The Right Paid Search Approach For Law Firms

One of the growing trends the law industry is experiencing today is the move toward specialized “boutique” firms that focus on one precise area of the law.  This strategy allows firms to market themselves as the niche “expert” in their geographic area.  Examples include bankruptcy, intellectual property, personal injury, and divorce, just to name a few.  A wealth of law industry research can be found online at http://www.lexisnexis.com/law-firm-marketing/industry-research/.

Atlanta internet marketing agencies can leverage a similar specialization approach to highly competitive industries within the pay-per-click space.  Average CPCs can easily reach the $50 – $100 range on Google AdWords for lawyer and attorney related keywords.  For clients that bid on these types of keywords within their digital marketing accounts, a long-tail bidding approach can mean the difference between failure and success.

Long-tail bidding is a pay-per-click strategy that improves ROI metrics by identifying relevant keywords that are very specific and often consist of three or more terms.  For instance, imagine the cost difference between the keyword ‘injury attorney’ and the keyword ‘atlanta attorney specializing in injury’.  Online users that search for specific, long-tail keywords are also further down the purchase funnel and ready to convert.  Therefore, long-tail keywords typically achieve higher conversion rates, lower cost-per-clicks, and higher ROI.  However, long-tail keywords are lower volume by nature and will not produce enough click traffic to drive the desired amount of total leads.  Therefore, employing the ideal blend of higher volume head terms along with lower volume long-tail keywords is vital to pay-per-click success.

Another common obstacle that requires a creative strategy to overcome is competitive bidding.  Unfortunately, it’s all too common for law firms to find themselves in a situation wherein competitors are bidding on their brand keywords.  For instance, Firm A is bidding on Firm B’s name as a keyword in their Google AdWords account.  Since Google AdWords is a real-time auction, the amount of advertisers bidding on the same keywords increases prices for everyone involved.  As a result, average cost-per-clicks for brand keywords skyrocket and account ROI declines.  Google does not allow competitors to utilize other firms’ names within ad copy, but it is perfectly legal to include those terms in keyword lists. Lead Horse is an Atlanta internet marketing agency that has developed a sophisticated and granular strategy for combating this type of aggressive, competitive behavior.  Discover the details in a previous blog post aptly named Paid Search Strategies for Brand Campaigns.

By employing both our brand CPC and long-tail bidding strategies, law firms can successfully run pay-per-click accounts without breaking the bank.