Most law firms interested in driving business from the web are appropriately focused on getting more traffic to their Web site. And why not? Using the web as a starting point to search for and find an attorney to hire is becoming more and more frequent. The beauty of online marketing is that the product performance (search, directory or display ad, email campaign or video) is visible to the advertiser in the form of marketing analytics and reporting which makes figuring out the marketing return on investment (ROI) easier than ever. Here at FindLaw our tracking and reporting of online clicks shows one important distinction: all clicks are not equal.
Progressive marketers know that clicks from relevant websites, those that are niche focused or are highly differentiated with content-rich user experiences, produce, per click, many more conversions. As users research topics and create pathways to specific content they reveal a lot about themselves, their preferences and most importantly their intent. Understanding the users “online behavior” helps you to figure out the difference between passive browsing behavior and deliberate activity. My colleague Brian Ledis describes the idea of using granularity, sorting out the good prospects from the bad in a sea of traffic, in a previous post on this blog. In effect, sourcing traffic from highly differentiated destination sites does the sorting: visitors to these types of sites are more likely to purchase goods and services than those on general portals, where many visitors have only a passive interest in the goods and services they are exposed to.
For instance, take the search term “immigration law”. Who might be making that search and what’s their intent? It could be an immigration lawyer looking for a resource. It could be a college student looking for research material. Or a blogger looking for political fodder. Or a law student writing a paper. Or someone looking for an immigration lawyer. Which click would your firm want? Which click would you pay for?
Now, compare that click with one from a user who is on a vertically focused destination site specializing in helping non-experts navigate the law. That user might research “Immigration Law Overview”, proceed to Immigration Law FAQ and then jump to Role of an Immigration Attorney and proceed to a directory of immigration lawyers. The intent of the user is expressed through their “online behavior” and a lot of it is available in the tracking and reporting metrics. Research by FindLaw shows that a click to a law firm Web site from a relevant site, such as findlaw.com, by a user who has been down the legal research path is much more likely to turn into a client than a user who clicks from a less targeted site such as a general search engine.
That’s not to say traffic isn’t important. Traffic, multiplied by conversion rate gives us a “net converted” metric, which then can be evaluated in an ROI calculation. It’s at this level of analysis that marketers can truly evaluate the effectiveness of the online marketing efforts in producing what really matters: converted contacts that can be turned into clients.
Charlie Vanek
Progressive marketers know that clicks from relevant websites, those that are niche focused or are highly differentiated with content-rich user experiences, produce, per click, many more conversions. As users research topics and create pathways to specific content they reveal a lot about themselves, their preferences and most importantly their intent. Understanding the users “online behavior” helps you to figure out the difference between passive browsing behavior and deliberate activity. My colleague Brian Ledis describes the idea of using granularity, sorting out the good prospects from the bad in a sea of traffic, in a previous post on this blog. In effect, sourcing traffic from highly differentiated destination sites does the sorting: visitors to these types of sites are more likely to purchase goods and services than those on general portals, where many visitors have only a passive interest in the goods and services they are exposed to.
For instance, take the search term “immigration law”. Who might be making that search and what’s their intent? It could be an immigration lawyer looking for a resource. It could be a college student looking for research material. Or a blogger looking for political fodder. Or a law student writing a paper. Or someone looking for an immigration lawyer. Which click would your firm want? Which click would you pay for?
Now, compare that click with one from a user who is on a vertically focused destination site specializing in helping non-experts navigate the law. That user might research “Immigration Law Overview”, proceed to Immigration Law FAQ and then jump to Role of an Immigration Attorney and proceed to a directory of immigration lawyers. The intent of the user is expressed through their “online behavior” and a lot of it is available in the tracking and reporting metrics. Research by FindLaw shows that a click to a law firm Web site from a relevant site, such as findlaw.com, by a user who has been down the legal research path is much more likely to turn into a client than a user who clicks from a less targeted site such as a general search engine.
That’s not to say traffic isn’t important. Traffic, multiplied by conversion rate gives us a “net converted” metric, which then can be evaluated in an ROI calculation. It’s at this level of analysis that marketers can truly evaluate the effectiveness of the online marketing efforts in producing what really matters: converted contacts that can be turned into clients.
Charlie Vanek
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