Findings from experimental and observational studies can shape the direction of your marketing materials.

During the 20th century, statisticians and marketing researchers perfected techniques borrowed from the hard sciences in order to collect and analyze data more efficiently. Today, law firm leaders rely on this highly accurate statistical data in order to guide and refine their marketing campaigns. Before using statistical data in a marketing campaign, it’s important to understand how the two different forms of data gathering, experiments and observational studies, are used.

Understanding observational studies

Observational studies are generally used to find correlations between a variable and an outcome. True to their name, these types of studies rely on personal observation and data gathering. All collected data is analyzed using statistical methods in order to reach a conclusion about a marketing question. Deciding on a marketing or research question ahead of time will help to guide observations.

For example, a DUI lawyer in Harrisburg might be interested in exploring if there are differences in how women and men experience the case adjudication process. The results of this research could be used to refine marketing materials so  they appeal to individuals based not only on their legal need but also on their gender.

Understanding experimental research

Law firm leaders can also use experimental research in order to gather marketing data. In this type of research, a hypothesis is tested in order to determine how an effect is related to one or more variables. In order to conduct experimental research, firm leaders must have a strong understanding of the scientific method.

Keep in mind that this type of research is best when used in situations where interfering variables can be controlled. For instance, a marketer might want to study whether potential clients react more positively to postcard-style ads or folded brochures. Remember that regardless of the type of statistical research being conducted, staying neutral and carefully recording results is key to garnering accurate data.

Changing gears a bit, check back again two weeks from today for information on the role of Google Analytics in online statistics!

Online and offline measure different but equally important figures for your business.

As law firm leaders guide their enterprises through the second quarter of 2013, they can begin to evaluate the initial success of marketing and outreach campaigns using statistics. During analysis, it’s important to understand the difference between online and offline statistics. While both of these measures are important, it’s essential that they be used correctly to best provide the insights that leaders need in order to shape marketing efforts.

Making the most of offline statistics

Offline statistics are absolutely indispensable for legal marketing professionals because they track and predict actual business for a firm. True to their name, offline statistics are generally used to track the success of offline marketing efforts and to help firm leaders better target those efforts. Imagine that a group of workers compensation attorneys in Springfield, MO wants to reach out to senior citizens who have re-entered the workforce. Research shows that this particular demographic tends to be swayed by offline marketing much more than by online marketing. In this situation, choosing an offline campaign and tracking its success with real-world statistics, such as total number of new clients who saw an advertisement in the local newspaper, will net the best marketing information.

Making the most of online statistics

Many firm leaders now prefer online marketing because it is affordable and has the potential to reach a wide audience. In order to avoid the pitfalls of online advertising, marketers must collect online statistics and use them to shape campaigns. Understanding the demographics who will search for a workers comp attorney online is essential to crafting a successful campaign. It’s important to remember that the online and offline demographic are often not the same. Use targeted statistics to craft a campaign that fits not only your needs but also the demands of your particular audience.

Interested in learning more about statistics in today’s day and age? The next installation of our statistics series covers experimental and observational studies in modern times, so check back again in two weeks!

These days, statistics are an essential part of a business’ online success.

For many decades, statistics were used to understand populations and events in the offline world. They’ve been applied to everything from understanding infant mortality rates to tracking basketball and baseball player performance. Today, statistics are still used in the offline world but are also becoming increasingly important in the online world.

Making the jump from offline to online

More than 50 percent of American consumers now begin the search for a new business or service provider online. E-commerce has increased substantially during the last decade, meaning that professionals in all industries have had to change their business and marketing models in order to attract clients. Many law firm leaders have shifted to online marketing strategies. Of course, this means that marketing research must now be targeted to an online audience.

Imagine that a group of bankruptcy attorneys want to know what types of services they should promote online. Looking at how potential clients find and use information about Chapter 7 vs. Chapter 13 bankruptcy can provide essential marketing insight. Perhaps the majority of individuals researching the topic are middle-aged, married males. Marketing materials can then be targeted to this demographic for optimal results.

The increasing complexity of consumer interactions

The shift to online statistics is also a response to growing consumer sophistication. Recent research by The Nielsen Company indicates that most adults view marketing information via three different mediums: television, the Internet and mobile phones. Understanding consumer behavior across these mediums is essential to constructing strong marketing campaigns.

Online statistics provide real-time information about consumer behavior. There is very little delay between the gathering and compilation of these statistics, meaning that marketers can now access crucial data within a few seconds. Gone are the days of waiting for mail- or telephone-based survey data to be calculated. Online statistics allow marketers to keep up with the real-world changes that affect their campaigns the most.

If you’re unsure of how to distinguish between online and offline statistics, come back to CaseDetails.com again in two weeks to learn more about their differences and how to make the most of each type.

The thing about Google Analytics is that there always seem to be more reports to run. If you want your firm’s website to have the best chance in the SERPs, you should learn what each report means, how often to run it and what to do with the information. In this post, we’re discussing what the URL Error Report means and what sort of actionable data it provides legal marketers.

Seamless experience

A seamless website experience is the hallmark of a successful brand, whether you are a Lake Charles motorcycle accident attorney or any other legal specialist. If someone doesn’t find your site professional enough, they may choose to go with your competitor.

At the same time, it can be hard to figure out the dead links on your site. You may have changed pages’ naming structures or deleted old pages. However, if blogs have links to old pages, people might land on the nonexistent pages and wonder what happened.

What is the URL Error Report?

The error report tells you one very important thing: where people are finding dead links in your site. It will let you know where you need to create redirect pages. You can do these one by one or use Google Webmaster Tools to export all of the broken page links to a CSV file. If the problem is just coming from one or two sources, you may also be able to contact the blog owner and convince him or her to link to the proper page.

The Error Report also provides other information such as DNS server errors, access denied errors, soft 404 errors and other issues that customers might have with getting to your content. You can dive into the details of the URL error report to find out what kind of problem is occurring and where it is happening.

The URL Error Report gets the job done when it comes to fixing hidden problems with your site. Get acquainted with it, use it and get rid of those dead links, and then watch your search rankings rise.

Statistics can be measured any number of ways, so sticking with one form is the best way to go.

Law firm marketing can be tricky, especially in today’s competitive economic climate. However, statistics provide a valuable way to plan successful, cost-effective marketing campaigns. In order to use these powerful measures in advertising efforts, law firm leaders must be familiar with levels of measurement.

Understanding levels of measurement

In statistics, a level of measurement is used to provide qualitative data about the variable being used in research. A Philadelphia accident attorney who wants to use statistics to craft a marketing campaign must understand these different measures in order to choose the types of statistics that are best suited to her needs. There are four different levels of measurement.

• In nominal measurement, a particular attribute is assigned a random number for research purposes. For instance, those with a clean criminal record might be coded as “0,” those convicted of a misdemeanor crime might be coded as “1″ and those convicted of a felony crime might be coded as “2.” There is no deeper meaning to these numbers.
• In ordinal measurement, a certain quality is ranked. This is often used to rank education and income levels.
• In interval measurement, the distance between two variables has meaning. This measure is often used to understand income levels.
• In ratio measurement, attributes are compared against an absolute value. These measures are often used in marketing to determine the successfulness of a campaign.

While determining how to measure data may seem difficult, marketers will become comfortable with choosing the right level as they work on different campaigns. Remember that ratio measurements will be particularly helpful in tracking an increase in clients.

Think you have a good basis for understanding statistics now? In the next quarter, we’ll take an in-depth look at how statistics are being used in modern markets and what this means for law firms in particular.

When it comes to studying statistics, it’s key you understand old and new terms alike.

Certain terms have long been associated with statistics and can still be applied today — in the offline and in the online worlds, where law firm marketing has become highly dependent on the data produced through tools like Google Analytics. Having a thorough understanding of these key terms is necessary to establish a link between the information you gather and what you intend to use that information for. These terms shape statistics and, in turn, shape our perspectives.

Common statistical terms

Many specialized terms are used in statistics, but most marketers are likely to focus on statistical significance. Put simply, this is a measure of the valid relationship between a variable and a factor. For instance, a marketer might find that TV ads have statistical significance, meaning that they influence more clients to come into an office than newspaper advertisements. Ohio debt collection lawyers would look at statistical significance to determine which advertising channel will be the most beneficial for them so they can concentrate the bulk of their marketing efforts there.

Law firm marketers may also hear the term null hypothesis being tossed around from time to time. This simply refers to the hypothesis that is being tested. It is the starting point for most statistical research. The term error (sometimes broken down by type) is also associated with the term null hypothesis. In this case, errors can be human errors, or they can be errors produced through the testing system that may produce false positives or false negatives. Both can impact the direction of a marketing campaign, so it is important to watch out for errors.

The final key term we would encourage you to become familiar with is interval estimation. This is a fancy way of saying that the statistics produced come from a limited sample population. Always keep the makeup of the sample population in mind as it may or may not reflect your true audience.

Our next blog post will round out the first quarter of our series by reviewing levels of measurement in statistics. Check back soon as we continue our discussion!

Tracking statistics can give you a better understanding of your business.

Statistics provides a powerful means by which to understand the makeup of various populations and the chances, or probability, that a given event will occur. In terms of law firm marketing, statistics provides a valuable way to understand target demographics and to boost the efficiency of advertising efforts. In order to use statistics effectively, it’s important to understand how statistical measures have been used to track populations and events over the course of history.

Understanding uses for tracking statistics

Some of the earliest tracking statistics were used in 17th century Europe. This first use of population-oriented statistics was generally referred to as political arithmetic. This arithmetic was used to calculate the value of land, people and animals. It was considered politically useful because it provided a means of predicting how given sets of people would react to certain political movements. These statistics were also used in efforts to control diseases and crime in society.

For a group of corporate law attorneys, the importance of political arithmetic to today’s marketing landscape may not be clear. However, the way that statistics tracking evolved over the following centuries offers a powerful understanding of how statistics are used today. While they were often used as a means to control populations, many public figures also used statistics to influence populations. They used gathered statistics to make predictions about different demographics and to sway them to vote a certain way, support given laws or even buy specific products.

Looking ahead to applied statistics

In the next quarter, this series will cover how statistics are used in the modern era. We’ll take a closer look at how tracking statistics has changed over the years and how this practice is used by marketers today. Remember that solid statistics are one of the most powerful tools in a law firm marketer’s arsenal because they help to define demographics and predict outcomes.

Marketing is integral to the success of any law firm. However, most law firm leaders know that good marketing is about more than just putting up billboards and advertising in the local newspaper. In order to be truly effective, marketing efforts must be brought into conversation with statistics. Applying statistics in real-life scenarios has long shaped marketing efforts, and companies have found that using statistics in this way can lead to a higher return on investment. Statistics have the ability to tell you what people do or do not like — and it makes perfect sense that advertisers would have incorporated knowledge gained by studying statistics into marketing materials.

Bringing statistics into conversation with marketing needs

Before launching a new marketing campaign, firm leaders must think about their target audience. For example, a family law firm might want to attract individuals who are looking for information about filing for divorce in New Jersey, and before the rise of the Internet a family lawyer would have used statistics to determine when their target audience would be watching television before running an ad. Now, good web design and strong search engine optimization (SEO) practices can be used to attract some of these clients.

It’s also important to reach out to clients using other methods. Statistics can be used to find and target the right consumer market and to boost efforts to attract new clients.

Choosing and applying the right statistics

Choosing the right statistics to use during a marketing campaign doesn’t have to be difficult. One of the easiest ways to gain an understanding of a target client demographic is to look at simple legal statistics. Is there a strong trend of individuals of a certain age, ethnicity or group filing the types of cases that the firm handles? If so, marketing efforts should be targeted at those individuals. It’s also possible to glean valuable information by monitoring websites designed for individuals in a certain demographic group. Pay attention to trending topics in order to understand the types of material that will stand out to potential clients.

When used correctly, statistics are one of the most powerful tools a marketing manager possesses. Remember that choosing the right statistics is essential to campaign success. Stay focused on identifying a target client demographic and understanding what grabs the attention of that demographic.