Law Firm Advertising & PPC

Paid advertising is one of the two major branches of search engine marketing. As opposed to search engine optimization, pay per click (“PPC”) ads offer a fairly instant way to get your message online in front of qualified prospects. The top-tier players are who you’d expect: Google AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, Microsoft adCenter and Ask.com Sponsored Listings. They enable users to bid for the advertising real estate within their search engine results pages (“SERPs”). This is an auction format – money is the major determinant in who’s ad shows up on top, so get ready to pay for this turn key source of leads.

The days are gone when you could just bid a ton of money and win at the PPC game. As outlined in my early post about Quality Score and, more recently, Top 5 PPC Tips, there are a few broad considerations to put into play for a law firm advertising campaign. As an extension of that, any PPC advertising firm you may be assessing for hire should be able to address what they’re doing for you in each of these areas:

• Keywords – before you open a PPC account, make sure you compile a list of keywords (2-3 words long) that actually appear on your website. I also recommend developing a web page written to address each group of clients you’re “courting” online – a landing page.
• Ad Groups/Landing Pages – the goal is to have your keywords divided into groups that can be effectively addressed by a single ad. In other words, you can’t effectively market to personal injury, criminal defense and family law all in one ad, so divide your keywords into AdGroups by topic. Use available landing pages on your website to start the grouping process.
• Ad Copy – before you go online, think of the things that make your law firm advertising campaign unique. Your PPC advertising should express that feature while using your major City and/or State in the process. Once that’s established, search for your target keywords online and see what others are doing. Don’t copy them – beat them!

Of course there are a dozen other things we could discuss in regards to law firm advertising via PPC, but these three points will get you started.