Trial Magazine

By restricting its search result pages, Google has pushed more and more of the legal industry’s internet-driven business through ­advertisements instead of traditional organic results. Under the ­pay-per-click (PPC) advertising model, advertisers “bid” (setting the amount they are willing to pay) to place ads that appear when users search certain terms or “keywords”; the search engine then charges each time someone clicks one of these ads. Large law firms can spend huge amounts on these advertising campaigns, but with a little knowledge, lawyers can successfully set up and manage Google’s advertising platform—Google Ads (formerly known as AdWords)—on their own.¹

An ad in Google Ads is com- posed of a clickable link (known as the ­“Headline”) and text that appears below (known as the “Description”). When triggered by the words in a search query, Google Ads will place the ad directly underneath the search box in Google. 

Before charging into a Google Ads Campaign, think about what you are trying to achieve. What are your more profitable practice areas? What are the firm’s unique marketing advantages? Strategically identifying those opportunities that help your firm find profitable­ niches within the crowded PPC market is frequently the key.

Set up your Google Ads account at https://ads.google.com/home/. You’ll need an email and a website address to get started, and Google offers a step-by-step guide for creating an account.² To keep things simple, I recommend using either a Gmail account or an email address powered by Google.

You may see information on using AdWords Express, a tool meant to simplify Campaign setup and management. However, given the competitiveness of the legal market, it simply doesn’t provide enough control and finesse. But if you already have an Express account, don’t wipe the slate clean and start over. You’ll lose historical data, which is informative and can impact the cost of the Campaign. Google uses this data to determine your “Quality Score.” Having a higher score means Google has evaluated your ads as higher quality, which can lower prices and improve ad positions. Starting over means you’ll lose the historical data on which a high Quality Score is built.

After you create an account, turn on auto tagging under “Account Settings,” which automates the connection between Google Ads and Google Analytics. Doing this ensures that data from Google Ads gets pushed into Google Analytics, which can help you track “conversions” or the number of people who contact you after seeing the ad—whether through phone calls, form fills, online chats, or even text messages. If you haven’t set up Google Analytics yet, stop and do so.³ Without access to conversion data, you’ll be running blind with your Google Ads account.

In the Google Ads Account Settings, also connect to Google Search Console (a free tool that tracks how your website appears in Google searches), Google My Business (a free tool that helps businesses connect with clients), and YouTube. (Having a single Google-based email address to manage all of these logins makes things much easier.) Connecting to Google My Business ensures you can use location extensions, which may place your firm’s ad as a Google Maps pin directly within the search results. Connecting to YouTube will simplify setting up video-based advertising in the future.

Campaign Design

Once your accounts are linked, configure the overall Campaign setup under “Campaign Settings.”

Key components. Three important Campaign Setting components will determine the overall success of your Campaign: 

• Daily budget. Put a ceiling on your daily budget. I once fielded a call from a lawyer who had failed to set his daily budget and through poor targeting, aggressive bidding, and no daily limit, unintentionally spent more than $10,000 on his Campaign over a weekend. Your daily budget will depend significantly on your practice area, geography, and aggressiveness.
• Time of day. Set Campaigns to run only when someone in your firm is available to field inbound inquiries. It doesn’t make sense to advertise on the weekend if you aren’t available to talk because, most likely, your firm will have paid for a click that will not turn into a client. Consumers no longer leave voicemails and wait a few days for a return call; instead, they go back to Google and call the next firm on the list.
• Location targeting. Limit where your ads appear geographically through location targeting.⁴ Most people strongly prefer hiring someone nearby. Lower your costs by reaching only those prospective clients who are geographically proximal and more likely to become clients. Law firms with multiple offices should set a unique Campaign for each location. Each Campaign will appear as a different tab. 

Campaign type. Select the type of Campaign carefully. There are two main options: search ads (text ads shown when users are searching for related services or products) and display ads (image ads shown across websites in the network without users entering a specific search term). In general, text search ads are more effective because they are visible only to users who have proactively indicated they are looking for something specific. By contrast, display ads are triggered by content on a page, not a user’s search query.

I don’t recommend selecting the “search and display” option (which enables you to select both ad types) because the economics for display ads versus search ads are fundamentally different. It can take thousands of impressions (which are counted each time the ad appears on the Google Network) for a display ad to generate a click, but the costs per display ad impression are very low compared to a search ad impression.

But make sure to opt in to “search network” and “search partners” (sites that partner with Google to display ads). Google Maps is technically part of the search partners network, so selecting that option makes your ad eligible to be displayed in the local map results on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). This key placement is typically extremely effective. 

Ad Groups. These are best organized as a set of contextually specific ads, keywords, and landing pages (the destinations people reach after clicking on an ad). Arrange Ad Groups, the foundational building blocks of Google Ads, by highly specific topics—for example, use “car crash lawyer” instead of “crash lawyer.”⁵ To maximize the click-through rate and conversion effectiveness, tailor ads, keywords, and landing pages within an Ad Group to each practice area. 

Avoid using “broad match keywords.”  This option allows Google to serve your ad to people who use that keyword—such as “lawyer”—anywhere within their query. This is an easy way to bid on lots of irrelevant searches—for example, “lawyer training” or “lawyer association.” To keep it simple, use the “phrase” setting or require an “exact match.”⁶ Also be sure to include negative keywords or words that will trigger your ad not to show. You may, for example, want to include negative keyword terms such as specific areas of law in which you don’t practice.

Include multiple ads per Ad Group and select the setting to “Google Optimize” because Google will automatically determine which ads best resonate with the audience and will serve the best performing ad more. You can also add “ad extensions,” which are ways to make your ad bigger on the SERP and provide more information. These extensions, which make your ads more effective, do not cost more. Examples of ad extensions law firms might want to use are site links, ­callouts (which could note value propositions such as “free consultation” or awards that you’ve won), and location extensions (required to feature your ads on Google Maps results).⁷

Bidding. In its simplest form, Google Ads lets you bid the amount you are willing to pay for a click on a certain keyword. This means you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.  Your bidding defines how much you are willing to bid per keyword—for example, $12 for clicks on the term “motorcycle crash attorney.” Google helps you automate bidding by learning and adjusting your bids within a given budget.⁸

While you can manually monitor and adjust bids, a much easier approach (but with much less control) is to select the “maximize conversions” bidding strategy. This setting algorithmically adjusts your bidding strategy to get as many inbound inquires as possible within a given budget constraint.⁹ Assuming you have your conversions set up correctly to track the ways in which someone can reach you, this focuses Google on doing what you want: growing your business.

Track Conversions

Set your Google Ads account to track all of your conversions, whether through phone calls, online chats, online form completions, or text messages. Depending on how you have your site set up, some of these conversions can be tracked through your connected Google Analytics account. Other tools such as conversion-tracking pixels can be used to track online form fills and determine whether these originated with Google Ads.

A good website developer can set up conversion tracking for you, but be wary of vendors self-reporting the success of a Campaign. I also recommend using a third-party vendor to create a full call-tracking log for inbound inquiries across all of your different marketing channels.

Once your advertising Campaign launches, review the account daily for the first week, weekly for the first month, and then monthly moving forward. This will help you avoid unexpected surprises (like overblown budgets) if you’ve made any systemic mistakes in your setup.

If you choose to work with an agency, insist that you control and have full access to who sees your account and all of its details. Agencies may cite “proprietary methodology” and refuse to provide access to the Campaign, but this creates a lack of transparency. Smart law firms insist on full ownership of their own accounts, and your firm should be the only party with administrative level access to your Google Ads account. 

Although Google Ads may seem too complex and expensive, with some careful planning, strict budget controls, and tight targeting, a law firm can run these Campaigns itself. 

Conrad Saam is the founder of Mockingbird Marketing. He can be reached at conrad@mockingbirdmarketing.com. The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not constitute an endorsement of any product or service by Trial or AAJ.

Notes

1. In PPC campaigns, expenses increase with the number of competing advertisers, such as in larger geographic markets or in more competitive practice areas.
2. Google Ads Help, Your Guide to Google Ads, https://tinyurl.com/yc9vh4z6.
3. Learn more at Getting Started With Analytics, https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008015?hl=en. 
4. Implicit in these geographic settings is the understanding that Google knows the location of anyone running a search. This means that the ad keywords do not need to include the location to target correctly. For example, a person searching from Atlanta will be served an Atlanta ad for the keyword “car crash lawyer” even if she doesn’t specify the term “Atlanta.” 
5. Learn more at How Ad Groups Work, https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2375404?hl=en. 
6. If you want more on keyword strategies, research “broad match modifier” to take your advertising to the next level.
7. Learn more at About Extensions, https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2375499. 
8. Learn more at Understanding Bidding Basics, https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2459326?hl=en.
9. Exclude your own office IP address to ensure that you and your employees don’t see and click on your ads. You can find your IP by Googling “what is my IP address?”