PPC for Lawyers: How Your Law Firm Can Use Pay Per Click and Other Strategies to Attract Business

What is PPC for lawyers and how does it work?

What is PPC?

PPC stands for “pay per click.” This is a form of advertising where you can pay for your ad to appear on the first page of search engine results pages when someone searches for a certain keyword, such as “owi wisconsin.”

PPC is also known as “search engine marketing (SEM),” and “paid search” because every time someone clicks on your ad, you pay the search engine a certain amount of money.

Google is the most important search engine because it holds “about 92% of the global search engine market” (HubSpot). When we talk about paid search ads, we are usually talking about PPC ads on Google.

Source: Google

How does PPC work for lawyers?

PPC advertisers participate in an automated “auction” which occurs every time someone types a keyword into the search bar.

Different law firms each place a “bid” for a certain amount of money on a particular keyword. This bid is the maximum amount they’re willing to spend when someone clicks on their ad. Let’s say you want to bid on the keyword “owi wisconsin.”

You’re competing for the top listings on the first page of Google after someone types in “owi wisconsin.” Whoever is willing to pay the most every time someone clicks on the ad can increase their ability to appear in the top position.

However, your ads’ “quality score,” can also affect how high and how often you’re able to rank, and how much you have to pay for those appearances. This score is Google’s measure of: 1) the quality of your ad, and 2) the relevance of your ad, target keyword, and landing page to the searcher’s query.

Factors that affect your quality score include:

• Expected click-through rate: how likely is the searcher to click on your ad?
• Ad relevance: how well does it align with the searcher’s questions?
• Landing page experience: how well does the page your searchers land on after clicking on your ad: 1) provide a solid user experience, 2) align with the content of the ad that sent users there, and 3) satisfy the intent behind the keyword the user searched for?
• Google Ad history: how well have your ads performed in the past?

Depending on the amount you bid and your quality score, you may appear at the top of a page a certain percentage of the times a keyword is searched for, or not be able to compete at all.

Note that not all search results are PPC ads. A certain number of results on each page are unpaid. These are called “organic” listings, and appear due to Google’s ranking algorithms without bidding.

Let’s say you win the bid for the keyword “owi Wisconsin” at a particular moment, and that your ads have a high quality score for that keyword. When someone in Madison who has been arrested for a OWI Googles “owi Wisconsin,” chances are the first thing they will see on the result page is your business.

Key Takeaways

• PPC is a marketing strategy in which businesses pay to have their ads appear on the first page of Google by bidding on keywords.
• Some law firms use PPC to get in front of potential clients who are actively searching for legal services.

The advantages and disadvantages of PPC

Many lawyers use different channels—such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and referrals—to attract leads. PPC is not for everyone. However, it can be a great tool for law firms looking for cases involving individuals, such as criminal defense, OWI, and personal injury cases.

Advantages of PPC

• Fast results: As soon as you get your ads set up, they begin to appear in search results.
• Easy to reach potential clients: This method makes it easy to reach people who are looking for services like yours.
• Trackable: With PPC, you can track how well your ads are performing and adjust them to perform better.
• Accurate: You get to choose which keywords your ad will appear for.

Disadvantages of PPC

• Cost: It can get expensive, depending on the keywords you buy, and there’s a risk of getting a low return on investment. For example, if you’re a Madison law firm investing in a general keyword like “criminal defense,” more lawyers may be competing for it, therefore making it more expensive.
  
  Plus, law-related keywords are often more expensive to begin with, since the searcher wants to solve an urgent problem immediately and law firms can potentially make a lot of money from one searcher becoming a client. For example, according to Ahrefs data, the keyword "car accident lawyer" costs $170 per ad click.
• Competitive: Competition for keywords is particularly fierce in the legal industry, and other lawyers in the area can rank higher if they have more money to invest.

• High-maintenance: A PPC campaign requires frequent adjustments, such as getting rid of ineffective keywords and testing new ads.
• Short-term investment with short term gains: It’s relatively easy to set up a campaign and start driving traffic, but you can only maintain that traffic flow if you keep investing money. This is in contrast to SEO, which requires up-front investment but can drive traffic long-term without needing to make continuous payments.

Key Takeaways

• PPC can provide fast results, is easy to track, and adjusts to fit your needs. If your clients use Google search, it’s also an easy way to put ads in front of people who may already be searching for legal services.
• PPC can be expensive and competitive, and requires maintenance and an ongoing investment. Some consumers may avoid PPC ads because they are wary of advertisements.

How to create a cost-effective PPC strategy for your law firm

Before you launch into your first paid search campaign, you will want to create a plan and take stock of your resources.

Planning your law firm's PPC campaign: step by step

Step 1: Make specific, “smart” goals for your PPC campaign.

Have you set goals? Before you launch your campaign, come up with specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based (SMART) goals. For example, maybe you want more to generate a certain number of personal injury case leads within the next quarter.

Step 2: Determine the scope of your PPC campaign.

Is PPC the best strategy for achieving your goals? Paid search tends to work best for law firms that serve a broader client base of mostly individuals who are likely to search for an attorney on Google. If your clients don’t typically use search to find your business, you may want to consider sinking your resources into other methods.

For example, general practice lawyers and criminal lawyers tend to serve individuals who might search for keywords like “criminal lawyer Madison WI” in order to find an attorney. This gives law firms who specialize in these areas the opportunity to put advertisements in front of potential clients who are looking for their services.

On the flip-side, pay per click may be a less effective strategy for law firms who serve very specific markets who are more likely to look for a law firm through an alternative method. When deciding whether pay per click is the best strategy for you, consider how your customers typically find you.

Will PPC be your primary marketing strategy? Law firms can use a combination of paid search and other methods, such as SEO (search engine optimization) which focuses on ranking for organic, unpaid search results. We cover SEO later in this article.

How long will your PPC campaign be? Because of their expense and short-term results, PPC campaigns typically have a defined beginning and end in order for firms to assess whether or not they got a good return on their investment.

Step 3: Consider your buyer.

Who buys your services? Understanding the types of people who hire you can help you choose which keywords they are most likely to click on. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your average customer.

It includes information like your average customer’s research and buying habits, and critical factors that affect their buying decisions, like cost.

You may have more than one average type of customer, depending on your law firm’s specialty, and may need to make more than one buyer persona as a result.

For example, maybe you’re a general practice lawyer and you handle both divorce and estate planning cases. Your customers for each area of law may have different backgrounds, pain points, and buying habits. If you’re not sure where to start, check out this blog post.

Step 5: Check your tech.

Do you have access to your website’s content management system (CMS)? A CMS is an application that allows you to manage web content, such as web pages. Make sure you are able to edit the existing pages of your website and add new ones. This is because you will want to create new, dedicated landing pages for your PPC ads.

Are you able to quickly follow up with leads? People who need legal help sometimes contact multiple firms. Respond quickly to messages from potential clients before your competition does.

Key Takeaways

• Before launching your PPC campaign, set goals, know who your best customers are (personas), and take stock of your website.
• Consider whether PPC is the best strategy for your practice area before investing the time and money.

Launching your PPC campaign

Now that you’ve completed the prep work, you’re ready to decide which keywords to bid on in order to achieve your goals.

Step 1: Choose your keywords.

Identify the most important topics and keywords, with your SMART goals in mind. What types of cases are the most valuable to you? For example, maybe your firm represents family law cases, and you want more divorce cases. What topics does your persona search for when they’re facing a divorce case?

If your law firm is in Janesville, WI, then maybe your persona would be searching for “Janesville family lawyer,” or “divorce lawyers near Janesville WI.” In that case, you may be most successful bidding on those keywords.

Narrow down which keywords to bid on. You can choose whether to bid manually or choose from one of Google Ads' smart bidding (automated) options.

If you're bidding manually, it’s often best to bid on the most specific keywords where the searcher indicates that they are ready to make a purchase. Let’s go back to our previous example of the Janesville family law firm.

The keyword phrase “divorce lawyers near Janesville WI” is specific (family law, divorce, Janesville WI). It also implies that the person searching for this wants to find a lawyer located near Janesville who handles divorce cases.

If one of your goals is to get more divorce cases, then bidding on this keyword for your divorce ad set may increase the likelihood of getting clicks. Plus, very specific keywords often attract fewer competitive bids, and can therefore be cheaper to bid on than broader keywords.

For example, a keyword like “family lawyer” may cost more money to bid on than "divorce lawyers near Janesville WI" since the former is less specific.

Rather than investing a lot of money in your campaign right away, start with your best keywords and see how well ads for those keywords perform. Google Keyword Planner is a great tool for keyword research.

Step 2: Set up your Google Ads campaign.

Choose your campaign settings carefully.

Google provides many settings that help you tailor your ads to match your goals and target your personas.

For instance, when you first create a campaign, you'll want to explicitly define which specific geographic areas you want your search ads to appear in. Campaign settings also control things like budgeting, the start and end date of your ads, the language(s), and more.

Step 3: Create ad sets.

Create an ad group for each set of keywords. You’ve identified which topics are the most important to you and which related keywords you would like to bid on. Now, create an ad group for every related set of keywords. When someone searches for one of the keywords out of this group, one of the connected ads may appear.

Let’s say one of your firm's areas of focus is personal injury cases. You might group keywords like “personal injury lawyer," "work accident attorney Madison," and "best law firms for personal injury” into a single ad group. By doing so, your connected ads will be eligible to appear for any of these keyword variants.

Write compelling ad copy. Instead of using the same ad copy for every ad in a set, tweak the copy to make each one unique. You should write at least three ads per set, in order to maximize the possibility that one or more of your ads will perform well. Google typically serves top performing ads more often.

Ads that are brief, emotionally-charged, personal, offer benefits to clicking, and promise to solve the searcher’s problem tend to be more effective. They also speak to where a searcher is in their buying process. Check out this blog post for tips on writing your PPC ads. This post from Google is also a great resource.

Create a new landing page on your website for each ad set. You want to send potential customers to a landing page (the web page they arrive on after clicking on your ad) that is relevant to their search term.

For example, say you are a general practice lawyer who represents both personal injury and criminal law clients. You have an ad set targeting each of these personas.

If a potential customer searches for “personal injury lawyer Madison,” you should send them to a landing page that offers a free consultation with a “personal injury lawyer.” You can create another landing page tailored to people looking for criminal lawyers by offering a contact form that offers a free consultation with a “criminal attorney.”

Users are more likely to complete the next action you want them to (such as filling out a form or giving you a call) on landing pages relevant to their search.

Plus, landing page experience is one of the ways that Google judges the quality of your ads, so it can directly impact the success of your campaign.

You should also keep the design of these landing pages clean and simple to create a great user experience that will keep potential clients on your page and encourage them to convert.

Alternatively, you can now include a lead form in your ad by adding one to your campaign.

Step 4: Adjust your ads.

Try extensions. If you provide Google with additional information about your law firm, such as your location, phone number, or a link to your website, they will sometimes display this information in your ad. These are called ad extensions.

Google typically includes extensions when your Ad Rank (how well your ad performs and fulfills Google’s standards of excellence) is high enough, or when Google calculates that showing extensions will improve your ad’s performance (Google). Adding extensions does not cost extra, and may help increase the number of people who click on your ad.

Make bid adjustments. Bid adjustments allow you to change the amount you bid on keywords based on certain factors, such as the geographic location of the searcher, the device they are using, or the time of day that they are viewing your ad, among others.

Bid adjustment eligibility based on campaign type
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If you know that searchers frequently find and contact your law firm while they’re out and about on their phone, then you might want to bid more money on mobile device clicks than desktop computer clicks. This could increase the number of times your ad appears on a mobile device.

At this stage, it may be in your best interest to make bid adjustments based on hypotheses backed up by hard facts. For example, if you know that people tend to look for information about sentencing and punishments after working hours, then you might want to increase the amount of your bid by 20% for clicks between 5 and 10 p.m. Want more details on how bid adjustments work? Check out Google’s help page.

Key Takeaways

• Start by identifying and bidding on a few highly-relevant keywords. Highly-relevant keywords tend to be specific and imply that the searcher is actively looking for legal services, like “estate planning lawyers near madison wi.”
• Create a specific landing page for each ad set that matches what that visitor was searching for or adding a lead form to your campaign.
• Use bid adjustments and ad extensions to optimize the performance of your ads.

Managing your PPC campaign

You’ve launched your pay per click campaign. Your ads are running, and they’re sending searchers to specialized landing pages on your website or collecting leads from form submissions. You’ve made adjustments to your bids to try to send potential clients to your website. Next up: tracking progress toward your goals and adjusting accordingly.

Step 1: Cut the dead wood.

Weed out keywords that don’t work. Some keywords will likely perform better than others. Sometimes they get strange results that are irrelevant to your ideal customer, or they simply don’t bring in enough leads for their cost.

For example, maybe you bid on the keyword “Wisconsin estate planner” but only got a few clicks with no conversions. In either case, stop bidding on keywords that don’t work. Instead, focus your energy on keywords that are helping you achieve your goals.

Step 2: Adjust your ads again.

Make more bid adjustments. Since you launched your PPC campaign, you’ve been gathering data every time someone clicks on your ads. You’ve had a chance to test your hypotheses and see if they hold up. Now, fine-tune your bids again now that you have some hard evidence. Note that if your campaign is very small and/or your budget is very limited, it might take a while to get enough data to make an informed decision.

Take Google’s advice. Google often gives feedback about your campaign to make it better. Since it is in Google’s best interest to help you, it’s usually wise to take their advice.

Key Takeaways

• Further optimize ad performance by getting rid of ineffective keywords, making ongoing bid adjustments, and following Google’s advice.

Our approach to PPC

At Madison Marketing Group, we tailor our search strategy to suit each client’s situation by examining their entire search environment, performing in-depth keyword research, and recommending a strategy that works best for them.

Next steps

Designing and maintaining a great law firm PPC campaign in such a competitive search environment can be an art form onto itself, and may take years of practice to perfect. When you have a full caseload and court visits scheduled, you may not always have time to mess around with keyword research and bid adjustments.

The more successful your pay per click or search engine optimization campaign, the more leads you generate, the more time you spend following up with leads rather than focusing on your duties as an attorney.

To learn more tips for marketing your law firm, check out our free guide.