A Marketing Lesson From The Virginia Tech Tragedy

Business Week arrived in my mailbox today and as I perused the table of contents I was drawn to an article entitled “Buying Clicks To A Tragedy.”  At first I thought it appalling but as I read it, I started to think about the practical application to our industry.

The fact is that there is an “ever-growing chunk of total revenues coming from the Web.”  Because of that, news outlets now “scramble their online marketing staffers as quickly as they do reporters when a big story hits.” 

And what does that tell us?  It tells us that once again, traditional mass media advertising is being replaced by the web.  The newspapers of the world have been forced to quickly adapt and embrace the web because their more traditional print medium is no longer as effective as it once was.  Don’t get me wrong.  There are millions of people that read newspapers.  They are not going away – at least not yet.  However, the web is becoming increasingly important.

And now the application to the PI industry.  This story immediately made me think of the biggest PI firms in the country.  When a relevant story hits, or a drug is recalled or a local catastrophe occurs, our ranks are so trained to call their advertising agency and scramble to run a series of TV spots.  That is if their advertising agency doesn’t call them first.  But how much of our time and resources are allocated to the web.

The Business Week article stated “At the risk of sounding crass, these do become marketing events for these news sites.”  When the Virginia Tech tragedy occurred the business operations of the New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and Time magazine bought ads on either Google or Yahoo so that anytime someone searched the phrase “Virginia shooting,” their links would pop up prominently on the right-hand side of the page.  That strategy is called pay per click advertising, and I’ve found it to be very effective when properly researched and placed. 

So let me ask you this.  How are you embracing and utilizing Web 2.0?  However that might be, I suggest that you step it up a few notches.  If you want to talk about it, give me a call at 610-692-2950. 

Web 2.0 – Is This Relevant To PI Attorneys?

Absolutely.  My best advice to you is to find a way to embrace Web 2.0 as soon as possible.  It is changing the way we acquire and nurture clients and you need to understand that before your competitors do. 

The average PI client is about 35 years old.  Do you really think they are looking for a lawyer in the yellow pages?  Probably not.  Instead they are becoming increasingly sophisticated web users that demand a significant and credible web presence from their vendors of choice.

A basic website is no longer sufficient.  We now need to concern ourselves with understanding blogs and podcasts, rss feeds and social bookmarking, online video and tags. 

We must have an online visibility that breeds confidence.  That means showing up in Google, Squidoo, Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us, Zoom, and My Space – just to name a few.

 By the way, here’s my Squidoo site.  It’s fun and it’s free!  http://www.squidoo.com/cindyspeaker/

The choices are truly endless.  That’s why the pursuit of greater online visibility and credibility requires study and research.  Focus your efforts in the right area.  Web 2.0 efforts are inexpensive but labor intensive.

Web Collaboration

In today’s issue of Business Week, it is reported that “My Space users are aging.”  Believe it or not, 67% of My Space users are over the age of 25.  That statistic really surprised me.  In the PI industry our average client is about 33 years old and that makes our clients avid web users.

So what is it that people are doing on the web?  The research shows that what we do at home and what we do at work differs a bit, but it’s clear that the web is an integral part of our lives.

Here’s what we’re doing on the web from home:

1. 75.5% use e-mail
2. 48.7% receive photos via e-mail
3. 15.5% watch internet video
4. 7.9% use social networking sites
5. 9.4% buy and download music files

At work, we use the web a little different:

1. 33% use message/bulletin boards
2. 24% online video
3. 27% social networking sites
4. 19% blogging
5. 17% wikis
6. 11% podcasting

So how do we, in the PI industry, leverage the web to build our businesses?  Begin by asking yourself how many of these strategies you are utilizing.  Do you have a blog?  Are you using online video?  Do you have an email marketing system to reach your clients and potential referral sources?  Have you tapped into the social networking sites?

Web collaboration is flourishing.  And nobody understands it better than our young people.  My recommendation to you is to have a web savvy young person as part of your team to make sure that you are growing your online visibility in a positive way and faster than your competition!