Law Firm Marketing Expert Qamar Zaman Explains How to Get the Most Out of Your Pay per Click Ads / Google Adwords
As competition among law firms get tighter, the need to stand out and create more visibility especially in the SERPs is of utmost importance if you want higher possibility of getting more leads. Pay per Click (PPC) is quite useful if you don’t want your spot in the SERPs getting occupied by your competitors through paid search. Here is a clear scenario.
For example, you are already doing great in organic search but your competitor got the top spot in paid search, this could lead to decrease in clicks which could end up in decrease in traffic and leads because your prospects are already clicking your competitor’s paid search ad. See example below.
In the screenshot above, you can see that if you are optimizing for the keywords “new york lawyer” and even though you are doing well in organic search (see second marked SERP result), your competitor still has the chance to steal your prospects through paid search ads (see first marked SERP result). This is the very reason why you should not forgo PPC as an important part of your online marketing strategy.
But, before you jump into the PPC bandwagon, you should make sure that you get the most out of your campaign by creating a strategy that can help you gain a better turnaround. Let’s discuss a few important tips that can help you get the most out of your PPC campaign without employing an expensive marketing consultant.
Tips on How to Get the Most Out of Your PPC Campaign
Let’s remember that Google is one of the biggest (more than 95% of their income is from their PPC Service – Google AdWords which provided them a total revenue of $33.2 billion from the 3rd quarter of 2010 to the 2nd quarter of 2011) companies that offer PPC services for any types of businesses who wanted to gain visibility in the SERPs (as sponsor ads).
According to WordStream (http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-keywords), lawyer keywords are among the top 4 most expensive keywords in Google AdWords Advertising. This means that attorneys and law firms have to set aside a considerable amount of budget in order for their PPC campaign to run. If your budget turns out higher than your expected turn-around, then there’s no use doing any PPC campaigns. Here’s a detailed and easier to understand example analogy by Kristi Kellogg (http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/ppc-management-lawyers).
“If, for example, you are operating on a daily budget of $1,000 dollars and your average cost per click is $50, you are only going to receive 20 clicks.”
Are those 20 clicks worth the $1,000 daily spend? That depends – even with a limited budget, in some cases, the cost is well-justified. If, for example, your site has a (very healthy) five percent conversion rate and you authorize a daily spend of $1,000 on keywords with an average cost-per-click of $50 … you can expect 1 conversion a day. If that single conversion (in this case, signing on a new client) is worth less than $1,000, the PPC campaign doesn’t make sense. However, if that single conversion is worth far more than $1,000, the PPC spend can make a lot of sense. If the desired conversion for a law firm is signing a new client and the worth of that conversion over the life the client is, say, $50,000, that initial $1,000 PPC spend had an ROI of 4900% (!).
Kristi’s analogy is definitely a spot on. Make sure you know your business goals. If you think the visibility you get from organic search is enough and you gain more clients through it, then you don’t need to spend on paid search anymore. But, if you find out that your competitor has been attracting the prospects that are supposedly yours, then you should do something about it.
Important Things to Remember When Setting Up PPC Ads
Getting the most out of your PPC ads includes the process of carefully selecting the keywords that you will use. Make sure that they are highly converting keywords (search terms that are used by prospects who are really looking for lawyer services).
Next, you need to create a landing page that can easily convince your prospects that the legal services they are looking for can be found on your webpage. Take note that you can create as many landing pages as you like as long as they are highly relevant to your campaign.
It is also important that your ads be served in different formats. This is to find out which ones are more effective in attracting clicks. From text ads, image ads, to banner ads, you have to find out which format garner more interests from your prospects.
Whether you use Google AdWords, Facebook Adverts, or any other PPC programs, these services have automatic reporting tools that can help you figure out if your campaign is running and working well. These tools can help you determine which ads have high or low click-through-rates or which ones are driving more traffic to your landing page/website.
Lastly, from the reports you get, you can refine your PPC strategy to improve the performance of your campaign. For example, if your reports show that a few keywords are not performing well, you can remove them from your ads and replace them with better ones. This can help you get rid of unnecessary spending that doesn’t have much turnarounds.
Final Thoughts
Doing a PPC campaign is not a run-of-the-mill marketing strategy. You should carefully consider your budget first and then make sure that you make the most out of it. Picking the right keywords, creating an effective landing page, selecting the best ad format, analyzing your ads performance and applying what you discovered to refine your strategy are important if you want to make the most out of your PPC marketing.
How about you? How do you make the most out of your PPC campaign? What PPC program are you using? Which PPC programs are more effective in driving traffic to your website? Leave your answers in the comment section below.
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