Some of the most expensive marketing decisions a firm makes are the ones it assumes. And there are two I run into repeatedly.
I have versions of the same conversation with law firms all the time – firms in a good position, steady case volume each month, and leadership looking to the next phase of growth. They’re firms playing it safe. And still, almost every time, the same two assumptions surface – both common, both quietly shaping decisions, and both wrong. If you market a law firm, there’s a good chance you’re impacted by at least one.
Assumption One: “TV is out of our reach.”
Somewhere along the way, a lot of firms are told the same thing: television is too expensive, reserved for the giants with unlimited budgets. It gets repeated by people in the know and colleagues until it becomes fact – not because anyone analyzed it, but because it’s been said enough to feel true. So, the channel gets written off without ever being investigated.
When we walk through how the Roux team buys television – being strategic about markets, dayparts, and programming, how creative choices affect cost, how a buy can be built around the moments that matter instead of blanketing everything – a lightbulb goes off. Firms realize TV isn’t an all-or-nothing expense. Bought with intention, it’s often far more affordable than they’d been led to believe, and capable of building the kind of memory that makes a phone ring when someone’s injured.
The lesson isn’t “every firm should buy TV.” It’s that a secondhand assumption shouldn’t determine your tactical decisions. The channels you’ve ruled out deserve the same scrutiny as the ones you’re buying.
Assumption Two: “It’s not that expensive, so it’s a good deal.”
The second one comes from the opposite direction. A firm is putting a few thousand dollars a month into a digital buy but isn’t quite sure of the real value. It feels reasonable and inexpensive, so, it never gets questioned.
Then someone runs the numbers. At the CPM many of these buys carry, a few thousand dollars might purchase a couple hundred thousand impressions. In a large market, against a broad audience, that’s not meaningful reach or frequency – it’s a blip. The money isn’t buying impact; it’s buying just enough activity to look like something is happening.
That’s the trap of inexpensive. A low price feels safe, so it escapes vetting and investigation. But price tells you nothing about value. What matters is what sits behind the price – the reach, the frequency, the audience, the work the dollars are doing. A small buy that delivers almost nothing is worthless. And the only way to know the difference is to do the homework.
The pattern underneath both
On the surface, these look like opposite mistakes – avoiding a channel assumed too expensive, over-trusting another because it’s inexpensive. But they’re the same mistake, just two different facades: making media decisions on assumption instead of homework.
That’s the takeaway I want any marketing leader to sit with. There’s a wrong way to do media and a right way. The wrong way is a collection of individual decisions – each made on a hunch, a headline price, or something you heard at a conference. Those decisions never get examined against what the firm is trying to accomplish. The right way treats media as a system: every channel evaluated on what it contributes, every dollar tied to reach, frequency, and ultimately cases.
When that system is in place, media stops being a series of guesses and starts doing its job. You stop ruling out channels that could work and stop funding ones that don’t. You know what each dollar is buying and why, and those dollars begin to drive the calls and cases that grow the firm.
The Roux Take
The firms that win aren’t the ones spending the most. They’re the ones who stopped assuming and started understanding. Often, that’s where growth is hiding – not in a bigger budget, but in a clearer view of your budget.
If you’re tired of making media decisions on assumptions, or you’re ready to build a system where every dollar is understood, measured, and pointed at cases, that’s the conversation Roux is built for. Ask us about our Decision-Moment Strategy, and let’s turn your media from a series of guesses into a system that does its job.
About the Author
Roux Advertising
Roux Advertising builds media strategies that connect investment to revenue. We work with ambitious law firms that demand proof, want to win the moments that matter, and are driven to lead their category. Eric Morgan is President of Roux Advertising and can be reached at 504-561-5055 or eric@rouxadvertising.com.
