How to Run Paid Ads with a Small Budget

Written by

An unfortunate caveat of advertising in legal is that it can be very expensive to run ads on Google. In 2017, keywords related to “lawyer” were the fourth most expensive keywords on the platform in the United States at an average cost-per-click (CPC) of $54.86. An average CPC this high can make it hard to begin advertising, especially on a tight budget. However, that shouldn’t stop you from running ads altogether! Here are a few paid advertising strategies that won’t break the bank.

Utilize Branded & Competitor Ads

If you are not already running ads for your brand, you should have started yesterday. There are three reasons for this:

  1. They are your safeguard against competitors who are either currently bidding on your name or may do so in the future.
  2. Since you are bidding on keywords specific to your brand, they have a much lower CPC than other law-related keywords.
  3. Branded keywords have high quality scores. High quality scores mean higher ranking & lower bids.

Running branded ads is a great way to ensure you are appearing at the top of the search results whenever someone looks for your firm. Creating ads for your firm shouldn’t stop at your brand name either. Creating ads for attorneys at your firm is another way to ensure your firm is appearing for your branded searches. What if you already appear organically? While paid search may cannibalize some organic traffic, having both actually leads to an overall increase in clicks and leads. Give users as many opportunities to click on your site, and not legal directories or competitor sites.

Along the lines of advertising for your brand, an increasing trend among law firms advertising on Google is to bid on your competitors’ names. Like your own branded keywords, the branded keywords of your competitors will also have lower CPCs. If you choose to run competitor ads, make sure your ads comply with Google Ads policy and that you do not misrepresent your brand. Also, check with your State Bar Association.

Run Call-Only Ads

As the world becomes more mobile-friendly, the likelihood of a searcher to convert on mobile over desktop is increasing. If they’re already on their phone, they are that much closer to giving you a call. Utilizing call-only ads instead of text ads is a great way to get more conversions with a limited budget. Call-only ads appear only on mobile devices, and a click on the ad allows the searcher to call your firm directly. To be successful with call-only ads, however, you must bid about double what you would normally bid on a keyword, but because these ads only appear for searchers on mobile, it narrows your audience so that the search volume in your area for your targeted keywords decreases.

Increase Visibility with Display & Video Ads

If your goal is to increase exposure for your firm, display and video ads are the way to go. This is a great way to broadcast your brand and services on the internet in an inexpensive way. Think of these ads as online billboards or commercials for your business. However, while these ads are relatively inexpensive to run, they are best utilized to get people to find you but not necessarily contact you. If your goal is to get the phone ringing right now, this isn’t the best option for you. However, with the right targeting, you can get your brand in front of a ton of people for very, very cheap.

Advertise in Another Language

Do you offer your legal services in other languages? If so, you should definitely be advertising in that language. Few law firms in the United States advertise in other languages, so the competition for legal keywords is much lower than that of their English equivalents. This means that the average CPC for these keywords is significantly lower, but the case value is just as high as their English equivalent. Just make sure that your ads are written with correct grammar and spelling as this is the easiest way for a native speaker to tell whether or not you actually speak their language.

Utilize Other Advertising Platforms

A common theme among some of these strategies is the low amount of competition there is to your target audience. This is true for platforms like Microsoft Advertising and Facebook Ads. There are fewer advertisers on these platforms, so it is far cheaper to go after some of the more expensive practice areas (like personal injury or criminal defense). In addition to the lower volume of legal advertisers on Facebook, it is easier to target users based on their interests, pages they’ve liked, or if they have visited your website but didn’t convert. Remarketing is a fantastic way to make sure you get the most out of all your marketing channels.

Paid advertising can be expensive to run, but by branching out into less competitive markets, it doesn’t have to be, especially if you are in a more competitive region, like Texas or California, or a more competitive practice area, like personal injury or criminal defense. By utilizing these tactics, you will have a much easier time keeping up with the competition in a cost-effective way.

 

Competitor Ads in your Google My Business Profile…

Written by

Well, we seem to be moving closer and closer to an advertising driven world, as Google has introduced advertising directly on competitor Google My Business listings. To the right is an example from Greg Sterling, at Search Engine Land which shows an ad for a competing car dealership showing up directly within search results. Greg notes that the advertisement is located almost an hour away…which, at least in the example, flies against the highlighted importance of “local” to consumers.

One important note – according to Greg’s review, firms can’t pay for ad free listings – which means any business may have competitor advertising embedded directly within their localized results. This “ad free profile” business model has been widely utilized by directories in (Avvo) and out (Yelp) of the legal market. From my experience this generates nasty backlash from prospective customers and Google is clearly trying to avoid that, although I’m not certain that the prospect of having competitor ads showing up by default on branded queries is going to engender any goodwill either.

If you’ve got an example of one of these ads in legal…please send a screenshot over.

Google Ads Search Position Metrics

Written by

It’s important to understand where your ads appear on the search page to determine if you should increase your bids or change strategy to be competitive. One metric that advertisers use to asses where their ads are showing up is average position.

However, average position has never been a clear representation of exactly where your ad appears on the search results page. Average position reflects the order that your ad appears versus the other ads in the auction on the search page. The first ad slot is not always at the top of the page above organic results. Sometimes no ads are displayed above the organic results so an ad with position one may appear at the bottom of the page.

Google Ads has four ad position metrics that can provide advertisers a clearer understanding of where their ads are showing up in search results.

  • Impression (Absolute Top) % – The percentage of your ad impressions that are shown as the very first ad above the organic search results.
  • Impression (Top) % – The percentage of your ad impressions that are shown anywhere above the organic search results.
  • Search (Absolute Top) IS – The impressions received in the absolute top position divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location.
  • Search (Topping ) IS – The impressions received in the top location compared to the estimated number of impressions you were able to receive in the top location.

To summarize, The first two metrics show when and where ad impressions display above organic results. The two impression share metrics show the share of impressions that were eligible for top-of-page impressions, above organic results.

If you have been using the average position to determine where your ad appears on the page, use these four metrics to get a better description of where your ad stands against the competition.

Google Ads Brand Attacks…Misspellings as a Workaround (i.e. Nagage)

Written by

While Google allows bidding on other firms’ brands (think Coke bidding on people looking for Pepsi), it doesn’t let Coke use Pepsi’s name in the text of the advertisement itself. So for example, while Mockingbird can bid on Scorpion, we couldn’t have an add that says, “Don’t get trapped by Scorpion’s proprietary website platform” or “Scorpion won’t give you access to Google Ads campaigns, but we do.” Part of Google’s position on this, I suspect, is to avoid the potential subjective call of Coke pretending it is Pepsi. While that may be an unlikely mistake for big well known brands, its much more of an issue for mostly unbranded industries, such as…legal.

One sneaky work around for this is misspellings of the patsy’s brand name. To whit…here’s Apex Chat advertising their superiority to…Nagage on a search query for “ngage chat.”

Note that Apex is bidding pretty aggressively as they are outbidding Ngage on their own brand and presumably have a much lower quality score for that term. Think this is just an innocent spelling mistake? Oh your naivety amuses me. Here’s another ad from Apex showcasing how they deliver more features and more leads than…Nagage.

As our Director of Advertising told me, it’s most likely against the rules, but could probably work for a while though…until it gets flagged. And Nagage Ngage, don’t send me a thank you note…you are on SEO Santa’s naughty list too. Just hope Scropion doesn’t notice our ads…

Google “Refreshes” Mobile Search Results Page

Written by

In May 2019, Google announced a visual refresh of the mobile search results page. The new design is meant to help push a brand’s image front and center, while allowing users to scan the SERPs more easily. This change affects both organic and paid search results on mobile.

New Google Ads Labels and Organic Favicons

The labels for Google Ads are now simple, bold and black. The green border around green text has been replaced. The URL has been switched from green to black as well, and both have been moved to the top of the “results card.” They have even gotten rid of the thin grey divider line between the headline and the description.

Organic results have undergone similar changes. Rather than an “Ad” label, Google is now displaying favicons. Your favicon, website name (NOT your domain name), and the page structure (breadcrumbs) are now above the page title exactly like the ads.

Why This is Important

This update might seem like a simple design change, but it has potentially massive impact for both SEO and PPC. Using identical design layouts further blurs the line between paid and organic results. Personally, I think it’s still pretty obvious when something says “Ad” but it’s not hard to see how the public could miss the difference between a label and a favicon. I expect this change to help click-through-rates for advertising campaigns (especially within Google Maps).

The update to organic results is interesting, and something you need to speak with your SEO agency about. Please don’t buy a “favicon optimization” package, unless of course you find it listed in our Legal SEO Store. It’s not something you need to optimize, but it is something you need to set up correctly.

If you’re not already, pay attention to your website name and your site structure. Some think Google is slowing killing the URL, and when I see search results without URLs like these examples above, I have to agree.

What to Do About the Mobile SERP Refresh

First, start advertising. Whether you like it or not, ads are taking up more and more real estate on SERPs. They are also getting harder to spot, which means fewer people will be ignoring the ads.

Second, optimize your headlines. For both paid and organic results, Headlines have taken center stage of these results cards. It’s more important than ever to make sure you have a clear, catchy, click baity optimized headline that captures attention and generates clicks.

Third, update your favicon. You don’t want your website to show your host’s favicon instead of your brand’s logo.

Lastly, stay tuned for even more updates. These changes are live on mobile, and we can only assume the desktop results will soon follow. Google’s announcement said “this new design allows us to add more action buttons and helpful previews to search results cards” so pay attention to when those features become available.

Test Ad Copy Easily with Google’s Responsive Search Ads

Written by

Google is continuing its shift toward increased automation when it comes to building ads. Recently, Google rolled out Responsive Search Ads (RSA) as a way to quickly build multiple ads simultaneously and make it easier to add variety to your ad copy.

How It Works

RSAs allow you to set up one ad with multiple headlines and descriptions. Once you’ve set them up, Google puts together various combinations of headlines and descriptions and tests these combinations. Over time, Google will learn which combinations will perform the best based on searchers’ behavior, search terms, device, and other signals, and serve the best ads to them.

Google's responsive search ads interface

How To Create Responsive Search Ads

Responsive Search Ads are currently still in beta testing, but you may be able to see the option to create these ads soon. To access them, go to the Ads & Extensions tab and click on the blue plus sign. Then, select Responsive search ad. From there, you can add each component of the ads: the final URL, URL paths, headlines, and descriptions. With these ads, you have the option to add up to 15 headlines and up to 4 descriptions.

For some time now, Google has pushed A/B testing on ad copy as a way to improve account performance by creating variability in the ads served to searchers. Previously, this was a manual process, but with the rollout of this new ad type, it’s much easier to test ad copy on your audience.

How to Add & Remove Access to Your Google Ads Account

Written by

Do you know who has access (or ownership) of your Google Ads account? Odds are, there are some old agencies or employees that still have access to your entire account. You may want to kick them out, or if you started working with someone new, you may want to give them access (with proper permission levels).

Here’s how to check, add, and remove access to your Google Ads account:

1) Log in to Your Google Ads Account

Go to https://ads.google.com and log in with your username and password.

2) Click Tools, then Account Access

Click the wrench icon in the top right, then click “Account access” under Setup.

3) Add or Remove Users

Make sure you (as a user) have full admin access to your own account. If it says “Standard” or “Read Only” it means someone else actually owns the account, and they can kick you out at any time.
Double check that whoever has access also has the right permissions. Change their access level if you need to – not everyone needs to be an Admin.

To add someone (a person, not an agency), click the blue plus button, select their permission level, and invite them via email. They will need to accept the invitation before accessing your Google Ads account.

To remove someone’s access, simply click the “Remove Access” link in the right column.

4) Add or Remove Managers (Agencies)

There’s another section that’s a little hard to see. Next to “Users” there’s a “Managers” tab. This is where you grant access to agencies and tools (rather than individual people). You may grant Administrative Ownership, but this gives them the ability to add or remove anyone they like. If that makes you uncomfortable, simply toggle that switch off. They’ll still have access, but they won’t have total control.

To add a manager, the agency will need to request access. Give them your Google Ads CID number (it looks like a phone number), and once they send a request, you’ll need to come back to this section and click “Approve”.

To remove a manager, simply click the “Remove Access” link in the right column.

5) Check Your Billing Users

Once you’ve verified that certain people and agencies each have the right level of access, you need to check who has access to your billing information.

This is NOT the same as who has access to your Google Ads account. There is a big difference between a Google Ads user, and a Google Payments user.

Go to Tools (the wrench icon) > Billing & Payments (under Setup) > Settings (left side menu) > Manage Payment Users (one of the middle cards).

You can then adjust permission levels, set notifications, select who is Primary Contact, and of course add or remove users as you need.

6) Sit Back and Relax… Then Audit Your Other Tools

Now that you know who has access to your Google Ads account, what permissions they have, and who is responsible for paying the bills, you can sit back and relax. No need to worry about old agencies messing things up, or worse, kicking you out of your own account.

You shouldn’t go through life paranoid, but you should be cautious about granting access to your business’ information. After adding and removing people from Google Ads, check who has access to your website, your registrar, your Google Analytics, your Google My Business, your Google Search Console, and all your other digital assets.

You may be surprised who you find.

Take some time to run a security audit. It’s better to check and not find anything, than to not check and wish you would have.

The ABC’s of PPC

Written by

CPC? What is that?

CTR? What does that mean?

Impression share? Who am I sharing this with?

There are many useful metrics within Google Ads to gauge how well your ads are performing. Unfortunately, Google has not made it very easy to find out what these metrics mean within the tool. Thankfully, we have created a handy-dandy guide with all the important terms (and abbreviations) you need in order to keep track of how your ads are doing!

PPC

While many people use this to talk about “advertising” in general, it actually means pay-per-click. This is the primary method used to charge campaigns.

PPI/PPM

Pay-Per-Impression/Pay-Per-Mille. This means you are charged when people view your ad, not necessarily click on it.

PPV

Pay-per-view is a TV term. Not important.

Campaign

This is the container that holds your ad groups, keywords, and ads.

Ad Group

This is the container that holds your keywords and ads.

Keyword

A list of terms within an ad group that are bid on to trigger your ads when someone searches for that keyword.

Bid

The maximum amount you are willing to pay for a click on your ad from a search term.

Impressions

The number of times your ad appears when someone searches for a keyword you’re targeting.

Clicks

The number of times someone clicks on your ad.

CTR (Clickthrough Rate)

This is the percentage of searchers who click on your ad after seeing your ad (clicks/impressions).

Avg. Position

How high up in the Google search results your ad shows up on average. There are ad placements at the top and bottom of each page (4 top, 3 bottom).

CPC (Cost Per Click)

How much a click on one of your ads costs on average

Cost

How much your campaigns have spent.

Conversions

The number of times someone takes an action on your site after clicking on an ad (contact form fills, calls to the firm, chats).

Quality Score

A score out of 10 of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing pages are to a person who sees your ads.

SIS (Search Impression Share)

Of the number of times your ads were eligible to appear in the search results, this is the percentage of time they actually appeared.

Search Lost IS (budget)

How often your ad did not appear in the search results because your campaign’s daily budget was too low.

Search Lost IS (Rank)

How often your ad did not appear in the search results because your campaign’s Ad Rank was too low.

Click Share

Of the number of times your ads were eligible to receive clicks, this is the percentage of time they were actually clicked on..

Search (Top) IS

Of the number of times your ads were eligible to appear at the top of the Google search results, this is the percentage of time they actually appeared.

View-Through Conversions

Conversions that are recorded when a user views (but doesn’t click on) your ad, and then converts later.

View-Through Conversion Window

A period of time that you set to allow Google Ads to count view-through conversions.

Ad Rank

This determines your ad position and whether your ads will show at all. There are 3 things that affect your Ad Rank: bids, expected clickthrough rate, and quality score.

 

Understanding the meaning of these metrics is just one part of running successful Google Ads campaigns. Take a look at some of our other articles about advertising, or download our free guide for more help.

Avvo Accidentally Emails Thousands of Lawyers with Cancellation

Written by

This just in:  Avvo seems to have accidentally emailed thousands of lawyers with a cancellation of advertising services email.  The problem… seems that these are going out to non-advertisers (if not their entire database) as well.

Subject Line: Your advertising contract with Avvo is about to be canceled.

Your advertising contract with Avvo is scheduled to be cancelled.

We are sorry to see you go. Before we part ways, we would like to know what we could have done to keep your business.

Take a moment to answer this 5-question survey so we can understand how to improve our products and services.

We will send you a $5 Starbucks gift card as a token of our appreciation.

The cynic could suggest that this is just a smarmy, albeit desperate sales tactic to drive inbound conversations with the Avvo sales staff (and more than a few on Solosez have.) However – I suspect this is really a genuine mistake; although it won’t do much to engender any more goodwill for the online directory. The sheer volume of the emails (and time of day) makes it unlikely that this is a desperate attempt to have lawyers call into Avvo. Having said that, I’m pretty sure Julie Clarkson never would have let this happen!

(Of course, it would be funny if everyone “took” the survey to get the $5 Starbucks gift card…. just sayin.)

UPDATE: I asked the Avvo marketing peoples to weigh in….

The email attorneys received from Avvo earlier this morning was sent in error; please disregard it. We apologize for any confusion.