house in their zip code. He did a small batch first, like 500 of them, and his phone started ringing off the hook for two weeks straight. People would call and literally say "we got your magnet and our toilet started acting up the next day." He still does it every year now.

avery_jackson1mo agoTop Commenter

Yeah I've seen this play out a bunch of times. The trick is figuring out where your clients actually hang out offline, not assuming everything moved to screens. For personal injury guys, those local church bulletins and senior center newsletters still pull serious weight because that's where their referral base reads. I've got a real estate attorney buddy who swears by his half page in the small town paper, says it brings in more local seller leads than his Google ads. If you track it right and test a small run before going big, print can still pay for itself easy.