Main takeaways:
- End of Lead Disputes: The removal of lead disputes in Google’s LSA system puts law firms, particularly in personal injury and criminal law, at risk of paying for unqualified leads.
- Shift in Advertising Strategy: Smaller firms may need to pivot back to pay-per-click ads and SEO to maintain a competitive edge and control lead quality.
- Opportunity for Alternative Channels: Diversifying into other advertising platforms such as Bing Ads or DuckDuckGo can provide more targeted, cost-effective leads.
In this episode of The Optimized Law Firm, we’re diving into Google’s recent update to Local Service Ads (LSAs) that removes the option to dispute leads. We’ll explore the impact this will have on your law firm, particularly if you focus on criminal or personal injury cases, and discuss the best alternative advertising strategies you can adopt.
Google’s recent decision to remove the dispute option for leads in Local Service Ads is a game-changer—especially for law firms. In this section, we’ll break down what exactly has changed and why it matters so much to your advertising strategy.
Timestamps:
- Introduction to Google’s LSA Changes
Timestamp: 00:00:05 – 00:01:13- Impact on Practice Areas and Lead Quality
Timestamp: 00:01:13 – 00:10:13- Alternative Advertising Strategies and SEO
Timestamp: 00:15:26 – 00:26:46
Short on time? Watch these digestible videos instead:
Transcription:
00:00:05:07 – 00:00:28:02
Patrick Carver
Imagine that your ad dollars are going right down the drain with no way to dispute it. Well, that’s exactly what’s happened with Google’s latest change with their LSA or local service advertising platform. Google recently changed their local service ads to no longer allow lead disputes. And this is going to have a disproportionate negative impact on certain practice areas.
00:00:28:05 – 00:00:50:06
Patrick Carver
Let’s find out which ones he woke up and saw that there’s now no way to dispute your leads and feel like you’re out of options. Pump the brakes for a second. Let’s talk about some of the ways that you can mitigate this new change that Google has produced and how you can actually be better off in the long run with some of the strategies that we can recommend.
00:00:50:09 – 00:01:13:10
Patrick Carver
In this episode of the Optimize Law Firm Podcast, we’re going to talk about Google’s recent update to local service ads, also known as Days that removes the ability to dispute lead. So we’ll explore the impact that this is going to have on your law firm, particularly those that are going to be hardest hit, in my opinion, by this recent change.
00:01:13:15 – 00:01:32:29
Patrick Carver
And we’re going to talk about some of the best ways you can mitigate this alternative advertising strategies, how you can really stay ahead of this when a lot of your competitors are going to be hit by this. And it’s a great opportunity, a great time to seize this opportunity for your law firm. So welcome to the Optimize Law Firm podcast.
00:01:32:29 – 00:01:56:21
Patrick Carver
I’m your host, Patrick Carver. I’m the owner of Constellation Marketing, where we help law firms grow beyond seven figures. This podcast is all about growing a more profitable and enjoyable law firm. So we talk about marketing, we talk about other hacks, different operational things that you can do to really create the law firm in the business that you want.
00:01:56:23 – 00:02:20:17
Patrick Carver
So I’m really excited to talk about this. It’s been kind of in the works for a while. We saw some information come out about it over the past couple of months and we the day is finally hit. We we got the update that you can no longer dispute leads in local service ads. And as you know, thousands and thousands of law firms rely on local service ads.
00:02:20:20 – 00:02:41:16
Patrick Carver
This could have a really big impact on the industry. So we’re going to break it down, kind of talk specifically about it and get into some of the solutions as well that you can utilize to make sure there’s no drop in in revenue. So if you’re not familiar with Google’s local service ads, there’s you know, it’s pretty simple.
00:02:41:16 – 00:03:20:29
Patrick Carver
So it’s another advertising platform that Google created. This is in addition to their other platform called Google Pay per click. And the local service ads have started to roll out probably like, you know, five or so years ago, maybe a little bit more than that. And this has been affectionately called Google Ads for Dummies. And they call it that because it provides a really simple way for business owners to take advantage of the advertising potential that Google has and get leads that are presumably, you know, interested in their search, qualified leads that are that are going to help here.
00:03:21:01 – 00:03:57:08
Patrick Carver
There’s a couple of fundamental changes between Elisa’s and the paper click side of things. So with pay per click, you are paying for the click. So every time someone clicks, you are going to get charged for that. With LSA, you’re paying by the lead. Another unique feature of LSA is and this is the one of them that you know, has has really been beneficial to a lot of firms and felt felt really good was that it had this lead dispute option and that allowed you to dispute any lead that came in that you were paid for.
00:03:57:08 – 00:04:23:27
Patrick Carver
And so there were some criteria that you could go in and, you know, in dispute this. And if you never took advantage of it, I’m sorry, because the good the good old days are gone at this point. And so with the paper click engine, you don’t have that opportunity, right? You just are paying for clicks and then are going to figure out your cost per lead just based on the total number of clicks it takes to get that lead into your system.
00:04:23:27 – 00:04:46:00
Patrick Carver
And so you can see for a number of reasons, these these ads were favorable for a lot of businesses are super easy to deploy. They also, in a lot of situations, well, really all situations appeared at the top of the search results even higher than the paper click ads. It also had a little logo on it that said Google screen.
00:04:46:02 – 00:05:30:00
Patrick Carver
So it it had this kind of beneficial opportunity for lawyers to get really good search result placement. And for a long time the costs were kept pretty low compared to the cost per click side of things, the PPC side. And so it was a really favorable option for for a lot of people, especially if you didn’t want to pay a marketing agency to do ads or, you know, you were in personal injury, for instance, the, the leads that came through for personal injury were substantially lower in cost than what it, what it would be on the pay per click site.
00:05:30:00 – 00:05:54:16
Patrick Carver
So for a while we were deploying these as a way to hedge against some of the larger personal injury law firms out there because we were getting really good value for the money for these. Not to say that the law was perfect definitely came with problems I won’t get into to all that. We’ll stick with this. We’ll stick with the lead dispute component today for this.
00:05:54:16 – 00:06:18:08
Patrick Carver
But you know, it’s a big problem or it’s a big change because, you know, if you were to get like ten, ten leads a month. Right. And you were able to dispute three of those, you know, that might save you $300, or if you’re doing it for 20 leads or whatever, you know, you’re talking about saving $500, saving $1,000 a month, depending on your your budget, and you just don’t have to pay for those.
00:06:18:08 – 00:06:46:00
Patrick Carver
And so it lowers your cost per acquisition. It ensures that you get more value for your money. It’s in a lot of ways less risky than doing regular paper click or SEO or, you know, and it really any marketing, other type of marketing because there’s always inherent risks. It may not work the way that you expect it to, whether that’s a performance thing from, you know, it just didn’t perform.
00:06:46:00 – 00:07:08:17
Patrick Carver
It can be that market like there’s a lot of things, a lot of reasons that regular marketing stuff might not work. This was a pretty good hedge and allowed you to reduce some of the exposure you had from a financial point of view. So this was going on and, you know, going pretty well for a long time for a lot of lawyers.
00:07:08:17 – 00:07:34:09
Patrick Carver
And it started to get not as good when the secret account was out of the bag. So it used to be that not a lot of people knew about this. And so, you know, if you got onto it early, you had that first mover advantage. You would get a majority of of those leads. And so we’ve had, you know, we have some clients who are like, you know, we’ll absolutely love Elsa’s right.
00:07:34:12 – 00:08:02:19
Patrick Carver
But over time, as more people got into it, it became more diluted. They. My theory on it is that they needed more more leads basically to go around to satisfy the demand for these these local service ads. And that eroded the quality over time. They started opening up the parameters more, having less stringent filtering as to what types of leads they were letting through.
00:08:02:21 – 00:08:22:07
Patrick Carver
And, you know, kind of as the the lifespan of LSA has gone on, you know, what we’ve seen and heard from our clientele, especially in areas like criminal law, is that the quality of the lead has gone down and then the costs have gone up substantially as well. So you don’t really have this good first mover advantage anymore.
00:08:22:07 – 00:08:47:02
Patrick Carver
And so the areas that we feel like are hardest hit by this, this change and just are not in, you know, kind of a favorable position with losses in general are going to be criminal and personal injury. So, you know, as I mentioned before, we really like using lessons for personal injury lawyers because it’s kind of a situation where they kind of punch above their weight.
00:08:47:02 – 00:09:15:27
Patrick Carver
Right. They can be really stringent about about those calls and dispute, you know, very aggressively so that, you know, even the amounts that they were spending, which the leads were substantially less than what you would see in pay per click, where we can be like $300 or $400. I mean, you can be $300 for a click. But with LSA, it was always like, you know, 30% of that was and you were getting an actual lead, right?
00:09:15:27 – 00:09:46:09
Patrick Carver
You’re getting say, who who put their information in to do it. And so by eliminating these lead disputes, I think it now favors large personal injury firms who, you know, really are accustomed to overpaying for or paying just a higher rate for that customer acquisition. So I think this really hurts smaller law firms who, you know, are are more strapped financially and, you know, they’re not generating income yet.
00:09:46:09 – 00:10:13:17
Patrick Carver
Maybe they’re a younger firm or they just don’t, you know, have super aggressive growth plans. This change where you can no longer dispute leads just means you’re kind of stuck with it. And what I predict with this is that, you know, the overall quality of lead is going to be lower. And so you basically have to make a decision, do I want to keep in this game, keep playing in this game, even though the quality continues to erode?
00:10:13:24 – 00:10:43:09
Patrick Carver
But I have no recourse. I have no ability to go back and, you know, and dispute this to Google to say, hey, I only signed up for car accident and this person reached out to me with a slip and fall. Like, you’ll just have to take some of those and those can be really expensive. The pricing has gone up substantially over time where, you know, early on we were seeing leads come in for personal injury at like 100 bucks.
00:10:43:11 – 00:11:05:21
Patrick Carver
That’s going up. It’s you know, I’ve seen 300. I’ve seen 400 per lead for that. And so, you know, that’s a lot of money. Really quickly. If you get a handful of leads that are not not qualified and you have no recourse for this. The other practice area that I think is going to be impacted heavily by this is is criminal law.
00:11:05:26 – 00:11:37:21
Patrick Carver
And this is kind of accentuation of the problems we’ve seen with with criminal law and hear from from attorneys. We work with a lot of criminal law firms and, you know, pretty consistently across the board, regardless of geographic area, they have reported to us that the quality of these has gone down substantially and this is a little bit of a different situation than for personal injury or other areas that, you know, they’re just trying to add more people into the mix of their more leads to pass around.
00:11:37:24 – 00:12:12:09
Patrick Carver
What we’ve seen with the criminal space is that they do not have a good they don’t do a good job of properly assessing intent or whether or not they the person searching actually has a a bona fide criminal law issue. They have really what we’ve seen is like the basically the filtering is very lax and a lot of people are getting through as as leads when they’re asking about something that is not a criminal matter.
00:12:12:09 – 00:12:36:26
Patrick Carver
They are asking about something like, Hey, my neighbor is really loud. I think they deserve to go to jail or, you know, a lot of random stuff where people just don’t really understand the difference between a civil and criminal activity action. And so they get a lot of these like weird things that, you know, people assume is a criminal matter when in reality it’s not.
00:12:36:26 – 00:13:01:23
Patrick Carver
And so it’s it’s you know, it’s a ton of it’s a big nuisance and in the quality is like not not very good at all. And so now it’s going to be even worse in my view, because you do not have that opportunity for recourse. You can’t go in and prove to somebody that they called and we’re asking about suing a neighbor or something and go through the call transcript and and show them like, look, these people are asking for it.
00:13:01:25 – 00:13:20:13
Patrick Carver
You know, they need a personal injury attorney like this shouldn’t this isn’t a criminal law. Right. And shouldn’t be you know, I shouldn’t have to be paying for this. You can’t do that anymore. And, you know, and so Google’s new system, you effectively just get to rate those leads. Who knows what’s going to happen with that data, right?
00:13:20:13 – 00:13:50:08
Patrick Carver
Like, who knows if that’s going to have some sort of impact on I mean, what do they do like give you? I mean, I think to some degree it’ll it’ll help the like I think it will vary so much between the reasons for why you would dispute a lead that, you know, if you don’t have a ton of data to train on, it’s it’s going to be really hard to kind of focus in on a specific thing that you’re trying to avoid by saying the lead was bad.
00:13:50:08 – 00:14:32:05
Patrick Carver
So I think the qualification process will be super hard. I think you’re going have to spend a lot more money if you’re on the criminal side. And, you know, and so it’s unfortunate because I think these this will really impact people who are heavily reliant on losses, whether it’s a PR firm or a criminal firm and just overall, I think, you know, as we go on, I think the other areas like estate planning and family immigration, I think those will all kind of go the same way as as criminal and immigration excuse me, criminal P.I. Those are really the two I’ve seen over the past ten years that are the most aggressive in terms of
00:14:32:07 – 00:14:54:18
Patrick Carver
in terms of advertising and marketing. And so I think over time, the you know, it’s basically going to catch up in these other practice areas that there will be more people in the mix, more people will because there’s extremely low barrier of entry to get these ads. Google’s not going to walk away from a dollar. So they want, you know, as many people as they can to sign up with these local services.
00:14:54:24 – 00:15:26:13
Patrick Carver
The more people that get into it in a market reduces the number of leads you’re going to get and ultimately reduces number of quality because they you’re going to try to generate more leads to satisfy demand that opens up the spectrum of what then qualifies as a lead, and you’re left with poor lead quality. So let’s talk about some of the alternative strategies that you can pursue if you’re going to be impacted by this change with lead disputes and how you can keep your revenue.
00:15:26:13 – 00:16:15:18
Patrick Carver
Look at other advertising channels and and ultimately, you know, take take this this challenge and turn it into an opportunity. So LLC, you know, is a big piece of marketing. It’s been a big, powerful help for a lot of law firms. But don’t forget about what I would call the fundamentals of of advertising or the, you know, the components that have been around for a long time, because I think what the the biggest change around this that we’re adopting for our clients is we’re moving them back to pay per click in terms of the using a majority of budget over there, When we start a new campaign on the advertising side, we often will do
00:16:15:18 – 00:16:50:06
Patrick Carver
both pay per click and less is because there is nuance related to practice, area, location. You know, all of those things will change the lead cost and so some people get great returns with losses. Other people, it’s absolutely horrible. So we typically will will put those back against each other to test them and see where you’re getting the lowest cost per lead so that your the efficiency of your of your investment is is at a very is very good.
00:16:50:09 – 00:17:28:19
Patrick Carver
Right. So one thing we’re mostly focused on is moving people back in terms of their budget to paper click and we like this because it’s a you know it basically is a buffer against lazy people. So more people are using our is because it’s super fast, super quick. There’s really low barrier entry and it doesn’t require any skill if you’re getting charged a lot of money for someone to manage your losses, like you’re absolutely getting screwed because there’s really just not much in there that you can do.
00:17:28:19 – 00:17:54:03
Patrick Carver
And that’s really the whole point was to take, you know, the actual pay per click strategist out of the equation so that this was kind of directly accessible by business owners, kind of like ads, you know, ads for the people. And so that puts you all on a equal, equal path, right? There’s some very minor things that, you know, depending on who you believe will impact this.
00:17:54:05 – 00:18:21:23
Patrick Carver
But like a review count and some other other things like that. But ultimately, it’s not something that you can really like turn to and to scale. You don’t have control over the scalability of it because we have clients where, you know, we’re putting in $1,000 as a weekly budget 2000 and we’re just not getting getting leads and we have no control over, you know, over that we’re not hitting anywhere close to our budget.
00:18:21:23 – 00:18:47:01
Patrick Carver
But for some reason, you know, Google is putting giving other people the leads. And based on our discussions with Google, with their local service advertising department, you know, we get the sense that basically every quarter they kind of reshuffle the deck. They get people who maybe haven’t had as many leads, prioritize them, you know, try to kind of rotate things around to keep everybody happy.
00:18:47:01 – 00:19:10:24
Patrick Carver
And so if you’ve ever had your your list is just completely drop off after a period where you’re like, I’m on fire, Like, this is amazing. That’s probably why that’s that’s probably what happened. So with PPC, it does not have those restrictions. You are in much more firm control over, you know, the scale that you pursue, but also the design of the campaigns.
00:19:10:29 – 00:19:30:05
Patrick Carver
So early on when you could dispute leads and there weren’t that many people. The quality of the lead for LSA was really good. It was good high content people who needed your type of service. And then as time has gone on, it’s gotten more and more diluted with pay per click. You can actually control for a lot of that.
00:19:30:05 – 00:19:57:18
Patrick Carver
So when we start a campaign, we’re going to do a lot of negative keyword targeting where we’re putting in just an enormous amount of keywords that we don’t want to be found for. So it can be pro-bono, so affordable, cheap, it can be other lawyer names, it can be unrelated queries. By doing that, you’re going to cut out an enormous amount of junk that would otherwise kind of slide in to an LLC.
00:19:57:20 – 00:20:23:00
Patrick Carver
And so you’re able to really drill down with with laser specificity the type of search that that you’re willing to pay for. And so when you do that and focus on those high tech keywords, you get a much higher quality of lead. And, you know, it’s that type of extra planning that most people aren’t going to do or they require an agency to do it.
00:20:23:00 – 00:20:53:25
Patrick Carver
And so in I think in a number of ways, by going with pay per click, it’s going to give you more of a moat, a competitive moat around your other customers. So in addition to that, the price advantage of LSA, I don’t think is as big anymore. And so we’re seeing, you know, in a lot of situations good equal or better rates with with pay per click because I think there’s been a bit of an exodus away from people with pay per click because they’re like, Well, why am I paying?
00:20:53:28 – 00:21:16:08
Patrick Carver
You know, why am I paying your agency fee when I can just go to LSA? And so I think what you’re seeing right now is, you know, probably a shift back in the in the other direction. So this is an opportunity, in my opinion, to shift away and have more control and ultimately get a better quality of lead than probably what you’ve been getting with LSA.
00:21:16:10 – 00:21:44:02
Patrick Carver
You can also look at other advertising platforms. So something that you know, is not ever talked about because no one really thinks about being that much is being has ads, right? So they have a percentage of the market and and have a fairly robust advertising platform. It looks and works basically exactly like Google ads. DuckDuckGo, I believe, actually has advertising now as well.
00:21:44:02 – 00:22:11:22
Patrick Carver
And so you can go into these other channels and kind of make up for that, make up for those leads that came in. You know, typically we’re coming in through through LSA. You know, what I like about being and, you know, potentially DuckDuckGo, we haven’t, you know, to be candid, we haven’t run campaigns there. But if it is keyword based, you again, can be extremely specific about the types of keyword you’re looking for and what you’re willing to pay for.
00:22:11:22 – 00:22:46:23
Patrick Carver
And so I love that approach. And ultimately it leads to a much higher quality of candidate and then ultimately more cases and more revenue. You can also look at other places to kind of depending on your your practice area like Facebook, you to Yelp, we see, you know, some mixed bag results with with Yelp. We are you know, not enormous fans of Facebook because typically the people that are that you’re you’re advertising to are not in the mindset of needing a service right then and there.
00:22:46:25 – 00:23:10:24
Patrick Carver
But when people are doing search you know search engagement they’re doing searches through, you know, a search engine or on Yelp or something like that. They’re much going to be a much higher quality of lead coming in. Facebook leads are notoriously difficult to follow up with. Often, you know, it made it so easy to click one button and, you know, and be a lead.
00:23:10:24 – 00:23:29:18
Patrick Carver
And so like, you know, eight times out of ten, they won’t remember. They they actually signed up for it. And if you are going to do it, I would suggest making it more of a slow burn where you’re taking people to a lead magnet and then follow up with them. And so that’s going be more conducive to like your estate planning, potentially bankruptcy.
00:23:29:18 – 00:23:52:03
Patrick Carver
But, you know, things that are like, I like hair on fire, I need a solution right now at criminal, probably divorce, too. And pie immigration as well. You know, you want a solution right then. And that’s when you’re going to be pulling out your phone, going on Google and searching for somebody. And so that’s really where we focus on how we can get those connections and get that get that real estate.
00:23:52:03 – 00:24:20:23
Patrick Carver
So the final thing that you can also do as a alternative, this is SEO. So we are enormous advocates of SEO when we do analytical data analysis about comparing channels, you know, we typically see on the low end of cost per lead and like the immigration space, it’s going to be between 40 to $60. And then in something like P.I., it could be like a $300, $500 lead.
00:24:20:25 – 00:24:44:21
Patrick Carver
So you have a really you have a lot of it’s going to cost a lot to produce those those leads. And you never you know, you never get any good quality or I guess, a cumulative advantage from it. You never get that compounding benefit. On the other hand, you do with SEO. And so we typically will see the lead cost.
00:24:44:23 – 00:25:18:09
Patrick Carver
You know, if it’s a 40, $60 lead and immigration, that lead cost is like below 20. When you factor in the SEO work that extends to all of the practice areas that we work with as well. So it is, you know, there are challenges to it, there are drawbacks. But when you actually invest in it and you get the desired outcome, you know you’re going to plug yourself into a sustainable compounding source of leads that, you know, is going to continue to lower and cost over time.
00:25:18:09 – 00:25:45:21
Patrick Carver
So it’s it’s an enormous advantage. And the biggest trend we see with with our clients is moving off of advertising and really doubling down on on SEO because it’s having such a great impact on their business. So the removal of lead disputes in local service ads definitely is is going to have a huge impact. But it doesn’t have to spell disaster for your law firm by understanding the changes.
00:25:45:23 – 00:26:10:14
Patrick Carver
If it’s going to affect your practice area and adopting some of these smaller alternative strategies, you can continue to thrive in a really competitive market. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Optimize Law Firm Podcast. If you have any questions about this, we’ve got, you know, a great staff, a great team of people who work on these these issues day in and day out.
00:26:10:16 – 00:26:34:02
Patrick Carver
I’m always open to talking about how we can grow your your law firm. You can reach me Patrick could go constellation dot com or check us out and go constellation dot com you can get see some case studies actual tangible results of how we’ve grown revenue from 3040 K to over 100 K per month and extra revenue for a lot of folks and take them over the seven figure level.
00:26:34:02 – 00:26:46:19
Patrick Carver
So thank you again. I know you have a lot of options when it comes to your time, who you listen to for marketing advice and I think that will wrap it up for today. And best of luck navigating these changes.
