Marketing for personal injury lawyers: four sub-markets
Personal injury is not one market. It is 4 that compete separately, price differently and are searched by people in different states of urgency. A firm with one injury page is competing in the most expensive of them and absent from the other three.
Last updated: 4 August 2026
What are the four sub-markets?
They share a practice area and almost nothing else.
| Sub-market | Who is searching | What they need to read |
|---|---|---|
| Motor and road traffic | Somebody days after a collision, often still in treatment | What happens first, whether it costs anything up front |
| Workplace and industrial | Somebody still employed by the other party | Whether they can be dismissed for bringing a claim |
| Medical negligence | Somebody who has been deciding for months | Time limits, what evidence is needed, realistic timescales |
| Public liability | Somebody with a smaller, clearer incident | Whether it is worth pursuing at all |
The second row is the clearest illustration. A person injured at work is asking a question a general injury page never answers, and it is the question stopping them from calling. One page addressing it outranks five pages that do not, because it is the only one that speaks to why they hesitated.
Which pages should a firm actually build?
One per sub-market it wants more of, plus the questions asked before instruction.
- A page per sub-market — four at most, usually two or three.
- A costs page. What a client pays, when, and what happens if the claim fails.
- A time-limits page. The single most searched procedural question in this practice area.
- A "what happens first" page, describing the first two weeks in plain language.
- A page per fee earner, named, with the sub-markets they actually handle.
That is nine or ten pages for a firm covering two sub-markets. Not sixty. A supplier proposing sixty is selling volume, and volume without a search behind it fills a site with pages nobody looks for.
Where does injury marketing money actually get wasted?
Between the inquiry arriving and somebody answering it, which no amount of ranking fixes.
This is the part suppliers avoid because it is not their department. In a practice area where a click costs up to $151.31 — Philadelphia, measured 3 August 2026 — an inquiry that reaches a voicemail on Friday afternoon has consumed the full acquisition cost and returned nothing.
Four questions worth answering before spending anything on visibility:
- Who answers the phone, and what happens after six o'clock and at weekends.
- How long does a web inquiry sit before somebody responds.
- Is there a script, or does the answer depend on who picked up.
- What is recorded, so anybody can tell which channel produced which matter.
A damaging admission: we do not fix any of those. They are operational, they sit inside the firm, and a marketing supplier who claims to solve them is describing software or a call center rather than marketing. But they determine whether the marketing was worth buying, so they belong in the conversation before the invoice rather than after it.
What does the traffic cost?
Enough that the intake question above is not a side issue.
| City | Injury searches/mo | Cost per click |
|---|---|---|
| Philadelphia | 6,600 | $151.31 |
| Atlanta | 12,100 | $149.13 |
| Houston | 22,200 | $114.87 |
| Chicago | 8,100 | $72.77 |
Measured 3 August 2026 across twenty US cities. These are the most expensive clicks in legal search.
Ranking organically does not compete with those bidders. It appears above them without paying by the click — which is the argument for doing the slow work in the practice area where the fast work costs most.
What does it cost, and how do you charge?
Practice Sprint $1,450, build tier $2,900. Fixed, published, no minimum term.
Never per inquiry, per case or per matter. Personal injury sits inside prescribed legal business, where referral fees are restricted, and the restriction binds the firm paying as well as the party being paid. US lawyer advertising also runs through ABA Model Rule 7.2(b), adopted differently in each state.
Of the 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read on 3 August 2026, twelve published a price at all and one offered work with no minimum term.
How long before it produces matters?
Three to four months for movement, six to nine before it can be judged, and month one produces nothing measurable.
The first quarter shows rising impressions with flat clicks, which is what moving from position 30 toward 11 looks like and reads exactly like failure. A firm that abandons the work in month three abandons it at the point it is working and cannot yet show it.
If the firm needs matters this quarter, it needs paid campaigns rather than this. We do not manage ad spend and will say so.
What this is worth where you are
In Philadelphia, 6,600 people a month search for personal injury, and Google charges around $151.31 for one of those clicks. We hold the same figures for 52 cities.
The free report gives you yours, plus which pages are missing from your site, and what 40 suppliers charge.
No call required. Our own prices are on that page.
Where should I read next?
On the intake problem this page raises: law firm client intake covers what happens after the inquiry arrives.
If you are planning rather than building: marketing plan for personal injury law firm and marketing ideas for a law firm.
By firm size: solo lawyer marketing covers doing this without a marketing budget.
Adjacent channels: email marketing for law firm reaches people who already know the firm, and law firm branding agency covers the identity question.
Frequently asked questions
Is personal injury one market or several?
Four: motor and road traffic, workplace and industrial, medical negligence, and public liability. They compete separately, price differently, and are searched by people in different states of urgency. A firm with one injury page is absent from three of them.
How many pages does an injury firm need?
Nine or ten for a firm covering two sub-markets: one page per sub-market, a costs page, a time-limits page, a "what happens first" page, and one per fee earner. A supplier proposing sixty is selling volume rather than intent.
What question do workplace injury clients actually have?
Whether they can be dismissed for bringing a claim against their employer. A general injury page never answers it, and it is usually the thing stopping them from calling. One page addressing it outranks five that do not.
Where does injury marketing money get wasted?
Between the inquiry arriving and somebody answering it. At up to $151.31 a click, an inquiry reaching a voicemail on a Friday afternoon has consumed the full acquisition cost and returned nothing. No amount of ranking fixes that.
Do you fix intake?
No. It is operational and sits inside the firm. A marketing supplier claiming to solve it is describing software or a call center. It still belongs in the conversation, because it determines whether the marketing was worth buying.
Can you charge per case?
No. Personal injury sits inside prescribed legal business where referral fees are restricted, and the restriction binds the paying firm as well as the recipient. US lawyer advertising also runs through ABA Model Rule 7.2(b), adopted differently by state.
How long before it produces matters?
Three to four months for movement, six to nine before a fair judgement, and nothing measurable in month one. The first quarter shows rising impressions with flat clicks, which reads like failure and is the normal shape of progress.