Pay-Per-Click – Part 2 of the Top 5 Family Law Marketing Strategies

Last Updated on June 30, 2021 by

Google Pay-Per-Click Advertising for Family Law Marketing

In this section, you’ll learn how to:

• Use Google Ads to acquire clients immediately
• Set up the right keywords and targeting for your ads
• Craft compelling ad copy using best practices
• Create landing pages that convert
• Reach potential clients who didn’t schedule a consultation

What Is Google PPC?

Google Ads, also known as Google pay-per-click advertising, is a method of placing ads for your law firm on search engine results pages. You will only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Why PPC Works for Family Law Marketing

On average, businesses earn $2 for every $1 spent on Google Ads.

The reasoning is simple: PPC operates similarly to SEO.

You target the right keywords, and your ads are only displayed to people actively looking for them. You’re reaching your target audience, who are people who know they need a family law attorney, and have started looking for the best professional for their case.

A Google PPC ad is the closest thing to giving your brochure to the people who tell you: “I need a family law attorney. Fast.”

Here’s how to acquire clients through Google Ads:

Keywords

Keywords are crucial to running a profitable advertising campaign on search engines – in particular, Google.

If you choose the relevant keywords, you’ll be able to reach only the people who are ready to hire a lawyer. Otherwise, you could be reaching people who are still on the fence, or people who are just looking for general information about family law in your state.

Understand the keyword intent

We’ve covered keyword intent in Section I: SEO, but when it comes to PPC advertising, you want to target keywords with transactional intent:

Keywords that say the person typing them into Google is ready to hire a lawyer.

Typically, those are long-tail keywords (specific keywords with more than three words in them) such as:

• “Family lawyer near me”
• “Family lawyer [city/state]”
• “Family lawyer [city/state] free consultation”
• “Best divorce lawyers [city/state]”
• “Affordable custody lawyer [city/state]”

When you target long-tail keywords, you’ll avoid people looking around for information, and focus on potential clients who are ready to turn into paying clients.

You can target lurkers with your SEO, but when you’re paying for ads, you want to maximize your return on investment.

Negative keywords

When you’re setting up a Google ad, you’ll be able to choose keywords you don’t want to target (a negative keyword).

This will stop you from spending your money on low-quality leads.

Some of the negative keywords you can exclude from your ad are:

• Location (locations out of your area)
• Education and careers (jobs, internships, college, scholarships, salaries, etc.)
• Pricing (if you don’t offer pro bono representation, exclude search terms that have “free” in the search query)
• Content (search queries including how-to guides)

It’s a good idea to exclude as many keywords as possible. They will allow you to focus on the right prospects, instead of reaching everyone and wasting your ad spend.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion

DKI is a great option for adapting your ads automatically to relevant search queries.

If your potential client searches for “divorce lawyers in Texas,” your ad will be adapted to include that exact keyword and match their search query.

However, DKI is an advanced ad feature, so it’s best to consult a professional.

Family Law Ad Copy

Just because you’re targeting the right keywords doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay attention to your ad copy.

Match the intent

The main goal of your ad copy should be to match the potential client’s intent.

If they saw your ad looking for “aggressive divorce attorneys in Arizona,” that’s what they want to see referenced in your copy.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion can help to match your headline with the searcher’s intent.

However, you have to make sure your copy answers the unspoken question your potential client came to Google with.

Consider the ads appearing for “quick divorce lawyers Texas”:

They all emphasize the brevity of the process by paraphrasing the search query.

Similarly, a search for “family law attorney Chicago free consultation” will result in this ad, which also matches searcher intent:

You don’t have to match your potential clients word for word, but you should personalize your ad to them by offering what they’re searching for.

Address objections

When it comes to family law, your clients come to Google looking for your services. However, they are wary of potential issues such as:

• The length of the process
• Communication with their attorney
• Satisfying outcome

In order to maximize client acquisition, your copy should address and resolve your clients’ most common objections:

• Your law firm’s experience
• Your approach to clients
• Simplicity

In some cases, it’s not the fee that counts.

Consider this ad which elegantly assures clients that the law firm will fight for the best possible settlement in their divorce:

Ad copy tips

Don’t forget to make use of urgency in your ad. Invite your potential clients to contact you immediately.

Use numbers and statistics in your headlines. State the number of cases you won, satisfaction rates, compensation, and so on. People respond differently to numbers in headlines, giving your ad more attention.

Empathize with your potential clients. Consider how this attorney appeals to the clients’ sense of entitlement to promote her services:

Leverage URLs. Going back to our previous example, have you spotted the “free consultation” in the URL of the ad? Leverage URLs to provide more context and/or match the intent further.

Finally, ensure your copy is clear. Avoid meandering lines and instead focus on the benefits and the expertise you will leverage to help your clients reach satisfying outcomes.

Ad extensions

Don’t forget to use ad extensions. They are additional links you can add to your ads (e.g. address, hours, page links, etc.).

They make your ad more dynamic, and allow you to capture and retain the attention of your potential clients.

Address and phone number extensions can also serve as additional CTAs pushing your potential clients to get in touch with you immediately.

Landing Page Design

Every ad your potential clients click on is going to direct them to a page on your website.

Now, you could technically direct them to your homepage, but that won’t match their search query.

You should create separate landing pages for your ads.

Matching the intent

If you have a feeling like we’ve said “matching the intent” a lot of times in this guide, it’s for a good reason. Everyone comes to the search expecting to see something.

And if your ad answers the question they posed with their search query, you’ll have a much higher success rate.

In addition to your keywords and your ad copy matching the lead’s intent, your landing page should also provide your potential clients with the content they expect to see.

So if you are running two ads – for divorces and custody – you should have two separate ads, and two separate landing pages.

When a prospect that saw a divorce ad clicks on it, they should be directed to a dedicated, personalized landing page.

This way, you can personalize the content to their unique needs.

Practice pages vs landing pages

One of the most common questions we get from family law attorneys is: “Can’t I just use my practice pages as ad landing pages?”

You could, but…

1. If you don’t have specific pages for each practice area, you aren’t matching the intent. Your ad costs will be higher.
2. Your practice pages explain what you do. Your landing pages explain why your clients need it.

Unless you have highly-specific practice pages optimized for client acquisition, it’s much better to build separate landing pages that correspond to the ad copy and searcher intent.

Landing page best practices

In addition to reiterating the promise from the ad, you can optimize your landing page by:

• Focusing on the problem. Your prospects will see the headline first, so make sure you address the problem they have.
• Explain the benefits. After reiterating the problem, explain the solution and the benefits of working with you. Make it sound so simple that your prospects can’t say no.
• Offering two CTA options. Invite your prospects to get in touch with you immediately, or fill out a form to be contacted (or nurtured through an email sequence).
• Adding testimonials from satisfied clients to your landing page. Make sure the clients have emphasized your approach, the brevity of the process, and the satisfactory outcome.
• Credentials. Have you received awards? How many cases have you won? All of this matters, and should be included on your landing page to convince potential clients you are the right family law firm for them.
• Live chat. Live chat is a great way of capturing leads who are still on the fence. Normally, they’d go back to the search and modify their query. With a live chat, you can start a conversation with them, answer their questions, and turn them into your clients.

Branded Campaigns for Law Firms

Branded campaigns are ad campaigns in which you use your law firm’s name, or your competitors’ names, to advertise your services.

They are not as costly as regular ad campaigns, and they can be a great way of capturing prospects that are ready to hire a lawyer.

Your own branded terms

If you’ve recently run advertising campaigns, your leads are probably looking you up on Google. A branded ad campaign is a great way of providing them with more information.

You can steer them to the right landing pages if you post an ad bidding on your own search terms.

A branded campaign is also a great way of preventing the competition from overtaking your search results.  

Bidding on competitors’ terms

It’s completely legal to use other law firm’s names as keywords in your Google Ads campaign. However, you can’t mention them in your ad and your ad copy.

Again, this is an affordable way to acquire more clients – especially if you have prominent competitors.

Retargeting

Sometimes, potential clients will visit your site but they’ll either be distracted or they’ll procrastinate making a decision right away.

You don’t have to write them off as lost.

Instead, you can retarget them.

Google Pixel

In order to reach the lost prospects again, you should add Google Pixel to your landing pages. It’s a piece of code that “tracks” people who visited your landing page across the web.

And then, when you’ve set up a retargeting campaign, they’ll see your search ad again.

This is especially convenient because you can set up separate campaigns for those retargeted leads, providing them with more information or incentive to schedule a consultation.

Your Law Firm’s PPC Budget

Finally, you have to set the right budget to run a successful PPC campaign.

Every law firm’s PPC budget is different.

Major law firms spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, but only because they (and their PPC agencies) perfected their ads. Their budgets allow them to earn three times as much from clients they’ve acquired through PPC.

If you want to run a successful family law marketing campaign, you should contact an experienced PPC agency.

Calculating and reducing CPC

CPC (cost per click) is calculated on a case-by-case basis.

If your ad copy is great, and if you’ve been advertising and optimizing for a while, you’ll likely have a lower CPC than some of your competitors.

In general, your starting CPC depends on other firms bidding for your keywords. The more competitors you have, the higher will your CPC be.

CPC is also higher if you want your ad to appear first.

However, the position is no guarantee of success.

People typically click on one of the first three ads. You could significantly reduce your costs by having a great, eye-catching paid ad that appears in the third spot.

Tracking conversions

When it comes to monitoring the success of your advertising campaigns, you should track both landing page (contact form) conversions and phone conversions.

You can set up phone conversion tracking by integrating Google Ads with Google Analytics.

As the process is not straightforward, it’s best to consult a professional to ensure everything is set up properly.

If you are looking to set up a PPC marketing campaign to reach your target audience, contact us today! We can work with your PPC platform to set up a PPC ad campaign and ensure that your PPC strategy is maximizing your paid advertising efforts.

At Nimbletoad, we offer a variety of marketing services, such as social media marketing, search engine marketing, and digital marketing. Let us help you with your PPC campaign management.

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