Claimant lawyers spend a daily £208,000 on advertising in 2014

Claimant lawyers spent a record £208,000 a day advertising personal injury and clinical negligence services last year, according to a white paper published by First4Lawyers.

The marketing collective has said that firms have increased their marketing spend by 182% since 2010. That year, lawyers allocated £27m to advertising, a figure which was dwarfed by 2014’s £76m total.

The increase in marketing spend has been clearly linked to the closure of referral networks following the referral fee ban in 2013.

First4lawyers said that a small number of organisations dominate the market in terms of amount of money spent. In each year, the top 10 spending firms accounted for 85% of the total. Law firms represent 30% of the overall pot while claims management companies spend an average of £2.5m each per year.

In the report, First4Lawyers said that firms or businesses wanting to become a top 10 advertiser would need to spend in excess of £1m during 2015.

“In reality, to compete at all requires a minimum of £350,000 investment in air time and media space, before adding production and delivery costs,” said the company.

First4Lawyers has also analysed the changing face of PI marketing and warned against firms putting all their efforts into digital marketing.

“It would be foolish to predict that any one single area of the marketing mix will break away to become the only marketing channel,” said the white paper.

“Our experience is that TV is currently providing some of its best ever efficiencies and return on investment. Digital marketing, by contrast, offers instant response and the flexibility to change campaigns with more agility depending on market conditions. We cannot use one without the other because they have grown to complement each other but modern marketing techniques mean that ‘mass marketing’ is now off the agenda.”

Mark Dugdale