Lockdown has changed the way claims services are advertised. Head of marketing Andy Cullwick reveals what First4Lawyers has learnt during these unprecedented times
Marketing for claims during the pandemic has not been without its challenges. I wrote previously about the way in which consumer media habits have changed during lockdown. As a result, the way in which firms attract new claimants has also had to change.
Even for businesses with well-established marketing operations like ours, navigating the pandemic has been a challenge. This is what we have learnt.
Forecasting the unknown
We saw an immediate and dramatic decline in demand for personal injury-related legal services. At the same time, any medical negligence marketing was seen by the public as a direct attack on the NHS and interpreted as grossly inappropriate given the circumstances.
It isn’t unusual to face seasonal changes in performance but often these are forecastable. We can prepare because we know with a degree of certainty when they will start and end and what the downturn is expected to be. Unfortunately for us all, Covid-19 has no end date and while we are seeing more normality now, there still isn’t an end in sight. This in turn makes forecasting and planning for your business much more of a challenge.
As such more time has been spent on forecasting, reforecasting and analysing the cost of generating business. We’ve been running monthly, weekly, daily, hourly and live reports to determine exactly when is the best time and how to generate the right levels of business for our panel firms.
Panic stations
It is safe to say that we did see a high degree of panic both in our sector and across the board at the outset of the pandemic. Rather perplexingly at that time, we saw competitors pulling out of TV advertising when audience levels were growing. Instead, they were pouring it into paid search, which was on the decline.
If your business offers a product or service that can no longer be fulfilled then it is understandable that you will want to reduce advertising, but you face irreversible brand damage if you cut your marketing activity too deeply. Research during previous recessions has shown that those firms that reduced their marketing took longer to see brand awareness and business return to normality.
Flexibility and a level head
The word ‘pivot’ has been overused during the last few weeks, but one thing the Covid-19 pandemic has shown is that you need to have flexible business and marketing plans.
Online searches for personal injury and medical negligence terms tanked overnight, which in turn saw the cost of pay-per-click activity skyrocket. There was a rush of firms turning to Facebook to advertise but with little rhyme or reason behind it. We saw competitors produce hastily designed creative, with little or no thought behind the targeting of these adverts as many advertisers delivered a blanket ‘target all’ approach.
This is not only bad news for those brands that adopted this approach, but sends out a negative message about our sector in general.
We retained our TV advertising but changed the balance of messaging to be mindful of the increased sensitivities around medical negligence. Our AI-driven digital marketing meant we were able to flex where we invested our spend, while al