Traditional marketing is a favorite among law firms across America. And while billboards, bus and bench ads, and radio adverts can broaden your reach, it doesn’t drive the best traffic.
There’s no way to segment your audience to increase the odds of conversions. So you’re left weeding through hundreds of calls instead of working on cases.
Not an ideal workday for a busy attorney. And it’s the reason more law firms turn to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to deliver better quality leads.
However, there’s another problem: Successful PPC campaigns require a lot of time and effort to build. That’s where hiring a legal PPC agency makes sense.
Struggling to build a pipeline of qualified leads using Google and other ad platforms becomes a problem of the past.
What is a legal PPC agency?
A legal PPC agency specializes in helping lawyers with their digital advertising needs. It provides a full-service approach that includes keyword research, landing page creation, conversion optimization, reporting, and even ongoing management.
The difference between a traditional marketing firm and a legal PPC agency is that the latter has experience working with lawyers specifically. They know how to get the right people to click your ads and convert.
Generally, attorney PPC agencies also have expertise in search engine optimization (SEO) to help your site rank higher in organic search engine results pages (SERPs). Using SEO services with PPC services is a powerful method to dominate the first page.
Legal PPC agencies understand how to build a marketing strategy that improves your law firm’s website visibility across platforms like Google, Bing, and YouTube. The result? More clients, more referrals, and more business.
There are many advantages of working with a law firm PPC agency, but three that appeal to lawyers are that:
- You can focus on your cases while the agency manages your PPC campaigns
- The agency brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to the table.
- The agency can scale your campaigns quickly to meet your needs.
Results are everything
HawkSEM in 90 seconds
What services do legal PPC agencies offer?
The best law firm PPC companies offer a comprehensive suite of services to manage your ad campaigns from start to finish. Here’s a quick rundown of the services you can expect.
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PPC audit of current campaigns
If you’ve run ad campaigns without success, then it’s time to look under the hood. A PPC audit will identify areas of improvement so you can boost performance.
For example, if you’re not getting enough clicks or converting well, then you may need to adjust keywords to target better audiences.
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Keyword research
This is arguably the most important service offered by a legal digital marketing agency. The goal here is to find relevant terms that describe your practice area. You want to target these terms as closely as possible to ensure you’re reaching the right potential clients.
Get this wrong, and you’ll waste your ad budget on irrelevant, non-converting traffic.
At HawkSEM, we determine relevant keywords to target based on your target audience. Then we update the PPC marketing efforts as your campaigns grow to improve the quality of conversions. How? By eliminating low-quality converters from seeing your search ads.
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Landing page creation
The keyword list you build isn’t just for your ads. It’s for your landing pages too.
Landing pages are “homebase” for visitors who click on your PPC ads, designed to speak to that user’s needs and get them to convert. Including the same keywords on your landing page tells Google it’s relevant to searchers, increasing the odds of it appearing.
At HawkSEM, we build custom landing pages and optimize them with copy designed to convert prospective clients. How we do it: by running A/B tests using heat maps to see how users interact with a page and how to improve it for conversions.
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Campaign planning and execution
With a custom landing page built, it’s time to create your legal PPC ad campaign. This includes setting up bids, managing budgets, and monitoring performance.
Our team handles all aspects of your account management, from creating new campaigns to optimizing existing ones. We also monitor your accounts to ensure you’re always receiving the highest return on investment (ROI).
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Ad creation and optimization
An attorney PPC agency will create eye-catching ads that are optimized for targeted audiences. This is possible using conversion copywriting to attract eyes, build interest, and garner clicks.
We create and update ad copy that improves the click-through rate (CTR) of your ads by making your law firm stand out. Without targeted ad copy, users who aren’t ready to convert — or aren’t within your target audience — may click your ads, causing wasted ad spend.
Ongoing A/B testing is critical because it identifies weak areas in your ads. So we test various headlines, calls to action (CTA), and ad copy to increase your ROI (not your budget).
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Conversion tracking
Stay on top of what’s happening (or not happening) in your PPC campaigns with conversion tracking. Your law firm PPC agency tracks how many people are clicking and attribute calls to specific campaigns.
This is critical to see which ad groups perform the best and which should be shut down. Then to keep you in the loop, the agency will provide regular reports that show how your campaigns are performing. They’ll also offer insights and recommendations for further improvement, so you’re always in the know.
HawkSEM achieves this using our proprietary software, ConversionIQ.
It opens communication between us and the law firm and offers full visibility about campaign performance. For example, we can identify which leads to target more (or less), so we can optimize your campaigns accordingly (as opposed to optimizing for all conversions shown in the ads platform, which could increase the number of low-quality leads).
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Bid management
When you partner with a legal PPC agency, they’ll manage your bids and budget to ensure you’re getting the most out of your PPC campaigns.
They’ll set daily, weekly, and monthly targets for your ads. They’ll also monitor your costs and adjust them when necessary.
What is a legal PPC ad and how do they work?
Legal PPC ads can appear across various platforms and in different formats. For example, you have:
- Display ads: Visual ads that appears on websites, apps, and social media platforms.
- Local ads: Text-based ads that appear in local search results in the local 3 pack box next to a Google Maps
- Video ads: Video advertisements that appear on YouTube, Facebook, and other video streaming platforms.
- Amazon ads: Sponsored listings that appear at the top of Amazon search and throughout the results.
- Search ads: Text-based ads that appear on Google, Bing, and other search engines.
For example, if someone searches “personal injury lawyer” in Google, then a local legal PPC ad may display at the top of the SERP. Google and other search engines use the searcher’s IP address, mobile device location, or city keyword to pull relevant local ads.
But it’s not just Google — you can also place pay-per-click advertising on other search platforms, including:
Microsoft Ads
Yahoo!
DuckDuckGo
Yandex
Baidu
YouTube (Part of the Google network)
Why use other ad networks than Google?
Google Ads (previously Google Adwords) is the most popular PPC platform for law firms, but other paid ad networks improve your traffic opportunities. For example, you can use a mix of Search Ads and Display Ads to also appear on websites to increase your law firm’s visibility.
How can an attorney PPC agency drive quality leads to your law firm?
The expertise a legal PPC agency brings to the equation gives your law firm a competitive edge over other attorneys. An agency has access to data about your practice area and performs a market analysis needed to craft data-driven ads that get clicks and conversions.
At HawkSEM, we match you with a legal PPC team. We have account managers who ran successful PPC ads for law firms. So our teams know where to start and how to best differentiate you from your competitors.
Law firms come to us when they struggle to get ads in front of their target audience. We’re able to determine the best keywords to target high-quality leads (all within your desired PPC budget). Our teams work through an ad account you own and have full access to — unlike some PPC agencies that don’t allow clients to access the ads platforms.
For example, a previous law firm client came to us with no historical data because they didn’t have access to their own ad account at their last agency. They were receiving a multitude of unqualified leads, which resulted in wasted ad spend. We increased their high-quality leads without increasing their ad spend and targeted users searching for legal services.
The result: a 10.3% conversion rate using a $4K budget in May to yielding a 20% conversion rate with a $2K budget in September.
What are the benefits of working with an attorney PPC agency?
Law firms have three options for legal marketing: continue to use traditional advertising, try to build PPC marketing campaigns, or hire an agency.
Only one of these options guarantees results using proven strategies and systems. The probability of getting an ROI using expensive ads or poorly managed PPC campaigns is low. If you’re serious about building your law firm’s presence in the local SERPs, then working with a legal PPC company is ideal.
Let’s review some of the direct benefits you’ll get when partnering with the right lawyer PPC agency.
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Improved campaigns
Low-converting keywords. Poorly written ads. Unoptimized landing pages. These are some things a legal PPC agency will catch when analyzing your campaigns for improvement. They’ll handle all the analytics and enhancements to ensure your ads continue to offer the highest ROI possible.
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Increased ROI
We’ve seen it happen before. A law firm spends thousands on PPC advertising only to see little to no return. When you partner with a legal PPC agency, you can track the performance of each campaign and make adjustments accordingly. You won’t waste time and money on ineffective campaigns because the agency will run A/B tests to maximize results and avoid costly mistakes.
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Higher quality leads
You can’t expect to build a profitable law firm if you’re not attracting qualified leads. Unfortunately, designing highly targeted PPC campaigns is something that takes time and expertise. Eliminate the learning curve by working with a legal PPC expert that’ll build PPC campaigns that attract your ideal clients. Filling your pipeline with cases has never been easier.
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Lower cost per lead
There are two ways lawyers lose money on PPC campaigns: bidding on the wrong keywords and not removing irrelevant, non-converting keywords. To make your ad campaigns profitable, you must keep your cost per lead as low as possible. A PPC agency will identify low-performing ad groups and scale high-performers, so you’re converting more leads without paying more.
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Expert insights and management
As a lawyer, you don’t have time to learn, run, and optimize PPC or SEO campaigns. So it’s a win-win to work with someone who already knows how to do it. A legal PPC agency has years of experience in building lead generation for law firms. They know what works and what doesn’t. Plus, they know which tools and tactics yield the best results.
This saves you time, money, and headaches that come with unfruitful campaigns. And ensures you get the best results possible as quickly as possible.
Plus, they’ll do all the PPC management on your behalf.
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More conversions
Keyword research, ad copy, and custom landing pages help lawyers increase quality leads. But there’s always room for improvement. An experienced PPC agency will analyze your current campaigns and suggest adjustments to get better outcomes. This is called conversion rate optimization.
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Legal PPC agency pricing
There are three common pricing models for legal PPC agencies: flat fee, performance-based, and percentage of ad spend.
Flat fee
The flat fee model is the most straightforward. You pay a fixed rate for the agency’s services regardless of how much you spend on ads. This is ideal for law firms that want to avoid fluctuating costs.
Performance-based fees
The performance-based model is best for law firms that want to ensure they get the best return on their investment. With this model, you only pay when your campaigns generate leads or conversions. This way, you know the agency is motivated to deliver results.
Percentage of ad spend
Then there’s the percentage of ad spend model. Under this arrangement, you pay a certain percentage of your total ad budget to the agency in exchange for their services. For example, if your ad budget is $10,000 per month, an agency may take 10% ($1,000 per month).
This works well if you have a large budget and want to ensure that your campaigns are managed efficiently and effectively. Most agencies charge 10-20% commission, but there are some that charge up to 30%
SEO’s role in law firm PPC management
Some wonder whether they should use SEO vs. PPC — but what they should think about is how to adopt SEO with PPC. Using the two together is how lawyers dominate the SERPs. Nothing drives traffic like appearing in both the paid results at the top and at the top of the organic results.
Now, the difference is, paid ads target people who are ready to buy now, while SEO nurtures warm leads into callers. For example, you see many people searching for the latest Florida child support laws on Google. So you target the “Florida child support” key phrase in both your digital advertising and your blog posts discussing the topic.
Someone who’s looking for a legal advisor will click your ad, while someone who needs more information will click your blog post. Including a CTA to reach out to your law firm for a free consultation in each post is another way to convert leads into new clients.
Sounds simple, but the reality is many law firms have trouble targeting keywords that drive conversions. The result: low conversion rate and wasted ad spend.
The idea is to target keywords that don’t normally convert into consultations and use them for your SEO strategy. But sometimes, you’ll find keywords that reveal both informational and PPC ads. Adding these search terms to your PPC ads, and blog content increases your traffic potential.
Content marketing requires publishing more posts than most law firms are used to. Not an issue when you work with an attorney PPC company. A PPC agency has content writers and SEO analysts on staff to handle all the blog writing, keyword research, and blog promotion while still managing ad campaigns.
They’ll also manage your local SEO opportunities, which include appearing in the business listings (local 3-pack) next to the map for local searches. This requires claiming or building your business citations on search engines, as well as directories like Yelp, Avvo, and Justia.
Social media’s role in law firm PPC
Paid ads on social media help drive visibility. But it doesn’t help to increase trust for your brand. By adding organic social media marketing into the mix, you can develop and join conversations with your target audience. And publish valuable content your followers will find helpful.
This gives your law firm a human touch that makes you stand apart from competitors.
Then as people engage with your law firm, they’ll think of you when it’s time to call an attorney. Many even leave reviews and vouch for lawyers that helped them win cases. There’s nothing that sells a service better than hearing from others about its greatness.
Over time, social media posting and engagement increases trust, creates relationships, and boost your brands reputation.
Who knows, maybe the next time a follower sees your PPC ad on social or search, they won’t think twice about giving you a call, or referring you to others they know.
HawkSEM: The legal PPC
agency you need
Some agencies are great at pay-per-click marketing. Others excel in PPC specifically for legal services. HawkSEM is the latter.
What sets us apart from other PPC agencies is our expertise in helping lawyers build visibility, leads, and revenue. Our experts aren’t just on the sidelines reading about the latest trends — we’re actively setting them.
As strategists that execute, we’re always in the know and on the battlefield implementing experiments and setting new records. But we never go in blind — with the ConversionIQ System, our proprietary software, we have a bird’s eye view of what makes a campaign perform well:
High-converting keywords.
ConversionIQ is a platform that gathers customer insights, including which terms convert high-quality leads into clients. We use this data to improve your campaigns to generate what matters most…sales.
ConversionIQ in Action
We make things happen …but don’t take our word for it:
CSUN
Patch Of Land
Google Partner
Google Premier Agency
The bottom line
Imagine: no more wasted resources trying to figure out how to build profitable PPC campaigns. Instead, your attention is on managing all the leads and cases coming to your law firm.
A PPC agency makes this possible by managing everything for you, from keyword selection to ad creation and optimization. This frees up your time to focus on client retention and client acquisition.
The next step is finding a reputable lawyer PPC agency that has a proven track record in law firm marketing.
Whichever agency you choose, ensure they understand your legal industry, target clients, and competitors, so your law firm will come out on top.
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No BS, just results. Average clients see a 4.5x ROI
- Dramatically improve ROI
- Outperform the competition
- Increase conversion volume
- Better track ROI
- Reduce cost per acquisition
- Improve lead quality