Sometimes law firm paid search advertising is like a game of high stakes poker. You're trying to win a big pot by playing a big game (bidding heavy on the right keywords). The good news is that if you take a systematic, data-driven approach, you can greatly reduce the risk in search engine marketing. One major component of this approach is proper use of targeting. Targeting is the process of displaying your marketing message in front of groups of people who are the most likely to need the services of your firm. The most obvious targeting decision for paid search is in what geographic markets to run your ads. Sometimes this is an easier decision than others. If you do business exclusively at a city/MSA level, you should advertise at that level, as opposed to a more broad geographic market. Don't waste your precious law firm's internet marketing dollars. Your budget should be focused on the best market for your firm. It is easy to specify that your search ads should only display in certain markets. Similarly, if your market covers several markets (a regional market), then you should set that region as your advertising market. If you do operate regionally, then the next issue is if you should run a separate campaign for each of your markets or a single campaign for all of them. Running all of your ads in a single campaign is simpler and easier to set up, but it does not give you as much control and does not generate as high a quality of data. If you are a large firm that operates on a nationwide basis, then you have the same issue to decide. Nationally, it is much more difficult to run a separate campaign for individual markets because of the very large number of markets to deal with. A better option here might be to set up larger geographic markets that encompass several cities or even states. Although you won't have performance data for specific individual markets, you will know what regions perform the best. Google offers an additional advantage for geographically-targeted ads by displaying the name of the market beneath the ad. For example, ads in a campaign targeted to the state of Texas will have the word "Texas" beneath the ad when viewed by Google users in that state. This highlights to Google users in a particular state that my firm is specifically targeted them. Another way to target your campaigns is by day of week or time of day. If your budget is limited, then this might be a good idea for your campaigns. It may be the case that during business hours you are competing against many other advertisers, which is driving click costs up past the point of profitability. In this instance, it might be a good move to try only running your ads during non-peak hours. There may still be plenty of traffic to purchase, with those clicks costing much less. There may also be certain days of the week when click prices are more reasonable. You can make this decision based on reporting that shows your account performance at different times of day and days of week, if that reporting is available. Targeting can make your pay per click campaigns much more effective. Sometimes it's not all that easy to figure out exactly when and where you should run your ads, but if you do, it could greatly improve your paid search performance. Jerry Work is president of Work Media, LLC, a Nashville search engine marketing firm and author of The Law Firm Internet Marketing Book. To learn more law firm Internet marketing strategies, check out www.law-firm-internet-marketing.net.
Related Articles -
attorney search engine marketing, lawyer search engine marketing, ppc, pay per click, law firm internet marketing, legal marketing, legal advertising,
|