Case studies / Legal
DUI defence · Google AdsWe bought eight times the traffic and got 46% more leads.
Month two of this account is the one worth reading. We scaled clicks from 69 to 541 and the conversion rate collapsed from 18.8% to 3.5%. Month three we spent 21% less, got 132% more leads, and cut cost per lead by two thirds.
A DUI defence firm serving clients who need help this week.
Alatorre Law defends DUI charges in Arizona. The client is usually someone who was arrested days ago, has a court date, and is deciding fast, which changes what the advertising has to do.
We were brought in to run Google Ads on a modest monthly budget, in one of the most expensive and researcher heavy keyword sets in legal advertising.
More traffic is not more clients. Sometimes it's the opposite.
Scaling a new account by opening it up is the obvious move, and it's what we did in month two. The clicks arrived. The leads didn't follow, because the extra traffic was made of people researching DUI law, looking up penalties, comparing costs, or writing about it, not people who had just been arrested and needed a lawyer that week.
541 clicks. 19 leads.
Spend roughly tripled and traffic went up nearly eightfold. Lead volume moved from 13 to 19, a 46% gain for a 203% budget increase, and the conversion rate fell from 18.8% to 3.5%. On a traffic report it looked like growth.
- Spend $3,243.19
- Clicks 541
- Conversion rate 3.51%
- Cost per lead $170.69
338 clicks. 44 leads.
We cut the traffic that wasn't converting, pulled spend back below month two, and concentrated on the searches that indicated someone actually facing a charge. Fewer clicks, more than twice the leads, a third of the cost each.
- Spend $2,549.21
- Clicks 338
- Conversion rate 13.02%
- Cost per lead $57.94
An urgent service in an expensive category.
Alatorre Law defends DUI charges in Arizona. The client is usually someone who was arrested days ago, has a court date, and is deciding fast. That changes what the advertising has to do.
Four things shaped the account.
DUI is among the most expensive keyword sets in Google Ads
Every criminal defence firm wants these searches and a single case justifies a high acquisition cost. On a $2,000 monthly budget, there's very little room for traffic that doesn't convert.
The vocabulary attracts researchers as well as clients
Students, journalists, people checking penalties for a friend, and drivers with a general question all search the same words as someone who needs representation. That overlap is where the July budget went.
The decision happens on the phone
91% of all leads here arrived as calls. Someone facing a charge wants to speak to a lawyer, not fill in a form and wait, so an account optimised toward form fills measures almost none of its own performance.
The window is days, not weeks
A person arrested on Saturday has usually chosen counsel within the week. Being present at the right moment matters more than reaching more people over time.
Four parts, and one correction.
The correction is the part most accounts never make.
Build around the phone from the start
Search and call campaigns with call tracking on every inbound, designed for someone reading about their charge on a phone. Given 91% of leads came by phone, anything less would have left most of the account unmeasured.
Every lead attributable to a campaign and a search.
Landing pages written for someone in trouble
Conversion focused pages built around what a person facing a DUI actually needs in the first ninety seconds: what happens next, what it costs, and how quickly they can speak to someone. Not a firm biography.
An 18.84% conversion rate in month one.
Scale up, and watch it fail
In month two we opened the account up to capture more volume. Traffic went up nearly eight times. Leads rose 46%, conversion rate fell to 3.5%, and cost per lead more than doubled. The extra traffic was researchers, not defendants.
$170.69 per lead, and a clear read on why.
Cut it back harder than before
Search term review across the whole of month two, aggressive negative keywords against research and informational queries, and budget concentrated on the terms that indicated an active charge. We spent less than month two and less than planned.
44 leads at $57.94, the best month of the three.
The middle month is the useful one.
| Month | Spend | Clicks | Leads | Conv. rate | Cost/lead |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June | $1,070 | 69 | 13 | 18.84% | $82.32 |
| July | $3,243 | 541 | 19 | 3.51% | $170.69 |
| August | $2,549 | 338 | 44 | 13.02% | $57.94 |
| Total | $6,863 | 948 | 76 | n/a | $90.30 |
Of those 76 leads, 69 were phone calls, and in August, every single one was. The form submissions went to zero in the month the account performed best.
We're publishing July because without it the August figures mean nothing. $57.94 a lead is only interesting if you know we'd just spent a month at $170.69 finding out what didn't work.
That month cost the client real money and taught the account something no amount of upfront keyword research would have. The searches that look like DUI intent and the searches that are DUI intent are very close together, and the only way to separate them reliably is to buy some of the wrong ones and read what happened.
An agency that reports only its good months will keep making that mistake, quietly, for years.
Figures cover the first three months of a six month engagement.
Five stars, three words.
"Thank you Yauheni!"
Javier Alatorre, Alatorre Law · five star review posted publicly on Google.
Four things for any urgent service account.
Watch conversion rate when you scale
If lead volume rises much slower than traffic, you've bought a different audience, not more of the same one. The conversion rate tells you within a month.
Research traffic looks exactly like buyer traffic
In legal, medical, and financial categories, the people learning about a problem outnumber the people who have it. Negatives are the only thing separating them.
Count calls or measure nothing
91% of leads here were phone calls, and in the best month it was 100%. Any urgent service optimised around form fills is optimising against its own data.
Ask to see the bad month
Every account has one. An agency that can show you what went wrong and what it changed is describing a process. One that only shows good months is describing a selection.
What went into it.
Five of our services, over six months.
Did your leads grow as fast as your budget?
If you've scaled spend recently and the lead count didn't follow, you're probably paying for a different audience than the one that was converting. Give us read only access and we'll show you which search terms arrived with the extra budget. Findings are yours to keep either way.
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