Case studies / Legal
DUI & traffic defence · NevadaThe budget never went up. It just started buying four times as much.
Over two years with Eric Palacios Law, cost per click fell from $8 to $2 on traffic tickets and from $30 to $7 on DUI. Same $4,000 a month, roughly four times the clicks, bought by making the ads more relevant rather than by bidding harder.
The budget never went up. It just started buying four times as much.
Eric Palacios Law is a Nevada-based law firm defending clients against DUI charges and traffic violations in one of the most contested criminal defense markets in the country. Partnering with us for nearly two years on a stable $4,000/month budget, we completely separated their two practice areas, refined ad relevance, and aligned dedicated landing pages.
Over two years, this strategy slashed traffic ticket CPCs from $8 to $2 (75% reduction) and DUI CPCs from $30 to $7 (77% reduction): quadrupling their click volume without increasing their ad spend.
You don't lower cost per click by bidding less. You lower it by being more relevant.
Google charges less for ads it expects people to click and landing pages it expects them to stay on. That means the price of a click isn't fixed by the category: it's partly set by how well the keyword, the ad and the page agree with each other. Two firms bidding on the same DUI term can pay very different amounts for the same position.
Pay the category price, forever.
Broad keyword groupings, generic ad copy and a single landing page for every search. It works, in the sense that ads appear, at whatever the auction demands, which in Nevada DUI is a great deal. The only lever left is raising bids.
- Keyword to ad match Loose
- Ad to page match Generic
- DUI cost per click $30
- Only lever Spend more
Pay less for the same placement.
Tight ad groups where the keyword, the headline and the landing page all describe the same thing. Higher click-through, better landing page experience, and a lower price for the same position, compounding over two years of refinement.
- Keyword to ad match Tight
- Ad to page match Specific
- DUI cost per click $7
- Result 4x the clicks
Two practices in one of the most contested legal markets.
Eric Palacios Law defends DUI charges and traffic violations in Nevada: a state where criminal defence advertising is unusually competitive relative to its population, because of who passes through it.
Four things shaped the account.
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Nevada DUI clicks start expensive
Thirty dollars a click at the outset. Las Vegas concentrates a large volume of offences into a small geography, and every defence firm in the state competes for the same searches.
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Two practices at very different price points
A traffic ticket is a modest fee, a DUI many times more. Run from one budget without separation, the expensive keywords consume the cheaper practice's spend automatically.
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Relevance was the only lever available
At $4,000 a month, outbidding better-funded firms wasn't an option. The realistic path to more volume was paying less for each click rather than affording more of them.
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Some of the demand wasn't in Nevada
A share of enquiries came from people who'd been charged in Las Vegas and flown home. Real demand, and operationally awkward: see below.
Four things, repeated for two years.
None of them is clever. All of them compound.
Separate the two practices completely
DUI and traffic split into their own campaigns and budgets. At a several-fold difference in click price, a shared budget flows to the expensive side by default and the cheaper practice quietly stops running.
Both practices funded and measured independently.
Make the ad say what the search said
Ad groups tightened until the keyword, the headline and the description described the same specific thing. Click-through rate is the largest input into what Google charges, and it responds directly to whether the ad answers the search.
Higher engagement, lower price for the same position.
Match the landing page to the ad
Pages built per offence type rather than one page serving every search, so someone arriving from a DUI ad reads about a DUI. Landing page experience feeds the same quality signals, and it's the half most accounts never touch.
The second lever on cost per click, pulled.
Review search terms every month for two years
Continuous negative keyword work against the research traffic that shadows every criminal law term. Irrelevant clicks don't just waste money: they drag down the click-through rate that determines what the relevant clicks cost.
$8 to $2 on traffic, $30 to $7 on DUI.
Four times the traffic, on the same money.
- Monthly budget ~$4,000
- Traffic ticket CPC $8 → $2
- DUI CPC $30 → $7
- Cost per traffic lead ~$20
- Cost per DUI lead ~$175
A 75% reduction in click price is the same thing as a 300% budget increase, except the client doesn't pay for it. That's the whole argument for spending the time on relevance rather than asking for more money.
It also took two years. Anyone promising a cost-per-click reduction of this size inside a quarter is describing a different kind of change: usually a shift to cheaper, lower-intent keywords, which lowers the price and the quality at the same time.
The difference matters. Cheaper clicks from worse searches look identical on a cost-per-click report and produce nothing. Cheaper clicks from the same searches are the result of relevance improving, and the lead costs stay steady or fall with them.
The Las Vegas problem we didn't solve
Somewhere between 5% and 10% of calls came from people who had been charged in Las Vegas and gone home: to New York, Florida, anywhere. They had a Nevada court date and no intention of flying back for it.
It's genuine demand, and it's peculiar to Nevada in a way that doesn't apply anywhere else. It's also operationally difficult: out-of-state clients are harder to manage, harder to reach, and the cases carry more friction than a local matter.
We didn't build anything to pursue it. Targeting out-of-state searchers deliberately would have meant more of a case type the firm found awkward to run, which is a bad trade regardless of what the lead volume looks like. Worth knowing that it exists, and worth being honest that we left it alone.
Four things about the price of a click.
Cost per click is partly yours to set
It isn't a fixed category price. Relevance between keyword, ad and landing page changes what you pay for the same position, sometimes by a factor of four.
Check whether cheaper means worse
A falling cost per click is only good news if cost per lead falls with it. If the clicks got cheaper and the leads didn't, you've bought lower-intent traffic.
Landing pages are half the score
Most accounts optimise ads and leave one landing page serving every search. Matching the page to the ad is the underused half of the equation.
This kind of gain takes years
Relevance compounds slowly through repeated search term review and testing. Be suspicious of anyone promising a 75% reduction in a quarter.
What went into it.
Five of our services, over two years.
Paying the category price for your clicks?
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