Posts Tagged ‘Internet Marketing’
Google’s Latest Toy – Can it help a real estate lawyer?
There was an article on an internet marketing website reporting that Google is planning to display panoramic and 3-dimensional real estate ads for customers searching Google Maps for properties. Can this tool help the legal industry? Yes, it can and here’s how. If this concept becomes a popular reality, then advertisers and businesses involved in property management, commercial properties, or residential properties, may also be displayed in the same manner. Coupons, hours of operation, etc. may eventually be displayed in pull-down menus.
What can that do for your business? It can make you more visible in a popular modality, and make your sellers’ properties more visible also. Selling a home in any region in this market needs advanced marketing techniques.
You can read more about the Google’s to the US Patent Office by reviewing their application.
When the Internet can jeopardize your Job from Non-Compliance
When the Internet can jeopardize your Job
The Compliant One
I created my first website in 2005 and was considered a maverick realtor among my co-workers. My internet savvy quickly grew, and I was fortunate enough to listen to the right people that were involved in early search engine optimization.
In less than a year I dominated my market, rising to the number one organic position in Google and Yahoo. This dominance gave me more leads than I could handle, and my online persona grew with local profiling and press releases. Pretty soon my name was everywhere on the internet and in 2007 my revenue more than doubled what it was in 2005. My online customers went from 90 to over 1,900 in just three short years.
I gladly shared what I knew with my competitors and spoke in other regions of the country about how to increase your presence on the internet. I found a compatriot who shared my enthusiasm for online marketing. Looking back, our purchase of local real estate domains was just a precursor to what we then learned to do with keywords. Although she and I shared many techniques, I wanted to dominate Google traffic while she wanted to dominate Yahoo. And we did dominate.
I was asked to help people who didn’t understand how far reaching the internet was, and who didn’t care to understand compliance. Rules in my industry are just as stringent as attorneys, and I have always prided myself on being ethical and conforming to the regulations of the Real Estate Commission, the local real estate boards, and associations we must belong to.
The Non-Compliant One
SomeoneI know and worked closely with asked for my help getting his name in cyberspace. Although his company’s website was a cookie cutter one, I was able to put some related content on my website so he could share my marketing success. I created a few press releases, submitted his profile into local directories that dealt with finance and real estate, and created a few videos reflecting our services as a team in a few NJ towns.
I seemed to have a knack for staying one step ahead of my competition. One day I decided to create a blog which dealt with police and firefighters. This Google blog became a powerful website which garnished the entire first page in organic search results. His leads kept rolling in. The business he gained from the blog, and not his cookie cutter website, awarded him a Leadership Club ranking at his company, similar to the AV rating of Martindale-Hubbell.
I had to burst his bubble once in a while and say, “No” when he requested something that smelled non-compliant to me. He did push the envelope too far, however. He wanted to achieve internet success yet didn’t take the time to look into advertising rules of his company with regard to the internet. Compliance in his industry had tightened up, and what I have found was that some large companies do not want employees getting direct internet leads from other sources so as to maintain control of internet customers. He wasn’t allowed to have a blog or any marketing material that was not approved by his company. I dismantled the blog so as to be compliant yet he still wanted it to garnish him business.
I thought he learned his lesson about six months ago when his company had him pull off all his links from websites other than his company’s website. They took my website and created a page which I had to use instead of the fresh content I had posted. They were adamant he was not to do anything in the future or the fine would be termination or a $10,000 fine.
Recently, he is in hot water again because of comments he made on websites or blogs. They were insightful comments with full disclosure of his name and title. He also his assistant started putting his profile in websites heavily trafficked, but without being compliant. However, comments are included on the “do not post” list. He is finding his profile on sites that were never in existence back in 2007. He has been told to delete a long list of pages that he has no access to other than writing to the webmaster asking to have the item removed.
He has been threatened with termination yet again. Also, there was recently an internal audit and he is under intense scrutiny by his compliance, marketing, and advertising departments.
The Moral of the Story
All stories have a moral and this one teaches you how innocent comments, postings, and links to other websites to gain exposure on the internet can come back to haunt you in later years. Compliance in certain industries is very critical and it could mean losing your job. Trust the experts in your industry and company and don’t do anything that could jeopardize your job.
Internet Marketing 101
Internet Marketing 101
Although there are numerous options available to marketers and firms who choose to take the internet-based route, the basic philosophy and techniques behind traditional marketing practices still apply and are very useful in the web-sphere; and you can continue to pursue your offline marketing efforts as well with success.
When your firm is targeting relevant keywords, you’re essentially targeting particular audiences and demographics, just via search engine results rather than print and other media methods. Some argue that these two practices are dissimilar, because SEO involves a very specific user (potential client) searching for a very specific type of content. While the SEO approach is much more targeted and gets more track-able results, you can still apply the basic ideas behind traditional strategies to your internet campaigns with a little tweaking.
Some hail internet marketing as the end of conventional marketing as we know it, but this is a bit of a sensationalist angle to take – all the groundwork is still there, there are just faster, more cost-effective, and more targeted ways of getting the results you’re looking for in your legal practice campaigns.
Your potential law clients are using a variety of ways to find you and your firm, from print advertisements to phone directories to the internet, so it’s really best practice for now and the foreseeable future to approach your marketing needs with both an online and offline focus – you can cover all of your bases and not miss out on potentially rewarding client relationships with people who maybe don’t own a computer or aren’t net savvy, but you can also provide solid resources and information to the intermediate and advanced internet-browsing crowd and take advantage of advanced lead-tracking tools.
The Basics of Marketing Still Apply
Know your audience, approach potential clients with relevant, timely, persuasive and useful information that is easy to understand and remember; keep an eye on your competitors; carve out a niche for yourself; be a resource; monitor response to your efforts – these are all marketing best practices that have been utilized for decades, and the fundamental approach is no different in social media and internet marketing.
The details of your strategies may take a different turn, but with a solid backbone based on the tenets of effective print and media marketing, you can go far on the web. Learning about how to effectively use search engine optimization, pay-per-click campaigns, and social media (or hiring a marketing professional to do so) can help keep you in the game and greatly enhance your lead generation.