You’ve likely heard the statistic before. Paid advertisements have a 200% ROI and generate twice the number of visitors that organic SEO does. But there’s so much more to pay-per-click advertising than the return on investment.
Are you a lawyer looking to expand your business and attract more potential clients? As you can see, PPC for lawyers is a great way to do that. However, maxing out every trick in PPC's hat takes time and lots of patience.
Don’t worry; this comprehensive guide will cover absolutely everything you need to know about leveraging PPC for lawyers so that you can hit the ground running with a top-notch paid search campaign.
What Is PPC?
PPC stands for pay-per-click marketing. It's a digital advertising strategy that businesses use to optimize their online presence and boost sales. As the name suggests, you create ads that people find when searching online via search engines like Google. When someone clicks on your ad, you pay per click (although there are different conversion models, this is the most popular).
What's so great about PPC for law firms is that it allows your firm to target specific audiences with its ads, tracking the success of campaigns by measuring the number of clicks on an ad. This makes it one of the most effective forms of digital marketing for those with local businesses. Yep, that includes lawyers.
Imagine, for example, that you're a divorce lawyer in Chicago. With PPC marketing, you can create ads targeting only people looking for a divorce lawyer in the Chicago area. This increases the quality of leads you get because you can weed out people who either don't live in Chicago or don't need a divorce lawyer. This saves you time and money in the long run.
Overall, PPC provides an efficient way for businesses of all kinds to advertise online and tap into potential customers interested in certain products or services. PPC is self-service, allowing marketers or even attorneys to easily create campaigns and track which ones generate the best outcomes.
PPC vs. SEO
You've likely heard of SEO. It's an organic form of marketing in which you create content designed to rank on search engine result pages. Using the example above, if you invest in SEO, you'd likely create content about the benefits of working with a Chicago divorce lawyer or choosing a Chicago divorce lawyer. You'd publish that content and wait for organic traffic.
There's no denying that SEO is incredibly powerful in today's digital world. However, when it comes to marketing for lawyers, PPC is often the better choice. PPC offers fast results and is an excellent way to generate leads in the short term. PPC campaigns are also highly customizable and controllable, allowing lawyers to target their desired audience precisely and accurately.
In contrast, SEO yields more organic traffic but takes months before any substantial results can be seen. PPC more quickly raises brand awareness and traffic to lawyers' websites via appropriate PPC bid strategies. With a modest budget, you can achieve tremendous ROI.
Therefore, lawyers should consider PPC a viable alternative to less immediate marketing methods such as SEO.
Benefits of PPC Campaigns
Before starting any digital marketing campaign, it's critical to ensure you understand the benefits of the service you're investing in. We've mentioned a few PPC benefits above, but let's quickly walk you through some of the most tangible benefits of PPC campaigns for lawyers and law firms.
Brand Awareness
By strategically placing ideal ads in relevant search engine results, your law firm can increase its exposure and drive more traffic to your website.
With PPC marketing for lawyers, it's about being seen in the right places at the right time. You can target your potential clients specifically by geography or type of legal services needed, allowing you to make sure you're only paying for the most ideal clients and eliminating wasted dollars.
Furthermore, if done correctly, you can gather valuable data on how people search and what they're looking for. This kind of data is invaluable and helps tailor future campaigns more successfully.
Local Audience
Most law firms and lawyers cater to a local audience. 60% of users have contacted a local business directly when using the search results. This makes marketing on search engines like Google incredibly lucrative for businesses like law firms that only cater to local audiences.
With local PPC, you have complete control over geographic targeting, ensuring your audience is local, and the location-specific keywords you use are tailored to reach local audiences. Being able to target local demographics with detailed insight into who is looking for what services allows law firms to create more efficient campaigns with greater ROI.
Immediate Results
Most law firms don't have three to six months to wait for the effects of SEO to kick in, and we get that. That's why PPC for law firms is so helpful. While you can't expect to have leads flowing in immediately after publishing a campaign, you can expect to see results pretty quickly (if you're working with a qualified team of PPC specialists).
With PPC, you can immediately get your law firm's name and website in front of potential clients. And the best part is you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. So if no one is interested, you're not wasting any money.
Cost-Effective
Finally, PPC for lawyers is a cost-effective way to get potential clients interested in your legal services. Rather than paying for an ad up front, you only ever pay if someone clicks on your ads and visits your website or landing page.
This (usually) means there's no money wasted on people who aren't interested. That way, you can concentrate your budget on those genuinely curious, making it the perfect marketing strategy for cost-conscious lawyers who want cost-effective results.
How to Develop PPC Strategies
Are you ready to start investing in PPC? Before you get started, it's helpful to arm yourself with a few PPC tips. Regardless of what type of legal firm you work for or which area of law you work in, you can follow these tips for a successful PPC campaign setup.
Define Your Goal
First, define your marketing goals. Consider the end result — are you looking to build brand awareness and reach new potential clients, or do you more specifically want to get people to contact you for legal services? Whatever your intention, make sure your PPC campaigns align with that.
Focus on fine-tuning your keywords and target audience, so you get leads from people who already have a clear interest in your services. That way, you can be sure that all your time, energy, and money on PPC marketing is worthwhile.
Define Your Audience
With your marketing goal in mind, it's time to define your audience. This means understanding your potential clients and how they use the internet. Are they millennials with a penchant for social media? Are they retirees who prefer search engines? Knowing exactly who you're targeting makes all the difference.
Once you define your audience, you can tailor your PPC ads to appeal to them the most and result in the highest ROI. This includes crafting copy that speaks to your audience how they like to be spoken to.
Build a Keyword List
Now that you know your audience, it's time to search for the right keywords. Think broadly at first: consider words and phrases your clients would use when looking for a lawyer's services, like "personal injury lawyer" or "‘family law firm." After the primary keywords are collected, build up more secondary words such as "lawsuit help" and "finding an attorney."
These will be more specific than your primary keywords, so they won't get you bogged down in unnecessary costs. Reviewing competitors' lists can also help build out your own, giving you further inspiration and ideas that may not have occurred to you otherwise in building a good keyword list. If you're unsure where to find that list, check out Ahrefs or SEMrush.
Create a Killer Offer
You're almost ready to publish your PPC ads! However, you still need to create the ad copy. This includes creating a killer offer. Why would someone searching for the above-mentioned keywords want to click on your ad? What are you offering them?
Some examples of offers include:
- Free consultation if you contact us before the end of the month
- 10% off legal services for those who provide their email address
- $100 off consultation fee for those who sign a service contract for legal services
The options are endless. The point is that you need to ensure your ad stands out from your competitors. To create an irresistible offer, think from the perspective of what your potential clients need most. Take into account their pain points when it comes to legal services as well as what they would find valuable.
Optimize & Improve
Once you've launched your campaigns, it's a good idea to continue to monitor performance. Over time, you'll use the data provided to optimize and improve your campaigns and ad groups.
Here are a few ways to do that:
- Regularly check your campaign's performance and make adjustments as needed
- Test different ad copy and landing pages to see what works best
- Keep an eye on your competition and see what they're doing that's working well
- Use negative keywords to avoid showing your ads to people who are not interested in what you're offering
Our biggest tip is always to be testing. Try different ads, headlines, and call-to-action types to see what works best for your audience. The only way to know what works is to test different things and see what gets the best results.
PPC for Lawyers: Tips for Success
The above-mentioned PPC tips are great for any type of PPC campaign. However, how can you tailor your PPC campaign to be more effective as a lawyer? Here are a couple of lawyer-specific tips.
Focus on Local
For a lawyer looking to stay top of mind and drive new business, focusing on local audiences is key. By narrowing the focus to your community, you can craft engaging ad messages that relate directly to them and connect with potential clients who are familiar with the area.
This focus allows for an easier connection to be made as users become more comfortable trusting a law firm that is seen to invest itself in the same region they do. Plus, local listings present another great opportunity for lawyers to achieve higher visibility within search engine results — increasing the chances these same people find you at just the right moment.
Showcase Your Expertise
When running marketing campaigns, whether as an individual or as part of a larger firm or organization, it's important to showcase your knowledge and experience to potential clients in order to drive business. Potential clients want to know they can trust and rely on you when tackling some of their most pressing legal needs.
Displaying achievements associated with particular areas of law can make you stand out from your competitors and draw attention from the right people. Plus, in today's saturated market, highlighting your experiences and wins helps ensure users trust you and can validate the quality of your services.