Case study · Professional services

McDonald Murholme: a stronger digital presence for employment law.

McDonald Murholme is an employment law firm that came to us in May 2016 looking for an agency that would take its marketing seriously, make it perform and report on it every month.

Sector: Professional services
Service: Digital marketing
Channels: LinkedIn · Google Ads · Google Search

Digital marketingCampaign delivery

McDonald Murholme team working together in their office.

The challenge

What needed to change.

McDonald Murholme is a firm of employment lawyers. The people who need the firm change constantly, by job title, by employer and by state, so its target market is never fixed for long and its marketing has to keep pace.

When the firm approached us, it wanted an agency that would take the account seriously, get the digital marketing performing and provide monthly reporting so the partners could see exactly what was working. The task was to attract the right audiences through social advertising, search advertising and search engine optimisation, and to turn that attention into quality enquiries for the business.

Approach

How the work took shape.

We decided early that organic search would carry much of the load. Better organic traffic would also drive quality enquiries, so search engine optimisation ran across the whole engagement rather than as a one off project.

LinkedIn advertising was chosen for its precise targeting. We tailored ads to specific job titles and to target companies, and ran the campaigns as a live strategy, so any trend in the firm’s online leads could be acted on straight away.

Google Ads gave the firm a long term search advertising plan. We target audiences across four states through search and display remarketing, and the leads arrive as phone calls, emails and enquiry form submissions.

To lift organic conversions further, we helped McDonald Murholme manage a second website under a separate brand, dedicated to employment law. Its role is to answer the public’s questions about employment and their rights, appearing in search for the questions people ask before they know they need a lawyer.

The sub-brand then links through to the main McDonald Murholme website, directing the visitors most likely to convert to the firm itself. This keeps the main website focused on enquiries while the sub-brand does the work of education and discovery, and it gives the firm two routes into the search results instead of one.

McDonald Murholme employment lawyers google search engine results.

The shift

A live strategy, adjusted as the leads came in, mattered more than any single channel.

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The work

The work, up close.

The search results pages tell the story. Between the main website, the sub-brand and the paid search campaigns, McDonald Murholme now appears wherever someone in its four target states looks for help with an employment matter, and the volume of enquiries has grown to match.

70%.

Increase in conversions over twelve months.

The main website carries the weight of every channel. Paid search, LinkedIn and organic visitors all land on it, so its pages are kept clear and direct, and every lead, whether a call, an email or a form submission, is tracked back to the channel that produced it. That tracking is what the monthly reporting is built on, and it shows phone leads up 65% since the new website launched.

24%.

Increase in phone leads since we began working together.

McDonald Murholme website desktop display.

On LinkedIn, the creative and targeting are refreshed as the firm’s priorities move, keeping the ads in front of the job titles and companies that matter at the time. The blog on the main website supports the organic work, giving the firm a place to publish on employment law topics and giving search engines fresh, relevant content to index.

Together, the ongoing SEO work, the sub-brand and the blog have built a steady rise in organic visitors that does not depend on advertising spend, which is the most durable result of the engagement.

27.59%.

Increase in organic traffic since we began working together.

McDonald Murholme LinkedIn advertising strategy.

McDonald Murholme blogs page design mockup.

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