Marketing By the Numbers, Part 2
Marketing by the Numbers, Part 2
About seven years ago, I created a 13-minute video entitled Marketing By the Numbers, where I showed, through the power of data, the rationale behind many recommended marketing practices. Although the stats that I used (particularly those regarding social media and mobile devices) may now be outdated, the marketing ideas and the reasons for them remain timely.
Fast forward seven years, and with big data now a full-fledged analytics tool, there’s even more statistics than ever available to shed insight on marketing practices. This post at the Business2Community blog recently reported 50 statistics on the latest marketing trends for 2017, culled from reports prepared by marketing companies and business analysts. Although all of these stats ought to be taken with a grain of salt since the companies sponsoring the studies presumably had a motive in creating the reports (e.g., an email marketing company will, not surprisingly find that email marketing is far more effective than other tactics), the results generally correspond with my observations and experience. So below, I’ve listed the statistics that I consider most relevant to marketing a law practice.
Mobile Websites
It’s been over two years since Google announced that it would begin to penalize websites lacking responsive mobile design in search rankings. Yet I still frequently encounter numerous lawyer websites (and bar association sites) that don’t work well on phones. Not only do these sites lose out on SEO, they also lose out on potential clients. A CMS Report found that 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. And Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead. (Source: MicKinsey & Company)
Email Marketing
A June 2016 survey of US marketers conducted by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and Demand Metric found that email had a median ROI of 122% – more than four times higher than other marketing formats, including social media, direct mail and paid search. Although as I mentioned before, it’s not surprising that an association comprised of email marketers would reach this conclusion, it corresponds with my general experience in my industry where my newsletters have yielded superior results to blogging . Another interesting stat: You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet. (Source: Campaign Monitor, 2016)
Social Media
Of course, sending out newsletters doesn’t mean that lawyers ought to ignore social media. There are 1.65 billion active mobile social accounts globally with 1 million new active mobile social users added every day. (Source:We Are Social) Social media is also where lawyers can snag profitable clients – according to Nielsen, Gen X (ages 35-49) spend the most time on social media – 6 hours and 58 minutes per week, with millennials (ages 18-34) ranking second, spending 6 hours and 19 minutes of their time per week on social networks. More significantly, 41 percent of consumers who spent 2 hours or less on social media spent at least $500 on online purchases over the past 12 months, while 38 percent of consumers who spent at least 3 hours per day on social media spent $500 or more. (Source: Nielsen)
If you’re interested in learning about some of the other current trends, the full post is available here.