What’s the Next Marketing Project?

Internet televisionI’ve had a chance to speak to many of you over the past few years. I’ve got a pretty good sense of where you stand on marketing, technology, management, and finance. Most of you are doing pretty well, but you’re focused more on practicing law than on running your business.

That’s cool.

Today’s article isn’t for you.

Today is for those of you who are fascinated by working “on” the business rather than “in” the business.

If you’re absorbed by “in,” then just keep on working and don’t worry about what I’m going to say in this short post.

You “in” people can stop now. This isn’t for you.

Okay, now that we’re alone:

What is the next big marketing project?

Here’s the deal. You’ve got a website. By now, you should also have a mobile website targeted at smartphones. We know that the most desirable clients have smartphones and are using them to research the purchase of professional services. If there are issues with your sites, then, of course, fix them.

Once you’ve got those sites in order, it’s time to start thinking about a site for TV. When we look into our crystal ball, we see an increasing number of Internet users viewing the web from their web-enabled televisions. Internet functionality is now built-in to more and more televisions, and a plethora of devices enable television access to the web.

You need to be thinking about how your site looks on a television and whether it offers the kind of experience that will help TV viewers know, like, and trust your firm.

Some of these viewers will come to you via browsers in their televisions. Some of them will require apps developed for their television. There is already competition among the app platforms. You should be watching these developments closely and devoting resources to the larger platforms.

You’re going to need to tackle design and layout issues that will depend on the platform. More importantly, you’re going to need to tackle content issues. That’s where your primary focus needs to be now.

Start thinking about and experimenting with your site on a big screen while sitting six feet away.

My site (rosen.com) is heavy—very heavy—on text. When someone is leaning back and watching a television, he or she isn’t going to read much text. That person is going to expect to watch, not read.

We’re going to need to anticipate these TV visitors, greet them, and feed them a television experience. That’s going to be very different from the lean-forward, hover over the screen experience of our current website.

I’m thinking “movie” vs. “book.”

This next project is going to require you to put your brain to work. Think about your prospective customers. Think about them sitting in front of the big screen dealing with a crisis. Think about what it’s going to take to move them off of the couch and into your practice.

That’s your assignment. That ought to keep you busy for quite a while.

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  • Nathan

    Lee, 

    I’ve hired a group to work on mobile and television deployments of my website, and I’ve learned something fairly interesting through the market research they’ve conducted: the content has to be comprehensively different for both, based on hardware limitations and ingrained usage habits of users.  With mobile, it’s fairly easy for people to see a call to action and then schedule a consultation, send an email, make a call, etc.  Therefore, short bursts of content that lead to calls to action are key.  With television, it’s more difficult for people to take immediate action after a call to action, since (unless they are using google tv or some browser-enabled box) they will take action a few minutes to a few days after viewing the content.  So, you’re absolutely correct…content has to be more engrossing and have a “story-telling” quality on the television in order for viewers to take action later in time.  It has to be memorable to be effective.  I’ve been told that two minutes is the sweet spot for mobile and web video, and five minutes is the sweet spot for television viewing.  People prefer to be more passive than active when in front of the television, so the calls to action have to be extremely good.

    There are also wordpress template layouts for 16×9 televisions, just like they have custom templates layouts for mobile.  The barriers to entry that exist now to do effective website layouts for television won’t always exist.  That said, the cream always rises to the top.

    It’ll be very interesting to see how browsers play out on television.  I don’t think that people will ever want to read on their television, but most of the trends that I see show the television as being the “aggregator,” through applications like google+ or facebook, where people source content they find interesting and either watch it immediately or push it to their mobile device or computer for later viewing.  It seems like the importance of a search engine is going to be minimal on television.

    • http://divorcediscourse.com Lee Rosen

      It’s going to be interesting. One thing I question, and I’ve been questioning this on the old website as well, is the length. While, personally, I won’t watch a long video of cats dancing or something, I’m finding that our audience will stick around for a long time. They’re in crisis and the more info the better. We’ve got people paying rapt attention to videos going over an hour in some instances. They really want to know what they want to know.

      Thanks for jumping in.

      Lee

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