Executing a successful digital marketing strategy for personal injury (PI) lawyers comes with challenges.
It’s a competitive and expensive vertical. If you’re not strategic and purposeful with your marketing, you risk falling behind the competition.
We’ve helped multiple PI firms achieve greater visibility and more leads through targeted SEO & PPC strategies.
We’ll unveil the secrets to success in this post.
Table of Contents
- 1 1. Competitiveness of PI for Marketing
- 2 2. Tier 1 Digital Marketing Services for PI Attorneys
- 3 PPC
- 4 3. Tier 2 Digital Marketing Services for PI Attorneys
- 5 4. Tier 3 Digital Marketing Services for PI Attorneys
- 6 Other Areas of Marketing for Personal Injury Lawyers (TV, Billboard, Radio)
- 7 Need Additional Resources to Fine-Tune Your PI Marketing Strategy?
1. Competitiveness of PI for Marketing
Let’s first establish why personal injury is more competitive than most verticals, and how a successful marketing strategy can pay off long-term.
Why Digital Marketing for PI Firms Is So Expensive
Combining keyword difficulty (KD) and cost-per-click (CPC) data, PI is a top 5% most competitive vertical, according to our internal analysis of over a hundred clients.
The average KD, which measures the competition for ranking for a certain keyword in traditional search engines (like Google), for PI firms is 62% [source]. This data was collected via internal Semrush data.
KD is measured on a 0-100% scale, where the higher the percentage, the more competitive it is.
A 62% KD is very high. It’s the most competitive area of law we analyzed for keyword difficulty, with the lowest being traffic law (19%) and bankruptcy (39%).
The average CPC, which is the average price paid by advertisers per click for a certain keyword, for PI firms is high. According to our internal client data, auto accidents average $90 per click, and personal injury keywords average $45 per click.
The overall blended average cost per click across our PI attorneys is $19.44, since certain practice areas, like medical malpractice ($4 CPC), drive this down.
For comparison, low-competition local businesses like hair salons can have a CPC of less than $1.
So, why is PI such a competitive industry for marketing? It’s primarily because the average case values are so high.
You can spend hundreds of dollars on a click, but if that click turns into a client, you’re talking thousands or potentially millions of dollars in revenue. We’ll cover specifics in the next section.
How Digital Marketing Can Be Lucrative for PI Firms
According to Martindale-Nolo, the average settlement/case value for PI lawyers is about $52,900.
After standard contingency fees are taken out (between 33% and 40%), that leaves about $17,000-$21,000 in revenue from one case.
This is just the average. One of our personal injury clients recently settled a motorcycle accident case for $6,015,000.
The right marketing strategy can bring you several new cases per month or a lucrative larger case. Do the math, and you can very quickly get to six figures/month that you weren’t making before investing in marketing.
It’s why Morgan & Morgan spends $350-$400 million annually on marketing and advertising. Firms that execute the right marketing strategy see ROI that justifies every dollar spent.
We’ll spend the rest of this post detailing the marketing tactics that have proven to help our PI clients increase their revenue.
Related Article: SEO Stats for Attorneys: Real Client Data & Insights
2. Tier 1 Digital Marketing Services for PI Attorneys
The following section will cover what we consider to be “Tier 1” or essential marketing services for PI firms.
They include:
- SEO
- PPC
- Directories
SEO/AI Search
SEO is the most profitable long-term channel for personal injury lawyers because it brings in clients organically without having to pay for clicks.
Even with the rise of AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Google still dominates the local search landscape for PI attorneys.
A successful SEO strategy optimizes for:
- Top-3 Map Pack visibility on Google, which generates about 44% of clicks for local search queries.
- Strong traditional search rankings on Google and other traditional search engines like Bing.
- Prominent positioning in recommendations and citations in AI search platforms and results, including Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.
At a high-level, you need the following to be successful at SEO for a PI attorney:
1. An optimized Google Business Profile (GBP). Your GBP is what’s primarily responsible for Map Pack rankings (circled below), which is often the first thing a local searcher sees on Google. If you don’t have a fully built-out profile, you’re missing out on the most valuable piece of local SEO real estate.
Get a full Google Business Profile Optimization checklist here.
2. A strong authority score (AS), which is a proprietary metric that measures the strength of your website for search engine rankings. It does not have a direct influence on search rankings, but successful personal injury attorneys we’ve worked with generally have 20-30 AS. The highest authority score for a PI attorney we work with is 33, to give you more context.
3. The right keyword strategy, which means prioritizing city-level keywords (“personal injury attorney Cleveland”) over suburb-level keywords (“personal injury attorney Lakewood”). For personal injury attorneys, people don’t typically search based on the suburb. Demand is higher for city-level keywords, and if you’re a top-notch attorney, people will travel.
4. The proper website structure, which includes practice area pages and service area pages. The right structure is dependent on whether you’re a single-location or multi-location firm. See the graphic below for a multi-location example:
5. Strong external trust signals via high-quality backlinks and brand mentions from reputable and relevant sources. Google and other search platforms don’t just take your word for it when assessing who’s the best PI firm. You have to prove your credibility through authoritative content and PR initiatives that get your name in places beyond your website.
Largely through the SEO tactics listed above, we’ve helped multiple PI firms increase their organic visibility.
This includes The Donahey Law Firm, a personal injury law firm in Columbus, Ohio, which achieved a 100% increase in pageview traffic and a 129% increase in organic traffic in a fairly competitive market.
“I have used The Media Captain for the past couple of years after switching from a national brand that specifically marketed for our particular business. Other law firms I co-counsel with comment, ‘how did you get that up so fast?'”
— Richard Donahey, The Donahey Law Firm, LLC
To see these tactics in full detail, check out our Personal Injury Lawyer SEO Guide.
PPC
While SEO is the most profitable long-term digital marketing initiative for PI firms, most will have to also invest in a PPC strategy since it’s such a competitive vertical.
Here’s a broad overview of the strategy/tactics to optimize your PPC campaign for:
1. Determine the practice areas you want to target with ads based on budget. It will vary widely depending on the type of cases you want to pursue. For example, in an analysis of our client portfolio of personal injury lawyers, we found that auto accidents ($90 per click) were much more expensive per click than medical malpractice ($4 per click).
2. Create separate campaigns for each practice area if your budget allows. This lets you allocate funds to your most profitable practice areas and shows you exactly which ones are performing the best.
3. Keep it simple with strategic keyword targeting for each campaign. Using too many broad match keywords can waste spend on irrelevant keywords. Instead, choose 4-5 keywords, with one being an exact match keyword without the city reference (“personal injury lawyer”) and the rest being phrase match keywords (“personal injury lawyer Cincinnati”). Side note: make sure to include the keyword you’re targeting in your ad copy.
4. Align your PPC landing page with your target keywords and fill it with unique content. Don’t just put generic copy and stock images on the page. Include pictures of your team, past verdicts, accreditations and testimonials to show you’re an established firm.
5. Get a reliable call tracking platform (we recommend CallRail). This will track each phone call and contact form conversion to help measure the ROI of your leads. When you’re spending so much money per click, you need to measure the ROI and make sure the leads are of quality
6. Complement your Google PPC campaigns with Google Local Service Ads (GLSA), which are pay-per-lead ads that appear at the top of Google search and Map results for local services. Across our PI clients, the average cost per lead for GLSA was $249.
7. Don’t forget about advertising on Bing, the second-most popular traditional search engine. It’s cheaper and can drive strong quality for a lot lower ad spend.
We’ve led successful PPC campaigns for several PI firms, including driving stronger engagement and inbound leads for Schiff & Associates after switching their budget from traditional TV ads to digital ads (more on this later).
“Jason and his team at The Media Captain were first class throughout our whole experience. It’s truly been a seamless experience with Grade A customer service.”
— Zach Schiff, Schiff & Associates
To learn more about the PPC tactics discussed in this section, check out our PPC for Personal Injury Lawyers Guide.
Directories
It might be surprising to see directories, which are lists of businesses in specific markets, in the Tier 1 category of digital marketing for personal injury lawyers.
But they are hugely valuable for local search, particularly in the personal injury vertical, where directories often populate on page one of Google.
AI search platforms also commonly cite directories when providing local recommendations for search queries.
Directories can serve as a trust signal to Google and other search platforms that you are an authoritative, reputable firm.
The key directories for PI attorneys to be included on are Super Lawyers, FindLaw and Justia. You can do a Google search in your market and find other relevant directories that show up on the first page of the search results.
While it’s free to create profiles for most directories, you typically must pay for top placement. This can be worth it for some PI firms since directories can be a source of referral traffic.
If you’re a single-location firm, we recommend manually vetting directories and creating your own listing. For multi-location firms, it may be worth it to invest in a listings platform like Yext to automate this process for you.
3. Tier 2 Digital Marketing Services for PI Attorneys
There is only one service in Tier 2 of marketing for personal injury lawyers, and it’s social advertising. Let’s discuss it in more detail.
Social advertising is paying for ads on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, etc.
Sometimes, focusing only on Google PPC campaigns is not enough.
This is where social media advertising comes in. Our average digital allocation for social advertising for our clients is 30%, so it’s not a trivial expense.
As cited earlier, we saw this with our PI client Schiff & Associates, who was over-invested in TV ads.
Once we shifted their budget into social media and built a strategy around the founders’ roots in Columbus, Ohio, the campaign delivered much stronger engagement and inbound leads. In an average month, we drove 39 leads at a $122.09 cost per lead, per our Meta Business Suite data.
A firm tour by founder Scott Schiff. This is a good example of the type of localized content that works well in social media ads.
The key when running social media ads is to:
1. Lead with video ads instead of text/graphic-only ads. There’s no need to blow your budget on a highly produced, car commercial-style video, either. Authentic, relatable videos taken on an iPhone can actually work better for ads than a mass-produced brand video.
2. Show your local roots and personality. Go and shoot a video by a local landmark or get a real testimonial from a client; something that says “We’re a local firm and we’re proud of it.”
3. Don’t just run ads on every social media platform. Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram) are typically the best channels for PI advertising.
4. Take advantage of events and moments. We did this for the Bressman Law Firm ad campaign (cited earlier), where we capitalized on the Ohio State University mold story to connect with students who were affected. It resulted in 40 new clients in just three weeks.
5. Use your high-performing organic content as pillars of your paid ad strategy. If a post has performed well organically, use that content for ads. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
6. Set your audience targeting to find more people similar to your existing clients/leads. Retarget visitors that didn’t convert upon first visit.
7. Ensure conversion tracking is accurate, and continuously test ad creatives and reallocate your budget based on results. Never just “set it and forget it.”
Also, ensure you adhere to your state bar’s ethics rules and the ad standards of the platforms you’re advertising on.
Stay away from using generic, unsubstantiated claims like “Best” or “Top Rated” and implying guaranteed outcomes. You’d rather have your past case results or clients speak for your competency, anyway.
4. Tier 3 Digital Marketing Services for PI Attorneys
Next is your Tier 3 marketing services, which for PI firms, include:
- Email marketing
- Organic social media posting
You can think of these services as necessary complements to your more ROI-driving Tier 1 and Tier 2 services.
Email Marketing
Since PI is not a repeat-purchase type of category, most of your prospects only have a brief window where they’re in the market for an attorney.
You can create warm lead nurturing email sequences for leads who haven’t signed yet, but you will likely have greater ROI if you focus your new client acquisition efforts on Tier 1 and Tier 2 services.
The most consistent way to leverage email marketing as a PI firm is to request reviews or testimonials after winning a case.
Google reviews are a ranking signal for local search, but more importantly, they are a key indicator of your credibility.
Up to 98% of people look at reviews before buying, and sending an automated email after every successful case asking for a Google review can be a consistent way to grow your review count so you stand out against the competition.
While advertising on social media is more of a true dollars-and-cents ROI initiative, posting organically on social media serves an entirely different purpose.
You’re likely not going to get many clients from an organic social post (although it can happen, and like we mentioned earlier, you can repurpose your organic social content for ads, which has a traditional ROI element to it).
Instead, your goal with organic social posting is to build your brand in the communities you serve, which has many long-term benefits.
The Rule of 7 in marketing states that a potential client/customer must see your brand at least seven times before making a purchase.
Since almost everybody with a pulse has social media of some kind, social posts typically serve as one of people’s first entry points into discovering your company.
Activity on social media platforms is also increasingly important for discoverability in traditional SEO/AI search platforms.
Google directly indexes social media posts into its standard search results page, AI Overviews and Google Business Profile carousels. In fact, four of the top five most-cited websites in AI Overviews are social media platforms or forums like Reddit (which is a quasi-social media platform).
And among the most cited domains by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Mode, four of the top six were social media platforms (Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook).
Other Areas of Marketing for Personal Injury Lawyers (TV, Billboard, Radio)
Drive through any major market, and you’ll likely see multiple PI attorney billboards. Turn on your local sports game and you’ll likely see just as many commercials over a 2-3 hour period.
Richmond PI attorney Joel Bieber. Photo courtesy of Lindsay Kelley, sourced from Wavy.com.
Traditional/legacy channels like TV, billboards and radio are synonymous with PI firms and are still relevant.
There actually might be untapped potential for these mediums in some markets, since ad spend has shifted toward digital platforms. According to Statista, global digital ad spend is forecasted to reach over $950 billion this year, an all-time high.
That is the opposite of what is happening for traditional channels, which have seen four consecutive years of declining advertising money committed to broadcast and cable TV.
Generally, though, you want to keep your budget and time spent on the three tiers we discussed previously.
As we noted in the Schiff & Associates social advertising example, they were spending too much of their budget on traditional TV and saw much more success when they transitioned to the digital space.
Keep the traditional channels in the mix, but focus most of your efforts on the digital channels.
Need Additional Resources to Fine-Tune Your PI Marketing Strategy?
To be upfront, executing a successful digital marketing strategy for personal injury lawyers is not easy.
It’s competitive and requires an initial investment in both money and time that might not pay off until 6-12 months down the road.
If you stick to the strategies we discussed in this article and trust the process, your firm could see major revenue gains.
If you need additional resources to finalize your strategy, check out the guides below:
If you’d rather have a company with demonstrated success marketing PI firms in competitive markets handle it for you, reach out for a consultation.
