S03E132 Google Ad Messaging Strategies with Mary Blackiston

What if your next signed case doesn’t come from a bigger budget, but from better words? We sit down with Mary Blackiston of Thrive Digital Marketing to unpack how research-driven messaging can transform Google Ads from a cost center into a steady source of qualified clients. Mary shares a standout case study: a civil rights attorney who jumped from almost no leads to 15 signed cases in one month on a modest spend, powered by voice-of-client insights and landing pages that speak directly to urgent pain points.

We break down the practical steps any firm can use to raise intent and lower waste. You’ll hear why thank-you page surveys are gold for capturing real decision drivers, how to interview past clients to uncover the phrases that make people say “you read my mind,” and why tightly aligned landing pages outperform homepages every time. Mary explains the mistakes she sees most, jargon-heavy copy, generic claims, blog-style layouts, and shows how to fix them with clear subheads, narrow columns, and copy that leads with the reader’s situation. We also cover the right way to test: focus on ad copy first, pin critical headlines, and keep human oversight on platform “recommendations” that can bloat spend.

If you’ve been battling bad leads, you’ll learn how to filter without scaring off the right people. We talk about using conditional logic forms to qualify cases, calling out disqualifiers in the ad itself, and building trust through story, purpose, and even the Prattfall effect when used carefully. By the end, you’ll have a simple audit you can run this week: compare your ads to competitors, map search intent to pages, and rewrite copy using your clients’ exact words. 

Reach Mary here: 
https://www.thryvedigitalmarketing.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marybblackiston/

Ready to level up your law firm marketing? Book a FREE Discovery Call with Marilyn Here: https://lawmarketingzone.com/bookacall

Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins 
Powered by Law Marketing Zone®
https://lawmarketingzone.com
A full-service Digital Marketing Agency helping clients increase Leads, Cases, and Profit by getting their digital marketing right.

Subscribe on your favorite Podcast listening platform!

Like, Share, and Review us!

#leadershipinlawpodcast #leadershipinlaw #lawmarketingzone #marilynjenkins

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:52

The Leadership in Law Podcast is here to equip you with the knowledge and tools you'll need to build a successful and fulfilling legal practice.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Welcome to another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. I'm your host, Marilyn Jenkins. Please join me in welcoming my guest, Mary Blackeston, to the show today. Mary is the founder of Thrive Digital Marketing, where she helps law firms generate better leads from Google Ads using research-driven messaging. Mary specializes in uncovering what prospective clients are actually thinking, searching, and responding to, and turning that insight into paint ad campaigns that convert. She's helped law firms dramatically increase signed cases without bloated ad spin, including one civil rights attorney who went from almost no leads to 15 signed cases in a single month on a modest budget. Today we're digging into what really makes Google Ads work for law firms and why messaging, not money, is usually the missing piece. I'm excited to have you here, Mary. Welcome. Thank you. Good to be here. Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about your journey.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Yeah, so I am a direct response copywriter and paid ad specialist, focused, specifically focused on Google ads. So basically I help law firms bring in more qualified leads and clients, as you said, with research-driven messaging and ad strategy. And yeah, I've been working in marketing for the last almost a decade now. I think it's eight years. I lose track of the time. And yeah, specifically focused on copywriting and conversions for the last five and a half years now. Yeah.

Mary’s Background And Focus

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Awesome. Now, let's talk about the civil rights lawyer that had barely any liens to 15 signed cases in one month for a$29.97 ad budget. To unpack that story a little bit, before you touched the campaign, what was actually happening and what were the ads saying that weren't working?

The Civil Rights Case Study

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Yeah. So my client had he had basically, he told me when I first started working with him that he had worked with another marketing agency. He spent$18,000, I think, on the agency that, and they only generated one lead. He told me he had a bit more success on his own, but not much. He'd been using Facebook ads and he would try to, he would get some leads here and there, but when he tried to call the people back, they wouldn't pick up the phone. So that was where we were at. And we decided to try Google Ads because obviously leads are more intent-driven and people are this is something that people are searching for. So meeting them right where they're at, where they're actually searching for this solution is obviously going to have better results. Not only that, but really focusing on the messaging. So the leads, so what happened was with the results, as you said, we were able to get my client has said that if he were to get three to four signed cases per month, that would be considered, in his words, crazy, wild, wonderful success. We were able to get 15 signed cases in the first month at half of my client's allocated marketing budget. So they were, he was, and the those results really continued over the course of the year that we worked together. We are still working together actually now, a few years later, with a he's now working at a bigger law firm. So we're working on a different campaign together. But but yeah, those were the results that, and those are the results that we were able to get. And we know that a lot of that was because of the messaging, because some of the lead we had a thank you page survey, which is a really great way to gather some voice of custom, voice of client to say, data and to see what people are thinking, why they choose your law firm. And so we asked them a series of questions. And one of the questions was, why did you choose our firm in particular? And people said things like, I felt so understood. It's like you're reading my mind. There was basically multiple responses where people said that the messaging really resonated with them. And that was also echoed on the calls that my client had, where to the point where people actually felt betrayed when my client couldn't take on their case. Yeah. Okay, that's interesting.

Thank-You Surveys And Messaging Fit

SPEAKER_02 5:01

And survey on the thank you page. That's fantastic. So did you, when you're looking at your now being a copywriter, you probably do it a very scientific way, but when you're looking at the messaging, are you researching his ideal client? Looking, what are they starting with keywords? How do you figure out what the words should be or what they're thinking?

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Yeah. So first I like to the keyword research is obviously get an idea of what people are searching for. And that way you can tailor the landing pages to that and the copy. But the voice of client data is where we get really where we're able to really dig deep and figure out the messaging that's going to resonate with people. And that might involve interviewing some of my clients' clients, asking them like a series of questions and then seeing where they hang out online. Reddit is often a really good place to look, different maybe social media platforms, anywhere where this with my client, he helps women who have been sexually harassed by their landlords. So I found that they weren't really, it was hard to find though that kind of voice of client data on online because many women don't speak about it very much until they really need help. So I found it more difficult, but I did find other ways to looking at to get an idea of their pain points that they're dealing with. I spoke with my client as well. Looking at like the call recordings, if that's possible, is another way to get that voice of client data. But in this case, speaking with my clients' clients was really helpful.

Research Methods And Voice Of Client

SPEAKER_02 6:27

Oh, I love that. So all the way down to what they're thinking before they even come through the ad. Excellent. And so in that so speaking in the voice of the client of the prospective case, that's how you were able to get so much value at such a modest budget because a lot of law firms' listings are gonna have been told they need to spend like 10K or more to see results. And not in all instances is that in high competition personal entry, maybe, but not every client. How did you talk him into the how did Judy explain we only need this budget to do this? But you said you used half the budget.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah, he told me what budget he was like, what he was comfortable spending on all of the marketing and to get things started. And I didn't know exactly what it might cost because it really involves just testing things and you need to at least let the campaign run for a little bit to have an idea of okay, what do we need to spend per day? What is the competition? What it's hard to know, but I can have an kind of an idea of the estimate. But but yeah, it just worked out that we were able to get go way under my client's budget.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

I love that. Now, did you do any split testing at the landing page or you went straight with your messaging because you knew the messaging was crafted for the actual lead?

SPEAKER_01 7:40

We did not do really, we didn't have a ton of traffic to the page. We did more of the A B testing with the with the ads because we tend to get fewer clicks, but the clicks that come in are high quality. We tend we just focus more on the on the ad copy to to bring people in. Yeah.

Why Messaging Beats Money

SPEAKER_02 7:58

Wow, that's amazing results. That's fantastic. So a lot of firms that think of Google ads as just keywords and bidding. And why do you believe that messaging is truly the real different differentiator?

Budget, Testing, And Efficiency

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Yeah, good question. There's just so much noise out there that when you type into Google, let's say you're looking for a car accident lawyer and 10 different apps pop up, or you see just when they all look the same, it it's to have messaging that really stands out. That's going to be key to getting people to not only click your ad, but feel like, especially because people who search are searching for a lawyer tend to be often in a more vulnerable position where they're maybe they've just been in a car accident, or in the case of my client, just been sexually harassed by their landlord or whatever it is, they want to feel like like you're going, like the lawyer that they hire is really understands the situation that they're in and is going to help them uh get through this difficult situation. So when you have messaging that really speaks to that, their pain points and what they're going through, that's just inevitably going to bring in more leads and more qualified leads. Whereas if your copy just sounds the same as everyone else, you might get some leads coming in, but they're not going to be like the highest quality leads in general.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

So And I love that what you did is he specializes in something very niche as well. So he can go very specific there. And that I'm sure there's loads of keywords in there that don't have a high competition.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Yeah, definitely. That's been another obviously helped our success as well, is that it is a lower competition niche. And being even if you don't have, even if maybe you are you are in a competitive niche, just having like more specific and tailored landing pages can go a long way. So instead of just, I see so many law firms that just have they either send people to their homepage or they have really generic landing pages and and add copies. So being having specific copy and landing pages like tailored to what people are searching for is always going to convert, convert better.

Common Copy And Page Design Mistakes

SPEAKER_02 10:03

I love that. Absolutely. Deep to speak to the client that you want to have. That's great. Right. So what do you think some of the most common mistakes are that law firms make, either their agencies are making or the law firms when they're running Google Ads?

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Yeah. So I see a lot of in terms of the copy, actually published a blog post on this, like the do's and don'ts of the, because I see a lot of the same mistakes. But one of them is just writing really having really formal copy with like legal jargon and wordy convoluted sentences. That tends to be more in the landing pages itself. But just basically not speaking to the reader like a friend or a human. And it's just it's just sounds like you're reading a textbook as opposed to speaking to you want the copy to sound like it comes from a good friend as opposed to and that that kind of more formal legal jargon not only confuses people, because you want your copy to be to people in like within five seconds of upon landing on the page to immediately understand like who it is, what you do, and how you can help them. And and yeah, when you have copy that just is overly too wordy or or overly formal, and that's just gonna turn people away. Yeah. So that's one thing that I see, particularly as I said, on landing pages. Then also on the landing pages, I see a lot of that landing pages that are structured like blog posts with long blocks of text and wide margins. Generally, you want to have like narrower margins because it's just easier for people to read. You want to have some white space and photos and to structure it so that it's not just long like blocks of text. So pay attention paying attention to the formatting and how people are going to read this is also something to take into consideration. And I see a lot of law firms just talking about themselves and their accomplishments, and it's very we focused, like they're speaking about their years of experience and the credentials, and people don't really care. And it just sounds the same as every other firm. Obviously, they want to find someone that's experienced. I'm not saying people don't, but you don't want to lead with that because you want to focus on and lead with what maybe the pain points are the re that your prospect is dealing with and what they're thinking when they land on the page. I agree.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

And you've done all that work on the messaging for the ad. So you want the landing page to have that continuity of messaging, the still I care, we help, that sort of thing. And so they feel they still they trust you. The two things have to combine.

Lead Quality And Filtering Tactics

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Exactly. Yeah, with this landing page I did for my client, we didn't even introduce him until halfway down the page. And everything was about the reader and their pain points. And so they read it and they felt like, wow, this lawyer really understands what I'm going through. And we didn't really, we didn't have a single testimony on the page. We didn't speak about his accomplishments. We spoke about why this issue was important to my client and why he was because he really is, he this issue was it was and is really important to him. So we wanted that to come across in the copy and to people to know that he's not in this for the money, he's in this to really help people. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

That absolutely proves that your credentials aren't don't need to be out front to get the message across.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Exactly. Yeah. And in fact, sometimes I think that it can be actually have the opposite of result that you intend if it's too in your face about it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

I agree. I agree. I think, you know, when it comes to the know and trust factor, you want to we your end customer needs to know what you can do for them, not necessarily where you went to school.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Definitely. Yeah. So that a few more mistakes I'll see is is just again like not sharing your their story of why this is important to them and sharing your story and like introducing yourself. And even if you're a big firm, you can introduce, okay, who are the lawyers that are going to be taking on these cases? Can we introduce them and share their their stories? And I don't see a lot of the copy that it doesn't seem to address, generally speaking, of course, the reader's hesitations and motivations and pain points. And it's not based on voice of client research. So it's just not going to resonate as much with the reader. So yeah, those are a few things that that I see missing.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

I love your approach. I love your approach. And I'm sure you've had firms that say they're complaining about bad leads. What do you feel is the real issue behind that?

Forms With Conditional Logic

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Yeah, I think part of it is the copy. We need to make sure that the copy is filtering out the bad leads. So that starts with the ad copy. What kind of leads are you trying to attract? And making sure that it's clear. If, for example, you are a car accident lawyer and a personal energy lawyer, you only want to take on people who are in serious car accidents. You don't want to attract people who are in just like fenderbenders, making sure that's clear, like either in the ad copy, ideally, so you don't waste money on clicks that aren't going to turn into leads, but definitely making sure that's clear on the landing page, qualifying like who is the type of person that you the types of cases that you want to take on. I have also found typeworm is really great for bringing in that allows you to create questions with like conditional logics. With my client that we're working with, we have right now, like we're getting like about six to seven. We we just started this new campaign. And so we've got in seven leads last week. So far we're at six this week. But those are really qualified leads. We're pretty sure that those are going to turn into signed cases. Whereas we have a lot of people, not a lot, but maybe 50% of the people who start the form finish it. 50% don't. But we asked them a series of questions to to make sure that the ones who do complete the form are actually good leaves and that my my client and his team don't waste their time on people who they can't help. So that's type form. I love you for that.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Oh, I love that. I didn't realize type form is was really good for that. But just to be clear, conditional logic is these are your qualifying questions. If they answer that to be qualified, they continue. If they don't qualify because of an answer, do they say sorry, we can't take your case kind of message, and they just go on.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Yeah, exactly. There's certain things that, yeah, if depending on the answer, if it's yeah, basically depending on the answer to the question, they either move on or they're disqualified.

Persuasion: Story, Proof, And Prattfall

SPEAKER_02 16:10

Okay, fantastic. I love that. Type form. We'll keep that in mind. So you talk about speaking to four different types of decision makers and ad messaging. Can you break that down a little bit about what that means and why it matters?

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Yeah. So there's a number of different persuasion techniques that I like to use and the copy itself. There's ones that like things like social proof and urgency are some like very common ones, storytelling. Storytelling is super powerful and a great way to connect with the reader. So again, like going back to sharing your story and why this is important to you. But then there's other things like the cure, some like curiosity gap, which is basically where you pique the reader's curiosity. This is great for emails as well if you do any email marketing. The curiosity back curiosity gap is the space between what someone knows and what they want to know. When someone doesn't have access to all the information, when you just pique their interest, that creates the desire for them to fill that gap with new information. So again, that that's more applies to email marketing. But yeah, the I'd say the ones that I use most on landing pages in particular are the ones that I recommend are storytelling, social proof if you have testimonials, although I don't think that's necessary. The Prattfall effect is, I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but that's basically the tendency for us to someone more if they make a mistake. But this is only the case if the person is already seen as competent. So that we use that on my client's landing page that I mentioned in his story. We talked about we got vulnerable and shared like ways that he wasn't perfect in the past and things that, like, okay, he, when he was just starting out as a lawyer, he didn't realize in this case, again, he helps women who are sexually harassed by their landlords and he made false assumptions that he later realized. So basically, just getting vulnerable and admitting your mistakes can go a really long way to connecting with the reader. Those are just a few that I like to use in the copy.

Email, Newsletters, And Follow-Up

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Interesting. Interesting. Okay, very good. That gives us some different directions for the landing page and also email newsletters, which are extremely important, I think, for law firms.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Yes, definitely.

Quick Audit Priorities For Stuck Teams

SPEAKER_02 18:12

Yeah. If you're thinking about trying to improve your lead quality and the few strategies that you would suggest, were you thinking about like the disqualification or conditional logic forms, has that been very helpful? Is that something you'd suggest to other firms that are running Google Ads now as well?

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Definitely, especially if you're more specific about the or more kind of picky, I should say, about the leads that you or the cases that you take on. It which in my case, my client has is very particular about the people that he wants to work with and the ones that he knows are going to result in a lot of money for the firms. So if that's the case, if you really work with almost anyone, then it's not maybe necessary. But if you are more particular about the leads and the cases that you take on, I definitely recommend doing that.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

I love that. Love that. And for a firm that's running Google Ads right now, but they're feeling a little stuck or frustrated, what's the first thing you'd have them audit?

Human Oversight Versus Platform AI

SPEAKER_01 19:10

I would check to see are your ads like, first of all, are they matching what people are searching for, which and do some keyword research and voice of client research and look at what the other ads that are running, see, okay, does this look like all the other ads that are out there? How can we make it different? How can, you know, we make these ads stand out. Another thing that I see with ads, a lot of with a lot of law firm ads, is that um they just like Google kind of mix and match the headlines and the descriptions. And if you often pinning your headlines and descriptions can it's something you will obviously want to A-B test, but it can often be work better than just letting Google mix and match. And sometimes Google can be very, it can be very like repetitive. So it'd be like carks and it lawyers and then carks and we'll say three times. And it's good, we don't need to say cark student lawyers three different times. So just making sure that you're intentional with ad copy and then yeah. So that's I guess where I would start is with ad copy and then the lending page. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

I think too, the that both Meta and Google are trying to have more AI input to what your ads look like and lend the recommendations. And yeah, my I don't know about your experience, it's been my experience that a lot of the times that just makes your budget go up. Spends more with less ads. You you want to have a human eye on that. Use your follow the data before you accept those recommendations. But I agree with you. They should already know not to have repetition when they do the mix and match, the headlines and the ad copy.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Yeah, definitely.

How To Connect With Mary

SPEAKER_02 20:42

So I know my listeners may want to reach out to you, have questions for you, and connect with you. Where is the best place that they can reach out and connect with you?

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Yeah, LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm not go through stages where I'm like more active. Sometimes, and right now I haven't been very active, but I am on LinkedIn and my website is www.thrive with that's with a why instead of an I, digitalmarketing.com. And yeah.

Host’s Closing And Resources

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Awesome. I will have make sure that those links are in the show notes. Yes. Uh Mary, thank you so much for being with us today. You've shared some great information about the messaging for your Google ads. I really appreciate that. And anybody out there that's running ads have questions, definitely check the links in the show notes and reach out for her. Mary, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me. Thanks for joining me today for this episode. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, you can connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take the next step with a digital strategist to help you grow your law firm, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to Law MarketingZone.com to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, thanks for listening to Leadership in Law Podcast, and be sure to subscribe wherever. You listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. Remember, you're not alone on this journey. There's a whole community of law firm owners out there facing similar challenges and striving for the same success. Head over to our website at LawmarketingZone.com. From there, connect with other listeners, access valuable resources, and stay up to date on the latest episodes. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, keep bleeding with vision and keep growing your firm.