Personal injury law is probably the most competitive of all practice areas.

That’s why law firms can pay hundreds of dollars per click with Google Ads. But it also means that the rewards are high if you’re near the top of the pile: more leads, more paying clients, and a growing firm.

How do you get to the top of the list? Not just with Google Ads but with a strong overall internet marketing strategy?

We’ve covered general law marketing techniques in another post here. But you can exploit specific areas that other personal injury lawyers are not employing.

In this post, you’ll find out how to shape your digital marketing strategy to perform even your toughest competitors.

This includes the following techniques:

• Creating a brand not just a website
• Niching out your practice area
• Making the most of regional opportunities
• Refining your SEO strategy
• Investing in content marketing
• Optimizing the user experience
• Gathering more reviews and testimonials
• Featuring case results prominently
• Optimizing your Google Ads strategy
• Running Facebook retargeting ads

The best thing?

You can start applying these techniques almost immediately. Let’s get started.

This really does separate one personal injury law firm from another.

You can go down this road…

Source

…or this road:

Source

Both offer personal injury legal services.

But which would you click on if you were based in California and suffered a serious car accident?

The first is an extreme example of a confused mess.

The second option talks clearly to its target audience. From the home page onwards, there is consistent messaging that they’re fighting your corner against the insurance companies.

Building a brand starts with asking yourself three main questions:

What makes your personal injury law firm unique?

Have you been in business for 80 years like Thomson Rogers in Toronto?

Source 

What’s your value proposition?

What can you promise clients whom you represent?

Source 

What do you consistently do better than other personal injury law firms?

Marrone Law in Philadelphia approaches this by asking an interesting question:

Source

Personal injury law encompasses a wide array of specialist fields, including:

• Motor vehicle accidents
• Medical malpractice
• Product liability
• Slip and fall accidents
• Dog bites
• Sex assault and battery cases

The more specific are the more targeted you can be with your marketing; and the less it will cost you in advertising with Google Ads (because you won’t waste money on people clicking through only to find you don’t specialize in what they’re looking for).

Here are a few good examples of law firms really niching out:

Dog bite injuries

Source File Removed

Boating accident injuries

Source 

Medical malpractice injuries

Source

PRO TIP: You don’t need to make your entire website about one specific niche of personal injury law; but creating landing pages specific to each niche will really help.

If you’re like most law firms (except the big guys), you probably get most of your work from your local area.

Being location-specific can help you stand out from the competition on two fronts:

1. Helping you rank higher in the local search results and Google Maps
2. Demonstrating relevance to the local audience

Local SEO strategy revolves around keyword usage and optimizing your Google My Business account.

Google My Business is a free business listing that includes details such as business name, address, website, phone number, business hours, business category, reviews and ratings.

It’s very important to optimize all your business information here to help gain accurate citations across the web and for Google to rank you well.

Let’s look at Dianne Sawaya LLC, a personal injury law firm in Denver:

Source 

They’ve optimized their Google My Business listing and when you search for “car accident law firm Denver” in Google, they come up first in the map listings:

Source

It’s even more important for firms in regional areas to optimize their website for local search and their Google My Business listing. Most can’t hope to compete with larger city firms.

Check out this one from James H. Brown in Alberta:

Source

If your firm has several locations, optimizing your Google My Business listings is equally as important.

To implement a multilocation SEO strategy use the following guidelines:

• Audit local keywords using Google
• Create one website per location (off a single domain)
• Maintain consistent NAP (Number, Address, Phone) listings across all pages
• Locally-optimize your keyword phrases
• Optimize page titles and descriptions
• Include location maps on contact pages
• Optimize URLs
• Actively seek inbound links and citations for each location
• Gather customer reviews for each location

As you can see, Staver Accident Injury Lawyers in Chicago are also making the most of regional opportunities by creating separate pages for each of its regional offices, off the main domain:

Source 

Source

You already know that you need to optimize SEO for higher rankings. Aim for the first page of Google as few searchers go past page one.

You can find out many of the best strategies for that in my Law Firm SEO article

As you’re working out which keywords to target, bear in mind the following:

You need to be crystal clear on the buying stage of your target audience

Is the term you want to attract click-throughs for likely to result in the purchase of your services?

Or do you want to find people earlier in the buying process? Those who are just looking for information?

This is fundamental to any campaign for any lawyer.

Some people are trying to find out more about their options, searching for answers to questions like:

• What is medical malpractice?
• Can I claim for medical malpractice?
• How much does a personal injury lawyer cost in Buffalo?
• How do I claim for workplace injury?

Informational posts like this from Cogburn Law can help you rank for these terms:

Source 

Then there are those who are ready to hire a personal injury lawyer searching for buyer-intent terms like:

• Personal injury lawyer Toronto
• Medical malpractice attorney New York
• Dog bite injury lawyer Buffalo

You’ll want dedicated landing pages on your website set up to convert these queries into leads:

Source 

The above informational and buyer-intent terms are worth targeting for different reasons – and the longer ones are generally less competitive.

Refining your SEO strategy like this can give you an important edge over the competition.

Ranking factors to focus on

Bear in mind that there are over 200 ranking factors that Google uses to rank websites in search.

Source 

You can read about the most important areas to focus on in the law firm SEO article I referred to before; but here’s a few notable ones for now:

• Mobile friendliness
• Page speed
• Optimized on-page keyword usage
• Optimized URLs
• Volume and quality of backlinks
• User interaction
• Site usability
• Schema markup

Make publishing high-quality, informative and original content on your website a must-do.

It will naturally attract new customers and improve search rankings. Blog articles dramatically increase your chances of appearing in search engine results pages.

The reason that most lawyers don’t do it? They don’t have time.

That’s not a good excuse when there is a wide world of freelancers available to produce content for you.

Base your content around:

Answer the FAQs of your target customers 

Being injured and in need of legal assistance is a stressful time for people.

You know the answers to most questions that potential clients need answers to, so go ahead and provide them.

Source 

Provide tips and advice for your target audience

Help people out.

It’s the right thing to do and they’ll appreciate the advice on topics that may be confusing for them: legal processes, court etiquette, etc.

Source 

Provide updates on news that may affect your target audience

Is there a big case in the news that your clients or potential clients will be interested in?

Update them on it.

Source 

Comment on cases that may affect your target audience

Your commentary on personal injury cases in the local area may be of interest to people in similar situations.

Source 

Try out a variety of resources

Don’t limit yourself to blog articles.

Videos, podcasts, eBooks, infographics, and white papers are all fair game.

Source 

Commit to providing regular informative content and it can become the hub of your marketing strategy.

You will build engagement, authority and trust with your target audience, become more visible online, and generate leads through a greater web and social media presence.

Make sure that when visitors come to your site, you welcome them with a great user experience.

A Customer Experience Impact Report found that a negative customer experience is the reason for 86 percent of consumers quitting doing business with a company.

Conversely, a Zendesk Customer Service Study found that good customer experiences lead 42 percent of consumers to purchase again.

If you don’t provide what your visitor is looking for, another law firm will.

So, focus on the following aspects to improve user experience:

Make it mobile friendly

Increasingly, people searching for personal injury lawyers do so from mobile devices (and Google penalizes you if you’re not geared up for that). Check your mobile friendliness here.

Even the desktop version of the Washington Injury Law website has a mobile-first feel to it: big text, collapsible menu, video, and large call-to-action buttons.

Source 

Up the page load peed

If your pages take 10 seconds to load, there’s a 123% higher chance of a visitor leaving than with a one-second load time.

Check your page speed here.

Source 

Include multimedia 

Plenty of images, video, and sound help to engage visitors.

Create shareable content 

Infographics and other easily shareable content can help spread your name far and wide across the web.

Source 

Post informative blog articles 

As we saw in the previous section, articles that answer user FAQs provide great value and improve the user experience.

Source File Removed

Help them find further information 

You can’t hope to provide everything a visitor needs in one article or web page. Help them find further information by linking out to reliable and authoritative resources and to other internal pages of your own website.

Source 

Ensure they’re not left hanging

Help visitors take a journey through your website and your hiring process by mapping out a series of next steps to take.

Source 

Remember, a high-quality user experience will keep visitors on your site for longer. In turn, this will aid your search rankings with Google.

Trust is important in any industry but, in law, it’s essential.

So, reviews, testimonials and 5-star ratings are necessary for the credibility of any personal injury law firm.

It’s always more believable when someone else blows your trumpet rather than you.

Whether text or video, they should feature prominently to say what you can’t say. Marrone Law includes both types.

Source 

Google reviews can also help your search rankings.

Source

Note how, in the above example for “personal injury law firm Vancouver”, all the main featured listings on the Google map include excellent ratings (featured on their Google My Business listings).

Anyone looking for such a firm would be quite likely to click on any of them, as opposed to the other organic listings on the page without visible reviews.

Bearing this in mind, it’s amazing how few law firms have an active policy to gather reviews.

The golden rule is simple: Ask for them from happy customers. 

Set expectations from the beginning: build it into your process and mention to new customers that you hope to get a 5-star review from them if the case goes well.

Then, remind them once the case is closed. Don’t be shy about this.

As well as Google reviews, you can gather testimonials on other platforms like:

• Yelp
• Avvo
• Lawyers.com
• Martindale-Hubbell

Here’s what a search for “personal injury lawyer New York” delivers on Yelp.

Source 

Note how the 5-star review ratings in red instantly jump out compared to the listing with no rating.

Still not convinced that you need a strategy for this?

Remember:

• A customer who has a negative experience is likely to leave a bad review and share the experience.
• Fewer than one in 10 happy customers will voluntarily leave positive reviews.

How powerful is this from Jurewitz Law Group?

Source

Featuring your case results adds enormous credibility for people searching for a personal injury lawyer to hire.

Results speak for themselves and it’s always better than you doing the talking.

Here’s another great example of how to use results to make your law firm more memorable to readers:

Source 

Note how a recent result is featured high on the homepage – not tucked away or buried on a separate page.

If, as a personal injury lawyer, you’re hoping to conquer Google Ads and bring in a swarm of leads, get ready to be ultra-strategic in your approach.

Search terms like “car accident lawyer New York” or “Houston truck driver lawyer” are not only common; they’re likely to cost you hundreds of dollars per click.

Assuming you don’t have a bottomless advertising budget, how do you go about your Google Ads campaigns to keep cost-per-click down and qualified leads up?

Here are a few tips.

Be as specific as possible with your keywords

Most personal injury lawyers target the buyer-intent terms discussed above with Google Ads. Understandable, as they’re the ones that translate readily to revenue.

The problem is that when everyone targets the same keywords, they get awfully expensive.

In 2016, Search Engine Watch reported that 19 of Google’s top 25 most expensive keywords are related to personal injury law firms.

So, following the crowd is not the smartest strategy here. Can you really afford to pay $300 or $400 per click? Thought not…

By getting specific and focusing on longer tail keywords, you’ll reduce the cost-per-click.

So, rather than “personal injury lawyer Dallas”, think “best pedestrian accident lawyer in Dallas Texas”

Source 

While they may not generate the search traffic of the major terms, a few niche phrases combined can be a powerful marketing boost in terms of leads.

Bid on your own brand name

Don’t miss this one: bidding on your own brand name prevents competitors from muscling in on your turf – a common strategy in a competitive environment like personal injury law.

It’s cost-effective (usually under a couple of dollars per click) and often there is good buyer intent.

Make sure that you’re at the top of any sponsored ads for search terms involving your firm’s name:

Use ad extensions

How do you make your ads stand out from the rest?

Ad extensions can help.

These are little snippets of extra information that you can include in your Google Ads. They allow you to add information like:

• Your location (as it appears in your Google My Business listing)
• Phone numbers
• URLs to other pages on your website (like testimonial pages)

This can increase the click-through and call rates from qualified leads.

In the following example for “car accident lawyer Chicago”, you see the first and third ads stand out a little more because they use ad extensions for location and web pages?

Source 

Focus on cost per case

As a personal injury lawyer, it can be tough to track return on investment from your ad campaigns.

You probably only get paid if you win the case and some cases take many months or even years.

You’re lucky if you even remember the original email or phone call from the client.

To accurately track this, you need Google Analytics working in sync with call tracking software (from Google, WordStream or CallRail).

You also need efficient practice management software to be clear on how each client has reached you and what happened to their case.

Google Ad spend must be factored into your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

It varies greatly between niche areas; medical malpractice case CPCs may be much higher than car accident cases but the rewards (commissions) are also usually far greater.

Set a desired cost per acquistion and this will help you set budgets for Google Ad spend.

To do this, follow these three steps:

1. Calculate your average case settlement value in the past two years.
2. Determine your profit margin per case.
3. Decide what you’re willing to spend on marketing: typically between 10% and 30% of case settlement value.

Need more info on running successful Google Ads campaigns? This article on Google AdWords for Lawyers will help.

People with a personal injury case are unlikely to sign up immediately after finding your firm online. The decision is too important to rush.

They must go through a “journey” with you and may visit your website multiple times before calling.

Even then, probably only a few percent will become paying customers without further marketing.

Retargeting is a great way to go after the other 95 percent or so.

As online advertising becomes more sophisticated, it’s now possible to retarget visitors who leave your website with ads.

You may have seen this process at work yourself: you searched for a product or service on Google and suddenly a related ad pops up on your Facebook feed.

Increasingly, lawyers are using this strategy to re-contact people who’ve shown an interest in their firm.

And, because personal injury law clients are usually from the general public, Facebook is a great place to find them.

Source 

Facebook retargeting is a specialist area that you’ll likely need marketing assistance with.

There’s a thin line between providing a timely prompt and annoying clients with this strategy.

I won’t bore you with statistics on how many people use Facebook. But get your retargeting ads right and it can be a very cost-effective way to win new clients and keep your cost per case down.

There are none of the huge cost-per-click rates that you see on Google Ads. The average is just two or three dollars per click.