Split the account at the state line before you split it anywhere else
Geography is the first cut in a Kentuckiana account, ahead of matter type, device or match type.
Draw Kentucky and Indiana as separate campaigns with separate budgets, even if you practice in both. They have different competitors, different costs and different landing pages, and mixing them means one side quietly funds the other.
Inside Kentucky, keep Jefferson County separate from Oldham County and Bullitt County. Metro searchers behave differently from people driving in from further out, and a single Louisville campaign averages the two into a number you cannot act on.
Set targeting to people present in the area rather than people showing interest in it. Otherwise you will pay for clicks from someone in another state researching a Louisville case they are not going to hire you for.
If you are licensed in Kentucky only, exclude Clark County and Floyd County outright. Excluded clicks feel like lost opportunity for about a month, until you notice how much intake time comes back.
An ad that never names a state buys inquiries you have to hand away
Ad copy is your cheapest qualification tool, and most family law ads waste it on adjectives.
Put the jurisdiction in the headline. Kentucky divorce attorney, Jefferson County custody, Indiana filings handled. The people who cannot use you stop clicking, and your cost per usable inquiry drops without a single bid change.
Skip the outcome language. Aggressive representation and results you deserve invite a click from everybody and tell the reader nothing. Bar advertising rules also constrain what you may claim, which is worth reviewing with your own counsel before a campaign launches.
Use the description lines for the practical facts people are actually screening on: whether the first meeting costs anything, how quickly somebody calls back, which counties you appear in.
Write separate copy for the Indiana campaign rather than swapping the state name. The reader on that side is often aware they are in a different system and is looking for a firm that says so.
A New Albany click deserves an Indiana page, or it should not be bought
Sending cross river traffic to a Kentucky landing page is the most common way this account leaks money.
Match the page to the campaign. The Indiana page names Clark County and Floyd County, uses Indiana terminology and carries an intake form that routes to whoever handles that work.
Kentucky pages should do the same in reverse. A page that lists Jefferson County, Oldham County and Bullitt County by name reassures a reader in a way that the word Louisville does not, because Louisville reads as the whole metro to people who live in it.
Keep the page focused on one matter type per ad group. Someone searching about an emergency filing and someone comparing divorce attorneys are at different stages, and one page cannot hold both without going vague.
Load time matters more than design here. Paid clicks arrive on phones, often at night, from people who will hit back rather than wait.
People who have just been served search differently than people thinking about it
The words that carry urgency are worth more to you than the broad category terms, and they cost less attention to win.
Terms built around being served, an emergency hearing, a filed petition or a denied schedule come from people with a deadline. Build ad groups around those phrases and give them their own copy, phone extension and page.
The broad category terms still belong in the account, but with tighter match types and a longer negative list. Divorce and custody attract students, form sellers, people looking for the clerk's office, and people looking for free help.
Negatives do more work than bidding in this vertical. Free, forms, DIY, template, salary, jobs, and the names of online divorce brands are the starting point, and the search terms report should be read weekly for the first few months.
Watch for cross state confusion in the query data. Searches naming Indiana counties, or naming a court in another state entirely, will appear and should be excluded rather than bid on.
Bidding at two in the morning only pays if somebody answers at two in the morning
A large logistics and air freight base makes overnight searching normal here, which is an opportunity and a trap.
Night and early morning traffic is real in this metro. The question is what happens to it. A form that sits unread until nine is a click you paid for and gave to whoever called back first.
Fund the hours you can cover. If intake runs seven to seven with an answering service on weekends, weight spend toward that window and either drop overnight or set up a genuine after hours path with a text reply.
Pace against your own intake capacity rather than a flat daily figure. A campaign that spends evenly while your two intake staff are in consultations all Wednesday afternoon is buying inquiries into a queue.
Call extensions and call only campaigns should be graded on whether calls got answered and how long they lasted, not on how many rang. A missed call in this account costs the same as a booked one.
The share of inquiries you refer out is the number that prices your geography
Cost per lead hides everything that matters in a two state metro, and cost per signed matter alone does not tell you why.
Track three figures per campaign: cost per inquiry, cost per consultation attended, and cost per signed matter. Then add a fourth that most firms never count, which is the percentage of inquiries you had to refer out or turn away.
When that referral percentage climbs in one campaign, you have a geography problem rather than a copy problem. Either you are advertising into an area you cannot serve or the ads are not saying which side of the river you work.
Feed signed matters back into your reporting monthly by pulling from case management rather than from form counts. Form fills flatter every family law account ever built.
Set your bids from what a matter is worth to the firm, not from what a click costs in the auction. Two consultations that sign beat nine that do not, and the account should be told which is which.
Questions we actually get
- Should we run ads in Southern Indiana if we are only admitted in Kentucky?
- Generally not for filings you cannot handle. If you have a reliable referral relationship on that side, a small campaign can make sense, but fee arrangements between firms are governed by rules worth confirming with your own counsel first. Most Kentucky only firms are better off excluding Clark County and Floyd County and putting that budget into Oldham and Bullitt.
- What should we be willing to pay for a divorce consultation?
- Work backward from your own numbers rather than from a benchmark. Take the average fee on a matter of that type, multiply by the share of consultations that sign, and decide what portion of that you will spend to acquire one. Anyone quoting you a market cost per lead for Louisville family law without seeing your books is guessing.
- Do we need separate campaigns for divorce, custody and modification?
- Yes, once volume allows. The searcher intent and the value per matter differ enough that one budget will starve the smaller categories. Start with divorce and custody split, add modification and support as their own groups when the search terms report shows enough traffic to justify it.
- Is paid social worth trying for family law here?
- It works better for modification, support and post decree matters than for new divorce filings, since people rarely act on a divorce ad in a feed. If you do run it, be careful with retargeting. A custody ad following someone onto a shared home tablet is a real risk in this practice area.
- How quickly can we tell whether the account is working?
- You can see wasted spend and query problems within two or three weeks. Whether it produces signed matters at an acceptable cost takes long enough for consultations to run and retainers to be paid, which in family law is often measured in months rather than weeks. We report the early signals honestly rather than declaring success on form counts.
