Legal marketing is a necessary part of practicing law today. More and more people use the internet to look up law firms and research about whether or not they can represent clients well. In addition, lawyers have to work hard at differentiating themselves from competitors; a criminal defense attorney, for example, would need to provide more reasons for a client to sign with him since there are so many others with his specialization.

Hiring a digital marketing agency for your law firm is one way of finding and capturing your audience. One of the things your agency will advise is allocating resources toward branded pay-per-click or PPC advertisements. These ads are an unobtrusive way to promote your law firm. They won’t cost you much, either; since PPC ads are charged only when a visitor clicks on the ad, you are sure to get people who are invested in finding a good lawyer.

How PPC advertising benefits law firms

When you have PPC ads, you can influence your business’ search engine results as well. If you type your firm’s name on Google, for example, you’d know that people associate your firm with the website if it comes up as one of the top three results. If you are registered with Google My Business, your firm name will place highly as well.

If you don’t do anything and just have a website for your firm, it might get pushed down by similar companies in your area, or ones with similar names. In a mobile device, search engine results will normally appear in this order: paid advertisement, Google My Business listing, and then the first organic result. If a person is browsing on mobile, they might have to scroll a little further down to get to the organic results.

When you have an AdWords consultant, you can jump the queue of the search engine results and be the first option to click. If you couple this with a long-term search engine optimization plan that provides valuable content for your target market, you can get more real estate on that first page of search results.

Uses of PPC advertising in legal marketing

Aside from being the top result for search keywords, you can use PPC ads to promote links on your website that are more aligned with your current marketing campaign. Since it is quicker to set up a PPC ad than it is for Google to index a website with keywords, you can use your ad links as a way to direct traffic to news or developments in your firm.

For example, you can link news regarding your company’s new acquisition. When people search your firm’s name or your newly acquired firm, they can be shown a link to a press release informing the public of this development.

Another example is when you hire a new lawyer who is also an expert in a specialized portion of the law. Yet another is if your firm is undergoing mass hiring, or if it is undergoing a transition in leadership. Your company’s branding should be under your control, and PPC ads help you maintain an image that you would like to show your clients.

Conclusion

What people read about your law firm online helps form their impressions of your company. Taking a proactive approach to maintaining your online reputation is a way of ensuring that you’ll get more clients in the future.

For help with growing your online presence, consult with us at Discover My Business. We are PPC management experts in New York who can help you build your advertising campaigns online!