Pay-per-click, or PPC advertising, is a savvy way to gain some serious traction online.

This highly targeted form of paid search Internet advertising can pinpoint prospective clients to drive targeted traffic directly to your legal site. Attorneys only pay when someone “clicks through.” PPC works as a complement to TV advertising and even as a stand-alone Internet marketing investment for lawyers with smaller or stretched budgets.

There are three key reasons why PPC for lawyers is worth considering:

It’s fast and flexible.

It’s targeted and tangible.

It’s driven by results and ROI.

Let’s dive into these benefits so you can see how pay-per-click really pays off.

It’s fast and flexible.

By fast, we mean if your PPC ad posts today and you could see pay off immediately through increased traffic to your website. With PPC for lawyers, attorneys can competitively bid so more people see their ad near the top of a search-results page. Statistics consistently prove that the higher up ads appear, the better click-through rate (people who see your ad and actually click on it) they earn. As you dial in this scientific method further with your legal marketing partner, the more your ads will appear. Likewise, because of the speed and impermanence of the Web, law firms can change ad text at any time, testing and adjusting around the keywords that are resonating (encouraging click-through) best for different audiences. This flexibility is nearly unmatched in traditional advertising.

It’s targeted and tangible.

As your law firm continues to articulate its ideal client, paid search campaigns can target with remarkable precision this person through keyword development (the words and phrases people type in a search engine when looking for a specific type of attorney, for example) and exclusive PPC landing pages designed to drive people to your firm’s website. To attract the most qualified client, you can hone PPC strategy further by location, time, language, gender and other analytics tied to consumer behavior on the Internet. What’s even better is lawyers can see tangible results straightaway. Through specialized PPC management tools for lawyers, you can now see how people click on your optimized ads, follow through to your website and, ideally, take the next step to convert to a case.

Bonus: PPC ads can also generate calls for free! By placing a phone number in the ad, people are able to call without actually clicking on it. However, make sure to use a unique number – or track line – so you can trace the lead back to your PPC campaign!

It’s all about results and ROI.

Lawyers, not unlike other service professionals, like it when advertising results are directly tied to investment; a measure that’s trickier in traditional advertising. In PPC for attorneys, ad- and traffic-tracking tools like Google Analytics actually measure minute-by-minute what’s working in an online campaign and what’s not. The way to realize true ROI in PPC advertising is to do a quick calculation based on click-through rate and conversion. Good CTR for a PPC ad campaign starts at about 1% and up. A solid conversation rate (website visitors who “convert” by taking action to contact your firm, for example, to request a free consultation) starts closer to 2%. Some quick math using the most conservative rates shows that about 5,000 people need to see your ad to generate a qualified lead.

Ready to learn more about how PPC can work for your law firm? We’re here to answer all your questions about pay-per-click. Just click here or call us today (888) 461-1016.  

Years ago, digital display advertising was about placing ads on websites where we assumed our target audience was spending time online. Generally, this “educated guess” or shotgun like approach would deliver hit or miss results that were difficult to track and hard to prove a positive return on investment.

All of that has changed with the creation of intelligent display advertising technology. This revolution in how online display advertisements are generated, served, and tracked has revived display advertising as a cost efficient form of paid media – especially for law firms looking for a leg up in the highly competitive legal advertising space.

What is ‘intelligent’ display advertising?

Intelligent display advertising is paid media in which a marketing or advertising agency strategically disseminates your advertising message in the digital space. It leverages innovative technology to create the most effective ad—in real-time.

Specialized tools curate dynamic data to combine the right mix of your law firm’s library of core ad components—logo, tagline, visual assets, key calls to action, etc.—to assemble the most relevant ad for where your target audiences land on the Web.

Rather than relying on one static, pre-designed display advertisement for several outlets, intelligent display ads are constructed around algorithms that survey things like past performance of different ads, top-performing traffic sources, website content, language, time of day and geographic location.

All that means is that really “smart” technology can take your online advertising from a nebulous presence on the Web to a more data-driven, precise and flexible campaign.

How does ‘intelligent’ display advertising work?

Today, display advertising is almost entirely data-driven. It’s all about actionable information that makes media buying make sense.

By design, intelligent display advertising tools use live data to create a competitive advantage. So your digital media planner now has access to statistics and analytics on all kinds of information like:

• where other law firms are placing ads—and getting results
• what types of banner advertising (size, design, location) the competition is using
• the length of time these campaigns are running—and on what specific landing pages they’re appearing

Based on this knowledge, your law firm might work with an agency to cleverly “mimic” effective creative elements; conversely, you might want to avoid placements where your ad would appear directly next to the competition. All of this data can be extracted based on specific criteria that your firm and digital media expert deem most worthy.

The second part of intelligent display advertising is tracking your progress:

• looking at where those “smart” ads ultimately end up
• measuring how many people actually saw them
• analyzing what the true conversion rates were

In turn, this data helps your digital media buyer determine the most cost-effective ad buy going forward. Plus, as research and tracking tools continue to evolve, over time it will become easier to prove the return on investment for digital display campaigns.

Ensuring your ads are being served in front of the right person at the right time will go a long ways towards that last point.

Why should my law firm add or shift to intelligent display advertising?

Well, because you still need to be where the modern world—and potential clients—are: online, 24/7. Advertising on the Web, while it may have lost its way for a number of years, is back and more effective than ever. This dynamic medium will let you test new creative and messaging—even course-correct, almost overnight.

Intelligent display advertising must be part of any marketing strategy because no one, and we’d argue especially lawyers, like to gamble when it comes to ad buys. No savvy business would risk money on a best “guesstimate” about where to place online ads over a data-backed, intelligently informed strategy. And no attorney should overlook a technology, now deployable from the agency level, that’s designed to help guarantee better results from a display ad campaign.

Just like our phones have gotten smarter, Internet display advertising is now way more intelligent than we are. That’s a good thing. And, with integrated analytics and evolving algorithms, placing and tracking online ads has gotten more sophisticated over the years.

In many ways, that means the decision to spend money on these highly targeted, real-time ads is simpler than ever.