Design

When you begin a Facebook Ads campaign, you’ll face a number of important decisions. One of the most important of all is the decision you make about your objective. That’s because the ad objective you choose determines so many other aspects of your campaign, including the way you bid, the way your campaign is optimized, and more.

The problem is, choosing your ad objective can be rather daunting. There are more than a dozen options provided by Facebook, and there isn’t a lot of detail provided to help you pick one over the others.

There’s actually quite a bit that could be said about each of the available ad objectives. But in today’s post we just want to provide an overview; hopefully, this will help you narrow down your options and make better sense of which ad objective is right for your campaign.

About Facebook’s Ad Objectives

Here’s the rundown.

1. Store Traffic. The Store Traffic objective is mostly for chains. If you want to drive traffic for a chain of stores or to help your end-user connect with a specific location that’s closest to them, then this is probably the best option for you to choose.
2. Reach. When you choose this objective, you’re optimizing your campaign to get as many people as possible to see your ads, and for those people to see your ads as many times as possible. In other words, it’s all about exposure.
3. Brand Awareness. If you’re looking to increase brand recall, pick this option, which signals to Facebook that you want them to show your ads to people that will be more likely to remember you.
4. Traffic. This one’s among the most self-explanatory objectives. Simply put, it’s what you should pick if you’re looking to get as much traffic as possible for your website or your app.
5. Engagement. This one’s all about encouraging people to engage with your content in some way, such as liking and/or commenting. If you’re looking to amass social proof for your product or service, this is a good one to think about.
6. Lead Generation. Useful at any point in the sales funnel, the Lead Generation objective is highly versatile; among other things, you can ask for customer email addresses to start building up your subscriber list.
7. Video Views. Another self-explanatory ad objective, this one is good for any campaign that hinges on video content.
8. Messenger. Are your leads likely to have questions or need certain pieces of information before they make their purchasing decision? If so, you might consider this objective, which encourages your end-user to reach out to your company via Messenger.
9. Catalog Sales. For eCommerce vendors that have catalogs attached to their business manager, this objective can be a helpful option.
10. Conversions. This is probably the most popular objective because after all, conversions are what this whole process is ultimately about! Be warned, however, that this is mostly useful for bottom-of-funnel scenarios when your leads are just about ready to convert.
11. Event Response. If you want to get Facebook users to RSVP to an event, this is the objective for you.
12. Page Likes. Just looking to get more Facebook users to LIKE your page? Here’s how you do it!
13. App Install. Finally, if you have an app that you want users to install on their device, here’s an objective that’s just right for your goals!

Find Out More About Facebook Ads

As you can tell, there’s a lot to think about as you start optimizing your Facebook Ads campaign. If you have further questions or want to talk to a Facebook Ads expert one-on-one, reach out to Driven2020 at your earliest convenience! Don’t miss out on what Facebook Ads can do for your business.

Design

In digital marketing, it’s important to try new things—to take risks, to swing for the fences, and to adjust your strategy on the fly. Some of the things you try will work wonders and some may come up short. That’s okay, so long as you learn from your trials and devote yourself to continuous improvement.

The problem is that a lot of brand marketers don’t have any way to learn from their mistakes or even to tell what works and what doesn’t work in the first place. That’s because they lack clear metrics, and in particular content performance metrics.

Simply put, how do you know whether all the branded content you’re developing is making any impact? What can you do to monitor and measure your content performance, ensuring you’re doubling down on what works and learning from what doesn’t?

Decide Which Content Performance Metrics to Track

The first thing to ask yourself is this: In measuring content performance, which metrics are actually important? These days, it’s possible to measure just about everything…but if you measure anything, you’ll quickly find yourself drowning in analytics. It’s important to be judicious about what you do and don’t measure. To accomplish that:

• Set the organizational goals for your content marketing—what are you ultimately trying to accomplish? How will you determine whether your content is successful?

• From there, you can identify top measurement priorities. For instance, if your ultimate goal is increasing sales, you’ll want to look at conversion data; if it’s improving brand awareness, you might look at website traffic or social media engagement numbers.

• Establish some basic performance benchmarks, which makes measuring content performance much easier.

• Also calculate the costs associated with creating your content and getting the results you need, which can help you contextualize your findings.

Track, Measure, and Monitor

Once you determine which content performance marketing metrics you’re evaluating, the next step is to do it!

• Start by creating a measurement schedule; how often will you stop to gather data and generate analytics?

• Build a measurement dashboard where you can look at all the key metrics and keep track of findings. This could be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet.

• Invest in monitoring and analytics tools that can automate the process and furnish you with useable results! Ask your marketing agency for a recommendation.

• Make sure you have a system in place to organize your information for easy reporting.

Turn Data into Insight

The final step in the process is to use your content performance marketing metrics to gather actionable insights.

• It may be beneficial to come up with a scoring system, which you can use to evaluate the success/efficacy of different channels or pieces of content.

• Use Google Analytics to get a good, condensed lineup of powerful metrics, including page views and bounce rates—both of which will help you better size up your content assets.

• Compare your data with your content creation and distribution costs and calculate your real return on investment.

• Create a new editorial calendar, and make further tweaks to your content strategy, using the data you have available.

It’s often said that to do marketing without analytics is like flying blind. That’s very true for those who work in content and for whom analytic data abounds…yet actually putting that data to good use can be daunting.

Driven2020 is here to provide our clients with a truly data-driven approach. Make truly smart, informed content decisions by gaining insights from our team. Reach out to us today to discuss content marketing performance metrics in greater detail or to develop a new online content strategy for your business. (See also: How to keep your law firm’s content marketing engaging; how to get efficient with your content marketing.)

Design

First impressions are important. They’re important on dates, they’re important in real estate, and they’re certainly important in marketing. Simply put, your potential customers or clients will very quickly form an opinion of your business, and if it’s a negative one, you may never have the chance to correct it.

That’s very pertinent to any discussion of website user experience, or UX. There are some complicated definitions of UX we could give you, but ultimately, it’s just a matter of making your visitors feel welcome and make the effort to improve your website. Good UX means your page is readable, it’s easy to navigate, and it helps the visitor locate whatever information he or she seeks.

UX matters for your first impressions, and good UX can underscore the professionalism of your firm. What’s more, UX is a big SEO ranking factor. All of this is just to say that it’s well worth investing in a positive UX for your law firm’s website—but how to improve your website?

6 Tips for a Better Website UX

Here are some simple ways your firm can improve website UX today:

1. Make sure the content on each page is broken down with appropriate headings and subheadings. This not only makes it easy on the eye—nobody really wants to see one long, unbroken block of text—but it also means that someone who’s just skimming can very quickly get a feel for what your content is about, and zero in on the section that’s relevant to them.
2. Add original images to your site. What do we mean by original, exactly? Well, basically, we mean not stock images. Most Web users can immediately identify these generic pics, and it can be a major turn-off. Whenever possible, have original graphics designed and unique photos taken for your firm’s site.
3. Be certain that there’s white space throughout your website. That means margins. It means a little breathing room between text blocks and images. It means not filling every single square inch of online real estate. Simply put, white space is vital for making your site readable. Without it, you’re just offering your visitors a headache.
4. Double and triple check that your site is optimized for mobile users. These days, most sites are, but you don’t want to leave this to chance. See how the site looks on all device types and on various browsers. If it’s hard to read, requires a lot of scrolling, or loads too slowly, that’s reason enough to get under the hood and do some retooling.
5. Speaking of loading times… it’s best if your site loads in two or three seconds, tops. If it doesn’t, visitors will get frustrated and head elsewhere. Loading time is a huge

component of positive UX, and something your firm should definitely explore.

• Finally, spend some time combing your site and making sure there aren’t any dead links. When someone clicks something on your site and it leads to a 404 Error, it can be annoying, to say the least. And while you’re at it, create a personalized 404 page, just in case; this can sometimes prevent a frustrated user from jumping to a different firm’s site altogether.

Contact Driven2020 to Ask About UX

UX experience matters for a number of reasons when looking to improve your website, and it’s not something you can leave to chance. We’d love to help you ensure a law firm website that’s ready to make a positive first impression on each visitor; Driven2020 has worked with a number of law firms throughout California and across the country, and we’d love to show you some of our user-friendly, SEO-enhances website designs. Reach out to us today to schedule a consultation.

Design

These days it seems like every business has their own blog, Facebook feed, and YouTube channel—trying to make good on the promises of content marketing. Not all content marketing efforts are created equal, though, and for every business that finds smashing success, there’s one that comes up short. One way to ensure your content marketing efforts thrive is to review some of the most common content marketing misfires—then taking care to avoid them at all costs.

The Top 5 Content Marketing Mistakes

These are the content marketing errors we see most commonly.

1. Not putting the audience first.

Great content doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have an audience to receive it—yet too many brands create content more or less in a vacuum. For one thing, they fail to identify the social media channels and digital platforms where their customers actually congregate—a fatal mistake. And, they neglect to ask questions, solicit feedback, and engage with their audience, effectively ignoring the social part of social media. These errors can make your content marketing feel one-sided and ultimately ineffective.

2. Focusing too much on SEO.

To be clear, content marketing and SEO are not at odds with one another. In fact, they’re really two sides of the same coin. With that said, it is possible to focus so much on optimization—stuffing keywords into every single sentence—that your content comes across as robotic or formulaic. Really, the best thing you can do is focus on creating real value for human readers that the algorithms will figure it out from there.

3. Having overly high expectations.

You can and should set goals for your content marketing, and expect your efforts to generate some results over time. With that said, content marketing isn’t something that yields fruit immediately. It’s ultimately about building relationships, and that requires a long-term commitment. We see a lot of companies that assume their blog or their tweets will send their sales through the roof overnight, and that’s just not reasonable. Be patient and stick with it!

4. Being inconsistent.

Simply put, if you only post a blog post or update your Facebook page once every five months, you can’t expect to get any traction. Again, you have to think of content marketing as a relationship, and relationships need to be nurtured. Make sure you maintain a schedule of regular content updates. Using an editorial calendar can help you achieve this kind of consistency in your posts.

5. Focusing on quantity instead of quality.

While consistent posting is essential, that doesn’t mean you should focus on the number of articles over the quality of those articles. The most important thing of all is providing your readers with valuable insight and useful information. Find a rhythm that works for your business—one where you’re creating new content at a regular interval but never sacrificing your standards of quality.

Develop a Content Marketing Approach That’s Right for You

As you consider your content marketing needs, and as you strive for a campaign that avoids these common errors, we invite you to give Driven2020 a call. We help businesses create digital marketing strategies that get real results, and that includes everything from content creation to content distribution.

We’d love to sit down with you, learn about your business, and help you establish some content marketing best-practices that deliver higher customer loyalty and increased sales. Reach out to Driven2020 today to start a conversation with us about your content marketing needs!

Design

Blog posts can be powerful tools for sharing thought leadership, earning trust, and engaging your customers and clients—but of course, they don’t mean anything unless people can actually read them.

That’s why we recommend promoting company blog posts on social media and in your email newsletter. And, it’s why we recommend robust attention to blog SEO.

Indeed, when optimized correctly, each blog post can be a powerful online asset—a way to gain greater visibility for your business and increased traffic for your website.

In this post, we’ll walk you through some of the best ways to make your blog posts more algorithm-friendly.

How to Boost Your Blog’s SEO Value

Do Some Keyword Research

First things first: You can’t optimize your blog posts without knowing which keywords you’re optimizing it for. This is where tools like Google Keyword Planner can be essential; input some keyword related to your topic and you can see a long list of keywords and phrases that search engine users might use. Pick two or three to employ in your blog post.

Use Keywords Effectively

The important thing to remember about keywords is that the days of stuffing as many of them as possible into your content are long gone. You don’t have to overdo it. Just make sure to organically weave a few keywords into strategic places—including:

• Your blog title
• H1, H2, and H3 headings
• Your meta description
• The opening paragraph
• A few organic placements throughout the body content, if possible

Format for Readability

Here’s a secret about SEO: Google wants to give its customers (search engine users) a great product (relevant results), so the best way to improve your rankings is to make your content more user-friendly. One way you can do that is to format each post for easy reading. Some suggestions:

• Use short sentences and brief paragraphs
• Use bullet points and numbered lists whenever you can
• Break up your content with section headings and sub-headings
• Include images so that you don’t just have a big wall of text

Include Links

Linking is another area where it’s best to just be natural. You don’t have to force 100 links into each blog post, but whenever you have a natural opportunity to link to a previous post or to a relevant section of your website, do so. You can also include links to authoritative outside resources, which can provide some SEO juice, but of course, you don’t want to link to competitor sites!

Ensure Speed

Hopefully it goes without saying by now that all content should be optimized for mobile devices—and part of that is being sure your blog posts load quickly. Do a quick speed test, and if it takes more than three seconds for the post to load, that could hurt your SEO rankings.

Get Set Up in Google

Finally, just a friendly reminder: After you publish a blog post, make sure you add it to Google Search Console. And, be sure Google Analytics is set up so that you can monitor your blog’s performance.

Get the SEO Guidance You Need

These steps will help you achieve better Google rankings for your blog posts—but of course, this is just one element of an effective digital marketing strategy.

To take more of a big-picture approach, we invite you to contact us today. Driven2020 is a seasoned marketing agency, known for helping our clients see real results as efficiently as possible. We encourage you to connect with us today so that we can start discussing your SEO and marketing needs!

Design

Content marketing has been a major digital marketing buzzword over the past few years—but what does it mean, exactly? For those who are unfamiliar with it, it’s basically the practice of sharing free, valuable content with your users—blog posts, videos, content on your website, etc.—to showcase your expertise, to drive traffic, and to increase engagement.

A lot of attorneys are on the fence about whether it’s actually worth their time to generate this free digital content—and we’d argue that it very much is. Here are just a few of the ways in which content marketing can benefit your legal practice.

How Content Marketing Benefits Your Firm

1. SEO is changing—and compelling content is key.

Content marketing can actually provide you with a good inroad to improved search engine rankings. Here’s why: Google’s algorithms increasingly focus on rewarding content that the end user finds to be relevant and valuable. As such, you can’t necessarily earn better rankings through the tired old SEO tricks, like keyword jamming. But you can earn improved rankings by developing content that your readers will actually find to be beneficial. In other words, a good SEO strategy is to write primarily for human beings, not search bots—and that’s something that dovetails nicely with content marketing.

2. Content marketing establishes your thought leadership.

How does your law firm stand out from all the rest? One way to distinguish your legal practice is to establish thought leadership—showing that you know your stuff and are respected in your field. Being seen as an industry leader will help you earn the trust of your clients, and one way you can develop that kind of thought leadership is by regularly blogging about legal issues. Start publishing your perspectives on legal questions related to your niche.

3. You can use content to guide potential clients through the sales funnel.

You may have some readers who aren’t quite ready to pick up the phone and call you for an appointment—and that’s okay. What you can do is help them reach that inflection point. Provide some more general, high-level content that will catch the attention of people who are just beginning to consider their legal needs. And, augment that content with some more refined topics, for those who are closing in on a decision. Use your content marketing to map out the prospective client’s journey.

4. Stay in touch with clients.

A final way in which content marketing can help your firm is that it allows you to stay connected to past and present clients—ensuring your firm is always somewhere close to the top of their mind. There are a number of ways you can do this, too—through an email newsletter, through regular social media updates, and more. Of course, a robust content marketing plan will also provide you with plenty of fodder for those communiques; for example, a weekly blog can easily be shared on social media, adapted into an email blast, etc. All of this helps ensure that your clients don’t forget about you, and makes them more likely to reach out when they have a legal need.

Get Started with Content Marketing Today

Content marketing is anything but wasted time and effort; actually, for law firms, it offers a range of benefits, and should be a central part of any digital marketing enterprise.

We’d love to tell you more about the positive effects content marketing can yield for your firm. Talk with our law firm marketing experts today; reach out to Driven2020 and set up a consultation at your next opportunity!

Design

It goes without saying that, in order for your law firm to succeed, you need to be visible to potential clients. That’s what search engine optimization, or SEO, is all about—ensuring your law firm shows up when local clients conduct online searches.

It sounds simple, but actually, SEO can be quite complex. Google’s search algorithms juggle a number of different factors, or ranking signals, to determine where your website falls on the results page.

With that said, there are some basic principles you can implement as you seek to position your firm for ideal visibility.

5 Key SEO Principles for Your Law Firm

1. Don’t try to fake it.

A common mistake is believing that you can “trick” Google’s search algorithms—but rest assured that you can’t. Tricks, gimmicks, and surface-level strategies ultimately fall short. Rather, it’s important to understand what Google really wants—namely, to provide its search engine users with access to relevant, valuable content. In other words, your best bet is to focus on making a website that will actually be beneficial to the end user.

2. All SEO is local.

The old-fashioned way of doing SEO was to relentlessly focus on being the #1, page-1 listing for all relevant Google searches. Not only is that an unattainable goal, it’s really not even a worthy goal. Your firm ultimately just needs to be discovered by locals, so the focus should always be on ranking well in localized searches. Things like the Google Map Pack, Google My Business, and Google Reviews are all of much greater significance than the pursuit of a top ranking.

3. Search is always changing.

Something else that’s important to remember is that search behaviors are always changing—and your strategies should adapt in kind. One obvious example is the advent of voice search. More and more people are using Siri and Alexa to assist in their searches, which means that natural-language keywords are increasingly important. The point here is that your law firm can’t afford to let its SEO strategy go stagnant; you’ve got to keep up to date with the latest search trends.

4. White hat is always better.

This one goes back to what we said about tricks and gimmicks. There are a lot of shady ways in which you can try to improve your SEO rankings—for example, buying backlinks, or by jamming a ton of keywords into your content. These are called black hat tactics, because they explicitly go against Google’s stated rules and regulations. Black hat strategies can provide you with some short-term value, but they ultimately lead to penalties in the end. It’s always better to play by Google’s rules, which means using white hat SEO strategies.

5. Give the people what they want.

To sum all of this up, it’s tempting to create website content with the algorithms in mind—but actually, it’s smarter to just focus on providing a meaningful user experience. Remember, Google wants to furnish its users with good, value-adding content. If you can make that happen, it will probably help you land some better rankings improvements.

Improve Your Law Firm’s SEO Rankings

The bottom line for legal professionals is that SEO can be a full-time job in and of itself, and there are always a lot of factors to take into account. All of that points to the value in hiring a skilled, seasoned SEO company.

Driven2020 provides digital marketing expertise to countless law firms throughout California and across the country. Reach out to us today to learn how we can help you generate improved search rankings!

Design

The Internet affords your business a number of opportunities—but those opportunities aren’t just going to fall into your lap. You have to seize them, which means making sure your company can be discovered by search engine users—and in particular, local ones.

This means a robust local SEO presence, something that isn’t always easy to come by. Indeed, there are some common local SEO errors that can cause your efforts to come up short. In this post, we’re going to highlight some of the most common local SEO mistakes and also show you how they can be avoided.

Local SEO Errors (And How to Avoid Them)

Here are some of the local SEO errors we notice most often:

• Not including the right contact information. Every page of your website needs to have your NAP data—that stands for your company name, address, and phone number. This is how Google knows where to categorize your business, and it’s vital if you want to show up in local searches!
• Including inconsistent NAP data. A related point: Your NAP information should be presented in exactly the same way on each page of your site, as well as on all your social media pages, local citations, etc. Don’t use different phone numbers or abbreviate your business name, which can muddle the SEO impact of that NAP listing.
• Failing to claim a Google My Business account. Google My Business accounts are important local ranking opportunities—and you can sign up for one completely free of charge! There’s no reason not to create a Google My Business account and fully optimize it.
• Selecting the wrong keywords. Entire volumes can be written about keyword selection, and we won’t get into all of it here. For now, we’ll just note the importance of using resources like the Google Keyword Research tool to find the right keywords, and to strike the right balance of competition, intent, and traffic.
• Not securing local citations. Does your local Chamber of Commerce have an online directory? What about local business organizations? Any opportunity you can find to claim a directory listing or citation, do so—and remember to use your NAP information!
• Not seeking local reviews. Getting reviewed on Google is an important way to juice your rankings—so be proactive in asking your customers and clients to leave you some feedback.
• Not including your city anywhere in your content. You don’t have to shoehorn your location into every line and every paragraph on your site, but do include it where appropriate—like in your meta data, title tags, and throughout your content.
• Writing content that’s thin or lacking in value. Finally, note that great content is always at the heart of a successful SEO campaign—so if you’re not getting the rankings you’d want, it may be time to look at your site and beef if up a bit. Make sure it has plenty of substantive, valuable content that helps the reader make an informed purchasing decision.

Talk to an Expert About Local SEO

You can’t just assume that your business will be discovered by local customers—no matter how great your products and services. You’ve got to actively seek out an audience, and that means investing in local SEO.

And that’s something we can help you with! Driven2020 has worked with countless local companies, helping them connect with consumers and enjoy higher Google visibility. We’d love to talk with you about your search marketing needs. Start that conversation by reaching out to our team at your next convenience.