Key Objectives
Drive Qualified Traffic Through Google Ads Campaigns
Beat Out Extremely Tough Competition for Click Share
Increase Overall Campaign Efficiencies to Drive Leads
Acquire New Personal Injury & Negligent Security Cases
The Project Background
Atlanta trial attorney Stephen D. Apolinsky tapped Captivate to help grow his online footprint, and to acquire qualified leads from potential clients who suffered a catastrophic injury.
His firm, Apolinsky & Associates LLC, handles personal injury, wrongful death, and negligent security claims in Georgia and Alabama. As such, he needed a cohesive digital marketing strategy to break through the competitive legal landscape — without breaking the bank advertising on a channel where relevant clicks can cost upwards of $400 each.
That spawned a longstanding relationship between Apolinsky & Associates and Captivate. We leveraged Google Ads PPC advertising amidst SEO, social media, and content marketing to push Apolinsky up the search rankings.
The Project Challenge
When we launched Apolinsky’s PPC advertising program back in 2015, average cost per click presented a huge barrier to entry. In a legal environment — especially one involving high ticket personal injury and wrongful death cases — cost per click rises upwards of $20-30. Targeting a precise, long-tail keyword like “personal injury lawyer Atlanta” meant spending $41 per click on average. Add 3-4 neighboring competitors for even more expensive cost hurdles.
In short, that’s a hefty price tag for results.
Apolinsky’s initial monthly advertising budget of $500 complicated matters further. Although our PPC strategy targeted a hyper-local greater Atlanta market, a low advertising budget made it difficult to tap into different practice area themes. Car and trucking accidents, catastrophic injury cases, and wrongful death all proved expensive.
We had to get creative.
Key Issues
Expensive Keyword Bidding that can Quickly Exhaust Ad Budget
Highly Competitive Digital Marketing Landscape
Low Digital Ad Budget Compared to Larger Firms
Targeting Multiple Practice Areas with Limited Funds
The ROI Focused Solution
After a thorough PPC account audit the Apolinsky Google Ads campaigns were optimized using modified, broad bidding strategies as opposed to traditional best practices using focused methodologies like exact and phrase match.
Our broad match bidding strategy and hyper-targeted ad group structure allowed us to drive clicks at significantly less cost. The key to ensuring success with this strategy required regular PPC account management and exhaustive negative keyword research to prevent ads on unwanted queries.
To further stretch budget efficiency, Captivate launched a display ad campaign that accounted for 10% of the monthly ad budget. Our display campaigns targeted a few selected placements and keywords, utilizing over 13 display ad variations. Clicks from these display network ads cost a mere $0.37 on average, lowering our total cost per acquisition (CPA) of a lead to less than half the cost of search ads.
The Results
Over the span of four years, Captivate introduced new campaigns, ran experiments, and fine-tuned ad copy to overcome AA-Legal’s cost and competitive challenges. With those efforts we were able to achieve several year-over-year milestones.
111%
Increase
Total Conversions
Includes 139% increase in conversion rate account-wide.
14%
Increase
Average CTR
Generated more impressions in consolidated ad targeting.
52%
Decrease
Cost Per Acquisition
Account CPA average a mere $18 per conversion this year.
15%
Increase
Top Impression Share
Gave AA-Legal a competitive advantage to neighboring firms.
136%
Increase
Search Conversions
Provided the greatest individual category increase.
29%
Increase
Click Share
Efforts combined to increase total click share.
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