The personal injury lawyers I speak with in Canada always discuss the first snowfall and the winter months as being the key time for injury lawyers. This makes sense, icy road conditions, difficult driving conditions, and not all road users utilizing winter tires lead to motor vehicle accidents and thus injured victims requiring personal injury lawyer’s services. However, I want to discuss the back-to-school season and why this is a period of time that should not be overlooked by personal injury lawyers.
The Consumer Behaviour Around Back-To-School
First, let’s think about the back-to-school mindset for your potential client. They’ve likely been injured earlier in the year, and maybe in the winter. However, they likely waited to see how their injury developed, or if they were completing rehabilitation wanting to see that through. Once the summer hit, the children were out of school, they were busy, and they didn’t want to “deal with that now”. However, there’s a back-to-school mindset that happens in September. The kids are back to school, the weather is changing, and there’s a real sense of “dealing with this before the holidays” that creeps into your potential client’s mind.
Now, their health benefits are getting maxed out, the insurance company is back trying to settle this file, and they are more in the mindset to deal with this issue. They probably even talked with a friend or family member at the lake or around the BBQ about their situation and got some advice to see an injury lawyer. The timing is right from the customer’s perspective to reach out to an injury lawyer. Are you ready to grasp this opportunity?
The Competitive Landscape of Personal Injury Lawyers In Winter
Most personal injury lawyers who practice seasonal marketing, that is, they advertise when they perceive there to be business, and they stop when they don’t think there are cases. The logic is, that the accidents are in winter, so I should do my advertising when there are accidents. This theory extends further to my potential clients are in cars with radios. Thus, I’ll put most of my budget into radio. This logic seems correct on the surface, and from a timeline perspective, it does work.
However, all of your competitors also think this way. If you are in a market with 3 or 4 large injury law firms, then 2 or 3 mid-size players and a few small players, you are all in the market around the same time. This has a few challenges. First, there’s a lot of saturation of advertisers and your potential client likely isn’t differentiating from you or your competitor. There are some things you can do with your ad to mitigate this. However, there will be some negative impact due to the amount of personal injury lawyers advertising in winter.
The other challenge with all of your personal injury law competitors thinking this way is for performance-based channels like Google Ads, Facebook, and YouTube you are all bidding on the same keywords, and thus, your costs are higher because there is only a finite supply of users, and an overwhelming amount of demand for those users. Thus, you are paying high costs to compete during winter. Of course, there are things you can do to mitigate this as well; however regardless, when more people want the same keyword or impression, you are going to pay more money.
The Competitive Landscape of Personal Injury Lawyers in the Fall
This is the best part about the Fall months for personal injury lawyers. There is less advertising. Most of your competitors are not actively marketing in the Fall because they still believe winter is the key time. Thus, you get less ad saturation; you pay less per click with your performance marketing channels (in my experience, the slight decrease in supply for relevant keywords is offset by the large decrease in personal injury lawyers advertising at this time).
From a file quality perspective, it is also more beneficial. The person has likely been doing some physiotherapy and going to medical appointments, it is a file that has progressed and is likely to settle. Additionally, somebody has considered some options and reached your injury law firm. From a client management perspective, the Fall accident injury client might be more worthwhile for your firm to attract.
What Does the Data Say?
Most of this blog has been anecdotal; what does the data actually say? Based on Google Trends for Canada the search activity for personal injury law is varied throughout the year. The winter months do have more volume, however it is not a great deal more. The summer certainly slows down. However, the month that routinely dominates the search volume index is the first week of September. As seen in the image below:
Thus, it is worth looking at that data and asking yourself why your injury law firm is a seasonal advertiser at all? What opportunities are you missing out on if you aren’t active in search and some other channels year-round? It is worthwhile asking your agency or marketing resource their thoughts on back-to-school as a marketing opportunity. I am not advocating pulling out of the market in the winter months, but I recommend taking September to November just as seriously.
Rock Bound Marketing Can Help
Rock Bound Marketing has experience with personal injury law firms of all sizes. We understand the industry and how to best deliver results from your marketing dollars. We also understand how much personal injury has changed over the last few years and how to help you not fall behind. If you want to grow your personal injury law firm or learn how we can help, contact Rock Bound Marketing today!
