Clicks, hits, visits, uniques, impressions, page views, conversion rates, click-throughs, CPM (cost per thousand impressions), RPM (revenue per thousand impressions) CPC or PPC (cost per click), CPL (cost per lead), CPA (cost per acquisition), ROI (return on investment) -- what does it all mean?
Are you drowning in a stormy sea of unfamiliar terms and conflicting information, trying to quantify and measure the success of your online marketing? Are legal marketing companies making promises based on SEO metrics and page one placement with major search engines like Google and Bing?
Value vs. Volume
The bottom line for attorneys, especially solo practitioners and smaller firms: it's a competitive landscape out there, and at the end of the day, you're just trying to attract more clients who want to hire you. You can have all the "traffic" in the world, lots of clicks and unique visitors, but how do we qualify this traffic, and how many of those qualified visitors end up becoming clients?
Let's take a closer look at overall online marketing and advertising strategies and try to get to the bottom of the great traffic debate.
Online advertising continues to drive the majority of revenues with the big four search engines; Google, Yahoo!, Bing and AOL, leading the pack. According to Price Waterhouse Coopers, "search revenue accounted for 47 percent of 2009 second quarter revenues, up from the 44 percent reported in the second quarter of 2008. Display advertising, the second largest format, accounted for 35 percent, followed by Classifieds (10 percent), and Lead Generation (7 percent) of 2009 second quarter revenues", totaling $5.5 billion.
Different advertisers and marketers are paying for different types of online exposure. But exposure alone doesn't necessarily mean more customers. Paying for clicks, hits or visits on one site might not provide the same ROI as another site, depending on visitor demographics and how qualified the traffic is.
Here at Nolo, for example, we pride ourselves on being a full-service legal resource center where millions of visitors come for help with their legal needs. When a consumer browses our thousands of pages of free legal content, we provide geo-targeted attorney listings related to the information our visitors are seeking. A site visitor who clicks on one of those attorney listings should be a more likely client than one who clicked on a paid Google link through a general key-word search.
Despite the promise of absolutely trackable results and metrics for every dime invested in online marketing, the age-old adage of "there are no guarantees in advertising" still rings true -- buyer beware.
Are you drowning in a stormy sea of unfamiliar terms and conflicting information, trying to quantify and measure the success of your online marketing? Are legal marketing companies making promises based on SEO metrics and page one placement with major search engines like Google and Bing?
Value vs. Volume
The bottom line for attorneys, especially solo practitioners and smaller firms: it's a competitive landscape out there, and at the end of the day, you're just trying to attract more clients who want to hire you. You can have all the "traffic" in the world, lots of clicks and unique visitors, but how do we qualify this traffic, and how many of those qualified visitors end up becoming clients?
Let's take a closer look at overall online marketing and advertising strategies and try to get to the bottom of the great traffic debate.
Online advertising continues to drive the majority of revenues with the big four search engines; Google, Yahoo!, Bing and AOL, leading the pack. According to Price Waterhouse Coopers, "search revenue accounted for 47 percent of 2009 second quarter revenues, up from the 44 percent reported in the second quarter of 2008. Display advertising, the second largest format, accounted for 35 percent, followed by Classifieds (10 percent), and Lead Generation (7 percent) of 2009 second quarter revenues", totaling $5.5 billion.
Different advertisers and marketers are paying for different types of online exposure. But exposure alone doesn't necessarily mean more customers. Paying for clicks, hits or visits on one site might not provide the same ROI as another site, depending on visitor demographics and how qualified the traffic is.
Here at Nolo, for example, we pride ourselves on being a full-service legal resource center where millions of visitors come for help with their legal needs. When a consumer browses our thousands of pages of free legal content, we provide geo-targeted attorney listings related to the information our visitors are seeking. A site visitor who clicks on one of those attorney listings should be a more likely client than one who clicked on a paid Google link through a general key-word search.
Despite the promise of absolutely trackable results and metrics for every dime invested in online marketing, the age-old adage of "there are no guarantees in advertising" still rings true -- buyer beware.
