Everything About Cell Phone Marketing

Developing a marketing strategy for law firms today involves using more technology than ever before.  Studies show that web traffic from smart phones has doubled every year for the last three years, and shows no sign of slowing down.  In this economic climate, effective cell phone marketing can give you the edge you need to beat your competition.  Keep reading to find out how to stay on top of the mobile revolution and stay competitive in a rapidly changing world.

Beyond Phone Calls: What Cell Phone Marketing Can Do For Your Firm

The era of using mobile phones just for phone calls has come and gone.  Today, many young people rarely, if ever, use the voice functionality of their mobile devices.  Instead, mobile phones have become a window to the World Wide Web that allows people to stay connected wherever they go.  Cell phone marketing today is less about making calls and more about the way your website displays on mobile phones.

By optimizing your website for cell phone marketing, you can see a nearly immediate rise in client phone calls.  It's easy to see the reason why—when a client looks at your mobile friendly website from a smartphone, all they need to do is click your phone number to make a call.  This eliminates several intermediate steps and makes it much more likely that a reluctant client will call instead of delaying getting legal advice.

Making Your Website Cell Phone Marketing Friendly

The best way to make sure that your website looks great to cell phones is to use several makes and models of phones to look at your website.  You can make your cell phone marketing work for more people by checking out your site using an Android phone, an iPhone, and a non-smartphone that still has internet connectivity.  Note the differences between how your website displays on these different types of phones.

Mobile usability depends on several factors.  It's not enough to make sure your page isn't garbled or unreadable when a mobile user looks at it.  If a user has to zoom in extensively, or click very small, close-together links, it's very likely that they will just press “back” and look for a website that is better at acknowledging their needs.

You may want to make some basic legal information available in small, digestible chunks so that cell phone users can check out articles when they are browsing.  Keeping a mobile-friendly blog can also be useful for cell phone marketing—entries that are just one or two paragraphs long but still engaging and with great information can keep mobile readers from bouncing back.

Why SEO Is More Important Than Ever

The size of touchscreens makes clicking and scrolling through results more tedious than it is on a computer.  Because of this, statistics show that mobile users are much more likely to click on one of the first pages of results, often even a result in the first half of the top page of results for their search.  This means that any search engine optimization your firm does is critical to getting mobile users as clients.

Make sure that you're monitoring your website's traffic in order to identify pages that are receiving a large number of visits from mobile users.  Having these pages or topics available in a mobile-friendly format can draw in a larger number of visitors who will then stay longer.  As more mobile phones become capable of streaming video, it's also a great idea to search engine optimize your videos and check their visibility on several common brands of mobile phones.

Cell Phone Marketing via SMS

Another form of cell phone marketing involves sending text (or SMS) messages.  These messages can be used to send out your firm newsletter to clients and business contacts, or to advertise a promotion that your firm has started.  You can also set up a service to autoreply to texts containing a particular word so that potential clients get information they need right away.

If you decide to use SMS cell phone marketing, your biggest enemy is the delete button.  Fighting it means that you'll have to keep your clients interested in what you have to say, and—even more critical—that you don't become an unwelcome intruder by repeatedly texting day in and day out.  

Advertising With Apps

Cell phone marketing can also involve actual programming.  While it's unlikely that any but the largest law firms could afford a full-time app programmer, your firm can hire outside contractors to help you develop an app that presents your content in a new and engaging way.  

Some attorneys have already been successful with offering apps that operate as effective cell phone marketing for their firms.  For example, one lawyer was able to list a free app that gave people concise, easy to use information about what to do if they were in a vehicle accident.  Apps can set your firm apart from the competition, especially when you advertise your apps using social media websites.  Some apps—usually the ones with an innovative format as well as great content—can even go viral and get tens of thousands of downloads in a short period of time.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Cell Phone Marketing

One of the biggest frontiers in mobile marketing was developed initially by Apple.  Siri, a new feature of the iPhone 4S, offers cell phone users a new way to search for information: by using their own voices.  The advanced voice recognition technology of the Siri makes people more likely to make “natural language” queries instead of just searching for keywords.

While it's too early to know exactly how voice searching will impact keywords, and not many people yet have a phone with this feature, remember that just a few years ago “smartphones” were brand new and roundly mocked by many observers.  You can't afford to let your cell phone marketing fall behind—embracing new technology is the easiest way to get ahead of your competition in both the short and long term.

When advertising online, context can be almost as important as content.  Contextual advertising puts your ads in front of the people most likely to do something about them, and has become an industry that generates over $2 billion in profit annually in the United States alone.  You can get in on the contextual ad bandwagon even today.  By using the newest tools, like contextual video advertising, you can put your best foot forward and grow your practice within weeks or months.

Contextual Keyword Advertising: What Does It Do?

Contextual advertisements are based in the idea that when you're visiting a website containing certain keywords, you may be more interested in particular products or services.  Because of this, the same search indexers that figure out whether your website should be displayed for a search for “divorce lawyer in Tampa” can also choose whether to display an ad based on those same keywords.

Let's give an example: some of the best contextual advertising for lawyers can appear on advice websites.  Someone who is already looking for answers to legal questions is a lot more likely to actually want to phone a lawyer than someone doing random web searches about topics unrelated to law.

If you use keywords and phrases that will put your advertisements in front of people already looking for legal solutions, you can also segment them based on particular legal problems.  This makes it even easier to target your landing pages for maximum conversions.  The more segmentation you're able to develop, the less money you'll be wasting on ad viewers with no need for your services.

The Best of Both Worlds: Contextual Video Advertising

If you've done any research about marketing law firm websites, you'll know that video advertising is great at generating both clicks and conversions.  It might not be surprising to you that best contextual advertising practices for attorneys today include using contextual video advertising.

A new offshoot of contextual keyword advertising, contextual video advertising works to post your law firm's video content on websites where it will be relevant.  Now, before even clicking to go to your law firm's website, you can use this type of contextual keyword advertising to show your law firm to potential clients.

What's more, contextual video advertising gives you the ability to split test different videos to determine which is the best contextual advertising for generating conversions.  You should always be testing your contextual keyword advertising so that you know for sure they're working according to plan.

The Worst Contextual Video Advertising Mistake You Can Make

You're sitting on your computer, quietly listening to some music you like in your expensive, noise cancelling headphones.  You click on an interesting page, and BAM!  Out of nowhere comes a piece of contextual video advertising so loud that you can't hear your music any more.

What do you do?  Well, odds are you won't click on the contextual video advertising that interrupted your reading time.  Instead of clicking any contextual keyword advertising on the page, in fact, you're quite likely to just hit the “back” button and visit a website that's more respectful of your ear drums.

Your clients are no different.  Even the best contextual advertising can look awful if it starts when people aren't ready for it to.  “Click to start” contextual video advertising is much less intrusive and actually more likely to generate clicks.  Don't waste your best contextual advertising ideas on sites that have automatically starting video.  These sites aren't likely to bring in conversions, and they may even make customers angry about your contextual video advertising.

Best Contextual Advertising Practices

When you're strategizing about how to make the best contextual advertising, you'll need to know current industry best practices.  A great deal of focus in best practices for contextual keyword advertising focuses on choosing the right keywords.  In general, you should make sure you're using:

Negative Keywords, which can help you weed out results for pages that have some similar keywords to what you're targeting but are actually about something quite different.
Separate campaigns for each of your target audiences.

Lawyers have been doing some rudimentary forms of behavioral targeting for decades—there's a reason personal injury attorneys get called “ambulance chasers.”  Online behavioral targeting has developed steadily for the last decade.  Today, studies show it can increase your click through rates by nearly 200 percent and improve your cost per impression or click significantly.  Keep reading to find out how to use behavioral targeting as part of your web marketing strategy in 2012.

How Online Behavioral Targeting Works

The vast majority of internet users allow websites to use a variety of tracking cookies that monitor their behavior.  Often, these tracking cookies are used to make someone's web experience better—if you've ever stayed logged in to your web email client even after you went to another website, you've experienced how tracking cookies work to keep your data and change the behavior of websites based on your actions.

Online behavioral targeting today can be used for a wide range of advertising and marketing purposes.  By tracking the behavior of website visitors, you can use behavioral targeting to identify the most likely people to click on a link or convert into paying clients.

Not all people are willing to be tracked.  Some people turn off tracking settings specifically to discourage online behavioral targeting.  Most web users, though, are more than happy to make a small trade-off in privacy to gain added convenience while surfing their favorite websites.

Delivering a Personalized Web Experience with Online Behavioral Targeting

The end goal of behavioral targeting is to fundamentally change how your website and ads are displayed based on specific consumer behaviors. 

For example, your website would be showing some behavior targeting if you offer a live help window for visitors who haven't yet made any further clicks after five minutes browsing your site.  If instead of this, though, a window popped up that asked if they were interested in any of several other blog articles on similar topics, you could track the person's behavior and guide them to more things that would be of interest.

Ideally, you want people who come to your law firm's website seeking information about (for instance) bankruptcy to see a completely different path through your site than people who enter through a landing page about trust planning.  While building that kind of website may be a long term goal, rather than a short term one, it should be on your mind when making incremental changes.

Onsite vs. Network Behavioral Targeting: What's the Difference?

There are two different types of behavioral targeting systems that you may be able to use for your advertising campaigns.  If you do your online behavioral targeting on your own website exclusively, this is called “onsite” targeting.

Tracking the behavior of your potential clients on your website alone gives you more control over what is done with the data.  It also usually means that, because people won't necessarily give out a great deal of personal information, you may be less vulnerable to any kind of hackers that would be interested in using or reselling the data you've obtained.

Network behavioral targeting refers to several websites combining into an ad network, then keeping track of behaviors on a wide range of sites.  This is the kind of behavioral targeting that can sometimes lead to major privacy breaches, but it can also provide you with amazingly in depth information about your customers and potential customers.

You can find out much more from network behavioral targeting than you'll ever find out from split tests using demographics alone.  Based on your behavioral tracking data, you can narrow your advertising campaign segments more than ever before.  This means you can then pinpoint exactly what each person wants from your website and provide it to them on a landing page made exactly for their behavior, not their age or gender or ethnicity.

Using Online Behavioral Targeting for “Remarketing”

It happens all the time.  Someone clicks on your website, then gets distracted or clicks away not because they weren't interested, but because something else caught their attention.  For the first time, behavioral targeting has created a way to reach out specifically to those customers and get their business back.

Here's what happens.  When someone clicks away from your website, if they stay online, online behavioral targeting will focus on advertising to them the next time they use a website that uses your ad network.

Remarketing is a concept that is based in how people's brains actually work.  If someone sees your website just once, it will be stored in their brain's short term memory.  However, if they see your website, then see an ad for it a short time later, it will jog their memory and make it more likely for your firm name and website to stick in their long term memory.

In order for remarketing to work, your banner ads will need to reflect the visual look of your website.  This visual reminder can be a cue to your ad viewer: “Oh, right, I was there a few hours ago—I should take another look, now that I'm less busy.”

A Word of Caution about Online Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral targeting is considered problematic by many leading privacy rights organizations.  These organizations oppose the amount of data that is gathered by many online behavioral targeting networks.  Some bar associations are also considering imposing limits on the type of behavioral targeting that lawyers may engage in.

Online behavioral targeting is also problematic because the collected data may be vulnerable to security exploits.  If hackers were to gain access to a behavioral targeting database, they would be able to use it to commit identity theft and credit card fraud.  They could also use online behavioral targeting information for extortion.

While these risks may seem farfetched, it's worth remembering that other big repositories of online data have been hacked into before.  If you're gathering a great deal of online behavioral targeting data through a behavioral targeting network, keep in mind that you are putting your visitors at some degree of risk.

If you're not yet doing behavioral targeting for your law firm, you're already missing out on the most exciting new trend for finding clients with pinpoint accuracy.  Behavioral targeting advertising budgets are still low at just 2 percent, but you should consider increasing your firm's investment in this marketing method.  Keep reading this guide to find out how behavioral targeting is creating a personalized web and why the most forward-thinking marketers are using it on a daily basis.

Why is Behavioral Targeting the Biggest New Trend in Marketing?

Currently, conventional wisdom holds that most businesses are drastically under spending on their behavioral targeting advertising.  Demographic data, which is the most common way to target customers, has some major flaws.  Many people aren't easy to reduce to their demographics: what about the people who are 40 but act (and buy) like they're 20?  What about women who have more stereotypically male interests?  These people often get overlooked by demographically targeted marketing efforts.

For lawyers, demographics are an even worse way to target.  Even if you know what demographics your clients are most likely to come from, a relatively small number of people will have a legal issue at any given time.  You're going to be showing your ad to huge numbers of people for whom it will be completely irrelevant.  That's wasted effort and wasted money.

Usually, when people have a legal concern or issue, they behave differently.  That's why behavioral targeting advertising works particularly well for law firms.  Behavioral targeting is becoming more sophisticated every day, and it's already becoming more possible to determine when major life events are happening to people just based on what they're browsing and shopping for.

Privacy Concerns with Behavioral Targeting Advertising

Not everyone is a fan of behavioral targeting.  Some privacy watchdog groups have criticized the practice, saying that it is invasive and uses customers' data in ways they would be uncomfortable with. 

Target made the news last year after its offline behavioral targeting advertising program delivered a flyer full of pregnancy items to a teenage girl's address.  After her father complained to the company, he ended up even more shocked when his daughter confessed that she was actually pregnant and that the company had correctly guessed her situation based on her buying patterns.

For attorneys, the need to keep behavioral targeting from looking like stalking is even more important.  As a professional with ethical guidelines from a professional association, every attorney in your firm needs to respect client privacy.  As behavioral targeting advertising becomes more common, you're going to need to ask yourself how far you're willing to go in pursuit of great targeting opportunities.

Before you use any new method for behavioral targeting, it's never a bad idea to consult with your bar association.  They can often give you guidance about your behavioral targeting advertising so that you don't unwittingly cross any ethical lines.

Methods for Behavioral Targeting Advertising

There are several different ways to track people's behavior for behavioral targeting.  If you want to base your behavioral targeting advertising campaign exclusively on how people act on your website, you can use what is called onsite behavioral targeting.  This means that you'll track the exact patterns of behavior from each of your website visitors, analyzing them to decide what kind of advertising they'll see.

How can this help your law firm?  Let's say someone visited your law firm's website earlier today but ended up getting distracted and doing a few other web searches first.  Instead of losing that potential client for good, remarketing behavioral targeting identifies these visitors and targets them for an advertisement for your firm when they're using another website or a search engine.  This can help to refresh their memory and get them back where you want them—looking at your content.

Many companies also use advertising networks to help them get the data they need about their site visitors.  Network behavioral targeting looks at someone's behavior across a wide variety of websites.  Because you get more data doing this, you'll be able to come to some better conclusions about their needs.  However, it can also be hard to interpret this data for some consumers, and this kind of continuous tracking can create additional privacy concerns.

Using Behavioral Targeting Advertising for Conversions

One form of behavioral targeting you may have already seen happens if you've been lingering a while on a web page for a law firm or another business.  After you've been looking at a page for some time, you may see a live help window or a contact window open up in case you have any further questions from looking at the website.

This kind of behavioral targeting advertising can help to keep potential clients using your website and calling your firm.  However, you should use some caution if you decide to use this kind of behavioral targeting.  If your behavioral targeting advertising comes up too quickly, it can be regarded as a nuisance rather than a help and is likely to be ignored.

The Personal Web: The Future of Behavioral Targeting Advertising

What is Behavioral Targeting?  Basics and Definitions

The behavioral targeting definition that is broadest is just identifying customers and showing them different ads depending on their patterns of behavior.  This kind of behavior targeting can actually occur online or off.  You probably already use some form of behavioral targeting in your offline advertisements, based on this behavioral targeting definition.  Think about it: every time you put a display ad in a phone book or on a billboard, you're advertising to people engaging in a specific behavior.

Today, though, the behavioral targeting definition most marketers care about is the online definition.  What is behavioral targeting online?  Well, in the online world, behavioral targeting can refer to two different things: targeting ads by network behavior (that is, things people do in a large network of websites) and on site behavior (behavior targeting based on results from just one website).

When you're using behavior targeting based on a network, you're getting more results that tell you more about what people did elsewhere on the web.  However, you're also getting a huge amount of data, which can be vastly more difficult to interpret and keep track of.

Firms new to behavior targeting may want to start their campaign by using onsite behavioral targeting instead.  This limits the amount of data you'll be tracking and helps you see exactly how people are using your website.  Once you start testing different ads for people based on how they're using your site, you may see major changes to how those ads are perceived and how often they're clicked on.

What is Behavioral Targeting Tracking?

Regardless of which behavioral targeting definition you're using, network or onsite, behavioral targeting on websites takes the form of “cookies” that log people's information.  What is behavioral targeting keeping track of?  That depends on what you're looking for with your behavior targeting.  It can track how long people spend on certain websites, what they're searching for, and even demographic information like their date of birth.

Remember, because of the flexible behavioral targeting definition, you can do whatever you need in order to make behavior targeting work for you.  Try tracking something unusual if you have a hunch that it could be useful in your behavioral targeting.  With enough testing, you'll find out if your guess was right.

What is a Behavioral Targeting Platform?

Let's face it: no one has time to do everything covered by the behavioral targeting definition all by themselves.  Great behavior targeting requires great tools, and you'll want to shop around to get the best platform for your behavior-targeted campaigns.

Using a behavioral targeting platform, you can track what is behavioral targeting making for you, and split test huge numbers of campaigns.  You can change your behavioral targeting definition to work with multiple network sites or just to do behavior targeting on your own website.

Most of these platforms make it very easy to do basic analytics for your behavioral targeting campaigns, so you'll never have to worry again that you're running a bad ad.  Behavioral advertising by definition works better when you're keeping better track of customer behavior, so it's likely that you'll see better results as you continue to use a behavior targeting platform for several months.

What is Behavioral Targeting for Emails?

If the behavioral targeting definition for websites didn't seem like something you'd want to do, there are other options as well.  Instead of using behavior targeting on a website, consider using emails. 

What is behavioral targeting going to do to help your firm get better email results?  Well, keep in mind that behavioral targeting definition: you can now look at people who are taking certain steps, and email them when they behave in ways that suggest they're ready to act.

For example, if someone has visited your website in the past and left their email address, a behavior targeting email could send an automatic “Do you still need help?” email after a certain amount of time had passed with no response.  These direct ads can help re-direct traffic toward your site even if someone had forgotten about their visit.

Starting Your Behavioral Targeting Campaign

It can be a little bit frightening to go from asking “what is behavioral targeting” to starting a whole new type of ad campaign.  If you've never done any kind of behavior targeting before, you should consider hiring a web marketing agency to help you develop the kind of behavioral targeting you want.

When you talk to your marketing agency, it's a good idea to go in with your goals and target market already in mind.  If you know some things about the demographics of the markets you're trying to reach, your agency may be able to tell you new ways to expand the behavioral targeting definition to include reaching out to those groups.

Everything About Contextual Online Advertising

Online contextual advertising can help you to get the most conversions out of your advertising budget.  Today, Google AdSense is the most common provider of contextual online advertising, and its ads appear on 18 percent of total web pages online today.  If you're looking for a contextual advertising example to know if online contextual advertising is right for you, keep reading.  You'll learn about several contextual online advertising methods that work for law firms, and how to avoid making big mistakes.

Contextual Online Advertising and Your Law Firm: Will It Blend?

Consider the many ways that your law firm has used advertising or marketing campaigns over the last several years.  Whenever you put an ad in print, on the radio, or on television, you (or your advertising agency) try to figure out which ad placement will put you in front of the most people who can actually use your services.

Usually, you'll use demographic information to decide who to advertise to.  But what if there was a better way?  With online contextual advertising, there is.  Instead of having your advertisement show up randomly on a wide variety of websites, you can now use ad networks to display your ads only in front of people looking at content with keywords you've chosen.

Contextual online advertising is a really great deal for law firms.  Millions of people do online searches for legal advice and help every year, and online contextual advertising puts your advertisements in front of those people.  What's more, you can narrow your targeting so that only people who are seeking the kinds of services you do best will see your contextual online advertising.

Online Contextual Advertising Mistakes

Before talking much more about using contextual online advertising, it's important that you know that not every contextual advertising example goes according to plan.  In fact, sometimes online contextual advertising can lead to embarrassing juxtapositions for advertisers.

The classic contextual advertising example mistake involves a tragic news story.  A weight loss company trying to use advertising about “melting the pounds off” could need to send out an apology if their ads appeared next to a story about a house fire and an obese woman being rescued from it. 

While it's unlikely that your contextual advertising example will ever be as offensive as something like that, it's good to be aware of the drawbacks of online contextual advertising.  What can we learn from a contextual advertising example like that? 

Two things: first, you need to use negative keywords for your contextual online advertising targeting.  Some negative keywords for ad copy like this would have avoided the problem completely.  Second, this contextual advertising example tried to get too clever with its wording.  Keep your wording direct and you'll minimize the risk of an online contextual advertising faux pas.

Making Contextual Online Advertising Part of Your Strategy

Online contextual advertising is a complicated topic, especially from a programming perspective.  If you're not a programmer, you're going to want to use someone else's software that makes it easier to create contextual online advertising.

There are already a huge number of tools for helping you manage contextual online advertising.  One way to find a great tool is to look at websites that already seem to be using online contextual advertising in a good way.  Don't be shy about asking a site administrator about a contextual advertising example.  He or she can direct you to the program they use.

The most common source for a contextual advertising example on the web is Google AdSense.  However, other companies have also gotten in on the online contextual advertising game in a big way.  Today, you're almost as likely to see a contextual advertising example from Amazon or AdBrite as you are from Google.

You may want to initially try using several different services for contextual online advertising.  Before you start to use any new sites, ask them for a contextual advertising example and what their ads look like on websites.  In some cases, you may not feel that a service's contextual advertising example would be sufficient to showcase what your firm can do.

Best Practices for Contextual Online Advertising

When you're using online contextual advertising, you'll need to keep some basic principles in mind.  The first key principle is segmentation.  A good contextual advertising example will include a great deal of segmentation, showing significantly different advertisements to different types of people seeking different keywords.

When you use online contextual advertising, you should also use geographic terms to narrow down your focus.  It's not helpful if someone sees your great contextual advertising example but can't hire your firm because they were looking for legal help in Chicago, not Los Angeles.

Using Contextual Online Advertising on Your Blog

If you want to make a little bit of extra money, you may also wonder if there's a way to get online contextual advertisers to pay you.  The answer is: yes, but you're unlikely to make a fortune from posting contextual ads on your website.

A large number of ad networks can help you to set up your ad account and start adding relevant contextual online advertising to your website.  However, unless you have a blog with tens of thousands of readers, or a website that gets incredible Google traffic, your profits will probably be low.  Most websites currently using Google AdSense don't generate enough clicks to make even $100 a month, the lowest amount that leads Google to cut you a check.

Does this mean it's hopeless to try to make money with online contextual advertising?  Not really.  While most contextual online advertising is fairly low-profit, there are still people joining the “UPS Club” from AdSense.  Instead of mailing checks via the postal service to websites that make over $10,000 a month, Google sends them via UPS shipping.  Is it likely your website will end up in the UPS Club?  No—but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

Comparison of Free Web Analytics to Google Analytics

Web Analytics: Open Source

Although the majority of websites use Google Analytics and other popular analytics like SEOmoz, a growing number of websites are using free web analytics.  This article will compare and contrast one web analytics (open source) called Open Web Analytics which is now being used by thousands of websites across the web. 

Overview of Open Web Analytics

Open Web Analytics is one of the top free web analytics programs on the internet for legal websites and their search engine optimizers, and the services that compare and  exceed Google Analytics in some cases.  This web analytics (open source) was created by Peter Adams and has been accessed by thousands of websites and developers.  The free web analytics is funded by donations from the public and the donations allow the developers of the web analytics (open source) to work on new features, fix bugs, and more. 

Comparison Between Open Web Analytics and Google Analytics

The following categories will help to make a comparison between the free web analytics offered by OWA compared to services offered by Google Analytics.  For more information on the web analytics (open source) offered by OWA.

Delivery Model and License

The free web analytics offered by OWA is Open Source Software while Google only offers commercial service.  Additionally, the web analytics (open source) offered by OWA have a GPL v2 license, while Google has  a commercial license. 

Technologies and Cookie Model

Open Web Analytics offers PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript software while Google Analytics offers proprietary and JavaScript technology.  The free web analytics offered by OWA offers a first party and an optional third party cookie model while Google only offers a first party model. 

Data/Logging Limits

Perhaps one of the biggest advantages to OWA’s web analytics (open source) is that it does not have logging limits like Google.  Google Analytics only has a logging limit of 5M page views per month.  Additionally, Open Web Analytics allows unlimited tracking of multiple websites, and although Google allows tracking on additional web sites, they limit the tracking to 50 websites.  This advantage is particularly beneficial for law firms trying to compete with other websites in the same area.

Site Usage

The free web analytics offered by OWA offers information on page views, visits, and more just as Google does.  Both services offer tools for conversion goals, goal funnels, E-commerce, and custom even tracking that allow you to track custom site actions and events as long as they are defined. 

Custom Variables

The web analytics (open source) of OWA and Google both define and store custom variables within tracking requests.  Each service provides up to five name/value pairs for page, visit, and visitor scopes.

Click Heatmaps, Mouse Movements, and DOM Click Tracking

Open Web Analytics offers all of these services while Google Analytics does not offer any of the services listed above. 

Standard Reporting and Multi-Dimensional Queries

The free web analytics offered by OWA compare exactly to Google’s standard reporting.  Each service provides 35+ standard reports.  Additionally, the web analytics (open source) offered by OWA compare exactly to Google’s resources for Ad-hoc multi-dimensional queries as well as mix-and-match metrics and dimensions. 

Segmentation for Defining Segments of Customers

Both the web analytics (open source) offered by OWA and Google Analytics offer these services.  Open Web Analytics uses segmentation through data access API. 

Unique Services offered by Open Web Analytics

The free web analytics offered by OWA provide the following unique features:

·         a command line interface that performs administrative tasks by using a command line instead of GUI

·         asynchronous event logging in order to process new events to a log file or queue instead of writing directly to the database

·         the ability to process new events on clusters of services

·         object caching

·         a core database schema for database warehousing

·         modules and plugin framework tools without having to modify core files

Other Unique Services offered by Open Web Analytics

The free web analytics offered by OWA have built in instruments for websites like WordPress and MediaWiki.  The web analytics (open source) also offer CMS integration for Drupal through a third party.  Google requires support for these integrations through a third party. 

How do I Report Bugs for the Free Web Analytics?

You can use the support forums offered by Open Web Analytics for troubleshooting answers.  If you need to report bugs, you need to visit the bug tracking system under OWA. 

How do I download the Web Analytics (Open Source) Software?

Before you down the web analytics (open source) software, you’ll need the following information:

·         the data host (the name of the host which the database is accessed)

·         database name (if the database does not exist, it needs installed before the free web analytics software is installed)

·         data base user (the user account that Open Web Analytics will connect to your database)

·         database password

After you’ve gathered (and installed) the following pieces of information, you can begin to install the web analytics (open face) software.  The following

steps are required in the download of the free web analytics:

1.       download the latest version of Open Web Analytics from the website

2.       place the OWA folder within the document root of your web server, and the folder must be accessible by browsers

3.       start the installation wizard

Everything About Revenue Sharing

In different contexts, the question “what is revenue sharing?” can mean different things.  By one revenue sharing definition, just giving referrals to a lawyer friend could constitute revenue sharing.  In today's online marketing context, though, “what is revenue sharing?” usually refers to online affiliate programs and coupon programs—and for lawyers, these can be a minefield.  Can you, for instance, use a website like Groupon to discount your legal services by 87%, as one Missouri attorney did?  In some states, the ethical revenue sharing definition requires all sharing to be done with attorneys.  This guide will help you sort out which revenue sharing definition matters to you, and how to make sure that your revenue sharing is considered ethical.

What is Revenue Sharing?

In its most basic form, revenue sharing simply refers to giving back a percentage of your fees when you have received a lead from someone else.  The oldest answer to “what is revenue sharing” for attorneys was the classic “fee splitting” agreement with another attorney who had worked on a case and referred it to your law office.  Today's revenue sharing definition has expanded significantly beyond splitting fees in this way.

The explosion of online affiliate marketing programs has changed the idea of what is revenue sharing substantially in just the last few years.  When attorneys talk about nailing down a revenue sharing definition today, they're usually discussing whether a particular form of advertising is “just an ad” or if it constitutes fee splitting in some way.

Before You Use Revenue Sharing: Check With Your State!

It is absolutely critical for your firm to find out what is revenue sharing that is considered ethical by your state bar association, before you use any affiliate marketing programs.  Unethical revenue sharing definition depends on which state you live in, and different bar associations have made different rulings on whether these marketing programs can constitute an unethical action.

The reason that the revenue sharing definition is so important is that state bar associations prohibit fee sharing with non-lawyers.  The opinion of bar associations regarding “what is revenue sharing” has been split.  Some bar associations, like New York, have determined that online revenue sharing does not violate ethics rules as long as you are paying for an advertising service.  However, other states, like Missouri, have decided that it is not ethical to use revenue sharing since revenue sharing, by definition, constitutes a fee being split with a non-attorney.

If you are uncertain about the ethical revenue sharing definition in your state, and whether your marketing strategy fits into it, you can contact your bar association.  Usually, the bar association can provide you with a ruling on revenue sharing so that you can continue your marketing campaign without fearing ethics charges.

What is Revenue Sharing With Attorneys?

The one type of revenue sharing that is always permissible for attorneys is fee splitting with other lawyers.  In fact, if you asked attorneys just ten years ago, “what is revenue sharing?” they probably wouldn't know of any other kind.  Fee splitting arrangements are, in essence, a very primitive example of the revenue sharing definition: they require people to pay based on the revenue they made, but are usually handled on a case by case basis, rather than constituting a true marketing strategy.

What is Revenue Sharing With Google AdSense?

It's no secret that when people find your website with a search engine, they may not always find what they're looking for.  You can let those clients bounce back out of your website, never to be seen again, or you can try to make a profit.  Google expanded the answer to the question “what is revenue sharing?” when it introduced Google AdSense, a tool that allows you to get money every time someone clicks on another attorney's advertisement on your website.

So far, advertising using Google Adsense has not met the unethical revenue sharing definition according to state bar associations—while revenue sharing with non-lawyers does occur when using Google AdSense, the general consensus of bar associations has been that it is merely another form of advertising, and therefore is allowed.

Just because it's considered ethical according to the current revenue sharing definition doesn't mean using Google AdSense will turn a profit for your firm.  The firms that may have the best luck using Google AdSense are those who have high-ranked SEO results for a number of keywords, but want to be able to profit when someone wants an attorney in a different geographical location.  Since you probably wouldn't have gotten those clients anyhow, making money when they click to go to another website can help you make at least some money from their visit.

What is Revenue Sharing With Groupon?

One of the most controversial revenue sharing tools being used by attorneys today is Groupon.  This website allows you to sell group coupons to clients in your area, so that they can obtain discounted legal services—for instance, a discount to writing your will.  Feelings about Groupon have been quite mixed among attorneys, with some feeling that its revenue sharing model is unethical, while others think it's simply tacky to market professional legal help next to gym membership and house cleaning discounts.

For many attorneys, the biggest revenue sharing question about Groupon is this: does it actually generate profits?  Obviously the goal of offering discounted legal services is to get clients who need additional legal work done for them, but you need to carefully weigh whether you really expect your offer to be profitable in the long run.  Ironically, the coupon that led to Missouri's ruling that the Groupon service constituted unethical revenue sharing with non-lawyers didn't end up making its firm any profit at all.

Groupon may still be a good idea to get your law firm's name out if your firm is new and struggling to make a name for itself.  Even so, it's unlikely that Groupon and the many nearly-identical revenue sharing programs it has spawned will be used by large and established firms any time soon.

Everything About Cost Per Action

Typically, attorneys using online marketing today tend to use pay per click (PPC) services like Google AdWords—but as many attorneys have found out, bounce rates using AdWords can mean that most of your pay per click budget just goes up in smoke.  For that matter, only 20 percent of users will even click on these PPC results.  If you want your firm to pay only for the clicks that are actually generating business, CPA cost per action advertising may be right for you.  Keep reading find out about the advantages and disadvantages of this technique.

What is CPA (Cost Per Action)?

Pay per click services charge you every time that someone clicks on your advertisement, whether it's relevant to them or not, and whether they have any intention of using your firm's legal services.  Even if someone clicks accidentally on your link and backs out right away, the click still counts and you're still charged for it.

CPA cost per action charges you only when someone takes a particular action on your website.  That action could be watching a video, filling out an online contact form, or otherwise showing engagement with your website.  Cost per action won't charge you for clicks that simply bounce out of your website.  The same kind of CPA cost per action advertising is also done by a number of businesses outside of law firms, including accounting firms and insurance agencies.

How Cost Per Action Advertising Is Different

Unlike pay per click advertising systems, which are often very large and based on search engines, most CPA cost per action advertising is done through affiliate networks.  Affiliate networks allow a large number of different advertisers to have their display advertisements placed on relevant web pages.  In order to get the most out of your cost per action advertising, you'll need to choose an affiliate network that meets your needs.

CPA cost per action advertisements allow you to set your “action” goals upfront.  You can decide what level of engagement with your website ensures that a site visitor is a solid lead, then set up an arrangement to pay only when that action is taken.

One way that cost per action can work online is that a client will click on a splashy landing page for a particular legal issue, then fill out a contact form so that they can be contacted by an attorney in their area.  When you are given this lead, the “action” will be taken and you will be charged.

Why is Cost Per Action a Good Fit For Law Firms?

There are some types of businesses that struggle to profit using CPA cost per action advertising.  However, in many ways, law firms fit the cost per action paradigm in ways that most other types of businesses don't.  One of the biggest reasons that CPA cost per action marketing campaigns fail is when each individual lead for a particular business simply doesn't generate enough profit to justify the cost per action.

For law firms, though, a single lead can be extremely profitable, especially for some types of cases (contingency fee lawyers should be particularly interested!).  When you use a CPA cost per action affiliate marketing program, you can arrange only to pay for every actual lead that is sent to your law office, rather than paying every time someone just wants to window shop or just get free information using your website.

Law firms that profit due to the volume of their cases, rather than having a smaller number of cases with higher fees, may not be a good fit for CPA cost per action programs.  Mass tort and personal injury lawyers may be able to make cost per action work for them, but if you're handling smaller cases with a lower rate of return, you could actually lose money using this type of affiliate network.

Cost Per Action Offline

While affiliate networks are often thought to be exclusively the province of the online world, many CPA cost per action networks now work offline as well.  Both cable and broadcast television channels, as well as radio stations, carry advertising for affiliate networks that charge using a cost per action system.  You may have seen these commercials on TV, talking about a particular type of personal injury claim and offering to refer clients with that claim to attorneys in their area.

Cost per action programs that work across a variety of media can help you reach a wide range of audiences.  Radio and television audiences tend to skew slightly older, while online forms are more likely to be filled out by younger people.  If your services tend to be mostly for people who are older, you may want to focus more on your radio and television cost per action marketing efforts.

When you use CPA cost per action marketing on television or the radio, the “action” you'll have to pay for is a potential client calling the service and getting a referral for your firm.  Your cost per action will need to be paid whether or not the referral results in a winning case. 

Cost Per Action Controversies and Ethics Issues

Before you decide to use a CPA cost per action campaign, it's a good idea to contact your bar association and make sure that these campaigns won't be considered a violation of ethics or professional responsibility codes in your state.  Controversial ethics complaints have stemmed from these services in recent years, and you should always check to make sure that you won't risk censure when you run a new type of advertising campaign.

The reasons that some bar associations are reluctant to accept cost per action advertising are complicated.  In some major ways, CPA cost per action advertising, especially when it is integrated across several media platforms, can be seen as in competition with bar association referral services.  Some attorneys have speculated that this competitive aspect is the main reason that bar associations have opposed the proliferation of cost per action services.