An increase
of 550%

in monthly branded search volume

Things have shifted and many attorneys are scrambling to figure out where the next opportunity lies. Covid-19 has shut down courts and dried up potential clients so let’s face it: your next marketing move needs to be the right one. The good news is this case study works for any size of law firm – regardless of city size or strength of competitors. There is a catch though – you have to change your mindset and think differently about your marketing in order to get in front of your ideal client.

This new digital marketing strategy can help you generate much needed revenue and brand reach – it could even save your practice. Dive in!

The Challenges

The need for more visibility without massive increases in budget.

High-competition metro (Seattle)

High cost-per-click for non-branded practice area keywords

Desire to produce more lead volume without a large budget increase

The need for awareness and staying top of mind

For over 80 years, the Walthew Law Firm has helped those in the Seattle area, and Western Washington with workers’ compensation needs.

The team at Walthew Law Firm was really looking for a partner they could trust when it came to their digital marketing needs. They first heard of Nifty almost 8 or 9 years ago at a conference in Seattle where owner Mike Ramsey spoke. The Walthew Firm liked what they heard, but they still weren’t ready to pull the trigger quite yet.

Almost 6 years after that first interaction, Patrick and the rest of the firm were ready to make a difference in their online visibility and hired Nifty to start an SEO campaign for them.

In a highly competitive market like Seattle, the firm had relied on their 80-year reputation and experience to compete. However, maintaining top of mind awareness for potential future clients had been a major challenge for the Walthew team. They met with the Nifty team to come up with additional strategies to help in this area.

Fortunately, they weren’t starting from square one with their digital strategy. Nifty had already worked with them closely to create an attractive website paired with an effective local SEO strategy, and winning search ads campaigns, but we won’t go into those specifics since this case study focuses on the firms paid digital advertising strategy Nifty put together for them.

Patrick C. Cook, Shareholder

It’s been great working with Nifty. They are very responsive. We receive consistent reports and can understand the information they share. If we ever don’t understand anything, we can get together and chat and then move forward.

Patrick C. Cook, Shareholder

The Walthew Firm wanted to achieve more lead volume, and they wanted to do it without a drastic increase in their marketing spend. The Nifty crew analyzed their current efforts and identified a range of options, ultimately opting to focus on social ads. The low investment needed to reach their exact target audience making social ads an appealing option for Walthew.

how many people can you reach for $1000?

This chart shows the potential reach of $1,000 across different marketing channels. This helped The Walthew Firm in making the decision to utilize social ads as the primary way to expand their audience with the lowest cost input possible.

According to Episerver’s “Reimagining Commerce” report, “Around 92% of first-time website visitors aren’t ready to hire you as an attorney, they’re simply there to look.” This type of data helped further drive the importance of social ad utilization.

bob kemper meclabs consumer research institute graph

Because attorneys are typically a high emotion and/or high commitment service, and social ads are often targeting those in the awareness stage of the consumer funnel, it’s expected and observed to produce more residual lead volume through other direct intent channels (see graphic below).

wordstream google branded search interest graph

The chart above represents the baseline amount of Google branded search volume observed with only Google ads (100%), vs the boost in branded search volume through Google when also running other advertising channels for awareness. These are known as cross-network searches, and they are a powerful tool for improving marketing dollar efficiency.

The Solution

Audit of branded search volume, and existing marketing strategies

Highly-Targeted Social Ads focused on workers compensation

Well designed ads to resonate with the target audience

Close communication with the Walthew team to combine their market expertise with Nifty’s digital advertising strategy

Since Nifty had existing ads management and SEO services in place for Walthew, and had for some time, it was relatively easy to identify historical trends and expectations. The existing performance of these efforts was audited closely, to establish a baseline in anticipation of the residual impacts from social ads.

From this audit, Nifty was able to conclude that 8% of incoming website traffic was via branded searches. This demonstrated immense room for improvement, and Nifty went to work crafting a range of targeting options.

workers comp- everett residents

Facebook allows for very detailed targeting capabilities that Nifty was able to utilize in putting together an optimal target audience.

A wide range of campaigns were created ranging from workers comp-specific behaviors and interests (excluding any attorney’s or law firms from this targeting who would also match the criteria) to those in blue-collar or high-risk job types with a combined interest in injury-related websites or search behaviors and also recent research into law firms.

Finally, Nifty worked closely with Walthew to identify high-risk companies in the region who had previously produced workers’ compensation claims. From here a list of addresses were targeted so that employees of these locations (with specific demographic constraints) would also see the ads.

The goal was to not only capture the interest of those further along in the consumer funnel (currently looking for workers comp attorneys), but also increase brand recall for those who might need Walthew Law’s services in the future (company locations) and create ads geared toward these specific people.

walthew law firm facebook posts
Patrick C. Cook, Shareholder

My favorite part about working with Nifty is being able to collaborate with them. They can do the technical stuff and we can work with them about what the right content and message is for our firm.

Patrick C. Cook, Shareholder

The Results

550%

Increase in monthly branded search volume (organic and paid channels combined)

85%

Increase in search ad lead volume (with the same budget)

51%

Decrease in search ad cost per lead

In January 2018 Walthew’s branded search volume accounted for only 8% of overall traffic. 12 months later that number had grown to 24%, and by June 2019 that number had risen to 47%.

branded search percentage vs. time graph

While a 550% increase in the branded search volume was certainly impressive, the Nifty team wanted to prove the true value of social ads. A closer look at search ads lead volume (with no budget changes) revealed that lead volume had increased 85% compared to the same time frame before and after social ads.

Cost per lead via search ads also decreased by 51% in favor of the far cheaper branded clicks (≈ $1.71 per click) compared to non-branded clicks costing upwards of $30 per click.

This increased lead volume and improvement in marketing budget efficiency has made it easy for The Walthew Law Firm to further increase their investment in social ads, SEO, and search ads over time.

Patrick C. Cook, Shareholder

We recommend working with Nifty. They’ve been great for us and I think they could be great for any law firm big or small.

Patrick C. Cook, Shareholder

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