Law Firm Marketing BLOG

One of the most popular law firm internet marketing strategies that we use for our clients is Pay Per Click campaigns; we call these campaigns SNAP™ (or Sponsored Net Ad Placement).  Every month, we send our clients reports, which detail how the campaign did for the month.  In order to understand the campaign, you need to know what the acronyms mean.
 

• Impressions are the number of times that your listing was displayed in the search results of all partnered search engines for that particular search term.  Note: you are not charged for Impressions.
• Clicks are when a user clicks on your search listing and arrives at your web site.
• CTR is the “Click Through Rate”. This is a percentage of the number of clickthroughs from the number of impressions generated for the specified search term.  In math terms: divide the number of clicks over the number of impressions.
• Average Cost is the average cost of that search term for the period of the summary report. As your bids are managed, they sometimes will change from day to day, so this is an average of their cost.
• CPC is “Cost Per Click”.  This is your current actual cost per click. 
• Average Position is the average position of your listing in the search results. So if your average position is 1, then you averaged coming up in the # 1 position on the page of a search engine when someone searched for that particular search term.
  

Understanding what your law firm marketing reports tell you is important in telling us what is working.

The one thing to keep in mind with your Pay-Per-Click campaign (PPC) is that it is not a matter of just getting traffic.  If that were the case, I could spend all day having my friends and family members clicking on your ads.  I am much more concerned with how much of that traffic turns into clients.  

If you get too many clicks and not enough calls, we need to tweak the campaign.  We may need to change the keywords, change the geographic reach, or change your position.  Don’t count on your reports and web stats to tell the whole story.  Your feedback counts, too.  It’s good to include PPC as part of your law firm marketing strategy, but make sure that you are tracking it correctly.

One important thing to look for in a lawyer internet marketing company is that the company realizes that what works in one region of the US does not necessarily work in all of them. 

For example, in some parts of the US, Yahoo is used more than Google (hard to believe, I know).  Some US searchers in one part of the country use the word “lawyer” more than “attorney”.  Some terms, such as DUI or DWI, vary state to state.  Now, while your marketing company may not have clients everywhere (which is good for you since the company doesn’t focus on your competitors), the company has to have the ability to adjust your campaign to allow for these differences.

Whether you are doing PPC campaigns, optimization, or print campaigns, your marketing needs to flexibility to adjust with the consumer needs and searches.