LawyerCasting

Happy Holidays - Say It With Flash

This is our second post exploring the versatility of Flash as a marketing tool. With the holiday season coming up, law firms looking to distinguish themselves may want to consider distributing holiday cards featuring Flash animation (also to consider: the major cost savings over mailing traditional print cards, and in terms of the environment, it's definitely more "green" to say "Happy Holidays" using the Internet rather than paper).

Here's a link to a Flash holiday card with music that we distributed last year. Interested firms can contact us to view our extensive library of holiday-themed Flash animations.

To be sure, there's certainly still a place for the traditional print card, which when handwritten, conveys a "high touch" feeling. Still, even as just a supplement to a traditional print card campaign, Flash cards can enhance the impact of a firm's holiday message.

Converting PDF Law Firm Newsletters to Flash

The print newsletter is a long time staple of law firm marketing. For years, firms have written, published and distributed newsletters to their clients covering legal trends and developments in various practice areas. More recently, firms have converted print newsletters to PDF and uploaded the files to their websites.

The latest innovation in newsletter marketing that lawyers may want to consider is converting from PDF to Flash. Here's an example:

http://www.elawflash.com/

A key advantage of Flash over PDF is that you can track readership: how many times each newsletter page was viewed, how long people spent reading the newsletter, and other useful metrics.

For subscribers who still prefer offline reading, there is a print icon to print some or all of the pages of the publication.

Article titles in the table of contents can be hotlinked to the pages where those articles begin, and for associations selling advertising in newsletters, you can hotlink ads back to advertiser websites.

The text inside the Flash is searchable and can be indexed by the search engines.

You can even insert video or forms inside a Flash newsletter for maximum interactivity.

A final consideration for those firms still distributing print newsletters: the cost of electronic distribution is a fraction of the mailing costs for a print newsletter.

5 More Landing Page Best Practices

We've previously blogged about the importance of landing page design as a means of maximizing leads delivered by online advertising, email campaigns, and other Internet marketing activities.

The PPC Hero blog recently published a post on this subject entitled "Discover 5 Landing Page Design Changes that Build Authority and Boost Conversions." The 5 "tips" as explained by blogger "John":

Tip #1: Keep It Above the Fold

The "fold" is the part of the landing page that displays to visitors before scrolling vertically. The number one priority for a landing page is to position your call-to-action above the fold. "John" contends (and we agree) that your landing page will fail if visitors do not immediately know what action you want them to take. Options include placing the call-to-action in a headline, or displaying the call-to-action as a button that is above the fold. If your landing page includes a lead form, it should be above the fold (see eLawMarketing example).

Tip #2: Limit Navigation

Experience shows that removing your standard website navigation from a landing page typically increases conversion rates. As "John" puts it, "by removing navigation, you are creating a 'sterile' conversion environment . . . In other words, you want to be in complete control of what the visitor sees, interacts with and hopefully this will lead them directly to the conversion." In contrast, if a landing page is just another page on your website with all the standard navigation, the visitor may leave the landing page before converting to browse other pages on the website (to be sure, Wall presents counter-arguments to this strategy from folks who disagree).

Banner Ads Deliver Branding, Not Leads

Last week, MarketingSherpa published a chart displaying the dismal clickthrough rates on banner ads - ranging from 0.37% for 300x250 ads to 0.10% for 468x60 ads. However, as the accompanying article noted, low clicks don't mean an ad isn't working. Rather, a well-designed, memorable ad can deliver strong branding value. Which means law firms considering placing banner ads on websites trafficked by potential clients should be thinking in terms of branding, not lead generation.

However, this doesn't mean the quality of the landing page to which you link from an ad should be ignored. To the extent some prospects click the ad, they are probably excellent leads, and so you'll want to make sure you offer something of value on the landing page (like a free white paper) that will entice them to establish contact with the firm.

Crafting Catchy Title Tags That Maximize Search Engine Traffic

As explained in our recent white paper entitled "The Top Ten SEO Best Practices for Law Firm Websites," the copy in your title and description tags is used by Google and other search engines as the "anchor text" and descriptive text when your link is displayed in a search engine result. As such, if you want to maximize the clickthroughs on links to your law firm website displayed by search engines, you need to invest in crafting enticing title and description tags for your website pages.

An excellent blog post on the subject of title tag composition recently appeared on SEO Book, a blog published by SEO expert Aaron Wall.

Second Life for Lawyers

Ari Kaplan, a leading motivational speaker and author providing career development services to lawyers, recently published an interesting article on Larry Bodine's Law Marketing Portal about how lawyers can market their services on "Second Life."

For those who have never heard of Second Life, Wikipedia describes it as:

"an Internet-based 3D virtual world launched on June 23, 2003 and developed by Linden Research, Inc . . . A free downloadable client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called "Residents", to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of a social network service combined with general aspects of a metaverse. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade items (virtual property) and services with one another."

In Kaplan's article, he shares the story of Stevan Lieberman, an intellectual property attorney with Greenberg & Lieberman in Washington, D.C., who joined Second Life to enhance his presence in the offline world. By interacting with the other almost nine million "Residents" of Second Life, Lieberman says he's reached a new demographic for his services that has resulted in $10,000 of new business.

While the opportunities presented to attorneys by Second Life seem promising, Kaplan offers some caveats to lawyers thinking about joining the virtual world, including avoiding the use of outrageous avatar figures (e.g., flaming head) that could prove embarassing, or avoiding the sharing of any information that could be misconstrued as legal advice.

So if you've just begun figuring out how to leverage MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter for marketing and business development, add "Second Life" to your list.

The Top 10 Law Firm SEO Best Practices

We recently announced the release of our new white paper entitled the The Top Ten SEO Best Practices for Law Firm Websites (incidentally, as previously noted, we strongly recommend the use of PRWeb to announce the release of law firm white papers as a method of generating site traffic, leads, and brand awareness - let us know if you need any help maximizing the search engine visibility of your releases).

The 6-page white paper provides SEO tips and strategies to help law firms and individual attorneys maximize the search engine visibility of their websites and blogs. Among the topics discussed are: composing effective title and description tags, keyword research, building internal links, soliciting external links, and monitoring progress with Google's analytics and diagnostics tools.

You can download a free copy of the white paper at the following link.

Enjoy!

Lawyer Webcast Best Practices: Part II

Following up on our initial law firm webinar post in early September, we'd like to recommend a toolkit recently published by MarketingSherpa entitled: "How to Produce a Webinar Program" for law firms interesting in launching a webinar program. A subscription is required to access the toolkit so we'll provide a summary of the content so you can decide whether it's worth the investment (eLawMarketing also offers webcasting services to law firms that require assistance in this area).

Briefly, the MS toolkit walks marketers through all of the steps necessary to produce and promote a successful webinar, including a sample timeline and cost calculator. Among the steps discussed:

#1: Selecting a Topic and Presenter: for law firms, the typical goal of a webinar is to establish one or more of their attorneys as experts in their field. This objective will drive the topic selected and the presenter.

The topic should be tailored to the audience's level of expertise. That is, don't cover basics if the target audience is already well versed about the topic.

The presenter should have an effective speaking style. Someone knowledgeable about a topic may not always be able to present it in an engaging and interesting manner. Speakers don't need to be techno-wizards, but should be comfortable working with basic technology - e.g., flipping through Powerpoint slides.

It's also a good idea to have a moderator to join the presenter to keep things moving along smoothly.

#2: Preparing the Presentation: most webinars are presented using Powerpoint slides. So you'll need either an outside vendor or internal staffer skilled at creating visually appealing Powerpoints.  Our own experience shows that attendees prefer slides with a minimal amount of text presented in bulleted, outline form. This allows attendees to digest your content in bit-sized chunks as they listen to the speaker. Also, avoid blatant sales pitches, and instead focus on conveying knowledge of high value to your audience.

#3: Selecting a Vendor: a good webinar provider will handle all of the technical aspects of your webinar. This includes setting up a teleconference line for the audio; recording the webinar; and hosting a web interface for displaying the slides. Ideally, the interface should include interactive elements such as polls and Q&A forms.

Vendors typically charge a fixed fee "per minute" per attendee for audio and web connection time. There may be additional fees for a support person to address technical issues during the presentation, and for creating and providing a recording.

Law Firm Webinar Best Practices: Part I

If your law firm hasn't yet started producing webcasts, time to get started. Also known as webinars or web conferences, these remote "live" presentations were the second most popular lead generation tool for B2B marketers in 2007, according to MarketingSherpa (to assist firms looking to launch a webinar program, eLawMarketing recently launched a law firm webcast service).

In this first post focused on law firm webinars, we'll review the top 5 "turnoffs" cited by webinar attendees in a MarketingSherpa study. In other words, if you want to follow "best practices" in webcasting, avoid these mistakes:

• Lack of honesty about webinar content in promotions - typically caused when marketers "pitch" webinars using copy that is appealing to the target audience, but don't confirm topics with the experts who will be presenting. Presenters should sign off on the marketer's promotional copy.
• Presenters who read directly from the slides or spoke to slowly - presenters don't need to be stand up comics, but they do need to be sufficiently dynamic or else they will lose attendees to boredom. To obtain constructive feedback on how they sound, it's a good idea for presenters to practice a presentation before colleagues at least one time prior to the "live" event. Firms might also consider speaker training for regular presenters.
• Webinar began with company/sales information - get straight to the topic - webinars are intended to be educational, not promotional. But no need to worry - simply by presenting on a complex topic, your speakers are positioned as authorities on the subjects about which they present, and that has proven adequate to generate leads.
• Already familiar with information on the first few slides - understand the knowledge base of your audience. If you approach a topic at an elementary level and the audience is already sophisticated about the topic, they will lose interest quickly.
• Webinar was too long - about an hour seems right - but intersperse the presentation with Q&A and interactive polls.

Here's a chart displaying the results of MarketinSherpa's research.

Next week we'll review further guidance from MarketingSherpa on producing a webinar.