You may be wondering right off the bat, how on earth could these different institutions have anything in common in terms of their marketing strategy, let alone pay-per-click? Well, if you think about the customer intent and journey to your brand, one thing to remember is that a good portion of leads for credit unions, law firms, and assisted living communities tend to originate from a word-of-mouth recommendation from a trusted friend, family member, or colleague. This makes those who search online all the more crucial to capture, as they are doing deep research in order to make a decision.

Let’s start with legal practices.

Certain areas of law are more searched for online than others.

For instance, bankruptcy, DUI/DWI, employment matters, personal injury, and other criminal charges are typically better suited for online advertising campaigns. The reason? Those faced with situations like this generally don’t want their circumstances known to others close to them.

Each area of law has a target audience that can be narrowed down, pinpointed by location, and negated if not the right fit.

There are several ways you can narrow down the audience that you need to target based on their lifestyle characteristics, age, gender, and so on. Geolocation comes into play when you think about where your audience frequently visits. For instance, having your ad show near bars is ideal if you’re looking for clients with DUI charges. Negative keywords that categorize an area of law you do not provide prevents the unfit clientele from finding your firm.

PPC campaigns are not standalone campaigns. Being tied to fully optimized web pages to help support those keywords is another component to the mix that you can’t afford to neglect.

Now let’s talk landing pages, and use credit unions as an example.

Information first, visuals second.

Stock photos, clever calls to action and headlines can blind us with their color coordination and nostalgia, stemming from a standard smiling photo of a happy family – leading us to believe that will make or break our user experience.

Sure, visuals grab attention, but they do not drive action. The layout of your landing page has to be done in a way that sufficiently presents the answer to the question the user is seeking.

Create segmented landing pages.

Not only does this give you the ability to reallocate the focus on specific financial services you offer, it also allows you to use it to target the specific individuals who are looking for it. Not only this, but given the opportunity to create multiple pages to A/B test will help you figure out what version is going to be the best.

Now that you understand the ins and outs to forming the optimal landing page, what targeting is going to be the right fit for the audience? Once you know this, you can then decide how to build out the PPC campaign to the best it can be.

We’ll use senior living as our example for this analysis.

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As they discussed in the movie Shrek, ogres are like onions – they have layers. Google Ads do too.

When you are within the platform, you might be overwhelmed at first. There are a few components that go into the setup and management of Google Ads, but first and foremost you must understand the hierarchy of how it is structured.

From the top down, Google Ads are organized by Campaign, Ad Group, and Keywords. Campaigns are essentially the entire project, and is where they are categorized as either Display, Search, etc. Ad Groups are the next level below this, where you can separate them into broad categories in terms of various aspects to your services, products, or brand. Keywords are the building blocks that make up the ad groups and are the search terms you are bidding on to drive people to that ad. This structure allows for various segmentation efforts.

Ad groups can be organized by the various levels and types of care. For instance these groupings can contain keywords that correspond with assisted living, memory care, and independent living. It’s a great way to allocate your budget in an equal effort across all services you want to promote.

Like any solid structure, Google Ads require routine maintenance.

Consumer behavior isn’t always predictable, and your business cycle will change during certain times of the year. It’s important that you optimize your campaigns each month to reflect what keywords you’ve tested are getting the most clicks, where you need more leads, and what may need an additional boost in budget to get a higher “bid.”

Keyword bidding 101.

A simple explanation of PPC bids are the dollar amount paid for the advertisements that appear on a search engine results page, at the top or on the side. These are separate from the natural, organic results that appear. The more popular the keyword, the higher the bid price. From the beginning, you’ll simply want your bids to essentially match your cost per acquisition. But, the beauty of Google Ads are it’s built in tool – Keyword Planner – to help mitigate the headaches of getting started.

In conclusion: always keep the customer journey in mind.

Your foundation to any PPC campaign for any of these industries is remembering that the choice of what lawyer to hire, what financial route is best, or where mom or dad is going to be happiest living, is a big one. Those seeking these services will do extensive research, so it is imperative that your company or brand is one of the first they get acquainted with.

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Sources:

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/05/11/easy-adwords-bidding-strategies

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/03/06/adwords-account-structure

https://www.lastingtrend.com/blog/ppc-for-law-firms

https://www.disruptiveadvertising.com/landing-pages/law-firm-landing-page-2/