Why You Need an Agency That Tracks Google Advertising Changes
The Google search landscape is dynamic and ever-changing, influencing not only organic aspects of a website but also paid campaigns. Changing market conditions, combined with constantly evolving Google products and features, mean a “set it and forget it” mentality with paid campaigns will not result in success.
To navigate Google and market changes, you need to develop an effective paid strategy, and you need ongoing management and optimization to deliver the best performance.
This is especially true in the legal vertical, where the competition is fierce. Personal injury is Google’s most competitive and expensive category. According to Google, searches like "Houston truck accident lawyer" can go as high as $400 per click. Searches for "car accident lawyer near me" are routinely over $100 per click. Strategy development and management of legal campaigns require highly specialized expertise. Hiring an agency that is not experienced in campaign strategy, planning and management can be a very costly mistake.
Key Elements in your Paid Campaigns:
Keywords - Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is not just about a firm’s investment, but effective targeting of the ad spend. It requires going beyond the more obvious searches to identify keywords that convert at a higher rate with a lower cost-per-lead. These factors differ by market. So, when it comes to PPC, a “one size fits all” approach does not work. Paid search opportunities are not always obvious; a campaign specialist cultivates them.
Negative Keywords - Over the last several years, Google has been expanding the reach of campaigns by broadening keyword targeting. For example, the broad match keyword "car accident lawyer," potentially displays ads to users who searched for something like "divorce lawyer" or a competitor's brand name. A negative keyword strategy refines the campaign by ensuring Google does not serve your ads for those terms, reducing waste.
Ad Development - Another area where Google has implemented significant changes over the last several years has been ad copy. Recently, Google disabled the ability to create/edit Expanded Texts Ads, which allowed campaign creators to develop ads with 3 headlines and 2 descriptions. Google replaced Expanded Texts Ads with Responsive Search Ads (RSAs). RSAs allow for 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. With RSAs, Google chooses the top 3 headlines and 2 descriptions to display in the ad. Google will then test different combinations to determine which performs the best, adapting the ad's content to more closely align with a customer's search query. This increases the relevancy to maximize campaign performance.
Quality Score - It is imperative that marketers maintain a high quality score. Quality score is calculated based on landing page experience, expected clickthrough rate (CTR), and ad relevance to the searcher’s intent. Improving quality scores through optimizing ad copy, landing page experience, and site speed will result in a higher position in search at a lower cost-per-click. This is one of the reasons why having an organically healthy site is not just important for organic search; it’s also instrumental in running efficient paid campaigns that optimize your investment.
Trends: Automation, Attribution & Conversion Tracking
As digital marketing continues to evolve, businesses that don’t stay on top of technological advancements will be left behind. Effectively targeting potential clients who are more likely to have a solid case will put your firm ahead of the competition. It can be the difference between a successful paid campaign and wasting valuable marketing dollars.
There is a massive number of searches being performed and data being aggregated each second of the day. It can prove challenging for a campaign specialist, or even a team, to process the sheer volume of information on time to optimize campaigns and performance in real-time. Being able to automate and accurately attribute leads is very important to managing efficient ad campaigns with Google.
Big Voodoo has the answer. We streamline automation, attribution, and conversion tracking for paid campaigns using our proprietary platform, Sherloq powered by IBM Watson. Sherloq helps track conversions from ad campaigns. Its rating system determines the quality of the lead based on factors such as the severity of injuries and causes of accidents. This allows Google to see not just the quantity of leads that converted but, importantly, the quality. This valuable data is leveraged by Google’s advanced Smart Bidding strategies to target higher quality leads, resulting in a high-performing paid campaign.
Don't get left behind. Contact us to elevate your paid strategy.