Since 2008, 2.2 million apps have launched in the Apple App Store and 2.8 million are ready for download on Google Play. There’s an app for everything, so why shouldn’t your law firm jump on the bandwagon?
According to Google developers, the web reaches three times as many mobile users than software applications when they compared the top 1,000 mobile apps to the top 1,000 mobile web properties.
App usage has taught us a lot about the end user, and by combining what we know with technology advancements, businesses don’t have to rely on expensive app development to reach mobile users in an effective and engaging way.
Progressive Web Applications (PWAs)
Progressive web applications combine the reach and familiarity of web properties with the speed and ease-of-use of apps.
Instead of asking a user to download an app, a step that most brands can’t overcome, PWAs are recognized by popular web browsers and deliver a seamless experience that mimics a mobile app.
This includes all the shiny bells and whistles: push notifications, placement on the home screen, and tools that reduce data usage for a speedier, more reliable experience on just about any device.
And here’s the best part: the cost is significantly lower than developing an app.
More on Bells & Whistles
Getting people to download your app shouldn’t be the hard part. The hard part is getting users to engage your brand and purchase your services. PWAs reduce this friction by cutting out the middle man—the app stores.
Web users are often redirected to an app store when they reach a web property on their mobile device. This extra step leads to drop off and user frustration.
PWAs avoid this process by giving the user an app-like experience with no strings attached. Instead, users are prompted to add an optional home screen icon to create a shortcut to the PWA. The icon lives on the user’s home screen and looks exactly like an app icon.
With a progressive web application, users won’t know they’re interacting with a web property. PWAs integrate the latest capabilities of HTML5, the standard used across the web—no special equipment or installs required.
The PWA’s responsive design and compatibilities function across nearly every device, without the need for multiple versions or constantly editing code.
Moreover, when launched from the user’s home screen, the PWA loads instantly, regardless of network connection. This allows the user to engage when and where they want.
Finally, with the addition of push notification, which are credited with enhancing user engagement on apps, web properties can now remind users to check back for updates, promotions, and other relevant news.
Money, Red Tape, & Other Considerations
App development is expensive and limited to users of a particular device. This often means multiple app versions to accommodate iOS and Android operating systems.
Moreover, the bureaucracy of app publishing is slow, involving community guidelines, forms, red tape, and reviews. The review process, specifically, takes place every update or iteration. With PWAs, changes can be made immediately and implemented without delay.
Law firms should think critically about their offerings before spending a lot of money on a branded app. Personal injury, for example, is a need-based service—you won’t find many users eager to download an app that’s only useful in crisis situations. This is contrast to popular apps like Facebook and Amazon, which deliver a want-based service.
That being said, a PWA can enhance your firm’s online experience, even if the user doesn’t add the home screen icon to their phone. With a PWA, the look and functionality of your site can be condensed to fit the expectations of the user, regardless of the device they’re on.
From a legal client’s perspective, this might include quicker access to contact information, service pages, and testimonials.
If you think your law firm needs a branded app to be successful, think again. PWAs can do just about anything an app can do and for much less.
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In this piece, we get into the nuts and bolts of finding content ideas from Google Analytics (GA), Search Console (SC) and Google’s own search results.
These methods can be valuable tools for generating content topics based on actual searches your potential clients are doing.
Before you keep reading, we’re assuming you can add code to your website, whether you’re using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress or a hard-coded HTML site.
It’s fine if you don’t know how to add code. Ask your marketing company or webmaster for help.
Once they install Analytics and Search Console on your site, follow the steps below to generate new content topics.
If you’re a one-lawyer show, then having one login for your Gmail, Analytics and Search console is very convenient.
However, if one day you hire an internal marketer or digital marketing company, they will need access (or control) of your Analytics and SC account.
By having an account specifically for GA and SC, you’re not giving other people access to your personal account. You may want to use it for other business properties, like Facebook and Twitter, as well.
It just depends on whether you want to keep your personal and business accounts separate.
Install Google Analytics (GA)
Google Analytics is a free tool that tracks visitors to your website. There’s a wealth of information available, from the number of page visits to average time spent on your site.
You can also use it to generate content topics. But before you do anything, you need to install the tracking code on your site.
Google makes installation fairly easy. Head over to Google Analytics, login in with your Google account, and follow the on-screen instructions.
After you’ve entered the required information, you get an analytics tracking code. This code needs to be on every page of your site. Any page without the code won’t be tracked in your GA account.
An example of Google’s Analytics tracking code.
If your site is hard-coded HTML, then you’ll have to edit every page. Depending on how big your site is, this can be quick or take several hours.
If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, you’ll only have to change one file to install the tracking code. Follow these steps to install GA on your site:
Log in to the admin section
On the left navigation, go to Appearance, then click Editor.
In Editor, you should see a list of files on the right. Find and click on header.php.
Paste the analytics tracking code just before the </head> tag
Click “Update File”
Note: If you don’t see “Editor” under the “Appearance” section, then your WordPress account doesn’t have administrative privileges. You’ll need to contact your webmaster to either update your user level or install the tracking code for you.
Once installed, Google Analytics immediately tracks visitors to your site. Visit the “Real-Time” section in your Google Analytics dashboard. If you see any activity here, then you’ve installed the code correctly.
Generating Blog Topics From Google Analytics
Google Analytics tracks certain metrics by default. But to generate blog ideas, you have to tell it to track what users search for on your site.
There’s a section in analytics called “Search Terms,” located under the “Behavior” tab on the left. This is where GA reports on the search phrases users type in your site’s search bar.
Your law firm’s website needs to have a search feature for this to work. If it doesn’t, then you can’t find out what users are searching for. So ask your web developer to add one to your site.
An example of a search bar.
After adding a search bar, we have to set up analytics to track what people are searching for on your site. You’ll need to go into the admin section of Google Analytics to turn this feature on.
There are three different sections: Account, Property, and View.
Click “View” settings and turn “Site search Tracking” on. That brings up a bar where you can enter the query parameter.
To find the query parameter, you need to do a search on your website. Look at the URL on your site’s search result page.
If you’re using WordPress’ default search, the URL looks something like this:
https://www.domain.com/?s=website+building
The query parameter is the word or letter right before the “=”. In this case, we enter an “s” in the query parameter field and click “Save”.
If done correctly, “website building” would show up in the “Site Search” report in Google analytics.
Quick Recap
Enabling site search in Google Analytics lets users find what they’re looking for quickly and offers ideas for future content topics. To recap how to use Google Analytics for site search tracking, you need to:
Have Google’s analytics tracking code on every single page of your site.
Your site needs a search bar. Without it, you can’t collect search data
In Google Analytics, turn “Site search Tracking” on and don’t forget to enter your site’s query parameter.
Visitors have to use the search feature. If they don’t, then there’s no data to collect.
Some Things To Keep In Mind
Analytics’ default settings track everything. Customer visits, visits from your home or office, spam traffic, and searches you do on your own website.
To counteract this, you’ll need to add filters to your Analytics view to weed out your visits and spam traffic. After applying the filters, you can get a better idea of how people are using your law firm’s site.
Finally, Google’s Site search Tracking only tracks phrases entered into your site’s search bar. It doesn’t track what users searched in Google, Bing, or any other search engine to get to your site.
Now that we have Google Analytics working, we’re moving to Google’s Search Console (formerly called Webmaster Tools).
Setting up Google Search Console (SC)
Go to Google’s Search Console and sign in with the same Google account you used to for Google Analytics.
Add your website’s URL to your account (as simple as typing the domain in) and verify that you’re the site’s owner.
There are a few different ways to verify your website. You can:
Upload an HTML file to your site’s server
Supply login credentials to your domain’s registration service
Add an HTML tag to the <head> section of your website
Use the Google Analytics Tracking code
Use the Google Tag Manager container snippet
If you logged into Search Console with the same account that controls your Google Analytics, you can use the Google Analytics tracking code for verification.
By using one account for GA and SC, you don’t have to add any additional files to your server or code to your website.
All verification options work the same but require different steps. Option three, for example, asks you to put an HTML tag in the <head> section of your website, just like we did with Google’s analytics tracking code.
After you click “Verify,” Search Console will let you know if it’s successful or if the process has failed.
And Now We Wait For Data
Search Console doesn’t report in real time like Analytics. The most recent data is two days behind, so your dashboard will be empty at first.
Depending on the market you’re in, you may have to wait a week or two before there’s any workable data in SC’s dashboard.
Finding Topic Ideas With Search Console
After the program collects enough data (a week or two’s worth), it’s time to generate some topics.
Go to the “Search Analytics” section under “Search Traffic.” It’s on the navigation stack on the left.
You’ll find the average search ranking, up to 999 search queries, how many impressions your web pages received, the number of clicks, and the click-through rate (CTR) for each page on your site.
There are preset filters you can tinker with to get more specific results. You can filter out desktop or mobile users, isolate traffic from a specific country, identify if users are searching web or image results, and change the reporting date range.
There are a few caveats with date range:
If you just verified your site, you won’t see any information prior to the verification date.
If the site is already verified and you’re using the standard dashboard, your date range will be limited to the previous 90 days.
For our purposes, pick the longest date range available, and isolate traffic from users in the United States.
With those filters applied, re-select “Queries,” and click “No filter.” That should bring up a pop-up on your screen with drop down options.
In the drop-down menu, select “queries containing.” You’ll be using this to find content ideas. It’s much faster than scrolling through all 999 search queries.
Start filtering queries, looking for ones containing basic questions like who, what, where, when, why and how.
You aren’t limited to questions. You can search for queries that contain your service areas, like car accident, to find potential topics.
If you find some phrases that you haven’t covered on a page or blog before, great. You’ve just found a new topic for your website.
Using “People Also Ask”
We’ve gone through finding blog ideas from Google Analytics and Search Console. But what if you’re pressed for time and need topics now?
You can find content ideas in Google’s search results.
Search for a topic that’s both relevant to your business and potentially interesting to site visitors. That could be anything like self-driving cars, car insurance, truck accidents, and so on.
Scroll through the results page. You’re looking for a box titled “People Also Ask.”
This box shows additional questions people have searched for on the topic. But don’t just look at the results, click on some of the questions. A drop-down will appear, along with more related questions. It can be content gold mine.
If your results don’t have the “People Also Ask” section, you can find related searches at the bottom of the results page. People are using those search queries, too.
Network Affiliates Can Help
Google Analytics, Search Console, and related searches aren’t the only way to brainstorm topics for your law firm’s website.
You can find ideas from social media, contact forms submissions, questions from prospects, news stories, articles, and so on.
But this process can take some time to complete from start to finish. If you’re a small firm or a solo attorney, time is a hyper-valuable resource. Even if you maintain a tight production schedule, finding and generating your own content may fall to the side.
And that’s not good for your website. Adding fresh, well written, easily readable content to your page has benefits for your site’s ranking, user experience, and lead generation.
We can take content generation off your plate while you maintain editorial control of topics on your site.
Our digital team finds the phrases people are searching for, create the content, post and optimize it on your site, and then share it for the world to see.
If you have any questions about finding content ideas, don’t hesitate to give us a call at 1-888-461-1016. You can also submit a form, or reach out on Facebook or Twitter.
Content is your website’s workhorse. It can motivate visitors to contact your business or quickly send them to your competition.
Creating “great content” is easier said than done. Everyone, ourselves included, would like every blog post, infographic, or video to be a home run. But that’s not how it works in reality.
Some do well. Some are duds. But we’re a digital marketing company. That’s our job – we make content, analyze, and improve it.
But what if you’ve just started your law firm and don’t have the budget for a company like us? Or maybe you’re a marketer tasked with maintaining an attorney’s blog?
Do you know where to start?
That’s what we’re going to answer. Here are some tips you can use to create content topics for your law firm’s blog.
Finding Topics
There’s no “one size fits all” approach to topic generation. You can get ideas from questions your intake specialists have answered, question-based queries you’ve found in Google Search Console or Google Analytics.
You can also scour your site’s form submissions for topic ideas.
Regardless of where ideas come from, there’s no way you can remember all of them. Make a list in either a small notepad or a digital note taker like Google Keep. Jot down the general topic, why you thought it was interesting, and the original source if applicable.
You may not use all of them, and that’s fine. But at the very least, you’ll have some ideas to fall back on when you draw a blank in the future.
Traditional brainstorming works, too. If you have time, get together with other people in your firm to come up with ideas. They’ll bring a different point of views to the table and suggest ideas you may not have thought of.
And if all else fails, there are multiple topic generators available online. This one from Hubspot spits out a few ideas for you.
Generators are helpful, no doubt, but they’re by no means perfect.
Once you have some topic ideas to work with, it’s on to the next step.
Format and Creation
Next: what is the best way to present the information you want to share? Blog post? Podcast? Infographic? Video? Text?
It’s your website. Your content. The format you chose is only limited by time and talent.
Speaking of talent, you’ll need to figure out who’s creating the piece. Perhaps you’ll take it on yourself if you have the time, or you may delegate it to someone in the firm as a collateral duty.
If you don’t have the time or talent, there’s nothing wrong with outsourcing the work to a freelancer or a marketing company.
Cost might be a factor, so shop around to find the best combination of price and quality, but be careful. If you pay five bucks for a blog post, it’s going to read like a five-dollar blog post.
Know Your Audience
When creating content, try to understand the person that’s going to interact with it.
Yes, you can create personas, but that will require more time and resources than you probably have available. And if you’re starting with a new website, a persona will demand a lot of information that you won’t have yet.
Personas work by helping you identify your audience and create content they’ll act on. But personas seem to work better for companies selling a product or service to a specific audience.
But you don’t need personas to understand who your audience is.
As an injury law firm, you know that your audience is:
An injured victim or their family member
Stressed out about their current situation
Looking for help
Probably not a lawyer
The best advice is to keep it simple. If you’re writing a service page or blog post like you would a legal brief, you’ll lose a lot of people before delivering your pitch.
Keep your audience’s needs top of mind when writing content for them.
Content Needs a Goal
The content you’re working on needs a purpose. Do you want to generate cases? Do you want to improve interactions on your social properties? Or is it an informative piece, letting site visitors know about important changes in the law?
Your content should have one goal.
By limiting the content’s workload, it’s easier to see if the content was a success or needs adjusting. If it’s successful, you can make an educated guess as to why it was a success and replicate it for the next piece.
If it underperforms, figure out what went wrong and don’t make the same mistake. Or change the current content and see if you get better results. Take notes as you make these adjustments.
There isn’t one “right way” to create a piece of content. Companies like Hubspot and Moz offer helpful tips you can use to get the most out of your effort. But at the end of the day, trial and error work best for a specific audience.
If content generation is new to your law firm, there may be more failures ahead than successes. Don’t give up. It gets easier over time.
Measuring Success
However you define successful content, free tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Facebook or Twitter Analytics make it easy to measure.
If your firm has a Facebook page or Twitter account, you won’t have to do anything but login and monitor your posts.
Google Analytics, Search Console, and Bing’s Webmaster Tools need to be set up before you use them. All three are free, but someone will need to add a few snippets of code to the backend of your website.
The goal or purpose you gave to the content will determine what analytics data you review. For example, if you wanted a piece to do well on social media, you’d look at data from Facebook and Twitter.
Google Analytics and Search Console show if people spent a lot of time on the page or converted to leads. And Google’s Search Console and Bing’s Webmaster Tools would give you a rough idea of how the piece is performing in search results.
The data you find should inform the changes you make in new content, and it will ultimately drive your success.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat
Odds are your content won’t do as well as you’d hoped. That’s fine. Analyzing content gives you a chance to see what worked and what didn’t.
If you think something worked, replicated it on your next piece to see if you were right. Conversely, if you think something specific caused the content’s failure, make that change and see what happens.
Again, there’s no silver bullet to content creation. It’s a never-ending wheel of content ideation, creation, and publication with each piece (hopefully!) performing better than the last.
If you have questions about content marketing, don’t hesitate to call content professionals for help.
At Network Affiliates, we offer a range of content services that’ll work for your audience and budget while supporting a comprehensive media strategy.
Think your law firm’s blog should be all about the law? Well, you aren’t wrong, but it’s important that your content has a local component too.
Google tailors some search results to a user’s geographic location. Local search marketing has become one of the most important practices in the digital marketing age.
That’s where local news and events come into play. They offer ready-made topics that can attract local traffic. Here’s why your law firm should blog about local events.
Why Law Firms Should Be Creating Localized Content
Most law firms confine their practice to a single jurisdiction. Even large firms focus on a few key markets.
But lawyers struggle to incorporate local topics into existing content organically because, for the most part, litigators deal with state or federal law — not neighborhood events.
Regardless, it’s possible for law firms to create local content that makes sense within the larger context of their websites. Here’s why it matters:
Each month, approximately three billion search queries include local keywords
70 percent of online searchers include local terms when searching for a brick-and-mortar business.
30 percent of Google searches are for local information
Local content can help bring more qualified traffic to your site, increase brand awareness, or build upon your social media presence. Your local content can be in different formats like:
Blogs are the easiest and most efficient way to incorporate local news and events on your website. They’re timely, allowing you to capitalize on a hot topic, a recent event, or new trend with minimal effort.
Below are four ways to use local news and events to inspire content that targets local topics.
Tip #1: Stay Plugged In
You can’t write about what you don’t know. Keep your finger on the local beat. When you’re plugged into the community, blog topics flow naturally. They’ll come across as more authentic and credible.
Look for relevant news and events in:
The local newspaper
The evening news
Community flyers at local diners and cafés
Social media (this might be the easiest way to stay informed)
Tip #2: Focus on the Content
Write in a way that’s natural for the reader and the writer. It means creating content that is informative, worthwhile, of high quality, and pleasant to read.
Google’s algorithms are good at differentiating organic writing from keyword-stuffed garbage. There was a time when one could dupe search engines, but these days, honest and authentic writing wins.
Tip #3: Reference Local Information
Let’s say you’re writing a blog about traumatic brain injuries, and you decide to include some statistics to bolster your content and add credibility.
You search for related statistics and find great information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). All done, right?
Instead of relying on national statistics or citing sources that cover a topic in broad strokes, start your research with credible sources in your state or city.
Transportation departments, health organizations, and local police departments often document local injury statistics. Use this to your advantage—it’s an easy way to add a localized spin to a broad topic—just be sure to credit those sources in your content.
Tip #4: Align Content with Your SEO Strategy
Your goal is to connect local topics to the services you provide. So, don’t turn your blog into a travel and tourism website or glorified classified ads. Once you’ve identified your topics, start thinking creatively about how you can relate them to your practice.
For example, street names could be relevant to blogs about auto accidents at a nearby intersection. A recent case of food poisoning or a high-profile hotel break-in might be a starting point for an article about premises liability.
In addition to creating local content for your blog, you’ll want to make sure that your law firm has claimed its Google My Business page and that its Google Maps listing features accurate contact and location information.
Beyond this, you might consider working with an experienced digital marketing team to ensure you’re doing everything you can to capitalize on local news, events, and relevant topics.
How Will Your Firm Utilize the Network?
Network Affiliates is a team of legal marketing professionals with decades of experience and proven techniques for local search marketing.
Whether you’ve only used our television advertising services in the past or this is your first encounter with our team, drop us a line and learn more about what we can do for you in terms of local search.
There are a lot of law firms in this country, and there are plenty of agencies pitching these firms different digital marketing plans. But do you know how to pick the right agency from hundreds of portfolios, media kits, and applications?
We’ve come up five things to consider when hiring a digital marketing agency. Plus, we’ll explain why they matter and how to find an agency that delivers exactly what you need.
1. Get to Know People on the Team
A marketing agency made up entirely of outsourced talent is like a law firm where 100 percent of the lawyers are “of counsel.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that but every business needs some full-time glue to hold it all together. Marketing agencies are no different.
While we contract with freelancers, we never outsource all work. We have in-housedigital marketing experts that ensure consistency with our overall strategy.
When you know the people on your marketing team, you know there’s someone you can call (or email) to meet your needs when you need them.
2. Ask About Their Research and Analytical Tools
Digital marketing is always evolving. This is especially true of search engine optimization. It has to keep up to date with changes in search engine algorithms and keep an eye on what your competition is doing.
We think this makes a real, measurable difference in our ability to keep clients ahead of the pack. Your agency should be doing that too.
Ultimately, your digital marketing agency needs to know:
Which marketing strategies are working and which ones aren’t.
How effective are your lead conversion techniques? (Many agencies focus on getting people to contact you. What matters is whether those leads hire you.)
What’s in the future for legal digital marketing? What changes can you make to stay ahead of the competition?
Is your social media strategy helping your business?
There are remarkable tools available to digital marketers, but many of them are complex or expensive and therefore beyond the reach of some agencies.
Be sure your agency can have a conversation with you about how much they invest in research and analytics.
3. Find Out Who They Work For
Your business is too important to be someone’s guinea pig. Some marketing agencies have little to no experience marketing law firms. Choose an agency that has been around the block and has a record of success to show for it.
Consider looking for a digital marketing agency that specializes in attorney marketing. But be sure that whichever agency you pick has the resources to make your account a priority. Some agencies play the field and work for multiple law firms within a single market.
4. Rule Out One-Trick Ponies
Some marketing agencies are very good at traditional advertising but not at digital marketing or content creation.
Some are good at web design but not search engine optimization.
Online success requires expertise in all digital areas. That’s why internet marketing is an industry, not just a talent.
5. Results Speak For Themselves
We suggest asking to see results before hiring an agency.
An agency should have hard proof on hand: Stats, maps, charts, and data. Case studies that demonstrate a clear relationship between the agency’s efforts and clients’ success. A compelling before and after, if you will.
Don’t be shy about asking for proof. If the agency is shy about supplying it, that’s a red flag.
How Will Your Business Use the Network?
Network Affiliates is a team of legal marketing professionals with decades of experience and a real sense of strategy for success. Whether you’ve used our TV advertising services or this is your first encounter with our team, drop us a line and learn more about what we can do for you digitally.
Dig into more digital discussions by following Network Affiliates on Twitter, or ‘like’ us on Facebook.
Foresight is a real thing, and it comes from insight. The more insight you have into a market, the more foresight you acquire into that market’s future.
Law firms that spend a lot of money on marketing want to make sure every dollar counts. After all, as lawyers, you’re not in the marketing game because you’re passionate about marketing—you’re investing because it helps you reach more people and increases your bottom line.
So, which digital marketing efforts will get you the biggest bang for your buck in 2018? We’ve made our predictions below.
1. Digital Marketing Isn’t Just Important, It’s Essential in 2018
For years, marketing agencies like ours faced an uphill battle in one area: convincing the analog world that digital marketing matters. This is true in the legal field, where decision makers are often accustomed to pre-internet traditions.
But the march of time has been on our side. Experts like Jonathan Gabay, one of the world’s leading voices in brand psychology, predicts that 2018 will be the year the old holdouts will give in: digital marketing is effective, and there’s simply too much proof for any firm or company to ignore it anymore.
Digital marketing budgets have consistently increased year-over-year, and marketing agencies are already confirming that 2018 will be no exception.
3. TV (Still) Reigns Supreme
Important as digital marketing may be, TV advertising will remain the single most powerful and effective means of reaching a potential client or customer base in 2018.
In fact, according to the Nielsen total audience report of Q117, time spent watching TV continues to lead all major media. Americans now consume more than four hours of television every day. Critics and market analysts alike regard the current era as a new “golden age of television.”
In contrast to last decade’s rumblings of an impending decline in TV advertising, the opposite has proven to be true: marketers are getting more out of their TV ads.
As one of the leading attorney TV advertising agencies, Network Affiliates has been pushing law firms toward creative, authentic, and outside-the-box television messaging for years.
No one wants to see a lawyer read a cue card into a cheap digital camera in front of their firm’s biggest bookshelf. It’s a waste of time and money and hurts your brand.
Instead, your firm should focus on film-quality law firm ads with a unique message and a creative spin. New data backs this up. A recent study shows that 75 percent of a TV ad’s impact is determined by how creative it is.
There is a right way and a wrong way to advertise your law firm on television. The difference is defined by dollars earned, not necessarily dollars spent. TV advertising doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective—but it does have to be creative.
5. Siri and Alexa Are Changing Search
Far from novelties or toys, new devices like Siri and Alexa have become access points for your clients. People use voice technology to run Google searches or find local contact information. (“Alexa, find me a personal injury lawyer nearby…”)
Here are a few voice-relevant guidelines to keep in mind:
Content must be written with readers and listeners in mind
Traditional organic search is still important, but so are other disciplines like local search.
6. Content Must Beat the Competition
As more law firms incorporate digital into their marketing efforts, and as the legal industry increases its spending on TV and digital marketing, you’ll need better content on both fronts to stand out. That means:
More creative TV messaging than your competitors
A voice that defines your firm’s brand as something identifiably different than your biggest competitors’
Better writing — more authoritative, more knowledgeable, more authentic, and more reader-friendly
7. #FakeNews Will Be a Challenge
“Fake News” wasn’t in the vernacular two years ago, but it’s an everyday term now — and is quickly becoming an everyday challenge.
Even as web users are hungry for content, they’ve become deeply skeptical of the content they find online. If they don’t already know your brand, you’ll have to convince them your content is credible, authentic, and reliable.
Hard sales pitches will have a negative impact on your content. Instead, create content that’s helpful, knowledgeable, skillfully crafted, and trustworthy.
8. Google Will Pop the Pop-Up Bubble
Google has already cracked down on intrusive pop-ups. (We explained this game changer in great detail last year.) We expect this trend to continue in 2018, putting pop-ups to an end — or at least the worst kinds of pop-ups.
This is important because a lot of law firms still use pop-ups on their websites. Once upon a time, doing so was even considered a “best practice.” Not anymore.
Here’s the catch: social messaging is projected to become more important in 2018. And while most law firms aren’t actively engaging clients on, say, WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, many do use pop-up chat features to make real-time contact with incoming leads.
This is important because web users, especially Millennials, value social messaging. It appeals to two of their top desires: authenticity (they can tell if you’re real by talking to you) and immediate gratification (instant messaging is just that… instant).
Fortunately, there are ways for your law firm to integrate pop-up chat and stay in Google’s good graces. Make sure you’re using those features the right way.
9. Don’t Forget Distribution and Social Media
In the crowded legal space, you can’t simply create a lot of great content and hope people find it.
You need multiple mechanisms for distributing your content, and that concept will become even more important as more law firms begin to compete digitally.
We are particularly interested in the way social media is changing the way we used to think about social sharing and distribution. For a long time, social media was a great way to:
(A) engage directly with your client base and community, and
(B) share links to your website’s content.
But increasingly, social media is emerging as a publication platform all its own. Twitter just doubled its character limit, for instance, meaning you can now tweet whole paragraphs at a time. That’s content, and it should be treated like content marketing.
At the same time, the lines between a platform like YouTube and a platform like Snapchat are blurring. Brands are producing original video content for Snapchat — something they’ve already been doing for YouTube.
As a general principle, it is wise to create multiple kinds of content across multiple channels. Social media publishing and distribution will likely make it easier to do that in the coming year.
10. Addressable TV Ads Will Be All the Buzz
On the TV side of things, we expect addressable TV ad spending to account for a bigger part of a media buying strategy.
Addressable advertising means you only show your ad to the relevant part of an audience. For example, if a million people are watching a show on Hulu, but you only need to address the ones in your state, it’s increasingly possible to target those viewers directly.
Consider, for example, that industry-wide, Spectrum (one of the biggest forces in TV broadcasting) projects a 141 percent growth in U.S. addressable TV ad spend from $1.26 billion in 2017 to $3.04 billion by 2019.
11. Your Design Needs an Upgrade
Visual aesthetics are crucial to building an authentic and identifiable brand. Part of your brand’s message needs to be that you’re current and progressive—millennials are especially aware of this as they browse the web.
Web design sends an immediate message to the public as to whether your firm is living in the past or in 2018. No one wants to hire a lawyer who can’t handle new technologies or understand emerging trends.
We know, of course, that you can handle new technologies and trends… but does your web design agree?
Remember: design trends change every year. Is your look due for a refresh?
Money matters in 2018, and with our help, you can spend every marketing dollar with intention, backed by a team of legal marketing experts who specialize in digital & television marketing for attorneys.
It’s the beginning of a new year—are you ready to turn these predictions into action?
How to Make the Most of Your Legal Marketing Budget in the New Year
As we move into a new year, the legal services market remains one of the top spending areas in the entire advertising industry.
In 2016 alone, law firms and other legal service providers in the United States spent more than $1 billion on marketing and advertising.
One billion dollars!
What a staggering sum. If the attorney world ever feels small, this number illustrates just how expansive and crowded it really is… and just how profitable it is.
Clients and cases are everywhere. Your firm’s goal is to get more of them — or, just as worthwhile, to get better and higher-value cases.
Your challenge, however, is that many other firms exist in your area, and they’re spending toward that same goal.
That fact comes directly from the 2015 Trial Lawyer Marketing report, prepared for the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, and it’s astounding. The report also projected that attorney TV ad spending would either hold steady or continue to grow despite any political or economic trends.
Sure enough, the report was right. Legal services TV spending kept growing in 2015 and into 2016, even while other reliably big-spend industries (e.g. automotive) cut back.
So what does this all mean? TV advertising is not dead. On the contrary, it remains the single most powerful tool you have for growing your firm.
Still, marketing dollars are finite, and competition is dense. You have to make choices about where and how you’re expending your budget. Accordingly, we present our annual checklist for maximizing both impact and ROI for your attorney television advertising in 2018.
The Checklist
Start with a Media Audit. There’s a good chance you may be spending too much money each month… or just spending it in the wrong places. A media audit is an incredibly detailed look at your current performance and, perhaps even more importantly, opens your eyes to opportunities you could be getting from different channels, programs, days of the week, times of day, etc. It’s a worthwhile way of making sure you’re getting the biggest bang for your investment.
Focus on creative TV production.Today, the most effective attorney ads look more like short films than television commercials. (See some examples here.) Conventional lawyer ads are passé, and TV viewers simply tune them out. Stated differently, they’re a waste of money. If you haven’t already, 2018 is the time to advance your message and marry it with superior-quality production values. Cinematic visual elements, excellent sound quality, personable voice over, tight editing… all these things matter. And in 2018, they’re more affordable than you might realize.
You MUST have a digital marketing strategy to complement your TV ads. Your digital assets (website, social media, PPC campaigns, etc.) will never replace your TV campaigns, nor do they pack quite the same punch. But the internet is simply too important to ignore. A funny thing happens along The Client Journey today… new prospective clients often become leads through your TV ads, but then they visit your website before contacting you. Today’s generation wants that digital reassurance. You need to give it to them by being easy to find online (SEO, content marketing, etc.) and having web content that complements the branding you have on TV. It’s essential.
Pinpoint your message – only ask for the cases you really want. You can’t have everything, so don’t ask for everything. Let’s be honest… you don’t want a lot of small, low-value cases, so why would you pitch for them in your ads? Likewise, why shoot for cases that are beyond your resources or reach? Instead, use your marketing to target the types of cases you (A) actually want and (B) can realistically handle well. Those are the cases that will ultimately boost your bottom line and lead to more client referrals in the future.
Get out of your own head. When crafting your marketing messages, avoid only emphasizing yourself, your credentials, your experience, or anything “you.” It’s not about you. It’s about your clients. Going into 2018, are your messages currently “you”-oriented or “client”-oriented?
Employ the experts. Lawyers are brilliant and highly competent people, but they simply don’t have the time to navigate the extremely complicated and competitive world of television, media buys, digital marketing, graphic design, etc. It is a full-time career all its own. Hire people who have real expertise and who can do what you can’t: devote their full attention to growing your business. Work with an expert legal advertising coach to understand your wisest course of action and investment for 2018.
Don’t Put a Single Penny to Unfruitful Use in 2018. Call the Experts at Network Affiliates.
If you are considering adding a TV advertising strategy to your marketing mix — or if your current approach needs some work — call the legal marketing experts at Network Affiliates today.
Likewise, if you need to supplement your existing campaigns with a highly effective and affordable digital marketing strategy for your law firm, give us a call.
With in-house creative, production, and media planning teams, we can handle all your TV advertising needs from beginning to end. We offer support at every step of the way. Contact us online or call us at (888) 461-1016 now!
The single biggest mistake lawyers make in their marketing messages is making everything about themselves — their track record, their years in practice, their education, the unique advantages they have over other attorneys, etc.
“What’s wrong with that?” you might ask. Well, nothing, except that these kinds of lawyer-focused messages miss the single most important point when it comes to messaging: It’s not about you.
It’s about the client.
It’s about their emotions, their financial concerns, recovering from their injuries, their fear of lawyers, and their strong desire to get justice and quickly put this whole mess behind them… that’s what legal marketing is about.
Look at your website and/or television advertising copy. How much of it is I/Us/Our language vs. You/Your/Your family language?
There’s certainly a time and a place for you to outline your impressive track record and the skillset you bring to the table. But that cannot be the focus. If it is, you’re just like every other firm, which means you have no measurable advantage over your competition.
The most effective messaging will speak directly to the prospective client’s emotional plight. It will come from a place of authentic passion.
They need to see and feel that your services are about them and their interests.
The quicker your firm understands this and implements it, the better. Most of your rivals probably haven’t put this insight to work in their own messaging yet (lawyer-focused messaging is still the norm), so there’s an opportunity for you to pull ahead of your competitors — even if they’re outspending you.
Stand Out From Your Competition
It’s human nature to repeat what we see. Our clients are often tempted to repeat the tactics they’ve seen a hundred other attorneys use on the airwaves, and we understand that impulse. Furthermore, “zigging” while others zag can feel almost intimidating.
Once upon a time, you could get some mileage out of conventional tactics like:
Dramatized testimonials
Flashy settlement figures, dollar sums, and firm statistics
“Speed-and-greed” talk
Partners huddled in front of a bookcase with the usual “If you’ve been injured…” script
But these tactics do not work anymore, and for several years now, we have been consciously steering our clients away in a much more effective and productive messaging direction.
The legal advertising space is far too crowded for you to risk blending in with the crowd.
Tell a Story
Your messaging needs to be about the people you represent and serve. You must create a story (one worth telling!) and craft your brand narrative around that.
Think outside the box. Grab viewers’ attention. Tap into their emotions first; persuade with pitches later.
Make Better Messaging. Let’s Tell Stories Together.
We can help. Network Affiliates is a legal marketing agency that specializes in creative advertising for attorneys. For more than 35 years, we’ve been putting law firms on the airwaves and, for the last 20 years, bolstering their digital marketing efforts at the same time.
In fact, we made some of the very first legal commercials ever broadcast on U.S. television, and we’ve continued to develop, advance and expand our strategies ever since.
Let us put you on the cutting edge and ahead of your competitors. Give us a call at 877.709.0633 or contact us online today.
2016 was a bad year for drivers in the United States… the deadliest in nearly a decade.
That news came as something of a surprise when numbers were released earlier this year. After all, for some time now, the expert consensus has been that the roads are getting safer.
Advances in safety technology, urban living trends, increased carpooling, tougher laws on careless driving in some jurisdictions, the advent of self-driving cars — all these things were supposed to drive down the number of collisions and fatalities. And perhaps in the long term, they will. (Indeed, that’s one of the reasons PI lawyers need to think about adapting to a new landscape for long-term survival.)
But technology can be slow to catch the majority. Most people still aren’t driving cars with advanced safety features. Self-driving cars aren’t a practical reality. And while laws can punish negligence, they can’t prevent it… human nature is immutable.
Of course, the biggest factor contributing to motorist deaths in 2016 is one we didn’t see coming ten or twenty years ago: the use of cell phones behind the wheel.
Distracted Driving is the biggest and scariest threat on the roads today. It’s enough to unnerve anyone with a loved one who drives. Its death toll is staggering, and there’s no real indication of hope on the horizon where driver behavior is concerned.
With that in mind, what can we expect from the 2017 traffic accident statistics? Are we in for another tragic uptick in fatalities? And if so, what might that mean for your firm?
We’ll see some of these answers for certain in a few months. The 2016 stats were published in February, so we expect this year’s stats will be released around the same time.
For now, we look at the current trends on the roadway and how they might inform your legal marketing efforts as personal injury attorneys.
Over the last decade, new cars have gotten electronic stability control systems to prevent skids, rearview cameras to prevent fender benders and more airbags to protect occupants in collisions. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on campaigns to remind the public of the dangers of drunken driving, failing to buckle up and texting while on the go.
Despite all that, more Americans are dying on roads and highways than in years past, and the sudden and sharp increase has alarmed safety advocates.
According to the National Safety Council (NSC), 40,200 people died in U.S. car accidents during 2016.
That’s a 6 percent rise over 2015. In turn, 2015 had seen a 7 percent rise over 2014. In other words, we now have two years of consecutive, significant increases in fatalities on the record — a total rise of 13 percent over two years, the largest in more than half a century.
In fact, 2016 marked the first time since 2007 that more than 40,000 people lost their lives in traffic accidents within a single year.
In accounting for the discomforting new numbers, the Times and the NSC point to several factors:
An improving economy, which has more people spending more time on the roads
Distracted driving (where the primary distraction is the smartphone)
A downturn in actual enforcement of seat belt, speeding, and DUI laws
Budget cuts in highway patrol departments
“It’s still the same things that are killing drivers,” Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, told the Times, “…belts, booze and speed.”
Your Clients Need to Know
In terms of your digital content, one of the best community services you can provide your current and future clients is informing them about current traffic fatality trends and providing meaningful, worthwhile perspective on the situation.
The benefits of blogging about traffic accidents, statistics, and trends are myriad:
Generating top-of-mind awareness for your firm
Creating a forum for you to demonstrate your authority on the subject matter, building trust among your readership
Creating high-quality content for search engines to crawl, thus boosting your SEO and making your firm easier to find online
Connects you with your community (when blogging about local stories or news)
Empowers your clients to keep themselves and their families safe by becoming aware of the current dangers
Talk to Our Experts About Your Digital Content Marketing
The 2017 traffic accident statistics are just a few months away. If they’re relevant to your practice areas, your firm would be wise to cover them on your website, in your social media, and across other digital platforms. Traffic stats are just one of many hot topics you can blog about to build your brand and increase client awareness.
We can help. The legal marketing experts at Network Affiliates have more than 35 years of experience in using television and digital platforms to help law firms grow.
Want more ideas for creating content that will connect you with future clients? Give us a call at 877.709.0633 or simply contact us online. We’d love to chat.
