Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing
What determines the success of personal injury lawyer marketing? BUDGET.
Yes, you read that correctly.
The number one component of a personal injury law firm’s marketing campaign is how much they spend on advertising.
And, yes, while we do agree it’s a shame that some personal injury attorneys care very little about their actual clients and are still wildly successful because they consistently outspend their competition, it’s how many industries work.
However, some tactics can help personal injury lawyers bypass the “outspending to get leads” scenario. But, we must also keep in mind that in order to compete, lawyers must meet certain baseline investments. Otherwise, any money spent is virtually wasted. It’s a balancing act between the law firm’s PPC budget and quality law firm SEO.
So, why the tightrope walk?
Because a law firm’s marketing strategy leaves very little room for error when a huge budget simply doesn’t exist. In order for law firms to be just as successful as those firms spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, they must have a seamless, well-executed marketing strategy that also follows all lawyer advertising rules.
Law Firm Economics
If you’re a lawyer who has previously tried to market your firm on your own or have invested minimal amounts with little research and have had no success, feel free to jump ahead. We’re sure that you’ve learned this little economic lesson the hard way.
Supply and demand.
Most understand the principle. When something is scarce, the price goes up. When more law firms advertise, the price goes up. Only so many “personal injury lawyer” keywords exist. And, many personal injury firms try to find the right balance: the most valuable cases for the least amount of money.
Factors that Alter Basic Economic Principles for Injury Law Firm Marketing
A few factors do alter the basic economics that we’ve mentioned.
Personal Injury Law Firm Marketing Company
First, few marketing companies understand how Google’s ever-changing algorithms work. If they do, the agency must also be nimble enough to rethink the strategy and move forward with changes quickly.
So, finding a successful but still smaller marketing agency is key. You’ll want a company with a dedicated account manager who knows your firm and its website inside and out.
When interviewing an agency for personal injury lawyer marketing, ask how many accounts each account manager is responsible for.
Some firms beat the system by simply having a better marketing team. 😉
On the other hand, there are obviously larger firms with larger budgets that spend way more than they should. These firms have hired agencies that make bad marketing decisions on their behalf. Sure, they’re getting loads of cases, but oftentimes, they’re overspending.
That’s why it’s critical to understand the critical roles a law firm marketing team should play.
If you feel your personal injury firm fits into this category, ask your current personal injury marketing agency about your cost per lead. Take this number and get a second, third, and maybe even fourth opinion.
Intake Department
Next, your intake department can make or break your personal injury firm. Period. You can have the best personal injury marketing strategy in the world, but if no one answers the phone or responds to leads quickly, every dollar you’ve spent is in vain.
Legal Market Volatility
Another alteration of the basic legal supply and demand concept is volatility.
If someone with a two thousand dollar car gets into a minor fender bender and later has a mild case of whiplash, what will they search for? In most cases, ‘car accident lawyer.’
In another situation, if someone is involved in a catastrophic wreck with multiple victims, what will they search for? Probably ‘car accident lawyer.’
It’s a coin toss. But, a toss that comes with a probability equation. When you only spend enough to get the minimum amount of cases, this is much more volatile than spending enough to give your firm the wiggle room it needs to cherry-pick your cases. Everything averages out in the end.
Law Firm Marketing Services
- Law Firm SEO Services
- Local SEO for Lawyers
- Law Firm PPC Services
- Law Firm LSA
- Law Firm Web Design
- Law Firm Content Marketing
- Law Firm Social Media
- Bankruptcy Lawyer Marketing
- Criminal Defense Marketing
- Family Law Marketing
- Personal Injury Marketing
- Immigration Lawyer Marketing
- Divorce Attorney Marketing
- Estate Planning Marketing
Appropriate Budget for Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing
How much should personal injury attorneys spend on marketing? Obviously, this is a complex question with a multitude of factors that will determine the final answer. So, we’ll break it down to how much it takes to get a single decent personal injury case.
Divide the total attorney fees collected by your firm by the number of cases that were settled. This gives you a general picture of what you’re currently working with.
Most firms can expect a 3 to 10x return from digital marketing for legal services.
So, to find the absolute minimum you should expect each case to cost, marketing wise, take this number and divide it by 10. To find the maximum cost, take the number and divide by 3.
Exceptions to Personal Injury Marketing Budgets
- If you’re just starting your marketing journey, you should be conservative and plan on getting a 3x return.
- If you’re investing in personal injury lawyer SEO services, over time, this number should move closer to 10.
- For firms investing in law firm local service ads, these numbers will be skewed. However, one of the key benefits of local service ads for law firms is that the risk is minimized greatly.
- Firms that only spend enough to get one case per month should expect a large amount of volatility. Some months you’ll get a case, while other months, you won’t. Most cases will probably be lower quality, while every once in a while, you’ll get an extraordinary case.
The Role of Personal Injury Lawyer Advertising
Before diving into types of personal injury lawyer marketing strategies, we’ll briefly go over the role of personal injury law firm marketing.
In general, personal injury marketing helps your firm accomplish three goals:
- Building your firm’s brand awareness.
- Getting in front of quality potential personal injury clients.
- Growing your legal practice by adding to your client list.
Now, for the specifics. It’s important to understand that the following personal injury lawyer marketing strategies are in no way mutually exclusive. As a matter of fact, you should be using these marketing strategies in tandem.
Personal injury law firm marketing strategy can be broken up into two basic categories: awareness and positional.
Personal Injury Lawyer Awareness Campaigns
Branding for Personal Injury Law Firms
As you know, branding includes a variety of elements: the colors of your visuals, the consistency of your graphics across platforms, your firm’s value proposition, etc. These are all parts of your brand.
Good law firm branding can help your practice stand out in the fierce competitive market that is personal injury firms.
When it comes to personal injury lawyer advertising, most associate the marketing with brand awareness campaigns. The typical mediums for awareness campaigns include:
- Billboards
- Television
- Radio
- Anything mass-advertising
The goal of any brand awareness campaign is to get as many people to know who you are and what you do, as possible.
Why?
Let’s say, for example, that your firm specializes in medical malpractice cases. Instead of someone searching for “best medical malpractice lawyer in Baton Rouge” or “birth injury lawyer near me”, because your brand is so associated with medical malpractice, the potential client will instead search for your firm’s name.
While we can’t understate the importance of good branding, this is more of a proactive approach to personal injury lawyer marketing. It’s also a very expensive approach.
Educational Awareness
Another type of awareness campaign is educational awareness. This type of campaign works the same way but with one major exception.
Instead of wanting people to remember you, you want to teach them something. We see this most often with product liability cases.
Sometimes, people may not know they even have a personal injury case. So, personal injury firms that specialize in product liability will spread awareness to those who may have been injured.
Personal Injury Lawyer SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, involves crafting pages on your law firm’s website to target common phrases that your target audience may be searching for. This includes researching what the audience in your area is searching for most and balancing that against what your site could potentially rank for. Then, creating content around those specific phrases and making sure that those keywords are visible to search engines, like Google.
Most personal injury attorneys believe that search engine marketing is writing SEO content to make their firm rank for “car accident lawyer in Las Vegas” or wherever the firm is located. And, yes, this is technically SEO. But, that’s not exactly how SEO works, at first, anyways. And, full disclosure- be prepared to open your wallet a little more if these are the only keywords you care about because. We’ll explain:
In order for your firm to start showing up for search queries you believe are the result of good personal injury lawyer marketing (personal injury lawyer near me, car accident lawyer in Tampa, etc.), it’s important to consider which keywords your potential clients are actually looking for.
These are going to be more along the lines of:
“Is it worth it to get a car accident lawyer” or “rear ended collision settlement”.
If your site consistently ranks for these types of queries, Google will start putting two and two together and realize that hey, your personal injury firm is the authority in your area.
This brings us to our next point: local searches.
Local SEO for Personal Injury Firms
More often than not, Google can determine whether or not someone is searching for a local resource and adjust the results to suit that need. So, when someone searches a phrase such as:
- “Truck accident lawyer near me”
- “Best truck accident attorney in Georgia”
“Truck accident lawyer in Atlanta”
Google is going to show the results that are closest nearby. And, if you’re a personal injury lawyer who’s firm handles truck accident cases, you will want to show up close to the top of the results page.
Content Marketing
So, you’ve read a few blogs or pages about SEO. From what you’ve gathered, it’s keywords. Put the keywords on the pages and then, you’ve got SEO, right?
Wrong.
And, we truly understand the frustration, here. While marketers do post the basics of SEO optimization for learning purposes, the truth of the matter is that it is not as simple as simply adding a few keywords to web pages.
If it were a simple process, there would be tons of YouTube tutorials outlining exactly how to optimize your site, yourself. There is a ton of generic information about why SEO is important and the general overview of SEO for personal injury lawyer marketing, but bluntly, SEO, especially in competitive industries, is not easy. It’s even hard for marketing agencies to correctly train new hires, for this very reason. Every single website and situation is different.
If you want cookie cutter answers from cookie cutter marketing agencies, you’re going to get cookie cutter results: ranking where everyone else does.
But, if you work out a clear law firm content marketing strategy with a legal marketing agency that’s tailored to your personal injury firm, specifically, you’ll stand out, in time. This content strategy will ensure that you’re ranking for the right queries.
For most personal injury websites, content is broken down into two locations:
Practice Area Pages
Practice area pages are long-form, meaning more than 2,000 words, and explain your practice areas in great detail. These pages usually address the broader search terms, such as “car accident lawyer”. These pages should include multiple sections that address different facets of the lawsuit process, such as cost, common injuries, etc.
Practice area pages are what we call bottom of the funnel content. Those who find your practice area page are looking for an attorney. So, from here, you’ll want to make the next step easy by adding clear calls to action for contacting your personal injury firm.
Blog Posts
It’s more difficult for most personal injury attorneys to see the value in blogs, but blogs are what give the entire site more authority, in Google’s eyes.
Blog posts, in general, are shorter than practice area pages. Because blog posts aren’t meant for bottom of the funnel searchers, they’re less “salesy”, and honestly, most attorneys don’t like this. We want to remind you, your website is not for you. It’s for your prospective clients.
The goal of blog posts is to educate your readers. Most of the time, believe it or not, people are not sure if they have a case. They will Google questions that are very specific to his or her situation. These are often questions like “What is strict product liability?”, “Can children sue for wrongful death?”, etc.
Blog content targets middle of the funnel searchers. You want to ensure your content is helpful for those who may not need your services just yet.
Why is Long-Form Content Important for Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing?
Creating long-form content is a major factor in search visibility. Why?
- You have more opportunities to rank for synonyms and related keywords.
- You can answer multiple questions for the same keywords.
- Your site is more likely to get backlinks from other websites who aren’t in the legal field. If you’ve explained the process in detail, of course, they’re going to send folks your way!
- Long-form content takes longer to digest. So, this sends Google the message that people must be interested in what’s on your site; they’ve been here a while.
Unique Content
Remember the college days, where all you had to do was tweak a few words on your buddy’s paper, in order to pass the plagiarism test? Google doesn’t work like that.
Just because your content isn’t plagiarized, does not mean it is unique.
We’re looking at you, big box personal injury lawyer marketing companies.
PRO TIP: If your firm currently uses an agency like this, do yourself a favor: pick out one of the blog posts that the agency has written on your behalf. Now google that title. See how many other lawyers have content that is eerily similar to yours. Scroll to the bottom and see if your marketing agency also runs that site. Now, how do big box agencies choose who gets the better version of this cookie cutter content? You guessed it! Budget. (Seems a little like deja vu from the beginning of this page, doesn’t it?)
If every law firm is using the same sources, nobody is providing value. Repeating and rephrasing each other’s content doesn’t jive well with search engines. Google wants to see unique sources, alternate opinions, varied formats, etc. Winners never cheat, and cheaters never win, longterm, that is.
Updating Existing Content
Once you’ve published your practice area pages, posted a few blogs, and have started seeing some traffic, you might as well cut ties with your personal injury SEO agency, right? Eh, not so fast.
It’s important that you continue to update content. How people search changes constantly, new competition enters the market and you have to tweak your content to continue to remain relevant. Furthermore, refreshing content gets recrawled, it updates the publish date, and allows for improvement.
If you search for something and see that the content hasn’t been updated in 2, 3 or 10 years, would you question the accuracy of said content? We sure would. You can bet your audience will, too. We both know that laws change often, and someone looking for *the best* lawyer, won’t trust something that hasn’t been recently updated.
So, how can you update your content without rewriting it altogether?
- Update statistics to their most current version
- Improve your sources
- Expand the length and improve the overall substance
- Tweak the formatting to improve readability
- Add or update media (images, infographics, video, etc.)
How would your marketing agency react if you tried to cut ties with them?
If they’ve got you tied to a contract longer than 1 year, with terms that even the best lawyers can’t wiggle out of, well, you can do the math, there. At Digital Logic, we’ve always worked with clients who want to leave. Guess, what? They all come crawling back. One in less than a week!
PPC for Personal Injury Lawyers
For PPC, or pay per click, advertising, you only pay when someone clicks on one of your firm’s ads. This type of advertising is pretty commonplace amongst personal injury attorneys. With PPC, you’re paying to bring potential clients to your site versus winning them over naturally, or organically, through SEO efforts, social media, or general referrals.
PPC campaigns are available in a variety of locations online-social media channels like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, as well as directory and business listing sites like Yelp or FindLaw, and obviously the most common, Google.
Google Ads
One of the most effective platforms for PPC advertising is Google. You’ll compile a list of search terms or phrases on GoogleAds that you’d like your personal injury firm to show up for, set your budget, and compete with other firms to capture the attention of those who are searching those terms.
One key benefit of running a Google Ads campaign is Google’s ability to align ads with the searcher’s intent. In order for your personal injury ad to appear, someone needs to search for something relevant to your firm.
Search ads are only one type of personal injury lawyer ads you can run. You can also choose from:
PPC Ads on Social Media
On social media, most personal injury firms choose to target those who may be potential clients. Ads are promoted as a sponsored post in the news feeds of the predetermined target audience. And, similar Google Ads, your firm only pays when someone clicks on your ad.
The major difference between running a search ad campaign on social media versus Google is intent. In order for your ad to appear on Google, someone must be actively looking for a service you provide. On social media platforms, however, those who see your ad are not actively looking for your services. When you run a search campaign on social media, you’re taking a chance as to whether or not you will capture their attention as they scroll through the newsfeed.
There’s value in running a digital advertising campaign on both advertising platforms. And, both advertising platforms can play a role in your personal injury lawyer marketing strategy, leading to great results, if executed correctly.
Campaign Goals for Personal Injury Firms
One of the most important details of any paid personal injury lawyer advertising campaign is ensuring you understand exactly what you’re paying for. What is the end goal, here?
With most platforms, you can choose between 3 basic goal types:
- Lead generation. Here your goal is to have an individual complete a task or specific preset action, such as filling out a form. This will allow you to collect their information and potentially retarget them, until they become a qualified lead.
- Traffic. The primary goal here is simply to have as many people as possible click on your ad. This is for times when you don’t expect those who click on the link to be converted immediately or even in the short term.
- Awareness. Here, you just want to reach as many people as possible. There’s really no direct action you want your viewers to take.This could be to boost brand recognition or to bring educational awareness, sharing valuable information about a Class Action lawsuit.
Law Firm Digital Ads Structure
Running a Google Ads campaign (or even a Facebook campaign, for that matter) in the legal sector without experience is a surefire way to waste money. Without an understanding of how the process works, setting up your campaigns will be confusing, messy, and will likely not perform well.
Across most of the PPC platforms, the structure for running PPC ads is pretty consistent. It’s split into 3 basic categories:
- Campaigns. This is the overall category you’re creating ads for. This could be for a practice area specific group of ads or a specific Class Action lawsuit you’re working on.
- Ad Groups. Within your campaign, you’ll have several ad groups. Some marketers use the terms ad groups and audience interchangeably. With each different ad group, you can choose to target the audience based on demographics. For example, one could be ages 18-25, while another is 45-60.
- Keywords and Ads. This is the actual ad copy, itself. If you’re running your campaign on Google, this will also include the keywords your firm wants to target. You can (and should) create multiple versions of each and test to see which performs better. This allows you to tweak the best performing copy to perform even better, in some cases.
Digital Ads
Most people don’t realize how much goes into creating great digital ads for personal injury firms. It takes both time and experience to land a good, high-performing ad.
Here are a few key areas to get started:
- Creative. Any time your firm chooses to run a visual ad, the creative you choose is absolutely crucial. Regardless if it’s a sponsored social media post with an image, a video campaign on YouTube, or a display ad campaign, the image itself takes up the most real estate and will be what drives the audience to click (or not to click).
- Message. No matter where you’re running your ad, your messaging will play a role. You’ll want your message to be precise, clear, and encourage action.
- Extensions, Callouts, and Sitelinks. If you’re running Google search ads, you’ll have the choice to include additional features with your ads. This allows you to highlight certain selling points or support pages directly in your ads.
- Testing. This is the most important part of any digital advertising campaign, especially for personal injury firms. You should always explore new messages and new creatives to see which performs best.
Retargeting for Personal Injury Lawyers
Now, retargeting for PPC ads is where digital advertising can really bring results.
Retargeting, or remarketing, ads display only to those who have already taken a specific action in the past. These people fall into the custom audience category. And, this action can be visiting your law firm’s website, interacting with your social media, chatting with a bot, etc.
How to Measure Your PPC Performance
When you’re trying to measure the performance of your personal injury firm’s PPC ad campaign, you’ll want to go back to the initial marketing goals you set. For most cases, you’ll be able to see how well you are able to accomplish this goal. So, for:
- Lead generation, how many form submissions did you receive?
- Traffic, how many clicks did you get?
- Awareness, how many people did you reach?
Now, you can dive deeper into the specifics of each campaign to determine the answers to questions, such as “How many of those people who clicked actually stayed on the website?” or “How many viewers watched the entire video ad?”
From here, having a general conversion rate, you’ll be able to measure your general, overall ROI. It can be difficult to pinpoint exactly how much revenue specifically your ads brought in, so a good approach is to take the value of certain actions and assign it to how much revenue you expect to generate from said action. If you’re able to convert 10% of consultations to clients, and your average retainer is $10,000, you can assign the value of that free consultation to $1,000.
Lead Generation for Personal Injury Law Firms
Here are some specific personal injury lawyer marketing tactics you can use to generate different types of personal injury leads, while growing your firm’s online presence:
How to Get More Auto Accident Leads
Here, in the United States, we have around 6 million automobile accidents every year. Out of that 6 million, 3 million end up moderately to severely injured. The following tactics can help your firm get in front of those turning to personal injury attorneys for help.
- Create a page on your website that explains what to do after you’ve been in a car, truck or motorcycle accident. Give specifics for your state, or even city, if applicable. This helps to establish your firm as the expert and starts to lay the foundation for the client-attorney relationship.
- Offer free checklists or guides to do after an auto accident. If you make these checklists downloadable, you’ll have access to someone who has more than likely recently been involved in an auto accident. This gives you the perfect opportunity to follow up.
How to Get More Class Action Lawsuit Leads
For mass tort lawsuits or class actions, you’ll want to focus on building brand awareness while also bringing educational awareness to those who may be affected.
- Run a video advertising campaign on social media to bring awareness to a new class action lawsuit. Most of the time, people are unaware of class action lawsuits they could be privy to. By running a generic, awareness-based campaign, you’ll get the message in front of everyone who may be able to join the lawsuit.
- Then, run a retargeting ad campaign to reach those who have watched parts (of all) of the video. Following up with a more targeted advertisement that urges them to take action will help incentivise the person to give your firm a call, visit your site, fill out a form, or whatever other specific action you deem fit.
- Set up a Google Ads campaign that targets the name of the specific product or company that is involved in the lawsuit. As awareness builds, curious individuals will look to Google for answers.You can count on that. By setting up an ad campaign targeting the brand and company in question, you’ll be able to attract those curious individuals to your site or encourage them to get in touch!
How to Get More Worker’s Comp Leads
Roughly 2.3 million people worldwide have work-related accidents every year. Since worker’s compensation is a touchy subject for many, you can rest assured that those injured on the job will be Googling answers before they go to his or her boss. For more worker’s compensation leads, try:
- Creating a dedicated FAQ and “How To” page on your personal injury firm’s website. There are tons of questions surrounding worker’s comp: how much does it cost, how to know if they’re eligible, how to get the ball rolling, how to file a claim, do they need a lawyer, etc. From experience marketing for worker’s compensation lawyers, we know that many of these questions go unanswered- easy conversions!
- Promote your worker’s compensation content on social media platforms. Once you’ve invested the resources into creating content that answers common worker’s compensation questions for your area, you’ll want to start promoting that content on your social media channels or even through PPC campaigns!
Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing with Digital Logic
There are a host of online marketing tools at your personal injury firm’s disposal. At Digital Logic, we determine which tools will serve your needs best. Then, we implement a strategy based on your firm’s budget, competition and goals.
When you choose a boutique-style agency, like Digital Logic, to run your personal injury marketing for you, you don’t need to be well versed in SEO, PPC, content, keyword research, etc. All you need to worry about is doing what you do best-practicing the law.
If you’ve made it this far, you are trying to offer your clients the very best service.
So, you have the groundwork laid for success. All we do is give you the platform to showcase your abilities, making sure your firm is seen by as many perspective clients as possible.
We can set you apart from the competition. Let us prove it.
