Why I Recommend Google Ads Over Facebook Ads For Solicitors Every Time

I am regularly asked by solicitors whether they should undertake Facebook Advertising or Google Ads Advertising. I thought it was time to answer that once and for all in my law firm marketing blog.

Facebook Ads Versus Google Ads For Solicitors - Which Are Best?First, it is important to note the position that I come at this from.

I am a marketing man through and through. I study what works and why, and when it comes to marketing for solicitors, this is especially important.

Most solicitors, quite rightly so, are not interested in ‘brand building’. No business should be unless they have millions of pounds to spend on it, because it is impossible to achieve without this sort of budget.

So solicitors, as do I, like to spend money on marketing and then see it generate a return on investment for them in terms of new client instructions.

The best way of doing this is to appear in front of people looking for solicitors AT THE PRECISE MOMENT IN TIME that they are looking for their services.

So how can you do this?

First, does facebook do this? When you advertise on facebook you can ask your advertisements to be displayed to people in certain locations, with certain jobs and in a certain age demographic, but you cannot ask to appear in front of them when they are actively looking for a solicitor. It has no way of knowing when they are doing this.

Turning to Google Ads, can they do any better? Can they make your advertisement appear in front of someone at the precise moment in time that they are looking for a solicitor or legal service provider?

How do Google Ads work? You ask your advertisement to be shown to people who type in certain words and are in a set geographic location. For example, if you provide probate services, you would ask Google to display your advertisements to anyone entering “probate solicitor” in your geographic area. You know the person is looking for a solicitor, your advertisement appears, they click on it, land on your website and call you. You have the chance of winning a new client.

Contrast this with facebook where your advertisement appears in front of hundreds of people, 99% of whom have absolutely no interest in finding a probate solicitor at that moment in time. Whilst they are looking at pictures of their friends latest holiday or a dog doing cute tricks, your facebook advertisement telling them to choose you as their Probate Solicitor pops up. They don’t want or need your services but they may still click on your advertisement out of interest, costing you money but giving you zero chances of attracting a new client.

When it comes to promoting legal services online, Google Ads wins, every time.

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Case Study

Beating the big boys whilst spending a fraction of their budget

We focus on accident claims, and it’s vital for us to have a strong web presence, which we didn’t have before Nick got involved.

As a result we had to buy in leads from other sources, reducing our profit margins and making us reliant on other companies to generate revenue.

We did have a company working on our Adwords and website, but the truth of the matter is that they weren’t getting the results we needed them to get – we only had a handful of clients coming in from those efforts, making us highly reliant on buying in the leads from elsewhere.

And then I came across one of Nick’s books, was impressed by what I read and got in touch with him.

The rest – as they say – is history.

We started working together with a clear brief: Nick’s job was to help us bring in more self-generated work, so we could stop relying on buying leads.

He started by working on our website, making it more accessible and easier to navigate.

Next he overhauled our Google Adwords, which the previous company had been running fairly unsuccessfully.

Adwords is hugely challenging in our sector, with some very big players bidding on some of the most common keywords, making it very difficult for any smaller firms to get a look in, and I’ve got to be honest and say that I didn’t know how Nick was going to make it work.

But he did, by analysing very closely what people were looking for and tailoring our Adwords efforts towards them.

It worked! We were competing with the big boys whilst spending a fraction of their budget, and the amount of work we got in was tremendous – we jumped from just a handful of leads and clients a month to 500 leads and 150 clients, every single month, all from our online efforts.

Nick didn’t just work on the lead generation side of things either – he helped us with the client conversion process too, training our team, making our sales calls better and improving our onboarding process to avoid drop-offs due to ‘cooling off’.

Now we don’t buy in any work at all, our pay-per-click efforts do a sterling job, and the large client database that Nick has helped us build has allowed us to increase the amount of work we do by a factor of ten, in just three years.

I’m one extremely satisfied client, and despite the dramatic differences Nick has been able to make in the time we’ve been working together, things are still improving thanks to his guidance and support.