What It Means To Law Firm Marketers?
Being an Apple user, you may be aware of their recent iOS 14.5 updates. This update grabbed everyone’s attention because it’s different from other previous versions. The update’s privacy changes cause quite a stir in the marketing industry.
So, what are this update’s implications for companies with a digital presence? In this article, we’ll discuss what internet marketers working for law firms must know about Apple’s 14.5 iOS updates and how brands can take action to prevent some unwanted surprises.
What is iOS 14.5 update?
Released a few months ago, this update is known as Apple’s AppTracking Transparency version. It is because this update enables Apple’s operating system to manage privacy changes that are important for consumers. The aim is to let consumers manage the way they share their data.
After updating your iPhone to iOS 14.5, a push notification is triggered which explicitly asks if you want to allow/deny apps to track your activities on the apps.
What legal firm digital marketers needs to know?
In simple terms, it means that apps like Instagram, Facebook will now be required to ask for user consent for collecting user data and tracking their activity — which is extensively used by the marketers for retargeting campaigns. Although it is very early to predict its outcome, there are many speculations about its effect and how it will bring change to the advertising world for law firm marketers.
Legal marketers often spend money on social media and online advertising. So, they need to understand this new update because it will have a huge impact on personalized advertisements. Law firms that usually use paid advertising options on social media will have to follow the new set of rules. This way, they can easily connect with their clients to form strong business relationships.
Why is Apple making this privacy change?
Apple decided to come up with a privacy change update after many years of controversy on issues related to user privacy. Some privacy scandals, such as possible election interference, general polarization, etc. have increased public distrust of online apps, especially Facebook.
As an answer, Apple developed iOS 14.5 update to provide people more control over their data that is increasing quickly in the internet world.
Law firm marketers who depend on targeted advertising to reach their clients on Instagram and Facebook will find it difficult to do so on Apple devices and MacBook’s Safari browser. Therefore, marketers have to retarget their campaigns as per consumer’s interests and behaviour changes while following Apple’s policy changes.
After this update, Facebook has made some changes to its advertising platform. Some of these changes are:
- Increased Event Measurement: If a consumer wants to remove tracking of Facebook, the app will offer only one conversion event data point. So, in this case, only the important conversion event will be tracked, and the remaining one will be private to the user.
- 8-Event Conversion Tracking Limit: With this tracking limit, legal marketers have to choose and select which events they want to track. It will lead to a less accurate analysis of a campaign’s performance. Plus, there will be less opportunity for proper funnel optimization.
- Removal of 28-Day Click Attribution Version: Earlier, marketers could easily track user actions on the result of a Facebook ad campaign. But now, the timeframe for tracking is reduced to only seven days. So, any conversions made on day 25 after the initial click won’t be related to the Facebook ad campaign. It is not good for ad campaigns with conversions of longer days.
What does it mean to law firm marketers?
Due to this latest update, law firm marketers have to deal with consumers’ reduced behaviour and interest targeting abilities that Facebook provides. With reduced targeting options, there will be higher costs for advertising and more marketers will be competing to target fewer users. With reduced audience sizes, there is increased frequency for specific ad campaigns that may need a different approach for ad creation.
While this reduced campaign data is a major change, the rest of the Facebook advertising will remain the same and as impactful as ever. The behaviour and interest targeting options are often changing, and adaptability has been important when marketers are working with Facebook’s advertising platform.
Apple’s updated on privacy does not mean that the Facebook ad platform will be less effective for targeting customers. Facebook also knows the importance of its targeting options for marketers. So, they won’t let this update reduce the resourcefulness of their ad platform. There are already various sources on Facebook to acquire user data through web tracking.
Final words
The privacy updates on data sharing won’t go away any time soon. Like Apple, even Google is working on blocking the data tracking on various Android devices. So, law firm marketers won’t have to ignore these updates and changes. Instead, they need to adapt and capitalizing more on good old search engine optimization for leads and conversions.