If you’re a lawyer struggling to get your Google search ads to profitable, here are the pitfalls and mistakes you need to avoid at all costs.
However, the way you set up your ads and the experience searchers have when transitioning from the ad to your website also matter.
Last year alone, we helped over 72 law firms dial in their paid search ads so they could generate more leads profitably. Here are all the mistakes we helped them correct (and avoid) along the way.
In this post, we’re going to break down a proven landing page template our agency uses for clients. If you are interested in getting access to the landing page design template, book a call here.
The economics of profitable Google Ads for lawyers
It has the highest intent when people seek to work with an attorney. This means that, unlike social media and other platforms, people look for the exact type of attorney they want to work with or legal matter they need help with.
For instance, every month, over 55,000 people in the US look for a personal injury lawyer on Google:
But, Google is a real estate game, and there’s limited space for you to show up. For paid ads for lawyers, there are often a maximum of four lucrative positions up the top (and sometimes not even that many).
Competition is fierce.
The more other lawyers are willing to spend on ad visibility, the higher the costs will be due to demand.
Not for phone calls, or bookings and definitely not qualified leads.
Most lawyers pay for at least ten clicks to their website before they get a single lead. If you want your ads to be more profitable, you can achieve that in one of two ways:
Get more clicks on your ads for the same (or lower) cost.
Get more people who click to convert into leads.
It comes down to the keywords you target and the experience your landing page offers searchers.
Here are the exact pitfalls to avoid so you can do both of these things and ultimately have more profitable ad campaigns.
1. Don’t send traffic to your homepage
If you’re using your homepage as the landing page people see when they click on your ads, stop that right now.
When we audit a law firm’s ad campaigns that aren’t working, this is usually the main culprit.
Your homepage is a bad landing page for ads because there are a million and one things people can do on it. It fractures their attention.
Instead, what you want is to minimize things like:
Videos
External links
Blog posts
Generic messaging
Any other “noise”
The aim of an ads landing page is to get people to call you or leave. That’s it.
Here’s an example of how we design our ad landing pages, drawing all focus and attention to the messaging and the core call to action at the top of the page.
Distractions on the landing page ultimately dilute the profitability of your ads campaign which is why we keep things laser-focused and you should too.
Why landing pages are important for profitable ads
You can’t change how much a click on your ads is going to cost—that’s market-dependent. But what you can influence is how many of the people who click your ad convert on your landing page.
For instance, say you spend $100 per click on your ads. Traditionally, you’re probably going to pay for ten clicks before someone converts into a lead. That is before they call you or fill out your form.
So, it costs you $1,000 for that lead.
But, if you can get a lead for every nine clicks on average, then the cost goes down to $900. The secret to reducing your costs is to optimize your landing page.
It comes down to testing and refining it in iterations. For our clients, we test everything including:
The page’s design
The content and messaging
The placement of buttons
The call to action text
The alignment to keywords
The idea is that with every test, you learn what factors lead to more people converting on your landing page.
If you don’t have another page you can use, try making a replica of your home page and change one thing at a time to see what works best. Then, keep improving it from there.
2. 90% of visitors only see “Above-the-fold”
On a landing page, the section often referred to as “above-the-fold” is the visible screen before someone scrolls or takes any other action.
In other words, it’s the bit right at the top. Here’s an example from our homepage:
The data from all the tests we’ve run indicates that people very rarely scroll down on landing pages.
This means you need to provide them with enough information to make a decision and to be able to take action without needing to click or scroll elsewhere on the page.
For your ad landing page, use this space to:
Tailor your messaging to specific keywords people search for
Ease common fears and anxieties people may have about the service
Display the benefits you offer through your services
Add clear call-to-action buttons, ideally for people to call you
Showcase genuine reviews, testimonials, and results
It sounds like a lot, but you can use principles of good design to condense all these elements into a user-friendly layout.
For instance, here’s an example of a text-heavy layout which is common for many law firms:
3. Leads not converting? remove your forms
This one may sound controversial because many law firms use forms to gather information about leads before they book the initial meeting. Here’s an example:
However, in some practice areas (like car accident) avoid adding forms and instead only allow phone calls.
Your intake team is going to spend 50% down leads that have no interest in talking with you.
Forms lengthen the conversion process unnecessarily
For instance, the best way to get a return on your ad spend is to book more paid consultations with attorneys.
You need to get prospects on the phone to do that. If you make a form the main call to action, it adds an extra step for your team to convert the form submissions into phone calls.
Unless you’re responding to all of these within 5 minutes (which is very difficult to do), chances are, only about half of the form submissions will turn into viable contacts your intake team can follow up.
These aren’t even leads yet. And they’re definitely not booked appointments with your attorneys.
Alternative calls to action that perform better for ads include:
Inviting people to call you
Allowing people to book a free consultation
4. The only design that matters is mobile
90% of clicks on ads come from mobile devices. If you’re not focusing on how your landing pages look and function on mobile, then you’re leaving money on the table.
Here’s an example of a mobile-friendly design we recently made for a client that you can draw inspiration from.
Notice how we’re trying to communicate a lot of things above the fold? However, we also make sure the design doesn’t feel too cluttered.
The design changes we commonly recommend to our clients include:
Removing any forms taking up space above the fold
Adding a clear click-to-call button that’s easy to press on a touchscreen
Reducing the amount of paragraph text
Having a clear headline that aligns with the keyword you’re mapping the landing page to
Having a handful of dot points with benefits you can offer
Adding some social proof like Google Reviews
5. Focus on outcome-based copy and messaging
When we talk about copy and messaging, it’s all about the words written in your ads and landing pages.
Many attorneys use very general messaging. For example, say you’re a business attorney. If all your ads and landing pages are about how you can help with all sorts of business-related things, your messaging is too weak to appeal to anyone specifically.
It’s better to tailor separate landing pages for people looking for things like:
Commercial contracts
Business partner disputes
Business structure set up
And so on
It all comes down to who is searching for your services and what they care about.
Think about what someone who needs a lawyer for a business partner dispute needs. What motivated them to make a Google search? What are the top three things stressing them out right now?
Instead of saying, “We’re business attorneys who help with disputes”, mention things like:
Experience resolving complex disputes
Offering protection from future disputes
Tailored legal strategies for your business
The better you align your landing page messaging with your ads, the more smooth a searcher’s experience will be after they click your ads.
The aim is to create a smooth flow from Google to your website.
6. Go “vertical” instead of “horizontal” with your keyword strategy
When it comes to Google Ads, everything relies on the keywords people are searching. It’s a bit of a misnomer since a keyword includes the entire phrase entered in the search bar:
The number one mistake lawyers make with their keyword targeting for ads is going too broad (aka horizontal).
It’s easy to tell Google to show your ads for every keyword that’s about your practice area. But it’s also expensive. You’ll be paying to appear on every keyword in your practice area, even if it has little business value for you.
For example, if you’re a criminal defense attorney, you shouldn’t be bidding on keywords like:
Criminal law: The intent is too informational. People searching aren’t looking for a lawyer.
Criminal lawyer salary: Wrong audience demographic; no point in paying for ads on this.
Pro bono criminal lawyers: Why pay for ads for pro bono work? There’s no return on investment.
Law and Order Criminal Intent: It’s a TV show, though it contains similar words to your services and may accidentally be included in your campaign if you’re not careful.
The easiest way to ensure your ads don’t appear on irrelevant keywords is to create a negative keyword list.
This list should contain words or phrases that you don’t want to bid on. For example:
Job
Salary
Pro bono
Law and Order
More specific keywords have lower competition and higher conversions
After you set up your negative keyword list, the next thing we recommend is that you tailor your strategy to target keywords that are about very specific services you offer.
In general, they have:
Fewer searches per month
Lower competition
Lower ad costs
Higher conversion potential
For example, let’s compare the keyword “business disputes” to more general terms like “business attorney” and so on.
Search volume (SV): this is how many times per month each keyword is searched in the United States.
Cost-Per-Click (CPC): This is a ballpark estimate of how much it costs for a single click from a Google Ad for this keyword.
Although “business disputes” has a lower search volume, it is also 9 to 10 times cheaper since fewer competitors are bidding on this keyword. Therefore, you’re likely to get more qualified leads than if you bid on the keywords every other lawyer is also competing for.
When you add more keywords like this to your strategy, their impact builds up very quickly.
It’s how you can get more clicks on your ads for a much lower budget> You also don’t need to compete head-to-head with the big fish with deep pockets.
Make sure you also consider the intent behind each keyword
Another thing to consider is the intent behind each keyword you’re targeting. Think of intent as the motivation behind why someone searched for the keyword.
If they’re looking to work with an attorney, bingo, that’s a good keyword to target.
For example, we learned that keywords like “S-Corp setup” and “LLC setup” are not always viable for a business attorney’s ad strategy. Sure, a business attorney could offer these services.
But, in this case, people are more often looking for platforms like LegalZoom instead of working directly with an attorney.
Whether you bid on keywords like this or not is up to you and what your law firm’s ultimate goal is.
However, the more nuanced your thinking about the keywords you target, the higher your chances of running a profitable ads campaign.
Want an expert opinion on your law firm’s Google ad strategy?
The goal of improving your landing pages, ad messaging, and keyword targeting is twofold:
Our Traffic Projection Tool Will Show Your Website’s True Potential (aKA How Much Money You Should Be Making).
Using data from your website, our Traffic Projection analysis can accurately forecast how much traffic (and revenue) your website could be getting from Google.
