There is little doubt that there is a relationship between file opens and traffic to your law firm’s website.
Getting traffic is becoming significantly more difficult than it once was. Once it was predominantly about creating content and plenty of it and consequently, those articles would be found and that in itself would do the job. One client who we started working with around 8 years ago was very skinny on content. Since then they became a publishing powerhouse and traffic to their website has grown exponentially from 2,500 visits each month to 17,000 and the numbers of lawyers have grown substantially as well.
But, the problem with content by itself in this climate, is that by and large, a good majority of firms are now onto it and those keywords that people were typing into Google are now returning lots of articles and hence getting oxygen for your firm’s content is harder.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it, you have no choice, you must! Because quite apart from being found for that content, it also has a positive impact on SEO (search engine optimisation).
So, What About SEO?
The other obvious way you get traffic is by ranking for primary keywords. If we’re doing SEO for your firm then you understand what we mean. But in essence, it’s likely that there will be plenty of keywords like, “Sydney Family Lawyers,” etc that are super competitive to rank well for, but not impossible. Ranking well for these types of terms is a ticket to traffic!
OK. What About Ads?
The other way you draw traffic, the topic of this article, is paying for it. Now what you spend depends on what you’re chasing. If your law firm is in a competitive space like personal injury law, then expect to pay in the vicinity of $60 – $120 per click. Ultimately it all comes down to numbers. If we stick with the personal injury example for the moment, if you’re opening 8 files per month on a $15,000 per month ad spend, it’s likely you’re well in front. That said, it sounds easier than what it really is. If only it was about placing a set and forget ad, then watch the files open.
Why We Now Do It
We recently brought Ad management in-house because we were unhappy with agencies that we’re doing it. More specifically, chasing irrelevant keywords and ad copy that just wasn’t up to par (some of which was just blatantly incorrect). That said, it’s complex and time-consuming and in some respects, we now realise why plenty of agencies do this work at scale, relatively cheaply. The volume at a minimum cost can work for them, but it ultimately doesn’t work for the law firm.
The cold, hard truth is that despite the fact that you might not click on ads, plenty of other people will and are. If traffic is the real problem for your firm, then consider ads on a budget you can initially afford. When you do, don’t expect results instantaneously because it takes time, not only for Google to calibrate around your ads, ad copy and landing pages, but it takes time at our end to set it all up well, so your firm is best positioned to garner good results.
Free Grade of Your Ad Account?
If you’re a law firm thinking about running ads, then reach out to us for a free, no obligation chat. Conversely, if you’re a firm and you’re running ads but not happy with the results, we can do a free, no-obligation deep-dive.
Our free report, including a final grade, on your overall Google Ads (formerly known as AdWords) performance, based on a detailed review of the following areas:
- Wasted Spend
- Quality Scores
- Click-Through Rates
- Account Activity
- Text Ads
- Long-Tail Keywords
- Impression Shares
- Mobile Advertising
- PPC Best Practices
What About an Ad Agency that Just Does Ads?
In principle, it sounds like a good idea! In fact, so good that we did it for a number of our clients. The bad news is that quite apart from what we said above about the far majority of agencies not understanding the nuances of legal practice (bad keywords, bad copy and bad landing pages) everything these days is interrelated. What do we mean? Often the ad agency would prepare landing pages done on a platform like Click Funnels, Lead Pages, Instapage, Unbounce etc and they typically used pre-made templates and changed the words. What resulted was landing pages that were not synergistic with the brand style guide (different colours, different fonts etc) and the copy itself was often badly constructed. Moreover, from a reporting perspective, the client was receiving multiple reports.
Notwithstanding this, as a completely multi-dimensional law firm marketing company, we’re watching our client’s marketing interactions daily. This is particularly the case if we’re running a CRM underneath it all. If we see patterns emerging, both from an organic or paid search perspective, we want to be able to act on it immediately!
What Should You Do Now?
Take us up on our free, no-obligation consultation and we can take you through how we’re driving business for our clients through our multi-dimensional approach.
