Does Pay-Per Click Marketing Really Work?
If you are asking yourself this question then you may have tried unsuccessfully to run your own PPC campaign, or you may have had a company that did not specialize with law firms run your campaign. I talk to lawyers all the time that have wasted thousands of dollars trying to get a piece of this huge pool of clients looking to hire a lawyer only to find out that all they did was generate a lot of “clicks” and not very many phone calls or emails.
The days of simply signing up for a Yellow Page ad waiting for the phone to ring are all but over. Search Engine Marketing is a fantastic way to generate a large amount of new clients. Although IT MUST BE DONE CORRECTLY! If you are considering this form of marketing for your firm (and you definitely should) please read the rest of this blog post for some things to look out for. There are a lot of choices out there for you, so how do you know what companies will do the best job for you? Here is a short list of questions to ask your potential PPC management company:
1. Does the company specialize in the legal industry? Most companies manage campaigns for all different types of industries i.e. plumbers, florists, restaurants etc. Using a company that specializes in the legal industry will greatly improve your chances for success.
2. What kind of reporting and tracking do they offer? Make sure that the company you choose is tracking the “conversions” by this I mean phone calls or emails. Remember, clicks cost you money while phone calls and emails make you money! If you are only tracking the clicks you have really no idea if your campaign is successful.
3. Do they build a specific landing page for each specific ad group or just simply send the clicks through to your normal website? Having a landing page can greatly improve your results. For example if your firm handles Criminal, Family and Personal Injury cases and you are running a PPC campaign focusing on DWI clients, if they click through to your website and see divorce and personal injury they are not as likely to think of you as a good choice to handle their DWI case. On the other hand if they go to a landing page that ONLY talks about DWI and why your firm is prepared to handle this type of case then you will have a much greater chance of converting this click into a client.
4. What types of management fees do they have? This is a question that a lot of PPC management companies will dread! The truth is a lot of companies do not disclose what their mark-up is on the clicks. For example if you set your budget at $2000/month some companies will only invest half of that amount on the search engines! Make sure you know exactly how much of your monthly budget will be spent on clicks! A reasonable amount is typically around 20%-30% of the budget to be charged for managing the campaign.
With so many companies out there to choose from it really is “buyer beware” so I also recommend doing some checking like with the BBB or another good resource is www.ripoffreport.com.
If you would like more information on how LexisNexis can help with your internet marketing needs please email or call me anytime.
Patrick Nicks
Law Firm Marketing Specialist- South Texas
Cell: 210-710-0292
Fax: 866-960-3991
Patrick.Nicks@lexisnexis.com
www.lawyers.com
www.martindale.com
Click Here for Lawyers.com Demo
Click Here to See Samples of Our Marketing Services
Also check out these previous posts:
Leave a Comment
