Investing in a solid SEO strategy is a must for any business, but it is a slow-burning approach to reign in leads. Sometimes, a business needs a quick fire push to generate enquiries. That’s exactly the issue Holborn Adams faced in 2019.
Holborn Adams is a London-based firm of solicitors specialising in criminal justice. Their name was lost in Google search result pages for searches for their specialist areas. They needed to push to the top and stand out - and fast. So, they came to Digital Impact for help with their online paid advertising campaign.
Our team of in-house PPC experts and ad copywriters came together to devise and implement an effective paid advertising strategy that would see Holborn Adams’ enquiries multiply and their return on investment skyrocket.
The Challenge
A strong team of top tier criminal justice solicitors. An exceptional track record of success with high-profile criminal law cases. Raving reviews from former clients. This seems just about everything a solicitor firm would need for a flood of enquiries? But just a couple of years ago, the phone lines were fairly quiet for Holborn Adams.
It is no secret that competition for criminal justice solicitors is fierce and crowded, and with a high concentration of firms to contend with in their home base of London, Holborn Adams faced an even more rigid challenge to stand out.
Eager to capture the attention of potential clients, Holborn Adams embarked on their own Google AdWords paid advertising campaign with a significant monthly spend in the hope of securing high-value criminal defence leads.
Their efforts, however, were not as successful as they hoped. Enquiries lulled but their expenditure increased - something was off balance, and they needed an expert appraisal of the campaign to bring in those all-important leads.
Frustrated and desperate to make their digital campaign a success, Holborn Adams came to Digital Impact for help. Here’s how we helped them to increase their ROI on their Google Ad spend by over a staggering 300%.
The Solution
To stand out from the crowd and rank organically for their top target keywords, SEO would help push Holborn Adams up the Google search engine result pages (SERPs). But this method would take a considerable amount of time to yield the results Holborn Adams needed.
Carried out effectively, Google pay-per-click advertising (PPC) would drive a steady stream of instant and relevant traffic to the Holborn Adams website.
Here at Digital Impact, we set up and carefully managed an effective PPC campaign on behalf of Holborn Adams. Our strategy can be broken down into some key components:
- Initial audit
- Competitor and market analysis
- PPC strategy and account build
- Tracking and goals
- PPC optimisation, reporting, and review
Initial Audit and Objectives
Effective PPC campaigns aren’t built on “hunches”. They are carefully researched and data-driven. Holborn Adams existing PPC campaign provided a ripe opportunity to pick out data that would show how effectively they were attracting leads and making conversions. Setting up email and call tracking on their live campaign allowed us to identify what was and wasn’t working to inform our later strategy.
Effective PPC campaigns aren’t exclusively about the numbers. Meaningful context around the business is essential to understand what goals to strive for and to recognise markers of success for that specific company. We worked with Holborn Adams to get to grips with their company culture, their short and long-term business objectives, and which key performance metrics mattered to them most. This information was critical for weighing up how well their current campaign was performing and to plan for future actions and adjustments.
Competitor and Market Analysis
Relying solely on the data from Holborn Adam’s previous PPC efforts wouldn’t be fruitful enough to set up a strong campaign, so we turned to their competitors to see what it takes to secure top ad spots in their industry.
Using various intelligence tools, we analysed their successful competitors’ efforts, focusing on their keyword targets, their copy, and more.
In order to better understand what makes a successful ad, we put ourselves in the shoes of potential Holborn Adams clients. We learnt about the specialist services Holborn Adams wished to promote - Criminal Offences Support, Sexual Offences Support, and Fraud Offences Support - and learnt what a client’s hopes and fears were in order to write attention-grabbing and influential copy, as well as targeting the most profitable keywords.
Using this information, we had a solid idea of the core areas we needed to target in the context of PPC.
PPC Strategy and Account Build
Armed with our list of relevant, competitive target keywords and our understanding of how competitors operate their campaigns, we created a bespoke strategy document for Holborn Adams, outlining exactly what our PPC plans were.
Following this document, we created a bespoke Google Ads structure tailored to their objectives at an account, campaign, ad group and ad-level.
To ensure that the campaign got off to a good start, we:
- Optimised the ad schedule for conversions and to avoid wasted clicks.
- Gained full control of budget settings for our in-house experts to manage.
- Optimised for devices to increase conversion rates and return on investment for different users.
Tracking Goals
It may surprise you how many companies are not tracking goals correctly. To keep the campaign running smoothly, it was crucial to track specific goals so we could identify which areas were performing well and which needed more attention.
Holborn Adam’s primary goal was to attract enquiry calls so we enabled call tracking from their AdWords account. This worked by recording the number of visitors who made a call following a click on a Holborn Adam’s PPC ad. This allowed us to distinguish between organic calls and those following an ad click.
PPC Optimisation, Reporting, and Review
Geared up with tracking data, we continually optimised success by weeding out poorly performing ads, keywords, and ad sources to ensure that every penny of Holborn Adam’s advertising budget was put to good use.
By rewriting ads as per AdWords best practice, testing Call to Actions, and carrying out a full negative keyword review, Holborn Adams campaign saw a decline in wasted clicks and costs.
PPC is a complicated business, so we wanted to make sure Holborn Adams understood how our approach was working and how their budget was being allocated. Every month, we produced detailed reports to display how each of the campaign’s KPIs were performing. These easy-to-understand reports meant that, collectively, we could make better decisions about the strategy moving forward.
In addition to monthly reviews, we conduct a bi-yearly review to get a crystal clear picture of how the campaign is running as a whole. We made any necessary changes to the campaign at this point.
The Results
From January to October 2019, Holborn Adams saw a 300% return on investment from their paid advertising efforts.
Through their campaign, they propelled to the top paid advertising spots on the results pages for their target keywords. They were no longer losing money on poorly optimised and inefficient ad bids.
These spots earned them greater recognisability and, teamed with their excellent reviews and notable reputation, fostered trust which boosted their enquiries significantly.