The latest Google Ads Benchmarks 2024: New Trends & Insights for Key Industries report is out and it validates what we at Convert It Marketing already know – legal services remains one of the most competitive – and fruitful – industries on the Google Ads platform.
And if law firms are not careful, they can very easily waste money and their valuable time in this competitive market for business. Here is what you need to know.
There are four key numbers that law firms should focus on when reviewing their Google Ads spend: Total Clicks, Cost-per-Click, Conversion Rate and Cost Per Lead.
Total Clicks is the number of users that clicked on your Google advertisement. This shows the number of interactions that Google users are taking with your ads. It is also the metric that determines how much you are spending on the Google ads platform.
Cost-per-click is an important metric as it will ultimately determine how far your ad dollars go. The Google ads platform is an auction based system at its core and you are bidding against your competitors for each click. Your cost-per-click is a measure of how competitive your market is and how you measure up to your competitors in the auction.
At the end of the day, what really matters to a law firm owner is conversions. A conversion is defined as a campaign’s desired outcome. Law firms should be defining a conversion as either a phone call or web form submission from a prospective client, as this is the entire point of advertising.
Conversion rate measures the percentage of clicks that took the desired action by calling or submitting a web form to the firm. For instance, if you had 100 clicks and 8 conversions (phone calls or web inquiries), then you would have an 8% conversion rate.
Finally and perhaps the most important metric, cost-per-lead or CPL. If you divide the total number of conversions (leads) by the amount spent on advertising you will arrive at your cost per lead.
The benchmarks for the legal industry, according to the Google Ads Benchmarks 2024: New Trends & Insights for Key Industries report, appear below:
Putting these numbers into context, you can see that only about 6% of those that click on an ad actually convert to a call or a web form submitted to the firm. That means that law firms have to pay Google for 16 clicks in order to get that 1 lead!
When you do the math, each lead ends up costing the firm about $144. That lead may not even be all that qualified or a fit for the firm.
Here is where firms are wasting money. At Convert It, we have 13 years of data generating more than 200,000 cases for more than 3,000 firms across 16 major practice areas. We leverage that data to bid for only the keywords and users we know have high likelihood of purchasing legal services. Then we construct landing pages that have been painstakingly refined and tested to ensure the highest rates of conversion. The end result is high quality leads to the firm at a lower cost. Lets compare our numbers to the averages for the legal market:
Convert It Marketing has a conversion rate more than 5 times the legal industry average! Theoretically, that means that Convert It will generate 5 times as many leads.
However, simply generating more conversions for law firms means nothing if the lead quality is poor. The last thing we want for our attorney clients is to spend their days on the phone with unqualified leads. At Convert It, we have developed a number of techniques to control the quality of the search query that we are bidding on and ultimately paying for in the form of a click. One example is our proprietary negative keyword lists that are organized by practice area and enable us to ensure we are serving our clients’ ads to the most qualified prospective clients. When you start controlling for better search query quality, the end result is typically a higher cost-per-click. However, when coupled with 30% conversion rates, it enables us to provide a higher quality lead with a cost-per-lead that is 25% less than the industry average!
Is your Google strategy wasting your money on leads that never turn into clients? Are you doubting the quality of the leads your advertising is generating? Contact us for a second opinion. In 15 minutes and with knowledge of your market, practice and target caseload, we can provide you with a strategy and a recommended Google budget to meet your firm’s growth goals.
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About the Author
John Simpson is the Chief Executive Officer of Convert It. For the past 25 years, John has counseled law firms of all sizes - from AMLAW 200 to solo and boutique firms - on marketing, business development and strategy. Prior to joining Convert It, John was the founder and CEO of the digital marketing agency One North.
Convert It Marketing
For the past 13 years, Convert It has provided easy, effective and affordable marketing services to solo and boutique law firms nationwide. Our marketing strategies are designed to attract, engage and convert prospects into paying clients, then amplify their positive experiences to attract more clients.
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