Running Personal Injury Google Ads? Read this first.

One of the most common issues we encounter when we have conversations with law firms is that they feel that Google Ads has many downsides. Some have that sentiment due to the personal experience and some due to frightening stories from other law firms who have failed miserably at using Google Ads. In this week’s blog post, we will uncover the three biggest myths about Google Ads for law firms and present tips for handling obstacles you may encounter in your advertising.

Myth #1: Google Ads’ cost per click is cost-prohibitive

For those who are familiar with Google Ads, you know that it is a bidding platform. This means that the cost per click will rise as high as the bidders are willing to pay. Lawyers and law firms have brought up personal injury keywords’ costs to the point where some cost hundreds of dollars. Why? Because it’s worth it. Law firms are making a return on investment in Google Ads even at such high spend, and they are willing to pay for the keywords that generate them profitable leads.

Tip: There are several things you can do to tackle this obstacle: Limit your campaigns to one or two days a week so your budget can be more competitive during the days you are running ads, or try lowering your bids and see if you can still get good leads at the expense of ad positioning and impressions. But here is our favorite one: Bid for high-intent Spanish keywords—they are a fraction of the cost of the English equivalent.

Myth #2: Google Ads don’t generate quality leads.

Coming into a Google Ads campaign with the mindset that every single call you will get out of your campaign has to be a qualified lead is a mistake in itself. In reality, you will experience the following: several calls that you will possibly retain, a few calls that will not be relevant to you (property damage only, no insurance), and every once in a while a home run, a lead that has several severe or fatal injuries and several seven-digit settlements on the table. Those won’t happen daily, but when they do, you will immediately change your mind about Google Ads’ value.

Tip: Sometimes what should be apparent still needs to be said. If your Ads account is not managed by a Google Ads certified account manager for whom such management is the central skill in their career, then you probably shouldn’t complain about the quality of the leads. For those who have an account manager, you should make it very clear to them what practice areas are of no interest to you when it comes to Google Ads so they can create a robust negative keywords list. Also, you should monitor what ad copy is working well and what is not so you can make adjustments accordingly. And, if you are working with an agency that optimizes your account once a week, fire them today. Your campaigns should be optimized every single day.

Myth #3: Google Ads results don’t correlate to my law firm’s performance.

This is 100-percent true if the report you are getting on your account performance is limited to clicks and conversions registered in Google Ads and Analytics. And the reason for this is straightforward. Your ads can be generating clicks, and people might be calling you. However, if you are not able to differentiate between the good calls and the bad calls, then Google will consider all calls as conversions when in reality only some of those calls are the ones that turn into retained clients, and your ROI and reporting should be based on only those.

Tip: You should implement call-, text- and form -tracking in your campaigns. Not only will it help you attribute a cost per acquisition to each signed client, but it will also help you in better understanding the user journey your clients go through as they navigate their way to conversion. And that is what makes digital marketing so effective, that the reporting can be so granular you can understand how much each lead costs you down to the penny.

No matter how long you have been using Google Ads, you should always keep in mind that there is no way to fully eliminate trial and error from any ads strategy. What will make your campaigns successful in the long run is the ability to implement effective solutions to the opportunities identified along the way.

Need help identifying opportunities in your Google Ads strategy? Talk to us, and we will be happy to offer you a free audit. And when we say free, we mean it—no pitching ?