The Biggest PPC Mistakes Law Firms Make
Five PPC Mistakes You’re Making Right Now
The pay-per-click (PPC) world is growing more competitive and advanced by the minute. New competitors are constantly popping up to advertise their business only to drive up your cost-per-click. Sound familiar? Gone are the days of seamlessly dominating the top three positions for the cost of an ice cream cone.
Every law firm expanding into internet marketing wants a piece of the PPC pie. Yet, these top five mistakes are still being made over and over by law firms. We are here to help recognize and correct these mistakes.
- Set it and forget it. It’s truly blinding to be throwing money out the window and hoping most of it magically falls back into your pocket. Bids change constantly, ads get stale and all of those shiny optimizations AdWords offers like ad scheduling, bid adjustments and geo-targeting are crucial. Use them and use them often.
- Not utilizing ad extensions. This is FREE real estate. Google’s character limits on ads will always be the thorn in our side because we all have a lot more we want to say about our business. Ad extensions give law firms that capability. Want a link to your About Us page? Provide the link and then type even more about what the visitor can expect to see once they get to your page. These are additional links Google gives you right under your paid ad. It takes up more room on the searcher’s screen and takes them exactly where they want to go, thus making for an easy breezy user experience and lowering your bounce rate. BAM!
- One campaign with TONS of Ad Groups. I get it. We all want our dashboard to be simple and clean. We all have a little OCD in us, so why clog up our screen with campaign titles? By having one campaign, you’re telling Google every ad group carries equal weight and I can guarantee that’s not what you want. Some keywords/ads need to have a lower budget and only target a small radius while others need the mother load—huge radiuses, high daily budget, etc. Don’t set yourself up for failure by not structuring your account efficiently. Put no more than three ad groups in any given campaign and make sure those three ad groups are similar in terms of topic and industry and can, therefore, have the same settings.
- Casting too wide of a net. Personal Injury, for example, as a keyword is one of the most expensive terms out there for law firms. If your budget can’t support buying the most expensive terms, either limit the number of keywords you’re going after or limit the locations to your core market. Do keyword research to gauge what the average cost-per-click is and how high or low search volume is in your market so you can make an informed decision about what terms you will go after.
- Poor ad copy. Your ads are what set you apart from the competition. Highlight what makes you different and include a strong call to action. Give someone an incentive to click on your ad immediately. Additionally, make sure you have several variations of each ad so you can do A/B testing.
Ready for PPC?
PPC is a great marketing tool for most of our clients. Often for about $50 a lead you can increase the number of phone calls and contact forms your firm receives. Check out additional PPC resources below and give us a call to talk about the details of your internet marketing needs: 954-523-2181.
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