But how do you reach this audience, especially if you’re a personal injury law firm? If a person sits down at their computer or browses on their phone and begins looking for ‘personal injury lawyer near me,’ how can you stand out? Appearing in the first position in search results usually involves paying for ads, which is where your law firm digital marketing budget comes into play.

So how much does it cost to be successful with PPC advertising?

As the Paid Media Manager at Hennessey Digital, I frequently receive questions about the ideal budget to allocate toward a PPC campaign. In this article I will highlight the important things to consider that will help you make an accurate decision regarding the allocation of your firm’s marketing budget for paid search.

Budget Misconceptions in PPC for Law Firms

In my experience, I have come across two common misconceptions. First, there is often a request for achieving substantial results with a budget as low as $500 per month, with the aim of generating 5-10 personal injury cases. Second, clients sometimes express a desire to invest the maximum budget possible to dominate the entire market within their region or area of service.

Both of these scenarios are not practically feasible.

Take the first scenario, where firms want to achieve the most with the lowest budget. First, let me clarify that I’m not suggesting that PPC advertising should cost an arm and a leg. However, it’s important to understand that personal injury law stands as one of the most costly sectors within the PPC landscape. The cost-per-click (CPC) – for a single click – can range from $70 to $250, contingent upon the targeted locations and the level of competition in that geographic area. Car accident and truck accident portfolios in PPC advertising are significantly more expensive too, with CPCs ranging between $150 and $500. Given this expensive cost-per-click, it is impossible to bring in 5 to 10 cases from PPC ads with a monthly budget of only $500.

With the second scenario, putting an unlimited budget toward PPC, I always advise spending each dollar wisely instead of burning every single penny with the aim of obtaining every piece of the pie. It is impossible to dominate the entire market due to the presence of other competitors who actively bid on similar keywords. If you blindly allocate every dollar to PPC ads, you might unreasonably inflate the cost-per-click, cost-per-lead, and ultimately, the cost-per-case, without being able to capture 100% of the searches. For example, if you have an unlimited budget and allocate all available funds to PPC ads without careful consideration, you are essentially engaging in aggressive bidding on keywords with the aim of capturing every click possible. This approach intensifies competition, however, resulting in higher costs as you attempt to outbid your competitors.

Optimizing Cost-Per-Case with a Data-Driven Approach

Here at Hennessey Digital, we track every possible metric (impression, CPM, CPC, CTR, conversion rate, cost-per-conversion) for effective campaigns. And we strive for optimal cost-per-case in the market. For a lawyer, this means how many cases you’ve signed and how much money you’ve spent to get them. To reach this goal, we focus on both the quality and quantity of searches, clicks, and leads. Our PPC team has analyzed more than $2 billion dollars worth of marketing data to establish average cost-per-click, cost-per-lead, and conversion rate-related benchmarks. We apply these benchmarks to formulate strategies that result in successful PPC campaigns for the law firms that partner with us. Our depth of experience in legal marketing also enables us to know how to allocate the right amount of budget toward specific campaigns related to personal injury, car accidents, or truck accidents.

Drawing from my experience, if you’re a personal injury law firm looking to venture into PPC advertising, it’s recommended to allocate a minimum of $8,000 in media spend for the first month, with the understanding that a management fee for the campaign is usually added on top of that. When managing these campaigns, we advise allocating a larger portion of the budget to generic search terms related to personal injury keywords, and a smaller portion to safeguarding your brand through a branded campaign for your law firm. We suggest gradually increasing the budget starting from the second month, based on the results you’ve obtained and the data analysis.

It’s important to note this is the ideal budget to set your law firm up for success in generating quality leads through PPC advertising. Multiple factors will come into play including your law firm’s size, digital marketing budget, objectives, or competition in your market – all things we factor to help you determine the right PPC budget to achieve your goals.

Maximize Law Firm PPC ROI With Strategic Bidding & Budgeting

It’s a delicate balance to strike – underinvesting in paid search campaigns can lead to lower visibility or brand recognition, but overspending can waste valuable budget resources. The real cost of PPC is about weighing financial inputs against potential outputs. Meaning, developing a thorough understanding that each click is more than a numerical value for that click. Within PPC there are bidding wars, keyword strategies, and developing an understanding of user intent.

Deciding how much money to spend on PPC campaigns can be tough from a technical perspective. Hennessey Digital has extensive experience working with law firms of various practices and sizes and provides effective SEO and PPC strategies tailored to personal injury lawyers and other practices. Our expertise allows us to offer valuable insights that help shape your overall marketing budget, and our reputation has shown that our motivation is to get you cases, not to artificially inflate your marketing budgets.

If you’re seeking to establish successful PPC campaigns, our expert team is here to assist with the setup, optimization, and management of these campaigns. Don’t let the details of campaign management derail your growth potential from PPC campaigns. Fill out the form below and begin bolstering your online visibility today.

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So let’s dive into strategies you can implement this year to improve the ROI of law firm PPC campaigns on Google Ads.

Understanding how pay-per-click works

When running PPC digital advertising, also known as paid search, you are charged a fee each time someone clicks on your advertisement. Instead of relying on organic methods to attract clients, PPC allows you to “purchase” website traffic. This is particularly useful when you want to target competitive keywords, such as “personal injury lawyer,” and your organic ranking may not be high enough to appear on the first search engine results page (SERP). By bidding on the keyword and paying a certain amount if clicked, your ad will be displayed.

SEO and paid search strategies are effective when run together, as they boost your visibility on the SERP, and seeing listings in both places is known to boost trust in the credibility of a page or link when someone clicks. Developing a PPC campaign strategy for law firms takes careful execution owing to regulations and optimizing campaign performance, but it’s important to advertise there since potential clients turn to search engines and often engage with paid ads when looking for legal advice. PPC marketing can sometimes be expensive and competitive, too, but it can also yield a high return on investment with the right strategies and focused campaigns.

Never bid on broad single-word keywords

It’s important to not focus solely on broad single-word keywords such as “lawyer” or “attorney.” These can be costly to bid on and can lead to campaign inefficiency and wasted budget. Instead, think about targeting long-tail or multiple-word keywords that are more specific, less expensive, and provide more opportunities to capitalize on than the highly-competitive, broadhead keywords. By doing so, you can choose more specific, niche keywords that take into account the buyer intent and the practice areas that generate the most revenue for your law firm. This strategy may seem subtle, but it can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of your ads campaign and is a great PPC strategy to implement for your law firm.

Use negative keywords in your campaign

It might seem counter-intuitive to use negative keywords in your paid search campaigns, but it is a proven PPC strategy. Negative keywords are terms that you explicitly exclude from your PPC campaign so that your ad will not show up when a specific term is searched for. This strategy helps increase the chances of reaching your target audience.

It’s common to use multiple negative keyword lists, around seven to ten, so when thinking of what you want to include in your list of negative keywords, consider terms that are unlikely to result in a qualified sales lead, such as ‘legal aid,’ ‘games,’ and ‘apps.’ You should consider adding terms associated with education and careers to your negative keyword list as well as other low-quality, sales lead terms like ‘cheap,’ ‘free,’ and ‘inexpensive.’ You may also want to include cities and states that are outside of your target region. Being aggressive with keyword exclusions will help you avoid spending money on undesirable search terms, boost your conversion rate by reducing unnecessary clicks, and result in more qualified customers visiting your website or landing page.

Implement an effective keyword bidding approach

An effective keyword bidding strategy is crucial for a successful Google Ads campaign. This involves determining the right keywords to bid on and setting the appropriate bid amount for each keyword. To use automated bid strategies, Google Ads provides several strategies that can help optimize your campaigns for different goals, such as maximizing conversions, maximizing clicks, and targeting CPA (cost per acquisition). It’s important to regularly monitor and adjust your bids as needed to help ensure that you’re getting the best results for your investment. Keep in mind that the most effective keyword bidding strategy will vary depending on your firm’s unique goals and circumstances.

Protect your brand

Even if your law firm already ranks well in search engine results for your branded terms (ie: company name), it’s important to consider advertising for these keywords. If not, a competitor may use your firm’s name in their ad campaign and potentially divert customers away from your business. This tactic is known as “brand-jacking.” Even if your organic search ranking is high, a competitor could still appear above you in the paid advertising section for your brand name. To avoid this, bid on your branded terms to increase your digital real estate and maintain control over how your firm is represented in the paid advertising section.

A/B test with compelling ad copy

One of the fundamental rules of a winning PPC strategy is to test everything. Nowhere is this more important than in your paid ad copy. This is the copy that will either convince a potential client to click or not, resulting in them completing an online lead form, calling your firm, or looking at a competitor. Messaging is key and the ad has to speak to the needs and concerns of your target audience. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you know what people want in your ads rather than what the data tells you. You can write the best ad in the world, but if it’s not performing by boosting click-through rates and leading to conversions, it means it isn’t working.

Google has a good built-in tool to test and measure different versions of your ad copy to determine what resonates most with your target audience and generates the best results in terms of click-through rate and conversions.

Although it may seem overwhelming to develop an organic search and paid media strategy that sets your law firm up for success in search results, understanding the ins and outs of law firm SEO is crucial for your PPC strategies to continually acquire new clients. A strong online presence and a constant flow of qualified leads are essential for the growth of your practice, and one way to achieve this is by working with an experienced PPC team that can manage and optimize your campaigns daily.

Looking to acquire more cases while keeping costs low, or want to improve your marketing strategies and establish a stronger online presence for your law firm? Trust our PPC experts here at Hennessey Digital to drive results for your law firm. Fill out the form below to learn how we can help you achieve your goals!

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