Data and Digital Advertising: Why You Still Need Human Analysis
By Robert J. Hoglund President and Founder of Hoglund Advertising & Analytics General Partner and Owner of Hoglund, Chwialkowski & Mrozik, P. L. L. C.
If there’ s one thing lawyers like to do, it’ s analyze. And you need your digital advertising agency to provide in-depth analysis as well. By analysis, I don’ t mean simply running an online report and sending it to you. For your digital advertising to be effective, a human being needs to dig into the data and see what’ s going on. This thought process needs to take place for you to discover what your digital ads are really yielding – and what can be changed to produce better results. Printing off a report should only be the beginning. Here are six types of deeper analysis that your ad agency should be performing personally.
1. Analyzing call quality. Many agencies will simply tell you the number of phone calls your digital ads produced. But you need more than the sheer quantity of calls. You need to know, how many of them were good calls? How many were marketing calls or current clients? An agency should perform the analysis to tell you how many valid, quality calls you receive as a result of your advertising.
2. Analyzing form fills. It’ s only a starting point to know the number of times the form on your website was submitted. You need to know how many of these submissions were potential clients and not spam.
3. Analyzing new campaign data to make needed adjustments. Launching a new campaign is a process that requires attention and thought. Every campaign and every market is different. The analysts at your advertising agency need to watch how your campaign performs in your geographic area. They should examine the data that comes in, to make decisions and adjustments. Especially at the beginning of a campaign, analysts need to take the time to closely monitor your account and make customized changes.
4. Analyzing search terms. The Google AdWords dashboard can show what search terms people used before they clicked on your ad. Your ad agency should dig into this information. Analysts may uncover new words or phrases to add as keywords to your campaign. They may also uncover terms that should be added as negative keywords: Negative keywords are words you do not want to trigger your ads. For example, if people are looking up a retail chain’ s bankruptcy, you don’ t want these searches to trigger your consumer bankruptcy firm ads. When you’ re paying per click, you want your ads to appear when people make relevant searches.
5. Analyzing your office’ s response to calls. The best digital ad campaign in the world won’ t help you very much if no one is answering your phone. Your agency should provide feedback on how your office is answering calls. For example, does your firm have an unusual number of missed calls? Is a large proportion of phone calls going to voicemail? Issues such as this can cost your firm business. It is possible for a digital advertising agency to help you identify this type of issue.
6. Crafting compelling ad copy. You want an agency that will take the time to craft compelling copy: ads that attract attention and provide reasons for people to click. Ads need to be
34 CONSUMER BANKRUPTCY JOURNAL Spring 2018 National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys