How I Cut a Personal Injury Firm's Google Ads CPA by 43% Without Touching Their Intake Team

If you run a personal injury firm, you already know the intake desk is everyone’s favorite scapegoat. “The leads are fine; intake just can’t close.” When a Phoenix-based PI partner called me in September, that was the narrative he’d heard from two vendors in a row. His Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) sat at $612, first-contact velocity was crawling at 13 minutes, and he was ready to rip out the phone system. I told him to wait. We won’t touch the intake team until I prove the traffic is worth their time.

This is a common story in PPC for lawyers: high spend, high frustration, and finger-pointing. Six weeks later, the same reps were converting leads at 21% without working a single extra hour—and CPA was down to $349. Here’s the exact sequence we ran inside Google Ads (with a light assist from Meta retargeting) to get there.

Snapshot: Where We Started vs. Six Weeks Later

Zero changes to staffing. No new phone scripts. Pure funnel discipline.

1. Build a Forensic Baseline in 45 Minutes

PI marketers love grand gestures. I start with a forensic crawl so I know exactly which screws to turn. My punch list:

1. Bid landscape check – Pull Auction Insights for the top 40 non-brand keywords. Verdict: two national aggregators were inflating CPCs on exact match because the prior vendor only bid broad match w/ smart bidding. Easy fix.
2. Routing audit – CallRail logs showed 28% of calls were getting dumped into the general receptionist queue. We tagged each tracking number by campaign and forced priority routing direct to intake. No HR changes, just logic.
3. Attribution gap – GA4 was set to data-driven, but Google Ads import used last-click. That meant Performance Max was stealing credit from RLSA and vice versa. We unified on data-driven inside both platforms, then added Offline Conversion Tracking (OCT) via Lead Docket so signed retainers fed back within 4 hours.
4. Compliance sweep – Re-confirmed every ad group had the required bar number in sitelinks and that all LPs included ADA accessibility copy. Bar complaints are not the vibe when you’re scaling spend.

Only after those baselines were locked did we touch bids.

(If you're wondering why costs were so high to begin with, check out our breakdown of why law firm Google Ads are so expensive.)

2. Right-Size the Campaign Architecture (Search First, Always)

The account had 11 campaigns, 137 ad groups, and zero intent separation. I rebuilt with a three-tier structure:

• Tier A: High-intent exact match (26 keywords)
  • Example: [car accident lawyer phoenix], [semi truck accident attorney az]
  • Bidding: Target CPA, shared budget capped at $1,800/day
  • Ad strategy: 4 RSA variants per ad group, each with courtroom proof points
• Tier B: Control match (phrase + exact)
  • Mixed-intent terms like “injury attorney free consultation”
  • Manual CPC with eCPC assist, so we could dial bids daily and feed learning back into Tier A
• Tier C: Demand acceleration (Performance Max + RLSA)
  • PMax limited to prior converters, CRM lookalikes, and YouTube viewers
  • RLSA layered on competitor terms to bid +180% when a past click returned

I also carved branded search into its own protective campaign with exact, phrase, and negative keyword matrices so aggregators couldn’t squat on the firm name. Branded CPCs dropped from $48 to $11 within the first week.

3. Stop Bleeding on Irrelevant Intent

You don’t cut 43% off CPA unless you get ruthless with negatives. We built three lists:

1. Exclusion list #1: Tire kickers – “pro bono,” “legal aid,” “class action claim status,” “workers comp phone number.” 318 negatives applied at the account level.
2. Exclusion list #2: Service-mismatch – The firm doesn’t touch slip-and-fall or medical malpractice, yet 19% of spend was flowing there. We negated 72 variants and redirected those searches to referral partners for a fee.
3. Exclusion list #3: Geo drift – State border terms were killing efficiency. Any query mentioning “California,” “Nevada,” or “New Mexico” got negative exact treatment. We also used location options to “Presence” only, eliminating searchers who were merely interested in Arizona.

The result: wasted spend fell from 32% to 11% in seven days.

4. Inject Story-Driven Messaging That Intake Can Echo

We never touched the intake script, but we did hand them something better to echo. Every RSA included:

• Headline variants referencing actual verdicts ($4.3M Lyft PIP, $1.1M spinal fusion)
• A “best ppc firm for injury lawyers” proof line to ride the core keyword theme
• A compliance-approved CTA: “Get trial-ready counsel in 3 minutes”
• Ad customizers pulling the searcher’s city (“Mesa,” “Tempe”) for hyper relevance

Landing pages mirrored the same storyline with heat-map verified CTA placement. We embedded the firm’s call triage video (hosted on Wistia for ADA captions) so prospects heard the same reassuring voice they’d get on the phone. Consistency = trust = faster intakes.

5. Performance Max as a Multiplier, Not a Crutch

PMax is temptation incarnate for busy agencies. We kept ours on a short leash:

• Asset groups aligned to case type (ride-share, trucking, wrongful death)
• Audience signals built from HubSpot CRM lists exported weekly
• Placements excluded kids’ games, political content, and anything outside Arizona
• Measurements tied to the same OCT conversions so PMax couldn’t claim soft leads

PMax contributed 17% of total conversions but only 9% of spend. Its real job was warming up prospects for search to close, not fishing in cold water.

6. Meta Retargeting to Close the Loop

Meta stayed in supporting role only. We ran:

• One lead ad targeting video viewers at 50% watch time, offering a “verdict playbook” PDF
• One retargeting carousel showing lawyer bios + testimonials to anyone who hit the case-results page

Spend: $2,400/month. Incremental signed cases attributed via UTMs and CallRail whisper messages: 4-5 per month. Worth every penny, but still only 12% of the total lift.

7. Call-Tracking + Routing Fixes Without Staffing Changes

Remember those phone complaints? We solved them with logic, not headcount:

• Dynamic number insertion per campaign so we knew which source rang which line
• Priority routing: PI calls now route directly to a four-person pod during business hours; overflow hits bilingual agents trained on PI only
• After-hours SOP: We set a simple Twilio IVR that texts the intake manager if a lead presses “1” for serious injury
• Velocity scoreboard: A Looker Studio dashboard pushes real-time speed-to-lead metrics to the partner’s phone every morning

Once reps saw their name on a public board, response time dropped to 6 minutes almost overnight.

8. Compliance, Documentation, and Bar-Safe Scaling

Personal injury advertising is a magnet for complaints if you skip governance. We documented every change in Notion and shared the following with the firm:

• Ad repository with screenshots and copy decks for bar review
• Quarterly compliance review checklist (disclaimer placement, ADA copy, privacy policy updates)
• Data retention policy for call recordings (kept 24 months, encrypted at rest)
• PII handling SOP so intake knows how long to keep SMS follow-ups before purging

This wasn’t busy work—it kept partners confident enough to approve budget increases without calling their ethics counsel.

9. Reporting That Speaks Partner Language

When we reported results, we skipped vanity metrics. The deck led with:

1. Signed cases vs. target – Goal was 32/month, we hit 39
2. Marketing efficiency ratio (MER) – Dropped from 3.2 to 1.9
3. Cost to acquire $1M in projected fees – Went from $260k to $148k
4. Call quality distribution – 72% A/B grade calls vs. 44% baseline

Every slide tied spend to courtroom outcomes. That’s why they increased budget 30% in November without blinking.

Mid-Funnel CTA

Need a courtroom-ready PPC audit?

If your PI account is bleeding cash on keywords you’d never take to court, book a 45-minute audit. I’ll show you the exact negative keyword stacks, routing fixes, and OCT wiring we used here—then we’ll decide if BestPPC should run it for you.

10. Lessons You Can Steal Today

1. Own attribution end-to-end – Import offline conversions within hours so smart bidding optimizes for signed retainers, not form fills.
2. Protect brand terms – Separate campaign, exact match, ruthless negatives. Aggregators feast where firms get lazy.
3. Throttle PMax – Use it to recycle high-intent audiences, not replace the search foundation.
4. Route smarter before hiring – Call-tracking plus routing logic can feel like adding a full-time closer.
5. Publish compliance receipts – Partners sign checks faster when they know you’re bar-safe.

FAQ From Other PI Partners

“Do we need a bigger content budget to replicate this?” No. We refreshed two landing pages and recorded a 90-second intake video. Spend went into media, not endless blog drafts.

“What about LSAs (Local Services Ads)?” We run them, but they weren’t the lever here. LSAs stayed capped at $6k/month to mop up high-intent calls while we rebuilt search.

“Couldn’t we just add more intake reps?” You could, but you’d be scaling inefficiency. Fix traffic and routing first; then decide if headcount still matters.

“How fast can we see results?” Expect first signs within 10 days (as negatives kick in) and full impact by week six once smart bidding recalibrates around your OCT data.

Ready to Scale?

If you want the “best ppc firm” benchmark working for your PI docket, let’s audit your account. We’ll rip through Auction Insights, rebuild your tiered campaigns, wire OCT into your CRM, and hand intake a faster pipe—without recruiting a single new rep.

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