How to Start a Campaign with Google Ads for Lawyers

Launching Google Ads for lawyers can be both daunting and overwhelming. To ensure your campaign is successful, there are several preparation steps that should be taken beforehand. 

In this article, we’ll walk you through the basics of creating successful Google Ads for lawyers campaigns, from setting up your account to crafting effective ads. But first, let’s take a quick look at what Google Ads for lawyers are all about.

What are Google Ads for Lawyers?

Google Ads for lawyers is an online advertising platform that allows law firms to market their services to a wide audience. Law firms can target specific geographic areas, keywords, or other firm types. The ads appear at the top of search results pages and are displayed based on how relevant they are to the searcher’s query.

One of the best aspects of Google Ads is that they are highly targeted and trackable. This makes sure that your campaign is reaching people who actually want to see your ads and allows you to measure how effective your campaign has been at generating new leads over time.

How Do Google Ads Work?

Google Ads uses pay-per-click (PPC) bidding models in which advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad. For example, if someone searches for “family law attorney near me,” an advertiser would bid on those keywords and pay only if someone clicked on their ad after seeing it in search results pages or on other websites like social media platforms or news sites.

Google Ads Campaign Structure

A Google Ads campaign is made up of different parts including:

• Budget and Bidding: A bid strategy is how you decide how much to pay for each click on your ads. It’s made up of a budget and bids, which are the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for each click. The bigger your budget, the more clicks you can buy.
• Keywords: these are the words that trigger your ads when they’re searched on Google. You’ll use these keywords to create ad groups. Groups of ads with similar targeting settings that share the same budget and bids.
• Ads: these are what users see when they search on Google or any other search engine. They’re made up of a headline and two lines of text below it, along with an image or video at the top of each ad.

What Is Quality Score And Why Is It Important To Your Campaign’s Success

Quality score is a numeric value that Google assigns to your advertisement, which determines how well it will rank in search results. The higher the quality score, the more likely it is that your ad will show up first when someone searches for a keyword related to your business.

The primary factors that influence your quality score are:

• The relevance of your text ad. How closely does the text on your ad match what people search for?
• How relevant are the keywords in your ad group? If they’re not related, they might be hurting your score.
• Your click-through rate (CTR), measures how often people click on an ad after seeing it in search results. The higher this number is, the better.

Now that you understand the basics of Google ads for lawyers, let’s take a closer look at how to set up your campaign.

Setting Up Your Legal Campaign

To get started with Google Ads for Lawyers, you’ll need to create an account. If you already have a Google Ads account, you can skip this step.

Once you’ve created your account, there are a few things you’ll need to do before getting started with your legal campaign:

1. Location, Language, And Audience

First, it’s important to decide on a location for your campaign. You can enter another location to increase your target area or remain in the area where your law firm is located. If your law firm has multiple locations, it’s best to create separate campaigns for each one of them.

Next, select the language(s) of the people who live in that area. You can also add other languages if the majority of people speak another language in this area.

Finally, select an audience based on their interests and behaviors as well as their demographics (e.g., age group).

2. Budgeting And Bidding

The first thing you need to do is set the amount you would like to spend each day on your ads. You can set bids by keyword or location, adjust bids based on traffic quality metrics like bounce rate or conversion rate if desired, and set daily budgets.

We suggest starting with manual CPC (cost-per-click) bidding rather than automatic. Manual allows more control over your campaigns and gives you insight into how much each keyword contributes to the overall cost per acquisition (CPA).

3. Ad Extensions

Ad extensions are little additional information that you can include in your ad. They’re typically placed below the headline of your ad.

These extensions increase your conversion rate and Click-through rate by providing more information about what a customer can expect upon clicking your ad. This could mean driving visitors to a landing page with more information or additional products they may be interested in.

The following are the most common types of ad extensions:

• Promotion Extension: Offers an incentive to visit your sites like a discount code or money-off coupon
• Call Extension: Connects users directly to a phone number where they can speak with a representative at your company
• Location Extension: Provides the physical address of your business for potential customers who want to visit in person
• Callout Extension: Provides additional information about your business such as hours of operation

4. Creating Your Ad Group

An ad group is a collection of ads that you can organize around a specific theme or topic. For example, if you have an office in San Francisco and another in Los Angeles, then you could create an ad group for each office so that you can target specific cities and regions.

You can also use ad groups to organize your ads around themes like “divorce”, “criminal defense,” or “immigration”. This will help you more effectively reach the right audience and make sure that they are seeing the most relevant ads.

5. Creating Your Ad

Creating your ad will involve selecting a campaign type and a campaign name. If you don’t have any campaigns yet, you can just choose “Create a new campaign.”

Once you’ve selected your campaign type and name, you’ll be asked to choose between two different ad formats: text or display ads. Text ads appear at the top of search results pages and typically include the advertiser’s name, URL, and a short description of what they offer (e.g., “Bail Bonds”).

Display ads are more visual in nature and can take many forms—images, videos, or custom designs. All display ads have one thing in common: they’re meant to grab someone’s attention.

Make sure your headline and description include any services, testimonials, locations, or anything that is relevant to your firm. The goal here is to make sure potential clients are interested enough in what you have to offer that they click through.

Overall, setting up a legal campaign on Google Ads can be an effective way to reach potential clients and grow your law practice. By carefully targeting your ads, writing compelling ad copy, and tracking your campaign’s performance, you can maximize the return on your advertising investment.

Keyword Research for a Legal Ads Campaign

Keyword research is a critical part of the process of creating an effective legal advertising campaign. 

First, if you want to improve quality and reduce your costs, you should start with a tight set of keywords for your campaign. This means choosing between the long query, low-volume keywords (best suited for blogs answering specific legal questions), and short keywords with high volume. Ex: Lawyer Attorney, Law firm (to rank web pages in organic results and PPC ads).

Then, make sure you understand the concept of keyword match types before creating your ad. You’ll want to make sure that the terms you choose are relevant to your business. Otherwise, your ad might not show up when people search for what they actually need.

How To Conduct Keyword Research

1. Use a Keyword Research Tool: There are many free and paid tools available online that allow you to enter a seed keyword and generate a list of related keywords. These tools also provide data on the search volume, competition, and CPC of each keyword.
2. Analyze Your Competitors: Look at the keywords that your competitors are targeting in their website content and advertising campaigns. This can give you an idea of what keywords are relevant to your industry and how to differentiate your marketing strategy.
3. Use Google’s Autocomplete and Related Search: Start typing a keyword into Google’s search bar and see what suggestions pop up. These suggestions are based on the most popular search queries related to the keyword you entered.

Once you’ve got your keywords locked down, identify negative keywords. These are words or phrases that you don’t want people searching for because they don’t apply to your firm or industry (e.g., divorce lawyer if you only handle custody cases).

Tips for Creating Effective Legal Ads

1. Define Your Key Goals: What do you want to achieve with your legal ads? Do you want to generate leads, drive traffic to your website, or educate potential clients about your services? Clearly defining your goals will help you create ads that are targeted and effective.
2. Find Your Target Audience: Who are you trying to reach with your legal ads? Are you targeting individuals or businesses? What are their needs and challenges?
3. A/B Test Your Ads: A/B testing involves creating two versions of an ad and testing them to see which one performs better. This can help you optimize your ads for better results.
4. Use Specific Keywords: Choose specific, relevant keywords for your legal ads. This will help ensure that your ads are shown to the right audience and increase the chances of a successful conversion.
5. Design Landing Pages: This is a page that a user lands on after clicking on your ad. Make sure your landing page is well-designed and relevant to the ad. This will help increase the chances of a successful conversion.

Remember to always follow the guidelines set forth by Google Ads and the legal industry when creating and running your legal ads.

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