Family lawyers who are looking for the quickest way to drive traffic to your website and one of the most cost-effective ways should keep reading as we will reveal why paid advertising online is the answer. We will discuss pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, as these ads are the most used and effective.
There are numerous online websites where you can run paid ads for your family law practice to attract new clients, which are some of the most visited online. That includes the #1 website at the time of writing, which is Google, although some websites covet that top position and are doing all they can to acquire it. That is good news for advertisers as it means more competitive pricing and increased traffic as these websites seek to attract more visitors.
One issue for many family lawyers reading this is that they may not be aware of the top websites for PPC ads and how each works. We will address that issue by highlighting the top two so you have what you need to know about ads on the two premier PPC platforms.
Google Ads
Google uses two main networks, namely Search Network and Display Network. Most businesses can use either. For search, companies will bid on search terms, and when their bid is successful, their ad will be shown when that search is entered. The display network exists across thousands of other websites that partner with Google and display ads relevant to the website or page that a visitor lands on.
You can set up different types of campaigns using Google Ads. These are:
- Search: Traditional PPC ads based on bidding for keywords on Google’s search engine.
- Video: Ads of up to 15 seconds that appear on videos published on YouTube.
- Display: Normally, image ads appear on a vast network of websites.
- Shopping: This is for retailers selling goods via their e-commerce store or Google’s merchant centre.
- App: For businesses with an app, and every business should, these ads allow them to promote it.
- Smart: These are campaigns that are auto-generated by Google.
The total budget you set will be influenced by several factors, which include:
- How competitive are the keywords that you are targeting
- How many keywords are you targeting
- Whether you opt for pay-per-click or pay-per-impression
- The performance of your ad in terms of click-through rate
- What are you willing to spend daily
Microsoft Ads
Previously known as Bing Ads, Microsoft Advertising works for businesses in numerous sectors, including the legal industry. It operates on a principle almost identical to Google Ads: a company will bid on keywords and only pay when someone clicks on their ad or when a certain number of ad impressions have been instigated.
As Microsoft shows ads on the Bing, Yahoo and AOL search engines, it allows your ads to appear on all of them. Microsoft also has a network of partner websites where their ads are displayed.
Microsoft ads do not offer as many campaign types as Google; the three they offer are Search, Shopping and Dynamic Search, which is the display ad network.
Calculating your budget is done by taking account of all the same factors as you would with Google, although you may find that, on average, your overall spend with Microsoft Ads is less than on Google Ads.
