Let’s face it – you’re a lawyer, not a marketing specialist or guru. 

Yet here you are trying to figure out how to make Pay Per Click (PPC) ads bring high-quality leads to your law firm.

You spend hours trying to set up a law firm PPC campaign, but you don’t have the right keywords, strategies, or intake system to handle these leads.

So, when it comes time to launch your law firm’s PPC campaign, you don’t land any leads from it. This causes you to become discouraged and failing to see the ROI from PPC. 

If this was your attempt at running a PPC campaign, then you may think that PPC isn’t right for your law firm.

The reality is: There are so many factors that go into running a successful law firm PPC campaign. 

However, there is hope and there’s no need to be skeptical about if PPC will work for you and your law firm.

We know what it takes to make paid search like Google Ads become a profitable source for lawyers to find cases and clients.

Lessons Learned on How to Generate Leads from Lawyer PPC Campaigns

We’ve spent over $2.87 million on PPC ads for over 100 law firms in the United States.

I’m sure that you can guess that we’ve learned valuable lessons on how to convert ads into high-paying cases along the way.

In today’s blog post, we’re going to be sharing those lessons with you. 

Lesson 1: Cost Per Lead Matters, But It’s Not the Holy Grail

What’s more important to your bottom-line; The average case value per lead or cost per lead?

It’s more important to consider the quality of leads that your law firm’s PPC ads bring in versus how much it costs.

Of course, you don’t want to overpay, but we would rather pay $700 per lead if it led to a 40% conversion rate. Wouldn’t you?

Let’s say that you’re a personal injury lawyer and you get a slip and fall case that cost you $700 on Google. But the settlement is upwards of $75,000. Your ROI on that case would be 107x.

Lesson 2: Make Sure Your Law Office Has a Well-Oiled Phone Intake System

Imagine this: someone has taken an interest in your law firm and your services after seeing your Google ad. Nice!

But then they call you, the phone rings, and rings, and rings… and no one picks up.

Not so nice.

They call your competitor instead who picks up on the first ring, and you just lost yourself a case.

Your leads are emotional and want immediate service.

Remember: Some niches of law, like personal injury and medical malpractice, are time-sensitive. You must be available for your potential clients when they call to inquire about your services.

We recommend making sure your phone calls are being picked up in under 5 rings.

This helps your potential clients feel important and taken care of during their time of crisis.

It’s also important to set up a follow-up system to ensure that no leads are getting lost in the shuffle. 

You know that lead that you keep meaning to call back? Chances are, they’ve already enlisted the services of another firm.

Lesson 3: Data Is Power, Track Everything and Anything

Keeping track of your incoming leads and tracing where they came from is vitally important to your law firm’s PPC campaigns.

Why?

Because data is power.

There are no losses, only lessons when it comes to your data.

Tracking everything such as: clicks, conversions, ad copy, etc will help you see what converts, and what people are ignoring.

Here’s a quick example.

The data in your law firm’s PPC campaigns show that the Ad Copy “Personal Injury lawyer” gets a lot of views, but it has yet to convert anyone.

On the other hand, your Ad Copy of “Wrongful Death Lawyer” has a high conversion rate of viable cases.

Now that you know “Wrongful death lawyer” works for you, you can use it in your blog posts, SEO campaigns, your social copy, across your website, etc.

Lesson 4: The Power of Long-Tailed Keywords In Law Firm PPC Campaigns

By now, you’re probably realizing that choosing the right keywords for your law firm’s PPC campaign is extremely vital to the success of your campaigns.

At the SMB Team, we’re huge fans of long-tailed keywords. Long-tailed keywords are strings of 3 or more words that are uses when potential leads search online.

For example: Best Divorce Lawyer Near Me is an example of a long-tailed keyword.

Why are these so important?

Because, in most cases, these long-tailed keywords have LOW TRAFFIC but HIGH VALUE.

This is a sweet spot where the competition isn’t as fierce (or expensive), but the case value is still high. 

If you get one person to convert on that long-tailed keyword, then it can make or break your ROI.

Lesson 5: Expensive Lessons: Never Learn on Your Own Dime

Improperly setting up your law firm’s PPC campaign can have some pretty expensive repercussions.

You could end up wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to figure out how to make PPC work for your law firm.

PRO TIP: We have an entire Free E-Book dedicated to heping lawyers and attorneys (like you) setup their law firm PPC campaigns.

The easiest (and most effective) route is hiring experienced agencies, like us, who specifically work with law firms and attorneys helping them find and land more quality cases through online marketing.

We’re not going to tell you that we told you so, but you can seriously save yourself valuable time and money by working with an experienced Law Firm PPC agency like ours. 

Lesson 6: Stop Thinking of PPC as a One-Time Investment

Pay Per Click Advertising isn’t a one-time investment or a “turn the faucets on” solve to generating leads for your law firm.

In fact, most times PPC campaigns work best when they’re apart of your overall marketing strategy and not the only source of leads for your firm.

However, when set up right, your PPC campaigns can provide you with priceless data that can help guide and serve the rest of your marketing strategy.

Therefore, PPC should be a long-term committment, just like any other form of marketing. You must think in 6-12 month increments and not become hot and cold with it month by month.

SEO isn’t enough to get your law firm on the front page of Google.

In fact, Google makes 97% of its revenue from ads.

Because of this, they are going to continually make it harder and harder to rank in the future so that you will invest in ads.

Think about it: the organic results have been pushed further down the page because of Google Maps and now Local Service Ads.

It’s more important than ever to set up a long term system with Google Ads that helps your law firm pull in more cases consistently.

Lesson 7: Do Not Make Long-Term Decisions on Short-Term Data

The truth of the matter is, PPC for lawyers is competitive, expensive and it takes a little bit of time to hone in on your tactics and create a sustainable pay per click campaign.

Because of this, you must be patient with the results.

We’ve seen attorneys become so hot and cold with PPC, ruining their campaigns by turning them off and on, off and on. 

To be quite honest, it’s possible to see minimal results for months, and then suddenly get a stream of several high-quality leads.

People want to measure a law firm PPC campaign’s success on a weekly or monthly basis.

A better alternative is to judge the quality of a campaign based on a yearly or quarterly basis.

This will prevent your law firm from losing quality leads in the future.

Lesson 8: Don’t Be Lazy, Stay Away from Google Ads Express

When has taking the easy way out ever paid off? Seriously!

If you want to see quality results, then don’t use the quick and easy method.

Properly setting up a law firm PPC campaign isn’t a few clicks of a button.

It takes time, skill, attention to detail, market research, competitive research and an understanding on how to stretch your ad spend.

If you take the easy way out, and use Google Ads Express, you will end up creating one massive campaign with a bunch of general keywords.

These ads will send people to your law firm’s home page on your website instead of a targeted landing page designed specifically to capture potential leads and clients.

Trust us, you will lose leads and waste money by setting your law firm’s campaigns up this way.

Google Ads need to use specific keywords that take time and research to find.

The campaign itself has to be set up with precision and detail.

You also need to track the results of the keywords. It will help determine what’s working to achieve high scores.

Lesson 9: Spend More Money

With everything else aside, Pay Per Click advertising is an investment.

It’s an investment in future ROI.

It’s an investment in data.

It’s an investment in the longterm health of your law firm’s marketing campaigns. 

If you want to profit from your law firm’s PPC ads, then you can’t be cheap with your budget.

Look at it this way: would you rather waste $1,000 – $2,000 per month, waste your time setting the campaign up, and not receive any resutls? 

Or would you rather spend $3,000 – $10,000 per month with a campaign that was set up right, and land 3-5 high value and high retainer clients per month that will exponentially pay for the ads themselves?

We recommend hiring an agency that doesn’t tie its pricing to how much money you spend on Google.

It will help ensure that your motives and their motives align with your PPC campaign goals.

Now That You Know the Lessons That We’ve Learned, What’s Next?

Our experience has led us to a place where there’s no guesswork.

We know exactly how to set-up campaigns to bring high-quality and valuable cases to you.

We can do the research and analytics to create a successful PPC campaign. Trust us, you may get lost in the data if you tried it on your own.

Your ROI is much more likely to increase with our expertise.

If you have any questions about how PPC campaigns can work for your law firm, then please send us a message.