Law Firm Marketing on July 6, 2011

PPC 101 – Legal PPC For Beginners

Law Firm Marketing   
PPC search results

PPC 101 – Legal PPC For Beginners

So, you had an attorney website built or maybe you built it all by yourself. Now what? It needs traffic. But all traffic is not created equal! You want targeted traffic. People, who come to your site and think to themselves, “Yeah, this is the kind of place I was looking for.” Maybe they’ll fill out a form for a free consultation. Maybe they’ll hire you. That pretty much sums up internet marketing for most law firms.

So what is the quickest, most surefire way to get targeted traffic to your site?  Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)!

What is PPC?

Pay Per Click Marketing, sometimes referred to as paid search marketing, is the process of driving traffic to a web page by purchasing ads on search engines and/or websites. Paid search marketing is more commonly known as CPC (cost-per-click) or PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, because search ads are commonly sold on a CPC / PPC basis.

Sometimes the ads are sold on how many people see them versus how many click them. This is called CPM, or Cost Per Mile. One Mile is  1,000 views.

Legal PPC ads can be text ads;  like you would see in a typical Google search result. They can also be image ads and video ads.

How PPC Works

Let’s use Bob’s Cooling & Heating Repair business for a simplified example:

  • Bob creates an ad to show in Google when someone searches for “a/c repair” in his city.
  • Bob bids $2 a click, which gets him good ad position against the others bidding on the same keyword phrase.
  • Your a/c breaks and you go to Google to find a repair man in your city.
  • You type in “a/c repair” and you see Bob’s ad.
  • You click it to view more information and check out the promotion Bob’s advertising.
  • Bob paid around $2 for that click.

What are the advantages of using PPC?

The fact that attorney PPC marketing gets quick, targeted traffic might be all the reason you need to justify using it. But, there are other pluses as well:

  • There are many advertising channels to choose from. Google, Bing, Yahoo or Facebook. You can target mobile devices as well.
  • It’s a great way to test ad copy and calls to action.
  • Attorney PPC is a definite source of immediate traffic, once you launch a campaign.
  • It offers unparalleled control over ad spending.
  • The information you’ll gather from your campaigns is a great source of useful data for website conversion improvement and SEO for your specific niche.

Helpful PPC Resources

PPC Hero – This site has tons of great content that ranges from beginner to advanced PPC topics.

Google Adwords Beginner’s Guide – Google’s own easy-to-use guide that does a great job keeping things simple. Check out the pdf you can download at the bottom called Growing your business with Adwords!

We will be digging deeper into law firm PPC management, optimization, account structure, ad testing and more in upcoming blog posts. See you then.

Do you need PPC help? Call us today to get a free consultation to see how we can help you get found when your clients are looking for you on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing!