Introduction
Here at THE FREEMAN AGENCY, we specialize in helping businesses achieve their online goals through effective pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Our team of experts has years of experience in managing successful PPC campaigns that drive real results for our clients. In this case study, we’ll explore how we helped a private law firm based in Chicago achieve their digital marketing goals through targeted PPC advertising.
THE CLIENT: A Private Law Firm based in Chicago*
Our client, a private law firm based in Chicago, was looking to increase their online presence and attract more clients through targeted advertising. With a strong reputation in the legal community, they wanted to leverage the power of PPC advertising to reach potential clients actively searching for legal services online.
THE FREEMAN AGENCY is very proud that we landed the third largest settlement in the firm’s history, a multimillion dollar case, through our PPC efforts.
Our PPC campaign was meticulously designed to align with the client's business goals, ensuring that our strategies directly supported their objectives and resulted in this significant achievement.
*Client name/brand withheld for corporate client privacy and security.
Overview & Challenges: Target Audience
This law office focuses primarily on vehicle accident and personal injury in the Chicago area.
The client has a history of success on the local level, but in spite of efforts, their online presence was lacking. Their tracking was almost non-existent, and their PPC campaigns ineffective. They wanted to get a larger market share of the Chicago area injury law business, which composes one of the most competitive DMAs in the nation for the legal profession. Effective internet marketing strategies were crucial in overcoming these challenges and achieving significant growth.
This is complicated by the fact that law related keywords are among the most expensive terms in Pay Per Click advertising, regularly averaging between $20 and $60 per click.
Challenges and Objectives
The law firm faced several challenges in their online marketing efforts, including:
Low visibility in search engines for relevant keywords
Limited online presence and brand awareness
Difficulty attracting high-quality leads through their website
Our objective was to create a customized PPC campaign that would increase the law firm’s online visibility, drive more qualified leads, and ultimately, boost their business growth.
Our Approach to PPC Advertising
To achieve our objectives, we employed a comprehensive approach to PPC advertising, including:
Keyword research and analysis to identify relevant keywords and phrases
Custom ad messaging and targeting to reach the law firm’s ideal audience
Ad spend optimization techniques to ensure maximum ROI
Ongoing analysis and reporting to track campaign performance and make data-driven decisions
Custom Strategy:
Knowing that a direct bidding war would be far too expensive for our client, we made an early decision to spread our coverage as far as possible, using multiple search engines and long-tailed keywords. Using over 2000 variations on Chicago legal keywords, we proceeded to push this client into every available nook of the internet. Our strategy consisted of capturing as many variations as possible of keywords relevant to the business, sometimes comprising rarely used 3 to 4 word phrases. While such keyword spread may seem like lackluster detail work, we knew that every single opportunity for a conversion was important to this client.
Moreover, Google Ads tends to give low quality scores to the most competitive keywords, with “low historical keyword performance.” Our long-tailed variations were so tightly matched to relevant ad copy that we were able to improve quality scores almost across the board. We re-worked the client’s ad copy to point out just how strong his professional record is, which helped us not just in terms of click thru rates, but even in conversion rates.
After our initial success, we implemented advanced tracking methods, with Calltrax Plus being the most notable of these. In particular, this was helpful in identifying the relative performance of different PPC vehicles. The client was eager to launch a Superpages.com campaign, since he had tried it before and seen very affordable traffic. This campaign drove an immense amount of traffic to the website, had a respectable bounce rate, and had far and away the lowest CPC of any search engine. We tracked it using our CallTrax system, however, and discovered that the money spent there was almost completely wasted. This ended up saving the client several hundred dollars per month. Paid advertising played a crucial role in driving targeted traffic to the website.
That money was reinvested in more effective search engines. In particular, we found a small niche in Search Alliance that was very cost effective and generated calls for minimal investment. This was particularly helpful, as the client’s fluctuated seasonally from $10,000 down to $5000 per month. This budget adjusting was accomplished by selectively trimming traffic using both Adwords information on effective keywords and adgroups, and also Analtyics information about days, times, and regions that worked better than others. Shopping campaigns were also integrated into our PPC strategy to maximize ROI. We were able to adapt to these changes because we were able to gain insights into their performance beyond anything the client ever expected.
Ad Spend Optimization Techniques
To optimize our client’s ad spend, we employed several techniques, including:
Keyword optimization to ensure we were targeting the most relevant and high-performing keywords
Ad copy refinement to improve click-through rates and conversion rates
Bidding strategy optimization to ensure we were getting the best possible ROI
Device targeting optimization to ensure we were reaching our target audience on the right devices
Analysis and Reporting
To track the performance of our PPC campaign, we provided our client with regular analysis and reporting, including:
Customizable dashboards to track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and cost per acquisition
Monthly reporting calls to discuss campaign performance and make data-driven decisions
Ongoing analysis of campaign data to identify areas for improvement and optimize ad spend
By taking a comprehensive and data-driven approach to PPC advertising, we were able to help our client achieve their digital marketing goals and drive real results for their business.
Results: Business Goals
As a result of our efforts, compared to website traffic before contracting us, pages per visit went up by exactly 100%, time on site by 106%, and bounce rates dropped by 28.54 percentage points. While this was a somewhat arduous process, it wasn’t long until we began to see the fruit of our labors. Additionally, the PPC campaign significantly contributed to an increase in organic traffic.
“You have done a great job bringing the numbers in line with the budget. Thanks again. I think the campaign is going really well.”
After only a month, the client’s traffic had increased, their cost had fallen by 27%, and their lead count had more than doubled, coming in at 9 over his prior average of 4.3. These improvements were instrumental in our efforts to increase organic traffic and generate more online leads.
Our success only continued to improve, and we regularly deliver 12-20 conversions per week between online and phone leads. Increasing organic traffic remains a key objective for enhancing the client's online presence.
We are very proud that we landed the third largest settlement in the firm’s history, a multimillion dollar case, through our PPC efforts. This is just one example of how persistence and detailed tracking can be a windfall for our clients.
OVER 372% INCREASE
IN AVERAGE
MONTHLY LEADS
AVERAGE DECREASE OF 27% IN MONTHLY SPEND
These leads are not due to growing traffic, but better targeting, as the graph below indicates:
As you can see, online conversions (the green line) rose even in the face of fewer clicks (the blue line) due to tighter budgets.
Most importantly, the lead quality improved, and we were able to generate exactly the types of leads that the client wanted while reducing the budget.
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