Are Google Ads an effective investment for Legal sector marketing?
Digital marketing is one of the best ways for law firms to reach new clients who are actively in the market for a solicitors services. The fast-paced technology allows us to be constantly connected and gives us access to vast information at our fingertips, but it appears rare that many law firms are successfully leveraging PPC as an effective channel for lead generation.
We already know it’s crucial to have a strong online presence for any business to succeed and the legal sector is no exception. Law firms too should always exploring innovative ways to expand their marketing activity across multiple channels.
There is no right or wrong answer as to the best channels to implement into your marketing strategies as it all comes down to your individual business goals, the markets you play in and your objectives. However, one channel we highly recommend honing in on is Google Ads.
It allows businesses to place targeted ads on Google Search results pages in front of high intent audiences. But. the question still remains, ‘are Google Ads the most effective method of investment for legal sector marketing?‘ Let’s dive in and explore!
What are Google Ads?
In short, it’s not SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), it’s a form of PPC (pay-per-click) marketing. PPC comes in many forms, but Google Ads is just Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) platform.
Google Ads are built on a structure of Campaigns, Ad Groups and Keywords, by which a law firm can segment their campaigns and focus in on areas of their legal services e.g .Family Law and Commercial Law would warrant their own Campaign and Ad Group(s) each.
Overall, the platform allows advertisers to gain visibility across Google’s multiple properties including Search results page, YouTube and more. Search Ads are the most commonly used type of ad and they appear on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) for those Googling relevant search term to the advertisers product/services.
Google Ads can also be used to run Display, Shopping, YouTube ads and more, but it’s important to have a bespoke landing page (or even landing pages!) to really get the most out of a Google Ads campaign for any law firm.
What is the average cost per lead with Google Ads for the Legal Sector?
Cost per lead will vary depending on a number of factors related to your Google Ads Campaigns, but WordStream offers an average number. At the time of writing this in 2023, WordStream has found leads to cost around £60 based on their Google Ads benchmarks.
However, if you build your law firm’s Google Ads Campaign around a focus on Quality Score, you can beat those with a bigger budget that you…!
Google Ads is about Quality Score and Budget. If Google see’s your law firm is willing to ‘splash the cash’ and spend a lot on ad spend, but your landing pages, ad copy or keywords don’t provide any for of ‘quality’ for users, you’ll be pushed down the listings in terms of your ‘Ad Rank’.
How do I make sure I get quality leads for my law firm with Google Ads?
Negative Keywords
One of the most overlooked techniques is to develop a tight Negative Keywords strategy.
These ‘Negative Keywords’ allow you to omit anyone who searches for phrases that don’t match what you want.
A great example is the word ‘cheap‘. If someone searches for ‘law firm in Farringdon‘ vs ‘cheap law firms in Farringdon‘, you don’t want the latter. So adding ‘cheap‘ as a negative keyword will stop that user from seeing your ad.
Price Pre-Qualification
Sometimes, as scary as it sounds, giving an indication of a law firms price in Ad Copy can help to stop clicks that would never have been a customer of your law firm anyway.
The reason being that you only pay Google when someone clicks on your Google Ads. So, if you say ‘Willing Writing Service Starting from £100‘, anyone who doesn’t have the budget will go else where and won’t waste your budget.
On the flip side, anyone who clicks your Google Ads based on the ad copy clearly has the budget and is willing to spend that much, or more, on have a will written by a professional law firm.
Ad Extensions
Using Ad Extensions is a great way to give users more options when it comes to getting in touch with your law firm. Google Ads offers a range of extensions including but not limited to:
Sitelink Extensions
Callout Extensions
Call Extensions (Yes, this is different from the above!)
Location Extensions
Rating Extensions
And lot, lots more than we won’t bore you with today, but all extremely powerful tools when it comes to any PPC campaign, especially for law firms who will have a variety of audiences with different preferences on how to engage with their solicitors in the first instance.
For example, I prefer phone calls, others might prefer submitting a contact form on a landing page to reply in their own time!
Landing Pages
A strong Landing Page is a massive factor in getting good quality leads with Google Ads.
Imagine, you have a user who is searching for your law firm’s services. They see you Google Ads and like your Ad Copy. They click through to your Landing Page and it is either:
Just your law firm homepage, or,
Has nothing to do with the services they were looking for
At that point you’ve paid for the click! You’ve done the hard work! But you lost the lead due to your landing page.
Additionally, as we’ve mentioned in this blog, Google Ads will ‘score’ you and give you an AdRank number based on your Landing Page amongst other factors. So, you may not even get into the top results of Google Ads for prospective clients.
Or, worse still, you have to pay more than everyone else to get to the same place because your landing page is so poor!
The moral of the story, if you’re going to put in this much work for your Google Ad campaign, make fast loading, highly relevant landing pages with your keywords in the copy and lots of calls to action for people to convert on.
As a bonus tip, you may want to create landing pages per campaign or even ad group in some case as it allows you to tailor everything to what your users are searching for.
Why are Google Ads an important investment for your Legal Firms marketing efforts?
There are a whole host of reasons to use Google Ads for any law firm marketing strategy, but here are just a few.
Targeted Advertising
Google Ads allows a law firm to specify exact target audiences for their PPC campaigns through specific factors such as demographics, location, devices, interests, etc. as does most PPC advertising. However, what’s different most importantly, search terms.
For example, if you specialise in family law, you can target your Google Ads to audiences searching for “family lawyers” or related keywords. This means your Google Ads are more likely to be seen by your target audiences, those looking for legal services, making your advertising more efficient and effective.
Cost-Effective
As we’ve established, PPC literally means Pay-Per-Click, meaning that you will only pay when someone clicks on your ad, making a PPC Campaign a cost-effective way to advertise your law firm when managed correctly. Google also allows you to set a daily budget which means you can control your ad spend and make sure you’re not overspending. An vital tool for any law firm’s PPC campaigns!
Measurable Results
Detailed reporting on the performance of your ads is available on Google Ads, but you need to make sure you’ve set up your ad campaign conversion tracking correctly.
By doing this, data such as number of clicks, impressions and conversions, becomes much more valuable when analysing the success of your ad campaigns, as your law firm can then tie back everything to trackable leads and sales.
These reports also allow you to continuously analyse campaigns and adapt when needed to ensure you are always getting the best results. We know that some services offered by law firms are seasonal and so tracking these trends helps you to shift spend & focus of your Google Ads campaigns over time by tracking how your advertising budget is spent, who is clicking on your Google Ads and the performance of positive keywords will help to provide tangible data.
Overall, Google Ads for lawyers are an effective investment as they provide targeted advertising, cost-effectiveness and measurable results. However, as with everything, there are some challenges to consider with Google Ads. High competition and limited budgets always have the potential to throw a spanner into the works. Before investing in Google Ads, legal sector businesses should consider their specific marketing goals and ad spend budgets, to ensure their strategies align with their business goals.
Should I be doing this myself?
There is nothing wrong with entirely managing PPC for law firms in-house, but you will need to understand exactly how to carry out Google Ads work effectively to achieve the best results in the legal sector.
Taking on an external PPC advertising agency to manage your Google Ads campaign will likely get you a better return on your ad spend investment and the in-depth analytics would should receive from them (note should! Pick a good agency!) will help you to gain a better understanding of what type of ad campaigns work best for your law firm.
A well-developed marketing strategy must be diversified to deliver measurable results. At Hewitt Matthews, we implement and manage PPC marketing strategies that use the latest tools, techniques and best practices available to grow your law firm and improve your bottom line by converting more prospective clients.
We’ll focus on the execution and delivery, whilst you can focus on the numbers and delivering the leads that your law firm need to continue their growth.
Want to learn more? Let’s chat!
We’re here to help and will even audit your current ad campaign set up for free.
