We know: Your caseload keeps getting bigger, and there’s little to no time to stay updated on the latest digital marketing trends. Let us brief you:

One of the most important digital marketing events of the year took place on May 24. That’s right, we’re talking about Google’s annual Marketing Live. As we re-imagine digital marketing and follow new trends, it’s important to know what the biggest digital platform has to offer law firm.

Here are all the updates from GML you need to know for your law firm:

1. Video ads across Google and YouTube

We’ve said it before: Video marketing is an effective tool to find prospective clients and increase your social media engagement, so you definitely want to learn how to incorporate it into your law firm’s marketing strategy. 

Well, Google now offers more ways to create ad campaigns with video ads on YouTube shorts worldwide and Google Discover. With over 30 billion daily views, YouTube Shorts can be a great tool to provide a brand new, immersive marketing experience. 

Google Discover, on the other hand, is a user’s customized landing page, and by incorporating video ads, users can be more engaged with a company’s products and services.

2. A wider audience for CTV ads

TV and digital advertising are a match made in heaven for law firms. With Google’s updates to Display and Video 360, Connected TV (CTV) advertising can allow your law firm to campaign to Google Audiences who use smart TVs and OTT devices. This is a great opportunity to market to cord-cutters who are transitioning from cable television to internet-based streaming services.

3. Prioritizing mobile ads

Most of the time spent on the Internet and social media is from our smartphones. This is especially true for the Hispanic market, who are 77% more likely to own a smartphone compared to non-Hispanics (70%). 

Google knows this well and has announced all-new, mobile-first layouts for responsive display ads. With responsive display ads, you can upload your firm’s assets such as your logo, headlines, and images, and Google will automatically generate ad combinations for its different platforms. 

In simple words, businesses can now showcase their brands with full-screen portrait ads, along with scrollable and video ads, designed for smartphone users. If you are planning to win the Hispanic market, this is great news for your law firm.

4. Max up your Google ads campaigns

If you’re a Google nerd like us, you’ll recall they rolled out the Performance Max campaigns to all advertisers worldwide last year. If not, you’re probably confused with what we’re talking about. Let us break it down for you: 

Performance Max is a tool that will help your law firm drive better results across Google’s channels with automation. Incorporating Performance Max into your advertising strategy will help you experiment with different audiences and ad formats, and it will provide you with more insights so you know what’s driving your law firm’s performance.

Even if you’re marketing on a budget, your law firm can benefit from Google’s updates to Performance Max.

5. Privacy continues to be a priority

The death of the third-party cookie is a reality, and some marketers are still mad about it. But Google stood firm to its decision to remove third-party cookies from their browser and announced some major changes to privacy this year. 

Third-party cookies have been the go-to method to track website visitors and tailor content to their needs. At the same time, cookies had increasingly become a privacy concern for many users. But not anymore! Google will be offering safer alternatives.

By using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Google is developing interest-based advertising without third-party cookies that will not impact a user’s privacy settings. This is the breakdown: 

  • Privacy sandbox APIs: This initiative balances users’ privacy online with companies’ digital marketing strategies. The Privacy Sandbox APIs will reduce cross-site and cross-app tracking while helping to keep online content and services free for all.
  • Enhanced conversions improvements: This is another tool which will allow Google to track a user’s information without third-party cookies tracking. When you send first-party data from a user to Google, it will match that information Google accounts in its database and connect that conversion to the different Google ads that user engaged with prior to converting.

Pro tip: If you’re building your law firm’s digital marketing strategy, you no longer can target prospective clients through behavior, identity, or audience targeting. To successfully adapt to this post-”cookiepocalypse” era, you can find everything you need to know about Google Privacy updates here.

6. Building trust in advertising

It’s not surprising that users want to manage and control their web-searching experience as much as possible. This also applies to the type of ads they want to see online. 

With Google’s  My Ad Center, users will be able to pick the types of ads they want to see more or less of. Furthermore, they will be able to control what type of data they want to share with advertisers across all Google platforms, including Discovery, YouTube, and search results.

My Ad Center will offer a variety of topics and brands users can choose from to customize their ads experience when using Google on their devices.

That’s not all, folks

There are other small but equally exciting updates that you can learn about, but here’s a compact summary of features you can look forward to: 

  • A more engaging customer shopping experience: One of the biggest updates is the use of Augmented Reality technology that lets shoppers experience products from every angle and interact with them in a “real” way. 
  • New asset library: Now you can store and curate all your digital assets to create video ads. We can soon expect YouTube-optimized templates tool. 
  • Messages in ads: Another cool feature Google is incorporating to ads featured in Search is Google Business Messages, which will allow users to communicate with businesses right as they search.

We’re excited to see how your law firm uses these updates to your advantage. If you’re still unsure how you can maximize your digital marketing strategy with Google, let us help you! We’re only an email away.