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Everything About Mobile Advertising Strategy

Everything About Mobile Advertising Strategy
Are you still building your law firm's website for the “old web”?  You know, the one on computers—the one you're probably looking at right now?  Increasingly, today's internet users aren't using traditional methods to access their favorite content.  Within 24 months, you can expect half or more of your traffic to come in through smartphones and other mobile devices.

Mobile advertising strategies are absolutely critical if your law firm wants to stay competitive in the 21st century.  Keep reading to find out six different ways to develop a mobile advertising strategy designed with an eye to your firm's strengths and the growth of the new, mobile web.

Mobile Advertising Strategy #1:  Spend More

This is a case where it's definitely worth it to increase your spending on an aspect of your marketing budget.  Even if spending more on mobile advertising strategies means you'll have to spend less on traditional display ads in print, you'll likely benefit from the switch: studies show that businesses today aren't marketing enough for mobile relative to the medium's popularity.

Think about it: if people spent an hour and a half staring at billboards every day, that's a huge amount of time.  Wouldn't you want to make sure you had a billboard in the mix?  Mobile web users today are spending hours of time every day viewing mobile online content in apps or with web browsers, which is why most mobile advertising strategies will suggest an increase in your spending relative to other forms of ads.

What's more, those mobile web consumers now represent 20 percent of the entire legal market today, and it's the 20 percent that are most likely to be active on social media and considered influential in their groups of friends.  This is a market you absolutely can't afford to ignore—having a mobile marketing strategy is not optional any more.

Mobile Advertising Strategy #2:  QR Codes

Everyone's seen them: the little black and white codes that almost look like static on everything from movie posters to coffee shop menus.  Those images are called QR (for “quick response”) codes, and using them to link your mobile advertising strategies with your print ads is a great idea.

Remember that any time someone accesses your website through a QR code, they're using a mobile device.  This means that your mobile advertising strategies must include good landing pages.  If a QR code takes someone to a dreary landing page or one that looks more optimized for desktops, your mobile advertising strategy just won't work to generate conversions.

Mobile Advertising Strategy #3:  Cross-Platform Ad Buys

Software tools are now being released every day that can help you to implement mobile advertising strategies.  One of the most difficult issues when developing a mobile advertising strategy today is simply choosing which ad networks to work with.  If you advertise with too many ad networks individually, you may start using a large amount of your time each day just keeping up with your mobile ads.

Instead of spending time fine-tuning every ad on every ad network, consider using software to make this part of your mobile advertising strategy faster.  Several different platforms allow you to purchase advertising with multiple networks and keep track of the results with a single intuitive interface.  Leaving these cross platform ad buys to a piece of software leaves you free to develop and implement other mobile advertising strategies.

Mobile Advertising Strategy #4: The Local and the Hyper Local

Most law firms don't need to advertise their services all over the country, or even all over the state.  Mobile advertising strategies are all about what's local.  Because cell phones are already keeping track of your ad viewers' locations, you can keep your ads focused on as small an area as you want.

Many firms today are seeing great results from using mobile advertising strategies that work hyper-locally, that is, in just the neighborhood or very small area around your law firm.  The clients targeted by this kind of mobile advertising strategy are the ones who are most likely to already know your location and to give you a call.

Mobile Advertising Strategy #5: Make an App For That

Take a guess: how many app downloads are expected to occur in 2012?  The answer is staggering: 100 billion, enough to supply every man, woman, and child on the planet with 14 apps each.  Apps are slowly starting to take over as a main way that people interact with the web. 

In just the last year or so, people who use mobile phones have begun to use their web capabilities more like an app machine that also surfs the web, and less like a web browser that also does apps.  The reasons for this shift are not entirely clear, but probably has something to do with the proliferation of great apps for low or no cost to the consumer.

Instead of just advertising during apps, have you considered using app authoring software as part of your mobile advertising strategy?  Mobile advertising strategies that include targeted app development can be tremendously successful, especially if none of your competitors are using apps this way.

Mobile Advertising Strategy #6: Video Works

If you've kept up with strategies for web marketing of law firms, you'll know that just incorporating a few videos into your law firm's website can have a big impact on conversions.  That same principle can be incorporated into your mobile advertising strategies: consider running ads that include video or that direct consumers to a professionally produced video for your firm.

Even a year ago, this advice would only have really been good for firms located in large cities.  Today, as 4G and 3G coverage expands, even small town attorneys can take advantage of mobile advertising strategies incorporating video ads.

Any video ads that come about as a result of your mobile advertising strategy don't have to be marketed just as direct advertising.  You may want to also include video marketing as part of your social media strategy.

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