How Attorneys Can Maximize Their Leads Using Google AdWords (Pay Per Click)

Did you know that unlike many other business owners, we attorneys routinely overpay for clicks on our Pay-Per-Clicks (PPC) ads? It’s true, the majority of the most expensive keywords are purchased by attorneys and law firms. And did you know that over the last five years, the average cost per click of legal terms has risen more than 30% per year. Many of these keywords go for more than $50 per click.

But PPC advertising when done correctly doesn’t have to be unaffordable or overpriced and it can be highly profitable. The bottom line is that mistakes, absolutely, positively have to be avoided. Mistakes can get extremely expensive, extremely quickly. Trust me, I know, I’ve literally made every mistake in the book while building my law firm on the back of Pay-Per-Click advertising. Allowing the wrong people to click on your ads can get very expensive, very quickly. And having the right people click on your ads, who don’t contact you, can be very expensive and also cost you a fortune in lost clients or cases.

That is why it’s so critical that after someone clicks on your ads and reaches your website, they actually take action by contacting you. Then they become a prospect or a lead (someone you can actually talk to) or what we call a conversion. But most lawyers do nothing to try to improve this rate of conversion and it’s normally very low – in a range of 5 to 10 percent.

Think about this for a second, once a person clicks on your ad, they have cost you money to come and look at your site. If they don’t find what they are looking for right away or don’t like anything about their experience at your site, they immediately hit the back button, and then they’re gone.

For many law firm sites, this is in the range of 90 to 95 percent of all visitors – gone! And you never capture them or the money you just spent for them to visit. But there are proven, ethical ways, to double or even triple your current conversion rate from visitor to prospect. I know I more than tripled mine overall. You can literally double your caseload or more by simply increasing this conversion rate. And best of all, it doesn’t cost you a dime in additional advertising dollars to do it.

The secret is landing page matching and testing. First, you must have the correct landing page for the keyword and ad that was clicked. You cannot have one headline and copy that attempts to adequately address every visitor from every keyword. The reason is that people want to find what they are looking for quickly when online. If their answer is buried 10 paragraphs down, they will simply leave to find another site that gives them their answer more quickly.

Second, the way to figure out the right match is through testing. There are an infinite number of variables that should be tested to determine the best conversion rate. Some examples include, the headline, the amount of text, the way the copy is worded, the right video, auto play or not, video length, size and placement of phone number, placement and size of contact form(s), color of site, buttons and text, testimonials in writing, audio or video, awards, privacy statements, different offers such as free report vs free consultation and on and on.

Whether you do it yourself or work with your webmaster and a qualified Pay-Per-Click management company, the results that can be achieved by increasing this rate of conversion can be game changing and are well worth the effort.

Here’s to your Pay-Per-Click success!