Leads Without Cookies – Contextual Advertising for Lawyers
The ease of access to information through an extensive online environment has changed how consumers make decisions – regardless of the product or service. Lawyers and their firms must not only be present but understand the needs of their target audience to engage and influence them. While digital marketing strategies for lawyers are highly effective when done right, integrating online advertising is also essential to get the best results.
Online advertising is highly competitive and can be expensive, especially if it isn’t done right. Each year, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on online advertising globally. Because of the fierce competition to reach their target audience, lawyers need to know what they’re doing to make the most of their budget. Online ads need to be optimized, just like other online content.
But how do lawyers know what type of online ads will be the most effective? Not to mention, where should they show up?
The Legal Examiner uses pull marketing strategies to drive people to our platform to look for specific legal topics and those who need legal services. From there, our credible, timely, and targeted content does the work; we anticipate the questions a specific target audience may have, back up our message with credible links, and provide a direct gateway to additional relevant content.
The Legal Examiner has integrated contextual display ads on our articles and pages, offering law firms the opportunity to gain web traffic and potential leads from content featuring legal topics they specialize in. Whether you know what contextual ads are and have included them in your digital advertising repertoire or not, understanding their value and how best to leverage them is crucial. Keep reading to learn about this beneficial online advertising strategy your firm should be leveraging.
What are Contextual Display Ads?
Contextual advertising is a simple but profoundly important concept. It involves placing ads on pages related to the content, specifically the content topic and context. Contextual ads don’t depend on predicting user behavior from third-party cookies data. Put simply, the focus of contextual ads is to match ad content to page content, ultimately improving the user experience.
It’s an important strategy to use in digital advertising efforts because it’s audience-driven. The user seeks information on a topic, and the contextual ads they get as they read, listen, or watch content are specific to their interest at that moment in time.
For example, say someone developed an illness because of a product they used, such as a recalled Philips CPAP device. They do an internet search and are directed to an article about the recall covering what machines are affected and the possible injuries and illnesses users have complained about. A contextual display ad could be for a defective product lawyer. The ad would be clear: it would tell the user the firm has a specialty in that area of law and may even indicate that they’re already representing clients in similar situations. For lawsuits with a claims deadline, that detail would be another possible message to include in the ad.
You’ve no doubt seen contextual ads many times and in different content formats. Two examples are an ad for tools before a how-to video for home improvements or an ad for a marketing service or platform displaying within a marketing article.
Contextual advertising isn’t new, but it’s becoming increasingly important as third-party cookies are phased out (more on this later). It’s also being recognized as a highly valuable tactic because you’re not guessing what people want to see. Instead, the ad is contextually relevant to the content the user has sought out.
Why Use Contextual Display Ads on The Legal Examiner
High rankings and traffic mean little if the people going to your site, blog, or social media aren’t your target audience. And with the rapid growth of the internet over the last two decades, businesses are struggling to stand out, reach their target audience, and maintain a strong presence.
On The Legal Examiner, we cover legal topics relevant to the wide range of legal services that lawyers provide across the country. Our content is timely, relevant, and credible. It answers questions and directs users to other valuable information. Our rankings reach the most important target audience a lawyer has – people in need of legal services and guidance. Now, lawyers can leverage contextual ads on specific articles and pages on The Legal Examiner platform.
Benefits of Contextual Display Ads
Why contextual advertising is effective and a worthwhile investment is connected to its many benefits. In a world where developing brand recognition and getting conversions is highly competitive and takes work, contextual display ads directly link businesses to their target audience.
The benefits of contextual advertising for lawyers include:
- Targets specific people with specific interests.
- No assumptions about what we think users with certain demographics will do or be interested in. It takes away the guesswork, ensuring ads are placed in front of an audience we know is important to gain credibility and ultimately attract new clients.
- Reaches an audience at the moment; they’re actively engaged and seeking information on a topic, which presents the opportunity to give them a personalized and improved experience.
- Matches business messaging, strengthening a law firm’s position and image.
- Clear value for potential clients because it’s a gateway to relevant content and solutions.
- Easy to do. Whether automated or manual, targeted ad placement like The Legal Examiner offers is based on a page’s topic, keywords, message, relevance, and purpose.
- No invasion of privacy. The strategy and placement of contextual ads aren’t based on data gathered through third-party cookies.
Automated contextual advertising analyzes the text, images, videos, keywords, and location information, matching ads to content. Ads are placed where they have the greatest likelihood to be clicked on.
At The Legal Examiner, we do the same for contextual display ads, but manually and with the experience needed to get our clients results. We determine the best content to promote a lawyer’s specialties based on the context and relevance of our content. This sets the stage for law firms to reach, engage, and influence their potential clients.
Contextual Advertising in a Third-Party Cookie-Less World
Google has committed to removing third-party cookies from the Chrome browser by 2023. Since Chrome holds the majority share of user browsing (around 65%), this has sparked many marketers to scramble at the loss of user behavior data outside of websites they own. Companies will still be able to track and analyze behavior and traffic on their websites. Still, the loss of third-party cookies means that ad placement won’t be dependent on how an audience interacts with other sites, including where they convert. Basically, the removal of third-party cookies eliminates some of the information many marketers use to plan online advertising campaigns, but this isn’t necessarily bad.
There’s already been a movement toward other digital ad strategies, and contextual advertising has proven to be one of the more prominent and effective options. It’s not a new concept, and the results speak for themselves.
While the phase-out of third-party cookies means we won’t see what users are doing after leaving our site, contextual display ads don’t need this information to be valuable and drive results. There’s a greater importance on targeting your audience with advertisements within relevant content, which is now offered on The Legal Examiner.
A Quality Marketing Plan for Lawyers Drives Digital Advertising Success
Contextual advertising is much more successful when driven by a quality content marketing plan. Why? Effective content marketing for lawyers includes components that ensure what’s published is timely, relevant, positioned for the right audience, and delivered in the best format and on the proper channels. It builds credibility, topic authority, brand recognition, and a robust online presence.
A content marketing plan should include SEO strategies like keyword research, topic ideation, goal setting, defined target audiences, and competitive analysis. It leverages social media strategies and repurposed, refreshed, curated, and aggregated content.
Setting key performance indicators, monitoring social media efforts, and using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to analyze marketing results are other necessary content marketing strategies for lawyers. The analysis phase also often reveals opportunities to strengthen and improve efforts.
So, how does this affect contextual advertising? What’s learned in creating and executing an effective content marketing plan also helps guide ad targeting and messaging. Contextual display ads are based on relevance and context; they offer additional value to the person reading content related to your firm’s ad because the audience not only learns more about the topic but is connected with lawyers who specialize in that area of law. Once a user gets to your law firm’s website, the language, content, and calls-to-action within it can drive conversions – like get potential clients to fill out a contact form for a free consultation, sign up to a newsletter, and so on.
How TLE Is Positioned for Ad Conversions
At The Legal Examiner, we understand the target audience lawyers want and need to reach in order to build authority and credibility, garner new clients, and get referrals. We continually analyze site performance, stay up to date on both digital marketing and legal industry trends and news, and deliver relevant content in a timely manner. We work hard, and it pays off for our advertisers – lawyers.
The Legal Examiner’s high rankings on extensive legal topics is a hub of information for legal issues and legal news. Much of our audience is people who need a lawyer. By providing quality, credible content and an effective ad structure, our site drives conversions. Our contextual display ads connect law firms with people who need legal advice, have legal questions, or require legal representation. Everything we do is strategic.
The fact is, lawyers need more than their own website to attract clients and build credibility; there’s a greater ROI when a firm gains exposure through multiple channels. The digital advertising for lawyers on The Legal Examiner gets firms in front of the audience that needs their service. We drive traffic their way, giving lawyers the opportunity to convert their audience into clients.
SEO & Digital Advertising
Effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategies drive a business’s target audience to their website, blog, social media profiles, and other platforms they’re on. What’s found within successfully optimized content offers clear value to the user. Quality content written in a language the intended audience understands and relates to, backed up with credible sources, helps businesses rank for important keywords and search terms.
When SEO efforts are doing what they should, targeted contextual display ads can be highly effective and deliver a great ROI for lawyers. While your law firm needs to be seen and easily found online, it’s about more than your own website and blog; you should be advertising where possible leads are, and The Legal Examiner offers a space to add value, build recognition, and connect with potential clients.
