Google Ads For Lawyers: 15+ Tips Lawyers Can use Google Ads to Generate More Leads

Google Ads can help to generate promising leads for all types of professionals including lawyers.
Almost every law firm needs a bunch of cases to keep the business running. Most of the law firms do have an idea about the existence of Google Ads too. But, they don’t seem to know the trick to benefit from it.

Let’s explore in this post the erroneous ways of using Google Ads that dilute results and the ways to fix those.

Google Ads for Lawyers: Basics to Know

Google Ads or Google PPC ads is a paid tool for digital advertising the law business on this ace search engine. For the uninitiated, PPC stands for Pay per Click. This model of advertising requires the users to pay every time a visitor clicks the ad.

The aim of this digital marketing tool is to supplement the organic traffic with paid visitors. Hence, the law firm can benefit from it if they get the returns from the same.

It requires intelligent use of a PPC campaign to get the best advantages. The businesses, however, fail to do so because of the poor knowledge of keyword use and insufficient budget allotment.

Challenges usually faced

The term ‘lawyer’ is not an easy keyword to tap. Law firms face heavy competition and need to be crystal clear on their USP and basic product. Poor choice of keywords can cause drainage of PPC budget and missing real target audience.

The more focus on saving cost sometimes pushes the ROI off the focus. Remember quality does come but at a cost. Hence, budget constraints make it difficult to maximize the benefits of PPC Google Ads campaign.

Not doing the math as regards to who to target and what earning to aim for hits ROI badly. The lawyers lack on being wisely critical of themselves and try to hit for larger aims than their actual offering.

Best tips to make Google Ads for lawyers work

Now that most of the challenges are clear, let’s find out the best working tips that can add to the advantages of the Google PPC Ads campaign.

1. Choosing more specific keywords
   
   Trying for the audience of keyword ‘lawyers’ can cause you to lose yourself in the horde. You can narrow down the search phrase by adding more specific keywords. For example, ‘mortgage document lawyer’ will help you get a better ranking on the search page instead of a broad category as ‘lawyer’.
   
   Also, if you want local SEO to work for your Google Ads campaign keywords, you can divert your PPC budget to ‘a mortgage document lawyer in texas.
   
   Such focused keywords may help achieve the real motive of a Google Ads campaign, which is easy conversion and more ROI.
   
   
2. Be particular about negative keywords
   
   Being clear about the keywords which should deliver you the results is not enough. You have to be equally aggressive about the negative keywords list.
   
   The negative keywords list comprises those search phrases which you want to steer clear of. Hence making a list of the negative keywords is also important and is likely to work in your favour.
   
   Negative keywords simply mean, ‘Don’t show my business when the user types these keywords’.
   
   A few of the negative keywords list options are:
   
   a. Cities and wider geographical areas: Include city names in the list where you don’t serve among negative keywords. Populate it further with states and provinces outside your catchment area.
   b. Unfocused: Games, apps, and other legal aids related terms mostly are used by searchers who are actually not seeking a counsel’s advice. So, these are negative search phrases for lawyers
   c. For cheap, affordable, free: These keywords clearly indicate the user intent of not spending on the legal advice. Hence, these are of no use for maximizing conversions.
   
   Other negative keywords options are career-related terms, education-focused terms, etc.
   In essence, Google Ads keyword list should aim at bringing in real business for the lawyers.
   
   
3. Be more specific geographically
   
   Try going for zip codes or postal codes instead of all city areas.
   
   This approach is more suitable revenue-wise. It helps target areas inhabited by regular users of law services. Also, the areas that have high population density or people with better spending powers become easy to target with zip code strategy.
   
   
4. Go for quality clicks rather than top position
   
   Some PPC services will consider their job done when your lawyer business ranks at the top.
   You realize the mistake when clicks don’t convert and only the budget is waned more sooner than anticipated.
   So, choose keywords that benefit your business truly.
   
   
5. Be specific to the point of your brands’ terms
   
   It is needed to avoid brand-jacking. Competitors may choose the keywords to target that capitalize on your brand identity.
   
   So, why not be the profit-maker from your brand name?
   
   Make it a point to include brand’s terms like owner name or a celebrity lawyer name from your team in your Google Ads keyword list.
   
   
6. Choose device-specific strategy
   
   Google Ads feature offers facility to adjust the bids device-wise.
   
   Some searchers respond more positively on the mobile phone as compared to desktops.
   You must do a little research to know how various searches conducted on different devices perform.
   
   It helps you have more budget allocated for mobile devices and lesser for desktops if the searches on the latter don’t yield conversions as per your research.
   
   
7. Keep focus in mind while bidding
   
   A bidder has four options to explore. These are – meet a cost per acquisition or lead, be at the top of SERP, maximize the clicks or bid for clicks on keywords that convert actually.
   It all depends upon your discussion with the lawyer PPC agency. The knowledge of client psychology towards the slots also helps.
   
   
8. Divide ads according to the ad group
   
   A bit costly approach, but can help meet clients’ expectations.
   
   Having different ads as per the ad group choice helps cash on the user intent’s knowledge.
   
   So, make a list of the most searched phrases from different ad groups and have an ad corresponding to those. It helps attain more accuracy in targeting ads.
   
   
9. Pick the match type that works best for you
   
   Do a little research and find the result for each match type.
   
   Have ad groups as per the match types’ performances.
   
   If your conversions are the result of an exact match or phrase match, have more budget tilted to the keyword group of these types. A broad keyword match category may not help get the best results in this case.
   
   The reverse works when the law firm is crystal clear of their motives and have a great presence offline too.
   
   
10. Choose ad groups that have as low as one keyword only
    
    Allotting budget to single keyword ad group simply means you are going ‘low competition’ way.
    
    The general tendency is to have more keywords from more populated ad groups. This speaks of try and test strategy.
    But, if you have the keyword in the ad group that matches your ad campaign’s target the most precise way, you have a readymade booster for your online presence.
    
    
11. Place keywords strategically and amply
    
    How is keyword selection implemented? Well, it is only the words that will help crawlers find you and pull you above the horde.
    So, use the keywords naturally in ads’ copies.
    
    The best places to use keywords in the Ads for the PPC campaign are found to be – display URL, headline, ad body and ad extension, and of course, the landing pages
    
    Using the keyword in these places can improve the Quality Score. Since these places are perceived to be most relevant, Google appreciates usage here and gives good rating.
    
    So, have keywords at least in three places out of 5.
    
    
12. Focus on Ad Extensions too!
    
    Ad Extensions are a very important part of an ad. Not all ad extensions will be shown, remember that!
    If you have learned the user intent well and populated ad extension with the information the users actually search for, this part will push the ranking for sure.
    Types of ad extensions to choose from are: location extensions, callouts, sitelinks and call extensions. Putting location can catch the attention of specific keyword searches. Call-outs will get you people who are searching for some peculiar service feature.
    
    
13. Do testing religiously
    
    No matter how confident you are of the ad copy, you are only speculating the user intent at the end of the day!
    
    Hence, ad testing has got no alternative.
    
    Test variations in heading, Call to Action, Text Body, and display URLs to find a good mix of user-friendliness and search engine-friendliness. You have to get picked by the search engine and meet the audience’s expectations too; accordingly, test the ads and compare to find a better fit.
    
    
14. Local service ads also matter
    
    We did discuss a thing or two about location targeting above.
    
    Apply that knowledge to create local service ads.
    
    This feature offers the convenience to appear on the top results with photos and contact numbers.
    
    Your click-through rate can definitely increase and will not cost if the visitor does not use ‘call’ feature. If the lead is irrelevant, it may cost however.
    
    
15. Optimize to provide responsive search ads to Google
    
    Google ads consultants are served several friendlier features by Google. One of those is Responsive search ads.
    In responsive search ads, you have the flexibility to create different ad versions. These are picked by the search engine algorithmically and the most optimized or the one deemed most relevant is shown to the prospective customer.
    
    Responsive search ads are the result of automated testing of ad copies and headline variations. Thus, the chances of these getting a better response is quite high.
    
    These ad types have performed well in terms of click-through-rates. Hence, these are going to stay at the top of the game for quite some time; some data resources indicate.
    
    
16. Use tracking code to design retargeting strategy
    
    You are not a spammer always when you try to re-approach a customer with a suitably aggressive approach!
    
    Perhaps, your customer needs a slight more confidence in making a decisions or was just carried away by some other distraction.
    
    So, take that last chance and reconnect to tap the interest shown by the prospective customer by making a re-targeting list.
    
    After all, the overall aim is to get more conversions from the Google Ad campaign. So, be smart enough to put that extra effort in shape of customizing the ad message or shorten the call to action. You may also re-design the bid to make it more result-oriented.
    
    All these actions become possible to take with the tracking code. So, do emphasize putting this code on the law firm’s website and find the user response for the next best action.
    
    
17. Tracks where phone calls and contact forms led to
    
    Overall improvement in sales figures is the ultimate aim of the Ad campaign, isn’t it? Revenues are needed to cover the costs of all types including the cost of the ad. So, your ad campaign for the lawyer service has served the purpose only when the tele-conversation or reaching through contact forms resulted into buying action.
    The tracking mechanism can work in your favour when you have put a dedicated CRM team in action for your law firm. A proper training for recording the call’s results and that of calling back the contact form customers should be provided.
    
    Pay attention to the client’s order size. The food for thinking about the next campaign comes from this figure. You can make the ads budget more yielding per lead if the campaign is designed for a $20,000 customer instead of $2,000 one. Also, find about the repeat customers; they are your real patrons!
    
    Wrapping up,
    
    Lawyers’ businesses can flourish significantly when you have leveraged Google Ads for lawyers to its best. Doing in-depth research is indispensable activity to benefit the most from this ads service for Google. Use the Media Challengers‘ pointers above to give your research a meaningful direction. It may prove to be the secret code for online and offline success of your law firm advertising.