Everything About LinkedIn For Business

While your teenage daughter may be addicted to Facebook and Twitter, odds are your professional colleagues use LinkedIn more.  With over 160 million users, most of them educated professionals, LinkedIn has rapidly become the world's most popular gathering place for people who want to network.  If you want to develop new business for your law firm, you need to know how to use LinkedIn for business purposes.  Keep reading to find out how using LinkedIn for business can improve your reputation and your return on investment.

How to Use LinkedIn For Business, Tip #1: Me and You and Everyone We Know

Using LinkedIn for business depends completely on the quality of the network you can create.  If you want to have the most reach that you possibly can, it's important to cast a wide net.  When you start to use LinkedIn for business, you can import the contacts that you already have in most major email clients.  LinkedIn will look at your contacts and see which people have already learned how to use LinkedIn for business and have their own profiles.

One of the biggest mistakes new or inexperienced LinkedIn users make is just looking at that contact list once, then adding new contacts individually.  If you want to get the most out of LinkedIn for business purposes, remember that new people are learning how to use LinkedIn for business every day—in 2012, two people create a new account every second.

This means that using LinkedIn for business effectively requires you to check and recheck that same list of email contacts.  Since the website streamlines this process, there's no reason not to do a routine check when you use LinkedIn for business.  You may find that several of your contacts are now using LinkedIn for business who had not previously had an account—contacts that you would have missed if you weren't vigilant.

How to Use LinkedIn For Business, Tip #2: Bid on Clicks

Law firms are uniquely positioned to use LinkedIn for business using its direct ad system.  These pay per click advertisements are substantially cheaper on a per click basis than Google AdWords tend to be for lawyers, and it's easier to learn how to use LinkedIn for business direct ads than AdWords.  Why?  Because unlike Google, which uses keywords to figure out who to target your ad to, LinkedIn uses demographics.

This means that instead of having to agonize over which set of keywords will generate the best results, you can quickly start using LinkedIn for business pay per click ads.  You can decide exactly what kind of users will see your ads, and can even specify which job title those users have.  This kind of precision targeting is substantially better than Google AdWords, and is one of the best reasons to use LinkedIn for business a part of your marketing strategy.

How to Use LinkedIn For Business, Tip #3: Be Part of the Community

It's not enough just to advertise and have a complete profile.  Using LinkedIn for business means that you'll also have to join conversations and groups.  Joining a group—or starting one for an interest that you have—is one of the quickest and easiest ways to use LinkedIn for business.  As soon as someone joins your group, you are able to send them messages.  You can also start using LinkedIn for business with groups by sending mass messages to all group members about information that might interest all of them.

When learning how to use LinkedIn for business, some attorneys make the mistake of thinking that they can plaster their advertisements, complete with catchy slogans, across all the groups they're part of.  Unfortunately, that kind of behavior is likely to be perceived as spam, and will usually get you banned from a group.  Using LinkedIn for business doesn't mean spamming others, it means giving real advice and information and getting the same thing back from others in exchange.

How to Use LinkedIn For Business, Tip #4: Sharing What You Do

One of the best ways to start using LinkedIn for business is to actually share some aspect of your work with others.  Obviously, you should never use LinkedIn to share any kind of private or confidential information, but you can still look around for other things to share with others.  For example, if you wrote a blog entry that you think a large number of your contacts might find interesting, you can start using LinkedIn for business by posting it.

As you learn more about how to use LinkedIn for business, you may also want to import your slides from a PowerPoint presentation using the website's SlideShare feature.  SlideShare makes using LinkedIn for business presentation distribution easy, but be careful: edit any presentations you have made to erase any confidential information.  You may also want to include more text in a presentation that doesn't involve a presenter explaining each slide, for the sake of clarity.

How to Use Linkedin For Business, Tip #5:  You Scratch My Back, I'll Scratch Yours

Professional relationships require give and take.  When you are figuring out how to use LinkedIn for business, you should consider what you have to contribute as well as what you want to get out of your web presence.  Maybe you often get clients that need to be referred to other law firms—you may want to start using LinkedIn for business referrals of this type.  Once you refer a client to one of your LinkedIn for business contacts, you may get similar considerations from that attorney in the future.

The same sort of scenario can occur when you want to use LinkedIn for business reviews.  If you start using LinkedIn to generate new reviews, you may be able to help someone else out by writing an honest and positive review about their services based on firsthand experience or a person's reputation in the community.  They can then return the favor by creating a LinkedIn for business review for you.

Recent research shows that over half of consumers who search for an attorney online will eventually choose their lawyer this way—translating to over 30 million new clients annually.  Lawyers without an online marketing plan in 2012 need to be making one for next year if they haven't already started.  Online marketing plans can help to guide your firm's strategy as you navigate the ever-changing blend of trends and regulations that guides internet marketing today.

Key Media and Platforms for 2013 Online Marketing Plans

Social media is going to be the key to having a successful 2013 online marketing plan for most law firms.  Businesses that really understand how to use social media—not just the basic techniques of posting and interacting, but that also “get” on a fundamental level how to interact with users—have one of the best sources of referrals possible today.

However, your online marketing plan needs to take into account who you're generally marketing to.  Business to consumer law firms will want to focus on B2C havens like Facebook, Twitter, or even smaller and more niche friendly sites like Pinterest and Reddit.  However, if your firm mostly markets to businesses, there's still only one real contender.  LinkedIn is still the place your online marketing plans should focus on, at least for the foreseeable future.

“Return on Influence” or “Return on Investment”?

Over the last few years, as social media has come to dominate conversations about online marketing plans, “ROI” has come to sometimes mean “return on influence,” a more nebulous concept than the traditional “return on investment.”  The change is supposed to acknowledge that the returns on your social media investments may not always be immediately apparent, and that gaining influence and reputation in the market is also worth something.

While return on influence is perhaps a term better left behind, it's reflecting something very important that needs to show up in your online marketing plan.  If your online marketing plans make it seem like you're afraid to spend money or time on social media and other new ways of doing internet marketing, you may not be saving money in the long run.  You should be willing to spend some of what you make this year in your online marketing plan for reputation building and growth.

Competitor Research: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

You should always make sure you know the basics of what your competitors' online marketing plan for last year was.  You can investigate where a competitor's inbound links are coming from and get a good sense of where they're spending their time when they create online marketing plans.

Good competitor research takes your competitors into account when determining your budget and the audiences you want to reach.  However, bad competitor research happens when law firms do the research, then ignore the results—leading to a less than impressive competitive presence.  Then there's the truly ugly thing some law firms do: copy everything their competitor does, right down to using the same inbound linking sources.  Understanding how someone else's firm works doesn't mean you should try to be just like them.  Have your own brand identity, and be a little different—don't just copy your competitors' techniques, improve them!

Online Marketing Plan Mistakes Lawyers Make

Attorneys today often make the mistake of thinking that their online marketing plans can be set completely at the beginning of the year.  While it's a good idea to have some overarching guiding principles for how you want your 2013 online marketing plan to look, don't get too set on specifics.  Keep in mind that because the internet is changing rapidly, you need to make online marketing plans that can be adapted to adjust for minor or major contingencies.

Online companies can go out of business suddenly, or very significantly change their policies in a way that either greatly benefits or greatly harms your firm's online marketing plan.  When this happens, don't blindly move on without looking to see how your online marketing plans have been affected and what you need to do to prevent financial losses.

The Benefits of New Platform Research

You should also be prepared to invest some of your time and money into finding new places to market your services.  Because new online platforms for content marketing are being developed all the time, it's a good idea to include experimentation with some of these platforms in your online marketing plan.  Online marketing plans don 't need to latch onto every fad, but there's nothing wrong with trying out something new and seeing if it works well for your firm, especially if you think you have a winning idea to use.

Early adopters of technologies often get additional benefits from them  that people who only jump on the bandwagon later don't get.  For example, if you're part of a new platform when it's just being started, you learn community norms as they develop, instead of having to risk violating unwritten rules when you come into an already-established online community.

The #1 Thing You Aren't Spending Enough On

The vast majority of law firm online marketing plans don't spend enough money or time on analytics.  While this may not seem like the most glamorous part of an online marketing plan, it's one of the most critical parts if you want to see your returns on your online marketing growing throughout the year and beyond.

Analytics help you understand when something you've experimented with has been successful, and what parts of your online presence are working or failing.  Using analytics, you can find out when users “drop out” of reading your website to go back for browsing.  This can give you valuable feedback about which pages you need to improve your content for first.

The only way analytics can help, though, is if you're willing to listen to the findings.  Data doesn't lie, and if you find out, for example, that a much-lauded site redesign is resulting in fewer people getting past your splash page and lower conversion rates, you may want to abandon the redesign.  But you can also check for other reasons.  If fewer people are coming through your splash page, it may be that many people who would never have contacted you anyway got a clearer view of your firm's niche specialty area—saving them time and you a bit of bandwidth.

Everything About SEO Services Blog

If you're a busy attorney and you want to capitalize on the blog market, you can have an SEO service write blog entries for you.  Up to 80 percent of firms who are involved with search engine optimization outsource some or all of their SEO tasks to other companies, and there's no reason that you shouldn't use a ghostwriter to do some or all of your blog entries so you don't have to.

Can an SEO Services Blog Really Bring In Business?

The short answer is yes.  The long answer is yes, definitely!  An SEO service blog can in some ways be better than a blog you write on your own, and attorneys at small firms report an over 50% success rate with their blogs, even if they're not optimized for search engine indexing.

An SEO services blog will always be search engine optimized in a way that meets with the latest standards from search engines.  For instance, new updates to Google called Panda and Penguin have substantially changed the way the site ranks pages.  As an attorney, you may not have time to keep up with the newest changes to how search engines operate, but SEO services specialize in doing this exact thing.

An SEO service blog can bring in business in a few different ways.  First of all, there's the direct business that you get every time someone clicks on the links to your website in your SEO services blog and decides to call you.  Second, you can use your SEO service blog to get referrals from other attorneys.  Third, connecting your blog with social media can make your entries go viral, bringing in even more traffic.

A Word About SEO Service Blog Content

Because of recent search engine changes, it's more important than ever that your SEO services blog contains quality content.  Of course, without great content, your search engine page rank results don't mean much: people will just click on your SEO service blog, see that the content looks too spammy, and turn right back around to the rest of their search results.

One of the biggest ways that the new search indexing algorithms decide which site is better quality is by looking at links.  You'll want to make sure that your SEO services blog has headlines and content that makes people want to click, whether they're seeing a link to your SEO service blog on another blog or on your Facebook page.

Deciding on the Right Service for Your SEO Services Blog

With so many different companies offering to start an SEO service blog for attorneys, it's even more important to make sure you're getting the best quality content for your money.  Avoid any companies that will have your SEO services blog entries written by people who don't live in the United States.  These writers may work for less money, but their content can sometimes be extremely clunky and even ungrammatical—not the first impression you want to give your SEO service blog visitors.

Any company you hire should be able to show you samples of other blogs they've ghostwritten.  If the SEO services blog you see contains factual errors, cross that service off your list.  You also want your SEO service blog to have some personality.  Ideally, that personality will look a lot like yours, so your clients get the right impression from your SEO services blog.  Avoid services that make the content for every SEO service blog they write look the same.  You want your content to stand out, not look like everyone else's outsourced blog.

For a Great SEO Service Blog: Check the Competition!

Because only 12 percent of small firm attorneys currently maintain blogs, it's possible that none of your nearest competitors has a current blog.  If one or more of them do, though, you should look at their blogs to give direction to your SEO services blog.

There are a lot of good reasons to keep up with any blogs being run by your competition.  First of all, you never want to sound the same as someone else.  If your SEO service blog looks too similar to the blog your competitor has started, you may want to direct your ghostwriters to change focus a little bit.

Style is also important.  Do you see your competitor getting a lot of attention in social media and from search engines because of a particular stylistic technique, like asking commenters open-ended questions?  Ask the company writing your blog if they can incorporate these techniques into your blog to generate more buzz and more business.

You should also try having your SEO services blog link to other attorney blogs sometimes.  While this may seem like giving clients to the competition, the truth isn't so simple.  The internet is all about connections, and by giving a link you're more likely to get one from someone else in the future.

What if I'm Unhappy With My SEO Service Blog?

Your ghostwriter isn't you, and even if you discuss your desires for your blog with an SEO services company, it might not come out looking exactly like you had hoped.  Don't decide right away to drop the idea of an outsourced blog altogether.  You should try to talk to the company ghostwriting your blog and see if there's any way to communicate better about what your needs are.

Of course, not every ghostwriter is a great fit for every law firm.  If you've made repeated requests for the focus of your blog to change, for instance, and your blog is still running entries about the topic you started with, you may want to start shopping around for a new service to write your blog entries.

Keep in mind that if you're having your blog ghostwritten, a sudden change in style or writing quality will look strange.  If your existing blog hasn't gotten a lot of traffic or a lot of loyal followers, you may want to ask the new company handling your ghostwriting to just create a totally new blog for you.  This way, the changes won't be as noticeable.

Everything About Small Business Social Media Marketing

You may be surprised (or maybe not!) to learn that small firms are almost twice as likely to use social media for business marketing as large firms—70 percent to just 37 percent.  However, there's a big difference between just using small business social media marketing and using it effectively.  From outdated social media profiles to boring blog content, most lawyers are making big mistakes when they use social media for business marketing.  This guide will help you stop making those mistakes and start exciting your clients.

Why Smaller Can Be Better in Social Media

There are definitely advantages to being a large law firm when it comes to using social media for business marketing.  Almost 20 percent of large law firms now have a full-time social media specialist helping to design their campaigns.  But what if you don't have the money for a social media specialist?  How can you maximize your small business social media marketing without spending more than your firm can afford?

There are two things that make small business social media marketing substantially easier than marketing for a big firm.  The first is flexibility.  Using social media for business marketing is only effective when you are good at responding to comments and joining in on conversations.  Small firms can excel at this kind of responsiveness if even one or two attorneys are interested in contributing to your small business social media marketing presence.

The second big advantage your firm has when it comes to leveraging social media for business marketing is branding.  Small business social media marketing depends a great deal on your ability to successfully differentiate your business from competitors.  When you don't have a lot of red tape and bureaucracy, it can be easier to figure out what you stand for and what the brand personality of your business is.

Social Media For Business Marketing: Expanding What You Have

A lot of attorneys at small firms have already made small, tentative steps toward small business social media marketing.  Maybe you've got a Facebook profile, not just for yourself but for your law firm as well.  Maybe you occasionally update a blog.  Perhaps you casually surf websites like Reddit, Dig, or StumbleUpon.

When you start using social media for business marketing, start with what you know.  Every website is a bit different, and it can be hard to learn the etiquette for several sites at once.  In a small firm, you may be able to divvy up responsibilities for small business social media marketing: the attorney who already has a personal Twitter account can start tweeting for the firm, while an attorney who spends a lot of time surfing Reddit can start submitting blog posts to the site.

When you start by engaging with the social media communities you're already connected to, you already know the rules and—more than that—you can have fun with what you're doing.  It shows when you genuinely enjoying your conversations when you use social media for business marketing, and that kind of enthusiasm can translate directly into new leads and new clients.

Social Media For Business Marketing: Building a Reputation

In today's small business social media marketing world, it's not enough to just make a series of great entries on a blog or to get a few ratings on Yelp.  Getting ahead of your competition means building a reputation, and that takes two things: time and content.

Content is incredibly important, because even if you have a great deal of fantastic content, you need to keep it fresh and new.  On the internet, information seems to have a short shelf life, and waiting too long to post about the next new thing can mean that your posts go unread.  

Stay abreast of new developments in your field, and always look for new opportunities to develop your small business social media marketing content.  A client's question, a disagreement in a meeting about a legal issue, a judge's decision, a link you read elsewhere—all of these can be fertile grounds for creating engaging content for your blog or social media feeds.

Social Media For Business Marketing: Mistakes and Missteps

When attorneys start using small business social media marketing, they often make mistakes, big and small.  Sometimes, what starts as a small mistake—a faux pas in how you talked to a commenter, or a minor gaffe on your website—can seem to spiral out of control in the social media world.  When this happens (and odds are, someday it will), you need to know how to handle it.

Start by acknowledging your mistakes, which isn't always easy for attorneys.  Some companies have managed to turn social media nightmares into positive experiences by promptly apologizing in an authentic way.  View the mistake as a learning experience: if you can, ask for feedback that can help you to avoid similar mishaps in the future.

While a mistake can certainly be embarrassing, and can even feel like it's destroying your small business social media marketing, keep in mind the old saying: This, too, shall pass.  The same short internet shelf-life that makes it necessary to keep producing content will mean that soon, your gaffe will just be yesterday's news.

Social Media For Business Marketing: Staying Ahead of the Competition 

In the same way that you continue your legal education with seminars and online classes, you should give serious thought to getting formal training in small business social media marketing.  It's not a bad idea to make sure that everyone in your firm understands at least the basics of using social media for business marketing, just so that all staff members are on the same page.

You should also make sure that you're keeping informed about changes to the social media platforms that you're using, so that you don't get blindsided.  For instance, even small changes to the way profiles are displayed could have a significant impact on your LinkedIn advertising.  Avoiding technological surprises is key to making sure that your social media marketing strategies succeed.

Everything About Internet Viral Marketing For Lawfirms

Originally, “viral marketing” was just word of mouth: people telling each other about a product they liked or a law firm they had a good experience with.  In the internet age, viral marketing has become a multimillion dollar industry built on creating buzz for products and services.  Building loyalty to your brand with social media and viral marketing works: 56 percent of consumers say they are more likely to recommend something after they become a fan of it on Facebook.  This guide will show you how you can implement internet viral marketing strategies for your law firm, and how to make the most out of all of your viral marketing efforts.

Internet Viral Marketing: What Can It Do For My Firm?

Viral marketing campaigns have been used to sell everything from blenders to shaving cream, and to advertise a wide range of services.  While the big internet viral marketing hits tend to get the most national publicity, there's no reason that your law firm can't leverage the potential of internet viral marketing to bring in new clients.

Instead of paying for every click that someone makes on one of your advertisements, viral marketing turns other people into conduits for your message.  When you use internet viral marketing effectively, people who see your marketing content will pass it along to other people at no cost to you, simply because they found it engaging, informative, or just funny.

Okay, But What Can't It Do?

Contrary to what some marketing professionals say, viral marketing isn't for everyone, and it can't do everything.  If your firm wants to continue advertising in a very traditional way, broadcasting your slogans instead of socially engaging with visitors on Facebook and Twitter, internet viral marketing might not be the right fit.

You'll also be disappointed if you're looking for immediate results from this type of advertising.  Internet viral marketing, like real viruses, take time to spread out into the population.  You won't see results overnight, and if you need a fast spike to your numbers, you may want to try a different marketing method, like pay per click (PPC) advertising.

Internet viral marketing should also never be considered an alternative to traditional marketing efforts.  Instead, it can be a great way of putting your brand out there so that you can attract people beyond your reach with traditional word of mouth advertising.  Traditional marketing can complement viral marketing strategies rather than being replaced by them.

Building Internet Viral Marketing Campaigns

If you've never done anything with viral marketing before, it's usually a good idea to have someone who knows how to help with your first campaign.  Talking to a marketing professional can ensure that your internet viral marketing campaign looks like something people will want to read and doesn't violate the terms of service of any of the websites you're planning to implement it on.

The key to making sure that your viral message is distributed widely is having a message not just worth seeing, but that makes people say, “this was so interesting I had to send it to someone!”  Now, of course, the reasons something is interesting can vary.  If your law firm has a good sense of humor, you can try to make a video about the law so funny that people forward it to their friends.  If you want your internet viral marketing to inform rather than entertain, you may want to create a guide or e-book that helps people with some common issue relating to your practice area.

Reacting to the Unexpected

Once you've deployed your internet viral marketing and it's “in the wild,” your control over it diminishes.  You can try to prevent negativity and unexpected events by making sure that your campaign is error-free, but you never know what will happen when people start looking at your content.

Keep in mind that not all unexpected things are bad.  You may find that your content is being circulated to an audience you hadn't considered, or that requests are now being made for your firm to do more content in the same vein.  If this happens, embrace it!  That kind of engagement is exactly what you want internet viral marketing to do for your law firm.  When you respond to content requests promptly and show that you're really listening, people take notice.

But what happens if something goes wrong?  What if it goes very, very wrong?  First of all, don't panic and delete comments that are negative.  Remember that the internet is a big place, and if you exercise that level of control over your internet viral marketing, people will go elsewhere to voice the same concerns.  

Instead, listen to the complaint (even if you initially think it's unfair), and try to address it calmly and respectfully.  That kind of move can be considered internet viral marketing all on its own—it's not unheard of for a company's heartfelt apology to be passed on.  Not everyone knows how to effectively defuse a complicated situation, and as a lawyer, your internet viral marketing should show that you can do exactly that.

After All That—Did It Work?

Trying to figure out whether an internet viral marketing campaign was successful can be hard work.  Because it can be so much work, it's tempting to use shortcuts to measure the success of your marketing campaign.  For example, you might think that a particular Facebook image failed because it only garnered five or six “likes,” while another generated thirty.  Looking more closely, though, more discussion may have occurred on one, or the people who saw that image may have been more likely to actually check out your firm's website.

Only you can decide what kind of performance goals your viral marketing campaign should have.  Keep in mind that all of your goals should be geared toward eventually producing more clients, even if it's indirectly through referrals or enhanced brand awareness.  Just creating a buzz isn't enough if that buzz doesn't go anywhere.

Ten years ago, almost no one guessed that by 2012, the mobile advertising market would be responsible for over $5 billion in business per year.  Until recently, the United States had lagged behind other mobile advertising markets worldwide, but now that has changed.  If you're a law firm professional, you need to keep up on the latest mobile advertising market trends, so keep reading.  You'll find out what's really going on in the mobile advertising markets that make a difference for your firm.

Recent Changes to the Mobile Advertising Market

One of the biggest pieces of news for mobile advertising markets worldwide was when, in 2012, the United States outspent Japan on mobile advertisements.  A lack of high speed wireless internet in many areas of the United States had until recently prevented the mobile web from reaching its full commercial potential.  Now, though, smartphones are increasingly considered a must-have accessory for consumers even outside of bustling cities.

The mobile advertising market has also recently seen a shift toward app activity and away from the web itself.  While people using their smartphones want to connect, increasingly they're doing it in some way that doesn't involve a traditional web browser.  Interactive apps have taken the world by storm, and in 2012, it's estimated that apps will be downloaded in the world's mobile advertising markets a total of 100 billion times.

Social media browsing has increasingly gone mobile in mobile advertising markets around the world.  The United States is no exception, and now a third of U.S. web traffic on major social networks is coming from mobile devices.

What the Mobile Advertising Market Wants

Learning to talk to mobile advertising markets can be tough.  The biggest thing you'll want to avoid is having your advertising and landing pages act exactly the same as if your visitors had come through a traditional web browser. 

Mobile phones and desktop computers just aren't the same, and trying to shoehorn the same content into fitting both applications is like trying to have identical copy for a radio ad, a TV ad, and a newspaper print ad.  Mobile advertising markets are like any other groups of consumers: they like to have their decisions acknowledged and affirmed.

The mobile advertising market also doesn't always want to interact with the web on a traditional website any more.  Increases to app downloads and purchases of in app items shows that the mobile web isn't all about search engines.  Don't make the mistake of thinking that you're preparing for mobile advertising markets if all you're doing is making sure your ads and landing pages display correctly on a smartphone.

Capitalizing on the Mobile Advertising Market Today

Okay, so your firm doesn't have a full time computer programmer on staff.  That doesn't mean that you can't capture the segments of your target mobile advertising markets that want to use apps instead of doing web browsing.

If you can't come up with an app idea, you should consider working with a mobile advertising network that can help you get your ads placed in apps that people in your area are using.  Local targeting with these in-app ads can give you incredible mobile advertising market segmentation.

But let's say you have an idea for a simple iPhone app that could make some aspect of life easier for your mobile advertising markets.  Whether it's an informative guide about what to do if you're pulled over or a checklist for making sure you're legally protected after a vehicle accident, you can probably make an app fairly easily.  You don't necessarily need to have a programmer: many app creators are available that allow app creation even by novices to the mobile advertising market.

Of course, if you want to do something truly novel, like a simulation game about life in your law office, you may have a tougher time creating your own app.  These kinds of apps are best left to the professionals, so you may want to hire a software company to write one for you if you need the latest and greatest app for your mobile advertising markets.

Mistakes to Avoid with the Mobile Advertising Market

On the web, advertising fatigue sets in soon after someone sees your ad.  Web users are so used to tuning ads out that they essentially develop a blind spot for your advertising after they've been overexposed to it.

If you're running the same ads to the same mobile advertising markets for weeks or even months at a time, the sad truth is that you've been wasting huge amounts of your advertising budget.  Your mobile advertising market knows what it wants: if someone was going to click a particular ad, they'd do it within the first few times they saw it.

Cycling a huge number of ads and changing them up on a daily or near daily basis is one of the best ways to avoid ad fatigue and capture mobile advertising markets.  Some advertising platforms make this kind of cycling automated and quick, while it may take some work to change ads frequently using other platforms.

The Future of the Mobile Advertising Market

No matter what, it doesn't look like people are about to be spending less time on their phones.  Mobile use continues to soar, and increasing adoption of smartphone technologies by middle and working class consumers means that mobile advertising markets are expanding on a daily basis.  Even if your law firm has been late to adopt some of these technologies, it's not too late to get on board now.

Keeping up with these trends means you'll need to subscribe to blogs and keep an eye out online for new statistics and reports about the mobile advertising market.  The next new social media trend or big advertising development will likely appear in blogs and news aggregator feeds long before it shows up in glossy magazines or newspapers.  Staying informed is absolutely critical if you want to keep your campaigns looking fresh and converting clients.

Everything About PPC Management

So you've started using pay per click marketing for your law firm—but what now?  Do you want keywords that cost $50 or more, or to bid lower on keywords for just a few dollars?  PPC bid management software can cost hundreds of dollars, and PPC management services can cost thousands—are they worth it?  This guide will explore how you can best manage your pay per click advertising, with or without PPC management services.  You'll also learn about common PPC bid management mistakes to avoid when you begin working on your PPC management strategies.

PPC Bid Management Options

When you start learning about pay per click marketing, one of your first questions might be “how do I know what to bid?”  There are several different answers to this question, depending on your PPC management needs and your current pay per click advertising budget.  Usually, the search engines offering this type of advertising also offer PPC management services and options that can help you manage your bids.

While it's easy to use these services for your PPC bid management, you may know about your other options as well.  Some companies offer software that can help you make bids and learn more about PPC management in your pay per click campaigns.  Others offer full PPC management services that allow you to focus on your firm's business without thinking about your own pay per click advertising campaign.

When Should I Use Search Engine PPC Management Services?

If you're new to marketing with PPC, you may want to start doing PPC bid management with the tools offered by the search engines themselves.  These services have a few distinct advantages: they're easy to use, with effective tutorials that can help you learn how to do the basics of PPC management.  However, there's a reason that up to 70 percent of big businesses eventually hire specialized PPC management services to handle their pay per click campaigns: it's not easy to just use what you're given by search engines.

Keep in mind that any PPC bid management that you do with the services offered by Google or Yahoo will be run by them, and that they're more interested in their own profit than your law firm's.  When you use their tools, then, don't be surprised if the way they do PPC management seems hazy.  They simply don't make all the best analytical information available to consumers.

When Should I Use Third Party PPC Bid Management Software?

Once you've worked with PPC management tools from the search engines for a while, you may be ready to move on to tools that give you more control.  For this, you'll want to look for third party PPC management services software.  The quality of these tools can vary, and some can cost hundreds of dollars for a user license, so you'll want to make sure to look for online reviews of any software before you buy.

Of all of your PPC bid management options, using third party software can give you the most control over your bid strategies—if you know what you're doing.  Make sure that you understand the tools that you have, and consider sending an employee to a training that can help them get the most out of any PPC management tools that you've spent money on.  Remember that the tools you use are only as good as the people using them.  If you're not able to spend money on training someone to use PPC bid management software, you may want to hire PPC management services to handle your bids.

When Should I Use PPC Management Services?

Micromanaging pay per click bids isn't for everyone, and many law firms end up deciding that it would be better to leave PPC bid management in the hands of specialists.  There's nothing wrong with using one of these services for PPC management, but keep in mind that the cheapest service may not be the best.

PPC management services that keep your data may be cheaper in the short term, but make no mistake: when you lose data, you lose money and time. You may not think that your data means much, but think of PPC bid management as a series of experiments.  Some work, and some don't, and every time you find out one that works you'll save money and attract clients.  If your data doesn't belong to you and you switch PPC management services, you're back to square one: you won't know which of your PPC management strategies worked, and which were failures.  

The best companies that provide PPC bid management won't just make bids for you, they'll discuss your marketing strategies and help you build a website that converts clicks into clients.  This can be much more cost-effective than hiring bare bones PPC management services to handle your marketing on the web.

Common PPC Bid Management Mistakes

When you're new to PPC management, you can easily fall prey to common bidding mistakes.  One of the easiest traps to fall into is bidding too high.  Obviously you'll get more clicks when you bid high, but how many of those clicks become clients?  Experiment with bids that don't necessarily put you into the top position—you may find that you're getting just as many clients when you're spending a great deal less on your bids.

Law firms that are new to PPC management also tend to start by using keywords in their ad groups that are simply too general to get the kinds of clients they want.  Keywords that are too general hurt your PPC management in two different ways: they make conversion rates go down while causing your bid prices to go up.

It's also important not to keep changing your bids too often, too early.  While some PPC management strategies may require changing bids fairly frequently, smart PPC bid management relies on building historical data and using that data wisely.  Changing your bids too much when your campaign is new can result in bad data and bad PPC management.

Everything About PPC

In today's legal marketing world, the internet has begun to dominate the discussion, and pay per click is more popular than ever.  You may have heard that PPC pay per click advertising can raise your law firm's website traffic by as much as 66%, but have very little idea what else PPC can do for your firm.  This guide will help answer the most basic questions, from “what is PPC?” to “How do I manage my PPC bids?”  It doesn't have to be hard to set up a PPC pay per click campaign—you'll learn how to start from the basics here.

What is PPC?

Both new and old law firms need advertising that works on the web.  You have several options: you can manage keywords on your website or in blog entries, then use search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to get onto the first page of someone's web search.  However, this kind of search engine marketing requires a high level of skill with web writing to make sure that your content is relevant while keeping keyword density high enough to put your firm into the top few pages of results.

Instead of trying to get your website into the first few pages of results through a traditional search, you can instead use PPC pay per click marketing.  Even if you have little computer experience and are still asking “what is PPC?” you can still use Google AdWords or another PPC program to get your marketing campaign off the ground.  PPC pay per click advertising allows you to target your firm's advertising and only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

What is a PPC Keyword?

When you start to run a PPC pay per click advertising campaign, you'll need to think about what clients are typically looking for when they come to your website.  If your firm specializes in helping people to beat traffic tickets, for instance, your clients probably begin their web search by looking for keywords relating to traffic tickets.

When you advertise using PPC, you can decide which searches your PPC pay per click advertising is seen on.  You will choose the specific keywords that your firm will bid on.  If you're in the top several bidders for a keyword when someone searches for it, your website's ad will be seen by that person—meaning that your site is seen by the exact people you want to attract as clients.

What is PPC Going to Cost My Firm?

The cost of a PPC pay per click campaign depends largely on exactly what kinds of keywords you're bidding on and what your bid strategies are.  If you want to bid on very expensive keywords, like “mesothelioma,” the answer to “what is PPC going to cost” will be very steep indeed—often tens or even hundreds of dollars for a single click!  However, by narrowly tailoring your keywords, you can bring PPC costs down.

For example, you may want to include geographic terms in your searches.  You may also want to include very specific keywords that clients are likely to use, rather than using the kind of keywords that lawyers use.  Instead of using PPC pay per click keywords like “personal injury attorney,” consider terms like “rear end car accident lawyer.”  You can also choose some PPC keywords to exclude from searches—so if your firm doesn't handle a particular type of case, you can exclude clients searching for lawyers who can.

What is PPC Bid Management?

Because PPC pay per click advertising uses bidding, the cost you'll have to pay to get your advertisement displayed prominently will depend on what other firms have already bid.  While firms that are still trying to figure out “what is PPC?” may not be able to work out a great bid management strategy right away, as you continue to use pay per click services you'll learn how to maximize the profits from your bids.

For example, you may find that it might be much cheaper to appear early in search results with your PPC pay per click campaign when you're advertising at certain hours of the night.  If you still get the same conversion rates (the same percentage of people call your firm after clicking), you'll want to make sure your PPC bid isn't any higher than it needs to be.  You can use PPC pay per click bid management software to help you figure out what is PPC bid strategy that will work best for your law firm.

What is PPC Campaign Management?

“What is PPC?” is a more complex question than just what keywords to bid on.  If you're still not sure how to use PPC pay per click marketing, you may want to look into PPC campaign management.  Campaign management services can help you get beyond the initial difficulties of setting up your PPC campaign so you can move on to getting the clicks and conversions you're hoping for.

What is PPC Strategy?

Building a great strategy for your PPC pay per click ads requires knowing about your potential clients.  When your clients are looking for websites to answer their legal questions or find a lawyer, they want accurate information and contemporary web design that is aesthetically pleasing.  In order to have the best PPC results, you'll want to create strategic landing pages that contain the content your clients are searching for.

When you have done PPC pay per click advertising for some time, you can begin to look at changing and developing your strategy based on what works.  What is a PPC effective strategy can depend largely on the exact nature of your practice—you'll want to look at which pages are driving conversions and what those pages have in common.

What is PPC Going to Do for My Business?

Used effectively, PPC pay per click can help your business to grow—not just by getting eyes on your website, but by getting the right eyes.  When you use PPC, you're targeting only clients who specifically want exactly the kinds of services your firm is providing.  When you begin to develop your PPC pay per click strategy, you'll find that your conversion rates can steadily increase, making it cost less for each new client you're finding online.  While other forms of marketing require a great deal of computer knowledge, you can begin a campaign with pay per click advertising relatively quickly and easily.