PPC Advertising – How to Get Started

As the internet has increasingly become the place where people turn to find information relating to problems they are experiencing, online advertising has become a necessity for lawyers looking to raise awareness of their practice and get new clients through their door.

PPC advertising, also known as “pay-per-click,” is a strong online marketing strategy for lawyers. In terms of search results, PPC ads usually appear above the organic listings, putting them front and center rather than buried somewhere on page 3. Needless to say, consumers are far more likely to see and click on search results prominently placed on the first page. As such, PPC marketing is a valuable complement to more traditional organic search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

PPC advertising has proven so effective, in fact, that the field has become extremely competitive in recent years, meaning that it is no longer enough to just throw some money at an advertising platform and wait for a noticeable bump in client interest. Instead, it is now more important than ever to carefully target your PPC campaign, using analytics and messaging to make efficient use of the money you invest in online advertising.

Getting Started with PPC

So how does PPC work? As the name suggests, PPC advertising requires paying to broadcast your targeted advertisements on a search engine or social network. Google Ads (formerly AdWords) and Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads) are the two most popular advertisement networks as far as search engines go. Facebook Ads, meanwhile, are currently king of the social network PPC space.

There are three main kinds of PPC ad campaigns. Aside from appearing above organic search results, PPC ads can also appear through display or remarketing campaigns. Display ads work through a network like the Google Display Network, which strategically places your ads across some of the two million-plus websites under its umbrella. Remarketing campaigns, meanwhile, target ads to people who have visited your website before.

Once you decide where and how you would like to advertise, the next step is to craft the right message to be sure that your ads will return the most bang for your buck. There are a number of factors to consider when approaching this stage in the PPC advertising process, such as:

Area of Practice 

In PPC legal marketing, it is vital to match your services with the prospective client’s specific needs. As such, you should craft your ad to directly address your area of practice, whether it may be divorce and family law, bankruptcy and debt, personal injury, and so on. By clearly indicating your area of legal expertise and offering a solution to the searched-for problem, you can increase your click-through rate (CTR) and improve your position in the ad rankings as a result.  

Keywords 

Certain professions have specific key terminology and the law profession is no different. With that said, there are no universally superior legal keywords, not to mention that those that are the highest performing PPC keywords at any given time will likely cost the most money anyway. The good news is that PPC platforms like Google Ads provide their own keyword planners, so you can experiment a bit before deciding on the best keywords for your situation.

Location 

Lawyers working in major cities like New York City, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles may seem to have certain advantages due to the higher population density of those areas. However, that doesn’t mean that lawyers practicing in small towns cannot enjoy substantial benefits from running a PPC ad campaign. Since there will be demand for legal services virtually anywhere, the key is simply to appear in the search results of those who are close enough to pursue your services.

Competition

Speaking of cities versus small towns, lawyers in more sparsely populated areas may enjoy an advantage in PPC advertising over more urban counterparts. Since the cost of PPC advertising is a function of the demand for advertising space, an area with little competition may cost less for a given PPC campaign, potentially resulting in a bigger return on investment. In any case, it is certainly helpful to keep an eye on how many competitors are running ads in your area and what they are signaling in those ads so that you can more clearly understand what it will take to get the upper hand in the PPC wars.

Closing Thoughts

To most effectively get the word out about your law practice, you will have to engage in some kind of online marketing. To that end, strategically crafted and placed PPC ads can be a great tool for getting clicks, but you will also have to make sure your landing page is up to snuff once the ad does its job.

While this article covers the basic details of PPC marketing, the requirements of companies like Google and Facebook are frequently changing, often making mastery of their platforms a costly and time-intensive endeavor for those with smaller revenues and advertisement budgets. For those looking for an ongoing boost in exposure to the most suitable prospective clients, we hope you will consider joining the Martindale network of effective lead generating sites. 

To learn more about how Martindale-Avvo is uniquely suited to increase traffic to your website, please visit our service page and let us know how we can help you achieve your online marketing goals.