Great news! I just scored you 50 free 30-second radio spots on a top-rated drive time radio show! You don’t have to pay a dime. (Not really.)
You can run a commercial for your law practice and bring in lots of new clients. It doesn’t matter what kind of practice you have, or if you’ve never advertised and can’t imagine doing so, this is free advertising, so say thank you and use it! (I’m just playin, but I have a point.)
There’s just one catch. (My fantasy, my rules.) You have to write the commercial yourself. (Horrors!)
The point of this exercise is to help you better understand what you offer your clients, and why they should hire you. Work with me, k?
I’ll help you get started. Here are some guidelines for creating your commercial:
1) CALL TO ACTION
Start with what you want the listener to do. Call your office to make an appointment? Call to ask questions? Call to request your free report? Go to your website to download your free report? Sign up for your seminar? A combination of the above? Something else?
Start with the end in mind. Writing your commercial will be easier because you know what you want to accomplish.
2) HEADLINE
What’s the first thing the actor who reads the spot (or you, if you record this yourself) will say to listeners to get their attention? Will they/you promise a benefit? Ask a question? Make a provocative statement?
Your headline is the most important part of your commercial, so make it great. If you don’t get the listener’s attention and make them want to listen, the rest of your ad won’t matter.
3) COPY
You only have 30 seconds, and yet that’s plenty of time to tell listeners what you want them to know about you and your services, about your report, or about something else that causes them to take action.
Will you tell a story about one of your recent clients? Will you talk about recent or pending changes in the law that will affect them? Will you warm them about something, or promise to help them get something they want and need?
A classic ad formula:
- State the problem. What is the listener facing, or what might happen in the future?
- Agitate the problem. What will happen if they ignore it, etc. How bad could it get?
- Present the solution. Your offer, your services, your report, your seminar, etc.
- State the benefits of this solution. What will they learn, gain, stop, prevent, etc?
- Tell them what to do to get the solution and benefits. This is your call to action.
Make notes about what to include in your ad. Then, start typing or recording, and don’t stop until you run out of things to say. Pretend you’re talking to a roomful of prospective clients. What do you want to tell them?
Now what? Now, throw this away. You’re not a copy writer and I didn’t score you any free advertising.
Okay, don’t throw it away. Hang onto it, so that when you decide you do want to advertise, you’ll have a place to start, or something to give to the copy writer you hire. You can also use your notes as fodder for creating other marketing documents.
That’s all for today. Fantasy over. Get back to work.
