Whether you’re the managing partner of a law firm or a solo practitioner, you know you must never stop seeking new clients. After all, you cannot provide legal services to clients you do not have. Nor do clients you do not have pay legal fees and enhance your revenues.
Modern ways to advertise
Gone are the days when you could not advertise because your state bar association prohibited it as “unseemly,” “unprofessional” and “unethical” conduct on the part of an attorney. But once attorney advertising became an accepted and respected practice, the problems became what type(s) of advertising to buy and which type(s) gave you the best ROI (return on investment).
Handing out business cards proved effective and relatively inexpensive. It still is, but it requires your personal presence to achieve. Yellow page listings and ads came and went as yellow page directories became a thing of the past. With the advent of the digital age, buying pay-per-click Google Ads has become a highly effective way for law firms to generate more business and increase monthly revenue.
Legal pay per click services
As effective as Google Ads PPCs can be in generating new business for your law firm, the operative word is “can.” Unfortunately, many attorneys fail to get the full benefits of Google Ads PPCs. Why? Because, bottom line, you are an attorney, not a technology expert. Nor do you have the time to learn all about digital advertising. Your best interests, therefore, dictate that you partner with a company that provides PPC services targeted to attorneys.
How PPC works
Pay-per-click advertising begins with you, the advertiser, determining keywords for the services you offer. Usually, these key words start with your areas of practice such as the following:
- Criminal defense
- Family law
- Personal injury
- Estate planning
- Civil litigation
- Bankruptcy
- Workers’ Compensation
When someone in your area needs an attorney and does a Google search for one of these key-word legal services, your law firm hopefully will show up on the SERP (search engine results page), preferably high up on the first page. The searcher then clicks on your law firm and is immediately taken to its website.
Dynamic key word insertion
Given the fact that other law firms in your area practice the same type(s) of law as you do, simply going with almost generic keywords such as practice areas by themselves, won’t get you the results you want. You and your legal PPC services partner will want to tweak your keywords to make them not only more personal to you but also to match as nearly as possible with words that people actually use when conducting a Google search. For instance, you might add the specific area of town where your law firm is located. One of the features included in Google Ads is called dynamic keyword insertion. This feature gives you the ability to automatically update your keywords to include the searcher’s search words.
Smart bidding
You will pay somewhere between $20 and $50 for each click you receive. Generally, you and your competitors automatically bid on the keyword phrase entered by the searcher. The highest bidder receives the best SERP placement and therefore the click.
How much you pay for each click will depend on several factors, including the following:
- The daily and/or monthly budget you submit to Google
- The tweaks you make to these budgets
- Your consequent automatic bid
- The target audience you specify for your PPC ads
Website landing pages
The final piece of getting your best ROI for the money you invest in Google Ads is making sure that your law firm’s website contains effective, well-designed and easy-to-use landing pages where searchers wind up when they click on one of your ads. At the very least, you should have a landing page for each of your practice areas, and it should include not only your address and phone number but also your online contact form that converts searchers into clients.