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Speaker 1 (00:02):
How do I tactically
expand my reach on Google Ads or
my budget, or just spend morein general?
Welcome to Legal Marketing 101.
I'm Toby Rosen.
When it comes to Google Ads,every dollar counts, especially
in this industry, where we'refighting against law firms that
have gigantic six-figuremarketing budgets.
And the reality is, look, thestrategic allocation of your
(00:25):
budget is what makes thedifference between wasted spend
and high value leads walkingthrough your door.
So let's break down how we dothis strategically.
We're getting straight into it,and the three key areas we're
going to talk about today arekeywords, geo-targeting and
timing.
First, we want to prioritizehigh intent keywords because,
(00:47):
look, not all keywords and notall clicks are created equal
High intent keywords like citypersonal injury lawyer or
divorce attorney near me.
They attract users who areactively searching for your
services.
When I say city, you canreplace that with any city out
there.
These are the people who aresearching on these terms.
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These are the people who aremost likely to convert into
clients.
Generic terms like legal advicethey're going to bring in some
traffic, for sure, but they'reusually too broad to generate
real leads.
Instead, we need to allocateour budget towards specific,
action-oriented keywords.
This approach improves ourquality score, it lowers our
cost per click and it boosts ouroverall return on investment.
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But here's one of the tricksDon't forget to use negative
keywords to filter outirrelevant traffic.
We've talked about this on thepodcast before.
So if you're not handlingcriminal cases and you have
terms like legal advice or legaltips in your keywords again I
don't recommend doing this.
But let's just say you do addterms to your negative keyword
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list like criminal defense orDUI lawyer.
This ensures that your ads onlyappear to the right audience
and doesn't appear on theseother high intent searches for
different areas in your practicearea.
And when it comes to areas, weneed to talk about location.
For law firms, location iseverything they say.
That's for real estate, butit's really the truth for law
firms too.
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Most potential clients, theywant someone local, and that's
where geo-targeting comes inwhen it comes to ads.
So we want to start bynarrowing our targeting to
specific regions, zip codes even, or a radius around the office,
depending on how we want totarget our campaign and where
our potential audience is.
This may or may not work, butin general, we want to be narrow
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.
So if our practice thrives oncases from affluent
neighborhoods or areas with highcar accident rates.
That's where we want to focusthe ads.
This ensures that our budgetisn't wasted on clicks that are
maybe not outside our servicearea, but just outside the area
of where our ideal clients areor live or are working.
Google Ads also lets us adjustour bids by location, so not
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only can we just turn areas onand off, but we can prioritize
the areas where our firm seesthe highest ROI.
So if there's a client from atargeted region that is way more
likely to convert than someonethat is not in that target
region, then we just want topour more money into that target
region.
And that brings us to numberthree on this list, which is day
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parting.
Day parting also just simplyknown as adjusting your ad
schedule.
This ensures that your adsappear at the right time.
We need to use data to ask whenare clients most likely to call
or submit a form.
For many firms, that's duringbusiness hours or the early
evening, but I don't want you toguess at this.
Go and analyze your historicaldata to identify the peak times
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for inquiries.
Then use that data to scheduleyour ads to run or increase
their bids during these windowsand pause or decrease bids
during off hours, whenconversions are less likely.
This approach reduces wastedspend and it aligns your budget
with your client's behavior.
That's ultimately what we'realways trying to do is align
with their behavior so that wecan capture more of them and
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turn them into clients.
With these strategies, yourGoogle Ads campaigns can start
working harder and deliverbetter results without blowing
through your budget immediately.
Now, there's a lot more I cantalk about when it comes to
strategic budget allocation, butthese three strategies are
really good for making sure thatyou're focused and that your
budget is going to the users youwant it to go to.
But let's keep going, becauseexpanding on Google Ads this is
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something that, shockingly, I'masked more and more about
Getting more exposure, and thereality is that expanding our
reach sure, it can mean spendingmore money, but it doesn't have
to mean emptying our budget.
By leveraging smart strategiesand tools that Google gives us
access to, we can attract morequalified leads while keeping
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costs under control.
Let's talk about how we can dothis with a couple of different
strategies.
First on the list is smartbidding strategies.
Google's automated biddingoptions are game changers, not
just for law firms, but foranyone that's looking to get the
most out of their ad spend.
Options like target cost peracquisition or target CPA, and
maximize conversions one of myfavorites.
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They allow you to focus yourbudgets on actions that matter
most Things like clientinquiries, consultation,
bookings, phone calls.
Quickly target CPA this is aspecific cost that we're willing
to pay for each lead.
Google's algorithm adjusts thebids for all of our keywords in
real time to stay within thattarget while trying to maximize
conversions.
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And there is a little bit offlex.
So if we set $100 CPA, it couldgo up to $120 or $125, but
Google's going to do its best tomake sure that they get you
conversions at the number thatyou've asked for.
And then there's maximizeconversions.
This strategy uses our budget togenerate as many conversions as
possible.
It's ideal for firms that arelooking to grow their client
base quickly.
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But I like it because itdoesn't tell Google to ignore a
conversion if it's slightly moreexpensive.
We're okay paying $150 for aconversion even if our target is
$100, but especially when we'regetting started out, we want to
get as much volume in aspossible.
When we're getting started out,we want to get as much volume
in as possible, the key tosuccess here, and I've talked
about it when it comes tobidding strategies before.
The key to success with smartbidding is having enough
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historical data.
Google needs this data topredict which clicks are the
most likely to convert.
If your account doesn't havesufficient data yet, just start
with manual bidding or enhancedCPC to collect initial insights.
Go back and listen to some ofmy bidding episodes Google ads
episodes to learn more aboutthis.
But next, google ads.
You know it's not just aboutkeywords.
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There's there's more to it.
It's also about knowing youraudience, and we've talked about
this in a bunch of recentepisodes.
Enhanced audience targetingensures that your ads reach the
most people that are likely touse your services.
So we've got two different areasof this.
First is custom intentaudiences.
These allow us to createaudience segments based on
specific online behaviors, so wecould target users who have
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searched for your competitors orfor legal queries, like best
personal injury lawyer near meand this ensures that our ads
are appearing to people who areactively seeking legal help with
those high intent keywords.
And we can use remarketinglists.
Now, not every firm is going tohave access to this.
There are a bunch ofregulations on Google about
which firms can use remarketing,but it's really effective, and
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that's because not every websitevisitor converts immediately.
Remarketing keeps your firm topof mind by showing ads to past
visitors of your website as theybrowse other pages on the web.
And if we pair this with astrong call to action like still
need help, book a freeconsultation today, to re-engage
these potential clients, it'sreally something, and it doesn't
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have to stop there.
One of the most powerful tacticsI've seen is combining the
remarketing stuff with similaraudiences.
Google identifies users thathave similar online behavior to
the people in your remarketinglists and it gives you an
entirely new audience to reach.
Google is getting really goodat some of this stuff.
That actually makes a lot ofsense, and that's definitely
become true with our next topic,which is RSAs responsive search
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ads.
Gone are the days of creatingstatic ad copy and then just
hoping it resonates, or creatingthree versions of an ad with
one punctuation mark.
Changed RSAs, let us testmultiple headlines and
descriptions simultaneously andthey dynamically adjust based on
the user behavior, based on thedata that they're getting back.
Here's how it works we provideup to 15 headlines and four
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longer descriptions, and Googleuses machine learning to mix and
match these elements,displaying the best performing
combinations to users.
So one user might see top citydivorce lawyer free case
evaluation, while another seesneed legal help talk to an
experienced attorney today.
This flexibility allows our adsto adapt to different search
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intents and drive higherengagement, and it allows us to
use really cool features likedynamic keyword insertion and
stuff that Google allows us todo to resonate even more with
users on the search engineresults page.
Check out my other Google adsepisodes for that.
Rsas also really, really helpwhen it comes to this ad
relevance.
Dki is a big part of that, butRSAs are great because they
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improve our quality score andthey ultimately just end up
increasing our CTRs, reducingour costs.
All of that good stuff.
But here's the thing To get themost out of these RSAs include
variations that highlight yourunique selling points, kind of
like how you'd use call-outextensions or some of the other
extensions that Google offers.
Examples like 24-7 clientsupport, millions recovered for
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our clients.
All of these are reallyinteresting and they align with
your audience's needs.
Now we bring it all togetherand combine the smart bidding,
precise audience targeting anddynamic ad copy and we're going
to significantly expand ourreach without even increasing
our budget.
Now, if you are trying toincrease your budget and you're
trying to increase the overallnumber of people, these
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strategies will still work foryou.
You can turn up that number andknow that the conversions that
are coming in are going to behighly relevant and that you're
going to spend less perconversion because you're
targeting the right people atthe right time.
Now, as I've talked about on thepodcast, I have Chad GPT helped
me a lot with these scripts andI've had Chad GPT write me a
section about leveragingtechnology and tools when it
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comes to Google Ads campaignsand automating tasks and
streamlining processes and,ultimately, just improving
decision making, and I'm notgoing to go through all of these
in this episode.
I'll go through some of this ata later date and I've already
gone through some of it, but Ijust want to quickly skim
through and read off to you whatChad GPT thinks are the most
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important tools for leveragingtechnology within Google Ads,
and first up is automated rulesand scripts.
I've talked a little bit aboutthese automated rules.
We can use these to setspecific conditions that trigger
actions, things like pausingads with a low CTR so that we
prevent wasted spend, orautomatically increasing bids on
high performance keywordsduring peak hours or even
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sending notifications whencampaigns are approaching their
budget cap.
These automated rules arereally helpful on these
repetitive tasks and for thesesmall things that we just want
to make sure we know theyhappened.
They're pretty cool and I'mgoing to go through them in more
detail at a later date, butthat's tool number one.
Number two is the scripts.
These are a little bit morecomplicated.
They do involve some codingwith the AdWords query language
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as a derivative of JavaScript,and they're cool because they're
a lot more advanced.
But they are a lot moreadvanced so we can use scripts
to do similar things where wehave low CTR stuff bid
adjustments, report generationbut we can also have it connect
to external information.
So if it starts raining, thenwe can have the script tell the
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ads to change the bidding.
In some this is much moreuseful if you're selling umbrell
more useful if you're sellingumbrellas than if you're selling
legal services when it comes torain.
But there are things like thatthat we can do with scripts that
are much more advanced andreally really cool.
For most law firms this isn'tcritical anymore.
Automated rules give us reallygood coverage with most of the
basic stuff we want to do, andscripts at this point are a
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little bit overkill, but I dowant to mention these because
these tools save time and theyhelp make sure that your
campaigns are staying optimizedeven when you're focusing on
something else.
So if you are personallymanaging your Google ads you
don't have a campaign managerlike me in there Rules and
scripts are really effective formaking sure that things happen
in the account, even if youcan't be looking at it every day
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.
And when it comes to thecreative side of things, I know
15 headlines and fourdescriptions can sound kind of
overwhelming.
So AI tools like Chad GPT areincredibly effective in that
role.
Give Chad GPT some informationabout your practice, your key
selling points, maybe about youor your audience, and it'll
produce some headlines for you.
And on top of this, you canfeed the data from Google Ads
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back into Chad GPT and ask it tohelp you make decisions on what
to change in your ads for thenext variation in your ads.
It's a really interesting tool.
We're seeing just the tip ofthe iceberg when it comes to
Chad GPT and Google Ads, butthat's a quick way you can use
it.
But look, leveraging thesetechnologies isn't just about
working smarter so you can workless.
The overall thing here is thatwe're making data-driven
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decisions that deliver betterresults without a lot of
guesswork.
These rules and scripts theysave time.
Ai and machine learning theygive us a lot of creative
potential, and all the coolanalytics stuff we can track
gives us a lot of insight intowhat our campaigns are doing and
what we can change and do tomove forward.
Here's what I would say for thisweek.
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Take one or two of thestrategies we've discussed today
and implement them into yourcampaigns this week.
You're going to be incrediblysurprised by how even these
little changes are going to leadto big wins.
We'll be back next Monday withmore on marketing in the legal
industry and the legal universe.
As always, if you have anyquestions, please don't hesitate
to visit my website, ask aquestion.
(13:47):
I'll be happy to follow upeither here on the podcast or
directly with you via email ifthat's what's needed.
But for today, that's it forLegal Marketing 101.
Check out RosenAdvertisingcomfor more Thanks.