Paid search is one of the most popular and common methods for driving leads to law firms. Family law pay-per-click ads appear when someone searches for terms related to your services. These ads showcase law firms who have placed a bid for those keywords at the top of the search engine results page on Google.
You choose your targeting and only pay when someone sees it and then clicks on your ad.
Divorce lawyer PPC ads start driving results soon after setting up your campaign. Getting a few simple details right with your ads clears your firm's path to getting more high-quality leads and more family law clients.
Here's what family lawyers need to know about running successful PPC ad campaigns.
Does PPC Advertising Work for Family Law Firms?
The short answer is yes, PPC ads work for family lawyers.
The legal market sees a 1.8% conversion rate from paid search in general. That may seem like a tiny percentage, but people perform millions of searches each month for legal services. That 1.8% adds up to substantial raw conversion numbers for lawyers around the country.
But choosing this marketing channel only makes sense so long as it fits into your law firm's marketing strategy.
PPC ads are most effective when they target someone ready to hire a lawyer right away. Targeting someone who just began their research process into a family law issue won’t do you much good.
That means PPC shouldn’t be your only marketing channel if you want to reach as many prospective clients as possible.
It's best to pair advertising tactics with other options, such as family lawyer search engine optimization (SEO) since divorce attorneys should focus their PPC marketing on people ready to hire a lawyer now. SEO and social media help enhance your firm’s online presence and nurture people who aren’t prepared to hire an attorney at that moment but will need a lawyer soon.
The Benefits and Drawbacks of PPC Ads for Family Lawyers
PPC advertising comes with numerous benefits that make it attractive to divorce and family lawyers. But there are drawbacks to consider, too.
PPC ads work for firms with a solid family lawyer marketing plan because they offer:
- Quick results (your ads appear on Google as soon as your campaign goes live)
- Effective geographic and demographic targeting
- Budgeting flexibility
- Tools for measuring your ROI
These factors combined mean that a well-structured campaign will start driving results fast. It’s true that PPC ads bring qualified leads to family law firms across the country. But those firms soon discover the following challenges of PPC advertising:
- You pay for every click, even if that person never hires you
- The cost per click on specific keywords can be very expensive
- Leads dry up as soon as you stop bidding on keywords for family law services
- Changes in competition in your area cause the price of ads to flex up and down over time
- You need to continuously tailor your ads to potential clients to get the best results
These drawbacks aren’t to say that Google ads don’t belong in your marketing plan. Plenty of lawyers understand these drawbacks and build successful campaigns. Doing that only requires that you take some time to understand the best practices that drive leads your way.
Getting the Most Out of Your PPC Campaigns
You put money on the line with every PPC campaign, so it's worth making sure that you have optimized every element. This involves a comprehensive process to determine your budget, select relevant keywords, confirm your target audience, and deliver solid ad copy.
Follow these expert tips to get the best possible returns from your family law firm’s search ads.
Know What Your Budget Should Look Like from the Outset
Setting a budget for PPC is difficult since the price you will pay varies by the areas you target and the keywords you bid on.
The cost of PPC ads depends on how much your competition is willing to bid on popular terms. This leads to big price disparities. A New York City family attorney will almost always pay more than someone in rural Kansas, for example.
Some lawyers in low-competition areas get away with a $2K/month budget. Others pay up to $50k/month for the same types of clients only because they practice in a big city.
Lawyers need to do bidding research in advance to determine whether their area is on the low end or the high end.
The keywords that you want to target define how much you need to have in your budget. That means that keyword research and advertising budgets are functions of one another. The relationship between keyword research and setting an optimal budget is why most lawyers work together with a PPC expert.
A PPC specialist will help you find terms that fit within a realistic budget. They’ll also advise you on creative ways to advertise if you feel the competition has priced you out of the market.
Pick Keywords with Conversion Potential
Keyword research is important for more than just finding terms that fit your budget. It’s how you find the keywords that are most likely to bring you leads. You’ll need to sift through thousands of keywords to find the set that is relevant to your services and ideal client.
Most family lawyers investing in PPC need to target bottom-of-funnel keywords.
These are phrases that indicate someone is ready to hire a family lawyer right away. Examples include searches like hire divorce lawyer or child custody lawyer miami. The person who’s searching for these terms is far more likely to be ready for your help than someone asking Google what divorce mediation is.
Look at each keyword you want to target and interrogate whether the person looking for that is ready for a final push to convert into a new client.
Top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel terms are far better for other forms of marketing. Leave terms like what to expect from a divorce attorney to your blog. The person looking for that isn’t ready to convert on an ad today, but that doesn’t mean you can’t nurture them with SEO for lawyers.
And you’ll also need to identify irrelevant keywords that should be excluded from your campaign.
Develop a full list of negative keywords to avoid bidding on terms with no conversion potential or no relevance to your service. Someone searching for terms like parenting coordinator or guardian ad litem seems like someone to target. The problem is when they search for those terms, they’re not looking for a lawyer yet.
Their search intent doesn't match a person seeking the best divorce lawyer in their area.
Finding the right keywords, including negative ones to exclude, is hard to do. There are a near-infinite number of ways people will search for family law-related topics. The difficulty of sorting through all of those terms is another reason why most family law attorneys lean on the help of PPC experts.
Dial In Your Audience Targeting
You will get the most out of your budget by showing ads only to people you can serve.
That means you need to limit your ads’ appearances based on the local areas or demographic types you focus on. Whenever someone you can’t help clicks on your ad, you waste your money and their time.
The good news is Google has detailed targeting features to help you narrow down who sees your ads.
Google lets you get granular with your ad targeting, basing it on location, demographics, and audience interests, or a combination of these factors.
Most family lawyers only need to worry about advertising to a defined region. Targeting people based on their age, gender, or interests isn’t necessary if you help anyone who lives in your area.
But there is an exception to this rule.
Some family lawyers need to consider demographic-based targeting. Cordell & Cordell, for example, gets a lot of mileage out of using demographic targeting to reach men. The same principle goes for firms that want to focus on things like gray divorce.
Excluding areas you don’t serve is important, whether you use only geographic targeting or mix in more advanced demographic targeting.
The last thing you want is for your ad to show up in a high-competition area you don’t practice in. You run the risk of spending a lot of money for an ad click that doesn't lead to a client. PPC experts recommend excluding every part of the world where you don’t practice to limit this risk.
Create Ads that Give People a Reason to Convert
It's not enough to put your ad in the right place at the right time.
Each ad needs to deliver a clear message about your law firm's unique value proposition. Your ads will appear on the same page as your competitors. That means yours needs to stand out if you want to win.
First, use clear, compelling copy to get your audience's attention and encourage them to click the link to your website.
Start with a good headline. You've only got 30 characters here, so make them all count. Look at these examples below. They make a strong point and highlight some of the financial aspects of divorce for their clients.
Second, write a description that builds on your firm highlights. You must do this within 90 characters. See how Walters Gilbreath, PLLC mentions the areas they serve and their strong reputation from working with clients.
Create three different ads for each of your ad groups. This lets you make your ads compete against one another to see which one converts the best. That way, you’ll be able to iterate through ideas for your ads so that the ones that convert into real clients stay in the rotation.
A good advertising campaign also takes into account where the potential client goes after they click an ad.
You need landing pages that convert visitors into leads if you want a return on investment. These pages need to follow law firm website design best practices. They also need a crystal clear call to action to show visitors what the next step is.
That means these pages need convincing copy, contact forms, and things like phone numbers and other contact methods that enable you to capture new leads.
Measure Your Results and Build Upon Them
Know how your campaigns perform and check on them often. Looking at your ad performance helps you cut out poorly-performing ads and optimize existing ads for even better results.
Tracking your progress requires a combination of three tools:
- Your Google Ads account
- Google Analytics
- A customer relationship manager (CRM)
Your Google Ads dashboard shows you things like ad spend and the number of clicks. Google Analytics shows you what searchers do once they land on your website. And your CRM ties it all together by showing you how many people became clients after clicking on an ad.
These tools will help you calculate the following campaign metrics:
- Click-through rates (how many people saw vs. clicked on the actual ad)
- Conversion rates (how many took some other action, like filling out a form on your site)
- Cost per acquisition (what you spend in order to get a viewer or client)
- Cost per mille (what you spend for every 1,000 people who see the ad)
Setting all of your tools up is crucial to verify your results and know how the money you’ve spent pays off. You’ll discover what ads convert at a higher rate than others and which underperform. This allows you to optimize your campaign by culling bad ads and making more like your best performers.
Pair Your PPC Campaign with Other Tactics
PPC works well on its own, but it performs even better when you diversify your digital marketing efforts.
Many lawyers drive more cases overall by combining PPC with content marketing, typically through an SEO-driven blog. Law firm SEO and family law PPC are stronger together.
Each tactic’s strengths cover the other’s weaknesses.
The benefit of PPC ads is that you can get faster results than the long game of SEO. But those pay-to-play results stop as soon as you quit paying or when the bids get too expensive for you at all. SEO takes longer to start up, but it’s more cost-effective. You pay once for each piece you publish, providing long-term value.
Finding More Family Law Clients Through PPC
Your ideal clients are out there right now searching Google to hire a lawyer. Running PPC ads puts you in a position where those people will find you.
But getting those clients means you need to set a budget, choose keywords, manage your targeting, and develop strong ads.
Most lawyers partner with an outside marketing expert to get the best bang for your buck with refined campaigns. An experienced team will help you draft, publish, and analyze your ad performance. You’ll get a pipeline of fresh, qualified leads without having to worry about taking time from your practice to get them.
Rankings.io has extensive experience in the legal industry. We know what it takes to help firms like yours grow your caseload. Contact us today to learn more about how our law firm marketing services will support your law firm.
