Is Google AdWords or Pay-Per-Click Even Worth It?

There are endless ways for law firms to position and market themselves online. In today’s day and age, advertising is nearly everywhere you look.

It’s on the side of the bus while you’re driving to work, it’s plastered out front of what seems like every coffee shop and store that you walk into.

The second you open up on your phone in the morning, your screen is infiltrated with ads to the point that we have become almost numb to them.

Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) is one of the only forms of advertising that ensures your law firm is showing up when your prospective clients are searching.

In 2018, over 86% of all American consumers used search engines in order to find local businesses that matched their specific wants and needs.

As the popularity of mobile phones continues to rise, so does mobile search engine use. Over 53% of searches occurred on mobile devices as opposed to computers or laptops.

Of those searchers? Over 64.6% state that they click on Google ads when they’re shopping online.

With all the changes, updates and technological advances in the digital marketing industry one thing remains the same: the power of law firm PPC.

Law Firm PPC is the most dominant and fastest driver of intent-based leads.

But in 2019, your law firm’s PPC campaigns and ads need to be more nimble and mobile-friendly as ever. With the fast paced environment of the online world, you need to ensure that your quality scores stay high in order to ensure lower cost per clicks and ad positions.

Don’t worry, this definitive guide will help you set your first law firm PPC campaign up for success.

Getting Started with Law Firm PPC

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is the fastest way to generate immediate leads for your law firm.

While SEO and Social Media are great and necessary strategies for marketing your law firm, they aren’t the best avenues for generating immediate leads and cases.

You’re most likely reading this because you’re interested in how you can increase the amount of phone calls and client that you bring through your doors.

Law firm PPC is the only way to ensure that you’ll get the phones ringing and clients in the door immediately after setting your campaigns live.

It’s not some black magic technique or secret trick. The key to setting up your first successful law firm PPC campaign is to do it right.

After running law firm PPC campaigns for countless attorneys & firms, we’ve seen everything from terrible keyword choices, to the wrong settings being selected. At this point, we’ve almost seen it all.

This guide will serve as your beginner’s handbook to all things law firm PPC – an easy and digestible step-by-step framework to set up your campaigns.

Download our free Law Firm PPC E-Book and keep it handy saved on your desktop or phone as you’re taking your first steps with Pay Per Click advertising.

If you’re too busy running your law firm right now to read this entire guide, download the E-Book and read through it when it’s convenient for you!

Identifying Your Ideal Client

Any good law firm PPC campaign is rooted in data – understanding your ideal client and their behavior is vital to setting yourself up for success.

Essentially, you should understand what your customer’s want, when they’re searching and how they’re searching for it.

This should be fairly easy for you to think about – after all, you’re dealing with these clients every single day. Who comes into your office? How are they dressed, how do they speak, what are their concerns and frustrations? What do they fear?

If you can answer those three questions quickly, you’re off to a great start! If not, you’ll have to conduct more research before launching your law firm PPC campaign. Otherwise you’ll be wasting ad spend on clicks and searches that will never result in real, paying clients.

Some things to take into account are: job title, marital status, household income, age, gender, etc.

If you’re a criminal defense firm you may understand that your ideal client is a hard working, blue-collar laborer with a family who may have just found him or herself in some unfortunate circumstances.

Or, let’s say that you’re a divorce lawyer and know that your clientele is mainly C-suite executives and high net worth individuals.

Knowing the WHO is vitally important to your law firm’s PPC campaigns.

Finding Keywords That Attract Leads

Chances are that if this is your first time running a law firm PPC campaign, you’re nervous about wasting money.

Perhaps you’ve heard horror stories form other attorneys where they turned on a Google Ads campaign and burned through thousands of dollars within a matter of weeks.

Don’t worry – we’ll share a simple and easy process to follow that ensures you’re slowly testing, gathering data, and driving results with your law firm PPC campaign. 

The first step is to find cost-effective keywords within Google’s Keyword Planner.

As you can imagine, the linguistic nuances vary depending on geographic location in the United States. For example, more affluent demographics are more likely to search the word, “attorney” instead of “lawyer”.

Open up a separate document where you can make a list of your keywords – we’ll get to how you organize them later on.

NOTE: If you’re running a national law firm ppc campaign, you can leave the location as “United States”. If you’re looking to just advertising within a specific geographic area, filter by the city and state.

Type in general search keywords and phrases for the area of law that you’re looking to target.

You’ll want to get as specific as possible here to allow for the most keyword variations as possible.

Don’t just type in “divorce lawyer” – think about your ideal client and what THEY may be typing into Google when making an intent-based search.

Look for different variations such as, “divorce attorney”, “separation attorney”, “divorce lawyer near me”. Relevant keywords with a low Cost Per Click (CPC) should be treated like gold.

The column that matters most is the “Top of Page Bid (High Range)”. What can you expect to be paying if there are multiple people bidding on the same keywords during the same time of day.

A keyword may have a $5.05 low range bid, but a $90.45 high range bid.

If you’re not cognizant of this, you may run your budget dry fairly quickly.

Once you’ve gathered a list of 15-20 high traffic keywords per vertical, you can move onto actually building the campaign.

Understanding Keyword Match Types for Law Firm PPC Campaigns

Keyword Match Types are different variations that Google will use for the keywords that you tell them you want to show up for. You are basically telling Google what you want to show up for, and what you never want to show up for. Getting this right is the foundation for your law firm PPC campaign.

There are four different Keyword Match types that you can use in your law firm’s PPC campaign.

As you can see, there are quite a few different ways that Google can use the keywords that you put in for your law firm PPC campaigns.

But the question is, which ones do you want to use?

It all depends on what the goals of your law firm PPC campaign is. Let’s say that you’re going after an extremely clear niche like: paternity rights, and you’re uninterested in any work outside of this niche.

Well, you’ll most likely want to stay away from broad and broad modified keywords. These searches tend to pull in a lot of “junk” clicks and calls from searchers who don’t fit your criteria.

Exact Phrase and Phrase Match will be your best friends. These searches will be the highest quality and of highest value to you and your firm. You know that if someone specifically types in “Paternal Rights attorney near me”, chances are that this individual is going to be one that you can serve.

You want to show up any time someone specifically types in Paternal Rights – you know that these individuals are highly qualified and looking exactly for your services.

The Power of Negative Keywords in Law Firm PPC Campaigns

If you are reading this… then you better input negatives keywords into your law firm’s PPC campaigns. Seriously, we mean it.

The number one mistake that you can make in your lawyer PPC campaign is failing to utilize negative keywords. It’s one of the most fool-proof strategies to avoid wasting your Ad dollars.

Remember that fear that we we’re talking about earlier of burning out your PPC budget and not getting an ROI from your campaigns?

The fastest way to do that is by failing to use negative keywords. They’re that important.

So, what exactly is a negative keyword you ask? Well, we have an entire blog post dedicated to negatives, but to summarize:

Negative Keywords are any word that you do not want your law firm to show up for.

For example, if you’re a Family Law attorney in Chicago, and you only want to show up for cases within the city’s limits – you’d exclude every surrounding town and county.

Failing to do so will result in unwanted cases, clicks and clients whom you wouldn’t be able to serve because they’re outside of your geographic area.

If you’re a criminal defense attorney but strictly stay away from DUI cases, you would want to use negative keywords for: DUI, DWI, OVI, etc.

Doing so will prevent your ads from showing to users who are specifically looking for a DUI case. We understand that these criminal defense cases are relatively hard to win.

So, stick to what you know and go after the cases that you know can produce profitable outcomes with your law firm PPC campaigns.

Organizing Your Keywords

Once you have mapped out the keywords that you want to target and exclude, it’s important to get them organized. We recommend building this in a Microsoft Excel or Google Sheet document so that you can keep your campaigns organized.

The more specific your ad groups are, the easier it becomes to track and measure how they’re performing.

One thing to keep in mind is that very specific, long-tail keywords give HUGE insight into search-intent and the quality of the lead.

What does this mean?

If someone were to type in, “Best Paternal divorce lawyer in Miami” – you know that this candidate has most likely done some research. They know that there are lawyers out there who specifically help fathers and dads in divorces. You also know that they’re specifically looking for the best lawyer in Miami.

This lead is (most likely) willing to pay higher retainer fees to acquire top-rated service from a lawyer with a proven track record.

Build A High Converting Law Firm PPC Campaign

Now we’re at the stage where we can begin building the actual PPC campaign.

But before we get into the nitty-gritty details, here is a brief overview of how a campaign is structured.

Campaigns reside over everything – this is where you set the type and goal.

Keywords are the foundation of every campaign. They tell Google what to show your ads for, and what not to.

Ad Set’s are the physical ad – this is where you input the copy and add extensions to increase your conversion rate.

You’ll want to login to your Google Ads account and create a new campaign.

1. Select “SEARCH” Campaign Type

Unless you’re running a display ad, you’ll want to select “Search” campaign type. This means that your ads will show on Google.com when potential leads are searching.

Campaign types determine where customers see your ads and the settings and options available within those ads.

But, for your basic PPC campaign, you’ll use the search campaign.

2. Select Campaign Goal

For this example, we recommend using the Leads goal for your campaign.

Essentially what this means is that you’ll be able to include specific features that’ll increase the potential that a searcher becomes a lead for your business.

With campaigns that have leads as the goal – specific features that start the conversion process will be available to you such as: audience targeting, extensions and access to Google’s partner network that will increase the likelihood of your ads being seen by the right audience.

3. Select how you’d like to reach your goal

There are four different options here: website visits, phone calls, store visits and app downloads.

As a law firm, the only two options that you want to select are website visits and phone calls

4. Update Campaign Settings

This is pretty straightforward, but you’ll want to rename your campaign.

Use a naming system that works for you. Ideally, it should describe the niche of law and location.

Having a general system for naming your campaigns will come in handy in the long-run when you have multiple campaigns running at once.

Additionally, you want to unselect display network, making sure that only the Search Network is running. Otherwise, your ads will start to show across Google’s Display Network of over 2 million websites, videos & apps.

While this is a great option with some campaigns, it may burn through your budget on users who aren’t specifically looking for your services.

5. Determine Location Targeting

This is where you need to really pay attention!

Ensure that you include (and exclude) each specific area that you want to target.

For example, are you only concerned with serving clients within one specific city such as Miami, Florida. But, you’d never want your ad to show up for a search in Fort Lauderdale, Florida?

This is where you’d tell Google that very information.

6. Deciding On A Budget

Your daily budget is 100% in your control.

Depending on your specific geographic location, you’ll want to have a competitive budget.

For example, in highly populated metropolitan areas such as New York City or Los Angeles, you’ll want to ensure that your ads have a high enough daily budget that you show up for searches.

If not, you’ll get eaten alive by your competition.

We recommend starting with a daily budget at anywhere from $50-$100 dollars per day. Don’t worry, Google won’t ever go over this number.

However, there will be circumstances when Google doesn’t even come close to spending your daily budget. This may be an issue within itself as the keywords that you’re bidding on aren’t getting enough search traffic.

One way to understand how much to set your daily budget at is to do a little bit of competitive research.

Spying On Your Competitor’s Law Firm PPC Ads

If you aren’t aware of who your major competitors online are – There are two things that you can do. The first being a simple Google search to see what lawyers in your area are bidding on, how they’re showing up and what their ads look like.

Given that you’re physically located and searching in the area in which you’d be targeting, simply go to Google and type in a search related to your field of law.

For the sake of this example (seen below), I took the third ad down and copy and pasted it into SpyFu.

From there, SpyFu scans their URL to see which keywords on Google are linked to it and pulls the data that it has.

If you click “Paid Search (PPC) on the right hand side, you’ll be able to bring up a deeper analysis into their Paid Advertising campaigns.

Once you pull up the in-depth PPC report (seen below) , you’re able to see what specific keywords they’re bidding on and a rough estimate of their CPC as well as their monthly budget.

While there’s no way for SpyFu to 100% accurately tell, it uses a fairly accurate alogirthm to determine these numbers.

Continue this process for 3 or more competitors to get a good idea as to what they’re spending online.

You’ll be able to use this as a gauge for what you set your daily budgets at, which keywords you want to bid on and which you’d like to stay away from.

Writing Law Firm PPC Ads That Sell

Having persuasive, effective and clear copy writing skills are necessary for creating Google Ads that convert into paying legal clients.

You want to be able to clearly position your company amongst the competition while also speaking directly to your ideal clients’ needs. This makes all world of difference when it comes to generating a positive ROI from your law firm PPC campaigns.

The key here is to have your campaigns so highly targeted that the ads feel as though you’re speaking directly to the user on the other side of the search engine.

In a study conducted by One Spot, over 87% of consumers stated that personally relevent branded content positively influences how they feel about a specific brand or agency.

Which ad from above do you think speaks directly to the consumer? Take in all accounts of the Ad: headlines, descriptions and extensions

In our opinion, #2 speaks the most clearly to a potential client. Here’s Why:

Speaks Directly To Searcher – It answers their needs specifically in the description. “Accused Of A Crime?”. If someone is looking for a criminal defense attorney, chances are that they or a loved one have found themselves in some form of criminal trouble.

Builds Trust & Rapport – “We’re Aggressive & Successful”. When dealing with a criminal charge, these types of cases can be as small as misdemeanors to as large as federal charges. Potential clients want to know that you’re going to fight for their rights and have a proven track record.

Emphasizes Locality – When an individual types in “Near Me”, you already know that they’re fairly serious about needing legal representation. They aren’t searching “criminal defense lawyer” to do research, they’re looking for one to contact. By including “Near Me” in the headline as well as the location extension it emphasizes the fact that this specific law firm is local to the searcher.

Secret Power of Ad Extensions for Conversion Rate

Extensions are add ons to the bottom of a Google Ad that help increase the conversion rate.

Conversion rate is arguably the most important metric to use when evaluating how well your PPC campaign is performing.

Ultimately, conversion rate tells you how many people that see your ad are taking a desired action. This desired action could be a phone call, form fill or a click on a specific part of your landing page.

Ad Extensions go below the description and they allow you to expand your ads so that they take up more space above the fold as well as provide clickable links that increase your click through rate (CTR).

There are many different types of Ad Extensions that you can choose, but a general rule of thumb is to select extensions based on your goal.

How do you know which ones to choose? We’ve outlined that below.

Goal: Purchase From Business Location

Location Extensions – These encourage individuals to visit your business by showing your address, a call button and links to your business details page which gives them hours of operation, photos of your business and directions on how to get there.

Callout Extensions – These include any specific services that your business provides such as, “Free Delivery” or “24 Hour Service”. These types of conversions help convert searchers offline.

Goal: Contact You

Call Extensions – Adding your phone number or a call button to your ads increases the likelihood that a searcher takes an action and calls your business to speak directly with you and learn more.

Message Extensions – These allow users to send you text message directly from your ad.

Goal: Website Conversions

Sitelink Extensions – These link searchers directly to specific pages on your website such as an “Order Now” page or your hours of operation.

Callout Extensions – These include any specific services that your business provides such as, “Free Delivery” or “24 Hour Service”. These types of conversions help convert searchers offline.

Structured Snippet Extensions – This type of extension allows you to showcase information that potential customers will find most valuable by selecting a predefined header and adding list items.

Price Extensions – These showcase your services or product categories with prices so that searchers can easily scan and browse your products right from your ad.

Putting It All Together

Once your Law Firm PPC campaigns are built and have gone live, you’ll have to monitor them daily so that you can make optimizations that may save you time and money in the long run.

Give your campaign 3-4 weeks to gain traction and real data – from there, you’ll be able to adjust keyword bidding, add or remove keywords, and find different ways to test ad copy. You’ll want to discard of any poorly performing ads that are wasting your budget and hurting your quality score.

Follow this guide when you’re setting up your campaign to improve your chances of seeing an ROI from your law firm PPC campaigns.

Have you ran your Law Firm PPC campaign yet? Share your experience and tips with us in the comments!

PPC Questions & Answers!

What Happens During The First 90-Days Of a New Law Firm PPC Campaign?

Unfortunately, there is a long learning period with any brand new Law Firm PPC campaign. This learning period is vital to the long-term success of your law firms’ PPC results.

During the first few days after a brand new legal PPC campaign goes live, there is a lot going on behind the scenes (most of which you are probably unaware of).

For example, a high-level legal marketing agency will be doing keyword-level bid management daily for the first few weeks to ensure your newly created ads are showing up within the top 2 positions on mobile and on desktop.

Each keyword will vary in competition (based on your target market) which further compounds the importance of this step. If one of your highest performing keywords is triggering an ad that is showing up on the 2nd page, this needs to be fixed.

Then, for the first 2 weeks, a good legal marketing agency will be doing HEAVY negative keyword optimization.

This involves looking through every single search term that people typed in before clicking on your ads, and excluding certain words to ensure that no money is being wasted on irrelevant clicks in your local market.

In addition, additional keywords will be added to your campaigns, all disapproved ads will be troubleshooted and mobile device optimization will begin to take place.

After month 1, it usually makes sense to start taking action on your split tests from a click-through-rate perspective. This is where we essentially will be doubling-down on the ads that are resonating the best with your local audience.

After month 2 or 3 (depending on the number of leads you’re getting per-week), you can start to do conversion rate optimization.

This involves pausing keywords that are not pulling in leads. It is vital to make sure you are making conversion optimization decisions based on a large enough sample size.

So, in some cases, it is better to wait until you have 90 days of complete conversion data to make decisions on.

Once you have enough data to make conversion optimizations, you can then begin to make demographic bid adjustments, to show your ads to people who fit your ideal demographic filters.

After 90 days, your remarketing list will grow to a point where your Facebook, Instagram and YouTube remarketing ads will begin to actually pull in some very inexpensive leads.

These leads will typically be people that visited your landing pages, but weren’t ready to call in when they first saw your ad.

The thing that makes me hurt inside is when a law firm tells me all of this work was put in, yet they still cancelled immediately after this 90-day window.

Why You Shouldn’t Turn Off Law Firm PPC Campaigns: The Tragedy Of Turning Off Your Campaigns After 90-Days

If you are working with a high-end legal marketing agency that you trust is doing good work, it is almost always a bad decision to abandon ship if things aren’t performing perfectly during the first 90 days.

As was explained above, you are investing a lot of money into the optimizations and improvements that are being made during the first 90 days of your PPC campaigns being live.

All of the historical data, negative keywords, bid optimizations and conversion rate optimizations will go to waste if you jump ship and don’t take action on the improvements that were made!

It is my sincere belief that the reason most law firms are dissatisfied with the results PPC can provide, is because they jump around too much and don’t take advantage of long-term data sets.

Put simply, most smaller law firms haven’t stuck with PPC long enough with a committed enough team to actually see the amazing things that are possible on the largest search engines in the world!

Not to mention, keep in mind that it has been that reported that over 51% of leads generated by PPC, will go untracked. For this reason, I always say that PPC for law firms is half tracked and half-GUT!

The real question is do you have the GUT to stomach the fact that at least half of your PPC leads will go untracked?! Or, are you going to continue to obsess over “tracked leads”, continue churning through PPC agencies and never experience the benefits that come from fine-tuning your strategy over multi-year time-frames with an agency you trust?

If you trust the legal marketing agency you are with, I suggest you stick with them for at least a year until you see what optimizations have been made and the results that come from these optimizations. I know this is a small sample size, but 100% of the law firms that work with us for at least 12 months see between a 5X-11X ROI (depending on the niche of law).

If you stick with PPC, and follow even an “OK” strategy for 1 year, you will see a net positive ROI. It works! It just takes patience, time and DATA! My question to you is… do YOU have the patience and persistence to eventually see a 10X ROI from your law firm’s PPC strategy?

PPC For Lawyers | The 4 Factors To Law Firm PPC Success

Are you looking to generate highly-qualified personal injury leads, family law leads or criminal defense leads for your law firm? Have you failed time and time again with your PPC efforts on Google, Bing or Facebook? Are you afraid to waste any more of your precious advertising dollars on failed PPC campaigns?

If your answer is “Yes” to any of the above questions, then please keep reading. This article will teach you how to not repeat the same mistakes.

After managing over 200 lead generation campaigns for law firms across the United States, I can honestly say that most lawyers (and legal marketers) have it all wrong when it comes to their PPC strategy.

There are 4 main factors that contribute to a successful or unsuccessful PPC campaign:

• Targeting
• Competition
• Conversion
• Lead Nurturing

#1: Targeting

How you target your law firm’s PPC campaigns is one of the most important factors to master if you want to generate high quality cases. Most lawyers go after the higher-traffic “lawyer” or “attorney” keywords.

For example, if you are looking for auto accident leads, you may bid on keyword variations like “Auto Accident Lawyer” or “Car Accident Lawyer.” While you may pull in a lot of clicks by bidding on high-traffic keywords like this, a low percentage of those clicks will turn into actual leads and/or cases.

It is NOT always smart to bid on the highest traffic terms in your market. It works better to bid on keywords that are lower in volume, BUT highly targeted.

For example, bidding on something like “Motorcycle Wreck Lawyer San Diego” and/or “18 wheeler crash lawyer” would make more sense. The more specific the keywords you target, the less you will pay per click and the more likely that click will actually turn into a person calling you with a viable case.

It is also not always smart to JUST bid on keyword variations that include the words “Lawyer”, “Attorney” and/or “Law Firm.” Sometimes it is better to get very specific with the practice areas or accident types you are targeting.

For example, it can cost $4 per-click for a “Motorcycle Crash Injuries” click vs. $90 per-click for “Motorcycle Injury Lawyer” click. Not only do you want to bid on highly specific keyword phrases, but you also want to bid on terms that do not include the keywords “Lawyer.”

Finally, demographic targeting is becoming more and more important by the day when it comes to search advertising.

With Facebook, we all know how detailed you can get with their demographic filters…it’s AMAZING! However, a lot of lawyers aren’t aware that you can target your ads on Google and Bing by demographics, in addition to keyword searches.

For example, for most personal injury campaigns, you don’t want to target people in the top 10% household income brackets. Most times, the clicks coming from the top 10% household income brackets are from your competitors clicking on your ads.

On the other hand, if you are targeting high net worth divorce cases, you definitely ONLY want to bid on the top 20% income brackets.

Target your campaigns with precision and you will move closer towards PPC success for your law firm.

#2: Competition

In order to make your law firm’s lead generation strategy work via PPC, you need to take into account the competition index of the geographic areas and keywords you are targeting. My general recommendation is always to travel where the air is thin and the traffic is slim.

If you are targeting a major metropolitan area, you always want to look into the competition index in the surrounding counties of that metropolitan area. In New York City, for example, the competition index in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens is MUCH lower than Manhattan.

Sometimes, by targeting the counties surrounding a major metro, you can see a 30-40% decrease in cost-per-click. Also, we have found that specific zip codes can be twice as expensive for the same quality of case. Excluding high-competition zip codes can reduce your cost-per-intake dramatically.

In addition, you always want to be conscious of the competition index of the keywords you are targeting. Google has a new feature where you can see the “Top-of-Page Bid (High Range)” and “Top-of-Page Bid (Low Range).” By using the Google Keyword Planner, you can analyze exactly which keywords are lower in competition. You can also do this per geographic area.

As was discussed before, some of the most competitive keyword phrases in legal marketing include the words “Lawyer” or “Attorney” in them.

Sometimes, it makes great sense (depending on your local market) to bid on keywords that are very specific about the client’s issues, rather than targeting the words “Lawyer” and “Attorney” in all of your Ad Groups.

For example, we pulled in a 7-figure case for only $50 before by simply bidding on “Cerebral Palsy Malpractice” instead of “Cerebral Palsy Lawyer”.

Understand and take action on the competition index to improve your PPC case generation results.

#3: Conversion

Landing pages, answering services and follow up, oh my!

If you are looking to convert a high percentage of your PPC clicks into leads and a high percentage of your leads into actual cases, you MUST be focused on the post-click conversion experience. My question here is simple, “What the heck happens after you do all of this detailed targeting and get the click?!”

First things first, you need a landing page. If you are currently sending your PPC clicks to your firm’s homepage, that is a big problem and please stop this immediately.

You need a separate landing page for EVERY NICHE OF LAW you market for. For the sake of this blog post, we are not going to go into detail about how to design your landing page. Just know that your landing pages need a practice area-specific headline, AND they must make it easy for potential leads to call you and/or submit a form on your website.

If you have any questions on how we create landing pages that convert upwards of 23%, please email me directly at bill@smbteam.com.

Great, so let’s say you have an amazing landing page. Now what happens after a lead calls the phone number or submits a contact form on your landing page? That’s right, you need an answering service and a lead follow up system in place.

There are quite a few great services out there that will answer all of your phone calls and follow up with your leads for you (Alert Communications, Ruby and Answer1 to name a few). But, if you can’t afford an answering service, my recommendation is to ONLY run your ads when you have someone available at your firm to answer the calls.

Don’t expect cold leads with great cases that find you on the internet to bang down your firm’s doors, begging you to be their lawyer!

Regarding follow up, we have a full sales training university online located at vimeo.com/smbteam. Check it out if you’re interested in amping up your firm’s sales systems!

#4: Lead Nurturing

When doing PPC for lawyers, re-targeting and email drip campaigns are of vital importance.

The average conversion rate on a landing page is about 5%. This means that (on average) only 5 out of 100 clicks from your PPC campaign will turn into a lead.

We design landing pages that convert at an average of 20%. However, even at the 20% mark, that would mean that 80% of the visitors (clicks) that travel to your landing pages are not going to immediately become leads.

You can re-capture this warm audience with Facebook, Instagram and Google Display re-targeting ads for pennies on the dollar. This will ensure that all non-converted leads are still seeing your ads when they log into Facebook or Instagram and on Google’s display network of over 2,000,000 websites!

Finally, what happens to the leads that submit their information on your landing page or website (give you their email), but don’t immediately convert into a case?

These leads need to be sent an automated email marketing “drip” sequence for the next 4-6 months, to ensure they convert into clients of your firm. Nothing crazy here, just keep your firm top-of-mind for these people.

I sincerely believe that if you refocus your law firm’s PPC efforts on more granular targeting, lower competition index demand, post-click conversion optimization and lead nurturing, you will generate a much higher ROI through your existing law firm PPC strategy.

Is Google AdWords or Pay-Per-Click Even Worth It?

So you’re wondering, “Should I consider Google AdWords or Pay Per Click Advertising as a Small To Medium sized business?”

Does Pay-Per-Click or Google AdWords even work for small to mid-sized businesses?

At the SMB Team, this is a question we get asked frequently from small business owners just like you. However, most times, we can’t answer this question without knowing the answer to the following 3 questions:

Question 1: What is your goal for using Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords)?

If you want to generate leads, it will probably work well (considering you answer yes to the following 2 questions). However, if your answer is to build brand awareness, it probably won’t work.

Question 2: Is your industry a high-demand industry?

When customers in your industry are ready to buy, are they in immediate need of your services? How much research do your customers do before making a decision? How quickly do they need you?

To figure this out, simply go to Google right now and type in what your ideal customer would type in when trying to find you. Do you see tons of ads up top? Great, that probably means your industry works on AdWords!

Question 3: Are you working with an expert or a salesman?

This question is perhaps the most is CRUCIAL out of all 3.

Most business owners that are in the right industry for AdWords and have the right goals set around AdWords are ripped off by these “Pay-Per-Click Salesmen” who know nothing about what they’re selling.

This is why most people don’t think Google Ads work. The reality is: you didn’t deal with a professional.

How Google Ads (AdWords) Can Benefit Your Business

Well, now that you answered my 3 questions above (hopefully), you probably have a better feeling as to whether or not Google AdWords ‘works.’

So, let’s say your goal is to generate leads with Google AdWords AND you’re in a high-demand niche. Below are some of the things that search engine marketing can do, that no other platform is capable of.

#1: Nearly Instant Page-One Rankings on Google

I think everyone would agree that it’s important to be on the first page of Google, right? Well what if I told you that 96% of people don’t even scroll down at all when they land on Google? You not only have to be on the first-page, but also high up. With Google AdWords, you can instantly do both. With SEO, you can do both, but in 6-8 months.

#2: Reach Highly Motivated, Targeted Prospects

With Google Ads (AdWords), you can target people based on exactly what they type in, before they see your ad. Not only can you do that, you are also showing them an ad when they’re motivated enough to be searching for your services.

#3: You Only Pay For Clicks (Action)

You are not paying for the people that just see the ad. You only pay for the clicks. So, if your landing page is great at converting clicks into leads, essentially, you only pay for leads!

#4: Geographic Precision

You can target where your ads are shown based on the location of your searchers laptop or mobile phone. This way, you will only get customers within your service area(s).

#5: Control

You have control over your keywords, daily budget, where the ads show up, how much you’re willing to pay per-click, the time the ads are shown, the messaging, the landing page and more. There’s no rolling dice with Search Engine Marketing.

#6: Best Form of Keyword Research

Many people don’t know this, but Google AdWords is the highest-level keyword research tool available. When you run a live campaign, you can see specifically what people type in online before they choose you, and you can use that knowledge in all of your other marketing channels.

What To Look For In Your Google Ads Campaign

Aside from all of the benefits of Google AdWords, what should you look for when you are running a Google AdWords campaign to know if it is working?

#1: Getting A Return On Your Money

Make 100% sure that the company you’re working with is tracking your results. Call recording and form-fill tracking is mandatory. Over the first 6 months you need to be certain that this investment is making you money.

#2: Relevant Keywords

Before any campaign launches, make sure you know what keywords are being used in your campaign

#3: Send Traffic To A Landing Page

If your website sucks, don’t send Google traffic to it. Build a new one or use a separate landing page.

#4: Follow Up With Non-Converted Traffic

Make 1000% sure that you are using remarketing to track every website visitor that does not convert into a lead! Also, make sure you are capturing the emails from all interested parties who reach out to you.

#5: Speed Of Improvements

AdWords is a learning process. However, if you’re working with someone new for AdWords advertising, always look for the changes they are making during the 1st month. This is crucial. No changes, no improvement.

#6: Use of Spy Tools

Make sure that spy tools were used to create your AdWords campaign. Spy tools allow you to spy on your competitors and figure out whats working for them. This will save you A LOT of money.