One Million Dollars Worth of Advertising on Google
Per year. $1,000,000.00 into Google’s coffers.
That’s my guestimate as to how much local defense lawyers are spending in these parts to advertise various phrases through Google’s AdWords program. I’m going to attempt to make this a substantive post, not just something that Google – or the other search engines – scans and reads for various keywords and phrases, so I’m not going to list what the most popular keywords are… but you can imagine that they focus on a combination of geography and the profession itself.
This guess isn’t just off the top of my head either.
I have it from pretty reliable sources within several of the various law firms that participate in Google’s “Why Don’t You All Just Outbid Each Other” marketing, or often from the horses’ mouths themselves just how much some law firms are spending per month. There are several paying Google more than $10k per month. Some are spending substantially more than that.
Sure, some folks jump into the market at first, and then disappear, when they realize the high cost of being #5 or in some cases #10. But most stick around, and keep driving up those Google profits.
And knowing how AdWords is structured, that is, the higher the ranking in the Sponsored Results, the more the bidder is paying, combined with watching various internet advertising over the last year or so, I’d say one million spent in Austin alone for lawyers advertising criminal defense services is a conservative estimate.
Amazing.
That’s a lot of advertising costs that get passed on to the clients.
Related Post: Ranking High on Google For Free
You left out the biggest drawback to cost-per-click advertising: click fraud. This can come from 1) people who host link farms and are trying to get paid by Google for selling these clicks; 2) competitors on very expensive keywords trying to wreck your ad budget (and at $54 per click on "austin dwi" it doesn't take to many of those to make a dent....); and 3) as others have speculated, perhaps the search engines themselves to generate revenue. So you might be paying for 1000 clicks @ $10/click, but you never really know what percentage of those are real.
That being said, the tracking capabilities of online campaigns can give you a very detailed picture of what is working and what isn't working. Click fraud aside, we still get pretty good numbers for CPC.