In this webinar, you’ll learn how to use digital advertising to achieve balanced growth for your law firm online, the truth about buying branded keywords and learn how to stay competitive in PPC, and actionable advice on how to improve your digital marketing efforts and save money!
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The broadcast is now starting. All attendees are in listen only mode. Welcome everyone. Welcome to today’s webinar. We’re excited to have with us two folks, Tanner Jones and Matt Smyres both from ConsultWebs consult. Webs is an annual underwriter of Hilma. And these two folks are here to talk to us today about PPC success for law firms, specifically short term wins and longterm gains.
A little bit of housekeeping before we get started. Everyone is on listen only mode. That means your microphones are muted. That’s for the listening pleasure of everyone else. If you have a question or a concern, they submit your question or your concern in the questions tab. Um, the go to webinar software, this webinar is being recorded and a recording of this will be uploaded to the member’s site on<inaudible> dot org within 24 hours.
Once again, we’ll be taking questions, submit your questions to the questions tab, and we will read them out at the end of the presentation. So right now I would like to introduce Matt and Tanner. Okay. Take it away. Very good. Thank you, Eric Tanner Jones here, I’m excited to be able to, uh, the cover some important paper,
click paid advertising topics with you all. Um, more so excited, really to have Matt Smyres joining me. I learned a long time ago in my career to, uh, surround yourself with people smarter than you are, and that’s exactly what I’ve done and why I’ve asked Matt to join me on this discussion. Matt focuses exclusively on paid advertising, digital advertising,
consulting firms, guiding firms on the best decisions to maximize pay-per-click dollars. So he’s just been immersed in this world for a number of years, and it’s just an incredible talent. And so I’m excited to have you here, Matt, looking forward to covering these topics. Thank you, Tanner. Glad to be here most certainly. So let me just give a quick intro to everyone joining.
First of all, thank you all for, for taking some time to go through this with us. I want to encourage you. If you have questions as we go through. Cause we, we are going to cover a number of topics and, and bounce through a few different concepts. So feel free to drop in questions as we go. And we’ll be able to take some time towards the end just to cover all those.
Um, let me just give kind of a quick run through, on, on what we’re going to cover, you know, spending wisely and pay-per-click and seeing real results, actual cases will lead volume. It’s not easy and I’m sure likely because of lackluster results among other things. There are firms out there, maybe even ones on this call, who’ve completely given up on all things pay-per-click and digital advertising,
but there’s also other firms from our experience that continue to jump in with both feet and, and, you know, it’s important to look. I was looking at some studies there a few days ago of Google’s revenue ad ad revenue, and ever since the inception, uh, really since they started tracking this, uh, dates back all the way to 2000 year over year,
since that time period, Google has increased revenue pretty dramatically, 2019, they reported an estimated 134 point $8 billion in revenue. Clearly there are business owners, there are law firms continuing to invest. Now some of those firms, without a doubt are wasting a lot of money. Other firms are seeing incredible returns and they’re able to consistently increase the number of cases.
And so what our hope over the next half hour or so is to provide several practical approaches that you all can implement or that you can share with your, with your team to implement and fine tune your paid advertising strategies, and hopefully help you drive some more cases and results in 2020. So I’m going to start here momentarily, uh, to cover the concept of a balanced or diversified marketing portfolio.
And for those of you who may have attended, uh, prior Peloma summits, um, I have touched on this topic once or twice before, because it’s a philosophy that we truly believe in. Um, so before we get into that, let me just hit on a few of these concepts here. I’m getting more with a PPC campaign, Matt, if you wouldn’t move,
move into the next slide here, go ahead and go into the next one here. Um, Eric, I’m going to ask you to drop in a link for the attendees to the nutrition guide. If you all don’t have a chance right now, uh, go back bookmark this link that Eric’s going to drop in and come back to it and familiarize yourself with this concept.
A well balanced marketing strategy we’re finding today is an absolute necessity for law firms. It’s not, it’s important. It, at least in this understanding this whole concept, it’s, it’s important, not just to help you grow your firm, grow your practice, obviously that is important, but it’s really important to differentiate your marketing strategy. You obviously have a ton of competitors in your market,
all vying for the same cases. And so the more diversified and holistic of a campaign you have implemented digitally, we’re finding that’s where you’re going to see the best results. And so Matt, if you’d move into this next slide here, we’re finding that the firms that have that well balanced diet, if you will, or diversified approach to digital marketing are the ones that are both protecting short term wins,
which is really this whole concept of this webinar, finding short term wins, but also protecting the longterm growth and the brand equity of your law firm. And you have the ability as a law firm to control both aspects. And so what, we’re what you see here on the screen, there are certain efforts and this isn’t just all specific to the digital.
It can most certainly fall over into traditional advertising, but you can see some of the foundational elements start with brand growth. This is really just a matter of positioning yourself as credible positioning yourself as trustworthy or what other, uh, characteristics, if you wanted to find for yourself to the market, but being intentional about pushing that message out consistently. And then as you work down below Gran brand growth,
you work slowly into more sales activation, the quick hitters, the, the, um, the short term results. A lot of people have this, what we would argue as a misconception of paid advertising or pay-per-click, and that it’s all sales activation efforts. It’s this bottom of the funnel opportunity to immediately convert and drive cases. And in some cases that’s exactly right,
but what we’re going to spend the majority of time on today is covering the fundamentals aspect of really finding that balanced diet for marketing specifically with strategic digital, so advertising, which will come into pay-per-click. So with that being said, man, I’m going to ask them to turn it over to you and cover some of these important details. Perfect, great, thanks very much Tanner.
And thank you for that introduction. So to kind of put a finer point on the foundation there that the Tanner laid for us there, as it pertains to PPC, I’m going to challenge you a little bit today to maybe reconsider how you’re thinking about pay per click advertising, both in terms of how you’re defining it. Um, but also in terms of,
you know, where on your, on your sales funnel, where in your nutrition guide does PPC fall. And I think when we’re done, you’ll be surprised to find that it’s not always necessarily in action. And, you know, as we were demonstrating here, people tend to take a marketing tactic and they put it into one of two categories. It’s either awareness and brand building or it’s action or direct response.
And what I’d like you to do is I’d like you to reconsider how you’re looking at PPC and I’d like you to come away understanding that, um, PPC can be effective for both raising awareness and driving action. And I think when you consider them in that, in that light and, and take that approach, you’re going to find that overall your PPC efforts are going to are going to yield more.
And so when we, you know, we look at this in terms of the traditional marketing or sales funnel with, you know, broad-based awareness at the top all the way down to decision. I think what you’re going to find when we’re finished here today is there’s opportunity all throughout the sales funnel to utilize PPC. Um, as we’re going to define it for you today,
um, to drive awareness, consideration, and decision. So let’s start with the top of the sales funnel on let’s at awareness, um, as far as PPC, um, one opportunity for you to, to drive awareness and strengthen your brand, um, through PPC. And, um, uh, now I’m talking specifically about a PPC Google ad search campaign,
um, is to make sure that you’re, you’re paying attention to the way your ad shows up. Uh, the way the copy is organized is a big factor in conversions, but it can also help establish your brand offerings, um, organized site links and extensions and call out extent, gins, um, can be an effective way, um, to,
to help your, your prospective clients and, and audience, um, you know, understand what it is that you’re offering. Um, and, and if you know your audience and know what their potential needs are, you can really utilize a well, well devised, well laid out ad, uh, to promote that. So let’s, let’s use an example here,
um, of somebody that does brand probably as well as any, any brand or product on the market and that’s hardly Davidson. Um, so obviously, you know, first starting out Harley Davidson has everywhere in this ad. Um, you look at all of the site extensions, um, pretty much everywhere. You know, you’re seeing the brand, so that’s obviously positive reinforced reinforcement,
but they know their potential customer and they know that they’re coming to the website, um, wanting more than just pretty pictures of the bike. They’re ready to schedule a test ride, um, even estimate payments. Uh, so those options are there for them, um, called out very clearly. Um, so what could you add to your PPC ads,
to your text ads and Google ads to emphasize your law firm brand? Um, if you know your firm’s value proposition, you already know the answer to this question. Um, what does your firm do? Well, what sets you apart? Is it your case results? Is it a guarantee to speak directly with a lawyer, maybe your convenient office location is something that’s important to your clients.
If you know this, you can take advantage of ad extensions and call outs within your Google ad text to provide a great opportunity to emphasize your firm’s brand. So, you know, if a prospect is coming in and they’re conducting a search for injury lawyer near me, for example, and they see these call outs, some of these things may or may not be important to that particular prospect.
And that’s okay because, you know, your, your target audience, you know, what’s important to them. And they could take advantage of just this quick, you know, text ad to find out if maybe you’re the right type of law firm for them. So I really encourage you to make sure that you’re, you’re taking advantage of everything that Google has to offer,
um, in terms of site links and, and, and your call out extensions. Quick point on that, Matt, if you don’t mind, if you want to hop back into that example, one quick tip that I would, I would suggest at least doing due diligence in this and thinking through the site links, um, most of you have Google installed on your website.
Do you have the ability to see what the most trafficked or most important pages are throughout the website? In many instances, it’s going to be your about us. So your attorney bios, but there, you may be surprised at certain FAQ frequently asked question type content, other content that’s just engaged users, and more importantly drove conversions. And you may use that data.
That’s already at your fingertips to drive strategic site links here that would lead users into very intentional pages. So it’s a concept that most certainly could be tested. Every law firm is going to be different. You’re going to have different pages that are more well trafficked. The biggest thing here, in my opinion, and Matt, certainly you can speak up to this,
but you want to control the user experience and the conversion. And so that’s, that’s an area we’re not really going to get into too much depth on today, but the biggest thing is once you get a user to that page from a paper click ad, you want to obviously maximize the conversion rate because you’ve paid to get that unique visitor there versus an organic result.
So ensuring that what is ever paid you link up here has strong call to actions and leads that user toward conversion very seamlessly. Yeah, that’s a great point to enter in and really what you mentioned there, it’s, it’s a two way street. So you mentioned using Google analytics and, and your, uh, user history, um, to drive what you’re putting in your Google ads in terms of,
you know, site links and call outs, um, that, that can work in the opposite direction as well. You know, you can test, um, you can use Google ads to test and find out what are people responding to. Um, if they’re responding to a call out that you don’t necessarily emphasize on your website, then you can create content on your site,
um, you know, to kind of meet that demand. So that’s, that’s an excellent point. So I want to chat next about, uh, display advertising, um, for PPC and display advertising is maybe something that most people don’t consider to be necessarily PPC, but it falls under that category. I mean, for the most part, you’re paying for display advertising through the Google display network or other platforms on a PPC basis.
Um, and I want to talk to you, I’m going to talk to you twice today about display advertising. The first is using display advertising, uh, for driving awareness. So whether a display campaign is designed for awareness or action, depends largely on how you set the campaign up within Google ads. If you’re looking for general awareness, you can run your ads throughout the Google display network,
using broad based targeting, such as geography, um, basic user demographics. It’s an outstanding way to keep your firm top of mind within your overall target demographic, even if they’re not in market for your services, um, you might even consider running video and some of them within some of these platforms, um, to make the most out of the power of sound,
sight and motion, uh, the video offers. So in terms of, you know, running display for the awareness goal of a campaign and working hand in hand with the action goals of your campaign, you know, I would suggest, you know, don’t be afraid to go a little bit broader with some of your, your display ads, um, Google,
as you know, and, and Facebook and other platforms offer an almost unlimited ability to, to target. And I’m going to get into that a little bit later on, but what we’re talking about here is really the top of the sales funnel. So most firms understand their basic demographics, the type of clients that they, you know, that they typically sign.
And you obviously have a pretty clear geographic footprint that you’re trying to target within. I would say don’t be afraid to run a campaign that’s as broad as that, um, it’s likely to generate fewer clicks, but that’s that’s okay, because that’s the goal of that campaign. The goal of that campaign is much more awareness driven, and you want to make sure that your ad copy and creative,
um, is specific to that as well. Um, try to keep it a little bit more general. And then as you work your way down the funnel, which we’ll talk about shortly, then you get more specific with your ad copy to match up, um, the particular, you know, point at which, um, your prospect is in their,
in their online buyer’s journey. Yeah. Another topic to discuss in the context of PPC. And again, this might come as a surprise to some is video advertising. Um, video advertising really can fall within the PPC realm. Um, it is more or less, even though it’s not on a straight up pay per click basis, you’re still paying for interactions.
Um, anytime somebody interacts with that ad or views it for a certain amount of time, that’s how you’re paying for it. Um, we all know that when it comes to advertising mediums, you can’t beat the movement sound and emotion of video. And that’s one of the primary reasons why television advertising is as successful as it is, uh, Facebook and YouTube as two examples each have their own unique video ad platforms that can offer incredible targeting capabilities and ad formats that provide the user with many different ways to interact with your video ad,
um, much like display advertising for awareness. You can get tremendous brand exposure through a well-placed video ad campaign that will stay help keep you, uh, top of mind with your target audience. So when they are in need of your services, your name will be the first thing they think of. Um, if you’re considering video advertising as part of your digital strategy strategy,
be sure to set clear goals and manage your own expectations going in, um, while it is possible to follow a user straight from an ad into your website, into a conversion, through a contact form or phone call, that path is not always clear. Um, if you’re expecting kind of a one-to-one direct response type of result from your video campaigns, you may wind up being disappointed.
However, if you, if you approach it as a top of funnel awareness tactic, um, you’ll find that video advertising and in particular on YouTube and Facebook, um, can be incredibly effective at reaching a very large audience, uh, with a tremendous amount of efficiency. Uh, the cost per view, uh, for campaigns on Facebook and YouTube is,
is very low, typically under 10 cents per view. And, you know, you’re talking about generating thousands of hours worth of view time in a month in a market, um, on a budget that’s probably lower than you might think, and it’s certainly much lower than what you would expect, um, from television. So again, don’t rule out, um,
video as part of your overall PPC effort. And I want to make a quick point too, on that map, because I’ve, I’ve seen this, I mean, you and I both seeing this of firms investing in YouTube and, um, just the dramatic increase in branded search volume. That’ll follow in most instances with this, which, you know, you made the comment of,
you want to be, you want to be careful not to go in with the mindset that this is an immediate sales activation channel. It is much more awareness and building a brand and, and those who may be on the call today, who’ve invested in television advertising for a period of time. You you’ve seen that, and you’ve seen how you grow exponentially over time in terms of just simply being recognized and known in the market,
which makes it easier ultimately, to convert more business. If you’re a known entity and you’re trusted YouTube, other platforms like Facebook that offer these, these video platforms, give you the ability to do that on pennies on the dollar. Another piece I would mention too, just to continue to evaluate it. You know, obviously you want to see a continued rising number of cases that that’s,
that’s really the big driver behind all marketing and advertising. We get that and certainly are not trying to steer away from that, but they work together as we talked about earlier. And one way to really judge that after you’ve been running a YouTube or any kind of video ad campaign, keep an eye on Google analytics, look at branded search volume, how much traffic is coming in to the site through people,
actively looking for you specifically. And that’s going to be one of the immediate indicators that this campaign is truly working in terms of building awareness, increasing search volume. And for those of you who are investing in search engine optimization, increased branded search volume, people looking for you specifically is a tremendous signal to the search engines and that you are a trusted brand.
People are actively looking for you, and that’s actually going to benefit your global, um, campaign, specifically your SEO campaign. So a few important points there on that piece. Absolutely. Thanks Tanner. So we’ve, we’ve touched on a few areas where you can, you can utilize PPC, uh, on the awareness side of the equation at that point in the,
in the sales funnel. Um, let’s talk a little about driving action via PPC advertising and, you know, the, the obvious and most common way to do so is through Google search ads. Um, Google search has essentially become synonymous with PPC and the terms are often used interchangeably. Um, that is Google search is still going to be the heart and soul of your overall digital advertising strategy.
Um, we could spend hours talking about all the different ways, keyword strategies, bid strategies, et cetera, to get more out of your you’re, a Google search campaigns. Um, there is no other advertising platform that can compare when it comes to putting your ad in front of prospects who are ready to hire an attorney right now. But in addition to Google search,
there are other ways to drive users to action using PPC. Um, before we get into that, I do want to touch on the practice of bidding on law firm names. Um, this is an area that falls somewhere in between awareness and action. So I thought this would be a good time for us, uh, to cover that here. Um,
so the question we hear quite often from our clients and prospects and law firms all around the country is should you buy your law firms brand name in a word? Yes. And I have two primary reasons. First, your goal should always be to dominate the search results for the keywords you’re targeting both organically and through paid ads. Um, Google search results are like valuable real estate it’s location,
location, location. Um, you want the top paid and the top organic search results for as many terms as you can get, especially your own firm name. Secondly, the best way for you to counter other firms bidding on your firm name is to bid on it yourself. This is frustrating. I know. Um, but you will be, you will be able to easily outrank and outbid your competitors who might be bidding on your name,
uh, since your ads are connected to your website, your website has your affirm name all over it. And maybe even it’s within the URL, Google will know that your ads are much more relevant to the users who are searching for your firm name than an ad being run by a competitor. Who’s trying to squat your firm name, um, as frustrating as it is to have,
have to spend money on your own name. It’s critical to set aside a portion of your PPC search budget for branded search. Um, the example on the slide here is a perfect example of what can happen if you don’t. I mean, this was just a quick search for a firm name. Um, and what you see is that, you know,
the top a top four ad positions are not for the firm that I searched for. Um, imagine if that’s your firm, that’s probably not a good look. So for what it takes to make sure that you’re in that top spot, I highly recommend that you include a branded search, um, strategy as part of your, your PPC search campaign. So the next question,
as it relates to searching for, from brand name that we get often is should you buy your competitor’s brand name? Um, PPC advertising for a long time has been a bit like the wild West. Um, very few rules, many firms have attempted to Sue Google for allowing competitors to buy their brand name. And they’ve all lost. Um, that is you seems to be pretty well established at this point that Google is not going to change their policy there.
Um, so should you bid on your competitor’s brand name within Google search? Um, at the moment there’s nothing stopping you. However, if you, if you do decide to do this and bid on your competitor’s names, you should know that doing so will likely result in lower click through rates, which will result in lower quality scores, which could make it more expensive for your ads to show and hurt the overall health of your entire PPC campaigns.
Um, as a policy, I consult webs, we don’t bid on competitor’s names on behalf of our clients, but again, that’s up to you, um, just know that if you do so, it is not without risk. So I told you earlier when we talked about display advertising for awareness, that we would reconsider display advertising for action. So let’s look at how we can utilize display advertising as part of an overall PPC strategy and start moving it further down the funnel,
um, towards an action tactic. Um, in the previous previous example on display, we talked about using broad targeting, like demographics and geography to raise awareness. You can also utilize display further down the funnel to drive action, and the way you do it is by tightening your targeting. So rather than going after a more broad audience with an awareness campaign,
you can become more strategic with your placements to target people who are more likely to be in market for your services example on the screen, uh, running ads on sites related to auto repair body shops, or in this case, Kelly blue book is going to increase the likelihood of reaching someone who’s been in an auto accident and is a need of auto repairs.
And therefore may be in need of your services, um, not the tightest targeting, but it’s one small example of where you might be able to, to find some pretty inexpensive clicks and leads, uh, by just adding something, um, some type of targeting like that. So to put a finer point on it, as we continue to move down the funnel,
um, and you’ll try and reach an even more qualified in market audience considering using retargeting. Um, this is a tactic that allows you to follow a prospect through their online buyer’s journey from your website to another website within the Google display network, and then back to your website where hopefully they’re going to convert into a lead or a client. Um, this is a concept that’s probably not new to most of you,
but there’s a specific tactic within it that you may not be doing that I think can really help improve the performance of your retargeting campaigns. And that is changing, uh, your ads, switching out your ads based on goals. And you can do this by setting, setting up certain timing mechanisms within Google ads. So for example, um, if a,
if a user comes to your website and you want to retarget them within the first 14 days of being on your site, and this is just as an example, um, you’re may be more inclined to deliver them a more sales activation based ad, right? More of a call to action call now type of ad within those first 14 days, decent chance,
especially in, depending on where they visited your website. And you can set the ads up to respond according to that as well. Um, but there’s a decent chance if they were on your site, especially within certain on certain pages that they might be in market. So you want to be able to hit them with an ad. And, um, it’s driven towards sales activation,
um, on the other side of the coin, you know, after 15 days, 15 to 45 days, um, you know, if that person is kind of still in and out of law firm websites, they may still be more in the, you know, fact finding mode or discovery mode. Um, and so maybe that’s a good opportunity to,
to use a brand reinforcement ad. Uh, you could also, you know, have multiple ad sets for people who, who visit, um, you know, within the first 14 days. And then afterwards, you know, you could deliver the same ad or different ads to the same person depending on when they came in and, and kind of continue to lead them through that sales funnel.
Um, so that’s one tactic that I think, um, if, if you can utilize for your remarketing audiences, um, you know, always making sure that you’re trying to customize your creative and your messaging, um, to the buyer’s journey and, and their, their online experience. One quick point too, on that map. And this may be common knowledge to a lot of the attendees,
but for those who aren’t aware, you know, just think about the overall conversion rate on your website. You know, if you have a lot of traffic coming into your site and for, for law firms focused locally, a lot of traffic could be just a couple thousand visits a month upwards of five, six plus thousand visits a month. In most instances,
conversion rates for all traffic coming into a website is going to be significantly under 10% in most cases, well under 5%. Um, and, and that may be a lofty number. So think about that just a few percent of folks will convert on your website and without a form of remarketing strategy where you’re able to stay back in front of those users who have left your site,
you paying for visitors, in fact, well over 90% of your visitors just to come to the site and leave. And so if you don’t have a way to stay in front of those users after they have come to your website to begin with, and clearly there was likely some intentionality coming into your Website to begin with you are leaving a lot of money,
a lot of cases on the table from our experience. So that’s an extremely important concept in many instances, very inexpensive and a no brainer for any firm investing in online marketing. Yeah, absolutely Tanner, um, one final, um, kind of strategy for display advertising. And this is really, I think kind of my personal favorite. I, I,
I love this approach and we’ve seen tremendous success with this and that’s building custom audiences within Google display. Um, and what I’m going to demonstrate to you is two different ways you can do that. It’s based on URL and then based on interests. So I’ve kind of put together just a, a quick example for you. This is what it might look like inside the display planner,
um, as you’re trying to build out a custom audience, and as you can see, uh, the first, the first methodology here is, is by URL. So in this example, we chose to target people who have visited, not just car insurance websites, but those who have visited the claims pages on those websites for an even more specific audience.
Um, this example also shows how we can target by interest, um, such as injury claim, accident claim, et cetera. Um, two layers of targeting by building out custom affinity, affinity audiences, as Tanner said, that can be, um, incredibly efficient. Um, you may not generate, um, as much volume here, but for what it costs to set this,
a campaign like this up and run it, you know, if you can imagine that somebody has been, you know, recently to progressive claims that the progressive.com claims page, um, they also cross reference with, you know, somebody who’s been searching for car accident injury. Um, you could add another layer to this. You can even add competitor’s websites to this.
Um, there’s, there’s, it’s really almost unlimited as to how you can target this, set them up in different, different audiences, different groups. Um, and then if, you know, if you’re able to deliver a very well thought out relevant ad to somebody who meets this criteria, who’s within this audience and the ad has to be relevant to the audience,
right? So, um, you know, that’s one of those ads where when you, as a, as a user, somebody on Facebook and internet browser sees it and your, you Marvel at how incredibly precise it is. Um, it, you know, for some people, it kind of freaks them out for other people. Um, they appreciate that somebody is paying attention and they’re delivering or offering a service or a product that’s,
um, is incredibly relevant to them. So, um, I really liked this, this option, um, in terms of, you know, driving action, uh, through display advertising another topic. And you might be a little surprised to see Facebook on here, um, when we’re talking about PPC, but keep in mind, as I mentioned earlier,
PPC, isn’t just for Google. Uh, any platform that accepts payment on a pay per click technically could be considered PPC. And it’s all part of the digital, uh, digital advertising spectrum. Um, there are opportunities for lower cost clicks, leads and cases outside of the traditional Google ad search campaigns. And Facebook, Facebook might be worth exploring as a supplement to your Google PPC campaigns in particular,
um, the use of lead ads. So after quite a bit of experience running initial ads and gaining audience data and insights, we’ve discovered that Facebook lead ads, which features a form that is right there within the Facebook ad, the user never has to leave Facebook. Uh, as soon as they interact with the ad, this form pops up the form,
automatic, automatically populates with the user’s name, email and phone number, because Facebook has that. You have to enter all that, um, in order to set up a Facebook page, um, that automatically gets pulled from their profile. And auto-populated into the form. You can add other fields to that form, obviously, as you see fit that are going to help to kind of filter out,
um, you know, people that, you know, may not be the right fit for you. Um, but it’s a great way to discretely target people who have, you know, potentially searched for legal help. And the way we do that on the front end is through, as I mentioned, the running of, of other campaigns that are a bit broader in scope and building out what Facebook refers to as lookalike audiences.
And we say, okay, we, you know, these are the people that interacted with a personal injury, uh, type of ad Facebook. We want you to go out and find more people who look like this, and then we deliver them this, eat this lead ad. Um, what the lead ad does is it reduces friction. Um, it also operates under the assumption that most people seeking a lawyer already know they need one.
Um, and so it forgoes that additional research oriented information provided by a traditional landing page. Um, and instead allows the Facebook ad itself to present the merits of the law firm. And therefore changes the question from, do I need a lawyer to which law firm should I choose? Um, so I, I highly recommend, um, you, you consider,
you know, Facebook lead ads as part of your PPA PPC strategy. It does take some work on the front end to build out those lookalike audiences. And the more you’re able to do that, um, the better off you’ll be. There’s also another option for building out audiences. If you have, um, a healthy, um, email client email list,
you can upload that into Facebook. Um, and they’re not going to target those email addresses, or they’re not going to use them, um, you know, for, you know, anything other than, uh, the purpose of uploading them, which is they will find if those people have Facebook pages, they will essentially create an audience that is similar to what you have uploaded and what they,
you know, and the users they’ve identified on Facebook. They’re not delivering ads directly to those email addresses or to those users. They’re just simply using the data to create an audience for you. Um, that’s something that can be just incredibly effective, um, in terms of reaching a target audience within your market. So to, to kind of recap, um,
remember PPC is capable of delivering on two marketing objectives, awareness, and action. It is not an either or proposition for awareness and to build the brand, make sure your ads are properly optimized with site links and call outs that emphasize your brand use broad targeting for display and consider adding video to the mix for action use display retargeting to include custom audiences based on URL and interests and consider Facebook lead ads as a way to generate efficient,
low cost clicks and leads. Remember PPC for awareness plus PPC for action is the best formula for healthy and successful digital digital advertising strategy. I do want to make note Tanner, if you want to kind of let them know what our, our projection here is. Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate that, Matt. I know we’ve covered a number of topics and we are going to open up for questions here,
but we did also want to offer, um, the, the folks here on this webinar, something of value. I know Ken is a big believer in being able to offer something useful. And that’s exactly what we want to do here. Hopefully the information we’ve shared is good, but I know we’ve scratched the surface only, and just a few areas.
So what I’d like to do is, is offer a custom pay-per-click bidding strategy. And what’s covered in that is a 30 minute discovery consultation with Matt. We’re going to provide some new PPC bidding opportunities for you, outlined some areas of improvements and then provide actionable paid advertising recommendations for you so that you can look at your market in particular and get guidance from some folks that have been doing this for a number of years,
exclusive to legal. So please do take advantage of that just to email Matt and it’s,<inaudible> at consultwebs.com, which is also illustrated on this next slide here, Matt. So if we would, Eric, let’s open it up to questions. Anybody have anything that we can address? All right. We’ll have an email. I’ll have a question right now,
approximately how much of the total marketing budget TV, radio billboards should be dedicated to paid digital advertising Thinner. I know that falls right in line with the, uh, with your nutrition guy. And it’s a question that you probably get globally, um, all the time. I’ve got some thoughts, but you want to Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll,
I’ll, I’ll take it, take a stab at it at the end of the day. You know, unfortunately there is no one size fits all approach. It’s all going to be totally dependent on your current caseload. You know, one thing I try to do and at the start of a question like that is gain better perspective what’s working And because every single market’s responding differently to different messaging and different brands,
um, as an overall like a general estimate, just to be able to give you something there T V typically is going to eat up a pretty significant budget, a lot of traditional advertising, likely going to eat up every bit of half or 50% of your overall marketing spin. Uh, typically what I try to do is advise clients to diversify, but be very intentional about tracking cost per lead and cost per case from all the individual marketing efforts and over time optimize and refine that marketing spend based on what’s performing in terms of digital or PPC of my overall digital advertising budget,
uh, PPC is going to likely require every bit of 50% of the digital spin in some cases and hyper competitive markets. Um, you know, depending on the cap of your digital spend, you may need to put even more than that, just to be able to see consistent cases. So in some cases over 50% of your overall digital spend should go toward pay-per-click.
Um, but again, those are all gender generalities, that’s the disclaimer, every, every firm’s different. And so, um, I would be more than happy to carry that conversation into, uh, a one-on-one just to gain better perspective and guide you hopefully a little better. Matt, what thoughts did you have? Yeah, I mean, very similar Tanner,
and I think you hit the nail on the head when you talked about cost per case. So, you know, I spend a lot of my time talking to clients and prospective clients about PPC and Google search in particular. Um, and when we pulled, pulled together estimates for our clients for a particular market and a particular practice area, um, we’re letting them know,
you know, how much we recommend they spend in a market. Um, and then we’re applying, you know, historical performance and estimates to that spend, um, to help the client come up with an estimated cost per case. And really from there, it’s up to it’s up to the individual law firm and that, that cost per case, um,
while it is somewhat influenced by how our campaigns perform, which we do have some control over with our expert management, it’s also largely driven by the market. And, you know, there’s nothing that we can do about that, right. Or that the firm can do about it. So what I find is that when we come to that estimated cost per case,
and we’re in agreement that yes, this is about what it’s going to cost. It’s up to the firm then to say, okay, this might be more expensive, for example, then than what I’m paying for a case through another advertising, medium like radio, or what have you. But these are 10, 15, 20 cases that I wasn’t going to get otherwise.
And so therefore I’m willing to pay a bit of a premium. So I tend not to look at these things as a mix or a percentage. Um, I am always in favor of our clients, um, spending what they can on, on offline advertising. And I that’s, I mean, we make no secret of that because, um, the well-branded firms that are investing in offline advertising,
um, it’s the rising tide lifts all boats, right. Um, when all of those platforms are working together, um, we, we see an increase in performance and a decrease in cost per case. So I know that’s kind of a long winded answer to a very direct question, but, um, as Tanner said that it really does depend on the,
from the market, um, how your firm is structured, your business model, how much you’re willing to pay per case. That’s my thing. And we’re always glad to have those conversations with our clients. That was a very good question. So thank you for that. We have one more or more law firms using outside agencies for this creating digital marketing departments within their own friends.
Yeah. I mean, I can, I can just address for my own personal experience. Um, I mean, so I think there’s three options, right? There’s, there’s do it yourself as the lawyer or hand it off, you know, maybe to a staff member who’s not, you know, specifically trained, there’s outsource it to, to an agency like ours,
and then there’s actually build an in house agency. Um, you know, we actually work as, you know, as an outside vendor, we work with with firms that have a people well in house who do the work, um, who, you know, who are, you know, PPC analysts and specialists, um, you know, in those situations,
it’s, it can be more of a consultative type of role, always good to have an extra set of eyes. Um, what I find typically is that, um, the bandwidth required in terms of human resources to run these campaigns effectively is usually more than what most firms are, are able to bring in house. Um, and most firms, you know,
like to have the flexibility of, you know, having a vendor, that’s more, more of a plug and play option, um, than worrying about additional overhead, you know, an additional, um, you know, an entirely, you know, additional staff, um, training and everything else that comes with it. Um, you know, I will also say,
you know, from a former business owner stamp perspective, it’s also easier to, to switch agencies than it is to fire an entire team of people and start over. So, um, I don’t see as many firms with in house agencies, so to speak more and more firms, really of all sizes, um, with marketing directors, um, people that are keeping an eye on,
you know, the marketing initiatives on the whole and managing those vendor relationships. But that’s, that’s kinda my experience Tanner. I think you probably, maybe, maybe a different Understanding. I think that’s spot on, I mean, across the board, yes. You’re going to have pockets of, uh, more likely larger law firms, heavy advertising, heavy spending firms,
uh, have the budgets ultimately to have the full time team members in place. But as you alluded to Matt, you know, when you start considering, you know, a graphic designer, an ad copywriter, so somebody is strong with content, unique value proposition messaging, uh, understanding of just Google paper, click alone. In many cases requires somebody who’s exclusively focused.
You know, that doesn’t even take into consideration the display networks, Facebook advertising, YouTube advertising, and all the things in between. And so having just one or two really, really strong team members is without a doubt, a benefit, but there’s almost always going to be a certain talents that they just simply don’t possess. Um, and that’s why it is helpful.
And that’s why we see a lot of law firms leaning on larger agencies that have a wealth of resources and really a breadth of team members that they can lean on for individual strategies. Alright. Another strong question. Does anyone else out there have a question? No. Well guys, I guess that brings us to the end of our presentation. Thank you very much.
It was very informative. And folks, once again, as a reminder, a replay, this webinar will be available on<inaudible> dot org in the members resources section by this time tomorrow. Anything, any final thoughts guys? No, just thanks so much for having us and feel free. Any questions you might have whatsoever, whether it’s PPC related or otherwise in the digital marketing world,
please don’t hesitate to ask happy to help. Yep. Thanks to all the attendees, enjoyed it. And thanks to<inaudible>. We appreciate it, Eric. Our pleasure. We’ll talk to you both soon. Thanks for coming folks. Thank you. Bye bye. Take care.
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