Contextual Online Advertising For Your Law Firm

Everything About Contextual Online Advertising

Online contextual advertising can help you to get the most conversions out of your advertising budget. Today, Google AdSense is the most common provider of contextual online advertising, and its ads appear on 18 percent of total web pages online today. If you're looking for a contextual advertising example to know if online contextual advertising is right for you, keep reading. You'll learn about several contextual online advertising methods that work for law firms, and how to avoid making big mistakes.

Contextual Online Advertising and Your Law Firm: Will It Blend?

Consider the many ways that your law firm has used advertising or marketing campaigns over the last several years. Whenever you put an ad in print, on the radio, or on television, you (or your advertising agency) try to figure out which ad placement will put you in front of the most people who can actually use your services.

Usually, you'll use demographic information to decide who to advertise to. But what if there was a better way? With online contextual advertising, there is. Instead of having your advertisement show up randomly on a wide variety of websites, you can now use ad networks to display your ads only in front of people looking at content with keywords you've chosen.

Contextual online advertising is a really great deal for law firms. Millions of people do online searches for legal advice and help every year, and online contextual advertising puts your advertisements in front of those people. What's more, you can narrow your targeting so that only people who are seeking the kinds of services you do best will see your contextual online advertising.


Online Contextual Advertising Mistakes


Before talking much more about using contextual online advertising, it's important that you know that not every contextual advertising example goes according to plan. In fact, sometimes online contextual advertising can lead to embarrassing juxtapositions for advertisers.


The classic contextual advertising example mistake involves a tragic news story. A weight loss company trying to use advertising about “melting the pounds off” could need to send out an apology if their ads appeared next to a story about a house fire and an obese woman being rescued from it.


While it's unlikely that your contextual advertising example will ever be as offensive as something like that, it's good to be aware of the drawbacks of online contextual advertising. What can we learn from a contextual advertising example like that?


Two things: first, you need to use negative keywords for your contextual online advertising targeting. Some negative keywords for ad copy like this would have avoided the problem completely. Second, this contextual advertising example tried to get too clever with its wording. Keep your wording direct and you'll minimize the risk of an online contextual advertising faux pas.


Making Contextual Online Advertising Part of Your Strategy


Online contextual advertising is a complicated topic, especially from a programming perspective. If you're not a programmer, you're going to want to use someone else's software that makes it easier to create contextual online advertising.


There are already a huge number of tools for helping you manage contextual online advertising. One way to find a great tool is to look at websites that already seem to be using online contextual advertising in a good way. Don't be shy about asking a site administrator about a contextual advertising example. He or she can direct you to the program they use.


The most common source for a contextual advertising example on the web is Google AdSense. However, other companies have also gotten in on the online contextual advertising game in a big way. Today, you're almost as likely to see a contextual advertising example from Amazon or AdBrite as you are from Google.


You may want to initially try using several different services for contextual online advertising. Before you start to use any new sites, ask them for a contextual advertising example and what their ads look like on websites. In some cases, you may not feel that a service's contextual advertising example would be sufficient to showcase what your firm can do.


Best Practices for Contextual Online Advertising


When you're using online contextual advertising, you'll need to keep some basic principles in mind. The first key principle is segmentation. A good contextual advertising example will include a great deal of segmentation, showing significantly different advertisements to different types of people seeking different keywords.


When you use online contextual advertising, you should also use geographic terms to narrow down your focus. It's not helpful if someone sees your great contextual advertising example but can't hire your firm because they were looking for legal help in Chicago, not Los Angeles.


Using Contextual Online Advertising on Your Blog


If you want to make a little bit of extra money, you may also wonder if there's a way to get online contextual advertisers to pay you. The answer is: yes, but you're unlikely to make a fortune from posting contextual ads on your website.


A large number of ad networks can help you to set up your ad account and start adding relevant contextual online advertising to your website. However, unless you have a blog with tens of thousands of readers, or a website that gets incredible Google traffic, your profits will probably be low. Most websites currently using Google AdSense don't generate enough clicks to make even $100 a month, the lowest amount that leads Google to cut you a check.


Does this mean it's hopeless to try to make money with online contextual advertising? Not really. While most contextual online advertising is fairly low-profit, there are still people joining the “UPS Club” from AdSense. Instead of mailing checks via the postal service to websites that make over $10,000 a month, Google sends them via UPS shipping. Is it likely your website will end up in the UPS Club? No—but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.