I’ve managed PPC for a variety of practice areas, and these 3 things can always be improved whether you’re a personal injury lawyer or criminal lawyer. These are key performance indicators that can also be applied to other advertising platforms like Facebook & IG. Here are 3 things your law firm could always improve in your ppc advertising.
- Click-through Rate:
- Conversion rate
- Lead-to-case ratio
- Have a 5% CTR? It could be 6 or even 8 percent.
- Have a 15% conversion rate? 20%, or even 25%, is not unheard of. You could work harder to create better landing pages to push it to 20 or 25 percent conversion rate.
- Do you close 20% of all inbound leads? Why not 30%?
- Is it your phone skills?
- What is stopping you from taking on more clients? Maybe you turn away half of your clients due to case quality and/or you are too busy with more important clients?
- Could you hire someone to handle the increase in leads and serve those extra, lower value clients?Click-Through Rate and Why It’s Important
3 Things Your Law Firm Could Always Improve in Your PPC Advertising
1. Click-Through Rate and Why It’s Important
Click-through rate is important given it’s implications and what a “good” click-through rate means for your campaign. A high CTR means that your ads are being shown to people who are interested in them. That’s a good thing in one aspect. However, it’s also a good thing in that the higher your CTR, the less your Avg. Cost-Per-Click will be on average. In short, a higher CTR equals relevant advertising and cheaper clicks.
2. Conversion Rate and Why It Should Be a Focus
Don’t let the cost-per-click scare you from trying PPC. Cost-per-click in any type of law is EXPENSIVE. Even the cheapest clicks that are still good quality searches are around $5. But, $5 clicks are not the norm. I typically see $15-$30 clicks in Family Law, up to $60 clicks for “probate lawyer,” and well over $100 for car accident searches to give you and idea.
Expensive clicks are exactly why Conversion Rate is so critical. It’s all about making your campaign as efficient as possible.
Imagine you have a 10 percent click-to-conversion rate, 10 percent of all clicks convert into a lead; phone call or contact form. If you get 100 clicks in a month, you’ll net about 10 leads. This is not horrible, and you could be profitable even if you spent $20 per click or $2,000/month (that’s how good 10 search leads can be). However, with these expensive clicks you will not get nearly as good of ROI if you had doubled the lead output without increasing the input (budget). You do this by focusing on getting clicks for the best, most actionable searches while serving these people highly relevant, hyper-local landing pages based on their searches.
How important of an investment are landing pages? Critical.
I’ve seen landing pages take an ad account from 11.5% conversion rate to 25% conversion rate overnight, effectively doubling the return on investment for that client without raising his budget.
3. Lead-to-Close Rate and Why It’s Critical
Search leads are some of the best leads out there, but they can still have a low close rate if not properly taken care of.
What do I mean by not taking care of a lead?
- Not answering their calls quickly and having everything available to answer their questions.
- Missing a call and making the lead have to leave a voicemail. (If they leave a voicemail, you just lowered your chance of closing and they likely called your competitor soon after leaving the message.)
- Not replying to form submissions within 24 hrs.
- Turning down a case because you do not have the resources to serve them.
- Not closing a lead because they didn’t feel confident in you.
These are all examples, but all of these can be easily corrected.
Suggestions to improve your Lead-to-Close Rate:
- Don’t miss any calls. Solo-Practitioner without a receptionist? Pay for your own answering service. A missed call while you are in court could mean you lost a chance at a $2,000+ case. Answering services run you around $100-$200 per month. They are worth it and will pay for themselves.
- Reply to form submissions within 24 hours. Same day if possible.
- Read a few sales books. I’m not the best closer, but we could all be better.
There are many more ways to improve your PPC advertising performance, but improving these 3 core metrics will drive your success more than other less-important metrics.
Interested in learning more about PPC advertising for your law firm? Contact us to schedule a break-out call where we’ll tell you exactly how we help our clients drive maximum ROI with PPC advertising.
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