Reputation Management, Part Nine: Using PPC Campaigns to Put Out a Positive Message

Pay-per-click ads can be used to place positive content about your law firm right before your prospective clients!

If someone makes damaging statements about you or your firm online, you can kill two birds with one stone by using PPC advertising to counteract the negative messaging while simultaneously promoting your services as an attorney. PPC is unique in that it allows you to create hyper-targeted ad campaigns. You can target your ad’s messaging to a particular online reputation issue.

What is PPC?

CaseDetails.com has a whole section devoted to articles on paid advertising, so this is just a quick synopsis just in case you have wandered in from elsewhere. PPC stands for pay-per-click, and it is a huge form of online advertising. With a PPC campaign, a business agrees to pay a certain amount of money if a prospect clicks on an ad related to a particular keyword or keyword phrase. (A Milford immigration lawyer would use that as one of these keyword phrases in a PPC campaign.) If prospects search for that keyword phrase through a search engine, your firm’s advertisement will pop up as a featured or sponsored ad. This places the responsibility on the business consumer to convert click-throughs into sales.

How to use PPC to promote your brand

PPC can be a powerful tool to counteract a negative statement. It combines public relations and advertising, and as such is somewhat more complicated than either. A good PPC reputation management campaign:

• May link to a micro-site or “counter-site” focusing on the issue at hand
• Meets the needs of prospects by offering comparison charts and graphs of data
• Uses the same keywords and keyword phrases as negative reviews
• Focuses on short and sweet messages
• Uses a neutral, objective voice
• Depending on the extent of the reputation damage it has caused, directly or indirectly references the article or review in question

The Internet remakes itself every day with new content, new blogs and new potentials for trouble. A PPC campaign can be developed and rolled out in a matter of minutes at a fraction of the cost of a standard ad campaign. This improves your business’ visibility, brings in potential new clients, and addresses the reputation management issue. It also gives you the opportunity to build links back to your site, which is another technique you can use to manage your online reputation.