Legal Marketing Articles

Posts Tagged ‘Pay-Per-Click’

Creating Landing Pages for a Legal PPC Campaign

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

Creating Effective PPC Landing Pages

If you run PPC campaigns or email marketing campaigns, landing pages are critical to your success. In fact, landing pages are critical to organic search engine marketing, press releases, and just about all Internet marketing efforts. It is important that you create landing pages for your campaigns that are constructed to improve the conversion rate of your efforts. Here are a couple of tactics to help you improve your landing pages and marketing efforts.

Tactic #1:
Know when to simplify the contents of the page.  Some direct response practitioners like an exciting – if not circus-like – atmosphere in a landing page; however this does not always help the conversion rate of your program.  In today’s “”give-it-to-me quick-or-I’m-out-of-here”" world, you need to keep your landing page focused and pretty simple. Help the visitor digest what you are offering quickly and easily. Use short paragraphs and bullet points. Offer crisp value propositions to readers that play off the question in their mind, which is: “”Why should I take the action you want me to take?”

Tactic #2:
Also, be sure to offer multiple calls to action on the page.  Some people click on the first link they see on a landing page. Others read for long stretches before they take action. Have links at the top, bottom and in between. Make it easy for visitors to take action whenever they’re ready. Track everything. Try to custom tag each link so you know which ones are used the most. This will come in handy for the next time. If you have a multi-stage process like a survey, shopping cart, or registration form, see where you lose people and work on that.

You’ve spent good money getting people to your landing page. You might as well take a few extra steps to make your campaign as effective as possible.

Read the articles below for a crash course in law firm PPC. Then check out posts on legal PPC from our Best Legal Marketing Blog for more info.

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PPC for Attorneys & Law Firms

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

When Does PPC Make Sense for Attorneys?

PPC search marketing is an Internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked.  The cost of these clicks can be based on two different pricing models; Flat Rate PPC and Bid-based PPC.  While Flat rate PPC includes a fixed price for a click, in the bid-based model, the advertiser signs a contract that allows them to compete against other advertisers in a private auction hosted by a publisher or, more commonly, an advertising network. Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a given ad spot, usually using online tools to do so. The auction plays out in an automated fashion every time a visitor triggers the ad spot. Search engines often use a bid-based system where advertisers bid for specific keywords that users will search for.

PPC marketing carries many benefits for law firms.  It allows advertisers to have precise control over their message while having an immediate impact on the amount of visitors coming into a website. Since PPC marketing prices are often pre-defined, costs can be better regulated by a company. In addition to this, PPC allows companies to get their message across immediately. This can result in increased traffic within only a few days.  Finally, PPC marketing also allows marketers to direct visitors to optimized landing pages. This will allow visitors to find the information they are looking for thus increasing the probability of conversion.

PPC search marketing is an Internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked.  The cost of these clicks can be based on two different pricing models; Flat Rate PPC and Bid-based PPC.  While Flat rate PPC includes a fixed price for a click, in the bid-based model, the advertiser signs a contract that allows them to compete against other advertisers in a private auction hosted by a publisher or, more commonly, an advertising network. Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a given ad spot, usually using online tools to do so. The auction plays out in an automated fashion every time a visitor triggers the ad spot. Search engines often use a bid-based system where advertisers bid for specific keywords that users will search for.

PPC marketing carries many benefits for law firms.  It allows advertisers to have precise control over their message while having an immediate impact on the amount of visitors coming into a website. Since PPC marketing prices are often pre-defined, costs can be better regulated by a company. In addition to this, PPC allows companies to get their message across immediately. This can result in increased traffic within only a few days.  Finally, PPC marketing also allows marketers to direct visitors to optimized landing pages. This will allow visitors to find the information they are looking for thus increasing the probability of conversion.

Read the articles below for a crash course in law firm PPC. Then check out posts on legal PPC from our Best Legal Marketing Blog for more info.

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Legal PPC Basics

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

Legal Pay-Per-Click Basics

What is PPC? How do you use Adwords? If you are feeling lost in the world of search marketing, we can help. Here is a quick guide to all the basic lingo you’ll need to know for your legal search marketing campaign.

What is the difference between organic and paid search?

Paid search ads are typically shown on the top or right hand side of a search engine results page. In many instances they will appear when you search for a brand, product or service. These are also called “”sponsored ads”".

Natural search depends on how relevant the content is on your website in relation to a search term. In doing this, search engines run websites through their algorithm to determine which site has the most authority on a topic. Natural search results take up the majority of a search engine results page, and often attract much more traffic than the paid ads.

What is PPC?
With PPC, you pay for your firm’s ad to appear in the sponsored listings. Every time a customer clicks on your ad, your firm pays for that click. The price of a click is often determined by a bid-based system where advertisers specify how much they are willing to spend.

What is CTR?
Click-through rate (CTR) is the number of clicks divided by the number of times your ad is shown (impressions).

Keywords are the terms customers search for. Advertisers bid on how much they would pay for a particular keyword to result in an ad that is clicked on by customers. This is called keyword bidding.

Ad Impressions are reported any time that an ad is displayed. Ideally, you want more than an ad to be seen – you want it to be clicked on. Because of this fact, many ads have a pay-per-click payment structure.

Display URL is the website address displayed within your ad. It is often a shorter version of the destination URL that is used to improve click-through-rates and eliminate long URLs with too many characters.

Now that you have an idea of some popular advertising lingo, you are on your way to starting an online advertising campaign. Each of the main search engines have PPC advertising programs that could help your firm: Google Adwords and Microsoft Ad Center are two of the big ones. Google still leads the market in the amount of traffic it receives and has revolutionized the way PPC works. However, they are constantly changing the way they rank sites, so you need to stay on your toes.

Read the articles below for a crash course in law firm PPC. Then check out posts on legal PPC from our Best Legal Marketing Blog for more info.

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Pay-Per-Click Search Marketing

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Let’s discuss two types of search results: organic versus pay-per-click, or PPC.  Organic search results rely on your website content and the code behind it, plus other techniques on the more technical-side, to get you to the top of search results.   PPC, on the other hand, lets you pay to be featured on search engine result pages.

PPC has been reported to be more successful in attracting page viewers over the short term, although other processes have more longevity.   Ideally, it’s best to have a solid page that is optimized for search engines, backed with a marketing effort that targets social media and other outlets, combined with PPC efforts to achieve maximum visibility for your law firm online.

It’s a multi-pronged attack, but once you learn the logic behind each process, it all makes sense.

How PPC Works

In order to use PPC, you must bid* on the keywords you want to target. For lawyers, it is good practice to bid on keywords that are geographical; for example, if you’re a lawyer based in Dallas, TX, it’s in your best interests to bid on keywords that include “Dallas.”  It’s highly unlikely that a woman seeking a divorce lawyer who resides in New York is going to be interested in hiring a lawyer based in Texas; utilizing local keywords lets your most likely leads find you much more easily and weeds out clients that you won’t be able to help, thus saving you further time and money. 

An experienced marketing organization is your best bet for this type of campaign.  These professionals can monitor your results and will be able to choose the best keywords for your legal niche and target customer base to ensure you get the most bang for your buck.

Benefits of Pay-Per-Click

PPC provides you with nearly-instant results for your investment; your site will likely see a boost in visitors almost right away once you implement PPC.  It’s a quick way to generate new leads and attract clients away from un-sponsored competitor links. 

Your marketing manager will be able to see where visitors are coming from, what keywords get the most attention and provide the most cost-effective solution, and use that information to help you get the most possible leads.

*Some organizations don’t use a bidding process; they will establish a flat rate; however, the big operators who offer PPC all currently operate on a bid-based model.

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