In the world of pay per click marketing, targeting is making sure that your ads are displayed to those who are already looking for your services The number one targeting decision is in what geographic locations to run your ads. This decision may not be as obvious as you think.

Attorney Search Engine Marketing: to Target or Not to Target?

If your market is local in nature, then you should advertise your firm at the local level. You will just waste your law firm's search engine marketing funds. Focus your budget on the most relevant market. It is easy to specify that your search ads should only display in certain markets.

Similarly, if your market covers several markets (a regional market), then you should set that region as your advertising market. This brings up the question as to whether you should run a single campaign that covers all of your markets or run a separate campaign for each market. The single campaign option is quicker, but you have more control and will generate better data with separate campaigns.

If you are a large firm that operates on a nationwide basis, then you have the same issue to decide. The problem here is that maintaining a separate campaign for each market could result in an unrealistically high number of campaigns. A compromise is to set up a number of campaigns that each encapsulates several geographic markets. You would still have some geography-based data to work with, although it would not be as specific as if you had a separate campaign for every individual market.

Google displays the name of the market for ads contained in campaigns that are geographically targeted. In other words, if my firm runs ads targeted to the state of Arkansas, Google users in Arkansas will see the word "Arkansas" beneath my ads. This highlights to Google users in a particular state that my firm is specifically targeted them.

You can also target your ads by time of day or day of week. If you are in an industry with abundant keyword inventory, then this might be an excellent targeting strategy for you. If you are competing against better funded advertisers, click costs may be too high during business hours. It may be much more prudent for you to run your ads at off-peak times. There may still be plenty of traffic to purchase, with those clicks costing much less.

Or maybe there are certain days of the week that are more profitable. You can make this decision based on reporting that shows your account performance at different times of day and days of week, if that reporting is available.

Targeted is an important piece of the lawyer search engine marketing equation. It takes time to figure out exactly when and where you should run your ads, but it is time well spent.

To learn more about attorney search engine marketing, check out the free articles at http://www.law-firm-internet-marketing.net.