Andrew Stickel

How Search Engines Help Consumers Find Local Products

July 21, 2017 by Andrew Stickel

For about a decade, small businesses and local communities have been aggressively and successfully challenging the impersonal nature of big corporations. The emerging support for small businesses and professionals who serve local communities has coincided with rising concerns and suspicions about a number of multinational corporations. Are Google, Amazon, and Facebook protecting our privacy? Do automobile manufacturers care about our safety, or do pharmaceutical companies really care about our health?

Consumers harbor no such suspicions about the small and mid-sized businesses – often family-owned businesses – that have served their communities for years and decades. The same can be said for many of the doctors and attorneys who focus on a local or regional practice. When consumers search today, they are generally rejecting big corporations and going to the local business, doctor, or lawyer they know and trust.

Since 2010, “Small Business Saturday” – the Saturday after Thanksgiving – has been a powerful and successful expression of the trend. Google’s continually-evolving “local search” is connecting more consumers to more local businesses and professionals than ever before, and with smartphone use still growing, those consumers are – for all practical purposes – everywhere.

HOW CAN YOU CONNECT – ONLINE – WITH LOCAL CONSUMERS?

If you own a small business, or if you are – for example – a dentist, a lawyer, or a financial adviser, you want to be connecting with the local consumers who are looking for you online. If your business is local – and most businesses are – you need to identify yourself and your business or professional practice directly with your city, community, or region. The benefits can be substantial, but how do you “identify yourself” online as local?

A professional internet marketing company can help. Here’s an example: Let’s say you live in Chicago, and your spouse serves you with divorce papers, so you must find legal help fast. Almost everyone in this circumstance will go to Google and type in either “Chicago divorce attorney” or “Chicago divorce lawyer,” or alternatively “divorce lawyers (or divorce attorneys) in Chicago.”

Obviously, a resident of Chicago will not care about divorce lawyers in Rockford. You need legal services – and most of your other products and services – from someone who is local, someone you can know and trust.

In March 2017, the Local Search Association (“a not-for-profit industry association of media companies, agencies and technology providers who help businesses market to local consumers”) and Burke Incorporated jointly conducted research regarding local search and internet users across the United States. Of the respondents, four out of five said that using a search engine was their top choice when looking for local businesses or professional services.

WHERE ARE CONSUMERS LOOKING FOR YOU?

In fact, four out of five respondents to the survey said that they had used a search engine within the previous seven days; 37 percent said search engines are reliable, and 32 percent believe search engines are “accurate.” Obviously, it is imperative for local businesses and professionals to take advantage of local search and to achieve the highest possible Google ranking – because that’s where the consumers are looking for you.

There is no reason to think that these trends will not continue to grow. More and more consumers will very likely be depending on “search engines” – meaning Google – in the years ahead. And while you’ve probably been reading that retailers are facing a “crisis” because Amazon seems to be taking over the retail world, the fact remains that half of all consumers who conduct a local search via a smartphone visit a retailer within 24 hours, and more than a third of those who conduct a search on a desktop or a tablet do the same thing.

EXACTLY HOW CAN YOU ATTRACT NEW LOCAL CLIENTS OR CUSTOMERS?

Local businesses and professionals must optimize their websites with a strong focus on local SEO. Google now gives a high priority to a company’s or professional’s user reviews, proximity to the consumer, and what Google calls “relevance,” so that only the most popular and closest professionals or businesses have any chance to be among the three “organically-generated” search results that now appear with a map at the top of some Google searches. How can you improve your own local online marketing?

Optimizing for local search is the surest way to attract new clients to your website. Be certain that your business name, address, and phone number are on each page of your site. Printed text that is part of an image doesn’t count; search engines can only read or “crawl” text, not images. Put your geographic location in your text and title tags. A title tag should be something like “Chicago real estate agent” or “Orlando personal injury attorney,” and that text should appear somewhere on every page.

Everything that is online regarding your business or professional practice must be accurate and comprehensive. Make certain – and then make certain again – that your business name, address, hours, telephone number, and website URL are accurate on all of your pages and accounts.

Write blog posts about local topics to interest local readers. If you are an attorney, write about a controversial local case or a confusing local ordinance. A real estate broker will want to blog about the great local quality of life and the splendid local schools, parks, shopping, and attractions.

As much as possible, be active in your community. Connect with business groups, non-profits, other businesses, and especially with your clients and customers. Look for appropriate opportunities to take part in charity events, educational events, and other community gatherings and projects.

Probably the best way to increase your local online visibility and to attract new local customers or clients is by working with an experienced, professional internet marketing company that can optimize your website – or design a new, optimized website for you “from scratch” – and also create the local content you need. That content may include blog posts, podcasts, videos, and more.

There is virtually no limit to the marketing possibilities that the internet can offer. Consider letting some experienced internet marketing professionals help you to take advantage of those possibilities with a variety of effective and innovative online marketing tools. Take the time – today – and schedule a consultation to discuss your local “presence” and your online marketing options.

What Are The Benefits of Advertising on Facebook?

June 23, 2017 by Andrew Stickel

The Facebook empire, believe it or not, is continuing to grow. By the middle of this year, it’s estimated that Facebook will have two billion active monthly users around the globe. You might already have spent a few dollars on Facebook advertising, and you may have been disappointed with your results.

Is there a better way to use Facebook to connect with your target audience? Because that’s where they are. According to the New York Times, the average Facebook user spends fifty minutes every day on the site.

How does Facebook advertising work? Who should advertise on Facebook? And what is the best way to ensure that your advertising on Facebook is effective and reaches the audience that you are targeting?

This will be a general look at Facebook advertising, but if you are serious about marketing on the internet, you really should discuss your marketing goals and needs with the professionals at a successful internet marketing agency.

WHAT IS A “BOOSTED” POST ON FACEBOOK?

As you probably know, there are several ways to advertise on Facebook. The simplest form of Facebook advertising is called a “boosted post.” You can boost a post from your business page – there should be a button at the lower right corner of each of your business page’s posts that says “Boost Post” – but you cannot boost a post from a personal profile. If you don’t see the button, either it’s a post that you can’t boost, or it’s already been boosted.

When you click on “Boost Post,” you’re given options regarding whom you want to reach and how much you want to spend. To reach more people, you’ll need to spend more or update your audience targeting preferences.

A boosted post appears more often in the Facebook news feed, increasing the chances that the audience you select will see it. When you boost a post, you can aim it at people who like your page, people who like your page and their Facebook friends, or specific groups you choose through demographic targeting.

If you choose people through demographic targeting, you can base your choices on geography, interests, age, and gender. Boosted posts can generate significantly more likes, shares, and comments than unboosted posts, so they are particularly effective when you’re seeking engagement with your audience. Facebook also gives you the ability to see how your boosted posts are performing.

WHAT ARE FACEBOOK’S OTHER ADVERTISING OPTIONS?

Facebook ads are a more sophisticated way to advertise on Facebook, with more options and more ability to reach your targets. You have to create an ad account – if you haven’t, it’s easy. Facebook helps you create your advertising, helps you choose your objectives and your target audience, and it provides complete analytics so that you can measure your advertising success and tweak your ad campaign as you need to.

For your Facebook advertising to be genuinely effective, ask yourself some questions before you create the first ad or spend the first dollar. Take a moment to think about why advertising on Facebook may be worth the investment for your business.

Precisely who are you trying to reach? What is your objective? What is your message? Having clear objectives and goals from the beginning is imperative. Never hesitate to consult a professional internet marketing agency to discuss your online marketing goals and objectives and the best way to attain them.

Whether you are “boosting” a post or buying a “regular” Facebook ad, the picture or graphic you choose will be the first thing that people see. You must choose images thoughtfully because our minds retain images, and this is how people will think of your business. Of course, you’ll want to be certain that you have the rights to any photographs or graphics you use for your Facebook advertising.

As for writing the ad text, you don’t have to be Hemingway or Stephen King – no one on Facebook is going to read a novel there anyway. Just make certain that all of the important information is included. Also, be certain that you use a spell check and grammar check or a program like Grammarly. Especially if you’re a professional, your online spelling, grammar, and punctuation need to be accurate – all the time.

WHAT ARE THE MOST POPULAR TYPES OF ADS ON FACEBOOK?

You can place several kinds of advertising on Facebook. Among your options, a “page post link ad” is ideal for promoting your external site, because that’s where it takes those who click the link. Video ads are growing in popularity. They now account for more than fifteen percent of all Facebook ads.

Properly produced, a video ad on Facebook can genuinely create a personal connection in a way that almost nothing else can. Event ads and special offers can be effective in the short term to promote sales, webinars, and other specific activities.

As you can tell, Facebook advertising offers a lot of options and advantages, but there are some “cons” to go along with the “pros.” Some marketers may feel their growth on Facebook has already reached a level of maximum exposure.

Others may look at their analytics and feel that their resources are wasted. Some may simply not know what an ad should say, and a few people are just uncomfortable and confused by Facebook’s terminology or feel that the ad purchasing system is needlessly complicated.

For anyone who is marketing online – especially if you are a busy professional, and your online marketing must be professional as well – the best way to accomplish your online marketing goals is with the advice and services of internet marketing professionals. Experienced internet marketing pros can help you make the right advertising choices, and they work with a variety of content writers, website designers, visual artists, videographers, and more.

If you want help with your Facebook advertising and more – or if you feel that you’ve exhausted your possibilities on Facebook and you need new marketing options – speak with some internet marketing professionals.

An experienced internet marketing agency can create a powerful online presence for you and coordinate your marketing across the internet. When you put your marketing concerns in the hands of talented, experienced internet marketing professionals, you can start marketing more effectively on the internet almost at once.

How To Use Social Media To Promote Your Brand

May 26, 2017 by Andrew Stickel

In the Old West, a “brand” was an identifying mark burned directly onto the cattle with a branding iron. A brand identified the cattle as belonging to a particular owner. With the rise of production, packaged goods, and consumerism in the 19th century, marketers started “branding” consumer items with trademarks to distinguish their goods from similar goods. You know a soda was made by the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta because the Coca-Cola trademark is printed on the bottle. Thus, we call Coca-Cola, Ford, and Microsoft “brand names.”

Today, a “brand” functions in much the same way – it identifies your business, non-profit, or professional practice – but a “brand” today is also much more than merely the product’s or company’s name. As consumer and marketing writer Jerry McLaughlin explains in Forbes, “Your brand name exists objectively; people can see it. It’s fixed. But your brand exists only in someone’s mind.”

WHAT IS A “BRAND” IN THE 21ST CENTURY?

McLaughlin defines “brand” in the 21st century as “a specific perception in customers’ minds concerning the qualities and attributes” of a business, non-profit, or professional practice. So how can you improve that perception of your work in the minds of your own potential clients? In other words, how can you most effectively market and promote your own brand on social media and other locations online?

Below is an explanation of six effective ways to promote your brand on social media and across the internet:

1. Take advantage of headlines: You may be the world’s best content writer, but if your headlines are not grabbing the attention of visitors to your blog and website, all of that excellent writing will be in vain.

Good headlines aren’t difficult; simply inform the reader that you are offering something the reader needs. A blog post titled “How to Avoid Income Tax Trouble,” for example, is far more likely to be read than “An Explanation of the Income Tax System.”

WHY ARE GRAPHICS SO IMPORTANT?

2. Take advantage of graphics: We know that posts on Facebook and tweets on Twitter get more attention – and get reposted and retweeted more – when they are accompanied by graphics. Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest are all graphics-driven sites. A visitor to your blog or website might easily ignore a block of text, but if it’s next to an interesting or compelling graphic, that text is far more likely to be read.

Sites offering free images include Wikimedia Commons, Unsplash, Pixabay, Photo Pin, Flickr Creative Commons, Getty Images, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Some sites offering free images allow you to use the images without attribution, but others require attribution or a link back to the site.

Creating your own graphics and working with an internet marketing company are also always good ideas. Be careful, however, with graphics obtained from other sources, or you may encounter copyright issues.

3. Post content in a timely manner: A “timely” post is a post shared when people are online and active. Between midnight and five a.m., for example, is probably never a good time to post something. So when is the best time to post content to social media? There’s no definitive answer.

Different businesses may find different days and times work best for them. Consider the platform you’re using, who your target audience is, and the region or regions you’re targeting when determining the best time to post content.

Data compiled from a number of sources indicate that these are the peak hours of activity on the following sites:

Twitter: Noon to 3:00 p.m. Monday through Friday; 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Wednesdays.
Facebook: Noon to 1:00 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Wednesdays; and 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays.
LinkedIn: On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and on Tuesdays from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

4. Post the same content multiple times: Multiple posting is the way to make sure that your audience has the opportunity to see and engage with your content. On Facebook, for example, something you post could very quickly be pushed far from the top of a reader’s Facebook feed, so posting at several different times over several different days is always a good idea. You should also consider using different headlines and/or different graphics when you post the same content multiple times.

5. Ask your audience questions: Social media is two-way, and you want to take advantage of that. You always want to strive to create a human connection with each member of your audience.

To generate feedback – and most importantly, to promote engagement with your brand – include a question that compels a response from your readers. Headlines in the form of questions are usually an excellent way to generate activity and responses.

WHAT CAN AN INTERNET MARKETING COMPANY DO FOR YOU?

6. Work with an internet marketing agency: When you work with an internet marketing company, you have the assistance of knowledgeable researchers and experienced professional writers who can create and supply the content that promotes your brand and meets your unique marketing needs. You can order blog posts written about specific topics and make or request revisions to any text, but the burden of creating regular content will no longer be on you.

An internet marketing company can provide you with a great deal more than written content. If time is an issue for you, an internet marketing agency can handle all of your online marketing needs while you deal with clients and run your business or professional practice.

An internet marketing company also provides you with the opportunity to work alongside experienced website designers, graphic artists, videographers, and other professionals who are dedicated to promoting your brand online and then keeping it promoted – and high in the search engine rankings – in the months and years to come.

Every element of your online marketing should be designed to strengthen and promote your brand. If you’re like most professionals today – just too busy – consider hiring an internet marketing company to create the content that promotes your brand, brings visitors back, and converts them into clients.

An internet marketing company can design (or redesign) and manage your website, provide you with valuable marketing insights, promote your brand, and handle all or any part of your internet marketing needs.

What Are The Benefits Of Law Firms Using Content Creation Services?

April 28, 2017 by Andrew Stickel

If you are an attorney and you are not blogging on a regular basis, you might be missing some genuinely lucrative opportunities. Blogging enhances your marketing efforts in several important ways. Probably the most important long-term aspect of blogging is the search engine optimization (SEO) benefits that blogging provides.

Every blog post that you write extends and expands your website and provides more opportunities for your website to rank higher in the search engine results. That, of course, makes it easier for the consumer to find you.

Search engines like Google are designed to seek fresh content, so when you post something new on a regular schedule, and when the search engines find that new content as they “crawl” your page, those pages are indexed by the search engines and “crawled” more frequently.

For attorneys, blogging is the most sensible way to extend and expand your website with fresh material. Moreover, your website could drop in the search engine rankings if you do not post fresh content on a regular basis. And while regular blogging is imperative, so is quality blogging.

There’s nothing wrong with checking out other websites to get some ideas, but your visitors want original, engaging, informative, and practical content. Visitors who in fact do find your blog posts useful may share them on Facebook or Twitter, expanding your readership and bringing, even more, new visitors to your site. Google also considers social media activity when it ranks pages, so the more your blog posts are shared on social media, the higher they rise in the Google rankings.

WHY DO SOME ATTORNEYS LOVE BLOGGING?

Some attorneys love to write blog posts. Blog-writing provides a break from the formalized, legal writing style that lawyering requires. Blogging is the chance to do something different or try something new, to express your ideas, ideals, and passions. Some of the most prolific attorney-bloggers, for example, are activists who write passionately about legal and social justice issues, openly seeking to persuade readers to share their convictions.

But that’s probably not you. In fact, you may be thinking that none of this can help you because you simply have no time to write two or three blog posts a week – or even one a month. That’s where a professional internet marketing agency can help.

A full-service online marketing firm can draft as much content as you need as often as you need it. By working with a staff of experienced professional writers who are familiar with legal issues and who write regularly for attorneys, an internet marketing agency can ensure that your website has the content it needs – freeing you to focus on the practice of law.

When you partner with an internet marketing agency, you’ll obtain the skills and services of experienced researchers and professional writers who can create and supply the blog posts that meet your specific marketing needs. You can order posts on particular legal topics, and you can make or request revisions to any text, but the weight of having to write something every week or once a month will be lifted.

WHAT ARE THE KEYS TO EFFECTIVE BLOGGING?

Of course, written content must be properly optimized to take full advantage of the way the search engines work. There are several key elements in any effective blog post, and each element must be considered carefully.

A good internet marketing agency and its writers will ensure that targeted keywords and phrases are appropriately and smoothly embedded into the content to obtain the highest possible search engine ranking. And every piece of content will be one hundred percent original – every time.

Good writing is the key to good blogging, but good writing is also essential on your home page, across your website, and everywhere else you post content online. A visually attractive website will catch a visitor’s attention, but it’s what the text actually says that will make the difference between a new client and a one-time visitor.

Effective copywriting is one of the key elements in a website’s development and a website’s success. That writing should be informative and persuasive, complementing your website’s design and enhancing your “brand.”

Your home page content should explain to your visitors who you are and what you do. Make that clear right at the beginning. Then, your home page should encourage visitors to stay and learn more about you and your law practice.

The words on your home page are some of the most important words you’ll post anywhere online, so they have to be right. A good internet marketing agency can help. After you’ve met with experienced online marketing professionals, they can create a website with content that reflects your goals and articulates your vision.

Candidly speaking, a lot of attorneys and law firms could substantially boost the appeal of their blogs. Too many are still using their blogs simply to recapitulate news stories about local traffic crashes (if they’re personal injury lawyers) or about celebrity divorces (if they’re divorce attorneys). And far too many other lawyers neglect their blogs for months or even years at a time.

WHAT DOES EFFECTIVE BLOGGING ACCOMPLISH?

The writing services that an internet marketing agency can offer address one of the leading concerns in online marketing – creating enough high-quality content on a regular basis to attract new visitors and search engines while also providing useful information in an engaging manner. Your online visitors are seeking easily-understood explanations of the law and how it affects their lives. They want to know how you handle cases like theirs. An effective blog accomplishes these goals and brings visitors back when they need more legal information.

Any online content that you write or post may be your single opportunity to turn a website visitor into a valued client, so you can’t neglect or overlook that opportunity. An internet marketing agency can provide the written content you need – and much more.

Online marketing professionals can establish a powerful online presence for your practice and coordinate all of your online marketing across the internet. Start marketing more effectively – now. If you simply don’t have the time or interest in blogging to do it well and regularly, call and arrange a consultation with the professionals at an experienced internet marketing agency.

How Your Law Firm’s Home Page Can Be Used To Turn Leads Into Clients

March 24, 2017 by Andrew Stickel

With thousands of potential clients searching the internet every day for lawyers, advice, and legal services, a substantial web presence is imperative for any flourishing law practice in the year 2017 and the years ahead. If you are marketing your law firm properly online, you are consistently driving potential clients to your website by taking advantage of social media, blogs posts, pay-per-click advertising, and links from a variety of other sources.

But when a prospective client lands on your home page, is that client finding something that will lead to a contact and a consultation? Do visitors find your home page to be helpful or confusing? User-friendly or user-unfriendly? If you want to convert more website visitors into clients – which is the whole point, of course – your home page must express these five key qualities or characteristics:

1. YOUR HOME PAGE MUST OFFER SPECIFICITY

It should be immediately obvious what kind of lawyer you are. Spell it out plainly. The top of the home page is not the place to explain details. People seeking a divorce want a divorce lawyer, and people charged with crimes want a criminal defense attorney. If the kind of lawyer you are is not instantly clear to your visitors, they will leave your home page immediately and find what they are seeking somewhere else.

2. YOUR HOME PAGE MUST BE DIRECT

Especially on your home page, your paragraphs must be short and must get directly to the point. Most website visitors will resist reading long blocks of solid text. Be certain that the information you provide on your home page is pertinent, important, and useful. Your writing must be candid, compelling, readable, and genuine. It’s imperative to avoid advertising phrases and clichés. Your prospective clients are looking for useful information, and they are also looking for an attorney who gets right to the point – without too much self-promotion.

3. YOUR HOME PAGE MUST DISTINGUISH YOUR LAW FIRM FROM OTHERS

The truth is that too many attorneys can’t distinguish themselves from their competition. Every law firm claims to offer high-quality legal services, to have substantial legal experience, and to provide “big firm-style service” with “small firm-style personal attention.” And when every attorney sounds like every other attorney, prospective clients start looking exclusively at prices. The better strategy is to stress your firm’s achievements, the benefits you’ve brought to clients, and the way you solve problems creatively and innovatively.

4. YOUR HOME PAGE MUST EXPRESS YOUR TRUSTWORTHINESS

Are the things you say about helping your clients really true? Putting positive testimonials and online reviews on your home page – or links to those testimonials and reviews – offers some proof that you can be trusted. Another way to gain trust – right from the start – is to clear all of the legal lingo off of your home page and “speak” in plain English. In an era of “fake news” and constant surveillance, you have to work hard to gain a prospective client’s trust, and you are more likely to gain it with plain English rather than “legalese.”

5. YOUR HOME PAGE MUST MAKE VISITORS COMFORTABLE WITH YOU

What you can do for clients is important, but the truth is that other attorneys can do it too. What a prospective client needs to know is, “Will I be comfortable working with this attorney? Will I like this person?” That’s why you need some video on your website and particularly on your home page. A video on your home page is a chance to introduce yourself and your services, talk about your clients and your achievements, and basically put visitors to your website at ease and make them feel comfortable contacting and approaching you. Text explains what you do, but video expresses who you are.

WHAT ELSE IS REQUIRED FOR A TOP-QUALITY HOME PAGE?

Understanding the expectations of prospective clients is key to keeping them on your website long enough to read your content and be impressed with what they find there. While it’s imperative to articulate the five qualities and characteristics listed above, text alone usually doesn’t persuade a website visitor to become a client. Symbols, graphics, fonts, colors, and the overall design and appeal of the home page are just as important as the text.

The page’s design should be simple and uncluttered. A poorly-designed home page sends prospective clients the wrong message and so does a home page that hasn’t been updated in years and looks like a refugee from 1999. Avoid the free website offers, and if you are not a website designer, don’t try it yourself. Contact an internet marketing company and have it done right.

A home page should also include something that encourages visitors to call or to email you. If a visitor can order an ebook or have a brief question answered without obligation, it will create a connection and begin building the visitor’s trust in you. Offer something for visitors right there on your home page, and don’t make prospective clients click through three, four, or five pages to find something. An impatient newcomer will probably just go to another attorney’s site.

Without a genuinely effective home page, you may be doing a great deal of work for nothing. Website analytics can tell you how many visitors your home page receives, how many are new visitors, how many are returning, and how much time they spend on your website. If more than half of your new visitors are leaving after briefly landing on your home page, you probably need to make some changes.

Your website’s home page will probably be your sole opportunity to turn a website visitor into a client, so you must take full advantage of that opportunity. It’s fine to gather ideas from other websites and home pages, but if you don’t have the time to do it right, consider hiring an experienced internet marketing agency to create an effective home page – or to manage all of your online marketing.

An internet marketing agency can create your graphics and videos, design your home page and your other pages, and even supply the text. Your options are almost unlimited. The services of experienced legal writers, videographers, and web designers can all be available to you through one professional agency. If your website’s home page needs a shake-up, or if you simply want to discuss marketing strategies, have a consultation with some internet marketing professionals who can manage some or all of your online marketing needs. The worst thing that can happen is that you’ll come away with some good marketing ideas.

Does Remarketing Work For Attorneys?

February 27, 2017 by Andrew Stickel

Marketing has a single goal. It’s designed to make consumers become customers and clients. Whether a consumer makes a purchase immediately upon seeing an ad, or the consumer acts later in response to a sustained marketing effort, the marketing “works” when and if consumers act on it. When it comes to attorneys and law firms, a lawyer’s first concern is attracting potential clients to your website.

When a visitor lands on your website, it needs to be attractive and user-friendly. You want visitors to stay on your site, read about your legal work, and eventually contact you about becoming a client. The median conversion rate for attorney websites is 2.07 percent. Even the highest-performing law firms barely exceed a 6 percent conversion rate. The reality is that even the best-performing legal websites fail to convert 94 percent of their visitors.

However, you don’t have to let that be a disheartening statistic. Even when a visitor to your website fails to convert on the first visit, that person may still be a worthwhile lead. Remaining visible to potential clients and bringing them back to your site – several times if necessary – is an important marketing tactic that’s now being called “remarketing.” Remarketing is the precise targeting of ads and other marketing content to persons who have already visited your website at least once. Remarketing lets you offer specific ads to specific audience segments based on the actions those visitors took or did not take when they visited your website.

HOW DOES REMARKETING WORK?

Remarketing relies on “cookies,” that are sent to and stored on the visitor’s browser. When someone visits a certain page or clicks a certain link, that action places a cookie in the visitor’s browser. The cookie ID – representing that individual visitor – is then added to your list of prospects for remarketing. Thus, the prospect will keep seeing your ads on websites throughout Google’s Display Network. Display ads are the visual advertisements that you’ve seen on advertising-supported websites all over the internet. Google says that its Display Network reaches over 90 percent of global internet users across two million websites.

Obviously, people will arrive at and then leave your website without converting for a number of reasons. They may simply be in “shopping mode,” doing research. Or they may be interrupted by one of the infinite number of distractions that we all experience online. In this age of information overload, it’s not easy to keep a website visitor’s attention. What you can do, however, is find ways to encourage those who’ve already indicated an interest in your services.

The consumers who come back to your website two or more times are considerably more apt to convert than a first-time visitor. Don’t be concerned that remarketing makes people feel like you’re following them around the internet and showing them the same ad repeatedly. A study conducted by Wordstream tells us that web users who have seen an ad six times are twice as likely to convert as the consumers who have only seen it once.

Remarketing also lets you offer precise and relevant advertising to those who’ve seen your ads previously. For instance, if someone visited your adoption services page, you can offer ads encouraging or providing more information about adoption. You can offer one ad to mobile users and another to desktop visitors. You can offer different content to visitors who downloaded your ebook. Your marketing – and remarketing – possibilities are virtually endless.

When you are remarketing, you are not charged simply because people see your ad – they see it for free. Remarketing works on a pay-per-click basis, so a fee only applies when someone clicks on your ad. You can cap click charges and block your ads from particular websites. You can decide how long a cookie ID should stay on a remarketing list, and you can also deal with “ad fatigue” by offering different ads to consumers who’ve already seen the first ad.

WHAT CHALLENGES ARE UNIQUE TO ATTORNEYS WHO REMARKET?

Google’s remarketing guidelines now prevent online marketers from using “any sensitive information about your site or app visitors” when compiling lists of prospects for remarketing efforts. “Sensitive information” is defined by Google as any allegation of a crime, any personal financial or medical information, and any information relating to a visitor’s marital status or divorce.

Google’s remarketing rules were established in response to a Canadian user who had visited sites related to sleep apnea and was then targeted with ads for sleep apnea products. The man filed a complaint with Canada’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner, which agreed that Google had violated Canada’s privacy laws because a user’s sensitive, personal health information was used for a marketing purpose. Thus, according to Google’s revised guidelines, if someone visits your DUI website, you cannot remarket that visitor with an ad that says “Suspected of DUI? Call a lawyer!” Attorneys, therefore, must watch the precise language they use when remarketing.

HOW CAN YOU START A REMARKETING CAMPAIGN?

The easiest way to start your remarketing campaign is by trusting an experienced internet marketing agency to handle the work on your behalf. Remarketing campaigns are based on the parameters you set in Google AdWords or Bing Ads. To set those parameters, you’ll first need to determine who should see your ads. Do you want to target everyone who visits your website? Should you create specific ads based on the pages of your site that are visited most frequently? How many different ads should you place? How many different prospect groups should you target?

You’ll probably want to start small, testing ads and prospect lists as you go. Begin with one or two prospect lists. Try out different ads and ad language. Be as frank and as candid as possible while remaining within Google’s guidelines. A personal injury attorney should probably say something like, “If you are in an accident” rather than “Have you been injured?” The first statement implies no prior personal knowledge about the prospect, while the question “have you been injured?” could conceivably imply prior knowledge that the prospect was involved in an accident.

A remarketing campaign takes a bit of technical work. You have to compile one or more remarketing lists, generate a code, and place the code on the web pages of your choice. Your IT team or your internet marketing agency can help. Remember, 94 percent – and probably more – of those who visit your website leave without taking any action. Remarketing lets you pursue those valuable leads and gives you important additional opportunities to convert them.