No one in the internet world cannot take immense benefit from Google Ads.
And when you are up to offering even the physical services in your local area, let alone in the virtual world, Google Ads will be the right pick for your business to retrieve the best out of it.
The people/the potential customers always practice to search things online before moving out. They require recommendations, reviews, feedback, and the personal instincts to dwell upon and take action.
There I will be educating the lawyers to take the best advantage of Google Ads, and how they can effectively use this platform to reach potential clients and bring in new business.
Although you can just set up your website and forget when your primary goal is to close in new clients, PPC (pay-per-click) is one of the reliable digital marketing strategies to count on.
Frankly speaking, it would not be any difficult to use Google Ads as long as you are sticking to my strategy.
I can bet you will notice an uptick in client acquisition from the day you set up the ad campaign.
Let’s wait no more — get on board with the exclusive guide on setting up Google Ads for lawyers!
Benefits of Google Ads for Lawyers, Attorneys, and Barristers
We deliberately skimmed the part of why Google Ads are important for lawyers because everyone is free to use it for their goodwill.
But the benefits are sure to be noted down for the sake of educating how the lawyers, attorney, and barristers can literally expand their network to open up a new stream of getting the business.
You are Known Beyond Distances!
Or better short it up — it will help you get the increased visibility which is quite a task (plus investment) to reach the new eyeballs. And reaching the new eyeballs clearly means you can be seen by potential customers looking up for the services offered by the law firms.
This is one step ahead of SEO (search engine optimization) where you sit (ideally) on top of SERPs resulting in getting the potential to be clicked by the searchers.
Thus, this translates into bringing the immediate results that you can ever imagine playing with normal-to-extensive (free to paid) SEO aligning to correct up your online presence.
Acute-Targeted Reach
With the play of the keywords specifically formulated for Google Ads, you can narrow down the reach to the specific location, age group, sex, and more as you fiddle with filters.
The keywords you mention there will only allow your ads to be shown against. No more fuss and buzz around!
Control Your Budget
That’s no less than a blessing to control your budget.
- Pause and enable anytime.
- Increase/decrease your daily budget to win different ad spots.
- Add/remove keywords.
- Place filters to amend the budget.
All in all, you would not find any trouble adjusting/re-adjusting the budget the way you want.
Add/Alter Your Ad Campaigns Any Time
Analyze your ad campaigns’ performance and alter them the way you want. You can freely customize the ads not only to improve the performance but test out different content to observe the dwindling performance turning towards bringing the results.
Alternatively, add more ad campaigns the moment you add in different services in your law firms, offer special discounts and promotions to woo away the customers.
The point is, keep your ad campaigns updated!
Google Ads for Lawyers 2024: The Complete Strategy
Almost all lawyers, barristers, and attorneys can safely and freely initiate the Google ad campaign without much fiddling and confusion as long as you stick to this easy-to-follow guide.
But in case you hit any dead-end, you can reach out to me. Also, I offer different ad-related services where I can just take the burden on my shoulder crafting the best-ever ad campaign to hook in new clients so that you should only focus on dealing with the legal cases and not with the Google Ads platform hunting for clients.
I will tell you at the end how exactly you can reach out to me to discuss the stuff directly with me!
Figure First: What Kind of Lawyer You Are?
Sounds pretty naive and a nuisance to ask such a question but you would be agreeing with what I put up here…
You are to figure out what kind of lawyer you are, and what kind of lawyer services you are offering.
Speaking of that, there are a lot of categories for lawyers. Someone is a criminal lawyer, someone is a self-defense lawyer, someone is a relationship lawyer, someone is a property-based lawyer dealing with mortgages or such, and someone is a banking and finance lawyer offering different services like obtaining student loans, car loans, personal loans, and so on.
The other notable lawyer categories are;
- Tax lawyer
- Employment lawyer
- Immigration lawyer
- Corporate lawyer
- Bankruptcy lawyer
- Merger and acquisition lawyer
- Entertainment lawyer
- Contract lawyer
- Toxic tort lawyer
- Prosecutor
- Estate planning lawyer
- Social Security Disability lawyer
- Civil litigation attorney
- Family lawyer
- Personal injury lawyer
- Medical malpractice lawyer
I mean you must figure the core out of what lawyer you are and which category you belong to. It is vital for your Google Ads campaign’s success.
The more transparency you could achieve with your profession the better you will do with Google ads.
Again, it is going to be the basic but the single and truest important piece of the overall strategy!
Get Yourself the Best USP!
Well, a lot of people will not just care about it. They will think to create an ad, they will create an ad, and that’s it.
Although, that is quite the formal way to go with setting up the ad campaign on Google you are missing a point here — a huge impactful point.
USP.
First off, what do you need the ad campaign setup for? Of course, to obtain the new clients. If you just wanted to set up an ad just like that, yeah, I would not be stressing about the U.S.P. thing but the motive here is to get the searchers to click your ad and convert them into your client’s list.
Then how come it will be possible? Bring in the best USP a.k.a., the unique selling point.
But wait… It does not need to be a deceiving one. No clickbait. And not based on lies, please. Fair, simple, and truthful it should prevail all around.
The success of your ad campaign lies in your USP, so stay one step ahead, creatively, from your competitors. It is the presentation of how best you define yourself, the services you offer, and everything to win the hearts of the new spree of your potential clientage.
For further simplifying; you should be offering the “WHY”?
- Why are you a lawyer?
- Why should the clients reach you?
- And, why are you the best fit for their legal needs?
Think, work, and devise the best USP for yourself.
Refine Your Location
You are a lawyer, right? Then you can only offer your services in and around where your office is, no?
There are some obligations you cannot offer your legal services online/where you are not present. So, it is a must to select your location being a lawyer.
However, I do not recommend targeting the whole city because it might not be a viable solution to cover the entire city and again you should not be targeting the block where your office is.
What strategy I propose is to look into your existing customers’ data and figure out where they came from/reside.
Also, you can include the nearby areas from your office locations as well as the customers who reached you. This way, you do not only add the existing customers’ locations but their nearby locations as well.
Landing Page is Mandatory
Agree or not but I just do not recommend hooking in any other pages from your website to serve as a landing page.
Not the plain services page as well. The equal effort will be required to compile the ad copy as well as the landing page.
The landing page needs not to be only creative, filled with your keywords and all of that but every word there should be jotted down to each other.
If you can serve the best of your services with a shorter selection of words, why bang it to fill up unnecessary words there?
The motive here is to reflect the reflection of the ad copy with the content, images, and all of that embossed in the landing page.
See that you are paying money for the searchers to land on your landing page after they see your ad, then if your website UI and UX are not up to the mark; the money is whole wasted.
Let me explain some goodies about the landing page because there the searchers//visitors/clients will decide if they want to proceed with hiring your services or not.
Let’s go to your browser for the time being.
For instance, if you are a lawyer based in New York City, let’s search “lawyers New York” then you are probably going to find some awesome landing pages.
You see on top of the SERP there are a few sponsored listings a.k.a., the Google ads hovering around.
Being a marketer, I urge you not to click on any because that will cost them money as our clear motive is to learn things and not look for lawyer services.
See I am just copying the entire stuff and pasting it into the browser’s URL box to open it separately (without costing them a paid click.)
Let’s analyze all three landing pages and you will see how seriously the lawyers take their landing pages and design them in a way that reflects exactly the dignity of their profession.
You will see “Free Consultation”, one of the apt methods to win the trust of your potential client. This way he/she will talk out all their problems and issues and if that is done all free, you are a step ahead to sign this client in.
Some of them have endorsed the Awards. But know that they should be real. The internet thing can easily reveal what’s true and what’s lie.
Another turning point is the inclusion of Google-based reviews as I also recommend this step.
The Google reviews are genuine, hence anyone can verify it. And it also proves you are already utilizing Google Business Profile.
See that you will be able to oversee a few Google Maps listings when you search “lawyers New York” which ultimately sends that map listing to be found above the general results on SERPs.
Here is another Google ad embossed with the call extension where the visitor will automatically land on call the lawyer instead of going straight to the landing page.
These generally help a lot given that you know what you are doing and what is your purpose in establishing the Google Ads campaign.
Crafting the Effective Ad Copy
As you are done with establishing the awesome landing page for your services, it is time to craft the effective ad copy to finally roll your lawyer services up on Google.
Coming back to it, this call extension ad is a great start for the lawyers when the visitors can directly call without dialing the number.
So, it is insanely a wise move to run the local search to find the competitors and how they are doing/performing on the SERPs.
Let’s try a thing with me. Let me search the “top 10 lawyers in New York”. There I am looking at the best example of an ad but I do not see anything compatible.
Let me search it again — I am now searching “divorce lawyer New York” and as you slide down the page, you will see this perfect example showcasing the good use of site link extension.
So, allow me to do a proper post-mortem of this Google ad using a tool to analyze the stats of the ads.
Just search “sample Google ads preview” and open the Google Ads Preview Tool.
It is a free yet effective tool where you can see the live preview of whatever you type in the fields. It is the best practice to see how your ad will come along before actually reverting to Google Ads.
The first preview is the normal ad but you can explore different ad extensions like site link, callout, call, location, advertiser rating, structured snippets, and price.
Like I am writing “LAWYER ABC” from the “Headline 1” text field and see the preview window showing the changes in live format.
As I selected “Add Sitelink Extensions”, I will be crafting the sample ad to showcase how the ad would come along on Google.
I am now writing “VISIT US” in the “Sitelink 1” text field.
On the next “Sitelink 2” text field, I write “AWARDS”.
So, when you feel like all the site link fields are filled in, you can select “Add Call Extension” to include the direct calling feature added to your ad. Remember the Google ad example I showed a while ago?
There, you can add your phone/mobile number but make sure to answer the calls timely because that will mean a business.
After that, I recommend adding “Add Location Extensions” because I believe this is a critical aspect to make a physical-based business trustworthy to show the real accessible address.
Remember I was talking about the reviews, do you? That can be availed using the “Show Advertiser Rating” extension. Just select it and you will see the star rating over there.
Also, there is another thing that is not for everyone but for those who are price conscious and decide their intention by looking at the price first before exploring the further details.
For that, you can select “Add Price Extension” from here or add the promo deal or something. But since we are crafting the ad campaign for the lawyer niche, then I do not recommend adding the price extension anyhow unless and until you are a competitive lawyer and targeting a very small market gap who is very price conscious. Again, it depends on the country and the marker from where you are.
So there are so many factors present which you can choose from. So once you are done with this landing page and the creation of the ads, then another step out of the strategy is picking the campaign type.
Picking the Right Campaign Type
For the campaign type, I recommend picking the “Sales” campaign with conversions as a local goal or local search ads.
The clear benefit of picking “Sales” as a campaign type with conversion as a goal is you are basically to create a campaign where you can get as many sales as possible. And the second piece of benefit is to set up local search ads because you do not want to reach an entire content, an entire country, an entire state, or even the entire city limit.
So, you just need to focus greatly on the nearby searchers/visitors wanting to fix their legal needs which we are set to help you out with.
This approach will greatly assist in setting your business/service up on Google Maps so that people who are searching for your name, services, and location, especially on their mobile phones will be able to see you/reach you.
That happens only when your campaign goal/objective is to target/place local search ads like the screenshot above as we are searching “divorce lawyer New York” and you will witness plenty of sponsored ads already targeting this competitive keyword.
And you also see the star reviews which translate automatically from the searchers/visitors while making a comment and selecting the star rating depending on their experience (good or bad).
So, I always recommend the lawyers create a local search campaign as well because that plays a huge role in ensuring the business is seen by the right set of searchers.
Setting Up the Campaign… Finally!
Know that it is a cinch to set up a campaign, no? Of course, it will be because you have not only reached this far but our easy-to-follow process is fun and humorous to walk through. 🙂
So, go to your Google Ads dashboard and click on “New Campaign”.
On the next window, you can select “Sales” as the campaign objective but for setting up the local search ad, you will have to opt for “Local store visits and promotions”.
For that, you may need to own a Google Business Profile first like these.
You can simply create your own as well but if you prefer, me and my team can help you set this up because it might need to run into technicalities which can turn out to be super hectic for you.
Keywords and Campaign Structure
Now the second part is to figure out the keywords and the structure for your campaign.
Well, most people would already know a campaign can take up to multiple ad groups, so you can utilize that one single campaign targeted for different locations without creating a whole bunch of individual campaigns.
So, it is wise to figure out what location is working well for you to further optimize that performing ad group to focus on.
We can also perform retargeting and remarketing campaigns that will enormously help in the long run.
Now that we have three search campaigns to set up; search, local store visit, and retargeting.
In easy words, a retargeting campaign is mainly set up for those people who already know your brand or service by visiting you at some point and will see your ad anywhere they go digitally.
And then a question pops up as to how many keywords you can use/utilize in different ad groups.
What I recommend is to only stick within 5 to 10 keywords in a single ad group.
The most important factor about the keyword is the “intent” of that keyword.
Let’s suppose someone is searching for a divorce lawyer and a marriage lawyer, both keywords have a totally different intent from each other, no?
As one searching is looking to get a divorce lawyer to proceed with filing for divorce and ending his/her marriage. On the other hand, a keyword where a searcher is looking for a marriage lawyer means that he/she wants to get married and inquire about the legal terms and conditions beforehand.
So you must figure out what keywords should go into your ad group. Even the words “buy” and “cheap” present the difference in intent because with the word “buy”, someone is looking to get the deal with but with the inclusion of the word “cheap” in the overall keyword, someone is price-conscious and wants to purchase something within a budget.
There you need to understand the intent/purpose of the keyword.
In case the two keywords do not have the same intent, I do not even recommend adding the second keyword to the ad group because it will just ruin the context/purpose of the ad copy.
So, never add the random keywords just like they belong to the services/lawyers until and unless you mean them.
That is the reason why I recommend creating a personalized ad for each ad group so that you can match the intent without veering away from the course. This way we will witness the increase in our CTR (click-through rate) and with the improved CTR, your overall ad quality score will be high enough and will ultimately result in reducing your CPC (cost per click).
And as you go with decreased CPC, your ad position will be high enough as your competitors pay less than them whereas they would probably be paying high click costs to secure the position.
So, work smartly and pay good attention to optimizing your CTR and quality score of your ad campaign and that will double your conversion rate.
The quality score will require a highly-converting ad with the inclusion of the best keywords that reflect your offered services, and the best-designed landing page which will end up improving the CTR on its own.
Mind it, raising the budget alone will not be fruitful at all.
Now for the keywords, what I am going to do is look around on the Keyword Planner to find some good keywords as well as different strategies that you use to figure out the intent and effectiveness of those keywords.
As I mentioned earlier, you should stick to the following during the keyword planning;
- Keyword intent
- Spying the competitors as to what they are targeting for them
To spy over the competitors, we need to find the keywords that are converting and ultimately bringing the business to them being the USP.
So the first step is to discover some new keywords to add to your campaign.
Suppose you are already on the “Keyword Planner” page, click on “Discover new keywords” to start with the search out.
And let’s suppose I am a divorce lawyer in New York, so I will punch down “divorce lawyer New York”. I can also enter my website URL but I will skip that part for now since we are learning our way up to establish the ad campaign for a divorce lawyer in New York.
For now, it auto-picked my location which is okay.
Now, let’s click on “Get results” to jump onto the list of discovered keywords.
See I got over four keywords. Now the thing is the intent is immensely important with this as well, no? Let’s say I select the location to be “United States” or let’s say I only select New York (state) as my target location, the audience reach will inflate to 33.9 million as my target audience lives in New York.
Now, I am going to further shorten my keyword to only “divorce lawyer” because I have already selected New York as my target location and I no longer add the city/state name anymore.
This will pop up many ideas, the keywords that I can include in my ad campaign.
You will be observing some more related keywords like “divorce lawyer near me”, “top divorce lawyer”, “divorce lawyer nearby”, and vice versa. So you need to figure out if you should set up a separate campaign for all such keywords because they will be highly assisting in locking the new clients.
Since we use different tools to conduct keyword research by looking at the competitors, there is no guarantee the keywords are always coming from the Keyword Planner. 🙂
So, you can now see that I got “divorce lawyer” data and there you can also see a few exciting keywords like “cheap divorce lawyer”, “best divorce lawyer”, “divorce attorneys”, “family solicitors”, “divorce solicitors”, “custody lawyers, “cheap divorce lawyer near me”.
You will also witness even the “cheap divorce lawyers near me” have a huge market which I can see from the volume size.
There I got over 396 keywords.
Oh wait… there I can see some more interesting keywords like “best divorce attorney for a man near me”.
With that, you can establish different ad campaigns targeting male searchers as well as women searchers, so this sums up the keywords and campaign ideas well.
We can even see “top divorce lawyer near me”, “affordable divorce near me”, “affordable divorce lawyer near me”, “ as well as “divorce lawyers $500”.
Can I tell you something about the same intent keywords but you cannot target them in one campaign?
Well, I am talking about “cheap divorce lawyer near me”, and “affordable divorce lawyer near me” as they bear different impacts and will eventually require two separate campaigns.
So once you have everything figured out with the keywords and their intent then this will craft a highly engaging and best-converting campaign structure to outperform the many competitors who are just playing with putting in the high budget and less effort on the research.
Dealing with Click Fraud and Analytics
There are some vital factors that you need to dive into as well;
Click fraud. You need to better understand click fraud. Click fraud happens when, for example, I click on an ad with no intention of purchasing/subscribing.
In rare cases, even real people do that to penalize the competitors, but in the worst situations, some may even go aggressive with it, engaging the bots to commit false/invalid/fraud clicks.
However, I always urge the searchers not to click on the sponsored links until and unless they want to take proper action as reflected through the ad copy, the landing page, and, of course, your intention.
This is illegal and unethical.
However, Google Ads has implemented different filters which it continuously uses to track the clicker/visitor and auto-detects if any suspicious activity occurs to the advertisers.
To decrease the false clicks issue, optimize the landing page as well as pick the right set of keywords for your campaign to ensure you only get the right visitor coming to your landing page.
And keep a good track of your clickers/visitors using Google Analytics to detect where they are coming from, which channel they used, how long they stayed, what actions they took, and when they exited out.
Every click costs you money, and every action will ensure your money is spent on the right audience.
For analytics, I always prefer and recommend Google Analytics + StatCounter which will ultimately help to detect what is happening on your website.
How Can I Help You?
In the end, I want to extend my thanks for reading this complete guide to setting up Google Ads for lawyers in 2024!
Also, me and my team can greatly help to take up your ad campaign from scratch. Not only Google Ads, we can create awesome and optimized Facebook Ads and Bing Ads campaigns to take the best out of the internet world.
We have crafted and dealt with thousands of ad campaigns from around the world, so we possess extensive experience in helping lawyers get the right visitors meaning the winning conversion.
What we ensure is your ad campaigns are cost-effective, within your budget, and conversion per your expectations.
So, hire me (and my team) and start winning the clients! 🙂
