Advertising for Personal Injury Lawyers: A Comprehensive Guide

In the competitive field of personal injury law, online advertising is paramount. It serves as a vital bridge that connects lawyers with their target audience—those in urgent need of their expertise and compassionate legal support.

The challenge in personal injury advertising lies in its fierce competitiveness. Powerhouse firms like Morgan & Morgan are willing to invest limitless amounts of money to acquire clients and monopolize the market, creating a daunting battlefield for solo and small law firm owners.

That’s why personal injury marketing strategies must be tight and well-crafted, leaning on the guidance and expertise of proven practitioners who understand the landscape and know how to navigate the competitive law firm marketing terrain.

Keep reading for an honest, no-nonsense overview of the best and worst lawyer advertising strategies. Gain insights from our Director of Advertising, Beverly Lodge, a seasoned professional with 21 years of experience who has honed her craft and is ready to share her wisdom with you.

The Online Advertising Landscape

In the bustling arena of online advertising for personal injury law firms, options abound, but not all are created equal. With clear winners and losers in this competitive field, understanding the landscape is paramount.

Let’s delve into the top platforms that accident attorneys are leveraging right now and assess their quality. Stay tuned because we share our #1 pick for the best advertising platform in the next section!

Interested in more than ads? Get holistic marketing tips with our guide to successful Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing.

Google PPC (Pay-Per-Click)

Google PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is the best-known advertising platform for personal injury lawyers.

Google PPC offers your personal injury law firm immediate access to a vast market of individuals actively searching for accident lawyers, coupled with the advantages of tight budget control, the flexibility to turn campaigns on and off as needed, and consumption-based pricing where you pay by the click.

However, it’s not without its challenges. The cost per click for accident campaigns has soared to $100-$300, making it a significant investment. Additionally, there’s no guarantee that those clicks will translate into leads, and managing a Google PPC campaign effectively can be a complicated endeavor.

Balancing these pros and cons requires careful consideration and strategic planning to ensure that Google PPC aligns with your firm’s goals and budget.

Facebook Advertising

Facebook Advertising (Meta for Business) offers personal injury firms access to a vast pool of targeted consumers, often at lower click costs than Google PPC and with more design flexibility to create engaging ads. However, this platform presents its own set of challenges.

Despite the large audience, only a small percentage of the advertising pool may actually need legal assistance, leading to a general trend of lower lead quality. Additionally, the platform’s limited relevant action-based targeting options can make it more challenging to connect with the right prospective clients.

Thus, while a Facebook ad has its advantages, it requires careful navigation and a well-crafted strategy to yield meaningful results for your law practice.

Other Online Advertising Platforms

We’ve focused on Google Ads and Facebook Advertising because they are workhorses in the personal injury space. But, other options are available.

Legal Directories

Legal directories such as Avvo, Martindale-Hubbell, Justia, and FindLaw have become popular platforms for personal injury legal services. These directories provide a centralized location where potential clients can search for legal assistance based on practice areas, locations, and ratings. Personal injury lawyers can create profiles, purchase featured listings, or sponsor specific areas to enhance their visibility.

While advertising on legal directories can certainly work, it’s not without its downsides. These companies often work with your direct competition, meaning your firm might be listed alongside rival firms, diluting your unique appeal. Additionally, the lead quality from these directories can often be poor. This is because they commonly use PPC ads with enticing language like “free and “affordable” to keep lead costs low, attracting individuals who may not be the ideal clients for a personal injury practice.

If you can generate an ROI from these “preferred’ listings,” then do it! We’re not anti-legal directory; we just believe that a better focus is the strategies that will build long-term value—like law firm SEO.

YouTube

YouTube ads present a unique opportunity for accident attorneys to connect with potential clients. By leveraging the platform’s advanced targeting capabilities, attorneys can tailor their ads to reach individuals searching for topics related to auto accidents, medical errors, and more. Engaging video content that resonates with these specific needs can be a powerful tool in an accident attorney’s marketing arsenal.

While YouTube ads offer a unique avenue for reaching potential clients, they come with inherent challenges for accident attorneys. The number of people searching for accident information on YouTube is generally low, and these users often lack “high intent,” meaning they are not actively seeking legal representation. This can result in a disconnect between the ad and the viewer’s immediate needs.

To connect with high-intent accident victims—those actively looking for legal assistance—strategies like SEO, PPC, or LSA advertising tend to be more effective. These approaches align with users’ search behavior and intent, creating a more direct pathway to those in urgent need of an accident attorney’s expertise.

TikTok Advertising

TikTok, with its staggering user base of over one billion, presents an intriguing platform for advertising, yet it falls into the same category as YouTube or Facebook when it comes to advertising legal services.

To be successful on TikTok, accident attorneys must navigate the challenge of advertising to a vast target audience and isolating those few who are eligible and in need of their services. Unlike platforms specifically designed for service searches, TikTok users typically log on for entertainment, not to find a lawyer. Convincing them to take action requires a nuanced approach that not only identifies potential clients within the sea of users, but also engages them compellingly enough to shift their mindset from casual browsing to considering legal representation.

While the platform’s reach is undeniable, leveraging it effectively requires strategic creativity and a deep understanding of the audience’s behavior and expectations.

Offline Advertising

We don’t talk about offline advertising a lot, but there’s no denying that it can be successful. We focus on personal injury SEO and digital advertising because 96% of legal consumers begin their search for a lawyer on a search engine.

Billboards, Buses, and Barns

For simplicity, we’re discussing billboards in this section, but we’re really talking about any static print advertising that is offline.

Phil Franckel is a personal injury lawyer who made the transition from attorney to marketer and he is a big advocate of billboard advertising. According to Phil, billboards are a cost-effective tool for branding, but they should only be utilized in combination with radio spots, Google ads, or TV commercials.

However, don’t expect billboards or bus wraps to work like PPC or SEO, which can provide a more immediate response.

Other personal injury lawyers echo this sentiment that it may not immediately bring in new clients, but it may be an effective way to build brand recognition—when incorporated into a holistic strategy.

Cable Television and Streaming Services

Television advertising in the legal industry is a billion dollar industry and continues to be a potent tool for personal injury attorneys, offering broad reach and the ability to convey a compelling message through visual storytelling. Similar to billboards, for this approach to truly resonate with potential clients, TV commercials must be used in conjunction with other channels like Google Ads and SEO.

A 30-second ad can cost anywhere from $25 for an overnight spot or remnant ad to $600,000 during Sunday Night Football. With the rise of streaming platforms, more options than ever provide detailed targeting and relatively affordable pricing.

Our guidance is to make sure you have a plan before diving in here. Without it, you’re likely going to burn your cash, fail to make a significant impact, and leave unsatisfied. We also recommend focusing on the channels that will be better at providing immediate responses before pursuing a branding strategy.

Alexander Shunnarah Case Study

If you live in the Southeast, you’re probably familiar with Alexandar Shunnarah. The Alabama accident attorney has over 2,000 billboards and thousands of television commercial spots each month.

After starting slow when he went out on his own, he now receives 1,500 calls on Mondays alone. If Shunnarah can convert just 5% of those, he’s looking at 75 cases per day with an expected minimum value of $10,000. So, we’re talking about $750,000 in a single day generated from billboards and television.

Shunnarah is coy about which channel is most effective for his law firm, but he does acknowledge that they work better when deployed together. It’s clear that if you want to make offline advertising a big success, then you need to be prepared to invest to become a recognizable brand.

Google Local Service (LSA) Advertising: The Best Option

In the bustling landscape of online advertising, one option stands out for law firms: Google Local Service (LSA) advertising.

But what makes LSA advertising the best choice for the majority of small and solo firms?

It’s the most cost-efficient way to get high-quality leads without trying to outspend the large firms in your market. Google LSAs have a unique advantage to regular Google Ads because the model is pay per lead as opposed to pay per click.

3 Benefits of Google LSA

High-Quality Leads
Google LSAs have a unique selling point: they allow you to dispute unqualified leads. Initially, you’ll pick the areas you want to advertise for. For example, you choose auto accidents, truck accidents, and slip and fall, but leave out medical malpractice.

If a lead comes in asking for med mal help, you can dispute this lead and spend nothing on it. This naturally leads to a better quality of lead compared to traditional PPC advertising.

Cost Advantage

As you know, the accident law space is extremely competitive, so you’re not getting these ads for peanuts. Successful PI firms know that they must spend money to make money.

Based on our experience working with 85+ law firms throughout the United States, we have witnessed a clear price advantage between LSAs and other forms of online advertising.

Personal Injury Ads Case Study

Let’s take a look at one of our clients that gets qualified leads for $228.68 in 2023.

In the same city, Google PPC clicks are going for between $210-$259 per click! So, which would you rather have? The choice is pretty clear.

Take a look at this firm’s new revenue that was directly attributed to LSAs. Since they converted leads to cases at around 20%, this was a significantly profitable campaign.

Now Here’s the Bad News

The bad news with Google LSAs is that they have been built for the average Joe to be able to use them, which means a lot of competition. Even though Google PPC Ads are older and have more financial competition, they are difficult to manage well, which creates a barrier to entry for many lawyers.

As part of this simplified setup, Google controls almost every facet of the platform which means there’s little you can do to improve your performance.

We’ve hired Google Diamond Product Experts to gain their insight on optimizing this platform for our clients and unfortunately, there are few levers that can be pulled.

This control by Google explains why most accident attorneys have “streaky” results where they are flame-hot one month, but it’s crickets after that. Based on our discussions with the Google Diamond Product Experts, Google is throttling the performance for some to provide more parity across all firms.

How Accident Attorneys Can Succeed with LSAs

The first step is to get started and complete the registration process. The following three steps have a positive impact on our client’s performance with LSAs.

1. Consistently accrue reviews on Google. Reviews continue to be the key factor to give you an edge with Google’s local algorithm.
2. Consistently improve your Google Business Profile. Google’s local algorithm is increasingly focusing on responsiveness and activity to determine the best candidates for visibility. LSAs are intrinsically linked with Google Business Profiles, so make sure you are showing well.
3. Max out the budget. One of the few levers you can pull is the budget. If you are consistently seeing leads in your cost strike zone, then you should be doubling down here.

Master Personal Injury Advertising Strategies and Unlock Success

In the ever-evolving world of legal marketing, finding the right strategy for your personal injury law firm is both an art and a science. While we strongly recommend focusing your firm’s marketing efforts on SEO and Google LSAs, we recognize that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

We don’t claim to have a monopoly on successful strategies; we simply share what has consistently worked for our clients. Your journey might lead you down different paths, and that’s okay.

Feel free to explore other options like television advertising, social media platforms, or legal directories. But remember, embarking on any marketing adventure requires careful planning. Know your destination, map out your route, and most importantly, measure your progress.

Ensure that you’re not just jumping in but are equipped with the right tools to track data and analyze results. This way, you can adjust your course as needed, learning from both successes and setbacks.

Ultimately, your firm’s success is a reflection of your unique approach, determination, and adaptability. Constellation is here to guide you, but the path you choose is yours. Embrace the journey, and may it lead you to the growth and success you seek for your personal injury firm.