In today’s fast-paced digital world, law firms must be able to adapt quickly to changes in the legal industry. One of the best ways to do so is to invest in pay-per-click advertising. PPC for lawyers can be a great way to increase visibility for your firm and attract new clients who are actively searching for legal services online.
However, law firm PPC campaigns can also be complex and time-consuming, requiring a certain degree of expertise to succeed. If you’re not careful, you can waste a lot of time and money on PPC advertising campaigns without seeing any results.
To avoid this, it’s important to know the most common lawyer PPC issues and how to fix them. This post will look at 5 of the most crucial issues and provide practical solutions that you can implement to fix your PPC campaigns and get better results.
1. Using Wrong Lawyer Keywords
- Get a clear picture of your firm's performance
- Boost your online presence
When it comes to lawyer keyword research, common mistakes can lead to subpar results. For example, if you’re a law firm that deals with personal injury, you might be tempted to use the keyword "law firm." But this keyword is too broad and will likely lead to many irrelevant search results resulting in low traffic.
That’s why using the right keywords on your law firm ads is important.
Solution
- Use long-tail keywords. As mentioned earlier, instead of using a short-tail, you should focus on more specific keyword phrases, such as "personal injury law firm near me" or "car accident law firm."
- Determine the search volume for your keywords to estimate the traffic you can expect for a higher ranking on the search engines. Search volume represents the number of requests for search terms in a given period. It can assist you in determining the optimal priorities for search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine results page (SERP).
2. Having Irrelevant or Unoptimized Landing Pages
The key element of optimizing PPC for law firms is having relevant and effective landing pages. This is the first page a visitor will see, so it’s important to make a good impression and encourage the user to stay on your site.
Unfortunately, many law firms’ websites have irrelevant or unoptimized landing pages. This can be a major turn-off for potential clients, as they may feel that the firm is irrelevant to their needs.
Solution
- Make sure your landing page is relevant to your target audience. It should be clear what services your firm provides and how these services can help the user.
- Use keyword-rich titles and descriptions on your landing page to help improve your search engine optimization.
- Use attractive page visuals, such as images or videos on your law firm website. This will help grab the user’s attention and encourage them to stay on your site.
- Include a strong call-to-action on your landing page so that users know what to do next (e.g., "Contact us for a free consultation").
- Regularly update your landing page with fresh content to engage users.
- Test, test, test! Always test different page versions to see what works best for your landing page.
3. You Spend Too Much Money on Ads
You can expect to pay $10 to 20 per click (or even more!) to put your ads on the Google Search Network. This could mean you have to spend about $10,000 monthly and $120,000 yearly on Google ads.
While PPC marketing can be a great way to reach potential clients through your Google search campaign, it can also drain your budget. You might not get any Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Solution
- Evaluate your return on investment and see where you can cut back. Adjust your PPC budget and optimize your Google Ads campaign so you’re not wasting money on clicks that don’t convert into clients.
What kind of Google ads campaigns can help you enhance your online marketing efforts?
Search Campaign
An excellent marketing funnel in the form of text ads on the Google search results page that show people searching on Google what they are looking for.
Video Ads
A marketing campaign that allows you to run ads before, during, and after videos on sites like YouTube.
Display Ads
These attractive visual ads appear as images on networks like Gmail and YouTube, which work with Google to provide ad space.
Local Search Ads
This ad type is perfect if your legal firm wants to increase visits or phone calls to its locations. Based on your content, Google will create an advertisement for you (e.g., text, images, and videos).
- Consider changing your Google ad strategy. Add an effective ad group to your Google Ads Campaign Builder for a successful PPC campaign, which, as the name suggests, builds ads.
For instance, if you have ad groups divided by insurance claims, you may make a business data table with a row for each case. An ad builder template can apply this business data row to the appropriate ad groups.
Search Ads 360 (SA360) can create an ad group.
- Besides the keyword solutions discussed above, there is also keyword bidding. In Google Adwords, a keyword bid is a bid made in a pay-per-click auction to help secure ad placement at the top of search results. When bidding on keywords for a law firm’s PPC campaign, there are a few things to keep in mind to develop a successful keyword bidding strategy.
- Ensure you target relevant keywords in your practice area. You can choose to bid using Google Ads.
- Consider your bid amount carefully. If you bid too low, you may not get any traffic. But if you bid too high, your PPC ad spend could be higher than necessary. The key is to find a balance that allows you to get the traffic you need without breaking the bank.
- Keep in mind that apart from money, Google scores for quality. So be sure to create quality content.
- Remember to keep an eye on your competition and adjust your bids periodically to stay ahead of them.
4. Your Location Is Too Broad
If your PPC advertising campaign targets too broad of an area, you may run into issues with your ads. For example, if you're targeting a city that's too large, Google may show your ads to people who live outside the city. This can lead to wasted clicks and a poor return on investment.
Solution
- Be more specific with your targeting. If you’re targeting a city, you should focus on specific neighborhoods or zip codes within that city.
- Try using negative keywords to exclude locations you don’t want to target. For example, suppose you’re targeting the city of Los Angeles. You could use keywords like ‘New York’ or ‘San Francisco’ to exclude those locations.
Google Keyword Planner is excellent for helping you target your location’s keywords.
- Try geotargeting only to show your ads to people in a certain location. You can do this in the settings of your campaign tool.
5. Your Ads Seem to Fall Off
If you're seeing ads falling off from Google, it could be because your ad spend is too low or your PPC ads are irrelevant to the keywords you're targeting. It's also possible your ads are being shown to people who are not likely to convert or that your landing pages are ineffective.
Solution
- Test new ad copy and PPC landing pages. The way to go is through AB Testing. This helps you see which ad copy works for your law firm. Some law firm online advertising testing tools include Survey Monkey, Adalysis, etc.
- Use a diagnostic tool to see if the content of your ads (including the headline, description, CTA, etc.) is appearing for a specific keyword. If they aren't appearing, the Google AdWords ad preview tool will tell you what's causing your ads not to appear.
- Monitor your key metrics regularly. Take advantage of analytic tools like Simple KPIs, Google Ads Dashboard, and Google Analytics to track your results and see where you fall short. You can also compare competitors’ websites to see what they are doing right.
Some important metrics to track are:
Clicks
Clicks are the most basic and widely used metric for distinguishing between performing and non-performing law firm PPC ads. They display the number of people who have clicked on your firm’s advertisements.
Click-Through Rate
This shows how often your advertisement is viewed compared to how often it is clicked. Assuming your ads receive 200 impressions and 25 clicks, your campaign’s CTR will be 8%.
A high CTR indicates that your ad is relevant to users in finding the right services.
Cost Per Click
The sum of money you spend on each advertisement. By dividing the total cost of your campaign by the number of clicks it received, you can quickly determine the CPC of your PPC ads.
Conversion Rate
The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors (or clicks) who become leads or customers. The conversion rate accurately depicts the success of your ad campaigns.
If your website receives 1000 clicks per week and brings in 250 clients, your conversion rate is 25%.
Impression Share
How often people view your advertisement is what determines your impression share. Since it helps evaluate your website, this statistic is helpful for brand awareness initiatives.
Avoid These Pitfalls with an Expert Law Firm PPC Agency
There’s no doubt that a well-optimized PPC campaign can be highly effective in driving traffic and generating leads. However, it’s important to remember that PPC advertising is only as good as the effort you put into optimizing it.
If you’re not constantly testing and improving your campaign, you’re likely hemorrhaging money. By following these tips above, you can ensure that your law firm’s PPC campaigns run smoothly and effectively.
If you are unsatisfied with your current PPC advertising even after research and action, don’t worry — there are ways to fix the issue. You can opt for a professional lawyer PPC agency like Grow Law Firm. GLF can help your law firm's website drive traffic, generate leads, and increase ROI.