In evaluating the effectiveness of your firm’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign, there is really only one metric that matters: What is the quantity of the qualified calls and inquiries your firm is receiving?
That’s it. No other metrics matter and for law firms, the data that you do get is really only diagnostic in nature. Fortunately, proper assessment of what I would call interim metrics offers some clues as to a) why your campaign is performing at the level that it is and b) what you can do to improve your results.
In order to mine this data for the “nuggets of truth” that they hold, let’s look at some of these metrics more closely.
Obviously, the most important of these is clicks. If one believes in the funnel approach to marketing and sales, then the more clicks one has, the more likely one is to generate leads and ultimately more conversions. Hence, when we see the level of clicks decreasing, we try to assess whether this trend is a function of the campaign itself or of other considerations. For example, we recently implemented an effort on behalf of a family law firm that focused primarily on post-divorce and enforcement matters. While the level of clicks was considerable, the client did not initially obtain the results (i.e., leads) they were seeking. When the strategy changed to focus on broader terms (e.g., alimony, domestic violence, etc.), the level of clicks declined – but the level of inquiries actually increased. More important, the level of “qualified” inquiries jumped dramatically. The reasons behind this had less to do with the logistics of the campaign itself, than the manner in which individuals seek out family law services. Hence, in this case, the low level of inquiries indicated a problem with the keywords that had been utilized.
But other factors may be playing a role in an upward or downward trend as well. Has a new competitor entered the fray and upped the cost-per-click, thus in effect, “shrinking” your budget? Is that competitor paying a premium price to be ranked top three no matter what the cost? Such trends may also be a function of seasonality (in which case you should compare results vs. the same period of the previous year) or a decline in importance or volume of a particular topic (e.g., favorable economic conditions may lessen the level of “bankruptcy” searches.) The latter can be explored in further detail by researching whether the overall volume of impressions (the number of times the search engines serve up each of your ads) or the number of searches for those keywords themselves have also gone up or down. If changes in your click volume and site traffic are reflective of trends in these metrics, then you are running with the herd. If they’re better, then “congratulations” – you’re doing something right. And if they are worse… well then, it may be time to make some changes.
The click-through rate offers yet another glimpse into what is going right or wrong with your PPC program. If your click-through rate is relatively high or trending upward, this suggests that your ads are doing their job in terms of attracting visitors to your site. If not? You guessed it…. Change them. Add a call to action.
Click volume is also a function of the quality of your web site’s landing pages (i.e., the pages to which visitors are directed from these ads.) Are they of sufficient relevance? Look at how Google is assessing your landing pages as based upon the quality score (from 1 – 10) they give for each of your keywords. That score is part of Google’s algorithm and is one factor in determining how high your sponsored listing is ranked as well as the cost of the clicks. If you are receiving low scores, consider either utilizing different keywords, or more likely, enhancing the relevance of your landing pages.
As I have discussed in a
previous post,
average position may or may not be another indication as to why click volume is trending one way or the other. Depending on the situation, higher rankings may be a goal unto itself, but in some cases, you may actually get more clicks on the dollar by accepting a lower position.
Finally, if you want to get really fancy, you can analyze the cost per client acquisition by dividing your PPC expenditures over the number of clients obtained (and then measuring that versus the revenue obtained). But even in doing this, be careful. You’re not selling Ty-D-Bol. Unlike for high volume retailers or manufacturers, one especially large or especially small client can skew results dramatically.
Ultimately, your best indication of results, will come not from reports on the metrics of your PPC campaign alone, but from aggregating your quality leads. All of the other metrics come into play only in the service of enhancing your efforts.
