Chris Dreyer:
Follow the money. Broadcast TV is still the number one category of spend today.
Sarah Parisi:
You also want to make sure that your brand has a unique message and it is memorable.
Chris Dreyer:
Everybody talks about TV as just brand, but I wanted to highlight how you like to buy. Talk to me about that strategy a little bit.
Sarah Parisi:
10A to 4P is really was my sweet spot. I was saying that's Monday through Friday. Those are the direct response hours during the week and how that differentiates from branding is really from a creative stance. I want to really hammer home the fact that broadcast TV still remains at the top.
Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. Let's get into it. TV isn't dead, it's just evolved. In this webinar replay, media buying expert Sarah Parisi shows how top law firms are using broadcast to dominate their markets while keeping ad costs low. Let's go.
Ken Mafli:
Hello everyone and welcome to Rankings live virtual event where we'll be discussing how you can master broadcast TV ads by leveraging the right strategies to come under budget and reach your most valuable clients. I'm Ken Mafli, the director of Demand Generation with here at Rankings and I'll be your host for today. Before we get started, I'd like to introduce you to our speakers. First up we have Chris Dreyer. Chris is our CEO and founder here at Rankings. He's built Rankings to be an elite law firm marketing agency that works with some of the biggest PI firms in the country, enabling them to dominate their core market. He's also the host of the podcast Personal Injury Mastermind, author of the book Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing: From Good to GOAT, and a member of multiple leadership councils including the Forbes Agency Counsel, the Rolling Stones Culture Council, the Business Journal's Leadership Trust, Fast Company's Executive Board, and the Newsweek Expert Forum. Welcome, Chris.
Next up, we have Sarah Parisi. With over 15 years of media buying experience in the legal sector, Sarah is a true expert in her field. Whether your firm is brand new to traditional marketing or already has an existing presence, Sarah will take your media investments to the next level. She ensures that you're strategically scaled to grow by producing a media buy in constant evolution. She's not your average media buyer folks. She is setting the bar as a true steward of funding for your marketing investments. Her southern accent larger than life personality and years of experience means you'll never think of media buying the same way again. Welcome Sarah. To start things off, however, I would like to set the stage. In today's rapidly evolving media landscape, law firms face unprecedented challenges and opportunities in TV advertising. While digital platforms continue to proliferate, broadcast television remains a powerful medium for legal marketing, particularly for firms seeking to establish a strong brand presence and generate immediate client responses.
In fact, broadcast TV makes up 68% of the average person's daily video watching. That means it beats out online content, YouTube or even Facebook. Traditional TV maintains significant relevance, again, particularly for law firms. People still want access to their live news and local sports folks. It's the number one distribution channel for building a brand, generating leads and maintaining a low CPM with high distribution rates. But I know what you're thinking. Streaming is better than broadcast TV. Everybody knows this. Well, like any good host, I'm going to drop that thorny question like a hot potato and hand it off to Chris and Sarah to answer that, but I will be back for the Q&A time. So Sarah, I'll let you take it from here.
Sarah Parisi:
Awesome, thank you so much. That was great. I loved the handoff. As we evolve in this conversation, not to say that streaming doesn't have a home in your media rotation, but I want to really hammer home the fact that broadcast TV still remains at the top. So Chris, I'm glad you're along for the ride with me here. I'm going to be going through a lot, just a couple of insights, actually more than a couple, but the number one that we're going to talk about first is just the cost and efficiency in TV advertising and that segue from Ken really allows me to speak to that. The number one part that separates streaming from broadcast would be the cost analysis and the higher premiums that come with streaming versus broadcast television.
So streaming services are going to average you around anywhere between 17 to $30 cost per thousands, but within on your local DMAs, which is your designated market areas, those are going to average more along the lines of $6 cost per thousand if you have a good media buying team. Coupling that with negotiation tactics, getting those rates where you're getting that right clearance percentage, you're negotiating in additional packages and free bonus spots, any types of added value to input back onto the campaign. That's really where broadcast TV shines and you get more bang for your buck.
Chris Dreyer:
The biggest thing here is follow the money. You've heard that before in movies and other things like that. Broadcast TV is still the number one category of spend today, not in the past. It's the number one spend and when you look at the markets, whether you're Vivvix or I think they rebranded the MediaRadar.
Sarah Parisi:
MediaRadar.
Chris Dreyer:
When you look at the spends and you see the firms that are the number one through three, they're typically the biggest firms in their designated marketing area, and so it's follow the money, that's where the spend goes and there's a reason for it even today.
Sarah Parisi:
And when you're going off of that big market. So I've actually been coming through a lot of the data. I do it weekly actually, and one of the larger markets to pop out at me just with a huge battle for that share of voice was Orlando. The competition and the amount of saturation within one market really speaks to the power that broadcast TV has. When you're going into these larger markets, the first thing is the significant capital that it takes for TV and billboard advertising that it's required in order for you guys to stand out in those crowded markets and break through the noise.
That percentage of share of voice is going to garner you those positions with amongst your competition and bring your brand to the for top of mind of awareness, not just having the most spend, but you also want to make sure that your brand has a unique message and it is memorable. It's something that the audience can relate to and that when they're in a time of need, it comes back to them and they recall this instant from their brain. They're like, oh yeah, I remember this. I saw this on TV, and it's just the hammering home of that message, so they really remember you in times where your services are needed.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, that's great. So let me ask the... I'm going to try to wear the PI attorney's hat in these when I'm asking questions.
Sarah Parisi:
Okay.
Chris Dreyer:
So if I'm in a big DMA, we see the throw down that's occurring with Dan Newlin and Morgan. They're trying to be, it's over a million, $2 million a month versus some of these other markets versus a St. Louis, like a mid-market or where I'm at. How do you gauge what you should invest in a market just on an investment alone, not there's other strategies to get more out of it with your creative, with your maybe different spots, but just from an investment perspective, what are we looking at?
Sarah Parisi:
So when I open up those larger markets to see that condensed amount of saturation meaning it's so heavy that we have attorney ads almost in every break of every program across the board of above local broadcast networks. What I would advise is that you have a media buying team that is constantly aware of the markets and is pulling the data so they can view areas of opportunity within TV and then really deducing from there. Is it possible to go into this market and obtain maybe the third position share of voice, but is that the best opportunity for your ROI? If there is just such a oversaturation of ads and you're finding, well, actually maybe better off like they've abandoned radio for instance over here, or this is a good opportunity to lock down some more billboards within the area and maybe do a large social media branding push. It's a give and a take.
I always have the yin and the yang, but you don't want to add to the already large amount of noise. You want to supplement it and stand out to the best return of investment that you can, but having a media buying team sit down and outlay those options and then do the math, do the homework, present it to the client and then test the theory. It's never an option where we're just going to set that there and well, that's it, you know what, clean our hands of it. We want to make sure that we come back, we judge the performance by the results and we make moves when necessary at daytime direct response hours. This is one of my favorites. Doing this for so long. They're like, who's watching daytime TV? And I'm like, well, it turns out a lot of people that we can pull the viewership metrics from Nielsen.
There's a consistent audience that is not just sick and at home, but the stay-at-home, the elderly. This is on in hospitals, it's on in your local cafes down the street. Daytime television is something that everybody's going to encounter on a daily basis whether or not they're out and about or if they're at home. I call this direct response hours. I think that it applies specifically to the legal category because if you are hurt and injured in an accident, you are at home. You are not at work and I don't think that you're getting up early either. I think that you might just be taking some time to rest and recuperate and so you're just turning on those mindless television programs that are airing throughout the day and do not ignore those because remember, this is a service that you're providing and the average consumer is going to see these ads and they're going to treat it just like they would a dentist's office or a company like installing windows and blinds.
They're more likely to call you all during daytime hours because they know your office is opened. And so I truly believe that the daytime direct response hours are where you'll find the most call to actions being conducted from TV ads. You want to have that equal distribution within the optimal placement. So there's a method to the madness. It's going in and negotiating with your stations, viewing all the inventory, making sure that each, you've got an equal distribution across the board across all networks and you don't want to necessarily avoid oversaturating programs to prevent viewer fatigue. That's an important note there because you may find that you've got a great deal on one program, but you're significantly over-placing it to the point that your ad is exhausting the viewer and it no longer becomes a point of like, oh, I'll remember them. Oh yeah, they'll remember you, but you also might annoy them and then they may or may not want to call you.
Chris Dreyer:
So let me ask some follow-up questions and guys, maybe Ken, you can find the episode I did with James Farron on the podcast and we could drop it in the chat, but I talked to them about they really look at TV as direct response, meaning a bottom of the funnel strategy. Everybody talks about TV as just brand, but I wanted to highlight how you like to buy. I'm not saying every market's different, every strategy is different. You got to find and pick holes, but talk to me specific about the strategy of the direct response hours versus the brand hours, maybe the weekend. Talk to me about that strategy a little bit.
Sarah Parisi:
Absolutely. Yeah. So I look at the Monday through Friday your standard, I prefer 10A to 4P, I will expand that around to 9A to 5P. Those hours get a little bit shaky only because some businesses do close at 4:00 and you're really wanting to focus on those hours that you know if somebody called, they would be speaking to a real person that in that physical building location, 10A to 4P is really was my sweet spot of saying that's Monday through Friday. Those are the direct response hours during the week, and how that differentiates from branding is really from a creative stance. So I would layer in a DRA or something with a call to action, call us now if you're hurt and injured during those daytime hours, and then we're not going to completely abandon TV if you've got the... Putting your budget.
If you're reaching to that level of that direct response category and we have a great share of voice, then we can expand into a branding campaign that encompasses those evening news, prime time and late fringe hours, which is really anything 6:00 PM to midnight. I avoid the morning news, your 7:00, 8:00, and 9:00 after your Today Shows and your CBS Mornings simply because that's an audience who is likely getting up and going to work for the day. They're also come at a premium cost. You're dealing with national inventory. It's not necessarily a great price point, and that's again, not every market is going to come across that, but if it is my investment, then I'm going to put it in the bang for my buck, the best deal where I know that the eyeballs that are more likely to call me and respond to my ads are going to be watching weekends.
Weekends. I have a hate, love relationship with weekends. I think that weekend spots, they definitely have a home in your marketing campaign. I would label it as solely branding efforts. They're not for the DR calls where you've got the call to action. That's not what the weekend is for. That's just for hammering the message home. Viewership is slightly down on the weekends, so it's just not something that I would... It would not be my next step. I would add in a medium, a new billboard or a radio campaign before I would suggest adding in weekends. Now, if we're talking about free spots from the station, so added value or if you're making up any type of missed viewership, things like that, and it can expand the ground that you've covered, absolutely. Expanding from any type of free, no charge added value that the station is giving you. Sure.
But as far as where your budget would be going, I would elect to add in a billboard or a radio, any type of paid social campaign before I would expand to the weekend hours. Catch thumbs up. Yeah. All right, creative strategies and frequency. So as I've already mentioned, we've got your direct response ads. That's where it's like you're injured, call us right now, we're open, get your 800 number on the screen, you get your URL on the screen and then you've got your branding ads. And those are going to be more of your testimonial types. Those going to be more of your showing boots on ground, your offices, who the attorneys are, what you're about, your mission statements, things like that. Branding recall of it is really putting a face to the audience. They've got a face to the name and they see what you're about from a community level versus again, the direct response is more just call to action.
Creative rotation. Creative rotation is so important and I don't think that a lot of attention is paid to it in the industry at exhaustion is a real conundrum that you want to avoid. You have a beautiful ad creative that you're airing and it's been going strong, doing very well for you. Even though it's been doing very well, it cannot go forever. Every ad, every creative ad has its own lifespan, so your agency needs to monitor that to proactively forecast its lifespan and predict the timeout, meaning when is it going to die and when do we need to get something else on air because the results are going to suffer. Eventually, the ads as good as they may be, will create white noise. They'll just be, they won't recall them anymore. It's something in the background. They've heard it a thousand times. Just like with any other song on the radio or action that you may see over and over again. Monitoring your creative exhaustion is a key piece in making sure that you've got a good agency with stewardship. So make sure that you're getting your ads rotated to the correct percentage cycle.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's go into detail a little bit more. Maybe you can speak to actual examples because you've seen a bunch of ads and we've got some great TV production people who have been joining us. We got Cool Fire, we got Adam Warren from OpenJar, so I would love to get some questions from those guys too, but give me some examples of what you think is a quality direct response ad versus just a pure branding ad.
Sarah Parisi:
Oh, a good quality direct response ad. Oh my goodness. So gosh, there's so many of them. So Ted Lorenz is one that comes to mind. He's got his, I'm on top of it, his ads air in Austin, Texas. And Ken Nunn is another one that just came to my mind. He has his whole call Ken. It's the 800 numbers listed. They're strong. They are projecting within this ad a sense of a structure that they are the attorney, they've got your case, they've done this before, they have experience and they're there to fight for you. And then a good branding ad and goodness gracious, there's so many good branding ads. I was fortunate enough to see some of the work that Adam Warren had done and I told him he had done one for Flores in Texas and I just thought it was so beautiful. It was one where she's walking around her community, she was shaking hands with a bunch of people and just you could see her love for her hometown in this shop that he was creating.
So branding is really not about saying, call me right now or listing how many years that you've been in service. It's creating a sense of you're bonding with the audience. Then again, there's just so many that could go out and say, but again, you just want to really, it's those shots where they're in action and they're shaking hands and they're, you see people from the community coming up to them or maybe they're at a specific landmark or something big within your own DMA. It's just an icon that everybody that's from there would know and you're seeing their association with that and it's a personal ad. It's more personable.
Chris Dreyer:
Would you say, let me ask a couple questions here to stick on this slide. So the direct response speaks to the injured. So they're injured, someone's injured and the brand speaks to everyone else and maybe it's to stay top of mind. Is that the simplest explanation?
Sarah Parisi:
Yeah, that's the simplest explanation and I honestly feel saluted for not saying it myself, but thank you for that. So no, that is the simplest, that is what it is because they're going to see this and like, oh my gosh, I love that. Look how she's walking around. Everybody knows this person or what a great shot of our downtown skyline. Oh wow, she's done this. Those branding ads, they're going to stick with the audience and yes, you're right, the call now, that's for the ones who are on the couch being like, oh my gosh, they just needed a little push. They needed to remember that they have rights that need to be fought for and they don't have to do it alone. Negotiation best practices. Thank you. I love this. Leveraging points. So when you place an annual buy, so what is an annual?
An annual is you coming in placing for the next broadcast calendar year. Annuals give you a lot of leverage with your negotiations mainly because they know you're going to be placing a buy and you're locking in for 12 months. Your buy is not locked in. It's not engraved in stone for 12 months, but it just shows the commitment that your agency and the client have to advertising on that station in that market and you get some cheaper rates and you get a lot of other opportunities that aren't necessarily listed out in plain sight for the average person coming in saying they want to place a media buy. So you get a view of the entire program layout every hour broken down, you get the rates and the ratings, so your viewership levels. And coming through those annual orders, I have to say you're negotiating with the stations.
It's a lot of phone conversations. It's a lot of, well, can you do this? Go back and forth on getting that lower rate. I love negotiating with stations. I love my reps. I think the world of them, it's a hard job and at the end of the day you've got two people who are just trying to find that happy medium spot that gets the station, what they want and that gets the client what we want and produces really a beautiful buy for the client that is set in place for the rest of the year. And so if you don't go anywhere, you don't cancel your buy. You've got this awesome rate that really nobody's going to be able to get and you have priority over placement because you've had it in their system since the previous year. So it gives you just that little bit edge extra overall that anybody else coming into place to buy for that program.
I don't, and this is ruffling some feathers. People often ask me about remnant media. I don't particularly care for remnant media and I think most of that goes back to me being a control freak over the investment. With remnant buys, you have no control over... You may have some control from a wide rotator block perspective, but I want to have control over where the spots are going to run, how many are going to run and what rate I'm paying for those spots. So with remnant media, yes, you may get a great deal during this 1:00 PM hour, but you'll be paying the same rate if the spot airs at 1:00 AM. I just like to maintain a little bit more control over that. I want to make sure that we're hitting that saturation level that I deem to be an equal distribution across all networks. So as I'm looking at this, I not sure what that meme means, but good job you have. Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
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Let me jump in here. Let me ask some questions. So one of the things that we talked about previously was I found really intriguing I thought I would share the audience is just paying your invoices on time with the stage value of that versus these net 60, net 90, whatever the terms are, and talk about how that factors in just paying on time or paying up front in regards to negotiation.
Sarah Parisi:
Oh my gosh, if you pay in 30 days, you are just considered the golden child. If you pay in 60 days, you're still considered a good payer. Paying 90 days, yeah, they're not going to hate you for it. I mean, they got paid. Anything past 90, there's not a system where they're docking you or writing points on it, but understand this, that your station wrap loses a percentage of their commission every continuation past 90 days. So you're losing a little bit of faith from their end where it's like, if we need some help real quick, "Hey, can you shove us this make good in next week? I know it's a little bit rush job." Or, "I've got this, I need to move some spots around. I know it's last minute, but could you make something work?"
So remember that we want to have a relationship with the station where we show respect and we show that our process and our services are aligned together and when they don't get paid, they're not going to necessarily have your orders at top of mind or go to bat for you because they're not sure if you're going to pay them next month.
Chris Dreyer:
You could say that about every business. I mean, it's people that are consistent and that's where you get these TV buyers have been on TV for 20 years, have consistently paid. Anytime there's an opening, they're going to go to those individuals first. Not only because of the economies, but just from the consistency perspective.
Sarah Parisi:
Well, and internally at the stations, I mean, and I'm not sure how much of this is known, but there's a ranking system. As I said, there's no points held against you. There's not like a client A red X beside it, but there's a ranking system on the traffic level and it's a priority insertion. And so if you've got a long-standing relationship with this station and you're a good payer, you are going to be in the first priority bucket without question. If you are not very... It could be a variety of different things. I mean, you just want to be a good partner. You're a partner with this station and they're putting your ads on air, but they will dock you and it's not like anybody, you would not know this.
In fact, I didn't really discover it. I think it was back in 2015 or 2016 when I had a rep email me a make good and she couldn't get her PDF to print, and so she sent me the raw copy from their end and their traffic system and that's when I saw the column and I was like, "What is that? What does that mean?" She was like, oh no, basically now I have to tell her. I'm like, "No, what is that?" She's like, "That's the priority label." I was like, "Well, what is it?" She was like, "It's a preference order of insertion, meaning who gets the first entry way." I'm going, "Oh, fun." I'm not mad about it because my client's in priority bucket A, so it's all good, but it exists.
Chris Dreyer:
Amazing. We use a lot of different tools, guys. We've got active dashboards, we've got things. Sarah's built them out for almost every market. We talked about capital earlier where we're trying to hit that 10% threshold so that you spend enough to be memorable. Not to say that your creative can't do that, but a lot of times in these bigger markets, if you don't spend enough, you might as well not spend any money at all. I would say that goes with about any channel.
Sarah Parisi:
Correct.
Chris Dreyer:
If you're going to do Google Ads and you're going to try to spend $10,000 a month, good luck. But if you're really going to try to go after the bottom of the funnel keywords, the accident terms, it's just not enough. I don't care what market it is. So I went in a rant here before you even got the start.
Sarah Parisi:
No, you're fine.
Chris Dreyer:
Okay. Okay. Measuring performance and ROI, take it away.
Sarah Parisi:
Yeah, no, it's super important and just to having make sure... So you get the marketing agency, you have your buying team, and then your firm is over here and you are the ones who are getting the results from the marketing team. There needs to be a connection. There needs to be something that links the performance to the actual spend. In my opinion. I want to be able to make sure that my buy is producing the results that are either forecasted or that we've set this line as our goal. I want to make sure I'm hitting that, and if I'm not, then I want to be proactive about making those changes to the buy. This isn't something that I want to be, and I don't want the client to have to call me and say, "Oh, calls are down over the last two weeks." No, I already want to know that information.
So tracking metrics via weekly spends, impressions, calls, cases generated, whatever format your agency decides. For us, I am a big, Google has made things beautiful and the ability to share. It can be a simple Google chart and then we can make it into something even more beautiful via Looker Studio, Tableau, what have you, but having that communication for a weekly ROI, this is how much we spent on this medium, this is how many calls and cases can be attributed to it. And again, attribution gets a little wonky. There are some tricks up in my sleeve for that stuff too, but just knowing that you are tracking the weekly spend cross-referenced with the calls and cases generated from that, and then you can add on the layer of the competitor visibility to that. So let's just say for instance, I'm tracking this performance and I'm pulling in the latest data from MediaRadar and I see that, oh my goodness, this one station, the CBSNR market, there are every single advertiser is in the noon hour and the 1:00 PM hour and it's just advertiser attorney ad after attorney ad like, you know what?
Let's break away from that clutter and move those dollars to another program that's maybe not so heavily saturated and really take advantage of those empty ponds. So that's one area which I would note on chart and say, this week, change goes into effect and then watch to see if you can garner any increased performance from that. You're basically tracking and testing your methods and providing an accounting as such that not a lot of people do. The proof of performance, proof of performance, as I say that, that's just transparent reporting, showing your ROI and to justify the strategies. That's really where it all comes down to is by giving this information back to the client saying, yeah, I made this change here and actually here's specifically what it was. It could be, you know what? This creative was exhausted. Here are the dates that we started our new ad-on air.
Or maybe you added in a branding buy or a radio, and then you can have in a new medium on your chart that says, here's our radio performance and this is where we are now. It's historical accounting view of your marketing company's efforts and the results spit it out. So the last piece and one of my favorites is the vendor audits. I started out as an auditor, so it is a dig the trenches type of job, it's invoices and you're matching them to the orders and you are fighting back and forth with a station saying, no, this isn't what we ordered. We need a credit off this. You would not believe how many people don't do an audit. I was shocked. I just thought that's just standard procedure to make sure that you got what you paid for. Having a station audit is imperative.
For one, I can promise you that it's not airing correctly every single month. I can just promise you. I've done it too long and seen too many to know that is not the case. And second part is when you're controlling the funds and you're being a good steward of media and spots inevitably are going to fall out. Fallout spots means we were preempted, our spots got bumped. Maybe somebody came in and was willing to pay double the rate that we are, and so our spot was bumped out that week. That goes into a whole other conversation about monitoring your actual clearance percentages, but they need to ask me if they can put that money back into another program in another week. They have to get that approval so I can track it on my end. I also want to approve where it's going. So if you take a spot out of my 3:00 PM Judge Judy, well, I don't want it going into 7:00 AM news next week.
That's not even the same audience, that's not the same viewership that I'm looking for. So you want to make sure that your make goods, everything stays along the lines of the set strategy and methodology of which you place the buy. And beyond the invoicing and getting in those discrepancy credits, lowering those bills, making sure the client's not paying for anything that you did not authorize are the impressions, the level of viewership, and those are called post reports coming through from Nielsen. So there is comp score, but I'm for Nielsen, so I'll just lay that out there now. They're going to report to us the viewership from the previous month, and they also do it by quarter, but I prefer to look at them per month just because that way you get ahead of it, if you go quarter to quarter, it gets a little bit heavy to make up any missed impression levels.
Plus it allows you time to make adjustments to the buy. If you are sensing that, wow, this viewership level that was quoted to me by the station, there's no way that they're going to be able to meet this estimate. So remember when we're placing annual orders and we're looking at those viewership metrics that are supplied to us, those are projections based on historical data. Now, we anticipate them to track, to meet, and for the most part they do. However, there are instances in which you're continually... They're missing it. They're missing it. They're undershooting it so far that they owe you thousands of GRPs. Thousands of impressions are missed. We've already paid for those. Remember, you've paid your invoices, you've paid for viewership you have not received. So the post reports are increasingly important to make sure that you get under delivery schedules, which are no charge schedules.
They're free spots because you've already paid for the air time. You did not get the viewership that was quoted to you. So that's really where it comes down to those vendor audits, those vendor posts, making sure that your buyer has a firm grasp on what those local affiliates are, where they're performing at, where they're putting in any make good schedules, no charge schedules and under delivery schedules and ensuring that it doesn't snowball out of control. And you're looking up after second quarter going, oh my gosh, the station's going, there's no way we can make up this viewership. Well, you've got to make it up and those conversations are hard.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I think we beat this one over the head. Let's go to insight seven.
Sarah Parisi:
Oh, sorry.
Chris Dreyer:
That phrase make goods was I always like, what do you mean? That's a classified phrase just for the mistakes, but let's move on. Seasonal and event advertising. I've got my wife's favorite channel here, Hallmark. I think I've seen the Prapple the pear apple one and some other ones, but let's see what you got. Let's see what you got here for the seasonal stuff.
Sarah Parisi:
All right, seasonal opportunities. I'm going to touch on them just because I do feel like when you're in the markets that have virtual sports teams, but then you've also got the end of the year, the Christmas time, these are things that are, they usually arrive to you a package form. So BS station just says, "Hey, are you guys interested in purchasing this package for us? And it could be just your holiday programming, it could be other items like any local type of coverage for an event that you're doing in the market." There are premium and make sure you're evaluating them at a cost per thousand level. And I really would just not give any credence. I've accepted some of them where we have the budget to do so and it fits within the strategy and the audience level. They're supplemental, not irreplaceable. Again, with the sports packages, I got to touch on that. I don't like sports. I think that people who are watching those events, they care about the sports event.
They're not thinking about their injury, they're watching the event, but in where you are. For instance, I was talking with Goodman Acker and it was like the Detroit Lions. It's like, okay, they got so close to the Super Bowl and there was a big game on. Yes, I understand that because you're getting so much viewership and plus it is so key to your demographic at that moment. So it can definitely be a good branding strategy. It's just not in place of your direct response is supplemental. Exclusivity. So this is something fun that I like to bring up with a lot of the clients that I've worked with. So it's just an added advantage that you get going into your market. Maybe you've got a heavy competition and you can request for exclusivity rates. And what that means is maybe you want to be the only attorney on air on Tuesdays or Fridays. You can get rates for what that exclusivity will cost. Maybe not the only attorney on air, excuse me, it may be the only attorney in that pod or that commercial break for certain number of programs.
It is a premium price. It is not something that comes at a deal. You're effectively asking that they not take any other funding from any other firm. So you can have exclusivity. So you're covering that. However, it does provide you with an advantage in heavily saturated markets where the competition, you just trying to find a way to wedge in there. So monitor it though, because remember, they're not going to tell you if they accidentally aired so-and-so and your exclusivity rate and you're still paying the higher rate. It's not like they went ahead and gave you a discount on it. So you need to make sure if this is the road you go down, if this is something you want to look into and add to the buy that your media buying team and your agency is actively watching the competitive performance reports and ensuring that there is no one, that they're not breaking clause of the agreement, that there aren't competitors airing in that break.
Chris Dreyer:
So on the exclusivity, I always think of the PI firm that's been there for a long time, that's got a lot of inventory, a lot of air time. So is that just part of the strategy like, "Hey, they're hitting all these spots. These spots are ideal. Let's go over here." I've heard other individuals, for example on radio, they say, "Oh, the urban stations have 14 lawyers on them. Let's go to the other stations that have four lawyers on them." How does that play into the inventory?
Sarah Parisi:
Where it's not just the count of attorneys, you're really seeing if the station... You would not know if this is a potential without speaking to your station reps. They may tell you, "Oh, we already have an attorney who has exclusivity on Fridays, and so now you can't get that date." And you may have wondered that after, or your agency may have wondered that when they're looking at the reports and they're saying, "Why aren't our spots airing on Friday? That's strange." Or, "Why is it that we always air at the end of the pod break during this program? That's weird." Probably because somebody else has reserved the first break-in and has an exclusivity contract that says nobody else, no other attorney can air the first break-in too. Let's just say the price is right, which really the price of the last break-out,
So I think that for most part you would have to approach the stations and just inquire, that you could probably get a pretty good idea of who it is that has the reservation based on your competitive reports. Creative examples and trends. I just love those pink high heels. I just love them. I think it's great. I think it's super memorable. Great slide here. Distinctive branding, your memorable ads, and this is Amanda DeManda's Pink Heel, Jim Adler's sledgehammer. You get your brand identity, get something that the people they associate with you. Something that speaks to who you are as a firm. You can play off of it in the creative elements. It can be in the background. It could be a saying that you have.
It's the way that we bring it into your actual creative specifics and breakouts. Whether you have your semi-truck accident, your Amanda DeManda's puts you stop in that truck right there. So that's a big truck case. Anything that balances the dramatics with authenticity, you want to make sure that it's not just silly, it's not just a big prop piece that you are speaking to the seriousness of what actually happens to these individuals and saying, this is memorable. This is a great ad to recall for, but then you need to be... It's a dance, man and it's careful and that's why you got to have a great creative team behind it when you're talking about these specific messaging.
Chris Dreyer:
Have you seen, I always think about the earned media component. There's the own, the paid for the distribution. A lot of times, I don't want to whisper the Super Bowl. We skipped that over the seasonal. I know you don't love the Super Bowl ad, but how does this play in, does PR companies pick up a unique TV commercial? For me personally, I see the PR companies picking up more the billboards. They talk about the billboards more than they do the television commercials. What's your thoughts on there? On just the earned media, the sharing component, the word of mouth?
Sarah Parisi:
When you can have elements like that. For instance, in Kansas City, they've been Super Bowl winners now for long time. So if you're in that market, you get this, you have an opportunity there. And I don't think that it's necessarily, it's not well wasted. It's an extra branding effort and value prop. A billboard is a billboard. I don't care if it's your PR company or your media buying team. I'm pretty sure your media buying team should negotiate it better for you and be more familiar with the contracts as long as they're making sure to stay away from the digital boards. And fight me on it. Don't care. Stop buying digital boards. So I think that there are, if you've got the chance and it resonates with a large percentage of your audience, go for it. Because in the end, you'll create relationships and further community involvement and advancement to get that additional earned media.
Media stewardship. Oh, man. That's why you asked about make goods because I hadn't gotten to that slide yet. Sorry. Okay, so media stewardship, what does that mean? It means to me, and this is my definition, so this is not Webster, this is me. It's me treating your money like my money. Pretty sure that is what it means. But I'm just saying, when you tell me that this is your buy and this is how much you're committing to spend per month for an investment, I treat that it's my money because it's my buy that I'm stamping on it. So being a good steward of media means that I'm handling my make goods and my preemptions in a proactive, managerial way. Preemptions are common. That's not something that should be alarming. What we don't want is a majority of your schedule being preempted, that's something that's up to your media buyer to determine. There's a sweet spot for everything. You want to make sure that you receive equivalent value. Like I've already said, I don't want my Judge Judy spot going into 7:00 AM news. Yes.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, let me interrupt here.
Sarah Parisi:
Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
What the hell is a preempted ad? Okay, so make goods is when the station bumps your spot or they don't run it, and maybe there's a political election or something that comes up and takes all the inventory or what have you, but what is the preempted ad?
Sarah Parisi:
Preemption is the bump spot. A preempt.
Chris Dreyer:
Got it.
Sarah Parisi:
It's the same concept. I say, they can be bumped, they can be, well, I'd say they're bumped or preempted. I think preemption is really the in-office term. Bumped is casual layer of it. But yes, no, and this occurs, like I said, it could be from, well for one, if your priority level is lower than where it needs to be and so their dollars be made good. So your spot gets bumped out because this client needs to hit this budget. It could be a variety of things, but like you said, you did mention political. That is a huge period in time in which you can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that your spots are going to be preempted. Anything from breaking news. Another thing, so weather alerts, it's very common. You just want to make sure that it's not recurring week over week because that in Eveline's, you're not going to hit your budget for the month.
So you want to make sure that your media buying team is active and they're saying, "Hey, this is weird. They're not just accepting the make goods as they're coming in." "Oh, okay, yeah, sure, yeah, sure." If it's the same program and you're getting a make good for it every week, then that probably means you need to adjust your buy. That probably means you're not paying quite enough. And if that is a rate that you're unwilling to go any higher, then move that funding elsewhere because it's not doing you or the client any good to just have it sit there in a constant fallout rotation. It just ends up hurting the campaign even more. So regular communication between the agencies and the law firms that just says, "Hey, we are coming up under budget right now, but we found the reason why and we're making adjustments and maybe the money is going to be moved from February into March."
That's just keeping the client more informed so they don't get their invoice bill in the mail and say, "What the heck's happening here? We are 30K less than what my monthly budget is, what's going on?" And that's just a number I'm pulling out of my head. But ultimately you want to get in front of them. The more communication that you can offer, and we know that the firms, we know you guys are busy, but we want to offer it up as a proactive. We are fighting for you. We're on your team, we get this and we're just letting you know.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I guess this is my takeaway from what I've heard. So the biggest thing is follow the money broadcast television works. It's got the lowest CPS, which is the lowest cost per thousand. Streaming is substantially more expensive. Now, you can reach a different demographic on streaming, so it can be very complimentary, but broadcast TV is still numero uno. It's the biggest category of spend in legal, particularly for PI. Strategic buying matters. So Sarah talked about negotiations, buying daytime television, the difference between direct response versus brand, consistency, paying on time, getting to the top of the list and being favored. You want to build a relationship. A lot of these individuals, they're super old school. I remember there was one story you were telling me about where they were wanting faxes. I'm like, who-
Sarah Parisi:
Oh my God, I about died. She was like, "Can faxes make it ever to you?" And I was like, "No girl, you cannot. I do not even have that machine anymore."
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. So the phone calls, a lot of negotiations, a lot of back and forth. People that love to negotiate, once you build that relationship, they'll tell you the creative is going to be key. I think that we could have touched on this more, but really it's you need to look at the market. Is everybody running these direct response heavy hitting ads? And do you want a different style? Do they position themselves all for the big truck? Do you want to go a little different direction? So it's a strategy and it depends. And then partner with experts. Look, I have now done several hours, many hours with Sarah and I still don't have a clue, a fraction of understanding on TV and what it takes.
But from a decade of experience, she does. She's had millions upon millions of buy, not just reading about it on ChatGPT. So I think that's the key thing here. The last and final thing that I'll say is every audit that we've done, there is a massive amount of waste or poor stewardship of the spend. Your ads just aren't running or you get new creative and they're not running the new creative. So it has to be maintained, it has to be watched very closely. And that can help you out getting more airtime. When you see those reports, those airtime reports, and you're like, wait, this individual's spending double, but the guy spending half is getting significantly more airtime. It's because of the buy and those relationships. So that is my summarized version of this. Sarah, do you have anything to add there?
Sarah Parisi:
No, that was great. You took that right out of my mouth. I want to hammer home those complimentary audits that we do because they're vital. It's not just to take it and say, oh, your agency is doing terrible right here. I also like to approach this as a knowledge base because it seemed like with you and me discussing it, there's so much, it's like a foreign language that you just can't interpret or understand. You get these invoices in, but you don't know what they mean. I want to help educate a lot of these firms and attorneys and their marketing directors on this is what you should be getting and this is why. And it's not to say that this agency, I'm harping on them, telling them they're doing a bad job. I want the playing field is level. This is what I would've done. This is what you should expect, this is what you got.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, and I remember the last audit we did, we saw some 30 plus CPMs and some other stuff that were added in there just because they weren't being monitored.
Sarah Parisi:
Just thrown in there. I'm going, I get so territorial over it. They're not even my client then I'm just like, this is ridiculous.
Ken Mafli:
Well, thank you both very much. We have had the questions actually pouring in. So yeah, so I will say, listen, we are at about six minutes till the top of the hour. We're going to keep going. We're just going to keep going through the questions. So first things first, Sarah, there is a burning question here. Do you know who Yoda is? Inquiring minds? Want to know?
Sarah Parisi:
Oh no, man. Okay. I've no filter. I will talk really long. No. I know who know the animal is.
Ken Mafli:
Next question. Okay. All right. Listen, it had to be asked.
Sarah Parisi:
I'm so sorry. No, I've never seen it. I know who it is. Don't know anything about it.
Ken Mafli:
Got it. Okay, got it.
Sarah Parisi:
Sorry.
Ken Mafli:
So what makes for an effective creative daytime TV ad I would imagine?
Sarah Parisi:
So just the call to action really has to be something that is carefully placed. And I wanted to also state that I do think that the age of the cheesy money guns and the lights and those loud ads, I don't think that there's a home for those anymore. I think that there's a level of seriousness but also a level of authenticity that the audience and the viewer is now requiring. And I think that's across the board, not just in television. In general, authenticity is key. And so really when you are looking at your creative daytime ad, you want to make sure your call to action that there's no mistaking, that phone number is up there the whole time. There's no mistaking the name of your firm and how you pronounce it, how you say it. You want to make sure that's really the number one piece that I would say, without that, I wouldn't say it's a good DR ad.
Ken Mafli:
What ad frequency is associated with exhaustion in broadcast TV?
Sarah Parisi:
So it depends how many impressions that you are purchasing per week. And there's a formula for it. So it's a per week placement. It depends on also how many ads you have in current rotation. So maybe you just have two, maybe you have four, maybe you have 25, which I would say is overkill, but we could talk about that. It's how many impressions that ad is receiving and you map that out. So how much you can until you reach an exhaustion point. And that could be in six months. That could be in a year. I would say in a year is always just the safest spot. But it also depends how many ads you have currently in rotation.
Chris Dreyer:
How many impressions are we talking? We talking after a million? Are we talking-
Sarah Parisi:
Oh, not a million. Oh, Lord. No. So again, it depends at the 30s versus the 15s. So if we're just going off 30, I would say probably right around 500,000 is where you need to tap.
Ken Mafli:
Good. Okay. Okay. What do you think about professional sports teams sponsorships?
Chris Dreyer:
Most of you are overpaying. It's a status play as opposed to a good strategic play for eyeballs. There's some exceptions on that. There was Alex Lamontes over in Indianapolis picked up the sponsorship of the, I can't remember the team for Caitlin Clarke pays for the Fever at a very discounted rate when they're selling out of stadium. When you're doing marketing in it, these NIL deals and these licensure deals, there's a trust component because if you like their favorite sports team, they're more likely to hire you. If you're more closely to them, you're more like them. But I think a lot of times these licensing deals are just wildly over priced.
Ken Mafli:
Do you have a targeting advertising budget mix between broadcast, outdoor, streaming?
Sarah Parisi:
Oh, yeah.
Ken Mafli:
Any guidelines there?
Sarah Parisi:
It depends by market, and that's difficult and not really the answer, but it really depends where you're coming in the percent share of voice within your market competition. We have to make sure that you get to the right level. We have to make sure that you not just, if you're wanting to hit at least let's just say 10% spender, we want to make sure that you are hitting on those gross rating points or impressions per week at the level of share of voice before we expand into other elements. So yes, in my method I would do TV, billboards, radio, and then streaming. But again, it's a mean one. It depends per market and competition levels. It's really an analysis.
Ken Mafli:
Got it.
Sarah Parisi:
I also want to just correct something real quick because I did one too many zeros in my head. 50,000 impressions, not 500. So I want to just throw that out there because it was an extra zero. I'm sorry.
Ken Mafli:
That's quite all right. This is live TV folks. Come on. Okay. So you had a little teaser here, Sarah, and one of the listeners was hoping that you could expand, would love to know your attribution tricks that you can share, you're pairing-
Sarah Parisi:
Oh yeah, absolutely. So while some firms are really into having those Vanity 800 numbers, I get that. I know you want them, but I would encourage if you can part with them just for a bit, let's just say you have an established branding presence. This would only be for those firms with established branding. Maybe they've tried TV and it was terrible. Get yourself some individual toll-free numbers to utilize on each station. Figure out where the calls are coming from. Additionally, there is technology. Now if you've got, again, a good media partner that can veiling code, so putting that watermark onto your ad, onto the actual creative and then putting a pixel onto your website and that way your ad is airing on TV and we can track the increase into web traffic. So maybe they're not calling but they're Googling you instead to, which I really truly believe that's what a lot of viewers are doing now, especially in these younger generations like mine.
We're Googling you before we're deciding to pick up the phone. And maybe when we're in the LSA on Google, we're just actually hitting that call button. And so it's not a TV that's not coming from a television attribution level, but they saw your ad and that's what sparked the interest. So by tying it in with that heat map on your volume of your website traffic, watching that rise within a three to five minute window post airtime. Those are those kinds of tricks that you're looking for.
Chris Dreyer:
Let me add a couple. So there are some other things you can do. You can do incrementality testing for other DMAs where you're running TV in one market and you're not running it in a different DMA to see what the lift is. You can also do aided and unaided brand recall studies to determine aided would be like, of these firms, which ones do you know? And you list which ones. And then an unaided would be, list all of the PI firms that in the market without any that you can select from. So there's some things you can do there. You want to look at the direct traffic, the brand traffic. And then overall there is, because marketing is so fragmented now, you want to look at just your blended CPAs. But if it's purely brand, and you can look at CPMs and just see how much distribution you're getting from a cost perspective, but look at the blended numbers as an overall metric.
Sarah Parisi:
Yes. When you're charting this, and just so you know, if you come in and you do TV and you're meeting the recommended budget, you're accepting the recommendation that we've put in the market.
Chris Dreyer:
At least 10%. Is that what you're saying?
Sarah Parisi:
Yeah. And to be within the market. What if 10% is not enough to be within the level, amongst the competition? So you have to really look at it from the current competition level. But if you're going with the plan that we sit in front of you, I promise to you, when you see that charts, because we're going to go a little bit historical. If you've been keeping track of your calls and your cases, you'll watch the line. You will see it. It's not something that you're going to have to be like, oh, I wonder-
Chris Dreyer:
Three months, six months.
Sarah Parisi:
If you're meeting with the recommendation, I would say within a month you're going to see a rise. You're going to see a lift. It's inevitable.
Ken Mafli:
Love it. Okay. Hey, last question, but Sarah, you got a little punchy. You threw down here a little bit. So someone asked why no digital boards?
Sarah Parisi:
Oh gosh, sorry. Y'all, they're fancy. They're cool. They have lights. No, they rotate out. And unless you are sitting in a parked traffic, you are sharing that impression. It's actually not your own impression. It's not your drive-by. So when they're selling that to you, they're not including the eight other people that are in a rotation on this board. They're just telling you, oh, this is the drive-by traffic that you're getting. This is how many cars pass through there. Those cars aren't guaranteed to see your ad. And I still to this day, and I said this on our last podcast, Chris, I passed by this past weekend. I have looked at this billboard coming into downtown Nashville from 65. I'm on 65. I still don't know the 800 number of this firm. Every single time it blinks right before I get there. Nope. Katie doesn't see the phone number. I just know it's an attorney because that's as far as I get.
Ken Mafli:
Okay. Okay. Valid. Great. Well, we're at the end of our questions.
Chris Dreyer:
Final thing here, guys. If you want us to audit your TV advertising, contact sarah@rankings.io. That's Sarah, S-A-R-A-H @rankings.io, and she'll do a complimentary audit. And thank you for joining us.
