Generating new client leads is the heart of every effective PPC ad campaign for attorneys.
However, running a successful PPC campaign requires more than setting up ads in the spare time you have in dealing with your own clients.
With so much at stake, it’s understandable you may be feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of running ads while trying to learn a new advertising platform.
Perhaps you may find working with a PPC agency can be a smart investment that allows you to focus on working with clients, while the agency does the rest to find your new client leads.
In this article, we’ll discuss the best practices to help you plan, search, and continually optimize your campaign to get the most out of your ad spend.
Defining your goals and target audience for your law firm
As a lawyer, you want to make sure your PPC ads are reaching the right people online and achieving their specific goals — whether it’s generating internet leads, phone calls, or more traffic to your website.
Without a clear understanding of who your target audience is or what your campaign’s goals are, your PPC ads can easily miss their intended target audience and fail to generate the desired results.
Let’s look at the action steps to determine which goals are important to you and who your target audience is.
Identify your main goal
Is it to generate new client leads, or compete against similar law firms? With a specific goal in mind, such as generating new client leads from your website, you can tailor the campaign to meet the needs of your target audience.
Once you have a clear understanding of your goal, developing a successful legal PPC strategy becomes much easier.
Define your target audience
Identify who your perfect client is. Consider looking to previous clients for attributes such as location, income, education level, and age to help you formulate campaigns that will resonate with your specific demographic group.
Once you’ve determined the key metrics to measure and your target audience, you can begin to conduct keyword research to understand the search terms clients are using to find legal services online.
It’s important to be aware of your jurisdiction’s regulations regarding online targeting, which can include retargeting and remarketing ads that place cookies in visitors’ browsers.
For peace of mind and optimal results, consider partnering with an experienced PPC agency such as Denver PPC which is Google Ads certified for compliance and accountability.
Conducting keyword research on legal terms
Imagine your potential client is looking for a lawyer on Google for personal injury.
They’ll probably type in “personal injury lawyer near me.”
Google will then match that search term to trigger relevant ads from law firms that have created PPC campaigns targeting those specific keywords.
Keyword researching involves identifying the specific keywords and phrases actively being searched by your target audience on Google and other search engines.
To help identify these keywords, marketers use keyword planning tools and SEO tools to perform competitive analysis, which involves identifying competitors and analyzing which keywords they’re currently bidding on.
For instance, using SEO and keyword planning tools, you can actually check on the exact keywords your competitors are using to adjust your strategy accordingly.
Landing page optimization for attorneys
A landing page is a specific page your visitors “land” on after clicking on a paid ad.
Their goals are to convert the visitor into a new lead by using calls-to-action, relevant and helpful information, and conveniently placed contact forms on the page.
There are several elements on a landing page that need to be optimized, including the headline, text copy, images, and the call-to-action (CTA) at the end that prompts the visitor to take an action — “Get a free consultation today!”
To optimize the landing page’s conversion rate, marketers will use landing page tools that offer A/B testing to automatically compare different variations of the same landing page against each other.
Whichever landing page wins will continue to be used while running more experiments to continually raise the conversion rates of the landing page.
Budgeting and bidding strategies for lawyers
Budgeting and bidding on keywords are critical aspects of running effective paid ad campaigns, however, it’s quite difficult for beginnings to figure out.
For example, it’s common to bid too low, resulting in ads not showing up enough, or bidding too high which unnecessarily drains the budget without generating enough conversions.
Luckily, many of the most popular ad platforms, such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Microsoft (Bing) Ads feature display ad targeting options to make it a bit easier.
These options allow for more specific demographic targeting based on interests, behaviors, similar audiences, and more. This ensures your ads are shown to the right people without becoming a Google Ads bidding expert.
If you’re not using display ad targeting options, you’ll need to be pretty savvy and consistent with learning to budget and bid for campaign deadlines in Google Ads manager or Facebook Ads manager.
Consistent monitoring is necessary to adjust your bid and budgets as needed and to keep an eye on important metrics such as return on ad spend (ROAS).
Tracking and measuring results for attorney-paid ad campaigns
It’s important to track and measure your results to make sure your campaign is meeting its initial goals, whether it’s to generate more leads, phone calls, or traffic to your website.
No paid ad campaign is set in stone—they’re continually in motion, with daily or weekly adjustments that can include pausing ads, creating new ad groups, creating new headlines, and optimizing the landing page.
As new data comes in, marketers can pinpoint what’s successful and what’s not to continually improve your campaign’s effectiveness. However, monitoring and analyzing data can be overwhelming, especially for lawyers who may be unfamiliar with PPC campaigns.
This is why it might be beneficial to consider outsourcing to a PPC agency that specializes in managing PPC campaigns for attorneys.
Denver PPC provides monthly reports to clients that include key metrics such as leads generated, click-through rates, cost-per-click, and conversion rates for paid ads.
These reports help our clients understand where their money is being spent and exactly how much value the ads are bringing in.
Read our case study on how we helped a law firm manage its Google Ads!
Let Denver PPC optimize your ad campaigns for new client leads
Are you tired of managing your own PPC campaigns as a lawyer?
It may seem cost-effective to do this work yourself, but it often leads to subpar results and wasted ad spending. This is where Denver PPC comes in.
Our team of PPC experts and account managers have over a decade’s worth of experience running successful campaigns for law firms of all sizes.
As a Google Ads-certified company, we have the expertise to ensure your campaigns are effective and compliant with Google’s ever-changing policies. We also specialize in managing ads across all major ad platforms including Google, Microsoft (Bing), Facebook, LinkedIn, and more!
Have an existing Google or Facebook ad account that needs help?
Contact us today to receive your free 10-point inspection
We’ll help you take your advertising to the next level.
Photo by August de Richelieu
