Our team conducted a study, averaging personal injury lead costs from sources across the US to build a full breakout of the average personal injury lead cost.
We give the average personal injury lead cost by:
- Lead source
- Lead type
- Region of the US
This report is designed to be granular enough for you to come to a rough idea of what you should be paying for a personal injury lead.
Average Personal Injury Lead Cost by Lead Type
The following table gives the average personal injury lead cost by the type of PI lead.
| Personal Injury Type | Cost Per Lead |
|---|---|
| Bicycle Accident | $986.40 |
| Boating Accident | $1,024.80 |
| Car Accident | $1,013.08 |
| Construction Accident | $323.63 |
| Dog Bite | $991.28 |
| Medical Malpractice | $82.28 |
| Nursing Home Abuse | $281.98 |
| Pedestrian Accident | $557.03 |
| Premises Liability | $399.05 |
| Product Liability | $134.98 |
| Slip and Fall | $808.85 |
| Spinal Cord Injury | $444.13 |
| Truck Accident | $1,349.33 |
| Wrongful Death | $639.63 |
Average Personal Injury Lead Cost by Lead Source
This table gives the average lead cost by lead source.
| Lead Sources | Lead Cost |
| Organic Search (SEO) | $180.70 |
| Social Media (Organic) | $272.31 |
| Local Business Listings (Google My Business, Yelp, etc.) | $359.91 |
| Email Marketing | $446.72 |
| Content Marketing (Blogs, Videos, Guides) | $541.10 |
| Paid Social Media Ads | $627.11 |
| Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads (Google Ads, Bing Ads) | $722.73 |
| Legal Directories (Avvo, Justia, FindLaw, etc.) | $810.55 |
| Lead Generation Services (e.g., LegalMatch, Martindale-Nolo) | $904.78 |
| Television Advertising | $988.64 |
| Radio Advertising | $1,079.96 |
| Billboards and Outdoor Advertising | $1,175.02 |
| Print Advertising (Newspapers, Magazines) | $1,261.64 |
| Sponsorships and Event Marketing | $1,354.17 |
Whether advertisers and law firms like it or not, Google still remains king for generating the highest quality leads for most personal injury cases. However, since pay-per-click costs can vary by the minute, let alone the day, consider this a Fall 2024 snapshot into the personal injury PPC lead costs that law firms must navigate.
As we move into our regions breakdown, we leveraged Google PPC bids to spread our cost ranges over the various regions in the US. We used the following methodology to calculate leads and new cases:
- Divided the United States into seven regions;
- Analyzed the cost-per-click data for high-intent keywords targeting those areas; then
- Multiplied cost per click by the number of leads it takes the average website to convert to a submission form; and
- Used the operating principle that skilled attorneys can close roughly 30 to 40 percent of their cases.
The states were grouped as follows:
| Region | States Contained |
| Northeast | Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania |
| Southeast | Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas |
| Midwest | Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas |
| Southwest | Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona |
| Mountain West | Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Nevada |
| Pacific | Washington, Oregon, California |
| Outside 48 | Alaska, Hawaii |
Below are the results:
Why Not Include Website Referrals?
While some of the most well-known legal marketing services provide referrals based on their domain authority, or how Google ranks them for search terms, they may not be the best fit for most law firms.
Outside of the fact that there are very few with ratings above three out of five stars on publicly available review sites, the web pages are rarely designed for conversion into cases. Most reviews by lawyers themselves note that people coming to them either did not expect to speak with an actual lawyer or expected free labor. The websites often conflate an initial free consultation with free legal work indefinitely.
Taking a Deeper Dive into Personal Injury Lead Costs
We also performed research into some of the most populous sites, which highlighted the disparity in regional and local interests.
Key Differences
- Pennsylvania is a far more competitive market for medical malpractice and similar cases. This may be due in part to the state’s lack of caps on medical malpractice damages.
- New York includes construction site and bicycle accident injuries, which makes sense given that the state’s population is centered on New York City.
- California and Texas bids show more competition for truck accident lawyers. Florida’s lack of inspection laws may be the reason why it remains focused on general car accidents.
Going Beyond Pay-Per-Click
A lot of agencies have experience running pay-per-click advertising and some of them may even have done so for law firms. However, most law firms and their agencies run into a catch-22: true high-intent keywords like the ones above are very expensive, meaning the rest of the funnel has to be completely optimized to maximize each click. For reference, a common funnel would look like:
- Creative ad on social media, banner ad, or search results;
- Optimized landing page with checklist completed;
- Submission form to select only highly qualified candidates;
- Integration of the submission data with either an agency capable of vetting potential claimants or into one’s own case management system.
While it is possible to do much of this in-house, many PPC management firms that call themselves “lead generation” agencies do not actually vet the potential claimants for these sorts of cases. As a result, false positives are possible as the law firm, in conjunction with agency staff, is expected to reduce false positives through careful submission form wording alone.
Get Full-Funnel Lead Generation from Injury Case Claims
As a 15-year veteran of the industry, the team at Injury Case Claims knows that in order to develop a cost-effective lead generation program, every element must be refined to perfection from the ad creative to a team of capable intake specialists who can ensure that claimants are verified and ready to sign a retainer before their information is transferred into your case management system.
Call or use the short form to get a quote based on your law firm’s needs and budget. Injury Case Claims looks forward to finding you the highest-quality options at a fair personal injury per-lead cost. In fact, we stand behind our processes so that any unqualified potential client will be replaced within 7 days or less, free of charge.
