How The Right Analytics Can Strengthen Customer Engagement

Customer engagement is where the heart is. Data-driven marketing offers industry leaders the opportunity to increase their market growth, while shaping customer satisfaction.

Based on the Forbes Insights and Turn report, “Data Driven and Digitally Savvy: The Rise of the New Marketing Organization,” executives agreed that data-driven marketing is critical in our competitive global economy. Companies embracing this idea are three times more likely than others to say they have achieved a competitive advantage in customer engagement.

Engagement marketing initiates when interested prospects interact with your business. The interaction is more than just talking; both sides must be willing to listen to one another. Your company’s goal is to fulfill their interests, while simultaneously achieving your own business objectives.

Marketing, sales, and customer support managers must work together to create an effective data-driven strategy centered on customer engagement. To attain the best results, your team should integrate a variety of marketing techniques.

Encourage dialogue between your consumers and brand. Improve your strategy with these four approaches:

1. Segment Customers with Personalization

Specificity gives your business the flexibility to cater to your customers’ needs and desires. Commit to learning more about who they are as people. Target visitors based on their lifestyles, not demographics.

Start by defining realistic goals for your big data projects. Setting expectations can secure buy-in within your organization. Moreover, it filters out the big data hype.

Get personal with advertising. Gathering consumer data should help you advertise effectively. No more guessing what product works best for your customers. Data facilitates wise decision-making for the budget.

Leverage data by segmenting your website visitors, and then serve up targeted ads based on users’ interests. You will ensure that the right ads reach the right visitors.

According to AdAge.com, when the computer technology company Lenovo implemented this method, its “click-through rates increased by 30% and resulted in greater conversions and sales.”

Customer-Specific Needs

Be different than your competitors. By aggregating and analyzing more information faster, your team can create smarter campaigns—leading to better customer engagement.

Brands should strive to gain an accurate description of their customers. Then, create personalized messages that stimulate action. According to BtoB Magazine, “real-time analytics create a better link between CRM and email analytics.”

Source: 5 Incredible Examples of Personalized Marketing – Pardot

Doggyloot segments its potential customers differently: by the size of their friendly pets. Follow their lead by producing customized ads and sending intentional emails. As Marketing Sherpa mentions, it doesn’t make any sense to give a 10-pound bone to a five-pound dog.

Take Action

• Define segmentation within your company.
• Design advertisements with the customers’ needs in mind.
• Develop smart campaigns with consumer data.

2. Set Behavioral Triggers

Evaluate customers’ interactions. You will gain new perspectives on how to effectively engage people with your brand. When clients click on a particular button or sign up for a specific mailing list, their behavior should signal a reaction from your team.

Don’t just collect the data. Dig deep and monitor the dynamic behavior of your customers. Identify behavioral outliers, patterns, and associated contexts. Every communication is prompt by “an accurate reflection of the customer’s current behaviors and needs.”

Further, detect your customers’ next moves. The old practice was to let your team study the analytics from a historical perspective. But for today’s marketing, you need analytics that present a forward-looking view. Predicting behavioral patterns lead to better timing for customer engagement.

To increase the duration of engagement, prevent people from stopping. In the computer game industry, when players get bored, the game displays new tasks to complete, in addition to the main activity.

So, how does this relate to your business? Prevent customer inactivity by stopping the boredom cycle. Analyze what’s “boring” about your product, website, or customer service. Then, identify opportunities to introduce new mechanisms of engagement.

Did you know? Kissmetrics is a great tool to help you with customer segmentation. We collect customer and behavioral data that you can use to optimize all of your marketing campaigns. Try Kissmetrics today!

Behavior-Triggered Email Campaigns

Email with a purpose. Through automation, you can produce email campaigns that engage consumers and convert them into buyers.

Focus on sending emails triggered by your customers’ behaviors. Analyze the campaign’s success by measuring the program ROI, revenue per email, and customer lifetime value.

Source: Behavior-Triggered Email Campaigns Win and Keep Customers

Take a proactive stance. For example, recover lost revenue from abandoned carts. Compose an email to remind your customers of their abandoned product. Offer to answer any questions or provide a discount to encourage purchase completion. When creating behavior-triggered email campaigns, think about customer value to increase your bottom line.

Take Action

• Analyze your customers’ behavioral patterns.
• Use predictive modeling to adjust to the future needs of your customers.
• Keep your customers “active” in your brand with ancillary tasks.
• Create email campaigns based on customers’ actions.

3. Create Ongoing Conversations

Customers expect a certain level of communication with your brand. Whether you desire feedback or not, people will share their opinions about your business. Monitor and manage customer sentiment by boosting your competency in real-time reporting.

Ian Lurie, author of Conversation Marketing: Common Sense Internet Strategies, reveals that conversation marketing is direct and conservative. Instead of the used car salesman tactic, this marketing technique strives to ask customers questions about their likes and dislikes. It’s not constantly telling people: Buy me!

Conversation marketing leverages technology to build and maintain relationships with customers. The key is to maximize sales over a customer lifetime, not just a single purchase.

ROI and revenue may not effectively measure method. Optimize conversational marketing with conceptual analytics.

Consider examining your Net Promoter Score. Think about how messages induce responses and how competitive messages influence customers’ perceptions. Investing in metrics that measure loyalty can impact how you approach the customer lifecycle.

No Sales Pitch Necessary

Listen intently to your customers. Pay attention to their tone and word choice. What emotions are connected to their responses? Then, customize the conversation. Engaging with a listening ear can eliminate many challenges.

Remember a cultural shift has occurred. Consumers desire open communication. However, a door exists between you and customer, and the consumer wants to control when the door opens. That’s why spam blockers and caller ID exist! So, deliver messages when and where the customer wants them. Talk with your customers—not at them.

Show customers you’re listening without a “hidden” agenda. For example, let’s look at the viral blue/black vs. white/gold dress debate. As the conversation exploded on social media channels, brands joined with their own messages. See Tide’s tweet below.

The tweet received thousands of retweets and favorites. Tide got its brand message across minus the sales pitch. Join the conversation by acting quickly and creating a relevant real-time message.

Take Action

• Investigate the best place and time to talk to your consumers.
• Don’t start customer conversations with a sales pitch.
• Participate in real-time discussions.

4. Influence Brand Ambassadors

Your team isn’t the only entity influencing people to try (or not try) your service. Experts and high-ranking YouTube reviewers are dictating how customers interact with your brand. Be available to keep them honest. Research and seek ways to collaborate with influencers.

Start by investing in your people. Employees are the most important assets of an organization. Their performance dictates the growth of the business. Therefore, practice employee evangelism.

Make customer engagement a responsibility for all team members. Specify everyone’s roles in ensuring profitable customer relationships.

Your workforce is an extension of your brand’s personality. If employees are valued, brand influencers will notice the investment.

Ambassador Programs

Brand ambassadors humanize your brand.

Create a community. Let your customers see how their peers are benefiting from your services. They will be inspired to communicate and share success stories.

Brand ambassadors should be genuinely interested in your company. They should have the time and passion to give a wholehearted effort in expressing how your brand makes a difference in people’s lives. To develop a sense of community, host an event or party for ambassadors to meet one another.

Recognize and reward ambassadors. Think beyond monetary gifts. Mention members on social media. Give them cool swag, like a gift package of stickers and apparel.

In return, your brand ambassadors will become more loyal. The “Loyalty Ripple Effect” points out that customers can contribute to their own satisfaction by their participation.

Source: 12 Reasons You Need Brand Ambassadors Now

How valuable are your brand ambassadors? Measure the effectiveness of the program. Revamp based on the results you desire. Evaluating performance will lead to more improvements and opportunities.

Take Action

• Designate customer engagement responsibilities for employees.
• Challenge your customers by granting higher levels of engagement.
• Measure the effectiveness of ambassadors’ actions on your business.

Conclusion

We are all connected. Our society lives and breathes “connectedness” with our devices.

Learn your consumers’ behaviors and give your loyal evangelists an opportunity to join the brand. Analytics will support your efforts as you gain momentum.

To be successful, toss out the old ideas of traditional marketing and embrace customer engagement.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, the law and social responsibility. She inspires a new breed of innovative attorneys at Hearsay Marketing. Connect with her on Twitter: @shaylaprice

Pinterest Begins Rollout of Buyable Pins

The buyable pins feature introduced by Pinterest in early June has begun rolling out to iPhone and iPad users in the U.S.

Buyable pins enable Pinterest users to purchase products directly via pins, using their credit card or Apple Pay information, and the social network teamed up with brands including Macy’s, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom on the launch.

Demandware retailer clients including Gardener’s Supply Co. and Michaels are also part of the launch of the feature, as are Shopify stores such as Poler Outdoor Stuff and SOBU.

The transactions are fee-free for both retailers and users.

Pinterest said buyable pins can be identified by their blue price tags, and they can be discovered via users’ home feeds, boards, category feeds, search results and recommendations. The buyable pins feature also includes a price filter.

In addition, Pinterest introduced a \"shop our picks\" option, giving users access to \"hand-picked\" products for seasonal categories.

Android and Web versions of buyable pins are in the works, according to Pinterest.

Pinterest users: Are you ready to start shopping?

The Importance of Customer Centricity in Evolving A/B Testing

Tweet

When we talk about A/B testing, we often think about it on a test-by-test basis. While this singular focus is beneficial, it overlooks testing’s role as an ongoing system for optimization.

At MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015, Courtney Eckerle, Manager of Editorial Content, MarketingSherpa, sat down with Lauren Wagner, Senior Manager, and Tessa Srebro, Lead Generation and Marketing Associate, both of VolunteerMatch, to discuss how to utilize A/B testing to constantly evolve programs.

Lauren and Tessa’s company, VolunteerMatch, is a nonprofit organization that is the world’s largest volunteering network. It also has an interesting funding model. The company sells a Software as a Service (SaaS) product to companies to help fund its organization and, so far, this model has generated almost $1 billion in social value each year through its work with nonprofits and volunteers. VolunteerMatch is also more than familiar with the benefits of testing, as evidenced by the subject line test it ran with MarketingExperiments.

Watch the excerpt below from the MarketingSherpa Media Center to learn how keeping up with current trends and thinking like a consumer can help evolve your testing and your company.

Keep up with current trends and your customers

Keeping up with current customer trends is one of the most important pieces of advice Lauren Wagner gave when asked how to keep a company’s A/B testing constantly evolving. Be sure that you’re keeping up with current trends in the marketplace, but don’t forget to take the time to learn about your customers.

Lauren suggested paying attention to what your customers are interested in and adapting to their needs and interests.

Lauren advised marketers to “continue to look at the space that you’re working in and seeing, you know, what are people talking about, what are the trends that they’re talking about so that you can continue to take your emails and continue to kind of mold them and change them and shift them to what those people are really looking for and are really interested in.”

By utilizing this mentality, VolunteerMatch saw a shift in the departments it worked with and was able to adjust accordingly.

“The employee-engagement, employee-volunteering space has kind of shifted over the years from, you know, sitting in marketing departments, sitting in corporate responsibility departments, sitting in human resources departments,” Lauren said. “For us to kind of shift the way that we’re approaching the benefits of employee volunteering from each of those different places in a company really has to evolve and change over the years.”

Think as a marketer and a consumer

Tessa Srebro highlighted one of the biggest and often underutilized advantages marketers have: Every marketer is also a consumer. Instead of only looking at campaigns and advertisements through a marketing lens, question what ads are working from your point of view as a consumer. Tessa explained that when she sees an ad that impresses or interests her as a consumer, she then asks herself why that’s the case. This approach has led to great marketing insights.

“I’m kind of looking for things that I can take from other marketers to my own organization. I’m constantly analyzing the world around me in that way,” she said.

She then added, “Human nature doesn’t change. So if you have these skills about what sorts of messages are going to appeal to a person, whether through emotions or logic or all of that, that’s timeless. Human nature is not going to change.”

You might also like

MECLABS Email Messaging Online Course [Register now]

Register for MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 in Las Vegas, Feb. 22-14

Watch Full Sessions from Email Summit 2015

Online Testing: How a B2B SaaS nonprofit increased clickthrough on landing page by 291% [MarketingSherpa case study]

Lead Management: How a B2B SaaS nonprofit decreased its sales cycle 99% [MarketingSherpa case study]

The Writer’s Dilemma: How to know which marketing copy will really be most effective [More from the blogs]

A/B Testing: How to improve already effective marketing (and win a ticket to Email Summit in Vegas) [More from the blogs]

5 Reasons You're Not Getting Qualified Leads From AdWords

Potential customers are searching for solutions to their problems every day and AdWords is the perfect way to get in front of them at the exact moment they're looking. They click your ad, show up on your site and convert into a lead for your sales team. Awesome right? Actually, there are many companies where […]

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

5 Reasons You're Not Getting Qualified Leads From AdWords

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Written by Robert Brady, Righteous Marketing

The post 5 Reasons You're Not Getting Qualified Leads From AdWords appeared first on Search Engine People Blog.

Law Firm Marketing: 9 Tips for Winning More Clients with PPC

I’ve been writing PPC guides for specific industry verticals for a while now, and naturally law popped into my mind when contemplating which industry to explore next. A good chunk of our clients at WordStream happen to be in the field of law, and I can testify that it’s not an easy industry to be in, especially when it comes to advertising on Google. But in order to survive, it needs to be done!

 

“Sixteen years ago all you needed to do was purchase a yellow page ad, and that was it. Nowadays if you don’t spend time on digital marketing, and paid search specifically, you’re not going to make it,” says Jeff Kelly, owner of his own law firm specializing in bankruptcy. “Your business will quickly dry up if you’re not marketing online.”

Law Industry PPC Challenges

To gain an even more thorough understanding of the challenges successful law marketers are facing with paid search, I spoke with three successful WordStream clients in the space, all of which oversee paid search marketing for various law firms. The first common complaint?

Law-related keywords are expensive!

Did you know that “lawyer” and “attorney” are the two most expensive keywords on Bing, costing over $100 per click for searches like “personal injury lawyer” and “criminal DUI attorney”? And that’s just on Bing, which is typically cheaper than AdWords. Law firms “can easily spend $50,000 to $100,000 per month on PPC,” according to legal marketing specialist, Robert Ramirez.

 

When you’re averaging $100 per click, if you don’t see a return right away it’s easy to abandon paid search all together. In contrast if done well, PPC can become a critical channel in growing your business substantially.

Competition is fierce

A high level of competition usually goes hand in hand with expensive keywords. Every lawyer in the area is bidding on the same terms, and hoping to yield massive returns so Google’s able to jack up the prices.

 

“The biggest challenge is getting through the maze of all the other lawyers out there,” says Mikki Anderson, Director of Marketing at Alexander Law, which specializes in personal injury cases. Being located in two prime California destinations, San Jose and San Francisco, doesn’t make things any easier for Anderson. “It’s difficult to gain visibility. We’re decent at getting press, but because of where we are a lot of it is fairly dated. If there’s a horrible accident in the Midwest it will be on the news within a day or two, but unless it jams up traffic in California it’s not getting on the news.” Anderson goes on to explain that with Google it’s easy and difficult in the sense that you have more control, but it’s expensive and everyone’s fighting to be at the top of the SERPs.

Getting qualified searchers is challenging

Many lawyers only take specific cases under specific circumstances. This of course makes it even more challenging to find relevant searchers, especially with the limited demographic targeting capabilities Google has made available to advertisers on the search network. Law marketers are going after expensive keywords that may or may not be relevant.

Anderson explains how their firm only takes severe injury cases that are categorized as catastrophic, which yield a return of a million dollars or higher.

“Law firms are funny. Depending on how severe the injury is, it dictates how much you’ll get back,” says Eric Huhn, a Digital Marketing Consultant running the paid search for Gruber Law. Huhn provides an example of a client that cost $500 to convert with AdWords, whose case was much smaller, resulting in a $2,000 gain, compared to a major injury case, which can convert from one paid search mobile call and could be worth as much as $100,000. “For us versus other industries, it’s somewhat of a gamble with clients. The goal is figuring out how to find the clients that have been more severally injured because we can be of a lot more help to them compared to someone who’s been in a very minor accident.”

Now that we understand the biggest challenges, let’s dive into the 9 PPC marketing tips to help lawyers get the most return out of Google.

Law Firm Marketing Tip #1: Conduct Competitive Research & Differentiate Yourself

We just discussed how competitive law is on the SERPs, so you need to make yourself stand out somehow. Start by scoping out your competition. Huhn recommends searching the keywords in your area to see what ads show up. “Most lawyers are in either one state or one portion of the state. It’s pretty easy to see your competitive landscape,” he says.

Huhn also explains that it shouldn’t even be that challenging to stand out. “Most lawyers tend to piggy-back off of each other.” So what can you do specifically?

• Craft an actionable & relevant call-to-action that spurs your searches to act immediately.
• Implement all ad extensions to take as much real estate on the SERPs as possible. Look at your competitor’s extensions (if they’re using them) and make yours better. Location, call, sitelink, callout, and review extensions are all great ones to utilize.
• Highlight what makes you better. Does your law firm have 24 hour customer service or offer a free consultation? You need to provide a reason for a searcher to choose you over the lawyer next door – whether that be a unique offering or a great reputation, flaunt your benefits.

One piece of advice, don’t become obsessed with spying on your competition. I’ve seen clients waste hours upon hours trying to figure out how much their competition is spending and which keywords they’re bidding on. There’s no magic way to gain access to their account data. Just check out their ads and make yours better, it’s that simple.

Law Firm Marketing Tip #2: Make Sure Your Geo-targeting is Set Up Correctly

Yes, I’m aware this tip comes from the PPC 101 handbook, but hear me out. You’d be surprised by how many law firms are targeting irrelevant regions.

“I’ve had friends in the legal advertising world that target the entire state of Georgia when they only have one or two offices in specific locations within the state,” says Kelly. “Geography is SO important because the average client is not going to travel further then they need to.”

Dig into the area to figure out the exact radius that makes the most sense to advertise on, and if you have multiple locations separate these into their own campaigns so you can target as accurately as possible.

To set up your location targeting in AdWords, navigate to the “Settings” tab, then “Locations,” then select city, region or postal code, or get more granular by clicking “Advanced Search,” and target by radius.

 

With each click costing a heavy chunk of change, making the mistake of wrongfully targeting a location can send a marketer off the deep-end, so double check each campaign!

Law Firm Marketing Tip #3: Ensure Your Ads Speak to the Search’s Intent and Readiness to Hire a Lawyer

Relevancy is key for any industry, but in law it can make or break your campaigns. If you pay for the click at the wrong part of the customer’s journey, you can quickly lose a lot of money. Hiring a lawyer can be a research-heavy process for some, but for others the process can happen instantly. For example, let’s take a case where you’re suing someone. You’re probably not going to hop on Google, make a call, and hire the first firm you see. You’re more likely to conduct research, compare prices, compare lawyer backgrounds, etc. There is no use in suing someone if it costs more to hire a lawyer than to get the return. In other cases, like a marriage you’re itching to get out of, lawyers might be hired a lot faster.

“If someone Googles ‘how can a car accident lawyer help me?’ you’re much more likely to gain business if your ad speaks to their question and directs them to an FAQ or more informative page,” says Huhn. “On the other hand if someone searches ‘hire personal injury lawyer,’ yes, your ad can say something along the lines of ‘we’ll get you more money.’ When people who are asking what to do after a car accident see ‘get maximum compensation’ in an ad, it just doesn’t make sense.”

 

So what should you do? The answer is simple: structure your account to ensure your keywords, ads, and landing pages match what a searcher’s intent is. If they need more nurturing, nurture them with quality content so they develop brand loyalty, and when the time is right they’re much more likely to choose you over other lawyers in the area.

Law Firm Marketing Tip #4: Prioritize Calls Over All Else

From all three clients that I spoke with, the message was clear: CALLS ARE IMPORTANT. For law firm marketers using PPC, mobile can absolutely not be ignored. There are already more mobile searches occurring on Google then desktop, and regardless every law marketer needs a system in place to capture phone calls whether it be through desktop landing pages or call-only mobile ads.

“A phone call is worth so much more than a click to a website,” says Huhn. “Leads that are much further down the sales funnel are more likely looking to talk to lawyer instantly. A $100 phone call is worth so much more than a $100 click.” So what should you do to drive more phone calls to your law office through paid search?

 

• Set up call-only campaigns: We all agreed that call-only campaigns are where it’s at. These new campaign formats were released in February of this year and work wonders to push more phone calls to one’s business when searching on mobile. Call-only campaigns replace the headline directing to a landing page with a phone number. This takes the often unnecessary step of visiting a landing page out of the equation, and gets right to connecting a searcher to a real, live person or lawyer right through the SERP’s. “If you’re looking for a lawyer on your phone, chances are you want to call one,” says Anderson. “Call-only campaigns work wonders for that reason. If you’re in the hospital bed after a horrific accident, a phone might also be the only medium you have to find a lawyer.”

 

• Utilize call extensions: Just do it. They’ll provide another way to get your phone number out there on the SERPs.

 

• Track every call: Whether it’s coming from a PPC landing page or directly from the mobile SERPs, you need a system in place to track calls. “We track every call back to the source, it’s critical to understand the value to review and tweak our strategy,” says Anderson. Huhn also explains how tracking calls has led to make more informed decisions of when to allocate their budget. “We noticed more calls coming in from 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM in some offices, so we increased mobile bids for those specific times.”
• Ensure you have a 24/7 answering service in place: All of the clients I spoke with also have a system to capture phone calls 24/7, whether it be an automated answering service or a dedicated off-hours staff to field calls. For instance, Anderson’s law office has a 24-hour system in place: during off-hours calls are routed to their call center, where employees are trained to follow a script, and if the call is urgent there’s always an attorney on-call. “If you wait a week to call someone back you’re probably going to lose them,” says Kelly.  

Huhn really drove the importance of mobile phone calls home: “If someone doesn’t necessarily have the budget for search I would suggest just advertising on mobile. So much can happen with a click on desktop and lots of law firms are not comfortable spending $100 per click. Instead, increase mobile bids by 200-300%, jump ahead of the competition, and go after the people that are much more likely to convert.”

Law Firm Marketing Tip #5: Use Videos on Your PPC Landing Pages

I’ve never used a lawyer, but I can imagine if I needed one I’d be quite skeptical during the research process. In most cases there’s a lot at stake against someone else’s word. There needs to be a method of gaining a lead’s trust to convince them to convert, which is why videos are so powerful in this industry.

“I can’t stress how important videos are in this industry,” says Huhn. “Lawyer’s don’t always have the best reputation, which is why it’s really important from a marketing standpoint that you trust your lawyer. If you can get on camera and just explain how the process will work or explain what you do as a firm in a non-salesy way, people love that!”

 

Anderson agrees, but places a higher focus on customer testimonials. “Video testimonials help people see other people like themselves, which helps them relate. Then they’ll think ‘Oh ok, these guys helped other Asian or Hispanic clients in the Bay Area,’” she says. “Where we’re located it’s a diverse population yet it’s difficult to find lawyers of the same ethnicity in the field, so often people are forced to look outside their comfort zone.”

So don’t be intimated by video because it can actually work wonders to convert skeptical leads. Try out an easy-to-use service like Wistia, and get creative with your video strategy.

Law Firm Marketing Tip #6: Have an Online Chat System in Place

This tip was also unanimous – having a chat feature on law landing pages is critical since so many case-specific questions can’t be answered through generic FAQ’s or even video content.

 

“Some people are not comfortable picking up the phone, and they’re much more apt to talk to an online rep rather than call a lawyer,” says Huhn.

Even though Anderson explains that having a chat system opens up their site to more noise, at the end of the day they have gained a few cases from this strategy so she finds it worth the investment of time and service. “It’s another way for people to get in touch, ask case-specific questions, and has led to some productive phone calls,” she says. “I like our clients to know that we’re accessible through whichever avenue they prefer.”

Law Firm Marketing Tip #7: Invest in Building a Memorable Brand – And Use Display Ads

Branding is one of those things that’s easy to overlook, especially if you are a preoccupied lawyer attempting to market your firm while working on client cases.

Yet, with so much competition, branding can really be the key to standing out in the industry. Unfortunately one of the cheapest and easiest ways to gain brand recognition is vastly underused. WordStream Data Scientist Mark Irvine found from a sample of our clients in the industry that only 5% of legal spend is allocated to the display network, even though the average cost-per-click is as low as $.65. Yet, 95% of spend is on search. Spending on search makes sense, but when clicks are cheap, display shouldn’t be overlooked from a brand standpoint.

Huhn explained that having a well-known brand has made it substantially easier to stand out against the other lawyers on the SERPs. Before implementing digital tactics, Gruber Law allocated 90% of their marketing efforts to TV commercials, so their slogan, “one call that’s all,” is well-known in Milwaukee. “We still do a lot of TV advertising and accompany it with display, which seems free in comparison,” he says. “A lot of companies don’t go that route, and underestimate the value of building a brand. For us, search is used to go after the sector of people that either don’t know who we are or don’t even know they need a lawyer.”

To target the most relevant searchers, utilize remarketing to show your ads to people that have already visited your site, and therefore are much more likely to need a lawyer.

Law Firm Marketing Tip #8: Track Every Action

Clearly law is a challenging industry to be in when it comes to marketing. We all know this by now, but this is why tracking and optimizing is key to seeing what’s working and what’s not.

 

“Track everything that you can – record phone call conversions in analytics,” says Huhn. “If you’re just starting out and you’re measuring success by the fact that people are clicking on your ad, that’s never going to justify if that’s a qualified lead or not. The ad might be getting clicked a lot, you might be spending a lot, but on the backside that visitor might be bouncing and the keywords you’re bidding on should actually be eliminated.”

Anderson echoed that same moto. She’s being doing PPC since 2008, and hasn’t stopped running A/B tests, measuring what’s working and what’s not, and trying new strategies to see what resonates.

“You’re going to end up spending a crap ton of money that goes nowhere. Hire someone who knows what they’re doing,” says Anderson. “No lawyer has time to advertise and track results on Google, and when it comes down to it all you’re going to do is end up spending a ton of money and getting nowhere if you’re not tracking and optimizing for better performance.”

Law Firm Marketing Tip #9: Don’t Forget About Bing
Bing who? Oh you know, that little search engine that hangs out around Google. Well, Bing actually isn’t that little! They reach 20% of the search market in the U.S., according to comScore, and shouldn’t be overlooked when it comes to finding new clients.

“Go hard on Bing. It’s way cheaper, and a lot of the time I’ve seen higher conversion rates,” says Huhn.

The most important takeaway for all PPC lawyers out there? Learn paid search before diving in head first! You wouldn’t practice law without a degree, right? Take PPC just as seriously.

“Paid search is critical to landing the clients I’m most interested in,” concludes Anderson.

About the Author:

Margot is a Content Marketing Specialist at WordStream with a background in PPC, SEM, content and digital marketing. Margot is passionate about writing and is also a regular contributor to Search Engine Journal and socialmediatoday.com. She enjoys running and eating ice cream during her free time (not simultaneous although that would be impressive). Follow her on:

Twitter: @ChappyMargot

Google+: +Margot da Cunha

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/margotdacunha

 

5 Ways Writing A Book Will Supercharge Your Online Presence

5 Ways Writing A Book Will Supercharge Your Online Presence written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Let me tell you right off the bat, writing and publishing a book is a lot easier than you think.  In September of 2014, when I became a Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant, I provided a list of ten reasons why joining the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant network is a no-brainer for digital agencies.  On top of all those reasons, I had no idea that the network would lead me to becoming a published author after just a few short months of joining.

The backdrop to my story is that I attended the Duct Tape Marketing Annual Summit last year.  Shortly after that amazing three-day event, fellow marketing consultant Ray Perry of MarketBlazer, Inc. approached me to write a book with three other Duct Tape Marketing Consultants.  Last year, Ray and another group of DTM Consultants published a great book on referral marketing called Renewable Referrals, and that book became an Amazon Best Seller!

Fast-forward six months, now I am part of an amazing team of fellow consultants that has launched The Small Business Owner’s Guide To Local Lead Generation – another book that is well on its way to Amazon Best Seller status.   Aside from an awesome foreword written by John Jantsch, we have an incredible list of endorsements from the likes of BNI founder Dr. Ivan Misner, Copyblogger’s Brian Clark, New York Times bestselling author Michael Port, and many more thought leaders and tech company CEOs.

Now that you know a little about what we’ve accomplished and how we got here, let me explain why publishing a book results in a seismic boost to your online presence:

1. Online Authority. Creating and publishing a book in your niche provides an instant boost in personal authority and elevates your status as an expert.  From creating book and author pages on Amazon, to launching a book via press releases, podcasts and online marketing, these activities provide an overnight boost in authority that most of your competitors will not have.  In other words, you are no longer just “Your Name”, you are “Your Name, author of…”
2. Online Trust.  Getting thought leaders in your niche takes some effort and creativity, but it’s easier than you think (assuming you have good content).  Asking an influencer to provide a quote for a book about their niche reinforces their position as a leader in that niche – so in many cases they will be motivated to provide a book quote.  Once you have multiple industry authorities blessing your book, all of your content suddenly becomes more credible, trustworthy and interesting.
3. Organic SEO.  If you launch a book effectively, you will also create a standalone book website.  All of the marketing that you do should lead people back to the book site, the same way we doing now in this guest blog post.  Our book site already ranks highly on Google for “local lead generation books” and is quickly climbing for more competitive generic terms such as “local lead generation”.
4. Social Media Exposure. Book launches, by their very nature, create buzz.  With careful and strategic coordination, you can dramatically amplify your social media exposure by leveraging your own network, as well as those that have supported your book.  From tagging tweets and posts, to simply notifying business chambers and local media, you will find many venues and organizations that will be motivated to share your story on social media.
5. Conversion Optimization.  If you are a regular consumer of John Jantsch’s content, you already know that creating great content in a way that draws ideal customers into your digital channel is a core Duct Tape Marketing principle.  By promoting and offering an actual book on your website, you now have a killer conversion hook that will convert more first-time web visitors into loyal content consumers, and thus on the path towards conversion.

The above list is really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of benefits.  Perhaps one of my favorites is that this book has become my new business card.  There is nothing like walking into a sales meeting and dropping a book on the table with credible endorsements.  As a busy agency owner, I really have to be careful how I invest my most treasured asset: time.  So when I tell you that book publishing has become a new cornerstone of my own inbound marketing strategy, I am not saying it lightly.  Yet, I have already signed on for another book project and will publish my own book this fall titled:  New SEO: Search Engine Optimization For Web Designers & Small Business Owners.

Trust me, if I can write a book, you can too.

Phil Singleton owns and operates Kansas City Web Design, where he and his team provide custom WordPress and Magento web development, and Kansas City SEO, where he provides search engine optimization services to companies with hundreds of thousands in revenues to hundreds of millions.  To get more SEO and Internet marketing tips and advice, and learn more about Phil’s book writing adventures, follow him on Google+.

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The Baskerville Experiment: Font and its Influence on Our Perception of Truth

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“Can we separate the form of the writing from its content?” – Errol Morris

“Is it ever possible to understand the meaning of a work of art as separate from the way in which we receive it?” – Lynne Conner

Source: The Pentagram Papers, 44^th Edition

In the spring of 1980, Academy Award-winning documentarian Errol Morris (“The Thin Blue Line,” “The Fog of War”) first encountered philosopher Saul Kripke’s seminal book, Naming and Necessity. After reading the book, Morris became fascinated with the theory that words and our interpretation of them are singular manifestations of all of the individual characteristics (seen and unseen) that comprise them.

More specifically, Morris was consumed with the idea that typeface itself might have an innate power to influence our fundamental perception of truth.

“Yes, we read the word ‘horse,’” Morris wrote, ”but we also see the letters, the typefaces, the shape of the word on the page. Is this not part of the meaning? Do we more readily accept (as true) sentences written in one typeface rather than another?”

As Morris continued work on his acclaimed films over the coming decades, this idea continued to haunt him.

Morris collected anecdotal stories dealing with the power of typeface. This included the story of Phil Renaud, a Canadian university student and blogger. While in school, Renaud blogged:

I’m nearing the end of my sixth semester of university, and things are going pretty well: I’m clearing a decent grade point average, enjoying my major, and just having wrapped up my semester’s ‘essay alley,’ wherein all my courses require a term paper or two, and getting my results back telling me that I’m doing much better than usual.

At first, I’m just relieved to be doing so well. Still, ever the skeptic, I start to wonder: what exactly am I doing differently now to be getting all these A-range paper grades all of the sudden?

I haven’t drastically changed the amount of effort I’m putting into my writing. I’m probably even spending less time with them now than I did earlier in my studies, and while I guess you could argue that I’m probably just being a great example of practice making perfect, I’ve got my doubts; I even used to take courses concentrating on writing better essays, and in the time surrounding that, my grades were pretty low.

Then it hits me: the only thing I’ve really changed since I’ve been getting these grades is … my essay font.

Renaud wrote 52 essays in total. 11 were set in Times New Roman, 18 in Trebuchet MS and the remaining 23 were written in Georgia. The Times New Roman papers earned an average grade of A-, but the Trebuchet papers resulted in a B-.

The Georgia essays? A solid A.

“Maybe fonts speak a lot louder than we think they do,” Renaud wrote.

In 2013, Errol Morris finally got the opportunity to test this theory in one of the more remarkable — yet under-reported — social experiments in recent years.

Morris, who had been blogging for The New York Times for five years, penned an article titled, “Are You an Optimist or a Pessimist?” Within the article, Morris discussed a giant asteroid that had recently made a close pass to the earth and detailed NASA’s public assurances that world citizens were never in danger of a collision.

Morris concluded the article with the below quote from internationally acclaimed mathematician David Deutsch:

“If a one kilometer asteroid had approached the Earth on a collision course at any time in human history before the early twenty-first century, it would have killed at least a substantial proportion of all humans. In that respect, as in many others, we live in an era of unprecedented safety: the twenty-first century is the first ever moment when we have known how to defend ourselves from such impacts, which occur once every 250,000 years or so.”

Immediately after the quote, Morris included a survey, ostensibly to determine whether readers were optimists or pessimists by nature:

In reality, Morris never intended to gauge the optimism of his readers. Instead, the article served a different purpose.

When presenting the final quote from David Deutsch, Morris — with the surprising cooperation of the Times — randomly segmented the readership into six equal groups. For each group, Morris used a different typeface for the quote — Baskerville, Computer Modern, Georgia, Helvetica, Comic Sans and Trebuchet.

With the help of the survey, Morris hoped to test his theory that different fonts subconsciously influence our perception of truth.

45,000 readers responded to the poll — a large enough sample size to validate statistical differences. What Morris found was astonishing. Baskerville, a 250-year-old serif font, had a statistically significant positive impact on reader’s willingness to trust David Deutsch’s quote.

David Dunning, Professor of Psychology, Cornell, was shocked by the results, which validated with a p-value of only .0083.

“I’m surprised that the damn thing worked at all,” Dunning told the Times. “You are conducting an experiment in an uncontrolled environment. Who knows what’s going on at the other end of a computer screen? Their kids could be screaming in the background for all we know. It could be two a.m. It could be two p.m. They’ve had their coffee. They haven’t had their coffee … The font is on their desktops. There is just a ton of stuff out there that could obscure any results whatsoever … But it is clear in the data that Baskerville is different from the other fonts in terms of the response it is soliciting. Now, it may seem small but it is impressive.”

In a follow-up article, Morris came clean to his readers about the experiment:

Here is my confession. My quiz wasn’t really a test of the optimism or pessimism of the reader. There was a hidden agenda. It was a test of the effect of typefaces on truth. Or to be precise, the effect on credulity …

I do not mean to dismiss the possibility of global catastrophe from asteroids or global warming or a host of other possible calamities — bio-engineered viruses spreading out of control, Malthusian nightmares of overpopulation choking off life on the planet, etc. I wouldn’t want to dismiss even the most outrageous of millenarian fantasies, including Mayan predictions of the end of the world.

But for the moment, I was interested in something somewhat less apocalyptic.

We all know that we are influenced in many, many ways — many of which we remain blissfully unaware of. Could typefaces be one of them? Could the mere selection of a typeface influence us to believe one thing rather than another? Could typefaces work some unseen magic? Or malefaction?

Don’t get me wrong. The underlying truth of the sentence “Gold has an atomic number of 79” is not dependent on the typeface in which it is written. The sentence is true regardless of whether it is displayed in Helvetica, Georgia or even the much-maligned Comic Sans. But are we more inclined to believe that gold has an atomic number of 79 if we read it in Georgia, the typeface of The New York Times online, rather than in Helvetica?

In addition to Morris’ work, there are numerous other studies that have found font to directly influence behavior.

For example, The Atlantic reported on a University of Michigan study where two groups of students were presented with identical instructions for an exercise routine. The only difference between the two sets of instructions was the font.

Students who received instructions in Arial font believed that the routine would be quicker and easier to keep up with than students who received the instructions in a more difficult font (Brush). As a result, students in the first group reported a significantly higher willingness to follow through with the routine and make it part of their daily lives.

To test the results, the experiment was repeated with instructions for a complex recipe. Again, students who received the instructions in Arial were more willing to follow through and cook the recipe at home.

Harvard Medical School, the University of Manchester and Leeds Beckett University have all found there to be a direct correlation between font use for medicinal instructions and labeling and patient understanding of the drug and willingness to use it. The Center for Disease Control, U.S. National Library of Medicine and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services all produce guides on font use, with each group urging the use of simple, medium-sized, serif fonts.

Whether it be because certain fonts like Baskerville simply “disappear” into the subconscious of the reader more easily than other fonts or because they have some deeper mystical power, as Morris implies, we cannot argue that fonts matter.

Similarly, just as using the right typeface can bolster reader perception of our credibility, using the wrong font can be disastrous to perception, even if you are the most accomplished organization in the world.

For example, in 2012, scientists at CERN finally found experimental existence of the Higgs Boson — the mythical “God Particle.” This single particle, which science had been searching for since 1960, is what gives everything in the universe mass. Without Higgs Boson, particles would have no weight, gravity would have no effect and the universe as we know it simply could not exist.

It was astounding, then, when CERN — which houses multiple Nobel Prize winners — chose to announce the most important breakthrough in physics since Einstein’s theory of general relativity in the much maligned Comic Sans font.

 

Viewers found CERN’s presentation so aesthetically offensive that the font choice became as big of a story as the discovery itself.

The reaction to CERN’s typeface was so strong that particle physicists who should have been enjoying their historic achievement spent the day defending the choice of font.

Now that we know that typefaces influence perception, what can we actually do with this information?

As marketers, we need to be acutely and constantly aware of the typefaces that we are using, and the influence that they have on readers’ perceptions of our individual truths.

Should we abandon all of our favorite or brand-specific fonts and worship before the holy altar of Baskerville? Of course not. Before settling on a typeface for our marketing materials, we should examine our customer theory and carefully consider what we know about our audience.

Are they scholarly? Stylish? Elderly?

Affluent? Skeptical? Children?

Choosing fonts appropriate to our unique audiences, and A/B testing these fonts when possible, can bolster readers’ perceptions of the credulity of our messaging.

There is no one-size fits all typeface, but luckily, there are numerous resources available to help us choose a font.

If ever in doubt, neutral fonts can be used. Helvetica, for example, was designed to be neutral. As explored in the stunning 2007 documentary of the same name, this typeface was created to hold no intrinsic meaning outside of the words.

Helvetica trailer (2007 documentary)

When optimizing our pages, typeface can often get overlooked in favor of more obvious elements, such as page layout, call-to-action, imagery, etc. As the Baskerville Experiment proves, however, in today’s hypercompetitive market, we can no longer afford to leave any page element untested.

Note: Prior to desktop publishing, the term “typeface” denoted the actual collection of characters (e.g. Times New Roman), while the term “font” denoted the full application of said characters (e.g. Times New Roman, 10 point, italics). In recent decades, the meaning of the two terms has converged. Thus, the terms typeface and font have been used interchangeably within this article.

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