Martindale-Hubbell leverages customer base via TV ad sales

When you’ve got a listing of every lawyer in the country and 90% of them already paying you something, you leverage those customers by adding new products. Martindale-Hubbell is doing just that with the addition of television advertising being sold to its law firm customers.

The New York Times’ Maria Aspan reports Martindale and Spot Runner, an online service that helps small businesses advertise on television, will help law firms produce inexpensive television commercials that can run in local markets. The advertising campaigns range from $10,000 to $50,000, including air time. Standard ads will be tailored to add the specific law firm’s information.

During the brief time I was a VP of Bus Dev at Martindale after Prairelaw.com’s acquisition, I advised TV being a good fit for Martindale. When I practiced in a general practice law firm we used Primerus, an alliance of top-quality, independent law firms, to purchase up scale television ads. Without the well produced ads we received, our firm would never have run TV ads. Our campaign of tasteful ads requesting people contact us for a booklet on how to select a lawyer worked very well.

The greater money being spent by law firms on television as compared to the web is also a big draw for Martindale. Per the Times article:

…[A]dvertising within the legal services industry generated more than $575 million in 2006, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus. But the top 10 spenders are all personal-injury or plaintiff-related law firms like Jacoby & Meyers and James Sokolove, which came in at No. 1 with more than $25 million spent on advertising last year……And while online marketing has a niche for lawyers, it is small: Nielsen//NetRatings measured about $2 million spent on Web advertising in the legal services industry last year.

You can see the potential revenue for Martindale. 100 law firms with an average buy of $30,000, and guessing Martindale nets $7,500, means $750,000 in incremental revenue. Get 1% uptake against smaller firm customers who buy web advertising from Martindale (20,000 plus firms) and you more than double that.