March 28, 2025 • 23 mins
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📱 Thinking about Facebook Ads but not sure where to start? Danny Decker breaks down everything law firms need to know before spending a single dollar on Meta’s platform. From targeting high-value clients to understanding when Facebook Ads make sense (and when they don’t), this episode is packed with strategic insights and real-world advice for beginners ready to make smart marketing moves.
📌 Key Takeaways
- Facebook Ads let you target ideal clients by income, geography, and lifestyle.
- These leads are cheaper but require more nurturing than search leads.
- Organic posting and boosting are not the same as running true ad campaigns.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Minute.
This week's episode is part oneof two on Facebook ads.
We held a free live virtualevent about it, hosted by Danny
Decker, and for this week'sepisode, for part one, he goes
into really the basics ofFacebook ads, how they're
different than Google ads, howone or the other makes more
(00:23):
sense for your law firm, andreally just the things that you
might not actually know aboutFacebook ads.
So let's dive right into it andI'll see you at the end.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
My goal here is for you to walk away with some
concrete knowledge that you canput into practice right away.
So please do keep a notepadhandy or a note app on your
phone or your computer orwhatever notepad handy or a note
app on your phone or yourcomputer or whatever.
With that said, the topic todayis how, when and why to use
Facebook ads for your law firm.
I know a small percentage offolks who registered and may be
(00:54):
in the room are not actually lawfirm owners and you may be in a
different industry and I'lltell you 90 to 95% of what
you're going to learn here isgoing to translate.
So don't worry if you don'twork in a law firm.
This is still a good place tobe and I also recognize some of
you in here are an attorney andown a law firm and are, you know
(01:15):
, not necessarily interested indoing this yourself, versus some
of you here may be on amarketing team and you are
trying to learn this and, eitherway, the goal here is to give
you a kind of a ton of value andhelp you think about Facebook
ads strategically and reallyunderstand how they fit into
kind of your overall marketingstrategy and really the
marketing machine that you'reworking to build for your law
(01:38):
firm.
So today, a couple learningobjectives, right.
Goal number one is I want tomake sure everybody who is here
walks away with an understandingof how Facebook ads work.
There is always confusion aboutthe difference between posting
organically and boosting postsand running ads and retargeting,
and there's always.
There's just a lot of questionsand, to Julie's point earlier,
(02:01):
meta is constantly changing howthe platform works.
So we're going to start withjust a quick run through to make
sure everybody's on the samepage.
Then we're going to talkstrategically about kind of how
to decide whether or whenFacebook ads make sense for your
business.
Facebook ads don't work forevery single law firm and,
depending on sort of yourstrategy and just a number of
(02:25):
different variables, some firms'Facebook ads make more sense
than others, and we're going tokind of talk through kind of how
to think about that.
We are then going to talk abouthow to think about the
financials right, how to budget,how to forecast, how to think
about return on investment foryour Facebook ads campaign.
We're then going to dive intothe weeds.
(02:45):
I am going to give you guyssome visuals of exactly how we
set campaigns up for success andsome of the I'll just call them
key variables that we've kindof uncovered along the way that
really make kind of all thedifference when it comes to the
success of your ad campaigns.
And then, last, I will sharesome thoughts on sort of
(03:07):
different ways to get started,where to begin, how to do it.
Um, I will tell you you know,spoiler alert, you're probably
not surprised to know um, thisis something at spotlight
marketing and branding that wedo.
We manage hundreds of uhFacebook ad campaigns and we
would, of course, be happy tohave a conversation with anybody
on this webinar.
If you have questions, maybethat are a little more in depth
(03:29):
or a little more proprietarythat you don't want to get into
on a webinar conversation.
That totally makes sense.
Jana is going to drop a link inthe chat If you do want to
schedule a one-on-oneconversation with our team, talk
about Facebook ads and kind ofyour marketing overall.
That is something we are veryhappy to do.
So, that said, and again, a fewmore people have joined in the
(03:53):
last couple of minutes.
Guys, please don't hesitate todrop questions in chat if you
have them.
I will do my best to addressthem as we go and with that,
let's start just talking kind offrom a technical perspective.
What exactly are we talkingabout with Facebook ads?
And I'm going to run through acouple of examples here.
(04:13):
At its simplest, this is aFacebook ad and you are going to
see basically three elements.
Right, your eye is probablyfirst going to the creative.
Right, we call this thecreative is probably first going
to the creative.
Right, we call this thecreative.
In this case it's a photo thatour team, you know, uses Canva
to add a headline and a logo.
Right, this is one way toapproach creative.
(04:34):
You can also use video.
Video often works well in adcreative as well.
Right, so there's a creativeelement to it.
And then there is written copyup at the top.
In this case, hurt in a caraccident.
We are here to help.
Why work with us?
Right, and we've got some copy.
And then down at the bottom isthe actual call to action.
(04:56):
So if they click on this button, what's going to happen?
And we'll talk about this as wego.
There are plenty of options.
Facebook gives you a number ofdifferent options.
In this case, this is an addesigned to drive a consultation
.
So if you click that book nowbutton, it would take you to a
page where you can actually goahead and book a consultation.
(05:19):
So, at its simplest, an ad isjust creative some written copy
and a call to action.
Now, what makes Facebook ads socool is that we also get to
choose who we put the ads infront of.
Right, so you create the ad,but then you run through a
process of audience targeting.
And, again, this is whyFacebook ads are such a great
(05:41):
tool.
And hey, I should also clarifythis when I'm talking about
Facebook ads, it's really,technically speaking, meta ads,
and it comprises both Facebookand Instagram, technically
speaking meta ads and itcomprises both Facebook and
Instagram.
So, as we're talking aboutFacebook here, just be aware
that this is the sort of exactsame process used for Instagram,
and so when we're runningFacebook ad campaigns for law
(06:02):
firms, we're also running themon Instagram in almost every
case, and so Facebook andInstagram give us a lot of
really great targetingfunctionality.
And this is just one example.
This is an audience that webuilt for an estate planning
firm.
Here they identified thatpeople aren't generally going to
want to drive more than about10 miles to get to their firm,
(06:38):
and so that was the geographicradius that we landed on, you
get to choose age range right Inthis case, 28 to 45.
This campaign is specificallytargeting women.
Then you get to do some funstuff and really get into
filtering your audience bywhatever variables are important
to you.
So, in this case, the next thingyou'll see here is we actually
(07:01):
filtered out the lower 75% ofthis population in terms of
household income, so we're onlytargeting folks in the top 25%
household income, which isreally important for this law
firm and really for a lot of lawfirms, because most of you,
from having hundreds of theseconversations, your best clients
(07:21):
tend to be middle income, upperincome, high net worth, right
Folks with disposable incomethat they can afford to hire you
, and so this is a filter we usepretty often.
The last thing we did here was,again, we're targeting moms of
young children, and so Facebookgives us the ability to target.
Basically, what we did here wasparents with kids who are age
(07:46):
five or under, and so, righthere, what we've created is an
audience that basically it'smothers within a 10 mile radius
of this law firm that have kidsfive or younger and are in the
upper 25% of household income.
So, as you can see.
It's really really specific, andyou get to be really choosy
(08:09):
about exactly who you want tosee your ads Really big deal.
You know just about the mostimportant thing your marketing
needs to do is attract the righttypes of folks to your law firm
, and Facebook Instagram adsmake that fairly easy.
So then, ultimately, you setyour audience and then that's
(08:29):
who's going to see your ad.
Now, one thing I really want tobe sure that we're all on the
same page strategically about isFacebook ads are not search
based.
Right, most law firms arepretty familiar with either SEO
or Google ads, which work verydifferently.
(08:51):
Right, you decide who is goingto see your ad based on the
search phrase they typed in,right, and so there are pros and
cons to that, and we'll talkabout that in a few minutes.
But the main point I want youto walk away with at this moment
is Facebook and Instagram adsare very, very targeted in terms
of who's going to see yourstuff from a demographic
perspective, from a hobbies andinterests perspective, but it's
(09:14):
not driven by a specific searchaction.
It's just going to show up intheir newsfeed if you have
selected.
You know if they fit youraudience criteria.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Hey there, Jana, here .
I hope you're enjoying thisepisode and we will get right
back to it in a minute.
Listen, out of all the thingsDanny has taught me about
marketing, one of his bestlessons is that the hammer is a
great tool, but it's pretty muchuseless if you need to get a
screw in the wall.
Marketing is the same way.
There are so many tools, butthe ones that make sense for
your law firm depend on yourgoals.
(09:45):
So when you have 30 minutes totalk about strategy and tools,
I'd love to share proven tactics, some free resources and
possible courses of action.
Check the podcast descriptionto reserve the best time for you
, and I look forward to talkingmore.
Now let's get back to theepisode.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Couple other just kind of clarifiers to get out of
the way right?
There is sometimes someconfusion around organic posts
on Facebook.
Most of you probably at thispoint have a Facebook page.
Hopefully you're postingcontent on your Facebook page.
That's not the same thing asrunning an ad campaign, right?
An organic post is when you justgo to your page and you post
(10:23):
something.
It could be a video, could be aphoto.
You post something organically.
You're not spending any moneyon it.
You are just posting it and,don't get me wrong, that's a
good thing to do.
You're not spending any moneyon it.
You are just posting it and,don't get me wrong, that's a
good thing to do.
You want to have organic contenton your page, but you have to
understand that on average, anorganic post is only going to
reach about 5% of the peoplethat are following your page.
(10:45):
So if you have a thousandpeople following your page, like
first off, congratulations.
That's a great number and itprobably took you some time to
get there.
That's cool.
But the way Facebook nowoperates is that if you've got a
thousand people following yourpage and you post organically,
on average only about 50 peopleare going to see it, and this is
like a big change for those ofyou that jumped into Facebook.
(11:08):
You know, years ago it didn'tused to work this way.
It used to work where if youfollowed or liked a Facebook
page, you were generally goingto see the majority of the
content that they posted.
And so if you had a thousandpeople following your Facebook
page and you post organically,you're going to reach hundreds
of those people.
Over time, as Facebook hasrolled out their ad platform, it
(11:30):
has really become much more ofan ad-driven ecosystem, and what
that means is, if you are notparticipating, if you're not
spending any money, you justaren't reaching very many people
.
Of course there are posts thatcan go viral.
Of course there are alwaysexceptions, but on average, your
organic content is just notreaching a very large audience
(11:53):
and you have very limitedcontrol over who those people
are.
Right, you don't get to choosedemographics and interests and
some of these things that I justwalked you through, so really
important to understand.
There is still value in postingorganically, and we could
probably do entire webinars onwhy.
For one thing, just a quickanswer a lot of times, before
(12:13):
someone hires your firm, they'regoing to go investigate your
Facebook page and they want tosee content there, right, and so
your organic content servesthat purpose as well as some
others, but it is very limitedin terms of the actual audience
you can reach.
The other thing I want you tounderstand and we have this
conversation a lot too boostingyour posts is not the same as a
(12:34):
full-on ad campaign.
Now, boosting your posts can bevaluable.
It's a great way to reach amuch higher percentage of your
audience.
One of the things that wouldhappen if you click on this
boost button the first thingyou're going to do is choose who
you want to see your boost, andone of your options is people
who follow my page, right, andthen there are some other
options as well.
(12:55):
So boosting your content not abad thing to do at all.
In fact, I generally recommend,if you're going to go to the
time and effort of creatingcontent, you should probably be
boosting at least some of it.
But I also want you tounderstand that what we're going
to walk through today is morein depth than thatdepth, than
(13:15):
that, alright.
So bottom line here boosting isvaluable.
It's not the same as running afull-on ad campaign.
Just don't want there to be anyconfusion around that and and
we'll kind of walk through someof these differences momentarily
.
So big picture I want to.
I want to spend a few minuteshere Facebook ads versus search,
(13:36):
and when I talk about search, Iam mainly going to refer to
Google, right, because Google iskind of the giant out there,
but there are Bing and others aswell.
So here's what I want you tounderstand.
Just a moment ago, I gave youan example of what targeting
looks like on Facebook, ok, andhow specific we can get in terms
(14:00):
of who is seeing your content.
The audience that we built wasbasically mothers with children
under age five in a veryspecific geography, in the top
25% of income, right, that's whowe're putting our ads in front
of.
Now I want to contrast thatwith a search here on Google.
So this is a Google search andthe phrase is divorce attorney
(14:25):
near me, right, and when I tookthis screenshot, I was at home
in Huntersville, north Carolina,and so all that Google is
actually basing these results onare two things One, what did I
search for?
And two, where am I located?
All of these other factors thatwe just talked about on
Facebook aren't a factor here onGoogle, right?
(14:45):
They don't know gender, or atleast they're not factoring it
into these searches, they're notfactoring income, they're not
factoring very many demographicsat all at all.
Right?
So the first thing that happensyou type in this search and what
happens next?
All right, first section herewe've got three local service
ads that pop up.
All right, next thing thathappens is we've got
(15:07):
pay-per-click ads that pop up.
Next thing that happens iswe've got map results that pop
up and then we finally get downto.
That happens is we've got mapresults that pop up and then we
finally get down to the bottomand we've got organic results,
which I don't know if you cansee this, but the first thing
that's listed here is a Yelppage that says the best 10
divorce and family law firmsnear Huntersville, north
Carolina.
So with that simple search,here's what happens I 10, 11, 12
(15:33):
, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 differentfamily law firms all pop up on
my screen, right, massive amountof competition.
And so when we're talking aboutFacebook ads versus search, one
of the things I want you tounderstand is that, because
Facebook ads are not searchdriven, there is very little
(15:54):
competition, generally speaking,in most markets on Facebook ads
.
Your ads are going to beshowing up in a news feed and
what they're going to see aroundyour ads are going to be
content from their family andfriends, maybe content from
groups they're part of, maybesome ads, but, like for other
products, right, you are notgoing to show up in a highly
(16:15):
competitive environment likewhat we create on Google.
So that is a huge upside toadvertising on Facebook.
There's much less competitionthere Now.
By the same token, it's alsoworth noting that when someone
goes to Google and actuallytypes in divorce attorney, there
is a higher likelihood thatthey're looking to make a move
(16:38):
right now.
Okay, because Facebook is not asearch driven.
On average, the folks you'rereaching in Facebook are not
quite in that same category interms of high buy intent.
Some of them are, some of themcan be persuaded right.
But when you go to Google andtype in divorce attorney, odds
are you're looking to callaround, okay.
(17:00):
So that is if you were lookingfor those sort of hottest
possible leads.
That's a reason to think aboutGoogle.
Also important to think aboutthe difference in targeting
control, right, I just shared onFacebook how specifically
targeted we can get, and onGoogle you cannot get nearly
that targeted you can.
(17:21):
Basically, your options arebasically limited.
It's geography and the actualsearch phrases that you want
your ads to show up for.
So I'm not sitting here tellingyou that in all circumstances,
facebook ads are better orGoogle ads are better.
What I'm not sitting heretelling you that in all
circumstances Facebook ads arebetter or Google ads are better.
What I'm trying to do here isjust help you understand sort of
the different tools available,and Facebook ads has some
(17:43):
definite advantages over Google,and Google has, at least in
certain cases, some definiteadvantages over Facebook ads
definite advantages overFacebook ads.
And so here's kind of how Iwould summarize this right, when
(18:05):
you are advertising on search,those leads tend to be more
highly motivated, but they alsoare almost certainly calling two
or three or four other firmsbefore they actually make a
decision about who to go with.
Often they are basing theirdecision on two factors.
One is just price.
They are calling around lookingfor the cheapest possible law
firm.
I just had a conversationyesterday with a family law firm
(18:27):
in Atlanta that's generating, Iwant to say, 60 or 70 leads
from Google every single month,and the challenge is that the
vast majority of them are tirekickers, they're price shoppers,
and so you often end up in ascenario where you've got a high
volume of leads but very few ofthem are actually qualified.
The other thing they're oftendoing is literally just talking
(18:50):
to the first person that answersthe phone, and some law firms
that have a really great intakesystem and always have someone
that can answer quickly orreturn a call very quickly, have
an advantage over some smallerfirms that maybe can't always
answer the phone on the firstring and maybe take a little
longer to get back to aprospective client, right.
(19:10):
So that's part of making thatdecision is just being realistic
about what are your intakecapabilities, right?
Who do you have answeringphones and how quickly are they
responding and things like that.
Okay, next factor search leadstend to be quite a bit more
expensive than Facebook andInstagram leads, because this is
where all the law firms aregoing right.
(19:31):
When you ask most law firmswhat their marketing looks like,
90% of them are doing somethingon Google.
They're either doing SEO,they're doing Google ads,
they're doing local service ads.
Again, you can understand why,but the reality is Google ads
and really all search platformsare very, very saturated, right?
And so, because these thingswork basically in an auction
(19:54):
format, the more competingadvertisers you have, the more
expensive it gets, so Google adstend to be quite a bit more
expensive than Facebook ads.
Other end of the spectrum,facebook ads can be much more
precisely targeted.
You can decide exactly who youwant to see your ads.
Also worth understandingFacebook leads are often earlier
(20:18):
in their buying cycle, right,and there's both a pro and a con
to that.
That can be both a good thingand not always a good thing,
right.
It just depends on yourstrategy.
The nice thing about reachingfolks earlier in the buying
cycle, right before they'reactually to the point of going
to Google and calling somebody,is that they're in this research
mode, right.
They're looking for information.
(20:39):
If you can capture theirinformation by being a resource
for them, you establish yourselfas their like go-to option and
they don't even get to the pointof searching Google.
Right, they are locked in onyour firm.
You get to continue to marketto them, and it makes it a much
less competitive sort of intakeprocess.
(21:01):
Bottom line leads from Facebookgenerally less expensive, more
targeted, but often do requiresome more time and patience and
nurture before they ultimatelyconvert into clients.
I sort of summarize this all asFacebook ads can be a great fit
for your firm.
(21:21):
If you want to reach potentialclients before they get to your
competition Right, which isn'talways, I know this probably
sounds like well, why wouldn't I?
Well, there are actually somecases, right.
If you're confident that you'rethe cheapest firm, right, or
that you're going to answer thephone the quickest, maybe you
don't want to have aconversation with somebody, like
, until the moment they're readyto make a decision, because you
(21:43):
are confident that you're goingto be the cheapest option,
right.
And if that's your model, then,honestly, if you are a high
volume model, then, honestly, ifyou are a high volume, low cost
firm, google ads is probablythe best place to be right.
And I'm not saying youshouldn't also test Facebook,
but on average, if you are alower cost, higher volume firm,
google can be great right?
(22:05):
Second reason Facebook ads oftenmake sense.
If you have a very specifictype of client avatar you want
to work with, facebook ads makea lot of sense.
If you prefer to work only withmiddle to upper income folks,
facebook ads are going to make alot of sense.
If you prefer to work withpeople in a very specific
geography or with a veryspecific lifestyle, the more
(22:28):
specific you want to be aboutwho your ideal clients are, the
more sense Facebook is going tomake for you.
If you are, listen, generic runof the mill, we will take, you
know, anybody who wants to hireus, then you're probably going
to have success on Google, right?
Third big thing here is becauseFacebook ads often produce these
(22:50):
leads that take a little morenurture.
Your firm needs to have systemsand an intake team and the
ability to nurture theseprospects, perhaps for a couple
of weeks, perhaps for a coupleof months, before they actually
pick up the phone and hire you,right.
So it just can take a littlemore time to nurture, and the
good news is there are someautomated ways to do that, and
(23:11):
we'll talk about that in alittle more time.
To nurture and the good news isthere are some automated ways
to do that and we'll talk aboutthat in a little while.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Hey, thanks for listening to part one of the
Facebook ads.
Episode Part two will startdebuting on Monday, with some
preview episodes and the fullepisode, as always, debuting on
Friday.
Have a terrific weekend andwe'll see you next week.
Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Minute.
This week's episode is part oneof two on Facebook ads.
We held a free live virtualevent about it, hosted by Danny
Decker, and for this week'sepisode, for part one, he goes
into really the basics ofFacebook ads, how they're
different than Google ads, howone or the other makes more
(00:23):
sense for your law firm, andreally just the things that you
might not actually know aboutFacebook ads.
So let's dive right into it andI'll see you at the end.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
My goal here is for you to walk away with some
concrete knowledge that you canput into practice right away.
So please do keep a notepadhandy or a note app on your
phone or your computer orwhatever notepad handy or a note
app on your phone or yourcomputer or whatever.
With that said, the topic todayis how, when and why to use
Facebook ads for your law firm.
I know a small percentage offolks who registered and may be
(00:54):
in the room are not actually lawfirm owners and you may be in a
different industry and I'lltell you 90 to 95% of what
you're going to learn here isgoing to translate.
So don't worry if you don'twork in a law firm.
This is still a good place tobe and I also recognize some of
you in here are an attorney andown a law firm and are, you know
(01:15):
, not necessarily interested indoing this yourself, versus some
of you here may be on amarketing team and you are
trying to learn this and, eitherway, the goal here is to give
you a kind of a ton of value andhelp you think about Facebook
ads strategically and reallyunderstand how they fit into
kind of your overall marketingstrategy and really the
marketing machine that you'reworking to build for your law
(01:38):
firm.
So today, a couple learningobjectives, right.
Goal number one is I want tomake sure everybody who is here
walks away with an understandingof how Facebook ads work.
There is always confusion aboutthe difference between posting
organically and boosting postsand running ads and retargeting,
and there's always.
There's just a lot of questionsand, to Julie's point earlier,
(02:01):
meta is constantly changing howthe platform works.
So we're going to start withjust a quick run through to make
sure everybody's on the samepage.
Then we're going to talkstrategically about kind of how
to decide whether or whenFacebook ads make sense for your
business.
Facebook ads don't work forevery single law firm and,
depending on sort of yourstrategy and just a number of
(02:25):
different variables, some firms'Facebook ads make more sense
than others, and we're going tokind of talk through kind of how
to think about that.
We are then going to talk abouthow to think about the
financials right, how to budget,how to forecast, how to think
about return on investment foryour Facebook ads campaign.
We're then going to dive intothe weeds.
(02:45):
I am going to give you guyssome visuals of exactly how we
set campaigns up for success andsome of the I'll just call them
key variables that we've kindof uncovered along the way that
really make kind of all thedifference when it comes to the
success of your ad campaigns.
And then, last, I will sharesome thoughts on sort of
(03:07):
different ways to get started,where to begin, how to do it.
Um, I will tell you you know,spoiler alert, you're probably
not surprised to know um, thisis something at spotlight
marketing and branding that wedo.
We manage hundreds of uhFacebook ad campaigns and we
would, of course, be happy tohave a conversation with anybody
on this webinar.
If you have questions, maybethat are a little more in depth
(03:29):
or a little more proprietarythat you don't want to get into
on a webinar conversation.
That totally makes sense.
Jana is going to drop a link inthe chat If you do want to
schedule a one-on-oneconversation with our team, talk
about Facebook ads and kind ofyour marketing overall.
That is something we are veryhappy to do.
So, that said, and again, a fewmore people have joined in the
(03:53):
last couple of minutes.
Guys, please don't hesitate todrop questions in chat if you
have them.
I will do my best to addressthem as we go and with that,
let's start just talking kind offrom a technical perspective.
What exactly are we talkingabout with Facebook ads?
And I'm going to run through acouple of examples here.
(04:13):
At its simplest, this is aFacebook ad and you are going to
see basically three elements.
Right, your eye is probablyfirst going to the creative.
Right, we call this thecreative is probably first going
to the creative.
Right, we call this thecreative.
In this case it's a photo thatour team, you know, uses Canva
to add a headline and a logo.
Right, this is one way toapproach creative.
(04:34):
You can also use video.
Video often works well in adcreative as well.
Right, so there's a creativeelement to it.
And then there is written copyup at the top.
In this case, hurt in a caraccident.
We are here to help.
Why work with us?
Right, and we've got some copy.
And then down at the bottom isthe actual call to action.
(04:56):
So if they click on this button, what's going to happen?
And we'll talk about this as wego.
There are plenty of options.
Facebook gives you a number ofdifferent options.
In this case, this is an addesigned to drive a consultation
.
So if you click that book nowbutton, it would take you to a
page where you can actually goahead and book a consultation.
(05:19):
So, at its simplest, an ad isjust creative some written copy
and a call to action.
Now, what makes Facebook ads socool is that we also get to
choose who we put the ads infront of.
Right, so you create the ad,but then you run through a
process of audience targeting.
And, again, this is whyFacebook ads are such a great
(05:41):
tool.
And hey, I should also clarifythis when I'm talking about
Facebook ads, it's really,technically speaking, meta ads,
and it comprises both Facebookand Instagram, technically
speaking meta ads and itcomprises both Facebook and
Instagram.
So, as we're talking aboutFacebook here, just be aware
that this is the sort of exactsame process used for Instagram,
and so when we're runningFacebook ad campaigns for law
(06:02):
firms, we're also running themon Instagram in almost every
case, and so Facebook andInstagram give us a lot of
really great targetingfunctionality.
And this is just one example.
This is an audience that webuilt for an estate planning
firm.
Here they identified thatpeople aren't generally going to
want to drive more than about10 miles to get to their firm,
(06:38):
and so that was the geographicradius that we landed on, you
get to choose age range right Inthis case, 28 to 45.
This campaign is specificallytargeting women.
Then you get to do some funstuff and really get into
filtering your audience bywhatever variables are important
to you.
So, in this case, the next thingyou'll see here is we actually
(07:01):
filtered out the lower 75% ofthis population in terms of
household income, so we're onlytargeting folks in the top 25%
household income, which isreally important for this law
firm and really for a lot of lawfirms, because most of you,
from having hundreds of theseconversations, your best clients
(07:21):
tend to be middle income, upperincome, high net worth, right
Folks with disposable incomethat they can afford to hire you
, and so this is a filter we usepretty often.
The last thing we did here was,again, we're targeting moms of
young children, and so Facebookgives us the ability to target.
Basically, what we did here wasparents with kids who are age
(07:46):
five or under, and so, righthere, what we've created is an
audience that basically it'smothers within a 10 mile radius
of this law firm that have kidsfive or younger and are in the
upper 25% of household income.
So, as you can see.
It's really really specific, andyou get to be really choosy
(08:09):
about exactly who you want tosee your ads Really big deal.
You know just about the mostimportant thing your marketing
needs to do is attract the righttypes of folks to your law firm
, and Facebook Instagram adsmake that fairly easy.
So then, ultimately, you setyour audience and then that's
(08:29):
who's going to see your ad.
Now, one thing I really want tobe sure that we're all on the
same page strategically about isFacebook ads are not search
based.
Right, most law firms arepretty familiar with either SEO
or Google ads, which work verydifferently.
(08:51):
Right, you decide who is goingto see your ad based on the
search phrase they typed in,right, and so there are pros and
cons to that, and we'll talkabout that in a few minutes.
But the main point I want youto walk away with at this moment
is Facebook and Instagram adsare very, very targeted in terms
of who's going to see yourstuff from a demographic
perspective, from a hobbies andinterests perspective, but it's
(09:14):
not driven by a specific searchaction.
It's just going to show up intheir newsfeed if you have
selected.
You know if they fit youraudience criteria.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Hey there, Jana, here .
I hope you're enjoying thisepisode and we will get right
back to it in a minute.
Listen, out of all the thingsDanny has taught me about
marketing, one of his bestlessons is that the hammer is a
great tool, but it's pretty muchuseless if you need to get a
screw in the wall.
Marketing is the same way.
There are so many tools, butthe ones that make sense for
your law firm depend on yourgoals.
(09:45):
So when you have 30 minutes totalk about strategy and tools,
I'd love to share proven tactics, some free resources and
possible courses of action.
Check the podcast descriptionto reserve the best time for you
, and I look forward to talkingmore.
Now let's get back to theepisode.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Couple other just kind of clarifiers to get out of
the way right?
There is sometimes someconfusion around organic posts
on Facebook.
Most of you probably at thispoint have a Facebook page.
Hopefully you're postingcontent on your Facebook page.
That's not the same thing asrunning an ad campaign, right?
An organic post is when you justgo to your page and you post
(10:23):
something.
It could be a video, could be aphoto.
You post something organically.
You're not spending any moneyon it.
You are just posting it and,don't get me wrong, that's a
good thing to do.
You're not spending any moneyon it.
You are just posting it and,don't get me wrong, that's a
good thing to do.
You want to have organic contenton your page, but you have to
understand that on average, anorganic post is only going to
reach about 5% of the peoplethat are following your page.
(10:45):
So if you have a thousandpeople following your page, like
first off, congratulations.
That's a great number and itprobably took you some time to
get there.
That's cool.
But the way Facebook nowoperates is that if you've got a
thousand people following yourpage and you post organically,
on average only about 50 peopleare going to see it, and this is
like a big change for those ofyou that jumped into Facebook.
(11:08):
You know, years ago it didn'tused to work this way.
It used to work where if youfollowed or liked a Facebook
page, you were generally goingto see the majority of the
content that they posted.
And so if you had a thousandpeople following your Facebook
page and you post organically,you're going to reach hundreds
of those people.
Over time, as Facebook hasrolled out their ad platform, it
(11:30):
has really become much more ofan ad-driven ecosystem, and what
that means is, if you are notparticipating, if you're not
spending any money, you justaren't reaching very many people
.
Of course there are posts thatcan go viral.
Of course there are alwaysexceptions, but on average, your
organic content is just notreaching a very large audience
(11:53):
and you have very limitedcontrol over who those people
are.
Right, you don't get to choosedemographics and interests and
some of these things that I justwalked you through, so really
important to understand.
There is still value in postingorganically, and we could
probably do entire webinars onwhy.
For one thing, just a quickanswer a lot of times, before
(12:13):
someone hires your firm, they'regoing to go investigate your
Facebook page and they want tosee content there, right, and so
your organic content servesthat purpose as well as some
others, but it is very limitedin terms of the actual audience
you can reach.
The other thing I want you tounderstand and we have this
conversation a lot too boostingyour posts is not the same as a
(12:34):
full-on ad campaign.
Now, boosting your posts can bevaluable.
It's a great way to reach amuch higher percentage of your
audience.
One of the things that wouldhappen if you click on this
boost button the first thingyou're going to do is choose who
you want to see your boost, andone of your options is people
who follow my page, right, andthen there are some other
options as well.
(12:55):
So boosting your content not abad thing to do at all.
In fact, I generally recommend,if you're going to go to the
time and effort of creatingcontent, you should probably be
boosting at least some of it.
But I also want you tounderstand that what we're going
to walk through today is morein depth than thatdepth, than
(13:15):
that, alright.
So bottom line here boosting isvaluable.
It's not the same as running afull-on ad campaign.
Just don't want there to be anyconfusion around that and and
we'll kind of walk through someof these differences momentarily
.
So big picture I want to.
I want to spend a few minuteshere Facebook ads versus search,
(13:36):
and when I talk about search, Iam mainly going to refer to
Google, right, because Google iskind of the giant out there,
but there are Bing and others aswell.
So here's what I want you tounderstand.
Just a moment ago, I gave youan example of what targeting
looks like on Facebook, ok, andhow specific we can get in terms
(14:00):
of who is seeing your content.
The audience that we built wasbasically mothers with children
under age five in a veryspecific geography, in the top
25% of income, right, that's whowe're putting our ads in front
of.
Now I want to contrast thatwith a search here on Google.
So this is a Google search andthe phrase is divorce attorney
(14:25):
near me, right, and when I tookthis screenshot, I was at home
in Huntersville, north Carolina,and so all that Google is
actually basing these results onare two things One, what did I
search for?
And two, where am I located?
All of these other factors thatwe just talked about on
Facebook aren't a factor here onGoogle, right?
(14:45):
They don't know gender, or atleast they're not factoring it
into these searches, they're notfactoring income, they're not
factoring very many demographicsat all at all.
Right?
So the first thing that happensyou type in this search and what
happens next?
All right, first section herewe've got three local service
ads that pop up.
All right, next thing thathappens is we've got
(15:07):
pay-per-click ads that pop up.
Next thing that happens iswe've got map results that pop
up and then we finally get downto.
That happens is we've got mapresults that pop up and then we
finally get down to the bottomand we've got organic results,
which I don't know if you cansee this, but the first thing
that's listed here is a Yelppage that says the best 10
divorce and family law firmsnear Huntersville, north
Carolina.
So with that simple search,here's what happens I 10, 11, 12
(15:33):
, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 differentfamily law firms all pop up on
my screen, right, massive amountof competition.
And so when we're talking aboutFacebook ads versus search, one
of the things I want you tounderstand is that, because
Facebook ads are not searchdriven, there is very little
(15:54):
competition, generally speaking,in most markets on Facebook ads
.
Your ads are going to beshowing up in a news feed and
what they're going to see aroundyour ads are going to be
content from their family andfriends, maybe content from
groups they're part of, maybesome ads, but, like for other
products, right, you are notgoing to show up in a highly
(16:15):
competitive environment likewhat we create on Google.
So that is a huge upside toadvertising on Facebook.
There's much less competitionthere Now.
By the same token, it's alsoworth noting that when someone
goes to Google and actuallytypes in divorce attorney, there
is a higher likelihood thatthey're looking to make a move
(16:38):
right now.
Okay, because Facebook is not asearch driven.
On average, the folks you'rereaching in Facebook are not
quite in that same category interms of high buy intent.
Some of them are, some of themcan be persuaded right.
But when you go to Google andtype in divorce attorney, odds
are you're looking to callaround, okay.
(17:00):
So that is if you were lookingfor those sort of hottest
possible leads.
That's a reason to think aboutGoogle.
Also important to think aboutthe difference in targeting
control, right, I just shared onFacebook how specifically
targeted we can get, and onGoogle you cannot get nearly
that targeted you can.
(17:21):
Basically, your options arebasically limited.
It's geography and the actualsearch phrases that you want
your ads to show up for.
So I'm not sitting here tellingyou that in all circumstances,
facebook ads are better orGoogle ads are better.
What I'm not sitting heretelling you that in all
circumstances Facebook ads arebetter or Google ads are better.
What I'm trying to do here isjust help you understand sort of
the different tools available,and Facebook ads has some
(17:43):
definite advantages over Google,and Google has, at least in
certain cases, some definiteadvantages over Facebook ads
definite advantages overFacebook ads.
And so here's kind of how Iwould summarize this right, when
(18:05):
you are advertising on search,those leads tend to be more
highly motivated, but they alsoare almost certainly calling two
or three or four other firmsbefore they actually make a
decision about who to go with.
Often they are basing theirdecision on two factors.
One is just price.
They are calling around lookingfor the cheapest possible law
firm.
I just had a conversationyesterday with a family law firm
(18:27):
in Atlanta that's generating, Iwant to say, 60 or 70 leads
from Google every single month,and the challenge is that the
vast majority of them are tirekickers, they're price shoppers,
and so you often end up in ascenario where you've got a high
volume of leads but very few ofthem are actually qualified.
The other thing they're oftendoing is literally just talking
(18:50):
to the first person that answersthe phone, and some law firms
that have a really great intakesystem and always have someone
that can answer quickly orreturn a call very quickly, have
an advantage over some smallerfirms that maybe can't always
answer the phone on the firstring and maybe take a little
longer to get back to aprospective client, right.
(19:10):
So that's part of making thatdecision is just being realistic
about what are your intakecapabilities, right?
Who do you have answeringphones and how quickly are they
responding and things like that.
Okay, next factor search leadstend to be quite a bit more
expensive than Facebook andInstagram leads, because this is
where all the law firms aregoing right.
(19:31):
When you ask most law firmswhat their marketing looks like,
90% of them are doing somethingon Google.
They're either doing SEO,they're doing Google ads,
they're doing local service ads.
Again, you can understand why,but the reality is Google ads
and really all search platformsare very, very saturated, right?
And so, because these thingswork basically in an auction
(19:54):
format, the more competingadvertisers you have, the more
expensive it gets, so Google adstend to be quite a bit more
expensive than Facebook ads.
Other end of the spectrum,facebook ads can be much more
precisely targeted.
You can decide exactly who youwant to see your ads.
Also worth understandingFacebook leads are often earlier
(20:18):
in their buying cycle, right,and there's both a pro and a con
to that.
That can be both a good thingand not always a good thing,
right.
It just depends on yourstrategy.
The nice thing about reachingfolks earlier in the buying
cycle, right before they'reactually to the point of going
to Google and calling somebody,is that they're in this research
mode, right.
They're looking for information.
(20:39):
If you can capture theirinformation by being a resource
for them, you establish yourselfas their like go-to option and
they don't even get to the pointof searching Google.
Right, they are locked in onyour firm.
You get to continue to marketto them, and it makes it a much
less competitive sort of intakeprocess.
(21:01):
Bottom line leads from Facebookgenerally less expensive, more
targeted, but often do requiresome more time and patience and
nurture before they ultimatelyconvert into clients.
I sort of summarize this all asFacebook ads can be a great fit
for your firm.
(21:21):
If you want to reach potentialclients before they get to your
competition Right, which isn'talways, I know this probably
sounds like well, why wouldn't I?
Well, there are actually somecases, right.
If you're confident that you'rethe cheapest firm, right, or
that you're going to answer thephone the quickest, maybe you
don't want to have aconversation with somebody, like
, until the moment they're readyto make a decision, because you
(21:43):
are confident that you're goingto be the cheapest option,
right.
And if that's your model, then,honestly, if you are a high
volume model, then, honestly, ifyou are a high volume, low cost
firm, google ads is probablythe best place to be right.
And I'm not saying youshouldn't also test Facebook,
but on average, if you are alower cost, higher volume firm,
google can be great right?
(22:05):
Second reason Facebook ads oftenmake sense.
If you have a very specifictype of client avatar you want
to work with, facebook ads makea lot of sense.
If you prefer to work only withmiddle to upper income folks,
facebook ads are going to make alot of sense.
If you prefer to work withpeople in a very specific
geography or with a veryspecific lifestyle, the more
(22:28):
specific you want to be aboutwho your ideal clients are, the
more sense Facebook is going tomake for you.
If you are, listen, generic runof the mill, we will take, you
know, anybody who wants to hireus, then you're probably going
to have success on Google, right?
Third big thing here is becauseFacebook ads often produce these
(22:50):
leads that take a little morenurture.
Your firm needs to have systemsand an intake team and the
ability to nurture theseprospects, perhaps for a couple
of weeks, perhaps for a coupleof months, before they actually
pick up the phone and hire you,right.
So it just can take a littlemore time to nurture, and the
good news is there are someautomated ways to do that, and
(23:11):
we'll talk about that in alittle more time.
To nurture and the good news isthere are some automated ways
to do that and we'll talk aboutthat in a little while.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Hey, thanks for listening to part one of the
Facebook ads.
Episode Part two will startdebuting on Monday, with some
preview episodes and the fullepisode, as always, debuting on
Friday.
Have a terrific weekend andwe'll see you next week.
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