What to Know About Law Firm PPC Marketing

I recently started a new Google paid ad campaign for a client and sent her the below email, which is something I’ve been doing to address issues that commonly arise with new programs.  I hope it’s helpful to anyone starting a search engine marketing program for their law firm.

The Google ad program is set-up and you’ve actually already gotten a click.  I should have the website tracking program in place shortly, too.

I’d like to share a few thoughts and encourage you to review carefully.  They are based on a lot of experience and will help us share the same expectations, which is the key to working well together on any marketing.

So… when it comes to paid advertising on Google, it’s really important to understand and accept that…

• This strategy may fail.  The most common reasons are that the Cost Per Click is too high relative to the available budget, and the frustration associated with talking with people who aren’t good prospects.  (More on this last point below.)  The good news is that this typically becomes apparent pretty quick.
• You will be contacted by a relatively high number of people you can’t help, but you’ll need to talk with them just the same.  There is no way to avoid this when it comes to internet marketing.  We’ve implemented a very tight campaign that only targets about 5 search phrases, and we have over 250 negative keywords designed to weed out the junk.  But the poor leads will still find you.  It’s just the way it is in internet marketing.  And the only way to get to the good ones is to talk with everyone.
• You will need to handle the leads in real time.  That means answering the phone for unfamiliar numbers and responding to emails instantly… and after business hours.  Allowing leads to go to voicemail or sit in your inbox is the death of these campaigns and it would be better to turn it off now than allow that happen.  These prospects are staring a screen of law firms that can help them. They will not leave messages or wait for a return call from just another name on the list.
• Your Average Cost Per Click will be higher than what you had with your old campaign, significantly.  Your first click was $23.65 and I would not expect it to go lower as we make future adjustments.  Law firm marketing is expensive regardless of the practice area or competition.
• There will be some waste in the program in the form of money spent on irrelevant clicks.  There’s just no way to anticipate every possible search someone may run and adjust the campaign accordingly.  However, I’ve never seen anyone eliminate waste better than me and I don’t anticipate there being much after the first 30 days, maybe 2-4 clicks per month.
• Paid advertising on the search engines is incredibly flexible, which is why I recommend starting here.  If this works, you simply won’t need anything else.

Last, and perhaps most importantly…

• Be honest with me about what the campaign produces.  Sometimes these programs do very well very quickly.  Some lawyers believe that if they share that success with me, I’ll jack-up their rate.  That’s simply not true.  I’m going to charge you for my time to manage the campaign whether it produces $1,000 a month or $100,000.  But the only way for me to make good adjustments to the campaign is to know in detail what’s happening on your end

I hope this has been helpful.  Looking forward to seeing what we can produce.

Thanks!