Investigator / Process Server Marketing Blog

Rising expenses & fuel costs? How much should I cut my marketing budget?

2008-06-12T08:23:00.015-05:00

If you are a process server or private investigator, your profitability is directly impacted by rising costs, especially the sharp increases in fuels including gasoline and diesel.

While some private investigators who avoid travel and surveillance might minimize the pinch, most process servers are seeing huge increases in costs, as service of process by its very nature requires many miles of driving. Process servers, particularly in rural areas, where business is traditionally slower, are even hard hit.

The dilemma is what to do.

First, you can raise prices, but with attorneys and other clients also being pinched by the economy, pushing the whole cost increase to the customer is very hard to do. So the simple fact is you are simply going to make less per job.

That means it is time to start cost cutting... You need to trim the fat wherever you can, and make your operation as lean a possible to maximize profits. For most businesses this means cutting discretionary spending where ever they can.

And your advertising / marketing budget is no exception. You need to be sure you are paying for a strategy that works to bring in business. But you shouldn't cut back.

In fact, expanded advertising for new business is one strategy to increase overall net revenue when expenses start eating into your bottom line.

Say what?

The winning strategy in this instance is to increase your business volume. Let's use this example:

You charge $75.00 for a service, and in 2006, you spent on average $10.00 on fuel and energy to accomplish the service. Your total non labor expenses were $35.00 ($25.00 over fuel cost). So you would be left with $40.00 to pay the help, and the remainder would be pretax profit.

Fast forward to June, 2008, and you are now spending $20.00 on fuel and energy for the same service, and your total non labor expenses have increased to $50.00 ($30.00 over fuel cost). You are now losing $15.00 more for expenses, but have been able to raise your prices to $85.00 per service. So you are making $5.00 less per service....

If you cut back on advertising now, and you get a few less jobs, you will lose the $35.00 pre tax profits on those jobs.. but you will save on advertising...

Not necessarily a good idea..... Your gross receipts fall, making any savings on expenses unlikely to increase profitability.

On the other hand, if you can increase business, that is the number of services performed, you can make $35.00 pre labor profit for each new job. So increasing advertising, and capturing more business can actually increase your gross profits.

The point of this exercise is to show that the only way to make the same profit, or more, in the face of increasing fuel costs and expenses, is to increase business volume. You may be making less on each job, but it is less on more total volume.

So as expense and fuel cost rise, avoid cutting marketing, and consider actually expanding your efforts....

Keywords and Google Results – Overrated? May be.

2008-03-13T19:07:00.004-05:00

What’s overrated is the obsessive desire to score in the top ten results for a certain key phrase. Now don’t get us wrong, it is always good to show in the top twenty search results for a key word or key phrase (we show in the top ten for private investigator and private investigators amongst others).

Problem is, you are assuming that your target keyword or phrase is what searchers are using.
We find that most search queries are much more complex than the particular keyword we are focused on. So for example take the following list of keywords for the Rominger Legal NJ PI page…

new+jersey+private+investigators
private investigators in new jersey
private investigators in south jersey
missing person
private detective in nj
private investigators in central nj
anthony's pi, nj
central jersey private investigator
investigation companies new jersey
investigator education in new jersey
new jersey private detectives
new jersey private investigator
new jersey private investigators
nj private detective forum
north jersey investigations blairstown nj
private detective bridgewater nj
private investigater in nj
private investigation in new jersey
private investigation, central nj
private investigator collingswood nj
private investigator in new jersey
private investigator license new jersey
private investigators in nj directory

Notice that no one search is the same, and that the exact mix of keywords changes. You can't optimize for each key phrase, and you can't optimize to any one keyword and get all of the traffic. So how do we get lots of traffic from lots of different searches? Links that build page rank!

So what to do? Do worry about your meta tags, your keyword density, and your sites search engine optimization, but don't forget to collect quality links, and draw web traffic from web links. Look at wikipedia, they are a top return for zillions of searches. This is only partly because they have the right keywords. More importantly it is because they have so many links coming in.

In summation, obsessive keyword optimization should be avoided or at the very least combined with getting links and building content.

Google Adwords vs Directory Advertising

2008-02-19T11:58:00.009-05:00

A common question that comes up with advertisers and marketers is how to compare Google Adwords with Online Directory advertising. Many simply count visitors and divide by the total costs.

One of the sale people here at Rominger Legal wrote this e-mail to a customer, which we have decided to share with you. Of course we have redacted some information to protect the privacy of the advertiser, and changed the names, but it is the actual dispatch edited for clarity.

The advertiser was wondering why if he paid $1.25 per click from Google Adwords, why our "cost per click" was so much higher.

Dear A.

I know this is long. If you can take 10 minutes to review it I would appreciate it. Because you are doing Google Ad Words I think you need to see the numbers. We are fan of Google Ad Words – over 1 million bought to date. Thanks- B.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me the other day. I am sorry it has taken a few days to get this over to you. I have spent the last two days home with my son who is sick with the flu (if you have children I am sure you understand / 1st time this year so cross your fingers).

Your situation is a tough one because you don't track where clients come from but rather look at where your online traffic is generated. We believe that we send you a better class of visitors who are more likely to need your services. So we may not send you as much but what we send you is better!!!!

I understand your logic on the cost per click with Rominger Legal vs Google Ad Words, but I think you may want to look at it another way. We are different form Ad Words and I will see if I can explain. There is no national average for bounce rates, click fraud or conversions. However, our experience and research has allowed us to conclude that bounce rates are 60-70%, click fraud around 10%, conversions (depending on what you consider a conversion) 10-25%. We came to these figures by analyzing our own data. What data you may ask?

1. Our Main Pi directory page had 100,000 + visitors in the last quarter of 07
2. In 2007 we purchased 353,667 clicks (Ad Words) to our Private Investigators Directory
3. In Dec 2007 alone we purchased 37,152 clicks (Ad Words) to our PI directory

Take this example:
If you buy 100 clicks from Google for $150 you have spent $1.50 per click
(not bad when you are paying $5.50 per click from us). The piece that is missing is the bounce rate and click fraud. If you average a 65% bounce rate and 10% click fraud 75 of you 100 initial clicks are gone leaving 25 qualified clicks at $6 per click (150/$25). If you pay $2 per click initially you are actually paying $8 per click for your 25 qualified leads. If any of these are repeat clicks or from the same source the rate goes up again. So your true cost for a visitor from Adwords is much higher than your cost per click.

The visitors that travel on to your website from Rominger Legal have already past the bounce point and because we are not PPC there is no click fraud. What you are getting is conversions or people who (most of the time) land on our California PI page and then take action to click your profile page with all of your information, then chose to travel on to your website (Remember some people will contact you directly from Rominger Legal and never travel on to your website ).

Let me break down in real numbers:
1. Our California Private Investigators Page has had 406 unique visitors in the last 30 days: http://www.romingerlegal.com/californiapi.htm (This is a spot where people bounce because it is not what they were looking for!!!)

2. Of those 406 visitors - 40 went the next step and clicked on the link to your listing page (These are people who must have felt they where in the right place because they are moving forward also they spent 1 minute and 45 seconds on your listing page at this point). (for $99 you paid $2.47 per visitor) [PAGE LINK REMOVED]

3. Based on our 90 day average counts, of those 40 visitors on your profile page appx 18 are going to travel on to your website. These are people who have viewed your brief profile and are still moving forward (quality lead / for $99 you paid $5.50 per visitor)

I will follow up later this week.

So that was the e-mail.

In summary, because a click to your web site from a directory listing has been "funneled and filtered", the traffic is of a much higher quality. As the users click through the directory and drill down to your web site, they have multiple chances to go somewhere else.

Would you rather pay $100 to talk to 1,000 random people about your business, or $500 to talk to 25 who are definitely needing to buy your services? The true cost per click on Adwords is not the total cost divided by the number of clicks. First you have to filter out the bounce rate and fraudulent clicks. Then you know the true cost per interested visitor. So once you know the bounce rates, you can start comparing apples with apples, and get a better view of your true marketing investment.

Marketing in 2008

2008-01-02T00:03:00.001-05:00

All right the new year is here! I'm sure by now you have a written plan for your advertising and marketing efforts in 2008.

No? Well now might be the time to start scratching one out.

First, figure out what percentage of your gross revenue from 07 should be dedicated to marketing. More than 15% is probably too much and less than 5% is too little.

Divide that number by 12 and you have your monthly "budget".

So if you grossed $190,000.00 last year, and want to dedicate 6% to marketing, you have $11,400.00 to spend, or about $1000.00 a month.

So if you purchase a yellow page ad for $100.00 a month, and buy $200.00 in Adwords each month, you still have $700.00 to spend. If someone charges you a one time fee, amortize it across the months it will last, etc.

So get to work and start planning.

A few ideas and items you might want to consider...

2007-10-15T20:40:00.000-05:00

Try this article - Pros & Cons Of Online Directory Advertising for Process Servers and Private Investigators - "There are a lot of directories online that profess to charge a modest monthly or annual fee to list a Process Server or Private investigator, and they insist the investment will produce results. Here's my personal feelings about the value of Directory Advertising, and what you should think about when making this decision:" - FULL TEXT

Or expand your library with these books -

Or try some case management software - PI - Professional Investigator (TM) - Private Investigator ... Case and contact management software for PI's, investigators, detectives, bailiffs.

Customer misreports once again! - ad tracking incident #42

2007-07-17T10:15:00.001-05:00

Its a little involved, but here it goes... We run a program called live meeting, which allows folks to talk with a customer representative on-line in real time. It also shows us when someone enters the site, and what keywords, and search engine they came in on.

One of the programmers was monitoring the program, when he saw some one had typed "process server in Pennsylvania" into Yahoo. He saw that they came to the PA Process Server page, and then to the listing page of one of the advertisers. Their IP address resolved to a city in Florida.

Happening to know the woman who answers the phone for that process serving advertiser, he called there to see if she had gotten any business from Florida in the last few minutes. She said yes, and he then told her what city the customer was from. She thought he might be psychic. (we know that not to be the case, although here in the office he has been called psycho)

Then he asked, how did they say they found you. This is where the story gets interesting.

The woman said the customer related that she typed "Pennsylvania and process server into the search engine". The process server said well what site, and the customer said I found you on Yahoo. Knowing that Rominger Legal sends her a lot of business, the server says she asked specifically about Rominger Legal, and the customer insisted it was Yahoo where she found the process server! She simply didn't "remember" the two or three clicks she made as she left Yahoo!

So if you are a process server or private investigator and you advertise on romingerlegal.com, servenow.com, or any of the free sites, be careful when someone says they found you on yahoo, google, ask, msn, etc. And if they say they found your website, check again, because they might just mean your web listing with romingerlegal.com, servenow.com, infoguys.com, yellowbook.com, etc., etc.

The moral... try typing the phrase private investigators into google. See if your site is in the top 10, if not, stop assuming that when folks say google, they mean google! (PS look who's currently # 2)

New monthly billing option on Rominger Legal

2007-05-02T20:56:00.000-05:00

We usually don't talk about our own advertising products here. However as many of you are aware we have directories for expert witnesses, private investigators, process servers, court reporters, and document retrievers. We've decided to announce and explain our new monthly billing to future advertisers, and those up for renewal.

For many years we have required those who list on the site to pay for their yearly advertising up front. We did this for several reasons. It is easy to administrate on our end, and results in less work for the sales force. It also tended to protect us from advertisers backing out too soon, particularly those who had a hard time quickly quantifying the benefit of the advertising, often because they had no system to measure the volume of web traffic we sent them, or to screen new business to see where they found the advertiser.

Now, with many PIs and Process Servers becoming more savvy about web statistics, and a better understanding of how to track their advertising success, this no longer appears to be a concern. Further, many start ups and small companies were locked out of advertising, or hesitant to do so, when they had to pay for a year in advance. The monthly billing option allows them to streamline their cash flow, while obtaining the substantial benefits our directories provide.

Borrowed: Are you missing calls?

2007-04-10T21:30:00.000-05:00

I just saw the newest post on the Expert Witness Marketing Blog, by Expert Communications. The author Meredith Hamilton writes,

"Don't make it hard for potential clients to reach you; they won't waste time trying repeatedly. They will simply move on to the next name on their list.... Check out your phone system occasionally...." - FULL POSTING

This resonates because we have a few advertisers on Rominger Legal who constantly have full email boxes, or a voicemail that says ONLY, "leave a message. BEEP" (add computer voice here). And surprisingly (insert sarcasm here) these are the same folks who say they don't know if their advertising works or not.

If you can't afford a live receptionist, try gotvmail.com. If you can't afford them, pack it in, and look for a job tearing tickets at the carnival (can you tell we're annoyed by this behavior).

Web site quick tip... Contact info should be up front !

2007-02-26T14:33:00.000-05:00

Can I e-mail you and find your phone number on the front page of your web site?

I was browsing a few sites that had great flash introductions, but I noticed in the time it took to get invited to "step inside", I could have already placed a call or typed an e-mail asking for the firm's services.... Have your contact information displayed while the flash loads.. while spinning disks and cool loading graphics are neat, they could also include a quick reference to essential contact information.

If the wait is too long, or the contact information not "front and center", the back button takes over, and you loose business!

Appreciate the middleman.

2007-01-20T17:46:00.000-05:00

In our last post, we explained that customers knowingly and unknowingly misrepresent where they found out about you. One issue that merits expansion and explanation is the idea of "the middleman".

What brand of toothpaste do you use? Let's assume it's Crest. Where did you buy it? Walmart. And who makes it? Proctor and Gamble. Now tell me the name of the trucking company that brought the toothpaste from Proctor & Gamble to the Walmart warehouse. Stumped?

Now imagine that someone says they found you on Google. Did they find your web site, your listing in info guys, your Rominger Legal PI page, the NAPPS directory? Odds are they don't know. They know they started on Google, and ended on your "web site", which could have been your actual web site, or your listing on a site such as those listed above. Many consumers, including business professionals have no idea who owns the web page they are looking at, and actually why should they care!

Here at Rominger Legal we often are sent e-mails saying that "such and such state statutes are down", or "there is a search error on the such and such court cases". Many of these e-mails presuppose that those statutes or cases which we link to are under are custody or control. Many users just can't seem to tell when they have left one web site and moved to another.

So remember, whether it is toothpaste or hiring a PI, most folks never think about the middleman, nor do they need to care. That is your job. Evaluating a web listing's or web site's relative success requires much more information than what a customer reports. See our blog archive for some ideas on how to do this.

Customers can mislead you - here's why.

2006-12-13T07:11:00.000-05:00

Imagine a highschooler who has a crush on one of his classmates. He might join the drama club just to bump into her more often. But if you ask him why he joined, he will lie. Why? He's embarrassed, and he definitely doesn't want her to know.

Customers do the same thing. Think about it. Say you decide you need an attorney to help you read a contract. And let's assume you don't know who to call, so you head to the yellow pages.

Now when you sit down with the attorney, and she asks where you found her, you might hesitate before you say, "yellow pages". Why?

Two reasons actually. You want to seem sophisticated and knowledgeable. You don't want people to know that you didn't know where to go, or who to call. Better to say, a friend mentioned your name, than to come clean...

If you don't think this is true, ask any attorney who uses the yellow pages. Many (not all) clients are embarrassed to say so, but will only admit it was the yellow pages when prodded.

And the number two reason why people like to pretend they were referred, or at least not a random customer, is because they perceive that as a "referral" you will provide them with better service, etc.

So if I call you to investigate my employee theft, and I say another local businessman gave me your name, you now have two customer obligations at play. If you do a poor job, word might get back. So I, the customer, have a perceived incentive to lie. If I'm just browsing an online directory, you might not be so anxious to satisfy my needs.

Now, rather than make up a source, when pushed, many customers will feign no knowledge of how they found you. So they make tracking hard.

Keep this in mind. When people claim to be referred, or to have heard about you from a friend or coworker, but don't volunteer a name, or claim not to remember who the person was, they might just be telling a little white lie. And since they are the customer, they must be right. Just remember that this category of customer might come from your web directory ad, yellow page listing, or airport brochure.

Want more Business - make yourself into a goto Expert

2006-12-05T19:24:00.000-05:00

One proven method of developing business is becoming known for what you do. Everyone wants to hire a known expert. They also figure that if reporters and technical writers go to you for the skinny, that you must know something about what your are doing...

We found a few of the experts and investigators on the Rominger Legal site could be found quoted around the web. A recent example is Sherlock Investigations.

One private investigator interviewed by CNET News.com, Skipp Porteous of Sherlock Investigations in New York, said he believed the FBI planted a physical bug somewhere in the Nextel handset and did not remotely activate the microphone.

"They had to have physical possession of the phone to do it," Porteous said. "There are several ways that they could have gotten physical possession. Then they monitored the bug from fairly near by."

Want to be quoted similarly? A few tips.

Advertise on expert sites.
Always call reporters back, even if you can't answer questions about the case they are calling about, they will appreciate knowing you are not ignoring them.
Let media outlets know you'll provide expert comment, and make yourself available to answer questions about your expertise, even if they can't always quote you.
Make sure when you do speak to the media that you avoid controversial points, be a thoughtful fact expert, not an opinion spinning machine.

Expert Witness Marketing

2006-11-09T08:09:00.000-05:00

Most of the ideas and concepts on this blog, while targeted to process servers and private investigators, apply to marketing an Expert Witness practice. But if you want a marketing blog which is directed to Experts, try - Expert Witness Marketing by Expert Communications. It is also a great source for PI's and Process Servers, especially if they want to break into doing expert work, or are simply preparing to testify about some work they have done in the normal course of their job.

Recent Articles have included:

I don't know where 30% of my clients come from! - the missing third found.

2006-10-28T12:29:00.000-05:00

You've followed all of the marketing and sales advice you can find. You and your staff ask everyone where they found you (do you ask every time? are you sure you do?). You carefully record which sites and which advertisements send the most work. You do all you can do, but for some reason you always have cases and clients which can't remember, don't know, or won't tell, so at the end of the year you have the missing third!

You have something like the following:

Web Site Directory I - 18 cases
Web Site Directory II - 10 cases
My web site - 22 cases
referrals - 20 cases
UNKNOWN - 30 cases.

So you have 100 cases, 30 of which can't be tracked! But does it matter? After all, at least you know how well those advertisements work for you. For instance, if Web Site II charges $500.00 per year, you know you spent $50.00 to acquire each new case.

If you've done your homework already, you know what a customer is worth, and you know whether $50.00 per customer is good or bad for you. So now you can decide whether to cut or keep the ad, or not! Or can you?

What if you don't want to pay $50.00 per customer, but you would accept $40.00? Is cutting the advertisement in this example a good idea? To really know, we will have to look at the 30% of the cases that we don't know where they came from. But how?

A marketer can make several assumptions to tease out where these people came from. Remember we already know where 70% of our business comes from. Also assume that the leads with no known origin probably reflect a similar distribution as the leads we do know about. (You may have never been to Idaho, Nebraska, or Indiana, but you can assume water runs down hill there too, and make plans based on those assumptions if you say travel there to raft) (You might have noticed that you can figure out what a million voters are thinking from only talking to thousands. Here, you've already talked to 70% of the "voters"!)

So what you can do is this. Web Site II gave you 10 cases out of 100 total which is 10 %, but put differently, and more relevantly, 10 leads out of 70 known leads, which is slightly more than 14%. So you can simply say that on average. 14% of your cases come from Web Site II.

Now take 14% of the 100 total cases, (water runs down hill?) and you can safely assume that Web Site II actually gave you closer to 14 cases. So we can rewrite our list above as follows:

Web Site Directory I - 25% of 100 cases = 25 cases
Web Site Directory II - 14% of 100 cases = 14 cases
My web site - 32% of 100 cases = 32 cases
referrals - 29% of 100 cases = 29 cases
UNKNOWN - 0

So rework that math. You spent $500.00 for 14 cases (not just 10) - so your cost per case falls to $500 / 14 = $35.00 per case. So if $40.00 was your cutoff, you would have canceled when you thought (mistakenly) that you were paying $50.00 per customer.

Now that you know that it is $35.00 per customer, you'll definitely keep the advertisement, and could even accept up to a 10% price increase! $550 / 14 = $39.29 per case!

So now you know where that missing third is hiding! And what ads you should be buying.

Marketing Resources & Sites You Can Use.

2006-10-18T09:24:00.000-05:00

Here are a few marketing sites, that while general in nature, are useful to PIs & Servers.

Internet Marketing by Locker Gnome - Helpful articles and tips on internet marketing. - Many topics covered, updated regularly.

Marketing vs. Sales: What is the Difference? - by Laura Lake on About.com. - Good article, learn the difference.

MarketingProfs Daily Fix - Comprehensive & constantly refreshed general marketing blog.

Quick Tip - Location, Location, Location. Where are you?

2006-09-24T21:36:00.000-05:00

They say the success of a restaurant is dependent upon location. It sort of makes sense, if no one drives by, or knows where you are, they probably are not going to come out and eat dinner.

What does this mean for you? Make sure you stake out the premium locations with your business. For most of us, unlike restaurants, it doesn't mean building an office where people will see it, but rather position your business, its brand and your contact information in front of the people who hire you.

The "location" of your business is really a description of the ability of a customer to find and locate you! If no one can easily find you, they won't call. If I refer a client to you, by name, (call Bill he's the best..) and they try to find you, but can't easily find a number, or an e-mail, they might hire the person they find while looking for you. This is part of the reason that display ads work in the yellow pages.

So to develop your location, you need to do a few or more of the following:

Develop a search engine ready web site so people can find you.
Advertise and List your business and web site in all the free directories you can find.
Advertise in premium directories and listings.
Post timely and interesting content to your web site.
Give customers and prospective customers your card and contact information.
Put a signature on your e-mails, which includes your contact info.

Doing these few simple things will build your business, and your client base.

Testimonials - the value of these endorsements.

2006-08-23T23:22:00.000-05:00

What is the most valuable form of endorsement? A client testimonial. If you are endorsed by a celebrity, we all know you bought their endorsement. If one of your clients writes a letter of thanks or praise, we know you earned it.

So be sure and collect these client testimonials and share them with prospective clients. Research shows they are very effective and persuasive. Just be sure to do a few things.

Obtain the customer's permission, preferably in writing, to share their testimonial. You might alienate them by sharing in public something they thought was "just between you and them". And some people will be irrationally affronted you are using their name to market your business.
Try to use only recent testimonial letters and e-mails. No one cares if you were "the best" in 1903, or 1904 for that matter. Unless of course your accomplishment is so extraordinary that it stands out, despite the passage of time. (i.e. in 1975 you personally served a summons and complaint to Howard Hughes)
Pick a testimonial that fits the prospect. If you are selling a surveillance, use a surveillance testimonial, not a background check testimonial, if possible. But remember, an off topic testimonial is better than none.
If a testimonial might reveal confidential information, ask to use it with a limited attribution, such as, "JD in Tennessee".
Finally, if you've done more work for that client since the testimonial, check and be sure they are still satisfied. Some prospects will contact them to verify the reference.

Any experiences you want to share? Add a comment below.

Quick Tip: Answer the Phone - it helps.

2006-08-17T13:18:00.000-05:00

You've spent $10,000.00 advertising your business, so why don't you answer the phone? Voice mail and message machines just don't cut it. Disagree? Watch your caller ID, or 800 bill for dropped calls.

What do we mean by this? Quite simply maximizing your ROI on an advertisement requires you to promptly answer the phone, preferably with a live person. When someone gets a personal referral, they might leave a message and wait for a call back, but if their scanning a web directory, the yellowpages, or Adword results, they can move to the next phone number or two, until they get a live person on the phone, and the instant gratification they are looking for. Further many people don't know how urgent their need actually maybe, and tend to believe immediate action is necessary, even when it isn't.

So enhance your investment by having someone answer the phones, or forward all calls to your cell phone when you're out of the office. With caller ID you can still avoid the nagging clients, while answering all new or unknown numbers, which will increase your bottom line. (some nagging clients will figure this out, but it's the cost of being successful)

So, remember, getting calls is good, but answering them is better!

Web Site Traffic - Do you track it? You'd better.

2006-08-14T01:02:00.000-05:00

We find that many web site owners have little or no idea how much traffic their web site actually gets, and where it comes from. They often think their web site is "working great", when in fact it has little or no traffic, or all the traffic comes from one or two paid directory links, rather than from free search engine searches or web links.

If you don't currently look at at least a summary of your web traffic volume and sources on a regular basis, then you cannot affirmatively evaluate your adverting spending visa vi the Internet.

So what can you do to track your traffic? Try one of these great products. Google Analytics (free), Stat Counter (free), and for more options, visit this web site. Your web host may already offer built in statistics reports, or allow you to activate such a program on your server or virtual host.

Once you have a tracking program in place, you'll want to see how many visitors you get, and where they are coming from. You may be surprised that many people come from only a few sources or searches. Now you can see if those keywords really work, or whether a web ad was a good purchase.

Quick Tip - Lowering the cost of pay per click advertisements.

2006-07-19T22:49:00.000-05:00

Most of the pay per click engines now look at your landing page to determine the cost of your clicks. Google for one, actually uses the "quality" of the landing page to determine where your ad should appear in the pay per click ads shown. In fact, a high quality landing page may cause your ad to appear above someone else who is bidding more than you!

So what does this mean? The more useful and relevant your web site is, the cheaper your keyword charges will be. Relevancy can be increased by getting links. Links from fans, free sites, friend's sites, and others can raise your page rank or similar measures. Many observers believe that Google Adwords, Overture and Ask use the number of links to a site or landing page to help calculate the cost per click, and to weight the bids.

(Gratuitous self promotion begins here) - So for instance, purchasing a listing on Rominger Legal, or other major web sites, which includes a link to your site, will not only make your site more search engine ready, but also help build links to possibly lower your bid costs by similarly increasing the link measure of popularity by Overture and Adwords as it applies to their respective keyword programs. (promotion ends)

So in closing, make your site useful and relevant to the keywords you are purchasing. Build the number and quality of the links to your site, and you'll spend less on obtaining visitors from the pay per click engines.

Tip #5. - Websites - I Built it, but will they come?

2006-04-27T08:23:00.000-05:00

The true purpose of a web site is not, for a professional firm which provides a service, to make sales.

The actual purpose is to provide information to assist in the sale or hire by a prospective client.

What do we mean? It may help to start with the history of the web site, as such history applies to PI and Process firms. Remember your first time on the web? Was it before 1997? Or was it after 2000?

We need to start in 1995 to understand why we think of web sites the way we do.

Remember hearing about the guy who made a "web site", and became a millionaire overnight? Like all good urban legends, it has some footing in reality. The truth is, early web sites got most of the traffic, because there were simply few destinations for web surfers. Of course there was far less traffic, but it was enough, such that the first Process Server to make a web site, was successful in generating sales because he was the only one. Same for the first movers amongst PIs, Experts & Lawyers.

So the first web sites, which were for the most part, glorified brochures, worked to generate leads and sales, simply because they existed. The early years were truly a, "build it, and they will come" era. But like the bronze age, while certainly an improvement on the stone age, it has passed, and expecting a web site to work, in and of itself, is a thought process that best indicates a fossilized brain.

Fast forward, to 2006.

Why has this changed? Well, first there are now thousands of web sites for every profession, covering every region, and blanketing all corners of the web. Imagine your firm is a zebra. And that the zebra is standing on the plain all by itself. The lions are going to have to fight over you. That was a web site in 1996. Now imagine you are standing in a heard of 1,000,000 zebra. Even if 10,000 lions descend upon you, and each gets a zebra, your odds of being eaten is only 1 in 100!

There are now billions of web pages, on tens of millions of sites, and growing. It is now the era of "build it, and some might trickle in". You need to position your web site to be found. (Useful is good too, but not at issue in this post.)

Ever hear of Las Vegas? Big destination, lots of people like it, yet they advertise like crazy. Hmmm, what can we infer? If they stop competing to "get the word out", you'll soon fall in love with Miami, New York, or Milan. Why? Because somebody is going to fill the vacuum, because they know that advertising brings visitors, and visitors have dollars.

So, you need to "get the word out". What does this really mean? It means you must learn to compete in the market of information. Ideally, we all want to find the cheapest product, from the closest source, that perfectly fits our needs. And sometimes we do, but usually we need lots of information to do that. Thus the more accurate, or "perfect" your information, the more likely you are to find the product or service that most fits those criteria.

The same works for your customers. Have you ever subcontracted work to someone in another area, and later learned that there was someone who could have done it both better and cheaper? Why didn't you use them the first time? Your information wasn't perfect. You still got the job done, because you had information, but you could have profited more had your information been better.

So in order to make others use your business, you need people to have information about you. And they need to find that information. Better, even if you're not the cheapest (or the best), if you're the only one anyone knows about, or finds, you'll get the work. So you need to be found.

And this is what a web site is, your chance to present your "information" for other's consideration. Of course they need to find it. And, that is the point. Unless you promote your web site, it will just be a trickle. Business don't grow on trickles.

So, building a web site is a great idea. And, it is pretty much expected of most businesses. But making it into a sales tool, requires that you help visitors find it. The more targeted and interested those visitors the better. (We'll talk about that in our next post).

You should seek out sources of traffic for your web site, and capture them. You need people who need your services to have information about you, and so you need to help them find you, and not your competitor. If you can do that, sales will follow.

So a web site was once a means to an end, that rested close to the beginning of the means. It was like the first neon sign in Vegas. It is now more in the middle of the process, because now that everyone has neon, you need to educate people to look for and read your neon. A web site needs visitors, and by itself, most small business web sites don't attract visitors on their own.

So if you built it, they will come, but only if you actively promote it. (Remember Vegas?)

Tip #4 - What's a Customer Worth? - Hint: Forget the sale!

2006-04-18T11:20:00.000-05:00

Forget the sale. Don't obsess about the sale, obsess about the customer instead.

Easily said, we know. And we realize that each sale is important. But when you are trying to evaluate your marketing budget, knowing the value of a sale is only one aspect of measuring the true value of that marketing budget.

Let us say that you have noticed, that on average, that most attorneys use you only once, and that some, after sending you the first piece of work, are good for ten more a year on average, year after year. What is the lifetime value of that customer?

When you determine the true cost of marketing, you need to know your average customer's lifetime value. You could calculate it like this.

Let's say you have 10 new customers a month. And, that 7 of them will only use you once, 2 of them will use you 3 more times, and 1, on average will use you 20 more times.

Now let's assume the average profit on a sale is $35.00. So you profit $350.00 a month on new customers. You've also discovered that your spending $400.00 a month on marketing costs. Time to cut back!

WRONG.

You have to look at the average lifetime values. Let the letter y represent average number of times a new customer uses you. Thus y will equal either = 1, 3, 20 in this example.

The 7 new customers that use you once are worth 7 x 35 x y (1) for a total of $245.00
The 2 new customers that use you three times are worth 2 x 35 x y (3) for a total of $210.00
The 1 new customer that uses you twenty times are worth 1 x 35 x y (20) for a total of $700.00

So once you know the lifetime values of your average customer's profit over time, you will know that your $400.00 in marketing is actually generating $1155.00 in profit.

You're still ahead, even without the prized customer that will use you 20 more times! (but only $55.00)

So in summary, it's not how many sales you make, but also how many times a customer makes repeat purchases that must be factored in. Also, what percentage of your new customers make a word of mouth referral? What's the value? The equation can get bigger, but this is not an algebra blog.

So remember, you can't go by your "gut". Figure out those lifetime averages. You might actually discover you want to increase your marketing budget, even if you sell less (the first time) to new customers than you spend to acquire them.

Tip # 3.1 How do I know if my website advertising works?

2006-04-09T17:49:00.000-05:00

In our previous post, Tip #3 How do I know if my advertising works? we explored some models for tracking results. We also identified that a big problem with the tracking is actually figuring out how people found you. Remember, they often don't know either. (If you didn't read Tip #3, you might want to review it before going forward here.)

If you have a web site, do you know if it works? If so, how well? Do you know how many actual people visit it each day? Do you know how they found your web site? Do you know how they move around on your site? Do you know what percentage of people hit the back button without going anywhere on your site? Should we keep asking rhetorical questions? No. Could we? Yes.

If you're not tracking these statistics, you simply might as well not have a web site. There are dozens of programs that will do this for you. You can use Webtrends, Google Analytics (formerly Urchin), Analog, or a dozen other tools. We personally recommend Analytics.

Let me give you an example. I can pull a report for any page on the Rominger Legal web site. I can see where people came from, what keywords they typed into the search engines, how long they stayed, and where they went on the site. So by way of example, from April 2 to 9, 2006, the front page alone, of the Rominger Legal Private Investigator Directory, was viewed 2,634 times.

Those 2,634 views were the result of 2,109 distinct visitors over those 7 days. (Some folks viewed the page more than once.) 66% of those visitors came from Google, the top 2 reported keyword phrases were (not surprisingly), "private investigator" and "private investigators". The number one domestic city of origin was Los Angeles, and the top foreign city was Lima. Over 1,400 visitors had DSL or Cable Modems, and over 300 were still on dial-up services. Almost all of the visitors had FLASH 7.0 or better installed.

I think you get the point. We can do this for each of over 70,000 pages. We know how people find our web site.

We also do the same for one of the sites we track, www.pennsylvaniaprocess.com. We know that more than 50% of that site's traffic comes from it's link in the Rominger Process Server Directory. What that means is that we can assume that about 50% of the new customers who tell Pennsylvania Professional Process Service (PPPS) that they found their web site, came as a result of their Rominger Ad. The remainder of the traffic for PPPS comes from the Google and Yahoo search engines. So we know that they are sending PPPS business too, from nonpayed, organic search results.

You can also take it a step further. Not only can we see where someone found one of our sites, we can also track what percentage sign our web forms. So we might for example know that 11% of the people sent to us from ask.com for the keyword, "advertise process server" sign up and ask how to advertise with us, but that only 3% sign up with the key phrase "advertise process serving". Where would you invest your future efforts?

So remember, if you advertise your business or web site on-line, and you don't track it with a good tool, you're not in a position to say whether your pay per click adverting, or your directory advertising is benefiting you. So, get a good program in place, like Analytics, and get to tracking. You won't be sorry.

Tip #3 How do I know if my advertising works?

2006-04-03T21:52:00.000-05:00

Hmmm, we've never heard that question before. Humor aside, it probably is the number one question any business owner asks (aside from how can I reduce payroll costs). So here's the answer.

Well, actually, if we could answer that question with certainty, we wouldn't be writing this blog, but rather collecting royalties from our absolute corner on every market everywhere. See, nobody can predict with certainty how well any particular advertisement will work. There are just too many variables, and each of them is constantly changing.

Of course, you may respond, "Well even if you can't predict what will work, once I bought an ad, it should be easy to track". And if you said that, you are either a true marketing expert (like Don Smith) , or you haven't bought too many ads.

See, the problem is to fold. First you have to track. Second you have to get accurate results from your tracking. If you can do both you'll start to be able to evaluate your advertising. We paid a consultant to talk with our advertisers, and you know what she found out? The more carefully our customer tracked all their advertising, the more likely they were to renew, and be happy with our PI and Process Directories!

Let's try tracking ad responses first. First, you need to track your raw responses. You need to ask every caller where they found you. Say you put an ad in the NAPPS docket sheet magazine, how may people contacted you as a result? Let's say you carefully ask each phone caller for the next month, and 11 of them say "the Docket Sheet", now you know for X dollars, you got 11 calls in the first month.

So it's X divided by 11! Well, no. What about the 32 web site visitors you had in that month. Did any of them get your web address out of the Docket Sheet? And the 5 e-mails, were they from the web site, or from your e-mail address in your ad, or worse did someone go to your web site, because of the ad, and then e-mail you from there, or call you from the number on the web site, rather than copying it from the ad? And, how many people lost your ad, but remembered to type Pennsylvania Professional Process Service into a Google search?

How many leads did you get from that Docket Sheet ad? Actually you don't know for sure, so it too is a variable (let us call it Y). So your cost per contact (lead) is X divided by Y! Wow... that helps. "Hey Bob, we only spent X/Y dollars for this call"!

And, even if you ask everyone in the world where they found you, they won't report it accurately. They lie. Many people who find your web site, by any means, will say they found you in Yahoo or Google, even if they made seven or eight clicks between the search results and your web site.

By way of example, we have a Court Reporter who advertises with Rominger Legal, and has no web site. She said if she did, she wouldn't know what to think about where her business came from, because most people say they found her in Google. But we are her only online presence!

Most large advertisers expect more than 20% of all consumers using traditional medias to report incorrect data about where they found out about a product or business. The ease of movement on the web complicates the matter even more. The fact that many people blur their web experience, often not realizing when they have changed sites (or more importantly, not caring), means that most people usually identify their portal of entry as opposed to the actual page or site where they found a business.

So what do you do? Well you keep tracking, and calculating. Don't be daunted, but do be persistent.

See, if X is your ad cost, you'll always have that. Just look at what you pay. And Y, as a function of contacts isn't impossible either. First, it cannot be more than the actual number of contacts you get. So if you have 32 contacts in a month, from all sources, Y is less than or equal to that 32. Tracking hard will increase your certainty of Y's various sources.

If we advertise on Google, Rominger Legal and the Yellow pages, we might be able to sort out which works best, or, more typically, we might know that about 65% of new contacts are from all the advertisements, and 35% are client referrals. So X = the cost of all three, and Y equals 65% of our new contacts.

If X= $200.00 per month and Y = 20 contacts per month, we have 200 / 20 * 65%
or $200 / 13. That's about $15.00 per lead.

Wow, now were done. - No? hmmm? Remember, you just figured out what a lead or call costs.

But what does a sale cost? If we're hired by 1 out of every 4 leads, our cost per sale is $60.00. If you're a process server, unless its Hague work, you'ld better retool. If your a $55.00 dollar an hour gumshoe, and your average ticket is $1365.00, you might want to spend more!

Of course, why are you only converting one out of every four? Is it that the leads are soft? Or, are you overworked, understaffed and voice mail dependent, and usually don't call people back in less than twenty minutes, let alone three hours? (maybe that should be addressed in Tip #4)

So, to summarize. Ask, ask, ask. Track, track, track. If you want to know what works you and your staff must ask everyone where they found you. We call people all the time, and amazingly, very few ask where we found them! What a lost opportunity.

Tip #2 - Past Customers are Marketer's Gold

2006-03-29T19:36:00.000-05:00

All investigators and servers eventually get hired by a law firm, or receive referral work, who by all measures seems to have little future need for your services beyond the job they called with.

No South Dakota law firm serves too many defendants in Spotsylvania, VA. So why bother following up with them? Well, there are several reasons;

Giving them a price list and a full description of your services may in fact cause them to hire you in the future. You never know, and they never may have anticipate it either, but they may need you again, even if just as a point of contact for your state or region.
Providing contact information, and making sure you are in their database of contacts is important. If another business or professional seeks a referral from them for someone in your area or expertise, making sure they have your contact data will help ensure they can accurately refer you.
Keeping them aware of who you are means you can still ask them for a reference down the road.

The list goes on. The single most important reason however, is that marketing is a numbers game. Two factors combine, to make recontacting and actively marketing to past clients so effective.

First, if someone hires you once they are statistically more likely to hire you again, as opposed to a business who never needed your services. This is a simple fact. That's why your insurance goes up if you have an accident. You're more likely to have another than a driver who has never had one. It doesn't mean you will have another accident, it just means that you are more likely to.

Second, everyone knows that if you pitch a product or service to say, 1000 people, someone is likely to have some interest in what you offer. Assuming a process service company can build a database of law firms and other servers from years of past business, they can then begin periodic mailings or other marketing drives to this group.

You can send 500 post cards to random law firms, or you can send them to 500 law firms that once hired you. Your response rate will be dramatically higher with past customers. For instance, the random list might include 35 law firms that have never litigated a single case! Every one of the firms on your past client list has had to have at least one paper served...

SO - carefully gather data about past customers, and market to them. And if you want to take it to the next level, you should also actively gather, retain, and market to people who called for a quote, but never sent the work. They too are more likely to need you, and respond to you in the future.

Remember to attempt to mail the list at least once a year with first class mail, so you can keep up on address changes.... - but that's list maintenance, and that's for another post.