PPC For Lawyers: The Ultimate Guide to Get More Clients Now

Have you invested a lot of money on paid ads only to find that they didn’t perform well enough? Randomly applying strategies like using the most popular keywords on Google can be a bit too expensive to help your law firm stand out on the internet. Therefore, it’s crucial to proceed correctly when implementing PPC for lawyers.

Many attorneys are already fetching scores of clients by virtue of their well-thought-out PPC strategies. So, how are they getting it right?

You’ll get all the answers in our guide to crafting the best PPC strategies for any law firm’s PPC campaigns. So, do stay with us till the end.

What Is PPC For Lawyers?

PPC for lawyers is part of paid online advertising that targets audiences who are necessarily searching for legal information or legal help online. It helps potential clients discover your services online as PPC ads are placed above the organic results in the search engine results pages.

This amounts to a premium placement in the SERPs on leading search engines such as Google. Speaking of the payment terms for PPC ads, law firms need to bid on some target keywords and pay only when people click on the ads.

The cost-effectiveness and easy measurability of this ad format have made it quite popular among online advertisers. Moreover, PPC ads have been shown to receive high-traffic inflow for all businesses— Recent studies reveal that over 33% of potential clients end up clicking on PPC ads.

While SEO for law firms is an excellent way to generate leads, PPC is just more powerful than SEO! A lead that comes from a paid ad is 50% more likely to convert than one that comes through organic traffic!

But to create truly conversion-worthy PPC campaigns for lawyers, you’ll need to effectively juggle several crucial marketing activities simultaneously. So, we’d say that PPC needs smart work just as much as hard work.

4 Benefits of PPC Ads for Lawyers

Even experts seem to agree that pay per click ads can initially seem competitive, expensive, and quite challenging to master. But once you’ve optimized your PPC ad campaigns the right way, you’ll only be left with the benefits, leads, and profits!

So, let’s learn about the various ways in which PPC can boost a lawyer’s digital presence, and ultimately their business growth:

1. PPC Ads Creates Targeted Marketing Approach

In the case of traditional techniques and other digital forms of advertising, companies pay for a general audience to view an advertisement. However, a targeted marketing model involves breaking the market into different segments.

PPC advertising focuses on getting measurable results through creating a targeted approach. It entails aiming marketing efforts to assist lawyers in generating more leads for their law firms.

PPC ads are known for generating high quality leads by targeting cohorts who are searching for specific legal services like criminal lawyers, tax lawyers, personal injury law firms, or civil lawyers to assist them on legal matters. This enables the firms to use specific keywords that their ideal targeted clients are searching for.

A PPC framework uses the integration of targeted marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) to boost lead generation for a law firm.

In the process, the pricing, distribution, and promotion of the services become cost-effective and truly conversion-worthy— because your advertisements only appear to the people who are searching for your services.

2. Offers More Data and Information

In an age where the world is heavily dependent on data analytics, PPC for law firms provides an abundance of information to optimize ads for boosting ROI.

Lawyers can gather data through PPC, including conversions, clicks, and impressions, which can provide valuable insights to a law firm on achieving KPIs in digital marketing.

For example, A/B testing lets advertisers experiment with two landing page variants to determine the one that comes with more conversions. For this, they might have to use marginally altered images and keywords or post at a different time of the day.

With PPC campaigns, law firms can obtain valuable ad performance data and refine ads regularly until they reach their peak in terms of audience engagement.

3. High Flexibility

Every element of digital marketing relies on a symbiotic relationship between internet users and search engines to fetch the desired results. Furthermore, both search algorithms and user behavior can change with changes in technology and the emergence of new trends.

Fortunately, PPC advertising lets businesses make decisive and swift adjustments to a campaign based on their changing needs.

This is nothing short of a boon for lawyers since they often need to change marketing strategies based on their online visibility and business performance at any point in time. As a result, they can steer clear of wasteful expenditure on under-performing campaigns or use the initial signs.

4. Fetches Faster Results

Once a PPC ad goes live, a law firm can track metrics on its visibility to the target audience and make necessary changes almost immediately. This feature of PPC ads helps reap the maximum benefits from their PPC advertising campaigns within a short span.

At the same time, lawyers should give each PPC campaign some time to collect the data required for any major marketing decisions. It’s not viable to make an effective decision for a PPC strategy by experimenting for a few hours. Moreover, your targeted demographic might be more active on a particular day or even during a certain period.

How to Create PPC Advertising for Lawyers?

Even the top-notch strategies for PPC marketing for lawyers won’t work if you don’t consolidate the foundations of a PPC campaign. Thus, first off, you’ll need to set up the campaign in line with the best practices in today’s PPC marketing scenario.

The simplest campaign type to start with is paid search, as it helps advertisers feature directly on a SERP for particular keywords. For instance, if you search for “business lawyer San Francisco, you’ll get results similar to the ones shown on the page below.

A successful PPC campaign will focus on the identification and bidding of keywords on the basis of the legal services you provide. For instance, if you’re a business lawyer practicing in San Francisco, the more lucrative keywords to bid on can be:

• Business lawyer
• Business lawyer San Francisco
• San Francisco law firm

That said, here’s a round-up of the steps to follow for executing a PPC campaign for lawyers:

Step 1: Campaign Strategy

Before you embark on crafting a well-targeted PPC campaign for your law firm, you’ll need to set a clear timeline and goal for executing them effectively. Below are some significant questions to ask yourself while jotting down the PPC campaign strategy for a law firm:

• Which audience am I targeting?
• What goals am I looking to achieve with the PPC ads?
• Which type of legal practices am I advertising for?
• What’s the message that I want to showcase about my firm?
• What is my budget for PPC ads?
• How can I track the results and performance of the campaigns?

In the strategy-making phase of the campaigns, you’ll need to gather your marketing experts to discuss the answers to the above questions or others you might come up with. This will help ensure the execution of the campaign is aligned with the results you’re looking to achieve. However, if you

Step 2: Campaign Creation

After opening the ad workspace on Google, navigate to the “Type” option and select “Search Network Only” from the drop-down. Further, you can choose between a standard PPC campaign with keyword-targeted ads or one with all the features enabled for advertising on the Google search network.

Next, you’ll need to set up location targeting so that you’re able to reach out to potential clients within the desired radius. This is crucial as you might not want to work with clients beyond a particular area.

So, under the “Location” option, select “Let Me Choose” and click on “Advanced Search”. You can then either target clients by a radius or via city.

The next step will be to set the budget and bid strategy. If you’re new to leveraging PPC ads for your law firm, it’s best to use an automated strategy for bidding that AdWords offers by default. You may consider exploring PPC management packages to ensure optimal campaign performance.

This is shown as “maximize conversions” and adjusts your bids to obtain the maximum conversions possible as per your budget. As for setting the budget, you’ll simply need to calculate and enter your daily or monthly budget in the corresponding section.

Step 3: Deciding on The Keywords and Ad Groups

Ad group is a term used collectively to define a few ads that are based on a common idea or theme and have similar targets. Each PPC ad campaign can contain one or more ad groups based on the advertiser’s needs.

The majority of today’s campaigns work on a Single Keyword Ad Group (SKAG) approach.

This implies that for every keyword you target, you’ll need to create an ad group that comes with exact, phrase, and broad match keyword targeting. Notably, the match types govern how accurately a search term should match the keyword before an ad appears on the SERP.

For instance, a business lawyer should create ads consisting of keywords such as:

• +business +lawyer– broad match- ads are shown for searches on variations of this keyword.
• business lawyer– phase match – ads are shown for queries that contain this keyword
• [business lawyer] – Exact match – ads show up when the query is the exact keyword

The use of the SKAG approach provides you with more granular control over a campaign. You can swiftly separate keywords that drive phone calls and form submissions from the ones that don’t.

As a result, you can effectively adjust the PPC budget by directing PPC ad spend toward the high-performing keywords and away from ones that are performing poorly.

This approach also allows you to tailor each ad to the keyword you’re targeting, as each keyword falls in a separate ad group. When you’re able to customize the ads to a specific keyword, you’ll be able to improve their quality score and CTR easily.

Step 4: Choosing Ad Framework & Ad Creation

The final phase involves creating ads for the ad group. Since you’d want to use the SKAG Ads framework, every section of the ad should incorporate the targeted keyword.

As an attorney, you are most likely to create text ads as these are the most inexpensive and efficient at the same time. These ads have limited space, which requires you to be wise about their usage.

There are three distinct parts of a text ad creation for lawyers & law firms— the display URL, the heading, and the Description, so ensure that the target keyword features in all three.

STAG ads are an alternative to the SKG framework. The STAG ads are characterized by single themes instead of keywords that fuel the SKAG ads format. However, as a lawyer, this might not be the ideal choice.

However, in 2023, the SIAG ad is making the rounds as it targets a group of words that mean the same thing. Hence, if you were to target ”PPC for lawyers” as your main keyword, ”PPC for attorneys” and ”Advocate PPc” would come under the umbrella, too.

If you are performing the PPC campaign yourself, the Hagakure Ad framework is a good alternative. It uses automated and smart bidding strategies to maximize the PPC efforts.

6 Best Strategies for Optimizing PPC Campaigns Lawyers

Once you’ve launched a law firm PPC campaign, you’ll need to optimize and refine the campaign regularly to evolve it into a well-oiled machine for effective lead generation.

While it might need quite a few trial and error sessions and much experimentation, we can vouch that the results will seem worth the effort!

1. Craft A Copy That Clients Can’t Unsee!

While writing an ad copy, your focus should be on your USPs as a lawyer. Plus, ensure that you support the statement(s) with a call to action like “Book A Meeting” or “Call us now”.

Keep in mind that copywriting will need you to experiment from time to time. That way, you can easily determine the message that resonates well with users.

Your ultimate aim is to get potential clients to click through the website and book a consultation to learn about your legal assistance services.

For this, we recommend trying different versions of the ads and running them for 7 days. This will help you identify the ones that are performing the best and reallocate the budget accordingly.

2. Apply the Keyword Planner Tool

Next up, you’ll need to research the best keywords to use in your ad copy to make the ads visible to a larger section of your target audience.

The Keyword Planner Tool from Google Ads can help you find relevant search terms by analyzing a competitor’s or your own website. Rest assured that the results you get from this tool will help boost lead generation and conversion in the long term.

Here’s what you get from using the Google Keyword Planner for keyword research:

1. View the estimates of searches that your keywords get every month.
2. Discover new keywords relevant to your target audience and law firm in particular. You’ll regularly get suggestions on relevant keywords relating to your website and services.
3. Determine the budget for your PPC ad campaign. You’ll see the average cost for an ad to show on keyword searches.

Now, when choosing keywords from the data you get with the tool, you’ll need to observe the search volume, as that would tell a lot about the search behavioral patterns.

Generally, more generic and broader keywords that have high search volumes are costlier. The more specific long-tail keywords have a much lower search volume and, hence, are quite affordable. You can then balance your total campaign spend easily.

3. Incorporate Keywords the Right Way

The criteria Google uses to rank law firms are no different from those used in other industries. They are based on the relevance and helpfulness of the services a firm offers.

An ad copy more relevant to the keywords you’ve chosen is sure to result in a greater quality score for your law firm. The quality score is one of the most crucial ranking metrics used by Google- it decides where the ad appears and also the cost per click applicable.

When using keywords in your PPC ad copy, make sure to remember the following tips:

Bid on Long-Tail Keywords

As we mentioned earlier, long-tail keywords aren’t as competitive as short-tail ones, which makes them more cost-effective. And a significant advantage of using such keywords is that they can help law firms target potential clients more effectively.

Include keywords throughout the ad

Keywords, when inserted in the headline right away, ensure your ads rank higher on a SERP. Apart from this part, you need to make sure the keywords appear in your CTA and benefit statements.

Consider Dynamic Insertion of Keywords

This term is given to the practice of using a widely searched query in the ad, which makes it more relevant to the needs of your target audience.

Create Conversion-Worthy Landing Pages

When potential clients click on a PPC ad campaign for your law firm, that’s half the job done. Thereafter, the campaign leads clients to a landing page, which must be conversion-worthy enough to convert the prospects into new clients.

That’s why creating a landing page focused on generating conversions is the key to churning out successful ads for a law firm. Remember that the landing page of a PPC campaign is its continuation and leads potential clients to an actionable step.

In today’s online advertising scenario, the most profitable landing pages for law firm PPC ads are minimalist in design and come with a simple CTA. This rule out the chances of the visitors getting confused about what to do next.

In case you require quality advice on crafting the perfect landing pages for your law firm, it will be best to hire a PPC agency for lawyers that has considerable expertise and experience.

4. Advertise on Mobile

As per the latest data available on mobile screen time, an average smartphone user in the US spends 7 hours and 5 minutes on the device. What’s more, mobile devices constitute 55% of the total web traffic on a global level!

That’s why it’s crucial to ensure your PPC ads are set up for mobile to make the utmost impact on the potential clients.

Even a few years back, several law firms pondered over showcasing their Google Ads campaigns on mobile due to the time needed to manage them and the complexity of running the ads.

However, the introduction of Enhanced Campaigns on Google made it much easier to implement mobile ads. The increasing popularity of this advertising format has helped boost calls and website visits considerably.

5. Add Extensions To Enhance CTR

When it comes to legal affairs, time is a crucial factor. Potential clients expect to be able to connect with their chosen law firm quickly. Similarly, you’d want a suitable prospect to get in touch easily to generate a fresh conversion.

To that end, Google ad extensions are a great resource to adopt as they can simplify the journey for both lawyers and their prospects.

The most common forms of ad extensions are:

• Location information
• Call button
• Link to particular pages of the firm website

Google revealed that incorporating these extensions in your ad copy can increase its CTR by many percentage points. In case a prospect has begun a quick search for an attorney on their mobile, they’re likely to click on the first ad that comes with a contact number. They might be weary of searching the phone number by logging into the website of a law firm.

6. Review the KPI

Regular ad audits for a law firm are crucial to ensuring the success of its PPC campaigns in the long term. It makes sure the right audience is viewing the ads, users are clicking through to the website, and the firm is staying within the stipulated budget.

The analytical segment of Google Ads will help you identify successful ad campaigns.Likewise, you’ll know about the ones that would require further optimization or should be dropped altogether.

While analyzing the data, you’ll come across five metrics that will provide the best overview of the ad performance along with some actionable insights.

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate of an ad reflects the percentage of people clicking on an ad who actually end up completing the CTA on your landing page.

Quality Score

This metric is used by Google to measure the relevance of your keywords to the searches of internet users. It makes sure searchers get to see relevant ads and always have a positive search experience.

Click-through rate

As the term suggests, this value indicates the percentage of ad impressions that result in a click. Both the CTR and the conversion rate are significant metrics for your law firm, as you wouldn’t want to spend money on traffic and clicks that don’t convert into business.

Wasted Spend

The wasted spend calculates the money spent on clicks that aren’t converting. Leveraging negative keywords is a great way to reduce the wasted spend for an ad, as they help filter traffic that’s irrelevant to a law firm and is less likely to convert.

Optimize Your Website

Law firm PPC campaigns can be effective in bringing traffic to your website.

That said, in case your website isn’t successful in providing timely, relevant information sought by potential clients, they aren’t likely to book an appointment with you. And spending money on ad clicks becomes useless if you don’t have in place a well-thought strategy to convert those into business.

Now, let’s have a look at the best ways to optimize the website for a law firm:

• Use similar or the same keywords in your ad copies and website content- this way, the content is more likely to drive conversions.
• Maintain consistency in visuals- Visuals on a website are crucial to creating an engaging experience for users.
• Keep your website copies to the point – Google admires websites providing straight answers to the queries of users. Though marketers tend to lean towards copies that appeal to a broader audience, this approach can, on the contrary, diminish user experience.

5 Common Mistakes Made in PPC Marketing for Lawyers

While PPC marketing campaigns can fetch lawyers the most lucrative leads, the competition in the industry can lead to wasteful spending if you don’t make proper use of the PPC ads. Read on to learn some common mistakes you should avoid when it comes to running a PPC campaign for your law firm:

1. Running A Campaign Non-Stop

Rather than continuing a single Google ad campaign for months, it’s wiser to have more short-term and smaller campaigns as they help generate traffic that’s more likely to convert. So, make sure to refresh your campaign sometimes or launch new ones to get the desired results.

2. Not Setting Up Ad Remarketing

By retargeting or remarketing a campaign, you can show the ads to those who had expressed some interest initially by logging into your website. It often happens that visitors leave a website without converting, which is why remarketing is the simplest way to nudge or remind them to move ahead.

3. Retaining Under-Performing Search Terms

Make sure to check your keywords consistently to identify the ones that are performing the best and those that aren’t. Also, the keywords should align with the practice areas of a firm, its business goals, and the message on the landing page.

4. Leaving Images

The visuals of a campaign are generally more appealing to any searcher rather than merely the words. That’s why you need to be careful to ensure you’re not leaving out images. Choose original and relevant images for your ads to stand out in the eyes of your prospects.

5. Not Doing the Math for Each Click

The amount that you bid on every campaign should be less than the profit it generates from the clicks on an ad. Remember to do the math consistently to ensure your campaign stays cost-effective in the long run and your firm generates a positive ROI.

It’s also worth noting here that a firm can steer clear of the above mistakes if it hires a dedicated and reliable PPC agency for lawyers to manage all PPC marketing activities.

Top 5 Reasons Why Should You Hire an Expert to Do PPC For Lawyers?

Successful PPC advertising campaigns depend highly on strategies, ad copies, and successful audience targeting. Also, unlike SEO, while strategizing PPC ad campaigns, there is a lot at stake in terms of money. Hence, your online marketing efforts must be on point, or else it may result in a lot of bad clicks and waste of marketing budget.

A PPC marketing agency can help you make the most of your PPC budget. These agencies hire experts to specialize in digital marketing strategies.

If you are not yet convinced, let’s elaborate on the various benefits of hiring an agency to run your law firm’s PPC campaign.

1. PPC Campaigns are Not simple

SEO is a simple process, but PPC is not. PPC strategies like Google Ads require thorough planning. Choosing relevant keywords or keyword groups is essential for PPC to attract the right audience who can convert easily. Also, these ads need to be foolproof, attractive, and make the most of the limited spaces they have.

2. An Expert Can Choose the Right Format

Search engines like Google allow several advert formats like text ads, display ads, video ads, local search ads, etc. Even if you already know which format of PPC ad for lawyers you need, you would still require an expert by your site. It is so because they would understand what works best. They have experts who can develop several Ad copies, do A/B testing, and find out what works for your legal practice.

3. An Agency is an All in One Hub

PPC for lawyers is essentially a digital marketing strategy that enhances the discoverability of your legal practice. Agencies that offer PPC services also have SEO, email marketing, and social media marketing for lawyers services that they can offer. If you require any other digital marketing services other than PPC, these agencies can come to quick aid. An added bonus is that, as you are already an existing client, any company can consider giving you a discounted rate.

4. Create Immaculate Ad Copies

Ad copies play a vital role in lead generation and customer conversion through PPC. The entire success of PPC for lawyers depends on the expertise that goes into crafting the ad copies. PPC agencies hire experts who are well adept at creating ad copies. Not only that, but they can brainstorm with you to create the ad copy that aligns with your law practice. They also create multiple advertisements to test which one has the best potential to attract clients to your landing pages.

5. Better Goals Measurability

Even if you have hands-on experience in getting a PPC campaign for law firms, measuring the same can pose a challenge. Factors like click-through rate, traffic source, on-page time, bounce rate, customer interaction with the ad, and conversion rate fuse to give you an accurate picture of your PPC success. And these metrics can be hard to measure. You will have no trouble measuring the KPIs with an agency by your side. These companies can track accurate data and formulate an unbeatable PPC strategy that gives you an edge over your competitors.

FAQs

Final Words

A consistent pipeline of conversion-worthy leads is essential in the growth stages of a law firm.

If you plan and monitor your PPC campaign strategies carefully, you have to be an expert at it. Anything short can deter your campaign. If this is the case, it can garner you the business growth you have envisaged.

However, you also require ample time at your disposal to get the rock rolling. So, the best alternative is to hire an experienced and reliable PPC agency for lawyers to do what is needed for your firm. Starting from strategy-making to launching and monitoring ads regularly, these agencies can take care of all.

Whether you choose to do PPC for the law firm on your own or hire an agency, try to make the most of your marketing budget. In case you go with the latter path, search the market well before choosing a PPC company for your law firm.

Additional Resources:

• Lead Generation for Lawyers: Expert Tips
• The Ultimate Guide to Social Media for Lawyers
• SEO for Law Firms: Ways to Dominate the Organic Search Rankings