Legal marketing can be highly competitive, and within the sector of legal PPC, the competition is fierce, with search terms like ‘mesothelioma’ commanding bid values in the four figure range and other keywords causing bidding wars. That’s why we’ve pulled together three PPC tips that your firm should know if you want to ensure the success of your legal firm’s marketing campaigns.

P.S. Learn how to target your audience with paid advertising with the help of this legal eBook!

1. Understand your persona and your competition

Too many legal firms simply replicate exactly what their competition is doing, meaning they don’t stand out from the crowd, while others don’t understand the behaviour of their ideal client enough to ensure their ads are targeted correctly.

To avoid falling into either of these camps you need to conduct adequate research on both your ideal client and your competitors.

To help understand your ideal clients you can build personas to provide you with a fictitious representation of your ideal client, with a clear understanding of their demographic information and their online behaviour. This information will help you to understand the types of keywords you should target to get in front of your ideal audience.

We’ve created some great persona templates that you can download to help you get started.

In terms of competition, you should look to see what terms they are targeting with their ads and what forms of ads they are using. By doing this you can see how you could make your ads stand out using your copy and ad extensions, as well as any long tailed keywords you could rank for which would give you a more targeted audience than your competitors broader audience.

2. Long tail over high traffic

Following on from the last tip, and what might sound slightly counter-intuitive, is, you should focus on long tail keywords rather than broader higher traffic terms. Why? Because those long tail keywords will target a much more precise and conversion ready audience.

High traffic terms may help you to reach a larger audience but that audience won’t always be at the right stage of their journey so as to convert from your ad, or they simply they might not be the right audiance, meaning that though you potentially drive more traffic to your legal firm’s website, you get very little return for your ad investment.

By targeting long tail keywords you’ll reach a much smaller audience but they will be highly targeted and are much more likely to convert through your ad, due to it being targeted and featuring copy which is specific to their needs.

3. Focus on local

Legal services are more often than not something that potential claimants look for within locality to them. So instead of trying to target the whole country, break down your PPC campaigns by geo-targeting granular and more limited markets. This again allows you to reach more targeted audiences and provide a personalised experience.

You can geo-target campaigns by county, city or even postcode, allowing you to ensure your ad campaign reaches those potential claimants in the proximity of your target sectors. Furthermore, this segmentation of your ad campaign by location allows you to tailor and personalise your ad copy to be geo-specific.

Utilise these three PPC tips and help your legal firm reach new clients, and drive new business to your firm through your digital marketing strategies.