Mark Wahlstrom at The Legal Broadcasting Network posted an excellent video regarding the recent Findlaw controversy.

Last month I held a teleseminar for my Inner Circle group of attorneys on the web.  One of the hot topics that we discussed was pay per click advertising.  I believe pay per click can be a very effective strategy when done based on careful research, ongoing testing and tweaking.

Today I want to share a video with you that gives detailed steps for an optimized pay per click campaign.  You will learn how to determine decisions such as:

1. Do I turn off the content network or not?
2. How do I decide how much to bid?
3. What position is best for my ads?
4. Do I use standard delivery or accelerated delivery of my ads?
5. What do I do about ad scheduling?
6. Should I enable position preference?
7. Should I rotate my ads equally?

This video was done by an online marketing organization called Stompernet that I have been involved with and think very highly of.  They are a real quality organization and I think that this video will be valuable to you if you are involved with pay per click advertising or intend to be in the future. 

The meat of the video starts at 8 minutes.   Here is the link:

 http://www.stompernet.net/goingnatural3/vid1_adwords_triangulation_method

Enjoy!

The “curse of knowledge” is that when you know something, it’s extremely difficult to put yourself in the state of mind of someone who doesn’t know it.  This psychological tendency consistently blocks our ability to create ideas and messages that stick in the mind of our target audience.  We assume that they know things that they don’t because it’s common knowledge to us.  This “curse of knowledege” can make us miss the mark on our messages.

In the business book “Made to Stick” the authors identify 6 principles at work whenever an idea or message breaks through the clutter and really “sticks” in the mind of the audience.

1. Simplicity - stripping ideas/messages to their core so they’re easy to remember.
2. Unexpectedness - avoiding predictability in your statements.
3. Concreteness - using specific details to help people understand and remember ideas/message.
4. Credibility - doing what’s necessary to make your ideas/message believable.
5. Emotion - ensuring that others care about your ideas/message by making them feel something.
6. Stories - getting people to relate to and act on your ideas/message.

To communicate your message, simplicity is better than complexity.  Concreteness provides the details that resonate in the brain.  Credibility is essential to making people believe your message.  Unexpectedness jolts listeners into thinking in new ways.  Emotion makes people feel why your idea is important.  And a good story can move others to action.

A recent study of more than 20,000 online shoppers resulted in some key research findings about the effectiveness of various tools for acquiring customers.  As you read them you will see that they provide great insights that can easily be adapted to our industry.

• The #1 reason that a shopper visited a website online was because of familiarity with the brand.  This group also had the highest satisfaction score - 77%.
• Promotional e-mails are an effective marketing tool:  24% of shoppers came to a site because of promotional emails from the company.  This group is more satisfied than those who came to the site because of a search engine and is 16% more likely to buy than those who came through a search engine.
• Search engines and shopping comparison sites bring more first-time visitors, who are significantly less satisfied and less likely to buy.  While the largest group of first-time site visitors came via a search engine or shopping comparison site (29%), this group was less satisfied than first-time visitors who came the site because of familiarity with the brand or promotional emails.
• Word-of-mouth recommendations are more effective at driving desired future behaviors than offline advertising.  Satisfaction for online shoppers who came to the retail site based on recommendation enjoys a slight advantage over that of shoppers who were prompted by offline advertising.  But word of mouth has a significant advantage in driving the future behaviors of recommendation, online purchase and loyalty.

In light of these findings there are several best practices that can help us improve customer satisfaction with the site experience, relative to the acquisition source.

• Ensure complementary messaging between the acquisition source and landing page on the site.  When a prospect comes to a Web sites based on a paid search ad, the page they land on should be closely related to the ad they clicked on. 
• Analyze needs and perceptions of first time visitors.  They have no prior experience with your Web site and they often struggle to understand the organization of the site.  You want to make sure that you understand their greatest concerns so you can do a better job of creating a satisfying first visit that will keep them coming back, time after time.
• Explore what’s driving word-of-mouth recommendations.  One of the most certain and powerful reasons to recommend a Web site is to deliver a highly satisfying experience during the site visit.  The only way to do this is to analyze the high priority areas for improvement, based not only on satisfaction scores, but on projection of the relative influence of improving one aspect of the site experience over another.  Delivering a highly satisfying experience will gain you recommendations as well as future business and ongoing loyalty.

Total ad spending fell slightly in the first half of 2007, down 0.3% to $72.6 billion from the same time last year, reports TNS Media Intelligence.

“For the first time since 2001, media advertising expenditures have declined for two consecutive quarters,” says Steven Fredericks, TNS MI CEO, in a statement.  “The results reflect weakness across a range of industries and advertisers.”

The biggest loser was newspaper advertising, losing a full percentage point in share, to 17.8% of the whole.  Local television ads were next, slipping 0.6%, yet 10.8% of the total.  Not surprisingly, Web advertising jumped to 7.6% of the ad share from 6.4% in 2006.  Magazine advertising also grew to 20% from 19.1%.

But, “given the uncertainties about near-term economic growth and consumer spending, we expect core ad spending will continue to face challenges,” the report says.

What is most interesting for our industry, however, is that direct response advertising increased 11.3% in early 2007 - more than any other of the top ten advertising categories.  I think we’re seeing the evidence of that with the growing number of attorneys advertisng on television. 

Viral marketing campaigns are less effective than the buzz about them would indicate, says a new report from New York bases Jupiter Research, which surveyed 3,580 marketers for their opinions.  Per the report, viral marketers plan to decrease use of this tactic by 55% within the next year.

While they effectively increase brand awareness, only 15% of viral campaigns in the last year actually achieved the marketer’s purpose of getting consumers to buy into and promote the company’s message to others.  And if a consumer doesn’t repeat the message to another, is a campaign really viral?

According to the report, the biggest problem viral marketers face - other than tracking campaign performance - is general ad clutter.

My Space allows members to customize their individual profile and in the process they have an opportunity to learn a great deal about their members.  So it just makes sense that in the very near future My Space advertising will be targeted based on the members profiles - just like we saw foreshadowed in the movie Minority Report a few years ago.

In today’s New York Times there was an article entitled “MySpace to Discuss Latest Efforts to Customize Ads for Members.”  According to the article “MySpace, the Web’s largest social network and one of the most trafficked sites on the Internet, says that after experimenting with technology over the last six months it can tailor ads to the personal information that its 110 million active users leave on their profile pages.”

 Currently when I visit My Space I see mass-market pitches for mortgages, online dating, etc.  But, if the future unfolds as anticipated, we may soon be presented with customized pitches during our online experience.  If and when that happens, the response will undoubtedly increase significantly, but the cost of the advertising will be greater as well.  Sounds like a win win to me!

I have to tell you that I am pretty excited about the article I read in the New York Times this morning.  Here is how it starts:

“Some companies pay millions to have their logos on Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s racecar, but others prefer to pay Brian Katz $500 or more a month for space on his Ford Expedition.

Mr. Katz, 32, of Manhattan, is one of the tens of thousands of motorists who have signed up to have their cars and trucks wrapped in advertisements in exchange for a stipend up to $800 a month.

These offers are becoming so popular that car owners have been willing to limit where they shop and abide by a code of conduct while they are behind the wheel.”

Wow!  I think this concept holds some real promise to be developed in conjunction with the “Client Advisory Panels” that I’ve been helping my attorneys put in place.

If you’d like to talk about this, give me a call!

Cindy Speaker, 610-692-3217

Syracuse, New York is at the center of a debate that recently challenged the limits placed on advertising for peronal injury attorneys.  Alexander & Catalano called itself “heavy hitters” in ads and had run TV commercials depicting its lawyers as giants towering over skyscrapers, counseling space aliens about an insurance dispute and speeding to reach a client.  Although some of the images were referred to in the case as “silly stuff” Gregory A. Beck, who argued the case, said that “attention-getting is what advertisements do.”

The case did a couple of things.  First of all the decision said that statewide rule changes that took effect on Feb 1 violated the free speech of lawyers.  It cleared the way for lawyers in New York to use pop-up ads on the Internet, but did not answer the bigger but more subtle issue of whether firms must label newlsetters and e-mail messages to clients as advertising.

According to the New York Times, “the new rules defined advertising as any public or private communication made on behalf of a lawyer or law firm about that law firm’s services, the primary purpose of which is for the retention of the lawer and the law firm.”  So does that mean that e-mail messages must have a note in the subject line stating that it is “attorney advertising” a designation that could trap the messages in spam filters?  A companion issue is the discussion as to whether or not it is necessary to include the disclaimer “attorney advertising” at the bottom of a firm’s web site and on any proposals seeking business.

All of this is rather unclear and will tend to vary from state to state.  If any of our readers have insight into these issues, please share it with us in the comments section of this post.

I was at a conference last week and had the opportunity to meet Mike Vondran of TAG legal marketing.  Mike did a great presentation and I want to share some of the numbers that he gave us.  Mike stated the following:

• 60-70% of new case calls are from women
• 61% of decisions relative to a PI case are made by women
• 25-54 is the average demo with a high school diploma or less.  Blue collar
• Average family PI attorneys service are single wage earner families that make $25-$50k a year
• 54% get their information from TV
• 67% spend less than 2 hours deciding on a lawyer

Mike went on to emphasize the importance of achieving TOMA in your market.  Decisions are made very quickly and the tendency is to go with the first lawyer that comes to mind or is seen during that window wherein the decision is made.

 If you want to reach Mike directly, you can do so at www.taglegalmarketing.com.