The Basics of PPC for Injury Lawyers

Pay-pay-click or PPC marketing is a crucial channel for injury lawyers. However, many injury lawyers and operations managers at injury law firms do not understand their most important marketing channel. What’s even scarier is many injury lawyers see the bills for their PPC ad costs on Google search and can’t explain what it is or how it helps their business. For this post, I am going to slow it down and explain the basics of pay-per-click marketing for injury lawyers, what it is, why it is important, where the money goes, and how you can gain some understanding around this crucial ad channel.

What is PPC Marketing?

PPC stands for pay-per-click, which means that for every click on your ad, the ad provider charges you a fee. The main thing about PPC marketing is control. You control how your ad appears, when, and why it appears. Then the cost is controlled as well, you only pay when a positive event happens (a click to your website). PPC marketing is a direct response vehicle, platforms like Google or Meta that offer PPC ad products do so only in formats that entice an action for a customer that is a positive for the business.

PPC marketing is very different from traditional forms of advertising because you set a bid that you are comfortable to pay for a click to your website from somebody who is searching for specific keywords. Whereas, in traditional advertising you buy a radio ad or a television ad on a program or at a time you think your target customer is listening. They may be engaged in the content, they also may be in your target audience, but you don’t really know. Additionally, the monetization of the advertising is different, with traditional media you pay a CPM (cost per mille, where mille is Latin for a thousand). For every 1000 listerns, readers, or viewers you pay a set fee. This fee is tied to the media company’s audience and not to a positive reaction to your business, and thus the model is in the media company’s favour and not your business’s. That’s why businesses love PPC marketing, and why Google is the largest advertising company in the world.

This desire to know more about your advertising activities is also a benefit of PPC marketing. Because it takes place online, there are lots of tracking capabilities and data that is captured about your advertising. This is often a challenge for many personal injury lawyers because determining which data is relevant and worth paying attention to can be hard to tell.

Another element of PPC marketing is the speed and flexibility of the channel. If you want to be in market and getting results it can happen fast, you can get an ad running in minutes on many of these platforms. If you need to change something or want to invest more or less you can do so instantly.

Why Does PPC Marketing Critical for Injury Lawyers?

PPC is essential for personal injury lawyers for several reasons. First, the high demand and high competition of the injury law space. There are numerous injury law firms and injury lawyers in any given market, and the demand for new cases and files amongst this group is incredibly competitive. So with PPC marketing, injury lawyers can target and control their advertising and market their law firm in a channel that is filled with leads and potential customers.

Second, PPC is incredibly local. Most injury law firms operate on a local or regional scale. PPC allows these injury law firms only to target the geographies they operate in. This is incredibly powerful; many injury law firms marketing ends up with lots of spill. Marketing spill is is where your marketing dollars spill outside your target and are essentially wasted. If you buy a television commercial on a cable channel that reaches the entire country and you only serve a certain province or state in that country, you have a lot of marketing spill. With a well designed PPC campaign you get zero marketing spill, every dollar you spend is productive.

Next, visibility on search engines for personal injury law firms is arguably the most important element of their business in 2023. Nobody is planning to need an injury lawyer, so when they find themselves needing on they consult a search engine first to understand what they need to know. Expert digital marketing injury lawyers can immediately seize this opportunity with PPC marketing. However, organic visibility on search engines takes time, money, and a succinct strategy. With PPC marketing, you appear in search right away. PPC marketing lets you advertise on the top of the search results page, no scrolling required. Additionally, PPC marketing gives you data about what is working and what people are searchign for. This feedback loop allows you to customize your website and other external communications to stay relevant to your audience.

Finally, it is critical because of the categorical targeting. Many injury lawyers specialize in specific injuries, whether it is medical malpractice, whiplash, spinal cord injuries, etc. With PPC marketing, you can specify only the keywords related to their specialty. For example, you can target “Medical Malpractice Ontario” or “Car Accident Lawyer Toronto.” Thus, you never get referrals for family law or wills and estates like you may get if you advertise on radio or other broadcast mediums.

Components of a Successful PPC Campaign for Injury Lawyers

This is the most important part of the blog. If you are trying to understand your law firm’s pay-per-click performance and approach, these are the topics you need to begin to understand. The components of a successful PPC campaign are as follows:

• Keyword Research – Which keywords do you want your ads to appear for? Then there’s a whole world of keywords you probably haven’t considered or thought of. A skilled PPC manager can research these keywords, estimate the bids, and compile a succinct plan of attack for your campaign. However, it all starts with keyword research. If you want to understand your Google Ads or PPC campaign, start with your keywords.
• Ad Copy – How do you want to attract clients to your business? Your Google Ads should convey at least trust, compassion, and expertise. However, they should also be engaging. At any moment, your campaign likely has many ads running; have a look at how you are speaking about yourself. Is it consistent with other advertising you are doing? How are the ads performing? Is one ad style doing better than another?
• Landing Pages – Discussing landing pages in a PPC marketing post seems odd, but you’re paying to send people to your website. Is the place you’re sending them worth spending money on? Is it relevant to the keywords you are targeting? Does it have a call to action? A great PPC campaign needs great landing pages.
• Conversion Tracking and Analytics– Any successful PPC campaign has conversion goals set up that are relevant to your business and proper analytics measuring the success and failures of the campaign. Normally, if the analytics of a campaign aren’t set-up properly or aren’t generating insights that’s a red flag.
• Budget Management – Another element to think about and consider is understanding how much you’re spending, where you’re spending, and working to decrease spending over the life of a PPC campaign.

Challenges Faced by Injury Lawyers in PPC Marketing

Injury lawyers don’t have it easy in PPC marketing. Most Injury lawyers know the benefits of PPC marketing, and thus, the competition is intense. It is one of the most expensive industries for PPC marketing. Thus, for smaller firms, it is very challenging to get started. Also, the cost is very high when mistakes happen or if an account isn’t managed properly.

Another challenge is the legal industry has rules and regulations. At the end of the day, injured victims are vulnerable and need to be protected. The large advertising platforms understand this and limit some of the types of ads injury lawyers can run. Additionally, many law societies and governing bodies have rules around advertising. This is important and good for society but adds more challenges to injury lawyers looking to advertise.

Finally, and this isn’t unique to injury law, but finding expert management is hard. The amount of time and effort that goes into an effective PPC campaign is a lot. There are many things that can be done to squeeze performance out of a campaign. An experienced PPC manager will help be able to get you there, and ensure you are getting the best returnon your advertising investment that you can. There are many firms and individuals out there offering Google Ad or PPC services and the quality varies. PPC management is expensive, it is one of the more expensive marketing skills to hire for. Personal injury lawyers aren’t unique in that it is hard to get great managers and then for them to understand injury law is another layer.

Tips for Getting Started with PPC for Injury Lawyers

Here are some ways to become more involved in your existing campaign or start one from scratch.

• Work with a PPC Expert or Agency – If you aren’t running Google Ads or PPC marketing currently, this is the fastest and best way to ensure you get a great campaign that will work for your business. If you are already doing this and unsure if your PPC expert is right for your business, most digital agencies or marketers offer free consultation and can discuss your campaign.
• View Your Reports – If you are running Google Ads either with an in-house marketing resource, or an agency, review the reports. You should get reports monthly or quarterly, just read them and see what types of things your resource is saying.
• Become Knowledgeable Yourself – Google Ads are likely one of the most expensive aspects of your law firm. You should become an expert in this channel. You will understand more about your business and get better results. I wrote about learning Google Ads fast in this blog post.

PPC For Injury Lawyers Is Not Going Away

PPC is over twenty years old and will be a large part of marketing for the foreseeable future. If you are thinking about whether it matters for your law firm, or if it is something you need to be managing, it does matter and needs your attention. If you want to maintain or grow your practice, you need to maximize your PPC marketing opportunities. Hopefully this blog helped get the ball rolling on how PPC marketing matters for injury lawyers.

Rock Bound Marketing, PPC Experts for Injury Lawyers

Jeff Lush, Founder and President of Rock Bound Marketing, is an experienced marketer in injury law. Jeff worked in-house as the Director of Marketing for a prominent Western Canadian injury law firm and understands the industry inside and out. Jeff also is a Google Ads certified Google Ads campaign manager and digital marketing strategist. If you want to take your Google Ads to the next level, contact Jeff at Rock Bound Marketing today.