Sometimes, small changes make a big impact.

That’s exactly what a local law firm realized when they partnered up with ParaCore to optimize their PPC campaign.

The law firm specializes in estate planning, wills, trusts, and estate disputes. When we first started their AdWords advertising, we created a PPC campaign that by all accounts should have been performing wonderfully. But unfortunately, the clicks weren’t delivering results.

What was wrong? How could we fix it? We set out to take a closer look and find answers.

Downloads don’t equate to clients

To attract leads, we started with PPC ads that sent users to a landing page where they could download a free Power of Attorney form. Power of Attorney gives legal power to another person to act on your behalf if you’re sick or unable to make decisions on your own.

All the user had to do was share a bit of contact information, and they’d receive a free template they could use to designate their own Power of Attorney.

The law firm’s goal was to use the form as a lead generation tool:

1. Prospect fills out form.
2. Power of Attorney template is sent.
3. Prospect creates Power of Attorney and realizes wants or needs additional legal advice.
4. Prospect calls law firm and becomes a client.
5. Alternatively: Law firm continues prospecting leads for legal business in the future

Seems logical, right? This is a standard lead generation tactic, and in a lot of situations, it works.

The problem was that steps 3 and 4 weren’t panning out.

The law firm was getting a healthy number of downloads and only spending about $33 per lead, which is a steal if those leads end up generating hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of business. If their goal was to attract downloads at a low cost-per-conversion, the campaign would be a success considering the cost of legal services.

However, most of the people downloading the Power of Attorney template weren’t actually turning into customers. Although it seemed like the campaign was doing well, it wasn’t actually reaching the primary goal or generating revenue for their business.

Why wasn’t it working? The majority of downloaders just wanted a free template, and they could care less where they got it from.

In other words, the campaign was wasting money because it was attracting the wrong type of user who wasn’t likely to turn into a real lead or client.

Improving the offer to improve results

After discussing these findings with the law firm, we recommended taking down the Power of Attorney template and changing the call to action (CTA). The template wasn’t driving the right results, and the law firm needed an offer that would pull in the right type of person: someone who wants the law firm’s guidance and not just a free template.

Our advice? Change the call to action from “Download the Power of Attorney form” to “Get a free consultation.” Our reasoning? Tons of people might want a free template, but the ones who actually want to speak to an attorney are more likely to become paying clients.

And guess what? It worked!

Virtually overnight, lead quality increased dramatically. We had implemented call tracking to gain visibility into which ads the callers had seen and what services they were looking for. After making the switch, we noticed more callers who had seen the PPC ads were interested in actually talking to an attorney versus getting a free form.

Now, don’t get us wrong—this change may have looked like it negatively impacted performance at first glance. It reduced conversions by 55% and increased the cost-per-conversion to $104. However, these metrics don’t tell the whole story.

In this case, downloads had been a meaningless vanity metric that wasn’t driving revenue. And while the data seemed to take a turn for the worse, the results that really mattered (lead quality and conversion from lead to client) improved substantially.

Is your CTA driving ROI?

When trying to improve your PPC campaigns, consider your real goal. Do you want more leads? Are you trying to build your email list? Are you looking for fast, direct sales?

Each goal will dictate a different metric or KPI. If the law firm had wanted to build an email list, offering a Power of Attorney template in exchange for someone’s email address would have been an effective technique. But because they wanted to use this campaign to acquire new clients, they needed to shift gears to an offer and CTA that were more aligned with their real goals.

Free consultations for them, free consultations for you

Like our client, ParaCore offers free consultations because we know how valuable it is to be able to talk with a real person about the challenges you’re facing and discuss potential solutions. Get in touch today to schedule your consultation and chat about how we could apply some of the same strategies to make your PPC campaigns more successful.