The wind is picking up, the sun is setting early, classic carols are creeping into grocery stores and we’ve all got one thing on our minds: Pay-per-Click advertising. Kidding. While that may not be strictly true, there are some strategies of holiday gift shopping that apply to PPC. You likely care about one of these things much, much more than the other, but PPC can be an incredibly effective tool to generate cases for your firm.

While we’ve definitely covered match types before, a quick review probably couldn’t hurt. In PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, marketers bid on keywords that prompt their advertisements when someone enters a relevant search into Google or Bing. For example, if your Personal Injury law firm operates out of Kalamazoo, you’d probably bid on a search terms like “injury lawyer Kalamazoo” or “Kalamazoo attorney” Match types (broad, phrase, exact) determine how closely a keyword has to match a search term before it triggers an ad.

Unnecessary Traffic Can Drive up Costs

Imagine hosting a White Elephant party; it’s on you to provide the food, drinks, music, and a cheerful environment to exchange gifts. Every added guest is an added expense, but their presence and gifts justify the incremental amount of money spent on cookies. Attendees who don’t bring gifts are a bit like clicks on an ad that don’t end up converting. Because ads are charged on a cost-per-click basis, every click your ad receives will drive up your cost incrementally even if it doesn’t result in a conversion. At the risk of sounding like a Scrooge, more is not necessarily merrier.

Let Your Budget Be Your Guide

How much you’re willing to bid on a keyword can impact your ad’s placement, reach, and quality score. Let’s say your Kalamazoo-based firm directly competes with a rival firm in Portage. You’re probably both bidding on terms like “injury attorney Michigan,” so if your landing pages are of similar quality, ad placement could come down to budget. Overspending is dangerously easy if you don’t have a strategy in place. You will likely discover how well this principle applies to Holiday shopping once Black Friday sales roll in.

Know When to Leave Room for Interpretation

Broad Match keywords are a bit like giving out money for Christmas. The gift is valuable, but it’s not specific and you can’t attach your own intent to it. Much like your teenage relative can use your money to buy almost anything, broad match keywords are triggered by anything remotely related to your keyword. You could end up triggering something like “Kalamazoo law school,” which likely won’t turn in to a viable case.

This is where broad match modifiers—and gift cards—come in. By substituting “Kalamazoo attorney” with “+Kalamazoo +attorney,” you will only trigger search queries that contain both of the words you’ve specified.

Specificity Can Save Time and Money

Have you ever been out with a friend who points out the perfect present to get them? Have you ever bought what they suggested immediately after they did so? That situation is a bit like using exact match keywords, which will trigger ads when someone types in the same exact words you have bid on. While the likelihood of both an exact match and an exact gift are small, the results can be fantastic.

Know Your Constraints

Hardly anyone gets their Christmas shopping, budgeting, and preparations done in time. It can be difficult to get the results you want when you don’t have the time, energy, or knowledge to execute even the most specific of plans. While we don’t necessarily have the solution to holiday stress, we can greatly improve your marketing efforts. If you’d rather stress over giving gifts to your loved ones than the intricacies of keyword bids, give us a call to learn more about our Social Security Disability, Personal Injury, Workers’ Compensation, and Employment Law leads. Figure out how to get through the holidays, and we’ll take care of the rest.