PPC and getting cases from Google searches is a lot easier than most attorneys think it is. In every major metro, for the main types of law, I see the same thing happening over and over. There are three or four law firms that are constantly advertising on Google searches. They’re the firms you see every time you Google “injury lawyers near me” or “car accident attorneys Dallas” if you’re in Dallas.
They’re the winners getting hundreds of clients a year (and sometimes each month) from Google searches while the rest of the law firms in town sit around, watching, and wondering how these other firms make Google Ads work for them.
But you don’t have to sit on the sidelines. You can make PPC work for your firm. And honestly, it’s easy.
There’s a lot of things that are complicated in life. But trust me, getting cases from Google Ads is not one of them. All you have to do is three things.
Show up on the right searches.
Google Ads will work wonders for you if you show up on the right searches. Alternatively, if you don’t show up on the right searches, you should just burn your money, there’s less pain that way and the fire will keep you warm. If you don’t show up on the right searches, PPC will never work for you.
But if you do show up on the right searches, you’re 90% of the way there.
What do I mean by show up on the right searches?
I mean to show up on searches where the search user is searching for exactly what you offer and could actually become a paying client. For example, if you’re a divorce lawyer, you don’t want to show up on a search like should I get a divorce? That person may or may not end up needing a divorce attorney at some point, but we’re not certain they do at this moment. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But we’re aiming for certainty with your advertising dollars.
Allow me to analogize for a moment.
Getting a click from should I get a divorce, is like swimming underwater in the ocean and trying to shoot fish. Maybe you’ll get lucky, but probably not.
Now right here you’re expecting me to say that getting clicks from more spot-on searches like good divorce attorneys in my area would be like shooting fish in a barrel. But you’re wrong, I’m not going to say that. Instead, getting clicks from searches like that is more similar to draining all the water from the barrel, letting the fish suffocate to death, and then dropping a grenade in the barrel and blowing the dead fish into a thousand pieces.
That is what it feels like when you get clicks from the right kinds of searches in Google. It’s not shooting fish in a barrel, it’s a million times easier.
Showing up on the right searches means only paying for clicks when people are actually searching for exactly what you offer.
If you’re a real estate attorney in Los Angeles, you don’t want clicks from do I need a lawyer when buying a warehouse, instead, you want clicks from searches like commercial real estate lawyers in Los Angeles.
You want to be as certain as possible that the search user is deep in the funnel and wanting to find and hire a lawyer in the type of law you specialize in.
Showing up on and getting clicks from the right kinds of searches is the most important thing to focus on in Google Ads, and in technical terms, it comes down to understanding the difference between keywords and search terms.
Getting clicks from the right kinds of search terms will get you 90% of the way there in terms of Google Ads success.
Intake is everything.
The next thing an attorney needs for PPC success is a good intake process. When you advertise on Google, your intake staffers become the most important people in your law firm.
We can show up on the right searches and get leads all day long. But if your intake staff can’t convert those leads into cases, then the revenue won’t come in and your PPC campaigns won’t be profitable.
Here are some intake tips for attorneys running PPC campaigns.
- Treat your leads like gold.
- Answer the telephone.
- Call people back.
- Respond to lead form inquires as fast as possible.
And seriously, think of your intake staff as one of your biggest assets. They can make or break you. Invest in them, champion them, and work to continuously improve your intake staff’s skills and conversion rates.
There’s no such thing as a winning PPC campaign without the intake staff doing their part and turning solid leads into cases for your law firm.
Know your value per case.
The final piece of the PPC puzzle is knowing your value per case. How much is one case worth to your law firm? Once you have a handle on that number, you should never fail at Google Ads. If the cost per case generated from Google Ads is too high compared to your value per case, simply lower the bids and lower your cost per case. Alternatively, if your impression share is low and your cost per case is much lower than the value of one case, then get more aggressive, raise the bids, and get more cases each month while still doing it profitably.
Know your value per case. Know your cost per case. Get your cost per case to be less than the value per case, and you’ll make money from your Google Ads campaign.
That’s all it takes.
The above three things are what the long-time Google Ads-advertising law firms in your city do to be successful and scoop up the cases each month. They show up on the right searches, they have great intake, and they know the value of a case.
If you do those three things right, then you can be one of the top advertisers too.
Google Ads can be a gold mine for attorneys, you just have to do a few simple things right to make it work.
