PPC for Lawyers: 13 Tips to Master Online Advertising

1. Set Your Goals

To start, you’ll want to define your goals — what do you want to get out of your PPC campaign?

The obvious answer is “to get more clients.” But we can get more specific by thinking about SMART goals.

SMART goals are a part of every law firm’s marketing strategy. And rightfully so.

If the goals you set are SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound), you’ll have more realistic and actionable goals that can guide everything you do.

So, instead of saying you want to get more clients, your goal could be:

“I want to generate 50 more leads per month through PPC. If I convert 25% of leads, I’ll have 12.5 more clients per month. I’ll reach this goal in three months.”

That’s just an example. To form your own goal, ask yourself:

• How many leads do I want to get every month?
• How many of those leads do you need to convert to consider the campaign a success?
• How long will you give yourself to reach the goal?

Then think about what the purpose of your goal is. Are you trying to generate leads? Raise brand awareness?

2. Target a Specific Audience

As you now know, you can’t have a successful PPC campaign without having a specific client persona in mind.

You likely already know who your main client base is. Take some time to put it on paper.

Figure out who your clients are, where they live, their income, their challenges and pain points, how they prefer to communicate, and even their interests.

All of this data can be used to hyper-target that specific audience, so your ads are only seen by them, saving you money and improving your overall clickthrough rate (CTR).

If you don’t have a solid idea of who your target client is, here are some ways to figure that out:

• Competitor analysis. Who are your competitors targeting? What types of ads are they using? On what platforms?
• Survey your existing clients. Figure out key data points about the clients you already have. This is the easiest and most effective way to build a client persona. Look at things like age, location, income, and marital status.

3. Target Your Specific Location

Many law firms depend on local lead generation to fuel their growth.

With SEO, that means local search optimization but with PPC for lawyers, you can target your precise location in your ads.

It can save ad spend and reduce wastage if you set geographical parameters for your ads to specifically target a defined area. Then your ads will only appear to searchers in that area and not attract clicks (for which you pay) from searchers in areas that are unlikely to yield paying clients.

Why show ads to clients in Minnesota if your clients predominantly come from the Bronx area of New York?

That would be wasteful for any law firm but especially if your cost-per-click is high (for competitive keywords).

4. Choose Your Advertising Method

Once you’ve figured out where your clients are active, you can choose your advertising method.

We’ve found that law firms experience excellent results using Google Ads, primarily with search and display ads.

Another option worth looking into is Facebook ads. As a popular social media platform, odds are a portion of your client base is active there.

Lastly, YouTube is a fine option if you have strong video content, but we’ve found that it doesn’t perform as well as the others.

5. Think About Budget

Managing your law firm’s marketing budget is a crucial part of any successful campaign — but with PPC (and its potential to get very expensive very quickly), it’s even more crucial to get it right.

Platforms like Google and Facebook are equipped with robust tools to help you anticipate your typical ad spend.

The Google Keyword Planner forecasts, for instance, offers invaluable insights into potential traffic and associated costs. By analyzing these forecasts, you can outline a tentative weekly or monthly budget.

However, it’s essential to approach these figures as guidance rather than absolutes. While they provide an approximation, numerous variables — many within your control like ad copy, ad design, and landing page quality — can influence the actual results.

Your forecast, by definition, is only an estimate of what you can expect. A lot of your success comes from your ad copy and other variables that are in your control.

Essential PPC Budgeting Advice: Vigilance is the key to effective budget management.

It’s all too easy for ad spend to overshoot its mark if left unchecked. Thus, our golden rule for those venturing into PPC is to exercise restraint, especially initially. Commence with a conservative budget, allowing your ads to run for a minimum of two weeks. This window provides a glimpse into their efficacy.

If they’re resonating with your target audience and driving results, consider incrementally increasing your budget.

Conversely, if they’re underperforming, reevaluate your strategy, make the necessary tweaks, and perhaps even test with a reduced budget before committing more funds.

Remember, the PPC landscape is dynamic.

Regularly reviewing and adjusting your budget based on performance metrics and changing market conditions will place your law firm in an optimal position to achieve your marketing objectives.

6. Write Ad Copy That Converts

Your ad copy can make or break an ad campaign. It should tell prospective clients why you’re a better choice than the competition. It should address their pain points and be followed with a call-to-action (CTA).

Like all aspects of PPC, it’s important to test multiple versions of your copy. After all, great keyword selection and optimization won’t get people to click on your ads. The creative will.

Remember the client persona you put together? Use that to identify client pain points and their needs and concerns, and work that into your copy.

You might think you know what people want to hear, but you’d be surprised. Testing multiple iterations of copy is the best way to create the perfect ad.

And Google gives you the ability to test multiple pieces of your ad copy, including:

• Headline variations
• Body text
• Calls to action
• Display URLs

Here’s an example of ad variations for one ad set:

Copywriting is an art that requires trial and error to determine what messaging works best. Google lets you run A/B tests, which display either version A or B (or C, D, E) of the search ad.

Run those for a couple of weeks. Then you can determine which elements of the ads are most successful, recreate the best version, and reallocate your budget accordingly.

You’ll be surprised at the results you can achieve with a little bit of patience.

7. Select Relevant Keywords

Keywords are the bread and butter of your ad campaign.

You can use Google Ads keyword planner to discover keywords you want to bid for. You can look at your website (or competitors) to see what keywords you should include in your PPC ad campaigns.

With the keyword planner, you can:

• Find keywords that are relevant to your target audience. Since many law firms operate locally, consider location-specific keywords like “defense attorney in Austin.”
• See an estimated amount of searches a keyword gets every month
• Forecast an estimated spending plan for specific keywords, as the average cost of a keyword is available

We recommend you find a balance between high-volume, broad keywords and low-volume, more specific keywords.

Broad keywords with high volumes are more expensive across the board. They can get your ad in front of more people, but they’re less targeted. A more specific keyword will usually cost less and convert better.

8. Use Keywords in Your Ad Copy

There’s more to PPC for Lawyers than just picking keywords and putting up the money.

Google (and other PPC platforms) use a Quality Score to measure how effective and relevant your ad is when compared to other advertisers bidding on the same keywords.

To ensure your ad gets to the top of the PPC section, focus on improving your Quality Score.

One way to do so is by using keywords in your ad copy.

Try to incorporate your keywords into your headline and ad content. This can be a challenge for some keywords, and it shouldn’t come at the expense of readability.

More specific long-tail keywords (those low-volume ones we mentioned earlier) will have less competition and have a lower Quality Score requirement. You’ll have an easier time getting those ads where you want them to be.

Lastly, you can consider dynamic keyword insertion. It makes sure that at least one of the search terms someone types into Google appears in your ad copy, increasing its relevance.

9. Create Landing Pages

When someone clicks on your ad, what page do they end up on?

An important aspect of any successful PPC campaign is the landing page that searchers end up on when they click your ad. It’s essentially your shot at convincing them that clicking your ad was the right choice and encouraging them to engage with you through a contact form or some other method.

For a few great ideas for creating these pages, check out our rundown of the best 21 law firm landing pages.

Criminal defense Google Ad campaigns tend to do well when they direct searchers to high-quality landing pages.

Here’s a great example from MD Criminal Defence.

It’s better to direct searchers to a landing page designed specifically in response to the ad copy so that it can better address their pain points, needs, and wants.

If your ad leads them to a generic homepage, the language and imagery won’t be tailored specifically to their needs, and they’ll be more likely bounce.

10. Use D