Law firms of all sizes should be taking advantage of Google Ads whenever possible. They are one of very few consistent ways to have a regular pipeline of targeted new leads into your law firm. Moreover, the flexibility and control that Google Ads offers make them unique. This helps differentiate from other forms of paid advertising such as social media advertising. Google Ads utilise machine learning algorithms and formulas that match up user intent, placing your adverts in front of the right people at the right time for the optimum outcome.
Google Ads for Law Firms: The Common Barriers
However, often legal companies are reluctant to engage in this. Some of the most common reasons cited by law firms for being unable (or being reluctant) to take advantage of Google Ads include:
- Monetary or budget restrictions
- A lack of time
- Unavailability of resources
These barriers are not acceptable excuses nowadays, however. Google has put measures to make Google Ads as user-friendly as possible. Consequently, law firms that fail to do this risk on missing on a multitude of opportunities, which could see adverse effects on both their short-term acquisition of clients, but moreover on their medium-to-long-term profitability and revenue.
Money, Money, Money
Firstly, we can debunk the issue around money. Google Ads is not the cheapest advertising platform, but this shouldn’t immediately serve as a red flag to customers. Google ads offer the advantage of being able to specifically hone in and target customers with clear intent based on their search engine queries. That level of specificity is unavailable on any other platform. What’s more, Google does not force advertisers to spend a minimum amount every single month.
Budgets are set based on daily maximum spend. You also get information on the monthly cap. For example, if your law firm has a 20.00 maximum daily spend, you will sometimes see it spend exactly 20.00 on one day, or it could spend 10.00 one day and 30.00 the next. However, every single pence gets directed towards the keywords and search queries that you have identified to have either a broad, phrase or exact match relevance to your company. It’s all defined by machine learning algorithms driven by real-time performance behaviours, so you can ensure that not a single penny of your budget can spend on anything you have no control over.
Following on from this, it’s important to remember the value of Google Ads leads tends to be extremely high. Leads obtained through Google Ads have been searching for a direct enquiry, or relevant information to their legal situation. It is rare that someone makes just a general request for more details through Google Ads, meaning that you can quickly pick up these leads and look at how you can arrange further meetings or conversations to convert them into business for your law firm. Finally, if you are looking to obtain leads below a certain spending threshold, then Google Ads has options to put in both a cost per acquisition (CPA) target and also a return on advertising spend (ROAS) target.
Time To Change?
Next, let’s look at a lack of time. It’s certainly true that Google Advertising can be extremely long and complex, and that is why some legal firms do outsource their PPC to Boss Digital or other marketing firms. However, if law firms do want to work internally on this, they have a number of options to make it more flexible and efficient.
Firstly, all bidding for adverts is automatic, using Google’s auction-time machine learning algorithm. Cost per auction is calculated at that exact point which not only minimises the spending action by law firms, it also ensures that you never bid too low or too high and risk missing out on potential relevant traffic. It is also possible to adjust your bids incrementally using percentages if you want to zone in on particular high-value terms or traffic. For example, if your law firm specialises in conveyancing services, you might want to bid up to an extra 10% automatically to secure this traffic.
Furthermore, when it comes to setting up the adverts, you can either input your own headlines, body copy and calls to action, or allow Google to scan and review your website to automatically generate the most relevant keywords, and associated headlines that will drive traffic to your site. If you are a law firm that focuses on visual content, you can also use responsive display adverts that harness images directly from your site and select whichever are most relevant to the search query to maximise the rate of conversion. This means you don’t need to spend additional time creating new assets specifically for this campaign.
Resourceful Resourcing
The final major hurdle that law firms often face is a lack of resources. Law firms are already massively stretched when it comes to time. Lawyers spend enough time on tedious administrative tasks and don’t spend enough time doing what they love. Resultantly, they become demoralised and the quality of their work-life balance can suffer exponentially.
Although Google Ads sounds like a lot of extra work, in a reality it is often very simple. Lawyers will know the sorts of questions and enquiries they face on a daily basis. These can help form keyword lists in their simplest forms. It’s important to remember that legal jargon might be commonplace in the industry. Google Ads requires simplicity and nuance wherever possible. What’s more, Google offers responsive dynamic advertising options that allow law firms to take a complete laissez-faire approach. Using dynamic adverts means that a law firm can designate ten key phrases that they want to target. They can then run a campaign quickly and then optimise it based on the enquiries and searches they appear for.
Through this broad base, law firms have the chance to hone into key markets once qualitative data is obtained. You don’t need to worry about the most minutiae of details and can instead focus on the law.
If this is all still not encouraging your law firm to take advantage of Google Ads, don’t worry. Contact Boss Digital today and we’ll discuss how we can make Google Ads work for you.
