Is Google AdWords Worth It For Law Firms?

The answer is Yes. Google AdWords is worth it, but if it is done correctly.

Conducting successful campaigns with pay per click marketing for attorneys is brutally tough.

Why? Because clicks can be costly.

Meaning a single basic mistake could cost you thousands of dollars a day depending on your budget. That’s potentially hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year wasted.

Broken landing page? That’s money down the drain for zero conversions. No message match? Goodbye, paycheck.

In an industry with such high costs, it’s critical to have a flawless Google AdWords strategy.

In this post, we will decode the way that Law Firms are driving serious profits from diverse Google AdWords strategies.

Let’s start with their keywords. Local Long-Tail Keywords and Geo-Targeting Win the Day. It’s no secret that law-based keywords are expensive. Meaning your cost per lead on any given campaign is bound to be in the high hundreds to low thousands for a single engagement.When it comes to keywords for attorneys, there are almost an unlimited number of them, too. Variations from “attorney” to “lawyer” already produce dozens of keywords. But reducing their cost is critical to profiting from Google AdWords as an attorney. Unless you’re landing only high-value clients that net thousands upon thousands of dollars each, you won’t break even.

Which keywords are top Law Firms implementing for decreased costs?

Unless your conversion rate is very high, expensive keywords that are more generic in nature won’t work for you. The good news? They don’t have to! You don’t need them.

A local long-tail keyword strategy looks like this:

Using SEMrush to pull keyword data from top attorney companies, you can see that their keywords aren’t generic. They pull specific locations into the keyword on top of location targeting.

But why do you want keywords with such a low volume? Why wouldn’t you bid on “attorney?”

Because that keyword costs tons of money and won’t drive the traffic you need.

While these keywords aren’t high-volume like “attorney,” they’re specific to their location. This allows them to rank higher for cheaper keywords and drive traffic that converts fast.

Stack multiple of these long-tail local keywords, and you can match the amount of traffic that you would get from generic keywords for half the price.

And when you think about the local user experience, it’s likely that they’re searching for keywords that include their location.

According to Google, “near me” searches are seeing explosive growth every year:

And those searches are resulting in buying decisions. 76% of people who search for a nearby service or product on a smartphone will visit that business within a day. Better still, 28% of them will purchase.

For attorneys, focusing keywords on geolocations and long-tail local phrases is going to net the best results.

The Secret Sauce of Profitable Ad Clicks: Benefits

When writing new ads for your next Google AdWords campaign, where do you start?

The primary goal is clear: get the user to click by (almost) any means necessary.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you can lie, clickbait, or trick people. That’s only going to make people angry and cost you for every click. And none of them will convert.

Instead, you need to deploy all of the weapons in your arsenal. Click the red nuclear bomb button and drop all of your bombs. But first, that starts with understanding the pain points of your customers.

You can’t just talk about how amazing your company is. People aren’t receptive to features. They’re receptive to benefits.

And the Google AdWords strategies that find profit understand this. If people are using search to find an attorney, they are in the beginning stages of the process.

To get their attention among the other competitors in your space, you’ll have to make a compelling offer that includes zero downsides and no effort for the searcher.

Like a free case review:

When users are window-shopping in the beginning stages, they aren’t willing to pay you. The top firms know this:

You should tailor each ad to the user experience.

Put yourself in their shoes:  They don’t have an attorney, and they need one. The unbranded search term tells you that this is likely their first time inquiring about an attorney. They don’t know much about their next steps and will be skeptical about paying out of pocket before seeing results.

With this in mind, you should focus your ads directly on nurturing the user and addressing their pain points:

Cater to their needs in your messaging:

We’ll come to you 24/7. Free Consultation. 24/7 Customer Service.

These benefits are key to driving clicks that turn into sales.

If your ads are boring and don’t contain direct results that users can expect, you aren’t getting clicks.

Driving clicks is just the first part. Now, the hard part sets in: Converting an expensive click to a profitable client.

Typical landing page conversions aren’t great when it comes to the legal sector. You can expect an average conversion rate of just 3.2% for a given landing page.

But you don’t have to settle for average. Some of the best landing pages in the legal sector are converting at over 15%!

That’s an incredibly high conversion rate that will ensure that you spend less per lead and acquire more customers on the money you do spend.

So, how are they doing it?

At Bawol PPC we have the secret sauce that helps law firms achieve the best results. Find out more and contact us today for a free consultation and audit.