When we talk about acquiring potential clients for a service company, such as law firms, you can't overlook the leverage that PPC provides to accelerate results.
This is something many marketing professionals know and convey to their clients.
But the multiplier effect that Display Remarketing can have on a campaign isn't talked about as often.
In skilled hands, this is a powerful digital marketing tool that lets companies reach audiences that have already expressed interest in their products or services.
This is the case we're covering in this post.
With this tactic well executed, we achieved:
These results were backed by our client's confidence, who in the same period decided to increase spend by 268.96%.
Something that has certainly also made the job easier.
For all these reasons, we're going to analyse the key levers we used to multiply the number of potential clients by 8, leveraging Display Remarketing in Google Ads.
Starting point: Stalled and declining client acquisition
Our client, a law firm specialized in labour law, was struggling to attract new clients through traditional marketing channels.
They also weren't getting the expected results through digital channels.
At some point, they turned to iSocialWeb to accelerate lead capture through the organic channel (SEO) and PPC advertising to boost their online visibility and attract potential clients.
Very early on, while working the SEO channel, we were able to grow and sustain good results.
However, in the PPC area, after a few months, we started noticing signs of exhaustion.
Very quickly we decided to focus on the firm's strengths:
Our client has a 95% favourable-ruling rate across the services offered.
Challenge identified: how to reduce acquisition cost without lowering lead quality
The problem or challenge we faced in PPC was rising lead-capture costs and strong competition in Google Search ad results.
No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't bring down the acquisition costs of the PPC campaigns, which were already quite high.
Especially when we talk about the unfair dismissal service, one of the most lucrative and most competitive at the same time.
For this type of lawsuit, because of Spanish case law, the case must be filed within a very short time window.
Otherwise, it can't be litigated after 20 days from when the dismissal is notified to the employee.
Which adds pressure to close the lead as quickly as possible, although it also helps push the user to make a decision.
Also, this type of litigation is very profitable for law firms.
The challenge this type of service poses is twofold:
All of this greatly increases acquisition costs and significantly reduces the chances of achieving a good outcome unless done right.
iSocialWeb's solution: Display campaign plus service-specific landings
Knowing all this, we decided to move forward on two simultaneous fronts:
As you can see, it was about lowering cost per click, and therefore lead acquisition cost, while increasing the firm's exposure or visibility to users who had already been attracted to the landings thanks to the search campaigns.
So:
To achieve the goals, we optimized the landing page. We made sure it aligned with the ad copy and offered a clear call to action.
We also implemented CRO-based optimizations, as well as tracking mechanisms to measure campaign success and make the necessary adjustments.
On the other hand, once we optimized both pages, we analysed which keywords had a low Quality Score according to Google Ads and added them as coherently as possible to the landing copy to force Google Ads to improve the Quality Score. We also designed display banners and launched the remarketing campaigns. We then kicked off the display campaign.
The results didn't take long to show.
At the same time, the display campaign caused a significant drop in CTR, but we managed to deliver an impression volume at a very low cost per click.
Something quite common in display campaigns compared to the cost per click of search campaigns.
All of this allowed us to re-impact a significant number of users who eventually came back and closed a service at a volume the firm had never seen before.
At last we had what we'd been looking for!
A confirmation of the strategy to follow.
Outcome: 700% lead growth and 55% CPA reduction
Thanks to the data we gathered from the tests run, we decided, step by step but firmly, to increase investment volumes in the display campaign.
This way, we leveraged the countdown effect driven by case law while massively increasing our exposure.
When properly used, remarketing campaigns are extremely effective.
On the other hand, we dropped the least competitive keywords for obvious reasons.
And we worked on further improving the campaigns' Quality Score by using more appropriate semantics on the landings and with a design specifically optimized for form conversion.
As a result of all these changes and adjustments led by Alba Brotons, Head of PPC at iSocialWeb, the firm saw a 731.11% increase in potential clients acquired through form submissions,
plus a 55.61% reduction in potential-client acquisition costs.
On top of that, impressions and clicks went up considerably.
This way, we were able to exceed every marketing goal set from the start, using Google Ads advertising and optimizing landing pages to drive measurable results.
Campaign investment in the same period increased by 268.96% due to the client's satisfaction with the results.
Conclusion or final thoughts: The "second winning horse" strategy
Display campaigns for remarketing have the power to produce what we call the second winning horse effect.
That is, it's always great to win a race and get a direct lead from a search campaign, but it's much better if on top of winning the race you also take home the second and third prize, don't you think?
That, in our view, is the effect well-executed remarketing can have.
As a takeaway, we should consider that campaigns of this style, where vanity metrics take priority, also work and have their reason for being.
We often think that if attribution can't be measured directly, then an action isn't worth it, but this isn't the case.
Our strategy produced successful results: with a 268.96% increase in investment, we improved the number of conversions by 731.11% while at the same time achieving a -55.61% drop in cost per lead.
Something only a few agencies can pull off.