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Pay per Click for Law Firms Guide

Pay per click for Law Firms (also known as PPC or AdWords) is one of the most effective ways to generate high-quality, high-intent enquiries for law firms.

With millions of people using search engines, like Google, every day to find legal services, a well-designed PPC campaign can drive targeted traffic to your website and generate legal enquiries.

However, creating a successful PPC campaign requires a deep understanding of how the platform works, as well as the unique needs and behaviours of your target audience.

PPC for Law Firms

Your Ultimate Guide

Our comprehensive guide will provide you with the knowledge to get started with your PPC marketing campaigns for your law firm.

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Is Pay per Click advertising worth while for Lawyers?

You may have already heard that good web design, blogs and SEO are essentail for generating online enquiries. But they assume one thing – that your ideal client is looking for a firm like yours in your area or that they know what they are looking for.

Now consider this.

What if you could engage with a prospect before they even think about contacting your firm to enquire about a legal problem? What if you could do it so early that only your landing page is on their radar?

That’s essentially what paid search is about and why it is so effective at generating relevant enquiries.

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Creating and managing successful legal pay per click campaigns can be a daunting task for law firms.

Request a free marketing review from us and we’ll help find the best solutions to market your law firm online.

If you already have a marketing team, that’s fine as we can collaborate with them to generate more work for your firm.

If you would like to learn more about PPC for law firms, continue reading this guide.

We cover all of the key elements you need to know about PPC marketing for law firms and provide insights from our own campaigns.

Alternatively, if you don’t have a spare 15 minutes, give us a call on 0161 877 4888 or request a callback.

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What is Pay per Click for Law Firms?

Pay per click for law firms is a form of online advertising where you, the advertiser, pay a fee each time someone clicks on one of your law firm’s ads.

It is one of the most effective ways to drive relevant traffic to your website, generate high-intent enquiries for your law firm, and increase brand awareness.

As the advertiser, you create an ad that appears on search engines (or social media platforms) when users search for specific keywords.

And you only ever pay when someone clicks on your ad.

To help you achieve your goals and to make sure your ad budget is not wasted on irrelevant keywords or audiences, you can hire a legal PPC agency like us, to proficiently manage your campaigns.

How does Pay per Click for Law Firms and Solicitors work?

PPC allows you to reach your perfect prospects by giving you the best opportunity to address the people who are actively looking for your legal services and target them with a call to action.

Imagine you are a Managing Director of a Personal Injury Law Firm and are looking to take on more slips, trips and falls at work cases because they were profitable for you in the past.

To generate more work in this area of PI, you create an advertising campaign that targets a number of keywords related to accidents at work.

One of the keywords you are targeting is ‘compensation for slipping at work’.

Now imagine an individual who just had an accident at work. They don’t know their legal rights and are not sure how much compensation they could be entitled to.

They decide to Google the phrase ‘compensation for slipping at work’.

Luckily, because you are running an advertisement specific to their search, your firm appears at the top of their Google search results and they click on your ad.

Knowing what your typical clients’ needs are, you designed your landing page to feature all the information needed to persuade a workplace accident victim to pursue a claim.

This is exactly how we run PPC campaigns for Solicitors and Law Firms.

We give you the best opportunity to show to individuals searching for your services and help you communicate that you are the best to solve their problem.

Why is PPC good for law firms?

One of the key reasons why PPC is so good for law firms is that it allows you to reach potential clients at the moment when they are actively searching for legal services.

By showing up at the top of Google search results, you increase your law firm’s visibility, which can attract more visitors, and with the right copy and calls to actions (CTAs), generate more enquiries.

W|ith PPC, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, making it a cost-effective way to reach potential clients.

PPC also provides you with extremely valuable data and insights that can be used to refine and optimise all your marketing efforts, leading to even better results over time.

Our legal marketing team led by Joel has already helped numerous law firms be successful using PPC.

Our case study about Treadstone Law Solicitors outlines how successful law firms can be using PPC advertising.  

As a result of our marketing efforts, over the last 3 years the firm has grown, reduced the costs of client acquisition and successfully hired new members of staff.

How popular is PPC?

You may not be always noticing it, but PPC is extremely common.

You run into campaigns on a daily basis while using search engines and social media.

Have you ever searched for an item or a service to purchase and then later noticed ads related to that product or service?

That was not a coincidence – you were being retargeted with paid ads.

Search engines such as Google and Bing, and social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, collect masses of information about individuals’ habits.

They monitor its’ users activities 24/7 and collect info which is then used by advertisers.

And the more detailed the data they have on people, the better PPC ads can be tailored to their needs.

The basics of Pay per Click for Law Firms

PPC ads can be easily compared to traditional forms of advertising, such as placing adverts on billboards, buses, and along the motorways.

In both cases, you must pay to have your ad displayed in a desirable location.

However, with traditional advertising, as more competitors enter the market, the cost for prime ad space skyrockets.

While in this sense, PPC for lawyers works in a similar way (like an auction house), it is often less expensive than traditional forms of advertising and offers a more targeted approach to reach your desired audience.

Unlike traditional methods, PPC allows you to collect various types of data that can help you measure the success of your advertising campaigns and make data-driven decisions for future campaigns. Some of the key data that can be collected through PPC campaigns include:

  1. Impressions: the number of times your ad is shown to prospective clients.
  2. Click-through rate (CTR): the percentage of people who click on your law firm ad after seeing it.
  3. Cost-per-click (CPC): the amount you pay each time someone clicks on your ad.
  4. Conversion rate: the percentage of people who take a specific action on your website, such as filling out a contact form or calling your firm, after clicking on your ad.
  5. Cost-per-conversion: the amount you pay for each conversion or new client generated through your legal PPC campaign.
  6. Search terms: the specific keywords or search terms that people are using to find your ads.
  7. Geographic location: where your ads are being shown and where clicks are coming from.

By analysing this data, you can optimise your campaigns to improve your click-through rate, conversion rate, and return on investment.

With traditional advertising, you run the risk of reaching a large audience but not generating any enquiries or interest in your legal services.

PPC eliminates this problem, as you only pay for clicks and can track the data to optimise your ad performance.

Overall, PPC offers a more cost-effective and data-driven approach to advertising for law firms.

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How do the keywords work?

When someone clicks on your ad, you will be charged a certain amount based on the maximum CPC you set and the competition for the chosen keywords.

Depending on what you do and what service you wish to advertise, your chosen keywords could be ‘divorce solicitor’, ‘personal injury law firm’, or something more specific to your area of expertise. Your PPC expert will advise you which keywords are worth bidding on.

You can set a daily budget to limit your overall spend, and you will only be charged when someone clicks on your ad. Not when it is displayed.

Google Ads offers several payment options, including credit/debit card, bank transfer, and direct debit.

You can take your marketing even further and specify exactly who you want to target. This includes your ideal clients’ age range, gender, location, interests, hobbies, whether they are single, married, divorced, like or hate football, and so on.

If you decide to outsource a law firm PPC agency to manage your campaigns, there will be an additional cost to pay for PPC management. Note that this cost is usually much lower than the cost of hiring a full-time marketing manager to work within your firm.

What are the types of PPC campaigns for Law Firms?

There are several types of PPC campaigns your law firm can run.

We describe the most popular ones.

  1. Search PPC campaign – this is the most popular type of PPC advertising described throughout this guide. You set up a campaign, choose your keywords, and advertise your legal services to users who search for specific keywords. On their end, the ad will show up in a variety of places on the search results page.
  2. Social PPC campaign – This is the precise type that allows you to advertise on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. It allows you to target specific people, of specific ages, in specific areas, and so on.
  3. Display advertising – Display advertising is not quite like PPC. But more a digital version of buying space in a phone book. In this type of campaign, you ‘rent’ a space for a banner on websites that your prospects are likely to use. Display ads are very good for building brand awareness.
  4. Retargeting / Re-marketing campaign – this type of campaign is useful as it allows you to target people who have clicked on your ads before and are using cookies. Those allow us to re-target searchers. Have you ever clicked on an ad with a mattress and then saw adverts for mattresses on all of your social media and Google? That’s how it works.
PPC services for law firms

Advantages of pay per click for law firms

PPC marketing offers several advantages if you are looking to promote your legal services online.

Below we list some of the most significant advantages of PPC for law firms.

You may now be wondering whether PPC will be any more effective than SEO.

SEO and PPC can actually work together to help you grow.

If your law firm is buying the majority of its cases from a CMC or a larger law firm, you may consider trying PPC to see if you can save on costs.

Our client, Treadstone Law, paid £300 per Business Interruption claim from their trusted Claims Management Company ‘CMC’.

With us, each accepted claim cost them £27.25 making a £273 saving on each claim.

Does increasing your ad spend result in more enquiries?

If you increase your Google Ad spend on your campaign, within a few days, you will see an increase in the number of enquiries coming through.

From the business point of view, it is best to see an immediate return on investment.

Hence why PPC is favoured by many law firms.

How does PPC help collect valuable data?

Imagine that your firm normally focuses on clinical negligence claims but you have just learned that a local manufacturer is letting poisonous fumes out of their factory that cause ill health.

Many local residents report symptoms of industrial disease.

Having helped clients with similar issues in the past, you decide to assist them in making claims against the factory.

In order to raise awareness, you begin a pay per click ‘PPC’ campaign on Facebook and Google to target people affected by the fumes.

Through your own research, you discover that the majority of people who suffer symptoms are 20-40 years old so you decide to initially target people within that age range and who live in the city.

As new enquiries slowly start to pour in, you learn that people suffer regardless of age. However, the ones who actively look to make a claim are mostly females.

Over time, you also learn that your active searchers like to visit parks, and enjoy outdoor activities such as hiking. In addition, the most commonly searched long-tail keyword is “chemical poisoning symptoms”.

As the campaign progresses, you also find out that you don’t need to target people in the entire city as the fumes only affect people who live in at a certain post code.

The above information and tailoring your campaign effectively help you reduce the cost per click and result in higher conversion rates because you target the right audience.

And lucky for you, no other local law firm has this information!

You are the only law firm running a PPC campaign to generate enquiries for industrial disease claims caused by the factory.

What is the average cost per legal click ‘CPC’

The average cost per legal click (CPC) can vary widely depending on a number of factors, including:

  • the specific legal practice area being targeted,
  • your geographic location and where you want to advertise your services,
  • the competition in your market, and
  • which platform you decide to advertise on.

In our experience of running campaigns for various types of law firms, clicks can range from a few pence to over £20.

Google Ads can be compared to an auction house. The more people in your target area bid on a specific keyword, the more it is going to cost. So for example, the same keyword may cost more if you are targeting prospects in Manchester than in Bolton.

The Quality Score is another factor that affects the CPC. Google really cares about the quality of the published content. Therefore, if you score low, this will increase your cost per click.

Speak to our PPC experts. We can provide you with a costs forecast.

Example of a Pay per click for law firms campaign

Anna is a 27-year-old female based in Leeds who was hit by a car while riding her bike to work. Luckily, she only hurt her wrist but she wants to make a personal injury claim against the driver’s insurance. She begins her Google search for helpful information. She types ‘hurt in a bike accident’ into the search bar.

After a couple of searches, she becomes more specific with the keywords. She starts looking for a ‘personal injury solicitor in Leeds’. That’s lucky for a local law firm that earlier in the day launched its new PPC campaign for cycling accidents.

In Google Ads, the firm specified that they want to target employed individuals who show interest in cycling, between the ages of 25-45, and are based in Yorkshire. Among others, the keywords they bid on were ‘knocked off bike’, ‘personal injury solicitor in Leeds’, and ‘cycling accident solicitors in Leeds’. As the firm’s ad appeared right at the top of Anna’s Google search results, she clicked on their tailored landing page.

To Anna’s joy, the page read as if it was written just for her, with calls to action prompting her to call the firm. Anna completed the form and logged out for the day. She found all the information she needed about making a claim, compensation she could receive, and the claims process.

And the law firm has just gained a new enquiry.

Frequently Asked Questions

We normally suggest a starting budget of no more than £20 a day (on Google Ads).

More than that could result in overspending.

If you choose our team to help you with your marketing, we will always work closely with you to make sure that you get the best value for money from your advertising.

Our ultimate goal is to help law firms grow.

You can’t just start your campaign by investing thousands of pounds in PPC/Google/social media advertising and expect to acquire high numbers of clients.

Pay per click for lawyers takes time and effort, and requires making constant changes to your campaigns led by data-driven decisions.

Furthermore, it is hugely beneficial to be experienced in law firm online advertising as it involves creating and managing online ad campaigns, and there are many factors that can impact the results.

Experienced law firm PPC advertisers have a deep understanding of how to optimise campaigns for maximum results and return on investment, know the ad platforms, ad targeting, and have knowledge of analytics.

Without experience in legal marketing specifically, your marketer may not fully understand your needs and your clients.

Each PPC campaign is different. But here are the main points each law firm should stick to:

  • Location – unless your law firm is located in every larger city in the UK, there is no point in trying to target searchers from outside of your region. The more focused your campaign is, the better.
  • Intent – there are a couple of types of searchers – those who look to use your services immediately, and those who are just browsing and planning. If your budget and capacity allow it, you can try target both types with tailored copy. For the visitors who are looking for the services now, focus on landing pages fine-tuned for quick conversions. For the browsers, create an informational piece of text that will help them make their mind up. Alternatively, you could use law firm SEO to achieve this.
  • Compel – PPC ads are usually quite small so the copy needs to be concise and send a straightforward message. No waffle, just persuasive and clear calls to action.
  • Sell – generating the enquiries is only half the battle. You now need to do the groundwork to make sure that they do business with you.

Search engines and social platforms make it seem that running ad campaigns is straightforward. However, you need to keep a couple of things in mind.

Google and Facebook may be very user-friendly. But don’t let them deceive you. We have previously worked with law firms who tried advertising themselves and ended up burning through substantial amounts of cash without generating any satisfactory results.

Ultimately, advertising platforms are businesses on their own that make money from you using them. Their aim is to get you to spend more money. They are your tools, not your friends. This is why it is best to hire a PPC expert – someone who has experience in running law firm ad campaigns to minimise any risks.

PPC is very sensitive and dynamic. It involves careful analysis of the business, online statistics, making constant adjustments, and (data-driven) optimisation and decisions. You can certainly try to set up a campaign. However, in order to manage it well, you need to commit to it full-time. This is especially if you don’t have any experience.

You also need to prepare yourself for failure.

This is really where the value of a marketing agency comes in as the ones who specialise in PPC normally have dedicated staff who understand the industry and its clients, and know the ins and outs of the platforms they use to advertise on. This allows them to tailor ads correctly and work them efficiently.

While you may take a year to learn how to work PPC, an agency can figure everything out for you within a week.

  • One of the biggest mistakes a law firm can make is pausing or stopping its campaign halfway through. If you pause your campaign when your cost per click has already been reduced, getting back to that lower price might take longer and will cost you more in the end. So, even if a campaign has not been bringing you many leads, it is best to wait it out.
  • If your landing page is poor quality, it is not going to convert prospects into paying clients. Both your online advertisement and the landing page need to be professional, clear and directly tied together. If they aren’t, that could cost you a lot of money.
  • Another error that a law firm can make is using keywords that don’t match the landing page, or worse – not using keywords at all. Google is very smart and its crawlers analyse the content of your landing pages. If the intent is not right or the keywords are irrelevant, this will negatively affect your Quality Score. On-page SEO is, therefore, essential.
  • Data is extremely important when it comes to running campaigns. So, if you don’t track your data or your conversions, you will miss the opportunity to learn about your demographics and what works and what doesn’t. Make sure you track your data correctly and ensure you are up to date with what is happening with your campaigns!
  • Another mistake that law firms can avoid is not using negative keywords. In pay per click ‘PPC’ advertising, negative keywords prevent advertisements from showing for certain keyword phrases you don’t want to show for. This can in turn result in better conversion rates as your services are only advertised to people who are looking for them, and reduce your cost per click.
  • As previously stated, pay per click ‘PPC’ ads require attention and maintenance. A lack of them will result in unnecessary expenses so you need to monitor your campaigns on a daily basis. Keep an eye on the performance and the searched terms, and adjust your campaigns accordingly.

Doing a bit of maths can help you determine whether an Adword campaign is worth running.

All you need to do is determine the lowest possible case value, and then identify the highest possible case value.

Divide the highest by the lowest and you will get your volatility score.

We find Google and Facebook to be the most effective platforms for law firms but this heavily depends on your individual needs. We will advise you which platforms would generate the most enquiries for your firm at the research stage.

Curious about how much each individual platform charges?

Each one has its own pricing scheme. Some may charge a share of your total spend while others will offer a flat fee and require a minimum threshold.

We will advise you about all the costs involved in PPC when you speak to us.

Believe it or not – other law firms drive it to this level (£20 is considered fairly expensive)!

But why do they do that? Because one good case can pay for all the PPC costs and make a good profit on top. Losing is just a part of the process.

For the above reason, PPC works great when you run multiple campaigns at the same time.

Whatever the work area, PPC works and law firms in the UK pay a good amount of money because it is a proven method of generating high-quality, high-intent leads that convert.

When choosing a PPC advertising partner, it is important to consider factors like reputationpricing, and communication to ensure that you are working with a partner who can meet your specific needs and goals.

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