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In an ever-evolving digital marketing environment, one element remains consistent – Google’s domination of search engine market share. This also holds true when it comes to how consumers research and look for lawyers online, with 90% of consumers saying they would use Google. As marketers, we want to know where people are clicking when it comes to Google search results. Are people clicking on LSAs more than traditional search ads? What percentage of people click on local packs? How does the placement of ads and local pack impact organic clicks? To find out, we ran a click-test study of a Google search result page with a total of 1,001 participants.

Each person in our study was shown an image of Google search results. They were asked to click on the one search result that they were most likely to click first if they were looking for a car accident lawyer. They were also asked to explain why they clicked where they did.

Note: It’s important to keep in mind that this was a “first-click” study, meaning the user only clicked one time on the image. The main study purpose was to identify what parts of the search results captured the user’s attention the most. In a “real world” scenario, users click on many different results when using Google to find law firms online. However, understanding what makes people click where they do is a crucial part of optimizing any digital marketing campaign.

SERP Click Distribution

While clicks were all over the place, as shown in the click map image below, the LSAs received the most clicks, followed by the local pack and then organic search results. We’ll dig into each of these items below.

LSAs

In our study, the LSAs clearly got the most activity. Considering LSAs are positioned at the very top of the page for most local searches for law firms, I don’t think this will shock most marketers. If you combine the 3 LSAs plus the “more results” link below those ads, 42% of participants clicked LSA-related links. One ad, in particular, was the most clicked of any element on the page, at a whopping 28%. Interestingly, the very first LSA ad only received 3% of the clicks and the LSA in the middle received 6%. We expected that first LSA to receive a much higher percentage of first-clicks, but these results show that it’s not simply about your location on the page. Reviews of course are a huge influencer in CTR, as well as the text that accompanies the ad. As for the ad that received 28% of the clicks, here are some of the specific reasons why participants clicked where they did:

• “It has the most positive ratings.”
• “It had the highest star rating with the most rating contributions. An added plus was it also had the most years in service.”
• “It had a 5-star rating with the most reviews. I initially noticed Seattle Car Accident Law Firm first, but there were fewer reviews, so I clicked on the link with more reviews.”
• “High number of good reviews, high number of years in business.”
• “I liked that this lawyer was Google-screened, had 32 years of experience, and a high number of positive reviews.”

You can see the pattern here. It’s all about the star ratings, review count, and years of experience.

Local Packs

The Local Packs received 29% of the first-clicks in our study. The local pack listed #1 received 14% of the clicks, #2 received 12% and #3 only received 1% of clicks, which was surprising. The remainder of the clicks went to the filter by rating drop-down that appears above the first map pack listing. Here are some of the reasons that users gave for why they clicked on where they did in the local packs.

• “I typically skip directly past sponsored results, and I would be drawn toward search results that have a lot of reviews and have been around for a while.”
• “I want to see real user reviews for each business. The ‘Google screened” seems fake and probably they paid Google to be there.”
• “High rating and years in practice”
• “This is an established law firm with over 20 years of experience. I would start my search with this law firm.”
• “They had very good reviews and were in business the longest so probably have a lot of good cases under their belts and know the area well.”

Just like the LSAs, ratings, and reviews were the most common reasons participants gave for why they clicked where they did.

Organics

The top 5 organic listings received 22% of the first-clicks in our study, with the #1 position accounting for 50% of the total. Interestingly, the #3 organic position received 6% of clicks and the #2 organic spot only took in 1%. This goes to show you that consumers don’t always click on results in the order in which they appear. Many users scan the page and read the titles and descriptions to help them decide which listings to click on. This is why it’s important to pay attention to CTR optimization. I don’t think anyone would be surprised that the organics took in fewer clicks than the LSAs or local packs, considering how far down the page the organics were here. Considering that Google continues to emphasize paid listings and with all the changes occurring in Google SERPs, don’t expect this to get better for these bottom-of-the-funnel searches. Here are some of the reasons given for why users made this their 1st click:

• “Because the first regular Google results are usually the most trustworthy.”
• “It is the first link of the main results. I don’t usually trust the sponsored ones.”
• “Because the link was not labeled as sponsored.”
• “Looking for a curated list of the best lawyers from a trustworthy source”
• “It was the first non-sponsored website that showed up”.

The underlying theme here with participants who clicked on organic results was that they were not paid for and were, therefore, more trustworthy.

While the LSAs and local pack received much higher activity in our study, it’s important to keep in mind that paid ads or local packs don’t always appear in search results, so organic SEO remains incredibly important for law firms. Especially for long tail or other top of the funnel searches. We currently track around 20,000 law related keywords in our Google algorithm monitoring software and at this time, exactly 50% of the queries we track included LSAs. Smarter marketers are optimizing your site for bottom, middle and top of the funnel search terms.

For firms that have invested in SEO for a while and that have a great SEO company behind them, most know that SEO still provides the very best value when it comes to cost per lead or cost per signed case, especially considering the rising costs of paid search ads on Google.

Important Takeaways

1. LSAs get the most first-clicks when they appear in the SERPs
2. Users clicked most on the LSA listing with the most reviews, highest ratings, and most experience
3. Local pack listings with the most reviews and the most years of experience received the most clicks
4. The #1 organic result received the 4th most clicks of any item on the page.
5. Google SERPs are constantly changing and you can expect more changes to be made.
6. LSAs do not appear for most law related search terms so having high visibility in organic results remains important.

Current Changes in SERPs

We have been observing much more variation in the Google search results of late for searches in the legal industry. I don’t just mean ranking changes, but changes in what SERP features are displaying. For example, we have observed Google reducing the number of local packs that show up (and we aren’t the only ones, as Joy Hawkins mentions here) in searches, as mentioned by Barry Schwartz on Twitter recently.

We’ve seen many other different variations in the layouts of Google search results as well. Sometimes searches include LSAs but do not display text ads, as was the case in our study. We’ve seen paid ads appear in the local 3-pack. Other times, both LSAs and search ads appear in local searches. In other instances, the local packs appear near the bottom of the SERPs. You can click the thumbnails below to see larger versions.

SERPs – No LSAs	SERPs – Local pack at bottom

The point being, you can’t rely on anything right now because there are so many changes occurring at this time. You can expect additional changes overall when Google introduces AI chat features to its core search engine. It will be interesting to see how these changes impact the legal vertical, but you can be sure we will be watching closely. As an FYI, currently, we track over 30,000 law-related keywords on Google search results every day (and have for many years).

Final Comments

Again, I’ll point out that this was a 1st click test, and in a real-world scenario, users will be clicking on many different results when using Google to research which law firms to hire. During our many consumer testing studies over the years, we’ve consistently observed people clicking on BOTH paid and organic listings in the same set of Google search results. We also know that’s true from Google Analytics data that we analyze on a regular basis. Additionally, it’s important to keep in mind that Google Ad costs will continue to rise. I don’t know about your law firm, but most firms we work with don’t have an unlimited paid budget. No matter what, you should never put all your eggs in one basket and rely on one thing only.

The smartest thing for law firms to do is to run both organic and paid ads if budget allows. If properly optimized, running both organic and paid campaigns will ultimately give you the best chance of signing up new clients on a consistent basis.

We will continue to run additional click test studies, as further testing is needed considering all the changes that are happening of late. If you want to be alerted when we publish new studies, make sure to sign up for our newsletter.

The process of consumers researching which law firm they should hire is more involved than most attorneys realize. While the significant majority of all consumers use Google, that’s not the only source they use when searching for law firms online. For many Americans, it’s usually a combination of multiple sources that lead them to reach out and contact a firm. With all the different resources available to consumers these days, what platforms are consumers using to conduct research on which law firm to hire? Are people using chatGPT to research lawyers? Do consumers use social media apps like TikTok to find lawyers? We wanted to find out, so we conducted a new study.

A total of 543 people across the United States participated, and it revealed which digital platforms consumers are using to conduct research on law firms before making the incredibly important decision on which law firm to hire. The study involved participants aged 21 to 65, and one of the questions we asked them was: “If you needed to hire a lawyer, which digital sources would you use to conduct research on which law firm to hire? Select all the ones you would use in your research process.”

The results reveal the variety of platforms that people are relying on and show the importance of having a diverse digital presence in 2023. This analysis offers valuable insights for law firms looking to generate more leads and cases through their online presence.

Google Remains Dominant in 2023

It’s no surprise which platform is dominant, Google still is the king when it comes to consumer’s looking for law firms online.

90% participants in this study said they would use Google to do research on which law firm to hire.

Google stands alone and completely dominates over any other digital source, as shown in the bar chart at the top of this page. We were curious if the introduction of chatGPT would have any impact on the number of people who use Google. Clearly, it hasn’t changed the fact that for the great majority of people (90% in our study), Google is still going to be heavily utilized. A couple of years back we conducted a different study and had asked participants what would be their primary source to research which law firm to hire. In that study, 86% gave the answer of “Google”.

It’s also important to keep in mind that consumers in 2023 rely heavily on Google reviews, and the number of reviews you have play a big part in CTR (Click Through Rate) in Google search results.  In a recent click study we performed with over 1,000 participants (we will post about this separate study soon), we asked people to tell us why they clicked where they did on Google results. What was the most common keyword used by that study’s participants? REVIEWS! Consumers take into consideration both the quantity and quality of your online reviews.

If you don’t have great visibility on Google, you already know you are missing out on business for your firm. Ideally in 2023, you are running a combination of both paid Google ads and you have great organic rankings, as this gives you the best chance of being found when consumers are looking for law firms on Google.

chatGPT: Limited Adoption

There’s been a lot of buzz in the media about chatGPT this year. Some people and media outlets have called it a “Google Killer”. Those people are wrong. Certainly when it comes to researching which lawyer to hire, people aren’t ready to simply trust the output of a GPT, although some people will start using it as part of their research process and may be asking informational based queries. In total, less than 1 out of 10 (9%) of participants indicated they would use chatGPT when doing research on law firms.

Facebook Still Relevant

Facebook was listed as one of the research sources people would use by more than 1 out of every 5 people who participated in the study. Understandably, Facebook is more important to older study participants over the age of 30 than younger people. Considering most consumers who hire lawyers are over the age of 30, it’s something that should not be ignored.

An interesting related data point we found in this study about people age 30 and over – 90% said that having a video about the firm would help them in their decision process of hiring a law firm. If you don’t have a great video on your site to impress your consumers, you need to have one in order to convert more visitors in 2023.

Part of our service offerings include creating law firm videos with a goal of helping to convert more visitors because we’ve seen the positive impact it has on helping law firms generate more leads and cases. Our consumer research studies over the years have helped to make us the best in the business at law firm video creation because we know what things are most important to consumers, will help build trust (a crucial part of the consumer’s process of hiring a law firm) and ultimately help you sign more new cases.

While 22% of consumers listed Facebook as one of the sources they would use in their research process, this doesn’t mean you need to be posting on Facebook on a regular basis or that you should make it a focal point of your marketing. However, you should make sure that your Facebook page is not incredibly outdated, has positive reviews and presents your law firm in a good light for those times that consumer do visit your page.

Additionally, because it’s still used over 200 million U.S. users, you should consider Facebook ads to generate more awareness for your firm. No doubt, many consumers have seen law firm ads on Facebook and that may be a factor as to why it was listed among 22% of the study participants.

Yelp: The Importance of Reviews

Why is Yelp important in 2023? Because reviews matter and are more important than ever. Yelp reviews, Google reviews, Facebook reviews…they all matter if someone is doing research on your law firm and wondering if they should hire you. Don’t ignore Yelp, especially if you have no reviews or you have a rating of 3.5 or lower. It will cost you cases. Our past studies have revealed that 89% of people won’t hire a lawyer if they have less than an average of 4 star reviews.

YouTube: Used for Research and as a Search Engine

Video matters to 4 out of 5 consumers who are researching which law firm to hire. So, it’s understandable that people will turn to YouTube to try to find information about a law firm. Many consumers will use YouTube as a search engine. Take a look at the image above and you’ll see auto completion suggestions given by YouTube when typing in “San Diego car accident”. The first two suggestions are for lawyer and attorney. These auto completion suggestions are based on actual searches being done on YouTube.

Aside from searches for lawyers, consumers also use YouTube to try and find more information about the firm they are considering hiring. In 2023, video can be a powerful way to generate more leads and cases for your firm.

Bing: Used by a small minority of users

Bing has received a ton of publicity this year, mainly due to their integration of chatGPT into their search engine and the Edge browser. This may have led to higher numbers in our study, as traditionally, Bing generally accounts for less than 5% of all search traffic for most law firms.  However, we don’t optimize for Bing search, we optimize for Google because of the obvious market share dominance that Google has and we don’t want to jeopardize Google rankings. However, we do run Bing ad campaigns in combination with Google ads for some of our firms who run paid ad campaigns.

Voice Activated Digital Assistants

Interestingly, 10% of participants said that voice-activated digital assistants Siri and Alexa would each be utilized in their law firm research process. In past research studies we’ve done however, consumers don’t love the experience of what is provided by Siri or Alexa. Neither one are very good at being digital assistants at the moment. However, this could change if these digital assistants perform more like chatGPT in the future. More research needs to be done here, but it may be that people are using digital assistants not to look for specific information on law firms, but to ask informational questions like “How much do personal injury lawyers charge?”, “How much time do I have to file a personal injury lawsuit in California?”, etc.

TikTok: Gaining Traction

Naturally, TikTok is more popular with younger audiences, but the TikTok user base continues to expand. We’ve seen more activity by law firms using TikTok in the past year, both for posting organically and for running ads on. Depending on who your target consumers are, it may be something to consider in 2023, at least for running ads on. Unless it gets banned in the U.S., we expect this number to increase in the future.

Key Takeaways

• If you want to generate more leads and cases in 2023, you must have great visibility on Google since it is used by 90% of consumers looking for attorneys online.
• Reviews are a very important part of the consumer research process in 2023. Focus on your Google and Yelp reviews.
• Yelp was the 3rd most used source at 21% and remains important due to the significance of reviews.
• Bing was listed by 15% of all participants – consider running Bing ads for visibility.
• Facebook is a relevant research source, especially for consumers age 30+.
• YouTube is used by 20% of consumers trying to research lawyers online.  Your law firm videos should be on YouTube.
• Having video about the firm significantly helps in the decision-making process for consumers. It is recommended to have video on your website, as well as other social media platforms (YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram).
• Consumers look for information on multiple platforms. A diverse and well rounded overall digital presence will help you generate more leads.

There’s been an insane amount of buzz around chatGPT in the past couple of months. From large media outlets, television news coverage, or social media, it seems you can’t go a single day without hearing someone talk about it. And understandably so! For most, ChatGPT is exciting new technology that has many incredible use cases. One use case in particular that many people in the digital world are talking about is content generation. For those that have never experienced using AI to generate text, it seems like a great idea to use a GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) like chatGPT to create new content for a website. However, from an SEO standpoint, this is not a smart idea.

Let’s talk about a few of the reasons why you should not use chatGPT to write content for your website.

A.I. Generated Content Can Be Detected

While for most people, GPT generated content is a new thing, it’s far from a novel concept. The technology has been around for many years. Personally, I’ve been experimenting with different versions of OpenAI GPTs since 2019, as I was a beta tester with GPT-2 and GPT-3. At this moment, there is plenty of software on the market that is capable of detecting whether or not a piece of content is AI generated. It’s a hot topic right now in the education space, where teachers are trying to determine if students are using chatGPT to do their work for them. AI content detection software typically works by using machine learning algorithms to analyze text for various features such as language patterns, syntax, and style. ChatGPT will also be integrating a watermarking feature that uses cryptography to indicate that a piece of content was created by their software. The idea behind this is to avoid misuse of AI in deceptive ways (such as mass generation of propaganda). While AI generated content may potentially work for a short period of time, we can expect future Google algorithm updates that will try and combat the use of AI generated content.

ChatGPT is sometimes factually incorrect

ChatGPT is not always right, so you cannot always rely on the information it gives you. There are plenty of examples being shared on social media of chatGPT being incorrect.

Here’s another example. This should be easy for it to answer this question, but it gets it incorrect.

No, it’s not a Google killer yet. Here’s the answer that Google gives me.

I asked chatGPT a question right now. It produced a fictitious case example here.

ChatGPT produces duplicate content

If you and I both ask chatGPT to write an article on “How to Find the Best Personal Injury Lawyer”, it will often generate the exact same response, at least for large blocks of text where the content is verbatim.  Of course, you’re not the only person wondering if you should use chatGPT to create content for your website. Now imagine 100 different personal injury law firms asking chatGPT to write that same article. Yea, there will be lots of content with the same information. That’s not a great recipe for SEO success.

ChatGPT doesn’t provide current information

I asked ChatGPT a simple question. As you can see the the response, the training data for chatGPT only goes back to 2021. So, it’s not current and can’t answer anything after the training data.

AI Generated Content is Against Google’s Guidelines

As if the reasons above weren’t enough, did you know AI generated content is against Google’s guidelines? According to Google’s search advocate John Mueller, it falls under the category of auto-generated content, which could lead to a manual penalty. In a recent Google SEO office hours, in regards to the topic of AI generated content he said:

“Currently it’s all against the webmaster guidelines. So from our point of view, if we were to run across something like that, if the webspam team were to see it, they would see it as spam.”

Before making that statement, he also said the following:

“I can’t claim that. But for us, if we see that something is automatically generated, then the webspam team can definitely take action on that.

And I don’t know how the future will evolve there, but I imagine like with any other of these technologies, there will be a little bit of a cat and mouse game, where sometimes people will do something and they get away with it, and then the webspam team catches up and solves that issue on a broader scale.

From our recommendation we still see it as automatically generated content. I think over time maybe this is something that will evolve in that it will become more of a tool for people. Kind of like you would use machine translation as a basis for creating a translated version of a website, but you still work through it manually.

And maybe over time these AI tools will evolve in that direction that you use them to be more efficient in your writing or to make sure that you’re writing in a proper way like the spelling and the grammar checking tools, which are also based on machine learning. But I don’t know what the future brings there.”

Here is the video clip with John discussing it if you want to watch it.

TL;DR

While ChatGPT has many amazing use cases (we use it ourselves for a variety of things), we do not recommend using ChatGPT to write the content for your website. While there are potential short term benefits, it’s not worth risking penalty or loss of trust for your website.

If you’re like most law firms, you’re always looking for new ways to market your business and attract new clients. Today, nothing offers more potential to grow your practice than the Internet. It goes without saying however that competition amongst law firms is incredibly competitive online. That’s why the team at iLawyerMarketing has put together these 20 law firm marketing ideas and tips to help you generate more income through smarter marketing. As we’ve been helping law firms create successful Internet marketing campaigns for more than 15 years, we know this guide will provide you with some fantastic ways to market your practice this year and next.

Tip #1: Make sure your website impresses your site visitors

Your website is the foundation of all your marketing. However, the great majority of law firm websites are not very good and do not make a great impression on website visitors. We can say this because we’ve audited thousands of law firm websites since 2006 and we conduct consumer studies every year to find out how consumers think when it comes to hiring lawyers online. These days it’s not good enough just to have a website. But do prospective clients actually care about the way a law firm’s website looks? Based on our extensive research and feedback from individuals in our consumer studies, the answer is yes.

The way your website looks and functions is something most consumers take into considering when evaluating your practice. It plays a very big part in your conversion rate (the number of leads your site generates divided by the number of visitors you receive). Here are some key takeaways to keep in mind:

• A beautiful website gives consumers the impression that you are a successful law firm.
• A modern looking website that provides a great user experience sends a message that your firm is itself on the cutting edge of technology. This builds confidence in your firm.
• The mobile version of your site must be visually impressive, load fast, be easy to read and to find information on.
• A slow website causes visitors to leave your site. This matters of course on both desktop and mobile, but is more often an issue with mobile versions of law firm websites. Since most traffic these days comes from mobile users, it’s an issue that must be addressed.
• A template looking or overly basic website gives visitors a poor impression of the firm. In the mind of most consumers, if your website looks cheap, you must not a successful law firm. That of course is not always the case, but nonetheless it is how most consumers think.

If you think a new website is expensive, the cost of NOT upgrading your website is much higher if you are losing potential clients to your competitors.

Remember, consumers are comparing you to multiple other firms when they are doing their research. The average consumer looks at 5 different law firm websites before they contact one. In order to maximize conversions and generate more leads, your website needs to be better  than your competition. Not only can a great website design increase the number of leads you get, but it also improves the quality of the leads you get.

Tip #2: Hire a better SEO company

The first tip is an obvious one, but it still needs to be said because it’s such a common problem among law firms today.  Far too many law firms hire a marketing agency or SEO person that is incapable of getting top organic rankings on Google in a competitive market. If that’s the case with your law firm, you are probably wasting your money and potentially damaging your reputation with Google (which means it will take even longer to get the results you want). With hundreds of marketing companies claiming they can get you amazing results, how do you know who is the real deal? That’s not easy to know for most people. The best way to know if a company is good is to check their results in ultra competitive markets.

Here at iLawyerMarketing, we have software that we developed that tracks the performance of almost every legal marketing vendor in the industry, as well as the performance of thousands of  law firm websites, over many years. This is based on a formula we developed called the A.R.C. (Average Ranking Consistency) score, which analyzes a websites rankings on Google for commonly targeted keywords. Using this data, we know which companies perform poorly and which ones are the strongest when it comes to organic SEO. The A.R.C. data, which is powered by organic Google ranking performance, shows that we are rank #1 among all legal marketing vendors when it comes to the average rankings of our clients.

I think it’s important to note that while the data shows we are the very best when it comes to SEO in the industry, there are still a small handful of other legal marketing vendors that do a great job of SEO. If you are working with one of these companies, make sure you give them enough time to do their job. SEO does take time. In certain markets where competition is especially competitive, it can take over one year to get results like these. However, if you’ve given your vendor enough time and they are still not delivering, it’s time to make a change.

If you are wondering if you currently working with a vendor and you want to know what the A.R.C. data shows in order to find out if they are capable of getting the results you are looking for, feel free to reach out to us at anytime.

Tip #3: Add more quality content to your website, consistently

In 2023, adding fresh content to your website is extremely important for many reasons. For one, it can help improve the level of trust you have with Google, which means improved rankings. Second, some content may be useful in attracting more links to your website when used together with outreach (or even organically, without even asking for a link) which also can mean improved rankings.  Third, the more content you add to your site, the greater the number of potential keywords you can be found for by potential clients which usually means more leads will be generated.

However, keep in mind that not all content is good content in the eyes of the Google gods. Low quality bog posts, thin content, competing content or over-optimized pages can actually have a negative impact on your Google rankings. This is why it’s important to have highly experienced SEO experts overseeing what content gets added to your site each month and to ensure that the content you add is of high quality.

Adding content on a frequent basis is one of the smartest investments you can make if you want to generate more leads for your firm.  The best law firm marketers are adding multiple pages of content to their website consistently, every single month.

Tip #4: Get “premium” videos created for your law firm to help you generate more leads

Sample video created by iLawyerMarketing

Video is a very powerful way to improve your law firm’s internet marketing campaigns. It can help to improve website conversion rate and ultimately help you generate more cases. This is the goal with all the videos that we create here at iLawyer. We do this by creating videos that increase the level of trust visitors have for your firm. Law firm video production is another area where the insights and information we get from consumer research studies are utilized. We apply this information to all the videos we create for attorneys across the country.

Just having video on your site however is not enough. Plenty of law firms do have video on their sites, but most videos don’t do a great job of “selling” the firm. In fact some have the exact opposite effect! Video is another area where you don’t want to choose a provider simply based on cost. Make sure you choose a provider that understands how to create videos that will help you maximize conversion rates and increase quality of the leads you get.

You can also use videos to run video ads on on various platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and even TikTok (more on these later).

Tip #5: Run retargeting campaigns on Facebook

If you are not currently running retargeting campaigns for your law firm, most likely it’s because someone has not explained it to you properly. Every single law firm that runs search engine optimization campaigns or paid search campaigns should be utilizing retargeting as part of their campaign strategy. Most visitors do not make the decision to contact a lawyer on their first visit to your site so you need to remind them that you exist and bring them back to your website so they contact your firm. While many firms are indeed running retargeting campaigns on 3rd party websites, most firms are not yet running Facebook retargeting ads. Since nearly 70% of all U.S. adults use Facebook, this makes it an obvious platform to advertise on. Especially when you can target those people who have already been on your website.

Tip #6: Advertise on Facebook

Speaking of Facebook, retargeting ads are not the only types of ads you should consider running on the Facebook platform. Facebook offers many different ad formats, including photo ads, video ads, carousel ads, story ads, slideshows (and more). With Facebook, you can target by demographics (age, sex, income, interests, etc.) and geographically (country, state, city, zip code, address) so it certainly makes sense for many different types of law firms going after specific types of cases. We’ve managed many highly successful ad campaigns on Facebook, so we speak here from experience. Of course, you still need someone that knows what they are doing when it comes to managing Facebook ad campaigns. Just like with Google Ads, it’s very easy to waste a lot of money if you don’t know exactly what you are doing.

Tip #7: Run ads on Instagram

Facebook owns Instagram, so you can retarget your audience (or advertise to people who have not ever been to your website) on Instagram as well if you are using the Facebook pixel on your website. With 130 million users in the United States who spend around 30 minutes per active session, it certainly is not a platform to completely ignore. We have clients who use Instagram to generate leads every single month, so it can absolutely work.

Tip #8: Run Local Services Ads (LSA) on Google

As Google explains, Local Services ads “help you connect with people who search on Google for the services you offer. Your ads will show up for customers in your service area, and you only pay if a customer calls you directly through the ad.” If you’re not familiar with LSAs, these are the ads that appear at the top of many consumer law searches. Running these does require a screening process and background check that usually takes several days. These ads go take the visitor directly to a profile page on Google, and not your website like the traditional text ads. The great thing about LSAs is you only pay for the leads you receive (as opposed to being charged for a click). The cost is rapidly increasing however and it will continue to go up, but for now it’s something you should consider utilizing to market your practice.

Tip #9: Run Google Text Ads

If you have tried Google text Ads in the past and it didn’t work for you, that does not mean they don’t work. Usually campaigns don’t work because of poor landing pages, inefficiently managed campaigns or a budget that is not realistic for the market you are targeting. We take over PPC campaigns all too often where we see at least one of these issues. In order to have your Google ads campaign work, you need landing pages that convert and highly experienced experts that know what they are doing running your campaign.

There are many firms around the country spending hundreds of thousands of dollars every single month on text ads. They wouldn’t spend this kind of money if it didn’t work, so you should absolutely consider it as a way to generate more business. Especially if you need business right away. Unlike SEO, which can take a long time to see the fruits of the labor, with text ads you can start receiving leads within 24-48 hours. The key of course is finding the right company that has a history of running successful paid search campaigns on Google.

Tip #10: Increase your paid search budget

Considering that having a budget too small is one of the main reasons campaigns fail, you need to increase budget to give yourself a better chance of generating more leads and ultimately having success. Take Google PPC for example where the cost per click can get extremely high in the legal vertical (especially for personal injury lawyers). If your budget is $2,000/month and the cost per click is $100, I don’t think you need to be a math whiz to figure out that’s total 20 clicks you can receive for the entire month. That’s not going to generate enough leads for you to generate cases on a consistent basis. And yes, click charges can be expensive, but when one single case has the potential to be 6 or 7 figures, it’s obvious why some law firms are aggressively spending on paid ads. While you don’t need to spend hundreds of thousands each month like some of the “big boys” do, you at least need to have a large enough budget for the market you are competing in.

Additionally, Google uses machine learning when it comes to paid search. With each passing year, their ability to understand intent and serve appropriate and relevant ads to people using Google gets better and better. If your budget is too small, you don’t give Google enough data to properly “learn” on your campaign. The same holds true for the PPC campaign manager running your campaign. Bigger budgets help solve this issue.

You can talk to our law firm PPC specialists if you would like to learn more or if you have questions about what kind of budget you need for your market.

Tip #11: Retargeting campaigns on YouTube

Here’s another retargeting avenue that most law firms miss out on, and that’s through running ads on YouTube. Of course, you need video to run video ads on YouTube, but this can be a powerful way to bring visitors back to your site and even increase the level of trust they have for your firm before they contact you. Nearly 73% of U.S. adults use YouTube, so most of your potential clients are using the platform. For these reasons, it make a lot of sense to run retargeting ads on YouTube

Tip #12: Run Instream ads on YouTube

How does getting some free branding and awareness on YouTube sound? Well, kind of free. One of our favorite types of YouTube ads is the skippable instream ads, which are ads shown at the beginning (or middle) of a YouTube video that allow the user to skip after 5 seconds. If the user skips your ad before 30 seconds, you don’t pay for that at all. Pretty awesome, right? Other benefits to running YouTube ads include the ability to increase trust and reputation (if the videos are good) and the ability to demographically target. I think anyone who is (or is considering) running TV ads should think twice and look at running YouTube ads.

Tip #13: Improve your landing pages that you use with paid search

Hands down, the biggest issue we see with paid search campaigns that we take over are poor landing pages. It makes no sense to spend thousands of dollars each month on paid search but to then send those visitors to a “cheap” landing page. The thought process behind having a landing page built for $500 and running $10,000 a month in ad spend is seriously flawed. It’s worth spending an extra $1k-2k to help you get more and better leads, don’t you think? Landing pages are a critical component of the conversion funnel and to not invest in a quality landing page is simply bad marketing.

Tip #14: Target additional geo areas with your SEO campaign

If you are targeting a certain geographic area, it may make sense to target additional neighboring cities, neighborhoods, or areas to enhance your SEO campaign. It’s a great way to increase traffic and the number of leads you receive. If you are going after a highly competitive city, it can also help you get some organic Google visibility as you wait for your main SEO campaign to start working.

Tip #15: Add a chat bot to your website

Another way to increase conversion rates so you can generate more leads and cases is by adding chat to your site. While most firms these days use live chat, the people manning chats are not always very good. We’re fans of smart chat bots that can control the flow of dialog between the visitor and the chat bot. It can help with qualifying leads to make sure you are getting the right kinds of leads that can ultimately turn into cases. It’s also a much more affordable option if your firm generates a good amount of leads every month.

Tip #16: Get more reviews

If you don’t have great reviews (or even enough reviews), you will lose out on cases. In our latest study on how consumers hire lawyers online, 89% of participants said a law firm needs to have 4 stars or higher in order for them to consider hiring that firm. No matter how great your website is, your potential prospects will be researching your law firm and looking to see what other people have said about your law firm. They also consider the number of reviews you have in their decision of which firm to hire. If you have 10 reviews and your competitor has 75 and you both have 4-star average ratings, it’s much more likely for your competitor to be called first. Reviews are extremely important in 2022, so make that a top priority to get authentic client reviews and you will be rewarded.

Tip #17: Use different call tracking numbers for all your different campaigns

While most law firms use call tracking numbers, not everyone uses different call tracking numbers for all the different types of marketing campaigns they run. You should have unique call tracking numbers for your organic SEO campaign(s), Google Ads, Facebook Ads, YouTube ads, directory listings, retargeting ads (one for each if you retarget on different platforms), landing pages, etc. This way, you can tell which campaigns are performing well and which ones are not so that you can make better decisions on what to increase spend on or to lower or shut off. Ultimately, this will help you generate more leads this year if you allocate your budgets to whatever is producing the most for you.

Tip #18: Create a specialty website to go after specific types of cases

Targeting a specific type of case or area of practice can be a smart way to differentiate yourself from your competitors. While most law firms simply create a page of content, sometimes it can be smart to create an entire website and marketing campaign going after a certain type of case. For example, here’s a website we created that targets aviation accidents. What do you think converts better, a single page on a website or an entire website dedicated to this area of law? From 15 years of experience, we can tell you that without question, specialty sites convert at a much higher rate.

Tip #19: Get involved in your community

Doing something in your local community can have multiple benefits. It can increase the perception of your law firm in the community, increase awareness of your firm, can sometimes lead to exposure in local media and can even help with generating links to your website in certain cases.

Tip #20: Run commercials for your law firm using OTT/CTV Ads

If you’ve never heard the term “OTT”, it’s time you learned if you want to stay ahead of your competitors. It stands for “Over-The-Top”, a reference to the way that these ads bypass traditional cable and satellite TV for delivering video content. When compared to traditional TV advertising, OTT ads are much more powerful in that you have the ability to target your audience based on thousands of factors, most commonly geographic location, sex, age, etc. This allows you to serve much more relevant ads and reduces ad waste.

For those law firms that have ever thought about about running TV commercials but were scared off by the large budgets typically required, running OTT ads for your law firm on streaming services may be the perfect way for you try running commercials without using up your entire marketing budget. The entry cost is not nearly as high with OTT ads, making video advertising an option for many law firms across the country. Over 150 million US adults now access streaming video with services like Hulu, Netflix, CBS All Access, Sling, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and other streaming services. An audience of this size shouldn’t be ignored.  You can learn more about OTT ads here.

Including important takeaways for improving your visitor conversion rates and generating more cases in 2022.

Has COVID-19 impacted how consumers hire lawyers? According to our most recent consumer study, the answer is yes.

We looked to answer many questions in our research, including if consumers have concerns about in-person meetings because of COVID-19, whether they prefer in-person meetings over remote video meetings, what the most important things are to consumers when looking to hire a lawyer, and more. We also wanted to find out how this varies across different age groups. For law firms, understanding this information is important so you can generate more cases from your website and have more success with your online marketing.

We asked a variety of questions to the 746 participants in this study. Below, we review the ones that provide important takeaways for attorneys and marketers.

Question: Would you prefer to work with a law firm near you that you could initially meet in person or with a law firm that can handle everything 100% remotely?

Respondents were given the option to choose a “law firm near me” or a “law firm that handles everything remotely”. Not surprisingly, the great majority (64%) of consumers said they would prefer to work with a law firm close to them. However, 36% of respondents said they would prefer to work with a law firm that could handle everything remotely, which is a higher number than we expected. This gives us some insight into the changing times.

Certainly, this is a combination of consumers being more open to meeting with lawyers remotely in 2021, convenience, and covid concerns. Without question, many more people are more accustomed to meeting with people over Zoom, FaceTime, etc. than ever before.

When analyzing further and looking at how this differs by age groups, we can see 81% of older individuals ages 60+ prefer in-person meetings. On the low end, just 57% of people ages 30-44 preferred in person meetings.

Takeaway: The ability for a law firm to be able to handle a case completely remotely is important to many consumers, especially for those under age 45.  Your website should let visitors know that you have that capability in order to increase visitor conversion rates from visitors who find that important. It could be the difference between a visitor contacting your firm instead of your competitors.

Question: Would you have concerns about meeting your lawyer in person due to COVID-19?

We wanted to find out if COVID concerns would stop people from meeting in person. For most people, the answer to that is no, but most people do have concerns as we can see from the chart below.

Nearly 31% responded that they were not concerned at all, but that leaves 69% that are at least slightly concerned with covid.

Unsurprisingly, the more concerned a person is about meeting in person due to COVID, the more likely they are to prefer meeting with potential firms electronically

Digging into our data further, we wanted to see how this varied across age groups. We found that younger people are more concerned about covid than older people.

Takeaway: Since most people have some level of covid concerns, if you ask potential clients/clients to come in to your office, you may want to add information on your website that explains the precautions your law firm takes in order to keep them safe.  Your intake specialists should also be able able to explain this to concerned prospects. This may contribute to converting more potential clients into actual clients.

Question: If you need to hire a law firm, how would you prefer to communicate with potential firms before making a final decision on which one to hire?

The results to this question were surprising, but perhaps they shouldn’t be considering how ubiquitous video is in people’s lives these days. If you combine Zoom (32.4%) and FaceTime (6.4%), the 39% total is more than the 35.5% that answered “in-person meeting”.

The good news here is that this opens up the possibility of working with clients who aren’t necessarily close to your office. In a previous study we conducted in 2017,  89% of consumers had said they would only travel up to 60 miles to visit a lawyer’s office. Today, more consumers are open to working with firms completely remotely than ever before.

Takeaway: Consider displaying prominently on your site that you offer Zoom or other video meetings. This could be a differentiator when it comes to consumers who are shopping around for a lawyer online, resulting in more leads generated for your firm. Additionally, make sure you are set up technically to be able to handle as much as possible remotely (fast Internet, paid Zoom account, EchoSign or DocuSign, etc.), so potential or actual clients have a great remote experience with your firm.

Question: Before contacting a lawyer, would watching a short video (to “meet” the attorneys you would be working with) help you with your decision on whether you should consider hiring that firm?

You’ve most likely heard how important video is to have on your site since it can help improve your website conversion rates. However, this question makes it clear just how important video is to consumers.  More than 84.4% of all respondents answered “yes” to this question.

Across all age groups and genders, potential clients overwhelmingly would find a video helpful.

If you don’t have a compelling video so potential clients can “meet you”, you are, without a doubt, missing out on cases to law firms who do. Speaking from over a decade of experience producing law firm videos and conducting annual consumer research studies, I can tell you that just having video is not good enough. Your videos need to build trust and confidence in the minds of potential prospects that you are the right law firm to hire. In analyzing thousands of attorney websites every year, I can tell you that most videos do not accomplish that.  Your law firm needs video that connects with potential clients in order to help improve conversion rates of your site visitors. If this is something you need help with, reach out to us for a quote.

Takeaway: Over 84% of consumers would like to see a video about your firm to help them in their decision to hire you. Without video, you are most likely losing potential prospects to competitors that do have video.  Our past studies show that consumers compare multiple law firms (5 on average) before deciding on which one to hire so your video needs to explain why your firm is the right choice. Having compelling video on your site will help improve conversion rates of website visitors.

Questions?

If you are a lawyer or represent a law firm and have any questions about this study, feel free to reach out to us. There are additional questions and answers that were part of this study (further insight into how consumers choose lawyers) that you are not going to want to miss. These will be covered in another post coming soon, so check back or contact us to hear about these insights today. If you are interested in improving your law firm’s marketing in 2022, that’s another good reason to contact us!