LAW FIRM MARKETINGGoogle Ads Marketing For Law Firms

• Law-related keywords are expensive!

Have you noticed that “lawyer” and “attorney” are the most expensive keywords? Keywords such as “criminal attorney” and “personal injury lawyer.” may cost you a significant amount of money. And this amount is not fixed because the amount may get higher if there is competition while bidding on Google Ads. As the cost is too high, you might give up the paid search altogether if you don’t notice a return soon, do not keep investing if you don’t see results and seek professional help.  If done right, it would start performing in only a few months, and PPC can become a vital channel in increasing your business significantly.

• Competition is savage

A great level of competition generally goes together with high-priced keywords. Each lawyer in the region is bidding on similar terms and expecting to produce enormous returns, so Google raises those keywords’ prices.

It’s hard to get visibility if you are based in major cities in the country that are filled with many experienced lawyers. It does not mean that you do not get any coverage but based on your bidding, your ads will show up for a limited period of time. The more you spend on ads, the more visibility you get.

• It takes time to mature the campaign

Google ads campaigns take time to mature. Now, what does that mean? A successful Google ad campaign will take approximately 3 months to mature and nearly 4-12 months to evolve into a powerful campaign. Having said that, if the Google campaign is not recovering your investment in a couple of months, there is a severe problem with your campaign strategy.

Construct a powerful keyword list

Keywords are at the core of the Google ads campaign. To discover what are those keywords, you need to find answers to these questions. For example, why does your target audience need a lawyer? What particular services are you seeking to advertise, and what search terms do potential clients use when seeking a lawyer associated with those services?

You can start by selecting the main keywords you use to market your legal services on your website. There is a free tool known as the Google Ads Keyword Planner; you can utilise it to find relevant keywords. Enter phrases you believe your prospective clients would use to discover an attorney.

Here are a few sample phrases an injury victim living in London may enter when searching for a lawyer for personal injury:

• Personal injury lawyer London
• Injury attorney near me
• Personal injury lawyer near me
• London car accident attorney

The Google Ads Keyword Planner tool offers you equivalent phrases to utilise in your ads. It even shows you some essential details, such as:

• How frequently prospective clients use these keywords in their searches
• In Google Ads, what is the competitivity of the keyword phrase
• The approximate cost per click of utilising respectively keyword

Competitor Intelligence

The competition will always be there; it would be wise to analyse the competitor while preparing your legal service campaign. Why make your own mistakes when you have an opportunity to learn from other’s mistakes?

Since with active campaigns on Google Ads, other law firms have previously done their optimisation and testing, you can utilise that data to decrease the risk of your advertising investment. Utilise insights to look at what worked in their ads and keywords to improve your ad campaign.

Is this ethical? Yes, it is. Do you need to pay Google to acquire this information? Not at all! It’s public information that is readily available by utilising third-party tools.

Construct Compatible Landing Pages

Acquiring potential clients to click on your ad is merely the first part of driving conversions. Next, you need to perfect your Google Ads; it is also crucial to provide a better user experience on the landing page.

Numerous law practices direct their Google Ads to the homepage of their website. This makes it very difficult for users to know about the legal service they are looking for, your expertise, achievements and offer; they also struggle to contact you and book an appointment. As a result, the chances are high that they leave the page and search for someone else. As a result, you would miss an opportunity to acquire a lead and lose the money spent on Google Ads. So, you must have a dedicated landing page for each legal service you market.

Use of USPs in Ads

Your firm’s unique selling proposition is what distinguishes your practice from other law firms. In brief, it is a persuasive reason that prospective clients should select your law firm over the others. A powerful USP answers the questions clients may have regarding choosing a lawyer. Powerful USPs helps to generate more traffic from clients who are looking for your particular services. It also pushes back clicks from people who are least interested in your law practice. USPs convince prospective clients in seeing you as the best choice for their legal requirements.

Before starting with Google ads, you should construct a landing page. Your campaign will struggle to perform well without a good landing page.

You should not transmit paid traffic to dull service pages or your home page. The objective of your web page is to share general information about your legal services. On the other hand, a landing page is designed for a specific purpose: to market-specific service so that prospective clients take action like calling you or filling up the inquiry form.

The landing page contains three vital components:

• A defined call to action
• A benefits block
• Trust indicators

You have made a list of relevant keywords, and the next step is to prepare ad copies. You can produce several ad copies and run a test; this will help you discover what ads are performing well compared to others.

Ad copy preparation looks like a small task but requires a lot of research; it is a creative task and requires professional assistance.

Write Ad Copies that:

• Catch the person’s focus: You should use the language that catches the prospective client’s attention.
• Respond to the search query: You must include relevant keywords in your Ad Copies. If your Ads are closer to the search terms, the chances are high that you get a high click-through rate.
• Build trust: You must consider utilising words carefully to build trust. For example, offering a free consultation or a free case evaluation can increase conversions.

• It is Faster: Mostly when people go online to search for legal services, they tend to click the number first instead of exploring the website. This immediate contact feature permits people to cut the chase and get the answer to their queries.
• It is Very Effective: Studies show that approximately 70% of mobile users directly call firms from search results. The remaining will contact a company after receiving more information.
• It is User-Friendly: Advertising your firm with the help of click-to-call ads is highly user-friendly. People can quickly get in touch with your law firm after finding your ad in search results with almost no trouble and minimal digital touchpoints. There is no requirement to remember the number or fill the inquiry form; they just need to click and call!
• It Provides More Value: Various people who contact the firm through call-only ads are genuine clients. This indicates that those who are calling your firm through these are interested in hiring your legal services.
• It Rises Relevance: You receive more relevant traffic as the callers are more genuine. It shows that ads are performing well, the quality score of your ads will also be high.
• It Doesn’t Need Landing Pages: The law firm can quickly start with a call-only campaign, it works well when the landing page for the service is not finalised yet. You would still require attractive ad copies.

Google Ads requires a lot of money and so only works for big firms

That’s a Myth. You can start Google Ads with a small budget, and it can work well for your law firm. However, you would require to invest time and resources into building a law firm marketing strategy that generates a return on investment.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Small law firm fails to do proper keyword research, prepare attractive ad copies and manage the campaign efficiently at times, and that is the main reason Google Ads does not work well for them. Whereas big law firms invest in paid marketing carefully, generate revenue from ads and increase the ad spend to attract more leads. They are consistent in their Google ads paid advertisement.

The competition is too intense for my Ads to appear on the first page of the search engine

Based on your Ads quality score and bidding management, google gives an opportunity to everyone ranking their ads on the first page. You can optimise your campaign to bit the competition and rank high.

Various competitors will click my ads continuously, and that will cost me a lot

It is very common to think this way, but thanks to Google’s robust technology, it checks the “invalid clicks” and tracks the IP address plus filters the “Malicious clicks” in real-time, so you don’t have to pay for such unwanted clicks.

To get better performance from your PPC campaign, you must keep optimising them. Campaign performance declines slowly if you don’t. The ongoing campaign optimisation can drastically impact the performance of your Google Ads campaigns. The below points show how you can optimise your PPC campaign:

• Optimise your Keyword List:

  The popularity of keywords used in your campaign can change over time. Also, new keywords emerge, and the old ones get redundant with the evolving Google searches. You can track such changes on various tools such as Google Keywords Planner. Adding the new and relevant keywords to your existing campaign will improve quality score, higher conversion rates and lower CPC.

• Improve your Click-through rate:

  Try to improve your CTR if it is average or below-average. The best practices to do that would be to edit your ad text, ensure the intent of your ad matches the intent of people searching for your legal services, highlight a USP of your law firm, experiment with unique call-to-actions, and be more specific in your Ads. All these practices will improve your CTRs, and more prospective clients visit the landing page.

• Test your Ad copy and Landing page regularly:

  Testing your Ad copy is essential. You analyse one to three copies against the current one and improve your Ad copy to improve CTR. The other way is to test the new landing page against the current one. If the new landing page does better, you can replace the old one and improve the quality score.

• Auction Insights:

  Most of the time, it happens that your competitors outrank you causing you a lower CTR and conversion rates, even after using a majority of the search terms that are relevant to your business. In such cases, change your bidding strategy or increase the bids on your keywords to get more coverage.

• Incorporate Negative keywords:

  Negative keywords are the keywords that help you limit the ads from showing up for queries that won’t land you clicks or conversions. Including negative keywords is a wise step to reduce your marketing spend on irrelevant leads.

• Poor keyword choices: Irrelevant keywords and keywords with low search volume are awful news for your campaign’s quality score. In case you are not getting leads, then it’s time to reconsider those keywords. Pause keywords that are not converting. You can carry another keyword research and include fresh new keywords with higher search volumes.
• Mistargeting: Targeting is crucial when developing a campaign. This assures that you do not pay needlessly for clicks from those who are not your prospective clients. Audience device targeting and Location are a few methods you can use.
• The bids are either too high or too low: Keep in mind that your ad rank for a provided auction relies on your quality score for the keyword you’re bidding on. So get the basics right, and then bid appropriately. Bidding too high will waste the budget, and too low will not show your ads on search engines.
• There is not sufficient keyword search volume: In case Google observes that you’re targeting an exceptionally low-volume keyword, they will make the ad temporarily inactive. Utilise the keyword planner tools to discover relevant keywords with more search volume.
• Your Google Ad groups aren’t correctly focused: You may begin to see problems in case your ad groups are not composed of closely associated keywords. You should produce different campaigns for different services.
• Poor Google Ad copy: Be certain that the Ad copy you write for any ad includes the keyword for the legal service you market. Try a/b testing various ad copies to see which works, select the ad copy that resonates well with your firm’s target audience. It is good practice to revise the Ad copy when required, especially when buyers behaviour changes frequently.