Mobile Marketing and Advertising: What Lawyers Should Know
All the best technology forecasters agree: the future of the web is mobile. Mobile advertising and marketing are changing the way businesses all over the world sell their products and services. What's more, when people use their mobile devices, they're using the web differently: no longer confined to web browsers, most mobile users now spend more time using internet-connected apps than their mobile browser. The time is right to change your mobile marketing and advertising strategy. If you want to learn how, keep reading this guide.
Why Now is the Time to Learn About Apps
Even two years ago, it would have been pretty strange advice to tell a law firm that learning about apps needed to be part of its mobile advertising and marketing strategy. In that time, however, smartphones have come to dominate the cellular phone market in the United States. The two main operating systems for these revolutionary mobile devices, iOS and Android, are largely app based and give developers the opportunity to create purpose-built applications for nearly any business.
As apps have become more popular than traditional browsing, it can be a great time to learn how to use a mobile marketing and advertising strategy in other people's apps. Ad networks allow you to put your mobile advertising and marketing campaigns into display banner ads that will be shown when people are using their apps.
If you're more ambitious, you might want to try a bigger mobile marketing and advertising project: building an app yourself! The kind of app that will be most effective for your mobile advertising and marketing purposes will be based firmly in your law firm's niche. Try to figure out how an app could make your typical client's life easier, and then use one of the easy app building programs available online to create it.
How Mobile Advertising and Marketing Networks Work
Not all apps use the same mobile marketing and advertising networks. If you want to get in front of the best viewers for your ads, you need to ask some questions about any mobile marketing and advertising network you're planning to use.
You should find out what their demographics look like, and what apps their ads are displayed on. A mobile advertising and marketing network that primarily advertises on games played by teenagers probably isn't what you're looking for when it comes to your mobile strategy. Instead, try to focus on the mobile marketing and advertising companies who are putting banner ads on applications used by adults in the age range your law firm caters to.
The New Trends In Mobile Marketing and Advertising: Social/Local
In addition to looking at mobile advertising and marketing in apps, you should consider advertising in the mobile Facebook app by posting “sponsored stories.” You can target these stories based on demographics, geolocational boundaries, or even by people who already know the people who are your fans and friends. Because sponsored stories appear directly in people's news feeds, they are already more than ten times more likely to be clicked on than a traditional sidebar Facebook advertisement on the desktop site.
Facebook is just one of several companies that is now offering better opportunities than ever for marketing to people who are very near to your location. Local ads are very appealing from a mobile advertising and marketing perspective, because it puts ads right in front of the very people who are most likely to be able to act on them immediately. As mobile marketing and advertising becomes integrated with smartphone GPS, it has finally become possible to target people specifically when they're close to your office right now.
QR Codes
Quick response (or QR) codes are everywhere today. You've probably noticed them yourself: the little square boxes of black and white static that you can photograph with a smartphone to go to a website. Using QR codes in your print advertisements can be an easy way to link your mobile website with your print advertising presence.
You might also consider having a QR code as part of a mobile marketing and advertising promotion. For example, if your mobile advertising and marketing strategies include advertising a free consultation, the QR code could take potential clients to a website with a contact form to claim this consultation.
Mobile Marketing and Advertising Mistakes to Avoid
Because mobile advertising and marketing is still a young field, a lot of people are still making amateur mistakes—don't be one of them. Make sure that your mobile marketing and advertising consistently directs to a website that has content that is completely readable for mobile viewers.
Don't forget to leave your phone number off your mobile website, and make sure that the number appears in text form (which becomes clickable for smartphone users). If your number is a graphic, smartphone users won't be able to click on it and will have a much more difficult time contacting your office for a consultation.
Finding Mobile Marketing and Advertising Tips
It's likely that this won't be the last article you read on mobile advertising and marketing. You can find a wide range of other mobile marketing and advertising on lawfirms.laws-info.com or by doing some Google searches. It's important to find information on mobile advertising and marketing that is relatively recent—because the mobile market is in a state of perpetual change, what works in 2012 might not be what works in 2015.
When you're looking for mobile advertising and marketing tips, take into account the source where the tips are coming from. Some articles about mobile marketing and advertising are trying to get you to buy a specific piece of software or use a method you can read about in a certain book (which, of course, costs money to buy). Those kinds of mobile advertising and marketing articles should always make you suspicious. Only take advice on your mobile marketing and advertising campaigns from sources that don't have a financial stake in your strategy.
