The Sterling Family Law Show
The Sterling Family Law Show is where successful family law attorneys share the exact systems they used to build million-dollar practices.
Host Jeff Hughes scaled Sterling Lawyers from zero to $17M with 27 attorneys.
Co-host Tyler Dolph runs Rocket Clicks, the agency in charge of supercharging Sterling and other family law practices to success using revenue-first marketing strategies.
Together, they share the playbook for building the law firm of your dreams.
If you're looking to grow exponentially, generate revenue, and get good at business, this podcast is for you.
The Sterling Family Law Show
The 5-Segment System That Boosted Our Paid Search Campaigns - #165
Most law firms waste paid search campaigns budget on broken segmentation that kills ROI and drains marketing spend.
This systematic approach to keyword segmentation strategy prevents the P-Max trap that bleeds budgets. Cost per lead tracking across buy terms, local terms, research terms, service-based terms, and core attorney terms allocation creates predictable growth. Multi-touch attribution modeling reveals why cutting research terms actually hurts your bottom-funnel conversions.
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📄 CHAPTERS
0:00 - Paid Search Campaign Structure For Family Law Growth
2:18 - The P-Max Problem: Why Agencies Waste Your Budget
4:02 - Buy Terms: 30% Budget Allocation For Ready Clients
8:35 - Local Terms: 42% Of Your Leads Come Here
10:44 - Research Terms: Attribution Modeling That Works
16:12 - Service-Based Terms: Segmentation Strategy Mistakes
19:09 - Core Attorney Terms: Multi-Touch Attribution Secrets
21:41 - The $100 Budget Breakdown: Campaign Performance Metrics
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Tell us in the comments if you liked this episode and what other kinds of episodes you would like to see.
What happens to the house? How do you get a divorce? What's the process? All of those, those are up funnel and then they keep getting more and more specific and typically the buy terms are going to get more stretched out and longer. There's going to be less traffic, but you're going to see more quality.
Speaker 2:I'm your host, tyler Dolph, and I am bringing back two of our best when it comes to growing family law firms online Tony Karls, who is the co-founder of our own firm, soiling Law, and James Patterson, who actually runs all of the advertising and is the head of our advertising for our law firm clients here at RocketClicks. Gents, so great to have you back Today. We are going to continue our deep dive into the paid advertising realm. We're going to talk about paid search terms for family law firms, and you know, if you're a family law firm and you are leveraging digital advertising to drive leads into your firm, one metric that I hope you are tracking, or that I would encourage you to track, is your cost per lead. How much are you spending and how many leads are coming through to your firm as it relates to those dollars and cents? And then, of course, you want to make sure the quality of those leads is good, and so James is our paid advertising expert across all of our law firm clients here at RocketClicks.
Speaker 2:We're going to talk through the different types of search terms that we believe are necessary for the ideal campaigns. But, james, I figured we'd start with a little bit of fun in talking about some of the accounts that you've seen over the years where we will take over an account, an existing account. Either the law firm was running it themselves or they had another agency, and we've seen some interesting setups. Give us a little background on some of the cobwebs and things you've found in these accounts.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely, it's always a lot of fun kicking off with new clients because I will say, you kind of never know what you're going to see when you're, when you are taking over a new account that was obviously managed by their previous agency or maybe somebody internal that that wasn't aware of, kind of how we look at that strategy in terms of being really segmented and intentional on the types of keywords we're targeting. Segmented and intentional on the types of keywords we're targeting. Some of the worst things I've seen is a whole lot of spend in a PMAX campaign that's basically just a branded search campaign. We'll skip the conversion actions. I think that's a whole separate conversation.
Speaker 3:But in terms of targeting, yeah, PMAX a lot of broad with not a lot of really great negative keyword lists in there, of broad with not a lot of really great negative keyword lists in there. So you know, as you kind of kick this off, Tyler, when it comes to cost per lead, you know just letting in so much cost for searches that you have no business targeting that you're leaking in. And if you're only looking at the keyword level, you know you might be reporting something that hey, we're getting good results here, but really you generally are not bringing in the types of leads that you would be hoping that you could do if you were using a strategy where you're being a little bit more refined there on what exactly you're targeting 100%.
Speaker 2:If you're listening to this and you're a law firm owner and you have an agency that is only talking to you about PMACs, please call us. We have a very strong opinion on that campaign type. But, just shifting gears into the different segments, as it relates to when we're building out a campaign for a new client, we really believe that there are five basic segments. We're going to start with the first one, which is our buy term segment. Give us a little deep dive into why we need these buy terms in the account.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in terms of our agency, we look at buy terms as being the most important keywords to be targeting. A lot of times, even when clients have a little hesitation or maybe poor experiences in the past with PPC, we generally recommend at least starting with these keywords, specifically Buy terms. They sound exactly what the name is right. So it's people that are actively looking to buy your product or service. So for law firms thinking like divorce lawyer near me, best divorce lawyer, things of that nature, where it's these really good intent of somebody who's looking to make an action now, so a lot of times that's people that have already gone through the research phase.
Speaker 3:So how do I get a divorce in Wisconsin? Or whatever the case may be, how much does a divorce cost? They've gotten through all of that process. Now they're looking for hey, I want to talk to somebody who wants to work with me and this is our opportunity as a good advertiser, good business, to put our hands up and say we are the top universal lawyer in your area or whatever the search is, and really capitalize there to obviously always have your brand shown up there, not only for the traffic but then also, from you know, visibility standpoint as they continue through their funnel journey and everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we would say this is the lowest part of the funnel. Their wallet is out, they are ready to buy, they know what they want to buy and we just need to be there to accept and do a great job in service, correct? Yep absolutely, tony. On the Sterling Law website and campaign, we have many offices, we have a very large campaign. We spend a lot of money on advertising. What would you say? What percentage of our campaign and, james, you may know this because you run the account is these buy terms?
Speaker 1:It probably depends a lot on if we have too many leads or not. So that would be the right answer Because the way we think about these different categories is it's full coverage of research. So, from the research point which we know, based on client interviews, we've done with several groups of clients that they're in market, typically before the contact firm, 18 months to three years. So you know, james, you mentioned a bunch of different terms before that are more. You know what happens to the house, how to get a divorce, what's the process, all of those. Those are up funnel and then they keep getting more and more specific and typically the buy terms are going to get more stretched out and longer. There's going to be less traffic but you're going to see more quality. So I know we have some ideal percentage scenarios. Do you know what those are off the top of your head, james?
Speaker 3:Yeah, again, obviously the advertiser's budget is going to play a part here, right. Obviously, in an ideal state, like Tony was talking about, you do have coverage across all these different buckets. I think when we look at basically a perfect scenario, I would say at least 30% of your budget is really focused here. It is generally going to be a higher cost per click. Generally, when you're thinking about keywords that you're targeting, it turns out other advertisers and businesses also know these folks are really high value, right, they're ready to go. We're not going to screw around with intake team working with them. It's like, ah, I'm not quite ready.
Speaker 3:You know, obviously wasted money potentially if they end up not wanting to work with you. So that is reflected in the search results. So you're going to want to have a high percentage of your budget in this category specifically From there, obviously depending on your market and demand, right, like obviously, larger law firms that are in, you know, multi areas and things like that, you know especially larger metros are going to have opportunities to spend even more in this category. So it's going to be a little bit dependent there. But you know, the main takeaway is like, if you're looking at prioritization and how you want to segment your budget in these different directions. Assume higher CPCs but then assume you know a better ROI in terms of those leads going through your funnel 100%.
Speaker 2:Love it. Going up just a bit in the funnel, we have our second segment, which is local terms, and I know from everything you both have told me 46% of all leads for a law firm come from the maps, come from local type search terms 42%. Sorry about that. Give us some detail on the importance of local terms.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so when we're talking about intent right, or keyword variations here, like locals, is a huge one. A lot of people do prefer, based off of research and data that's out there, to work with a local company when they can. So that's something that you can use to your benefit by targeting these local keywords. So it's really simply, from like a structure standpoint, it's going to be your core terms and then some type of city or geo variation to that. So divorce lawyer in Milwaukee, wisconsin. Divorce lawyer in Miami, florida. Child custody support and then obviously, whatever metro you're targeting or where you are searching for you.
Speaker 3:So it's an easy way again to kind of work a little bit more in terms of focusing on customers that are probably a little bit further along in their journey. Like now, they're actively looking for local businesses for you. So you have the opportunity to again kind of put your hand up and say, hey, we're a local business, we do this and really win there. You can be creative with your ad copy as well. There as well, like doing a location insertion, so that when the user sees your ads, it literally says you know, divorce lawyer, perfect, that's what I'm looking for and it's just another good way to again, to really, you know, ensure good quality of leads and then, you know, really play into the fact that you know, like you just said, tyler, a lot of people are looking for local businesses, so, if you are one, there's a lot of searches out there that you can be capitalizing on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, think an interesting part of what you said is the connecting back to where the user is and improving that relevance. So if I'm searching for divorce attorney Milwaukee and then the ad is talking about the fact that, oh, that's us, we're a divorce attorney law firm in Milwaukee, you know, as a user, I'm thinking, great, that's exactly what I'm looking for. I'm going to click on that and be able to get what I need. Yeah, exactly yeah, love it. All right, let's continue moving up. Our next segment is research terms. Now, I'm a novice here and I'm assuming that is, I'm not potentially ready to buy, but I may be in market. I'm trying to understand the scenario. Is that correct?
Speaker 3:spoil any future topics. I know we'll probably talk about offers at some point, but there's a lot of search volume here. These people are likely not going to be your I'm ready to buy tomorrow type leads if they're looking for the first time how to get a divorce in their area or whatever the case may be. So it can be valuable to target these searches if you have good offers on your website to try and keep them engaged. Obviously, a divorce in most cases can take some time for the user to understand what they're going through or whatever, and come to terms with their options moving forward. So having a good offer to keep them engaged when they are going through the research can be really your go-ahead in terms of targeting those types of searches.
Speaker 3:The biggest thing here is is because these users are generally not as buy ready. Generally, CPCs are lower because other advertisers are understanding this. You know the conversion rate can vary A lot of times. When you look at the business KPIs for these types of campaigns, that's where you're going to see the biggest mismatch, where maybe you got some conversions up front from these campaigns but then ultimately they didn't end up get funded or, you know, they got far further along in the, in the sales journey, Maybe talk to an attorney and ultimately said, well, I'm not quite ready for this, so it can be a really good tactic to capitalize on. Obviously, there's a lot of search volume here. Get your name in the in the list of future considerations that they're thinking about. But in terms of strategy, this is going to fall a little bit further down and again, you know budget limitations are going to really give you you know kind of your options if this is something that we should be focusing on or not.
Speaker 2:Love it. And so just because there's maybe not as much search volume or they're not as competitive terms, it doesn't mean you shouldn't have them right? Uh, why? Why would there's actually?
Speaker 1:a good amount of search volume on a lot of these. So not not that there's less, they're, they're just less likely to buy at that point when they're searching for these. So like how, how, it's a lot of how and cost and you know, like, if you think of all the, you know who, what, where, when, how, why questions like there are a lot of those types of questions, long tail queries what happens to the marital house, what? What is the cost of child custody? How do you file for divorce? What's the process for child custody in Wisconsin? Like it's a lot of that type of stuff. So they're not quite they're researching, like they. They're like, all right, this is the path, but I don't know enough to buy yet, I don't know enough to move forward, so I need to research.
Speaker 2:It sounds like that's an opportunity to position your firm as being the expert when they are ready to buy. Maybe they come back direct and then you're saving on the cost per click there.
Speaker 1:Yeah we did it, we did James mentioned said it perfectly we, we, we talk, we have another podcast about offers and these work really well if you have offers to give them and offers aren't. Get a consultation. Offers are here's. Here's a webinar that you can you can do here's. Here's some calculators. Here's some forms. Here's some. It's like things before they buy, cause they're not quite ready yet, but like they'll make a micro commitment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the way usually our team are looking at research keywords is like these are questions potential customers are asking before they're ready to talk to an attorney or an intake team person. So that's how it should be broken out in terms of your strategies. There's a lot of opportunities there if you can build the right offers and processes in place, but if you're looking for a bang for your buck, that buy term and local terms are going to be your better value upfront.
Speaker 3:If you're kind of looking at your business today and your primary offers, just you know. Hey, give us a call if you're interested.
Speaker 2:I think this is an interesting point is as a business owner. Sometimes I'm going to look at things in more of a black and white perspective. I put a dollar in. Why didn't I get $4 or $8 or $10 back? And without the awareness or the context of what you're saying in regards to this category, I may be looking at a report that my agency sent me and been like why are we spending all this money on these keywords that aren't converting? Should we cut them all? And, I think, adding that context to help business owners and law firm owners understand that these are lines we're putting in the water for future fish and where we'll see, the conversions are in the buy and local terms.
Speaker 1:They aren't going to often come in the research. I've done this when we first started the law firm oh, we're not getting conversions, let's shut them all off. Oh, we get way less conversions now. Overall, we need to look at a mixed attribution model so that we can maximize the total value. So if we're like, what keywords are the only keywords that do conversions, you're probably going to hurt your account.
Speaker 2:Great reminder there. Okay, we're going to continue moving through this funnel and we're going to go to now service-based terms. So I'm in a family law firm. My family law firm does all kinds of things right, Divorce and custody and paternity and action and all the things You're saying. There should be different keywords and categories for these different services.
Speaker 3:there should be different keywords and categories for these different services. Yeah, definitely, I think, in terms of campaign structure, a lot of times where we going back to your previous question, tyler, when we kicked off this is an area where we see a lot of ill-advised strategy, where a lot of times, previous agencies are setting accounts where all of these keywords, which are very, you know, right, they have the relevance of a family law service, but are very different cases, different types of folks that are going through this, they're looking for different information and ready to convert and combining it all into one ad group. So then spend across the board is going to go into different areas. You know, we'll hear it sometimes from clients and they're like man, I just PPC and all we got was child custody or whatever the case may be. And a lot of times we'll look at the account and these are the types of things we'll see.
Speaker 3:It's like, oh well, they did have divorce keywords active, but they had everything blended together or maybe they had loose, negative keywords and now all this stuff is bleeding in and ultimately gave them results that they didn't like. So I think, with the service terms in particular, just the biggest thing there is just being very mindful in terms of segmentation, both from negative keyword list perspective to the actual keywords that you're targeting to your ad copy landing page, that you should be obviously focusing on all the services that are important to your business, but if you're not doing this, well, what could happen is you could be potentially allowing more budget to flow to things that really aren't that important to your business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say these are again a little higher up the funnel because they're even more generic. So there's good traffic here, so it's kind of a misleading indicator. You're like, oh, I think I should be here. Divorce in Wisconsin is an example that has a lot of keyword traffic. It's not something I don't like based on lead volume. It's very rarely been on in the account because it's not something that actually works that well. So it's too high up the funnel and you need. You need either earlier offers and like that's not something we've been able to develop at this point.
Speaker 2:Love it. So maybe awareness, but definitely not buying signals, and maybe even less so would be our final.
Speaker 1:They're great for organic Like. These are where you can find some really good organic opportunities and you know, if you're paid an organic team or working together, you're going to find some really cool wins there, Because some of these you should really you should focus on on in both but, like there's different application.
Speaker 2:Moving on to our final category. And then, james, I'll prep you for this question If I have $100, how am I splitting my $100 up across these five categories? So think about that as you're telling us about our fifth category. Fifth and final, which is core attorney terms.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Core attorney terms is exactly what it sounds like Just really targeting keywords specific to obviously having the iteration of lawyer on the keyword. So where segment four and segment five differ here is that in segment four, for service terms, you're looking at just divorce and some variations. Here in segment five, with core attorney terms, you're looking at, you know, divorce lawyers and then you know other variations added onto that in different instances. So this can be really important as well. Obviously it's, you know, a little bit further down, I would say, in terms of people looking for somebody to come in and service their problem that they're working through. So it's definitely an important area to allocate budget. Again, as we look at the full matrix I know, Tyler, it sounds like you're queuing me up for the reveal in terms of my budget recommendations I do think that this one is likely more important than segment four, even in terms of what you're targeting that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, probably both three and four. This is probably. You know you got one, that's a by terms. Two is local. Three, from an order perspective, is probably core attorney terms, and then you're going to go up into research and then you're going to go off to the higher research. So, but yeah, these are, these are great targets. This is another example, though similar to the research terms, where we've we've done testing before, where we won't see tons of conversions to these or we'll see conversions but it's going to be a really high CPA by keyword but shutting them off actually has a negative effect on the bottom of the funnel. So there's like multi-attribution is really important and like if you don't understand that in the in in paid like it, you're right, it doesn't work for you but it's because it's not done well you're right, it doesn't work for you, but it's because it's not done well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to me that's like such a huge call out. You know, law firm owners and us included you don't have time to look into the every single detail and minutiae all day. Yet if we're hearing from our agency hey, we're turning off a bunch of these research terms because they're not converting, that to me is a big red flag, it's a big call out. And so if you're listening to this and you're hearing your agency wanting to cut costs because performance isn't there, and they're doing that through just slashing a bunch of keywords, that may not always be the right answer. All right, james. The big reveal here We've got five segments, we've got $100 to spend. Right, we're doing like fantasy draft. Where are we spending our $100? As it relates to these five different categories?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so five categories and if we have to spend in all of them, right, because I am going to advise $100 budget we're not going to go in all five in a non-fantasy format here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this could be 1,000, could be 10,000, 100,000. So I'm just trying to make it easy math.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all right, so I'm going to go. I'm going to stick to my guns on the 30% end of buy terms. I think obviously, again, demand is going to play a role here, potentially maybe even more if there is the search volume for it. But we'll stick to my guns on the 30% for buy terms here For local. I'm going to go next here and go. I'm tempted to almost go 30 again, but we'll knock it down just to show the priority level of buy terms being the number one spot and we'll go 20 on local terms.
Speaker 2:We're 50% of our budget.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:That's the way we do it around here. Yep, I like it. Then, from here I'm going to go, let's go another, let's go 15 on core attorney terms.
Speaker 2:So what does that put me to? We're at 65 for the math wizards in the room.
Speaker 3:Okay, we've got 25 to work with. Here. I'm going to 35 to work with here. I'm going to go the remaining 35. We're going to go. Oh, this is is tough, I might have to readjust here we're gonna. We're back up for a second. Okay, so for core eternity terms, I said 15, let's make that 20.
Speaker 2:So now, we're at 70. Okay, you're at 70.
Speaker 3:Let's go research terms. There's a lot of search volume here. Like I said, I'm gonna assume that you have good offers on your site with this one. Okay, is that fine to say that's fair? Sure, okay, we're going to do another 20 on research terms. But I want to be clear here in this recommendation that I'm not saying that core attorney terms and research terms are equal per se. But if we're going to do the example here to where there's really great offers on the site I think you can be successful here Then the remaining 10 will do service terms or not at all, and let's just put it more into buy terms is the final recommendation.
Speaker 3:So, if you heard nothing else, local and buy the rest, you know it has value, but not nearly as much as it does in the buy and the local term. So depending on the way your business is set up and obviously how you're working from an operation standpoint and what offers you have on your site, there's going to be opportunities to potentially play in these different buckets. But ultimately when we're kicking off with new clients, we're pushing them right into the buy terms and local terms right away and then from there again kind of depending on the business.
Speaker 2:We'll make some decisions on where to allocate. From that point, I love it. Yes, nothing set in stone. There's no silver bullet strategy here. It is custom based on where the law firm is and what they're trying to do. But really appreciate the insights today. Gentlemen, this is foundational and very important knowledge that we love to share with our law firm community, so I appreciate it again. Thanks for your time and listeners. Thanks for being here. If you enjoyed this video and you want to learn more about our paid advertising strategy, our structure, as we deep dive into what we do that helps our law firm clients grow online, check out this video and, of course, we'll add a link in the comments as well. Thanks, everyone, and we will see you next time.
