Martindale-Hubbell’s
Transformation
From Print to Digital
Our Transformation Story and Key Learnings
What I Will Share Today
●
Our transformation story and how we did it
●
Our business today in online marketing services
●
How online marketing services – in general – are critical for
“Massive disruption occurs at the low end.”
-- Clayton Christensen,
Harvard B-School
Information is cheaply indexed, stored, retrieved and shared
●
2000: Google became the de-facto directory for essentially all business information
●
Barriers to entry dramatically reduced
●
Price disrupters abound
●
Amazon's Jeff Bezos buys
The Washington Post
for $250M
(In the first half of 2013, the newspaper lost $49M)
●
The New York Times Company sold
The Boston Globe
for $70 million
(20 years after being bought for $1.1 billion)
●
Newsweek
is sold for $1 in 2010 (recently sold again to IBT Media, terms not
disclosed)
●
BusinessWeek
sold for ~$2M to Bloomberg in 2009 (BW profit had peaked at $100M
in 2000)
Martindale-Hubbell Evolution to
Online Lead Generation Provider
1868 – 1995
Books
2007 – Today
Mobile Lead Generation
1996 – 2006
Transition to Online Directory
1868 –Martindale US law directory published 1870 –Hubbell’s legal directory published 1989 –Acquired by Reed Elsevier
1996 – Martindale.com launched
1998 – Lawyers.com launched
2007 –Launched website/ SEO offerings
2009 – Launched lead tracking 2009 –Launched search engine marketing service
2010 –Launched LawyerLocator 2012 – Launched social media, mobile, and video
The Martindale-Hubbell Transformation
Print directory provider to lead generation and digital marketing services leader
2000
2013
●
Primary products: Print Directories
and Lawyer “vanity” merchandise
●
90% of profit from top 1,000 large
law firms
●
45,000 customers
●
Primary products: Online lead
generation via Lawyers.com, a
consumer destination, and hosted
websites, social media and SEO
services for small law firms
●
2% of profit from top 1,000 firms as
focused shifted to small law firms
ROI for our customers had to change!
Two Main Product Lines –
Lawyers.com and
Web Visibility Solutions
A New Game:
Consumer Traffic Acquisition
-
Content -SEO strategies -Advertising/Branding-Google Adwords
Significant shifts in technology
and customer value proposition:
Directory information became
cheap and ubiquitous
Created digital marketing
products and services:
Customer leads = Value
Powerful Websites
● Lawyers.com ~36m annual visitors
● Martindale.com ~11m annual visitors
What We Leveraged and What We Built
Unique Peer Review Ratings
86% Brand Awareness Among
Small Law Firms
Large Customer Base
(25,000)
400 Employees with HQ in New Providence, NJ
Leading Edge Digital Marketing Services
(SEM, SEO, PPL, Mobile, Video, Social, Local)
+200 Sales Professionals Dedicated to the
Legal Vertical
Network of Lawyer Websites (6,000 websites)
Shifted Focus to Lead Generation
Lawyers.com Website Traffic (2007 – 2012)
Investment in content, SEO, branding, Google Adwords pays off
0
10
20
30
40
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
Annual Visitors (in Millions)
Lawyers.com Evolution
Site overhauled to become a rich, consumer resource
1998
2013
● Improved design and usability
● Invested in user testing (multivariable and A/B testing)
● Adopted SEO best practices, reduced reliance on “buying traffic” through Pay-Per-Click ads
● Use of API’s, RSS, Video, Maps, Online Calendaring, Chat, Client Reviews
● Robust content (Legal News)
Key Transformation Challenges –
Things We Did Right
●
Strategy
– Target Market: shifted focus to the needs of small law firms (Lead Generation)
– Lawyers.com: invested in content, SEO and advertising (traditional and online) to build a top tier consumer legal resource. More traffic, more leads for customers.
●
Talent Shift
– Upgrade people skills in several key positions, shifting to more tech-oriented talent
– Trained sales force to become more fluent in selling online marketing solutions and to do right by the customer
●
New Product Introduction
– Call-tracking telephone numbers, profiles with video, live chat and blogs
– Websites, Social, Mobile
●
Customers Focus
– Organizational wide focus on improving the Customer Experience and making it easier to do business with us
Key Transformation Challenges –
Things We Struggled With
●
Legacy Systems
– Modified legacy systems – should have started over
– E-commerce efforts poor
●
Pricing
– Competitive pressures to lower prices put strain on margins
– Legacy products priced above market
●
Sales Force
– Products and value proposition too complicated for easy transition
●
Culture Shift
– Being nimble inside a $10B corporation (It’s HARD!)
●
Operations
Martindale-Hubbell Transformation: How We Did It
Focused on Providing Better Customer Value
Lawyers.com User Experience
Customer Experience
●
Made it easier to do business with us
– Simpler contracts, invoices
– Centralized Customer Support
– Enhanced sales force training
– Improved tools to measure customer value/ROI
Call Tracking Numbers
Weekly Leads Reports, including Lead Alert iPhone App
●
Expanded from raw directory to rich
consumer resource
●
Built strong “domain authority” (how
well a site ranks in searches)
●
Focused on lead generation and ROI
for paying customers (small law firms)
●
Over 2 million pages of content and
attorney profiles
●
Ask-A-Lawyer Feature
●
Chat capability
Martindale-Hubbell Transformation:
How We Measured It
Adopted Net Promoter Score as Our Key Success Metric
Key Metric: Net Promoter Score
●
Customer Experience role created
●
Monthly progress reports shared with all employees
●
Quarterly “root cause” reviews held with product team
●
“Humble Pie” gift basket sent each time we screwed up
●
Hand-written THANK YOU sent to all Promoters
●
“Red Flag” comments (0-6 score) prioritized and resolved quickly
●
Outbound telephone calls to all new customers
Representative Customer:
1 – Google Analytics, 2012
Martindale-Hubbell Created a Comprehensive Online Solution for Case, Rajnoha & Boudreau, a Three Attorney Firm Founded in 1975 Specializing in Family Law in St. Louis, MO
Solutions Used in CR&B’s New Online Campaign
Web design
Search Engine Optimization
Profiles on Lawyers.com℠ and martindale.com®
Preferred Placements
Video production
Results
Averaged 269 new visitors per month with a total of 3,728 site visits1
Delivered +48 to +88% more visitors than their old website
33% of all web visits originated from Lawyers.com and Martindale.com1
Visitors from Lawyers.com profile spent 4x as much time on the site and viewed 2x the number of pages1
Rich Content Including 1.1M Attorney Profiles
Consumers Can Connect to an Attorney
by Calling, Emailing, or Clicking on Website Access to Firm Blogs and Videos
Descriptive Content Including Areas of Law, Attorney Education, and Ratings
Geo Location with Ability to Receive Directions
Significant Continuing Investment In Content
Legal Information
Blogs
Videos
Subscribers Have Access to Mobile Apps
To Track Leads
Lead Alert Application
Refer an Attorney
MH Lawyer Index App
Perform
Competitive Analysis
Not Just a Website – All the Techniques to
Gain Customer Visibility
Primary Website
Digital Marketing: Implications for You and Your Business
●
Why Online Marketing is Critical
●
Best Practices for LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook
Think Mobile First
This year mobile phones
will overtake PCs as the
most common device to
access the Web
Sample Mobile
Website
Personalization
And younger consumers
spend more time with
their phone than
watching TV
2013
(Registered Users) Google+ Launch Twitter Launch YouTube Launch First Blogs Launch Google Launch LinkedIn Launch Facebook LaunchWhy Social Media Matters
Source: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google
1994
1998
2000
2003 2004
2005
2006
2010
2011
250+ million 500+ million 1 billion
200+ million 800+ million
Companies that blog have
55%
more website visitors
and
Generating more business exposure (reported
85% of marketers surveyed)
Increasing website traffic (69%)
Gaining marketplace insight (65%)
Top Three Benefits of Blog and Social Media
Marketing:
* Source: 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report: How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses, Sponsored by Social Media Examiner, April 2012
#1
#2
#3
The
#1 Social Media Network
for Business Professionals
●
150,000,000 users in 200 countries
†●
Over 750,000 Senior Executives use it
†●
All the Fortune 500 companies have
profiles on it
†●
Average household income
is $109,000
†Best Practices
●
Create a comprehensive profile
●
Start by connecting with people you know
–
Tip: Use LinkedIn Toolbar for Outlook
●
Recommend others first ... then ask to
be recommended
●
Join groups for referral sources & prospects
●
Start a group for your target market
●
Answer questions
●
Update your status at least 3x per week
●
List all your events on LinkedIn
Best Practices
●
People have profiles, businesses
have pages
●
Update your status regularly
●
Include calls-to-action, logos,
pictures, and video
●
Referrals are all about
●
145 characters – headline + link
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www.bing.com/social – real time search
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TweetBeep – email alerts of mentions of
you, a client or prospect
●
TweetDeck – display columns based on
search terms
Best Practices
What is “
Search Engine Optimization
”?
SEO
Off-Site Optimization On-Site Optimization ResearchOn-Site Optimization
What can be done on the pages of
a website to maximize its ranking
performance in the search
engines for target keywords
.
Off-Site Optimization
Techniques involving securing
links from other websites back to
your site. Off-site optimization
accounts for the majority of
search engine results ranking.
Anatomy of a
Search Engine Results Page
(SERP)
(More on Paid Search Later from Blerina)
Search Terms
Paid Search
Local Results
More Tips to Improve
Search Engine Rankings
●
SEO-friendly URL’s, using keywords
www.lawyers.com/bankruptcy
●
Use the best URL when there are
several choices
– These are all different to Google:
▪ www.example.com
▪ example.com/
▪ www.example.com/index.html
▪ example.com/home.asp
●
XML sitemap and robots.txt files
●
Authorship markup (rich snippet)
The Importance of Inbound Links
Think of a link from a well-ranked site as a “vote for your site.” The more “popular” your site is,
the more “votes” or links you receive from other popular sites and the better you rank.
Your Site
High PageRank™
Site
What Are “
Back Links
” and Why Do I Need Them?
Google Adwords/Paid Search Ads
to Increase Traffic and Leads
Product Features:
● Keyword research
● Bid and budget management
● Ad copy
● Landing pages
● Ongoing optimization
● Reporting
