Many law firms canvassed recently via email and phone by LegalQRCodes™ stated they really do not need to advertise.  Some disclosed most of their new clients come from professional referrals (other lawyers, accountatns and business people) which date back up to 25 years or more. 

The Arrival of 2012 with Disruptive Technologies and Market Changes…

2012 Market Disruptions and Trend Setters Include:  QRCode Interactivity, SmartPhone 60% Market Penetration, Connected TVs 70% Market Penetration, Google TV, mobile search increasing versus PC searches, consumer demand for rich media and interactivity.

 STATS

MEDIA POST:  315 Million Connected TVs by 2015

MAY 2011 NIELSEN REPORT:  91% of Americans are mobile phone subscribers, 142.8 million total smartphone users by 2011

Market Positioning – A diagnostic guide for law firm development

At first sight, a recession may not seem the best time to overhaul radically a law firm’s strategy.  It seems more intuitive to batten down the hatches, trim overheads, tighten up the operation and wait until the recessional storm clouds recede before attempting any dramatic change of direction.  If, however, past recessions are anything to go by, this is just the moment for bold and agile firms to make any move which can perhaps give them some sort of advantage over their competitors.  There are three possible attacking moves which a firm might want to consider during a recession.  In the first category, some firms may feel that their survival strategy is best served by going for further growth or by becoming part of a bigger enterprise where the advantages of scale, critical mass, and deep teams will allow them to maintain or improve their financial and competitive positions.  For the second type of move a firm may elect to follow a strategy that allows them to avoid all the disadvantages of growth and to remain niche (or at least small) by competing in a restricted set of markets or services and specialisations, and by occupying specific strategic positions relative to competitor firms in terms of quality, or cost, or client focus.   This strategy is not as easy as it sounds as it may require the firm to discard irrelevant or unprofitable offices, departments and partners. These two attacking moves have at their heart a desire to improve or change the firm’s competitive positioning in the market-place.  Similarly, a third category of move means a firm might therefore seek dramatically and radically to change the firm’s market position in other ways, and this article examines what this might mean and how such a venture might be approached.

 The nature of market positioning in the legal profession

 Put at its very simplest, strategic choices can be distilled into two basic parts.  The first is the firm’s choice as to where it should compete (positioning) and the second is the firm’s strategies to address how it should compete (gaining and sustaining competitive advantage). 

READ REST OF ARTICLE HERE.

If branding and the opportunity to communicate and form relationships with your current and potential customers and clients isn’t enough reason to get involved in social media, here’s one more:  it affects your SEO.  It’s important.  SEO is about links and more and more links are being shared in social media.  The search engines have taken note, and it’s time that you do too since your search engine ranking can really help to make or break you.

SOURCE:  Which social media site drives the most traffic to the rest of the web? If you think it’s Facebook or Twitter, you’re wrong. StumbleUpon now accounts for more than 50% of all referral traffic from the top social media sites.

New data from StatCounter shows that StumbleUpon is the dominant source of traffic among the world’s top social media sites. For the first 18 days of August, StumbleUpon accounted for 50.27% of all referral traffic from the top 10 social sites. Facebook was second with a 38.9% market share, while Reddit, YouTube and Twitter each garnered less than 4%.

The stats are surprising, to say the least. StumbleUpon has been growing rapidly (it recently surpassed 25 billion clicks of the StumbleUpon button), but it has nowhere near as many users as Facebook or Twitter. The company does track approximately 3 million websites, however, so it has a decent sample size.

While we hesitate to say StumbleUpon drives more traffic than Facebook (can 12 million users really beat 750 million?), the service is clearly growing in influence. Mashable has noticed a consistent increase in StumbleUpon referral traffic for the last few months, and there is nothing that suggests that growth won’t continue.

Consider the brief facts.  The initial way that social media impacts SEO is personalized search.   Many businesses fail to realize that diverse people see different search results … even when they type in the same keyword or keyword phrase.  Why is that?

Results are based on geo-location, mobile or fixed device recognition and recommendations of a user’s connections.  If a searcher is signed in to their Google account, while searching in Google they will be given relevant results that their Google connections have tweeted or +1’d.  So the process is personal and it is dynamic.  Most business today are largely ignorant of this first fact.

Second, if someone is signed in to Facebook and conducts a search in Bing, they will be given relevant results that their Facebook friends have “liked”.  For example, a search for “baseball” is more likely to include information about the Red Sox and Fenway Park for people located in Boston while the same search might include more results for the Yankees and Yankee Stadium for those located in the Bronx.

Experts tell us that this is because the search engines understand that people trust those in their social circles.  Consider the impact of that last statement on someone searching for a Law Firm, a Medical Practice or a brand consumer good or service.  If someone is looking for advice or insights they turn to their friends and family members. The search engines have now incorporated this methodology into search.

If a brand has a good product or service and a robust social media presence, it is more likely that it will be “liked” or +1’d and more likely that you will show up in a search result.

Third, social media affects SEO social signals.  Similar to personalized search, the social signals idea is founded on the premise that any content and links that are shared frequently in social media and shared by users with high influence in social media must be valuable.  Consequently these are viewed more favorably by the search engines and may rank higher than a link that wasn’t shared at all. Member of LinkedIn can see this with great frequency in the Groups to which they belong.  Those members in LinkedIn Groups who participate in and offer new discussions are ranked daily in terms of their influence.

Significantly, instead of the search engines having to do all of the work to figure out what results are best and most relevant, they are now being helped by actual web users.  Clearly, social signals are just one significant part of many ranking criteria, yet it is worth paying attention to when evaluating a company’s social media strategy.  The power of social media got Google’s attention in Summer 2011 and this resulted in the creation of Google+.  Some might suggest, if Google’s paying attention, it must be important.

There are over 300 million mobile devices in the United States alone. And the number of businesses providing mobile sites is constantly rising.  Half of the United States will have SmartPhones by the end of 2011 and over 60% of them will be moms.  A fast, engaging mobile site is what is mandated in 2011 to establish a relationship with potential clients.  Mobile sites are not simply a regular website “shrunk down” requiring a magnifying glass to read it.

This is the number 1 mistake law firms make when considering mobile platforms.  To save money or technological resources they mistakenly believe all that is required is to take their existing website and “make it mobile.”  Nothing could be further from the truth for several reasons.

When searchers arrive at an online website their search intent is oftentimes different than when they search for something on a mobile and SmartPhone device.  Online searches trend more to “grazing” at a moderately slow pace for information, whereas mobile searches are about getting that information “on the fly”; information that is relevant to their search or click intent.  Surprisingly this if often overlooked and bounce rates prove it.

Bounce rates for searches on mobile devices are the result of not giving the viewer engaging content relevant to the reason they came to your mobile site in the first place.  Let’s use an example.  When a potential client uses their mobile phone and scans a QRCode to visit your site, you must consider this question.  What will be a scanner’s intent when they scan the QRCode on this poster, this newspaper or magazine ad, this business card, this billboard, this banner or from this TV ad?  To help answer the question advisers have to ask where will the person be when they see this poster, this newspaper or magazine ad, this business card, this billboard, this banner or this TV ad?  What is it likely the person will be doing when they see it?  Do we want them to take immediate action by doing something (i.e. a SECOND CLICK) on their SmartPhone?  Would it be good if the person did something with a SECOND CLICK and what would that be in order of priority?  FaceBookLike, Tweet this, or share on Google+, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit?

Until recently, online marketers have driven sales growth primarily by building traffic (attracting customers) to websites. With the new disruptive technologies that are available like LegalQRCodes™, mobile platforms, Google+ and GoogleTV on connected TV’s, that is no longer the case.

In the old world, the idea was simple enough – increase the raw volume of visitors, and that will increase the raw volume of conversions (turning visitors into customers).  However this old world strategy is now rapidly changing.  Since the vast majority of websites online and mobile) treat new and repeat visitors exactly the same every time they view the website, increasing the raw volume of visitors does not improve the rate of conversion and profitability.   I could say let me repeat that but I won’t.  I will say this is a real and endemic problem that inhibits conversion rates.  …

READ REST OF PDF REPORT HERE.

Up to 18% scan rates and up to 27% conversion rates at mobile platform under specific conditions.

LegalQRCodes(TM)  offers a comprehensive solution to law firms to leverage their existing social media, websites and print media advertising taking it into the 21st century where new clients with Smart Phones are waiting.  We provide an end to end, outsourced,  solution to deploy instant, integrated, mobile applications to engage your community and market.  Our core business model is to engage and drive new clients to your firm leveraging your existing print advertising.  Our subscription fee includes the design, deployment and maintenance of your mobile applications so you may remain stay focused on your core tasks that are critical in a managing your firm.

The changes in the digital landscape between 2005 and present have been enormous.  When evaluating the LegalQRCodes(TM) subscription platform service as an integrated marketing solution, consider the following statistics and questions.

Some Statistics Which Support Why Each Law Firm Can Acquire New Clients From An Interactive Mobile Website.

F:  As of December 2010, 302.9 million Americans reported that they own a mobile device, making the U.S. wireless penetration 96 percent, according to CTIA – The Wireless Association. What is more is that 26.6 percent of U.S. households are mobile-only, meaning that they do not have a landline and instead depend on their mobile devices to make and receive all calls. Of these mobile subscribers, approximately 63.2 million own a smartphone, according to comScore. About 35 percent of smartphone users access the mobile Internet from their device, illustrating the reach that marketers can achieve with a targeted mobile advertising campaign. MOBILE MARKETER – CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE MARKETING 2011.

F:  350 Million ConnectedTVs in 2015:  Q:  If your law firm does not have an integrated optimized platform such as the GoogleTV site we provide in our service package, your firm may have a web site in 2015, but it will not be seen on these projected 350 Million connectedTVs.  “The one certain consequence of a world with 350 million connected TVs is that every single company in all industries touching TV and video entertainment will be disrupted.  Either they find a way to thrive in this world, or they will not survive.“  June 16, 2011 Media Post SOURCE.

The market for mobile apps will continue to accelerate as the number of downloads is expected to increase from 10.9 billion worldwide in 2010 to 76.9 billion in 2014, according to an International Data Corp. forecast. Worldwide mobile app revenues will experience similar growth, surpassing $35 billion in 2014. Application developers have churned out more than 500,000 mobile apps in just over three years, and the good news is that those apps are starting to generate more revenue.  MOBILE MARKETER – CLASSIC GUIDE TO MOBILE MARKETING 2011.

F:  QRCode code scanning increased by 4,549 percent in the first quarter of 2011 on a year-over-year basis, according to a Mobio Identity Systems study. Report May 2011:  “The Naked Facts: Whiplash Edition QR Barcode Scanning in Q1-2011“  READ FULL REPORT HERE.  Q:  If your Law Firm does not have an integrated mobile strategy which includes LegalQRCodes(TM) how will you reach these people in your communities and encourage them to retain your firm?

F:  Facebook has over 500 Million users, over half the daily activity is via the mobile web.  Twitter recently exceeded 20 Billion text messages – The world is not going mobile–it is mobile.  Very soon every human being on the planet will be connected 24 hours per day, 365 days a year.  Every serious Law Firm needs a mobile QR Code strategy.  SOURCE  Q:  If your Law Firm does not have a digital mobile strategy to reach out, engage and interact with each potential client that has a Smart Phone, how will your Firm compete against Firms which do?

Please Scan this LegalQRCode(TM) Below to See a Representative Demo Mobile Site with Various types of Content (Video, Email, Website Link, PDF Article, Map for Directions, FaceBook Like, Twitter, etc)  Download Free QRCode App Here.  For iPhone … For Android

If you are unable to scan this code with your SmartPhone and you are on a computer, please click this link to see the LegalQRCodes(TM) mobile site Demo.

LegalQRCodes(TM) realizes digital mobile strategies and operations are not your core business.  While vital to engaging and attracting new clients, the expertise and commitment necessary to create and manage a mobile and GoogleTV integrated platform with LegalQRCodes(TM) should not take your staff away from your dominant business model.  Our subscription service to outsource this to us is straightforward and reasonably priced.  Please click the Contact Tab above and call us for a free initial consultation today.

SIMPLE SUBSCRIPTION PRICING AND TERMS HERE