PPC Campaigns

Everything About PPC Campaigns

The internet has changed everything about finding a lawyer. Today, 65 percent of potential legal clients look online for law firms before choosing which lawyer to call. One of the fastest ways to get your website into the top pages of search results is to use PPC search engine advertising. This kind of advertising is highly effective, and can increase the traffic to your website by 60 percent or more when you design your PPC campaign with your client in mind.

Starting Successful PPC Campaigns

One of the toughest things about designing a pay per click ad campaign is just knowing where to start. You may have seen other law firms buy their way into sponsored web results, and wonder if there's a way to have your firm do the same thing. PPC search engine advertising is available through most major search engines, and many of these search engines offer quick tutorials that can help you get PPC campaigns off the ground within days if you want to move fast.

While the speed of starting a pay per click campaign is one of the advantages of this form of advertising, it's important not to get too carried away. Waiting to initiate your PPC campaigns until you are sure you know what you're doing can ensure that you get the maximum return on investment. Before you start working with PPC search engine advertising, here are a few questions to consider:

• Do you know what your goals are for your advertising campaign? Keep in mind that just generating more website traffic doesn't necessarily mean you'll get more clients—don't just have a goal like “we want to see a 50 percent increase in visitors to our website,” think about how many new clients you're hoping for.

• Are you familiar with the jargon and terminology of PPC campaigns? You'll have a much easier time understanding best practices for PPC search engine advertising if you know enough of the vocabulary to do your research.

• Is your website attractive and well designed? Even the best PPC campaigns won't work if your pay per click ads lead to a website with inaccurate information or broken links. If your website is merely mediocre, up to 85% of clients will leave before they've even looked for 30 seconds—and they aren't likely to come back.

What to Do If Your PPC Campaigns Don't Work

Because PPC search engine advertising is still relatively new, it's easy for people designing new pay per click campaigns to run into some trouble when they first start designing their advertisements. Here are a few common problems and how to fix them:

• If you're spending your PPC search engine advertising budget too quickly on too few clicks, you may want to focus your PPC campaigns on narrower, less prestigious keywords. Hyperlocalization can help you to get the most out of each click made on your advertisements.

• If your ads aren't bringing in many clicks, the copy of your ads themselves may need fine-tuning. Don't bother including a phone number in your PPC search engine advertising—save that for your landing page, where it isn't taking up such a high percentage of your space.

• If you're getting a lot of traffic with “broad match” keywords, consider adding negative keywords to your PPC campaigns. For example, you may want to make sure that your PPC search engine advertising doesn't involve paying for clicks from people seeking free legal aid.

• If you have plenty of clicks but no one's calling, take a long, hard look at your website. PPC campaigns can fail even when ad copy is brilliant if a website is messy or just plain boring. The more you can differentiate yourself from the competition with your website, the more likely it is that your PPC search engine advertising will be successful.

You may want to consider hiring a service to help you with your PPC campaigns if you have corrected what you believe to be the problem, but haven't seen any results. A well-organized pay per click campaign should have a significant impact not only on your website traffic, but on your number of clients. If it's not, you may want professionals to evaluate your PPC search engine advertising and your website. Professional help may save you money and time when trying to design a new campaign—think of these services as an investment, rather than a cost.

Third Party Software and PPC Search Engine Advertising

When you want to step up your analysis of data from PPC campaigns, you don't just want to rely on Google or Yahoo services for bidders. There are dozens of third party tools that can help you improve any aspect of your PPC search engine advertising.

In order to understand how to get the most out of any third party software tool, you'll need to know how to use it. Some tools for PPC campaigns include enough tutorials and documentation that you'll understand the basic features right away. However, if you're a power user or you want to be one, it's critical to seek out training. Training seminars and webinars can make it easier to use the more complicated features on your software so that your analysis of your PPC search engine advertising is more robust.

Alternatives to PPC Search Engine Advertising

While PPC campaigns can be a great way to get your website in the spotlight quickly, it's important not to let pay per click be your only marketing strategy. A more complete internet advertising campaign will also include search engine optimization (SEO) strategies that can help place your website higher in organic (non-sponsored) search results.

You may want to work on your PPC search engine advertising at first, when your internet marketing campaign is new, and then gradually increase the effort your firm puts into SEO. Then, once your organic search results are high enough, at least for some terms, you can scale back your PPC campaigns on those terms and work on different sets of keywords or simply reduce your pay per click budget.