Facebook Ads for Lawyers: Strategies to Get Clients

Facebook is a valuable marketing tool for many law firms and one that can add authenticity to your professional reputation. Plus, Facebook has places for sponsored ads, which gets you in front of people in your area that may need your legal expertise.

Is your law firm advertising on Facebook? If not, here are some easy strategies to get clients.

Social Media

Social media is a different way to market your law firm. It gives you a chance to be a little less formal, and interact one-on-one with potential clients. In addition to having professional social media profiles, you can also purchase targeted Facebook ads. While some users may not enjoy having an ad pop up on their scroll, Facebook is constantly tweaking its algorithms to make the ads successful without detracting from the overall user experience.

Identifying Your Target Audience

Part of generating a successful attorney Facebook ad campaign is understanding your target audience. Facebook ads make it easy to pinpoint a certain demographic to ensure that your ads are relevant. For example, a personal injury attorney may wish to reach people who drive or people who work in an industry with a higher-than-average number of workers’ compensation cases. A family law attorney, on the other hand, may wish to approach middle-aged people with children, in cases of divorce or custody disputes.

First, think about the demographic characteristics that your clientele share. Facebook allows you to select by gender, location, relationship status, educational level, age group, and interests. A personal injury attorney may very well wish to target people whose interests include physically active sports!

Facebook also has a feature called Audience Insights that allows you to get a clear picture of the type of Facebook users your ad is reaching. Putting your ads in front of people most likely to use your services means that you aren’t wasting money advertising to people who won’t become customers and ensures that potential clients are aware of your firm.

If your law firm specializes in several fields of law, create a few different Facebook ads that focus on the individual practices, and choose a target audience for each.

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click (PPC) is advertising that you pay for only if a user clicks through to your website from the ad. For attorneys with a tight marketing budget, these ads may be a better investment, as you only pay when someone interacts with the ads.

However, PPC advertising for attorneys comes at a cost – some of the highest CPC’s are legal keywords. This makes it imperative that you are not only tracking your ads impeccably but you are targeting the right audience. Imagine you are a large law firm offering many different practice areas and one of the keywords you are bidding on is “criminal defense attorneys in Houston.” If you are just sending users to your homepage you are wasting budget. You should instead send users to a landing page or service page specifically about your criminal defense offerings. Why social media is more desirable in many ways from an advertising perspecitive is that you can get more for your money. The CPC’s on Facebook are usually less expensive and your targeting can be way more focused.

Advertising Goals

Before you create your ad you need to set advertising goals. Determining which ads are effective and which aren’t can help you constantly hone and refine your Facebook legal ads.

Set specific, measurable goals, and a deadline for achieving them. For example, you may wish to gain 100 new email addresses for an email marketing campaign, 10 new consultations, and 2 new cases per month. Start small, document the results each month, and adjust your goals with regard to achievability and realistic results.

Advertising Budget

Your Facebook ad and social media profiles might be the first impression potential clients have of you. Even with a small advertising budget, it’s important not to cut corners with the presentation. Professional headshots of you and your associates give viewers an impression of confident, authoritative attorneys, which is something that people search for when seeking legal representation. Video ads and videos on your website are engaging and popular for many users. Hire a professional videographer to shoot your multimedia ads.

Monitoring the success of each unique ad can help your advertising budget, as you’ll be able to spend money on the campaigns that deliver results and stop wasting money on ads that don’t.

Creating Compelling Ads For Your Target Audience

Most people ignore ads that appear in their scroll unless they have an immediate need for the goods or services – or unless the ad captures their attention. Creating engaging, unique ads increases the number of clicks, leads, and clients.

Don’t be afraid to use humor in your ads. This one from the Colorado Legal Group is definitely not your father’s divorce attorney advert! It begins with “Divorce the Spouse From Hell,” and uses an eye-catching photo to entice users to click through to view the advertising video. With an attention-getting headline and striking photo, this ad receives viewers who may not even be married!

Your ads should invite readers to engage with them, following the links to read your content, or view your video and proceed down the sales funnel. Identify your audience’s needs and wants, address these in language that is relatable and understandable (that is, NO “legalese”) and point a clear picture of the direction they need to go next.

Once you’ve identified the buyer persona for each of the fields that your firm specializes in, you can begin to build a picture of how to approach them with relatable language. Consider their likes, dislikes, and needs, and the type of content (blog, bullet-point ad, video ad, polls) they’re most likely to engage with.

Maintaining a Consistent Brand Voice

Developing your law firm’s brand voice can help shape your ads not just on Facebook, but on other platforms. Plus, a distinct brand voice carries over to your brand’s social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It includes your message and incorporates your values. A personal exudes compassion for a worker that may have permanent disabilities from an accident on the job, while a family law attorney may wish to be seen as a parental figure, protecting the needs of children.

How do you develop a brand voice? A digital media marketing agency can help you, including your own personality and your field of law.

Finally, your brand’s voice includes the action that you want users to take and clearly outline the benefits of taking action, including visiting your office for a free consultation, joining a class-action lawsuit, or delineating a custody agreement.

Crafting the Perfect Ad

Your Facebook ads should have a compelling headline, clearly state the purpose, and lead users to the next step, either visiting your Facebook page, website or calling for an appointment for a consultation. Fresh, original content, polished photos, and if possible a short video are part of what makes an attention-getting advert.

When creating your ads, have a goal in mind – what do you want the ad to accomplish? What feelings do you want the ad to evoke from viewers? Identify those, and then work backward creating the ad, with a distinct focus on the goal.

Takeaway

Facebook advertising gives attorneys a captive audience as well as the ability to target certain demographics that are more likely to use their services. Creating an ad that compels users to click through can be tricky, which is why many attorneys choose to engage the services of a professional digital marketing agency that can capture their firm’s voice, identify the benefits of working what the firm, and present these to the target buyer persona in an engaging, successful manner.