You’ve heard all of the buzz surrounding pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. You did the research, targeted your keywords, and you paid for those clicks. But you don’t seem to be getting enough quality leads from your PPC campaign, and it feels like your marketing budget is going down the drain with no results.
While it may be tempting to ditch your PPC campaign and focus on other aspects of law firm marketing, you would risk leaving behind valuable leads. In reality, the most common problems with PPC campaigns are easy to fix. When it comes to PPC, there are a few simple but extremely costly mistakes that will drastically reduce your ROI, and it doesn’t require a ton of technical knowledge to fix them. If you’re not an attorney, these tips will still benefit you! Although this article is specific to law firm marketing, the following tips apply to every business with a PPC campaign.
While the following may seem intuitive, these are the top three PPC budget killers that can easily slip through the cracks and wreak havoc on your ROI.
Mistake #1. Nobody Answers the Phone
Although law is one of the most demanding professions, prospective clients expect you to have time for them. This includes when they first pick up the phone to call you. Although it’s impossible to personally be available 24/7, it is crucial to designate somebody to answer all calls, at least during business hours.
Prospects will not leave a message. Even if they do, they are probably immediately moving on to the next ad or Google listing they see. By the time you reach back out to a prospect, you may have spent anywhere from $10 to $100+ just to learn that they have retained your competitor down the street.
People are impatient, particularly when they are seeking answers to specific legal questions that they can’t find online. Because of this, it’s best to avoid automated call answering systems. Instead, let them hear a real person’s voice the first time they call. By simply picking up the phone, you significantly increase your chances of converting your paid traffic.
Mistake #2. You Have a Bad Website
Your website must be set up to convert prospects into clients before you ever spend any money sending traffic to it. A good website is built to demonstrate your authority and knowledge within your practice area. It’s a prospect’s first impression of you and should inspire confidence in your expertise. If your website isn’t set up correctly or doesn’t have good content, your conversion rate will suffer enormously as leads bounce to the next ad or Google listing.
Here are common website problems that will quickly drive traffic away:
- The website design is outdated and clunky to use and/or the pages load slowly.
- Your reviews are not prominently displayed on the website.
- You have no content, or the content that is featured isn’t useful or relevant to your practice area(s). Content should preemptively answer common questions.
- There is no “click to call” button for mobile users, or your website isn’t mobile-friendly.
Once your website is cleaned up and functioning well, be sure to direct all traffic to its relevant landing page. For example, if someone clicks your DUI attorney ad, they need to be taken to your DUI page, not your homepage. Your DUI page will present the content specific to the ad they clicked, and to their searches. If you answer some of a prospect’s questions as soon as they visit your landing page, they will be less likely to seek these answers elsewhere, i.e., on another attorney’s website.
Mistake #3. You Only Have Bad Reviews, or No Reviews at All
The importance of quality reviews for attorneys and law firms is very often overlooked. Having only a few bad reviews or no reviews at all is one of the fastest ways to guarantee a low conversion rate for your PPC campaign. Reviews from others who have benefited from your services foster trust between you and any potential client visiting your website. They showcase not only your skills, but the experience of retaining you.
It is critical to ask every single satisfied client for a review so you can capture the full picture of your legal services. If you have no reviews or only a few bad reviews with no positive reviews to counteract them, it is highly likely that most paid traffic will move on to a different lawyer or law firm that actively seeks out and exhibits good reviews.
Create a procedure for requesting reviews from every satisfied client, display them on your PPC landing pages, and you no longer risk losing paid traffic to your competitors. A good place to start is creating a Google review link that can easily be sent to all clients.
In Conclusion
If you’ve tried PPC in the past and it didn’t work, don’t give up. In nearly every case we have looked at, a poorly performing campaign was due to one or a combination of these elements. You can find more details about these and other digital marketing tips for attorneys in this online guide to law firm marketing.
Take another hard look at your website, your Google reviews, and how you’re handling incoming calls. When implemented correctly, we’ve seen unbelievably positive results for lawyers and law firms utilizing PPC campaigns.