Legal Brand Marketing Testifies to the Value of WebTrends Ad Director

C A SE STUDY 851 SW 6th Ave., Suite 1600 Legal Brand Marketing Testifies to the Value of Portland, OR 97 204 1.503.294.7025 fax: 1.503.294.7 1 30 WebTrends Sales 1.888.932.87 36 WebTrends Ad Director sales@WebTrends.com Key Benefits Realized: Europe, Middle East, Africa • Visitor conversions increased and cost per order dramatically reduced by + 44 (0) 1784 415 700 self-learning optimization. emea@WebTrends.com • Cost of running paid search campaigns cut in half by automated bidding, For offices worldwide, visit: optimization and reporting. www.webtrends.com • Campaign reach and results boosted by an exponential increase in keyword combinations. • Cost of reaching key audiences in different locations reduced by geographic targeting of ads. • In-depth insight on campaigns and results with customized reporting. Overview: Lawyers Lack Time, Want More Out of Marketing “We were throwing The ubiquity of marketing in today’s world has convinced many lawyers money at paid- to rethink their profession’s aversion to the self-promotion of their search marketing services. However, many lawyers lack the time and marketing know- and seeing what how to promote themselves ef fectively outside of the courtroom to would stick. It was potential clients. like the Wild West.” Legal Brand Marketing (LBM) helps lawyers overcome these challenges. Founded in 2004, the California-based company has provided more than 200 law firms across the United States with marketing services informed by the legal experience of the lawyers on its staff. These services range from event planning to office “imaging.” Challenge: Paid Search Costs Soar, Visibility Sags As its client base and the scope of its marketing services have grown, LBM has faced a challenge similar to that of the law firms it serves; it doesn’t have the time or resources to perform the most specialized marketing tasks, particularly in the area of paid-search management services. In addition to rising costs per customer conversion, the manual techniques that LBM was using to manage paid-search campaigns provided little insight into the ads and keywords that were generating the best results for their clients. Perhaps most disconcerting, costs were being artificially driven up by clients competing against one another for keywords and placements. “We were throwing money at paid-search marketing and seeing what would stick,” said Braden Pollock, owner of LBM. “It was like the Wild West.” Solution: WebTrends Account Team Sets Stage for Sophisticated SaaS LBM enlisted WebTrends Ad Director and WebTrends dedicated SEM account team to improve the results generated by its paid-search service. The account team worked closely with LBM to identif y client goals and overhaul its broader paid-search strategy. WebTrends Ad Director took on the rest of the heavy lif ting. The sof tware as a service (SaaS) uses sophisticated self-learning technology to manage, optimize and profitably expand paid-search campaigns on a scale that bid-management tools and other manual techniques can’t duplicate. The service’s multivariate testing engine performs around-the-clock analysis of keywords, ad creative and other variables. The automated testing is done across all of the leading search networks to determine the combinations and bids that will generate the customer referrals and other desired outcomes at the optimum price. The self-learning technology examines the results and automatically refines bids and placements to continually improve campaign performance over time. When unpredictable opportunities arise, account managers can manually override the system and adjust keyword buys with new strategy and insights. No other automated SEM service provides this flexibility. Results: Conversions Up, Management Costs Cut in Half WebTrends Ad Director has eliminated the time consuming manual tasks that LBM previously performed, and exponentially boosted results beyond the capabilities of bid-management tools and other manual techniques. One client web site has seen conversions triple to nearly 600 a month, while its cost per order has been nearly cut in half. Another site, which used to produce as few as four conversions a month, now generates 75; its cost per order is down from more than $1,000 to $78. LBM’s management costs have been more than cut in half by the power and ef ficiency of the automated service. Staf f previously devoted to paid-search management is now dedicated to other client services. Multivariate Testing Determines Optimal Bids Smarter, more ef fective bidding has fueled the improved paid-search results. LBM has expanded the selection of active keyword combinations beyond the limited number that it used before the addition of WebTrends Ad Director. One client now maintains a portfolio of nearly 14,000 keyword combinations, up from a few hundred before. This “long tail” of combinations lets the client advertise to niche audiences and take advantage of secondary ad placements without paying the high price associated with heavy-traf fic terms. Geographic targeting uncovers location-specific keywords Better geographic targeting of ads has also helped improve results. WebTrends helped LBM build a campaign strategy that targets and weights every metropolitan community with more than 100,000 people. In key states like Florida and Texas, where prices for many legal terms are high, LBM now uses location-specific keywords that are less expensive than more general terms yet highly ef fective in targeted districts or counties. WebTrends Ad Director’s highly customizable reports provide in-depth daily updates and targeted activity reports throughout the day on overall paid-search performance. LBM can also track the progress of individual client campaigns, web sites and ads, as well as performance by region to help identif y locations that would benefit from more analysis and testing. The clearest sign of success: LBM’s clients no longer question the ef fectiveness of paid-search advertising. “If we don’t hear from clients, we know it is working,” Pollock said. “They are busy serving the new customers who have found them through their paid-search ads.” About WebTrends Since 1993, WebTrends has provided the market with web analytics solutions that help marketers measure and improve web sites and online marketing. Today, WebTrends Marketing Lab delivers comprehensive analytics, dynamic advertising optimization and deep visitor intelligence to drive customer engagement and power targeted marketing. Thousands of leading global organizations have chosen WebTrends solutions and proven client services expertise to optimize their marketing initiatives, including General Mills, IKEA, Microsoft, Reuters and Ticketmaster. For more information, visit www.webtrends.com. WebTrends Marketing Lab™, WebTrends Analytics™, WebTrends Score™, WebTrends Visitor Intelligence™, WebTrends Marketing Warehouse™, WebPosition®, WebTrends Ad Director™, WebTrends® and the WebTrends logo™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of WebTrends Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. © 1996-2008 WebTrends Inc. All rights reserved.