Lawyers running paid ad campaigns should consider how every piece of the marketing strategy aligns from the first impression to the signed retainer. If you don’t strategize about how channels interact and influence one another, you’ll keep paying for ads while your performance plateaus. Advertisers must adopt the approach of full-funnel law firm marketing.
Take one of our clients. They were investing in paid search and Facebook advertising and even considering SEO variables and blogging articles. But what they lacked was a well-rounded strategy that consistently communicated complementary messages across channels. Channels weren’t siloed from one another (paid search campaigns targeting their owned domains’ organic search rankings); in fact, some undercut each other’s performance.
The Challenge: High Spend, Inconsistent Results
Paid ads were running across several channels: search, social, and Google Display. Leads were being driven, and forms were being submitted. However, their performance varied wildly from campaign to campaign:
- Year-over-year cost per lead was increasing
- Cost per signed case was too high
- Leads weren’t meeting expectations across quality
- Channels were siloed
Campaigns weren’t centralized around the funnel stage, awareness campaigns weren’t purposefully leading into retargeting, mid-funnel engagement wasn’t tactically nurturing prospects, and bottom-of-funnel campaigns weren’t robust enough to convert high-quality leads at scale.
Rebuilding the Strategy Around the Funnel
Rather than measuring each channel independently, we rebuilt the account into a holistic digital marketing ecosystem. This helped us measure efforts across every advertising platform and allowed us to layer strategies to ensure they were complementary and producing top-line KPI’s for each funnel stage.
Awareness with Lowest Cost (Top of Funnel)
Brand awareness matters for personal injury companies. Most people aren’t going to choose the first lawyer they find, but the lawyer they know.
We launched:
- Google display campaigns to drive reach
- Social paid campaigns with a focus on thought-leadership
- Video Ads that displayed the company and what they do
At this stage, we didn’t care if these people booked with that company right now. We wanted the strongest brand awareness at the lowest possible cost of engagement. We optimized for reach and CPM to push as many potential leads downstream as possible, while narrowing audiences and paring back our ad copy to cut out anything unnecessary for the lowest cost of awareness.
Building Engagement (Middle Funnel)
Once our leads began interacting with content, we placed them in nurturing campaigns featuring:
- Social retargeting
- Display remarketing
- Informational search ads
- Testimonial/case result ads and creatives
We looked at deepening our engagement numbers and growing trust. Click-through rates, video completions, and time engaged mattered most.
Optimized landing pages were crucial at this stage, too. Once a lead clicked on our campaign for car accidents, they’d be directed to a landing page specific to that type of injury. This not only helped our conversion rate, but also helped us weed out unqualified leads before they reached intake.
Turning Searches into Signups (Bottom of Funnel)
We bid on high-intent keywords across all personal injury and specific practice areas. We kept ad copy short, benefit-focused, and spoke on urgency, our experience, and free consultations.
We optimized for:
- Phone calls
- Form fills
- CPL
- CPS
Last but not least, landing pages were engineered for speed, clarity, and frictionless conversions. We decluttered forms, increased mobile page speed, and displayed testimonials and case results for establishing trust.
The Results: Lower Costs, Better Quality Leads
Tightening alignment across the entire funnel yielded huge results:
- –49% in cost per lead year-over-year
- –27% reduction in cost per sign (–$480 per sign)
- +77% Paid Media signs year-over-year
- +51% All signs year-over-year
- Five times more “wanted” paid media leads
Plus, we improved lead quality dramatically. Cases where clients actually wanted the firm to handle (“wanted leads”) increased fivefold. As a result, intake teams had more time to create high-intent inquiries and convert more quality cases.
They lowered the cost per case, raised conversion %, and saw improved ad KPIs across the board.
Why the Full Funnel Strategy Worked
There were three primary reasons why this strategy led to measurable improvements.
1. Platforms Stopped Competing and Started Supporting Each Other
We stopped asking: “Which channel drives the best performance?” Instead, we analyzed: “How does each channel play a role in the user’s journey?”
Google displays built awareness. Social repeated messaging & lift recall. Search ads targeted users exhibiting purchase intent. Retargeting ads created familiarity. And each platform was assigned a KPI that fit with its purpose in the funnel.
2. Aligned Messaging
The ad copy was relevant to the funnel stage it occupied. Ads that played to awareness focused on educating users. Engagement-stage ads were about creating trust. And conversion-focused ads clearly defined the desired action.
This allowed us to improve our CTR, eliminate wasted spend, and drive more signups.
3. Lead Quality Became the Focus.
A lot of law firm marketing success stories are by lead volume alone. Higher volume doesn’t always equal success. Without quality leads to prove it, your intake team will be overwhelmed, and your cost per case will skyrocket.
We focused on tightening our audience targeting, keywords, and landing pages to drive quality leads that would convert to more sign-ups from paid channels.
Making a Full-Funnel Law Firm Advertising Strategy Work for Your Brand
Big budgets aren’t how you win when it comes to personal injury law firm marketing, but by optimizing. When all of your digital channels are aligned and integrated (think Google display ads, search ads, social media), your firm can drive huge volumes of leads at low cost. That’s a full funnel strategy at work.
Want to learn more about how the Mavericks Marketing team can help you? Let’s chat! Schedule a free consultation with us today.