The moment someone needs an attorney can be terrifying: usually, one seeks the services of a lawyer when something goes wrong or fears something might soon take a turn for the worse. It can be a source of stress and concern. This is an ideal setting for you to come to the rescue, and put your audience’s minds at ease. In this article, we’ll talk about how to do that with the help of Google Ads. Here are a few things to help you make the most of Google Ads for your practice.
Kevin Adams is the founder and CEO at Predictive Online Marketing, a digital advertising agency specialized in paid search advertising. Kevin has been down the path of paying over $300 per click (on mesothelioma ads he ran)! From this he’s discovered a few secrets that can help you drive your ad costs down. He sat down to walk us through how attorneys can get more from their online ads.
In his blog, Kevin tackles a variety of topics like:
Successful businesses need to create value and communicate the value that they create. That’s what your first interaction with potential customers should be about. What makes you better than your competition? Why should a potential client choose you? If you can’t answer these questions, how is your customer supposed to? Ad copy is the vehicle for you to deliver those answers to your customer base.
Once you’ve written your copy, you may think you’re done. On the contrary: never stop testing your ads. In advertising, everyone copies. Parts of your winning ad today may be in competitor ads tomorrow. Also, what works today may not be so effective tomorrow. Iteration is the key.
Whenever possible, include offers, pricing, and a clear call to action. Your ad copy should mirror the theme and messaging of your landing page, and both should strive to generate business.
To maximize your chances of converting, find alternative ways of saying the same thing.
Examples with similar meanings that may imply the same thing:
“law”, “law firm”, “legal”, “lawsuits”, “attorney”, “lawyer”, “justice”
‘About Us’, ‘Our Mission’, ‘Our Promise’
Copy writing is hard, not so much for the complexity of the task, but for the patience and consistency the work demands. Keep at it, and you’ll eventually find the sweet spot.
A landing page is the page users see when they click on your ad. Your results will be heavily influenced by the quality of your landing page: the better you are at welcoming people who have clicked on your ad, the higher the chances that they’ll become a paying customer. It helps to think of a landing page as a salesman whose job is to get potential clients in contact with a person.
Keep it brief and simple. It may be tempting to write a lengthy page with every piece of information, but short sentences are more impactful and effective. Consider bullet points. Include a clear call-to-action and make your phone number and contact information prominent.
This also applies to forms: they should be modest in size. 4 to 6 questions is a reasonable number. Additionally, in the form’s button, avoid ‘Submit’ or ‘Send’. Except for very specific industries, “submitting” sends the wrong subconscious message to your prospect. Instead, suggest what the user will get from completing the form. After they complete the form, provide expectations, and be sure to follow up within that time frame.
Examples:
Form title: ‘Personal Injury Consultation’
Form button: ‘Get Legal Help!”
Thank You Page text: “Thank you for contacting XXXX, XXXX, & XXXX Law Firm. One of our attorneys will contact you within 1-2 business days.”
These are additional elements – like location, pricing, text, image, or phone number– that allow Google to test and improve upon your ad copy. Ad extensions are additional links that increase the clickable real estate in your ad. You’re not charged extra for these. In fact, Google rewards you for adding Ad Extensions.
Shorter is often better, because many users may be on mobile. But test different lengths. This will give Google options to optimize for different screens.
Think of what your prospective clients are looking for such as “bankruptcy attorneys”, “divorce lawyers”, “personal injury law”. These are the keywords you want to bid on. The more specific they are, the better. They will attract better quality leads, and since there will be less competition, you will save money. Avoid overly simple keywords like “law”.
Google will test your ads on keywords that may have somewhat different meanings than you intended. To limit this, I recommend adding them with the syntax included in this article, with quotation marks on both ends of the phrase.
These prevent your ads from appearing when the words appear in a user’s search. They can save you a lot of money, but the wrong negative keywords can exclude valuable searches.
Single word negatives can block many potential searches. Be judicious when applying them. I have found “laws” to be immensely effective as negative keyword. Too many searches including that term are made by the wrong users or at the wrong moment.
State names are often safe negative keywords (barring local geography or street names), but some states such as “colorado”, “oregon”, “indiana”, “maine” have abbreviations that may not be safe – “co”, “or”, “in”, “me”.
If you can’t track an action, you can’t effectively optimize and account for it.
Submitted forms are the easiest way to send the user to a ‘Thank you/Confirmation’ page with a separate URL. Google Analytics will report visits to that URL as a goal. You can then import that goal into Google Ads for tracking. You can also use Google Ads conversion tracking and follow Google’s instructions to add the tracking.
Call tracking services are also a good avenue for tracking conversions. Companies such as CallRail, Invoca and Call Tracking Metrics serve a greater purpose than simply recording phone calls. They allow the originating source or keyword of a phone call to be reported back to an ad account, and those can be valuable insights for your ad strategy.
There’s a world of people out there who are searching for your services. Google Ads can help connect those people with you and your services. Obviously, there are a few details you need to get right, and a learning curve. But once you do, Google Ads can help you grow your law practice in a very effective and scalable way. Hopefully this article can shorten that learning curve for you, and ease your way into growing your business with the help of Google Ads.
Kevin Adams is the founder & CEO of Predictive Online Marketing, a digital advertising agency.
Kevin began his digital marketing career in 2004. Since then, he has combined his paid search and performance marketing experience with AI tools to solve advertising problems using methods previously impossible. Kevin gets results – to that end, he is relentless.
Daniels-Head Insurance Agency (DHIA) seeks thoughts and insights from a variety of individuals and organizations in the industry. The guest content on this blog represents the individual opinion of the author and not that of DHIA. Nor is it the opinion of DHIA’s underwriters and business partners. Neither DHIA nor DHIA’s business partners are recommending, endorsing, or sponsoring any companies, or third parties mentioned in this blog.
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