Google Local Services Ads Impact to Personal Injury Law Firms
We are mere days away from an update to Google’s Local Services Ads that will impact specifically personal injury lawyers and law firms. Here’s what you need to know.
Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF):
Beginning on June 30th, 2022, personal injury lawyers and/or law firms who wish to run new ads on the Google Ads platform much have at least 5 customer reviews. New is the keyword in that sentence. Any ads that are currently for personal injury law firms with less than 5 reviews are essentially grandfathered in and do not need to take action. However, while your current ad would be able to continue running, should you decide to create any new ads, refresh the content, etc., again, you must have the right number of reviews.
What Does This Mean?
It means that if you’re a personal injury law firm with less than 5 reviews (or even if you have the magic number), you need to be proactive and work on your reputation management. Honestly, even if you have 5 or more reviews, it’s never a bad thing to have more reviews out there – especially if they’re not recent reviews.
What Are Local Service Ads?
Whereas regular Google Ads can reach a wider audience, lawyers and law firms typically only focus on a specific geographic area for a number of reasons. This is where Google’s Local Service Ads come in. The Local Services ads connect advertisers, such as law firms, with individuals querying Google for services that your law firm may offer – specifically in your defined geographic area. The best part about these ads? You only have to pay when someone calls or messages you directly through your Local Service ad. No more having to worry about paying for each and every click. Local Services ads mean higher quality leads for a potentially lower cost.
Reputation Management for All Law Firms Running Local Services Ads
While this new requirement coming out will only impact those with less than five reviews, preventing them from running any new ads, reputation management still remains important for all those running Local Services ads. Here’s why:
If you’ve run ads before on Google (not just Local Services ads) you know that there are multiple factors that will go into determining how well your ad will rank as opposed to your competitors. For Local Services ads, Google has stated that the following factors can impact how well your Local Services ads will rank:
- Your proximity to potential customers’ locations
- Your review score and the number of reviews you receive
- Your responsiveness to customer inquiries and requests
- Your business hours
- Whether or not we’ve received serious or repeated complaints about your business
So, you can see that your review score (aka rating) and the number of reviews your law firm has can impact your ad rank. Therefore, continuing with your reputation management efforts of gaining reviews from your clients remains an important endeavor to have your ads rank higher and to ultimately improve the number of leads you get. Our clients can take advantage of our “leave a review” functionality on their website which provides a direct link to Google to leave a review. Our results dashboard that displays everything from website SEO rank to social media traffic counts also track all reviews left on various platforms for your firm all in one place. Our system also has an email template you can simply send to your favorite clients.
Not sure whether Local Services ads are right for your law firm? Get in touch with us today. Precision Legal Marketing understands all of the nuances that go along with law firm marketing and advertising and can assist you in running a successful Local Services ads campaign. Let’s work together to grow your law firm.