Mesothelioma Marketing: Cracking The Search Engines Most Competitive Arena
By Konstantine Kyros, ESQ
By Konstantine Kyros, ESQ
Introduction.
As anyone with who has waded into the world of search engine marketing knows, Mesothelioma is one of the most competitive search terms in cyberspace. In the quest to recruit Mesothelioma victims as potential plaintiff's in lawsuits, law firms around the United States have enlisted a cadre of skilled SEO, SEM and web savvy entrepreneurs to market legal services to a tiny number of people diagnosed with a rare (and difficult to pronounce) form of cancer.
The combative nature of the advertising and online space stems from the large, often seven figure settlements, that law firms may be able to obtain for individuals diagnosed with the disease. But that is not the whole story, a number of other unusual factors work to make this legal-medical-marketing world unique. Those factors, the legal business and the internet space associated with this state of affairs is the topic of this article.
It would be an understatement to say that these issues have been closely studied by this author. Beginning in 2001 I began marketing Mesothelioma online, between 2003 and 2010 I spent over $10 Million dollars online to connect law firms with these patients. My efforts resulted in over 7000 Mesothelioma inquiries and the referral in hundreds of plaintiff's to law firms handling these lawsuits. I am proud of my work in this area and believe that I have helped many, many people find justice and compensation. If you are a person affected by Mesothelioma you have my sincerest blessings and I apologize if this article seems insensitive. This article discusses facts surrounding the legal marketing world and is directed to law firms and search engine professionals to shed light on the business of Mesothelioma online. In that respect this article is very forthright and I hope it will benefit all readers.
As anyone with who has waded into the world of search engine marketing knows, Mesothelioma is one of the most competitive search terms in cyberspace. In the quest to recruit Mesothelioma victims as potential plaintiff's in lawsuits, law firms around the United States have enlisted a cadre of skilled SEO, SEM and web savvy entrepreneurs to market legal services to a tiny number of people diagnosed with a rare (and difficult to pronounce) form of cancer.
The combative nature of the advertising and online space stems from the large, often seven figure settlements, that law firms may be able to obtain for individuals diagnosed with the disease. But that is not the whole story, a number of other unusual factors work to make this legal-medical-marketing world unique. Those factors, the legal business and the internet space associated with this state of affairs is the topic of this article.
It would be an understatement to say that these issues have been closely studied by this author. Beginning in 2001 I began marketing Mesothelioma online, between 2003 and 2010 I spent over $10 Million dollars online to connect law firms with these patients. My efforts resulted in over 7000 Mesothelioma inquiries and the referral in hundreds of plaintiff's to law firms handling these lawsuits. I am proud of my work in this area and believe that I have helped many, many people find justice and compensation. If you are a person affected by Mesothelioma you have my sincerest blessings and I apologize if this article seems insensitive. This article discusses facts surrounding the legal marketing world and is directed to law firms and search engine professionals to shed light on the business of Mesothelioma online. In that respect this article is very forthright and I hope it will benefit all readers.
Unique Character of Mesothelioma Marketing
Rarely is marketing so dependent on a word, especially a word harvested from the medical literature. The term mesothelioma was first proposed in 1920 by researchers studying tumors appearing in the pleura. The medical community was very slow in adopting the notion that Mesothelioma was a separate, unique disease. At one point there were over 30 different terms used to describe the disease and there was no medical consensus until the 1970s as to whether this was truly a separate clinical type of cancer. The attempts to correctly classify the disease and establish its relationship to asbestos were in many cases tied to workers fighting in the courts to collect medical benefits stemming from injuries related to their employment history. Thus the disease becuase of its occupational origins has always closely been linked to the legal process. Once the disease was identified and medical science clearly related it to asbestos exposure, large scale litigation commenced and armies of lawyers began filing claims for injured workers. In the past three decades corporate liability has extended into tens of billions of dollars and forced dozens of companies into bankruptcy. Today over two thousand cancer cases developing annually the litigation (and systematic settlements) continues unabated.
The formerly obscure term is now the nexus between fatal cancer, asbestos exposure and lawsuits against the largest US corporations. A word that through its meaning standing alone is an invitation for dozens of lawyers to spend tens of thousands of dollars each day, every day to reach one person who logs onto a computer and enters it into a search engine. Mesothelioma is now a synonym for multi-million dollar case. Over ten years ago I attended a legal marketing seminar and during a presentation by a law firm on how to reach asbestos victims, a prospective marketer remarked to the presenter that Mesothelioma sounded a bit like medical jargon and queried whether the patient or family would be familar with that term. To which the lawyer knowingly responded that the patients and families hear the word and never forget it.
Mesothelioma Web Sites Explode
When I first became involved in Legal Marketing in 1998 there were only a handful of mesothelioma web sites competing for clients. [See Note 1] The sites were run by law firms who handled the cases, they were informative and as amazing at it seems ten years later they were virtually cost free to the firms operating them. By 2008 there are over 100,000 mesothelioma web sites, almost none of them run by law firms handling the claims, most have thin content and recycled information, and the search terms are a eight figure revenue source for Google and Yahoo. This proliferation of mesothelioma web sites has had a major impact on legal marketing as well as presenting a striking history of the commercialization of the internet.
The purpose of the multitude of Mesothelioma sites is to make money, although the different types of mesothelioma web sites do this in very distinct ways. In some cases the web sites are designed to directly recruit clients for lawsuits and thereby generate large sums of money to victims and law firms. However the vast majority of web sites are designed to make much smaller amounts of money by trying to slice into part of the genuine law firm marketing budgets. Thus Google, Yahoo, domain name parking outfits and affiliate web sites owners wind up pocketing many of the marketing dollars used by asbestos litigation firms flush with contingency fee cash.
Today there are several distinct types of Mesothelioma web sites which I will try and classify by marketing strategy, ownership and revenue source:
Marketing strategy is the method that the web site owner uses to connect with consumers. For our purposes here marketing means using the search engines either 1) in natural rankings (free), 2) using search engine optimzation (SEO) paying a developer to increase the placement of the site in the free search engine listings or 3) using search engine marketing (SEM) by paying to be in Google or Yahoo.
Ownership is what entity, law firm or individual controls and owns the site.
Revenue source is the techinque that the site owner is using to generate money from the site. The revenue source can be a legal fee (direct or indirect), a direct fee is generated by a law firm taking a case and handling it themselves, or indirectly by one law firm referring it to another in exchange for a referral fee. The referral fee is a percentage of the net legal fee paid to the referring counsel by the law firm who first collects money on the case. The legal fee revenue sources are the most lucrative and in directly or indirectly drive the funding for all the other revenue models described here. Another revenue source is a flat fee, usually called a per inquiry ( or "PI") arrangement in which the web site owner called an affiliate is paid a flat fee in exchange for each inquiry he receives on the web site. In some cases, usually sites that are created by SEO companies, law firms will lease or pay high monthly maintenance fees for the rights to obtain inquiry from the web site. Finally, the revenue source that is reponsible for many, many web sites is PPC arbitrage and domain name parking in all of their forms. These revenue models will be discussed in detail further on.
Mesothelioma Web Site Types: Here is a breakout of the web sites by three major criteria in the table below.
Rarely is marketing so dependent on a word, especially a word harvested from the medical literature. The term mesothelioma was first proposed in 1920 by researchers studying tumors appearing in the pleura. The medical community was very slow in adopting the notion that Mesothelioma was a separate, unique disease. At one point there were over 30 different terms used to describe the disease and there was no medical consensus until the 1970s as to whether this was truly a separate clinical type of cancer. The attempts to correctly classify the disease and establish its relationship to asbestos were in many cases tied to workers fighting in the courts to collect medical benefits stemming from injuries related to their employment history. Thus the disease becuase of its occupational origins has always closely been linked to the legal process. Once the disease was identified and medical science clearly related it to asbestos exposure, large scale litigation commenced and armies of lawyers began filing claims for injured workers. In the past three decades corporate liability has extended into tens of billions of dollars and forced dozens of companies into bankruptcy. Today over two thousand cancer cases developing annually the litigation (and systematic settlements) continues unabated.
The formerly obscure term is now the nexus between fatal cancer, asbestos exposure and lawsuits against the largest US corporations. A word that through its meaning standing alone is an invitation for dozens of lawyers to spend tens of thousands of dollars each day, every day to reach one person who logs onto a computer and enters it into a search engine. Mesothelioma is now a synonym for multi-million dollar case. Over ten years ago I attended a legal marketing seminar and during a presentation by a law firm on how to reach asbestos victims, a prospective marketer remarked to the presenter that Mesothelioma sounded a bit like medical jargon and queried whether the patient or family would be familar with that term. To which the lawyer knowingly responded that the patients and families hear the word and never forget it.
Mesothelioma Web Sites Explode
When I first became involved in Legal Marketing in 1998 there were only a handful of mesothelioma web sites competing for clients. [See Note 1] The sites were run by law firms who handled the cases, they were informative and as amazing at it seems ten years later they were virtually cost free to the firms operating them. By 2008 there are over 100,000 mesothelioma web sites, almost none of them run by law firms handling the claims, most have thin content and recycled information, and the search terms are a eight figure revenue source for Google and Yahoo. This proliferation of mesothelioma web sites has had a major impact on legal marketing as well as presenting a striking history of the commercialization of the internet.
The purpose of the multitude of Mesothelioma sites is to make money, although the different types of mesothelioma web sites do this in very distinct ways. In some cases the web sites are designed to directly recruit clients for lawsuits and thereby generate large sums of money to victims and law firms. However the vast majority of web sites are designed to make much smaller amounts of money by trying to slice into part of the genuine law firm marketing budgets. Thus Google, Yahoo, domain name parking outfits and affiliate web sites owners wind up pocketing many of the marketing dollars used by asbestos litigation firms flush with contingency fee cash.
Today there are several distinct types of Mesothelioma web sites which I will try and classify by marketing strategy, ownership and revenue source:
Marketing strategy is the method that the web site owner uses to connect with consumers. For our purposes here marketing means using the search engines either 1) in natural rankings (free), 2) using search engine optimzation (SEO) paying a developer to increase the placement of the site in the free search engine listings or 3) using search engine marketing (SEM) by paying to be in Google or Yahoo.
Ownership is what entity, law firm or individual controls and owns the site.
Revenue source is the techinque that the site owner is using to generate money from the site. The revenue source can be a legal fee (direct or indirect), a direct fee is generated by a law firm taking a case and handling it themselves, or indirectly by one law firm referring it to another in exchange for a referral fee. The referral fee is a percentage of the net legal fee paid to the referring counsel by the law firm who first collects money on the case. The legal fee revenue sources are the most lucrative and in directly or indirectly drive the funding for all the other revenue models described here. Another revenue source is a flat fee, usually called a per inquiry ( or "PI") arrangement in which the web site owner called an affiliate is paid a flat fee in exchange for each inquiry he receives on the web site. In some cases, usually sites that are created by SEO companies, law firms will lease or pay high monthly maintenance fees for the rights to obtain inquiry from the web site. Finally, the revenue source that is reponsible for many, many web sites is PPC arbitrage and domain name parking in all of their forms. These revenue models will be discussed in detail further on.
Mesothelioma Web Site Types: Here is a breakout of the web sites by three major criteria in the table below.
| Marketing Strategy | Ownership | Revenue Source | Notes |
| Natural Listings in Search Results | Law Firm | Legal Fee | Once common these are very rare. These sites are free to maintain. |
| Optimized SEO Listings in Search Results | SEO Company | Paid by Law Firm Per Inquiry or Fixed Term Payment for Site | Today dominated by specialized SEO consultants using Link counters and related techniques to boost search engine page rank. Most Google sites are black hat, but not all. |
| Optimized SEO Listings in Search Results | Law Firm or Proxy Law Firm | Direct or Indirect Legal Fee | Risky Investment if using black hat SEO; highly uncertain results if not. |
| Sponsored SEM | Controlled by Law Firm Handling Cases | Direct Legal Fee | Handful of Successful Law firms that see the value of marketing and have trusted web staff, most refer some cases other law firms. |
| Sponsored SEM | Controlled by Proxy Referral Law Firm | Indirect Referral Legal Fee | A law firm that partnered with SEM web developers that refers most or all of their cases other law firms. Sometimes called referral or feeder firms these are a new type of practice. |
| Sponsored SEM/None | Web Developer | PPC Arbitrage Sites Paid for Clicks by Google and Yahoo | Owners buy low cost ads to display higher cost ads and capture a small percentage of the difference, Used by Google and Yahoo to increase revenue, rampant abuse, practice has resulted in tens of thousands of useless web sites. |
| Sponsored SEM | Affiliate | Paid Per Inquiry By Law Firms | Affiliate is a term used to describe this type of arranagement, Formally viewed as unethical because the information is collected by a nonlawyer, now widely practiced. |
| Parked Domains (may use SEM) | Domain Name Owner, Parker | Paid for Traffic and Clicks by Domain Parking Company | Very Low value traffic, mostly fraudulant with domain name owners driving fake clicks to their own parked domain names. |
The table above summarizes the main types of mesothelioma sites found online. It is important to realize that all of these sites owe there existence to the law firms that are able to collect legal fees on the actual claims. The representation of Mesothelioma victims is extremely lucrative and many of the law firms make tens of millions of dollars yearly in profit. These profits are used to fund the various marketing strategies, forms of web ownership and revenue models. Thus the "real" sites that receive funding from the law firms themselves exist at the top of the mesothelioma marketing food chain in the SEM world. The sites connected in some way with law firms pay the search engines Google and Yahoo to place the site in the sponsored search listings. The fees are nominally calculated as the cost per click from actual users who click on the advertising. I say nominally because in practice the amount of delivered traffic on valuble keywords is fairly steady and it not really the product of random search- This is a topic of another article. The advertising fees flucuate over time but because of the ability of Google and Yahoo to deliver clicks these costs are relatively predictable. These costs include the clicks from the affiliate, domain name parked, and PPC arbitrarge sites that daily take their tithe on the "real site."
In the Yahoo screen shot below taken on 1 June 2008 the search results displayed are for the phrase "Mesothelioma lawyer." The sites listed in the blue "Sponsor Results" have signed up with Yahoo Search Marketing and are bidding at somewhere between $75 and $35 per Click. These four sites are owned by law firms or Proxy law firms: SimmonsCooper of East Alton, Illinois is very well known for its large Madison Country Verdicts and settlements, the second site is a Texas Law firm Simon, Eddins & Greenstone, LLP, the third site is by Danziger De Llano for cases to be referred to Houston lawyer Mark Lanier, The fourth is Williams Kherkher another Houston firm. Thus the sites are financially backed by actual law firms with marketing budgets looking for clients with mesothelioma.
In the Yahoo screen shot below taken on 1 June 2008 the search results displayed are for the phrase "Mesothelioma lawyer." The sites listed in the blue "Sponsor Results" have signed up with Yahoo Search Marketing and are bidding at somewhere between $75 and $35 per Click. These four sites are owned by law firms or Proxy law firms: SimmonsCooper of East Alton, Illinois is very well known for its large Madison Country Verdicts and settlements, the second site is a Texas Law firm Simon, Eddins & Greenstone, LLP, the third site is by Danziger De Llano for cases to be referred to Houston lawyer Mark Lanier, The fourth is Williams Kherkher another Houston firm. Thus the sites are financially backed by actual law firms with marketing budgets looking for clients with mesothelioma.
| The two screen shots pictured below (Green: considerabledeals.com and Orange: constructioninsight.org) are from web sites found advertising for the term "mesothelioma lawyer" in Google Adwords. The listings for the sites themselves were found at the very bottom of the 3rd and 4th pages of the Google Sponsored Links, thus the site owners are paying less than one dollar per click and probably no more than few cents. The sites are designed and have no other purpose than to display the search results from what is called a Yahoo Feed, that is the ability of the web site owners to display Yahoo ads on their own sites for a percentage of the revenue. As can be seen the sites are displaying the same ads from the same firms that appear on Yahoo.com. In turn Yahoo will pay the site owners a small percentage of the total cost of each click they deliver to the law firm web sites. | |
| The above sites illustrate pay per click arbitrage, the purchase of low cost advertising to display higher cost ads. Since the traffic these sites recieve from such low level advertising is miminal, it is usual that sites of this kind (not necessarily these above) will use bots, automatated click software and related techniques to drive traffic to the ads. Most sites of this kind do not even bother to advertise but merely exist in cyberspace. Tens of thousands of these sites exist and serve as gray area traffic sources for Yahoo and Google. Many of these are not web sites properly understood but merely domain names with a template advertising links provided by Domain Parking companies. Although little discussed, and not well understood these sites also function to essentially guarantee that Yahoo and Google can deliver a constant stream of clicks on obscure, but high cost phrases such as "mesothelioma lawyer." That is a topic of another article. | |
Mesothelioma: Marketing in the Competitive Landscape
The multitude of sites described briefly above by some of their characteristics create unique marketing challenges. Not only are there many web sites, there are distinct types of parties who own and control them, each having a different financial status. Thus the potential entrant into the space has several different scales of spending competition to contend with: 1) Well Financed Law Firms with large marketing budgets whose financial reward is enormous and tied directly to the inquiry they receive from the site; 2) Proxy Law Firms who are also well financed but recieve only one-third (or less) of the settlement and thus will spend significantly less (unless directly partnered with the firm handling the claims on the marketing site as well as the referral fee site); 3) Sophisicated SEM talent that is well compensated and may have a large budget; and 4) Poorly financed but numerous arbitrage sites that not only feed off SEM mesothelioma budgets, but also function to clutter the marketplace in vicious competition with each other.
SEO Versus SEM: Which Makes Sense?
Given the financial challenges from varying levels of competition one might conclude that an SEO strategy, that is developing a web site for the organic results is the best option. Obviously having a web site appear in the search results for free in natural listings makes the most sense. The David Law Firm and their very simple web site: mesotheliomaweb.org has long dominated the natural result positions in Google and Yahoo usually appearing near the top of the search results for "mesothelioma." There are many reasons for this, paramount of which is the age of the site which has been online for at least 10 years, additionally the site has good inbound links that have also been around for a very long period (the product of good SEO work many years in the past), and the site has hundreds of pages with well titled content. The David site is to some extent sui generis, it is not capable of exact replication though many sites compete and are very active in the natural listing space.
A handful of Law Firms notably Danziger De Llano, Baron & Budd, Early Ludwick Sweeney, and The Peterson Law Firm have hired SEO firms to create mesothelioma web sites for insertion in the Google search results. These law firms are all able to "buy" placement in the natural rankings by having well developed sites, but more importantly active SEO. Good optimized sites share certain traits, most will have hundreds if not thousands of pages of content, expert keyword sensitive copywriting, a good domain name and possibly the use of an .org. However, most of the SEO associated with these sites, without making any specific identification, falls into a grey area relative to search engine acceptability. In theory Google polices attempts to manipulate the search results, in practice the SEO efforts succeed for some time usually 6 months to a year. Most of the Mesothelioma web site SEO work is premised on developing a large number of links to the sites. Links can be purchased in many ways, the more legitimate the site the more valuable the links. Some of the SEO work in this area has obtained links from hundreds of Firefighter Union Web sites for example. In past cases the SEO vendor offered free link counters embedded with a link to a mesothelioma web site they were promoting. The code for the link counters (along with the link to mesothelioma site) were placed on hundreds of unrelated sites by unsuspecting site owners who just wanted a free link counter. One site appropriately named MesoLink at one time had obtained over 20,000 links from various sources and consequently was number one in Google.
This strategy is very appealing at it: 1) Eliminates the need to buy advertising in Google and Yahoo; 2) If well done creates an asset that will generate leads continously ; 3) Law Firms can create multiple sites and try different techniques; 4) Can be obtained at varying costs all of which will be cost effective if the site meets its goal of getting into the results.
There are however some risks with the SEO approach. An SEO developed site is statistically more likely to fail rather than succeed. No legitimate SEO company can guarantee a particular result, so if using such a company the initial outlay typically starting at $250,000- to 1M for site development might be forfeit if the approach fails (this was in fact the case with a former client). Thus while SEO promises much better returns the risk is that there may be no return at all. An SEO site both legitimate as well as those using questionable techniques is subject to the vagaries of the Google algorithm which may drop the site either on its own or as a penalty for attempting to manipulate the search results. In both cases the result is uncertainty, radical uncertainly: one day the law firm has a viable web site generating business, the next day there is no visable site and consequently no business. With few exceptions SEO developed sites must be understood in this business framework. Thus decisions about investing in them and predicting the sites capablity to generate clients have to be predicated on assuming a fair amount of risk. For this reason few of the major law firms marketing in this area depend soley on SEO. In fact as the screenshot below, in a search for "mesothelioma" in Google illustrates the appetite for cases is so stong that the top law firms dominate both SEM and SEO space!
Given the financial challenges from varying levels of competition one might conclude that an SEO strategy, that is developing a web site for the organic results is the best option. Obviously having a web site appear in the search results for free in natural listings makes the most sense. The David Law Firm and their very simple web site: mesotheliomaweb.org has long dominated the natural result positions in Google and Yahoo usually appearing near the top of the search results for "mesothelioma." There are many reasons for this, paramount of which is the age of the site which has been online for at least 10 years, additionally the site has good inbound links that have also been around for a very long period (the product of good SEO work many years in the past), and the site has hundreds of pages with well titled content. The David site is to some extent sui generis, it is not capable of exact replication though many sites compete and are very active in the natural listing space.
A handful of Law Firms notably Danziger De Llano, Baron & Budd, Early Ludwick Sweeney, and The Peterson Law Firm have hired SEO firms to create mesothelioma web sites for insertion in the Google search results. These law firms are all able to "buy" placement in the natural rankings by having well developed sites, but more importantly active SEO. Good optimized sites share certain traits, most will have hundreds if not thousands of pages of content, expert keyword sensitive copywriting, a good domain name and possibly the use of an .org. However, most of the SEO associated with these sites, without making any specific identification, falls into a grey area relative to search engine acceptability. In theory Google polices attempts to manipulate the search results, in practice the SEO efforts succeed for some time usually 6 months to a year. Most of the Mesothelioma web site SEO work is premised on developing a large number of links to the sites. Links can be purchased in many ways, the more legitimate the site the more valuable the links. Some of the SEO work in this area has obtained links from hundreds of Firefighter Union Web sites for example. In past cases the SEO vendor offered free link counters embedded with a link to a mesothelioma web site they were promoting. The code for the link counters (along with the link to mesothelioma site) were placed on hundreds of unrelated sites by unsuspecting site owners who just wanted a free link counter. One site appropriately named MesoLink at one time had obtained over 20,000 links from various sources and consequently was number one in Google.
This strategy is very appealing at it: 1) Eliminates the need to buy advertising in Google and Yahoo; 2) If well done creates an asset that will generate leads continously ; 3) Law Firms can create multiple sites and try different techniques; 4) Can be obtained at varying costs all of which will be cost effective if the site meets its goal of getting into the results.
There are however some risks with the SEO approach. An SEO developed site is statistically more likely to fail rather than succeed. No legitimate SEO company can guarantee a particular result, so if using such a company the initial outlay typically starting at $250,000- to 1M for site development might be forfeit if the approach fails (this was in fact the case with a former client). Thus while SEO promises much better returns the risk is that there may be no return at all. An SEO site both legitimate as well as those using questionable techniques is subject to the vagaries of the Google algorithm which may drop the site either on its own or as a penalty for attempting to manipulate the search results. In both cases the result is uncertainty, radical uncertainly: one day the law firm has a viable web site generating business, the next day there is no visable site and consequently no business. With few exceptions SEO developed sites must be understood in this business framework. Thus decisions about investing in them and predicting the sites capablity to generate clients have to be predicated on assuming a fair amount of risk. For this reason few of the major law firms marketing in this area depend soley on SEO. In fact as the screenshot below, in a search for "mesothelioma" in Google illustrates the appetite for cases is so stong that the top law firms dominate both SEM and SEO space!
In the above screen shot (taken 23 June 2008) the letter "A" is placed near the David Law firm websites which occupy the top of the sponsored (paid listings) as well as the sixth spot in the natural listings. The letter "B" is Early, Ludwick and Sweeney which is doing better in the SEO natural listings and has lowered its bid in the SEM space (on the side). The letter "C" indicates Baron and Budd which is prominent in the space and balances both worlds.
SEM: Search Engine Marketing: Unraveling the Google and Yahoo Ad Programs
I have advertised with both Google and Yahoo continuously since the inception of their programs (and even the predecessor, the original PPC engine goto.com). The programs have evolved from being peripheral and limited in scope to become the main driver of revenue to the multi billion dollar search engines. More importantly the advertising sold by these programs has become the first stop for millions of web users, replacing the natural listings in prominence and importance. Returning to the Google screen shot above, most consumers will not significantly differeniate the "Sponsored Links" in tan at the top or on the side from the natural search results. Thus the advertiser is given the opportunity to reach millions of consumers first. The opportunity afforded is not free however, especially for Mesothelioma and related terms.
Both Google and Yahoo have somewhat arcane and fairly complex methods that allow "self-service," in the set up, monitoring and maintenance of the ads a law firm wants to run on the search engines. The advertiser is tasked to design the text of the ads as well as the selection of the search phrases and keywords typed into the search engines by consumers that will trigger the ads to display. Adding to the confusion the pricing is based on a combination of delivered clicks, at a cost determined by the competitors bids in an "auction" style bidding process. In theory both Google Ad Words and Yahoo Search Marketing hide the competitors exact bids, but in practice it is easy to determine the price range. What is not so easy to determine is the number of clicks the ads will receive and most importantly how and if those clicks will result in inquiries and actual clients. This is why most law firms will hire experienced SEM help.
Budgeting and Costs
So how much is being spent for mesothelioma online advertising? The term "mesothelioma" is fixed at a bidded price of $100 per click in Google. Without any budget controls an advertiser can expect between 20 and 60 delivered clicks per day on this term alone, with the average number of clicks being close to 50. Because Google functions on an auction system with the different advertisers competing for the top spot the amount paid per click varies per click generally from $50 to $70 (even at the $100 bidded price because competition for the top spots is fierce). A campaign will consist not just of the term "mesothelioma," a well run campaign will have thousands of related keywords each bearing some cost. But sticking with the main term standing alone the table below illustrates a random selection of Ad Words dailey spending for the word "mesothelioma" in January 2008.
So how much is being spent for mesothelioma online advertising? The term "mesothelioma" is fixed at a bidded price of $100 per click in Google. Without any budget controls an advertiser can expect between 20 and 60 delivered clicks per day on this term alone, with the average number of clicks being close to 50. Because Google functions on an auction system with the different advertisers competing for the top spot the amount paid per click varies per click generally from $50 to $70 (even at the $100 bidded price because competition for the top spots is fierce). A campaign will consist not just of the term "mesothelioma," a well run campaign will have thousands of related keywords each bearing some cost. But sticking with the main term standing alone the table below illustrates a random selection of Ad Words dailey spending for the word "mesothelioma" in January 2008.
| Google Spending for word "Mesothelioma" January 2008 | |||
| Date | Number of Clicks | Average Cost Per Click (CPC) | Total Daily Cost |
| Jan 14 | 45 | $55 | $2,482 |
| Jan 15 | 69 | $58 | $4,045 |
| Jan 16 | 58 | $58 | $3,063 |
| Jan 17 | 52 | $52 | $3,072 |
| Jan 18 | 56 | $56 | $3,189 |
The above costs are with Google budget controls as to display time and position selection, without controls the spending can be much higher especially as the average CPC with raise to over $80. Thus an advertiser can easily pay over $5000 per day simply on the word mesothelioma. For myriad reasonsexplained elsewhere it is my belief that these costs imposed by Google bear little relationship to actual consumer behavior in clicking on the ads. (Mesothelioma is an extremely rare orphan disease that affects at most a few thousand people in the US, yet my 2007 campaigns in Google alone garned over 5 million impressions and 46,000 clicks? I leave that to statisticians out there to ponder.) But Law firms looking for Mesothelioma clients have created a financial windfall for the search engines, SEM, SEO, Domain name parker, PPC arbitrage industries. Though it is impossible to give an exact figure, based on my own spending, observations and calculations of competitors spending, Google generates at least $30 million dollars annually from Mesothelioma and related terms. Law firms spending money looking for clients will always be criticized as ambulance chasers, but what of search engines whose "Don't Be Evil" motto requires tens of millions of dollars to connect cancer patients with law firms who aid them in their legal claims?
The costs and pricing however are inescapably related to the value that these cases have to law firms. Whether by chance, the manipulation of delivered clicks, or the efficency of the auction bidding system or some combination of these factors the costs borne by the "real" advertiser law firms loosely reflect the price point that lawyers handling these cases are willing to pay, which as it turns out is quite a bit. How much? That depends on where on the Mesothelioma food chain the law firm resides.
These costs can be controlled in many ways, several I have found very useful include: 1) Effective keyword development & management; 2) Conversion and Click Fraud Tracking; 3) Budget controls; 4) Geo Targeting; 5) Ad Testing and improvement; 6) On site factors including landing pages and content development. I will discuss each of these briefly below.
1) Effective keyword development & management.
| Google Spending for all terms January 2008 including Mesothelioma | |||
| Date | Number of Clicks | Average Cost Per Click (CPC) | Total Daily Cost |
| Jan 14 | 135 | $30 | $4,075 |
| Jan 15 | 179 | $33 | $5,868 |
| Jan 16 | 160 | $33 | $5,263 |
| Jan 17 | 156 | $32 | $4,925 |
| Jan 18 | 125 | $34 | $4,305 |
With SEO developed sites the relationship is less complex with the money following from the law firm to the SEO company
Since the law firms themselves specialize in settlements and litigation it follows that they would rely on special vendors and build unique relationships to keep the new cases coming through the door. To be continued...
Since the law firms themselves specialize in settlements and litigation it follows that they would rely on special vendors and build unique relationships to keep the new cases coming through the door. To be continued...
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