The Law Firm Marketing Minute
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The Law Firm Marketing Minute
Facebook Ads for Beginners: What You Need to Know
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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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Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Minute. This week's episode is part one of two on Facebook ads. We held a free live virtual event about it, hosted by Danny Decker, and for this week's episode, for part one, he goes into really the basics of Facebook ads, how they're different than Google ads, how one or the other makes more sense for your law firm, and really just the things that you might not actually know about Facebook ads. So let's dive right into it and I'll see you at the end.
Speaker 3:My goal here is for you to walk away with some concrete knowledge that you can put into practice right away. So please do keep a notepad handy or a note app on your phone or your computer or whatever notepad handy or a note app on your phone or your computer or whatever. With that said, the topic today is how, when and why to use Facebook ads for your law firm. I know a small percentage of folks who registered and may be in the room are not actually law firm owners and you may be in a different industry and I'll tell you 90 to 95% of what you're going to learn here is going to translate. So don't worry if you don't work in a law firm. This is still a good place to be and I also recognize some of you in here are an attorney and own a law firm and are, you know, not necessarily interested in doing this yourself, versus some of you here may be on a marketing team and you are trying to learn this and, either way, the goal here is to give you a kind of a ton of value and help you think about Facebook ads strategically and really understand how they fit into kind of your overall marketing strategy and really the marketing machine that you're working to build for your law firm. So today, a couple learning objectives, right. Goal number one is I want to make sure everybody who is here walks away with an understanding of how Facebook ads work. There is always confusion about the difference between posting organically and boosting posts and running ads and retargeting, and there's always. There's just a lot of questions and, to Julie's point earlier, meta is constantly changing how the platform works. So we're going to start with just a quick run through to make sure everybody's on the same page. Then we're going to talk strategically about kind of how to decide whether or when Facebook ads make sense for your business. Facebook ads don't work for every single law firm and, depending on sort of your strategy and just a number of different variables, some firms' Facebook ads make more sense than others, and we're going to kind of talk through kind of how to think about that. We are then going to talk about how to think about the financials right, how to budget, how to forecast, how to think about return on investment for your Facebook ads campaign. We're then going to dive into the weeds. I am going to give you guys some visuals of exactly how we set campaigns up for success and some of the I'll just call them key variables that we've kind of uncovered along the way that really make kind of all the difference when it comes to the success of your ad campaigns. And then, last, I will share some thoughts on sort of different ways to get started, where to begin, how to do it.
Speaker 3:Um, I will tell you you know, spoiler alert, you're probably not surprised to know um, this is something at spotlight marketing and branding that we do. We manage hundreds of uh Facebook ad campaigns and we would, of course, be happy to have a conversation with anybody on this webinar. If you have questions, maybe that are a little more in depth or a little more proprietary that you don't want to get into on a webinar conversation. That totally makes sense. Jana is going to drop a link in the chat If you do want to schedule a one-on-one conversation with our team, talk about Facebook ads and kind of your marketing overall. That is something we are very happy to do. So, that said, and again, a few more people have joined in the last couple of minutes. Guys, please don't hesitate to drop questions in chat if you have them. I will do my best to address them as we go and with that, let's start just talking kind of from a technical perspective.
Speaker 3:What exactly are we talking about with Facebook ads? And I'm going to run through a couple of examples here. At its simplest, this is a Facebook ad and you are going to see basically three elements. Right, your eye is probably first going to the creative. Right, we call this the creative is probably first going to the creative. Right, we call this the creative. In this case it's a photo that our team, you know, uses Canva to add a headline and a logo. Right, this is one way to approach creative. You can also use video. Video often works well in ad creative as well. Right, so there's a creative element to it.
Speaker 3:And then there is written copy up at the top. In this case, hurt in a car accident. We are here to help. Why work with us? Right, and we've got some copy. And then down at the bottom is the actual call to action. So if they click on this button, what's going to happen? And we'll talk about this as we go.
Speaker 3:There are plenty of options. Facebook gives you a number of different options. In this case, this is an ad designed to drive a consultation. So if you click that book now button, it would take you to a page where you can actually go ahead and book a consultation. So, at its simplest, an ad is just creative some written copy and a call to action. Now, what makes Facebook ads so cool is that we also get to choose who we put the ads in front of. Right, so you create the ad, but then you run through a process of audience targeting. And, again, this is why Facebook ads are such a great tool. And hey, I should also clarify this when I'm talking about Facebook ads, it's really, technically speaking, meta ads, and it comprises both Facebook and Instagram, technically speaking meta ads and it comprises both Facebook and Instagram. So, as we're talking about Facebook here, just be aware that this is the sort of exact same process used for Instagram, and so when we're running Facebook ad campaigns for law firms, we're also running them on Instagram in almost every case, and so Facebook and Instagram give us a lot of really great targeting functionality.
Speaker 3:And this is just one example. This is an audience that we built for an estate planning firm. Here they identified that people aren't generally going to want to drive more than about 10 miles to get to their firm, and so that was the geographic radius that we landed on, you get to choose age range right In this case, 28 to 45. This campaign is specifically targeting women. Then you get to do some fun stuff and really get into filtering your audience by whatever variables are important to you.
Speaker 3:So, in this case, the next thing you'll see here is we actually filtered out the lower 75% of this population in terms of household income, so we're only targeting folks in the top 25% household income, which is really important for this law firm and really for a lot of law firms, because most of you, from having hundreds of these conversations, your best clients tend to be middle income, upper income, high net worth, right Folks with disposable income that they can afford to hire you, and so this is a filter we use pretty often. The last thing we did here was, again, we're targeting moms of young children, and so Facebook gives us the ability to target. Basically, what we did here was parents with kids who are age five or under, and so, right here, what we've created is an audience that basically it's mothers within a 10 mile radius of this law firm that have kids five or younger and are in the upper 25% of household income. So, as you can see.
Speaker 3:It's really really specific, and you get to be really choosy about exactly who you want to see your ads Really big deal.
Speaker 3:You know just about the most important thing your marketing needs to do is attract the right types of folks to your law firm, and Facebook Instagram ads make that fairly easy. So then, ultimately, you set your audience and then that's who's going to see your ad. Now, one thing I really want to be sure that we're all on the same page strategically about is Facebook ads are not search based. Right, most law firms are pretty familiar with either SEO or Google ads, which work very differently. Right, you decide who is going to see your ad based on the search phrase they typed in, right, and so there are pros and cons to that, and we'll talk about that in a few minutes. But the main point I want you to walk away with at this moment is Facebook and Instagram ads are very, very targeted in terms of who's going to see your stuff from a demographic perspective, from a hobbies and interests perspective, but it's not driven by a specific search action. It's just going to show up in their newsfeed if you have selected. You know if they fit your audience criteria.
Speaker 2:Hey there, Jana, here. I hope you're enjoying this episode and we will get right back to it in a minute. Listen, out of all the things Danny has taught me about marketing, one of his best lessons is that the hammer is a great tool, but it's pretty much useless if you need to get a screw in the wall. Marketing is the same way. There are so many tools, but the ones that make sense for your law firm depend on your goals. So when you have 30 minutes to talk about strategy and tools, I'd love to share proven tactics, some free resources and possible courses of action. Check the podcast description to reserve the best time for you, and I look forward to talking more. Now let's get back to the episode.
Speaker 3:Couple other just kind of clarifiers to get out of the way right? There is sometimes some confusion around organic posts on Facebook. Most of you probably at this point have a Facebook page. Hopefully you're posting content on your Facebook page. That's not the same thing as running an ad campaign, right?
Speaker 3:An organic post is when you just go to your page and you post something. It could be a video, could be a photo. You post something organically. You're not spending any money on it. You are just posting it and, don't get me wrong, that's a good thing to do. You're not spending any money on it. You are just posting it and, don't get me wrong, that's a good thing to do.
Speaker 3:You want to have organic content on your page, but you have to understand that on average, an organic post is only going to reach about 5% of the people that are following your page. So if you have a thousand people following your page, like first off, congratulations. That's a great number and it probably took you some time to get there. That's cool. But the way Facebook now operates is that if you've got a thousand people following your page and you post organically, on average only about 50 people are going to see it, and this is like a big change for those of you that jumped into Facebook. You know, years ago it didn't used to work this way. It used to work where if you followed or liked a Facebook page, you were generally going to see the majority of the content that they posted. And so if you had a thousand people following your Facebook page and you post organically, you're going to reach hundreds of those people.
Speaker 3:Over time, as Facebook has rolled out their ad platform, it has really become much more of an ad-driven ecosystem, and what that means is, if you are not participating, if you're not spending any money, you just aren't reaching very many people. Of course there are posts that can go viral. Of course there are always exceptions, but on average, your organic content is just not reaching a very large audience and you have very limited control over who those people are. Right, you don't get to choose demographics and interests and some of these things that I just walked you through, so really important to understand. There is still value in posting organically, and we could probably do entire webinars on why. For one thing, just a quick answer a lot of times, before someone hires your firm, they're going to go investigate your Facebook page and they want to see content there, right, and so your organic content serves that purpose as well as some others, but it is very limited in terms of the actual audience you can reach.
Speaker 3:The other thing I want you to understand and we have this conversation a lot too boosting your posts is not the same as a full-on ad campaign. Now, boosting your posts can be valuable. It's a great way to reach a much higher percentage of your audience. One of the things that would happen if you click on this boost button the first thing you're going to do is choose who you want to see your boost, and one of your options is people who follow my page, right, and then there are some other options as well. So boosting your content not a bad thing to do at all. In fact, I generally recommend, if you're going to go to the time and effort of creating content, you should probably be boosting at least some of it. But I also want you to understand that what we're going to walk through today is more in depth than thatdepth, than that, alright. So bottom line here boosting is valuable. It's not the same as running a full-on ad campaign. Just don't want there to be any confusion around that and and we'll kind of walk through some of these differences momentarily. So big picture I want to.
Speaker 3:I want to spend a few minutes here Facebook ads versus search, and when I talk about search, I am mainly going to refer to Google, right, because Google is kind of the giant out there, but there are Bing and others as well. So here's what I want you to understand. Just a moment ago, I gave you an example of what targeting looks like on Facebook, ok, and how specific we can get in terms of who is seeing your content. The audience that we built was basically mothers with children under age five in a very specific geography, in the top 25% of income, right, that's who we're putting our ads in front of. Now I want to contrast that with a search here on Google. So this is a Google search and the phrase is divorce attorney near me, right, and when I took this screenshot, I was at home in Huntersville, north Carolina, and so all that Google is actually basing these results on are two things One, what did I search for? And two, where am I located? All of these other factors that we just talked about on Facebook aren't a factor here on Google, right? They don't know gender, or at least they're not factoring it into these searches, they're not factoring income, they're not factoring very many demographics at all at all. Right?
Speaker 3:So the first thing that happens you type in this search and what happens next? All right, first section here we've got three local service ads that pop up. All right, next thing that happens is we've got pay-per-click ads that pop up. Next thing that happens is we've got map results that pop up and then we finally get down to. That happens is we've got map results that pop up and then we finally get down to the bottom and we've got organic results, which I don't know if you can see this, but the first thing that's listed here is a Yelp page that says the best 10 divorce and family law firms near Huntersville, north Carolina. So with that simple search, here's what happens I 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 different family law firms all pop up on my screen, right, massive amount of competition.
Speaker 3:And so when we're talking about Facebook ads versus search, one of the things I want you to understand is that, because Facebook ads are not search driven, there is very little competition, generally speaking, in most markets on Facebook ads. Your ads are going to be showing up in a news feed and what they're going to see around your ads are going to be content from their family and friends, maybe content from groups they're part of, maybe some ads, but, like for other products, right, you are not going to show up in a highly competitive environment like what we create on Google. So that is a huge upside to advertising on Facebook. There's much less competition there Now. By the same token, it's also worth noting that when someone goes to Google and actually types in divorce attorney, there is a higher likelihood that they're looking to make a move right now.
Speaker 3:Okay, because Facebook is not a search driven. On average, the folks you're reaching in Facebook are not quite in that same category in terms of high buy intent. Some of them are, some of them can be persuaded right. But when you go to Google and type in divorce attorney, odds are you're looking to call around, okay. So that is if you were looking for those sort of hottest possible leads. That's a reason to think about Google.
Speaker 3:Also important to think about the difference in targeting control, right, I just shared on Facebook how specifically targeted we can get, and on Google you cannot get nearly that targeted you can. Basically, your options are basically limited. It's geography and the actual search phrases that you want your ads to show up for. So I'm not sitting here telling you that in all circumstances, facebook ads are better or Google ads are better. What I'm not sitting here telling you that in all circumstances Facebook ads are better or Google ads are better. What I'm trying to do here is just help you understand sort of the different tools available, and Facebook ads has some definite advantages over Google, and Google has, at least in certain cases, some definite advantages over Facebook ads definite advantages over Facebook ads.
Speaker 3:And so here's kind of how I would summarize this right, when you are advertising on search, those leads tend to be more highly motivated, but they also are almost certainly calling two or three or four other firms before they actually make a decision about who to go with. Often they are basing their decision on two factors. One is just price. They are calling around looking for the cheapest possible law firm. I just had a conversation yesterday with a family law firm in Atlanta that's generating, I want to say, 60 or 70 leads from Google every single month, and the challenge is that the vast majority of them are tire kickers, they're price shoppers, and so you often end up in a scenario where you've got a high volume of leads but very few of them are actually qualified. The other thing they're often doing is literally just talking to the first person that answers the phone, and some law firms that have a really great intake system and always have someone that can answer quickly or return a call very quickly, have an advantage over some smaller firms that maybe can't always answer the phone on the first ring and maybe take a little longer to get back to a prospective client, right. So that's part of making that decision is just being realistic about what are your intake capabilities, right? Who do you have answering phones and how quickly are they responding and things like that.
Speaker 3:Okay, next factor search leads tend to be quite a bit more expensive than Facebook and Instagram leads, because this is where all the law firms are going right. When you ask most law firms what their marketing looks like, 90% of them are doing something on 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 platforms are very, very saturated, right? And so, because these things work basically in an auction format, the more competing advertisers you have, the more expensive it gets, so Google ads tend 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 you want to see your ads.
Speaker 3:Also worth understanding Facebook leads are often earlier in their buying cycle, right, and there's both a pro and a con to that. That can be both a good thing and not always a good thing, right. It just depends on your strategy. The nice thing about reaching folks earlier in the buying cycle, right before they're actually to the point of going to Google and calling somebody, is that they're in this research mode, right. They're looking for information. If you can capture their information by being a resource for them, you establish yourself as their like go-to option and they don't even get to the point of searching Google. Right, they are locked in on your firm. You get to continue to market to them, and it makes it a much less competitive sort of intake process. Bottom line leads from Facebook generally less expensive, more targeted, but often do require some more time and patience and nurture before they ultimately convert into clients. I sort of summarize this all as Facebook ads can be a great fit for your firm.
Speaker 3:If you want to reach potential clients before they get to your competition Right, which isn't always, I know this probably sounds like well, why wouldn't I? Well, there are actually some cases, right. If you're confident that you're the cheapest firm, right, or that you're going to answer the phone the quickest, maybe you don't want to have a conversation with somebody, like, until the moment they're ready to make a decision, because you are confident that you're going to be the cheapest option, right. And if that's your model, then, honestly, if you are a high volume model, then, honestly, if you are a high volume, low cost firm, google ads is probably the best place to be right. And I'm not saying you shouldn't also test Facebook, but on average, if you are a lower cost, higher volume firm, google can be great right?
Speaker 3:Second reason Facebook ads often make sense. If you have a very specific type of client avatar you want to work with, facebook ads make a lot of sense. If you prefer to work only with middle to upper income folks, facebook ads are going to make a lot of sense. If you prefer to work with people in a very specific geography or with a very specific lifestyle, the more specific you want to be about who your ideal clients are, the more sense Facebook is going to make for you. If you are, listen, generic run of the mill, we will take, you know, anybody who wants to hire us, then you're probably going to have success on Google, right?
Speaker 3:Third big thing here is because Facebook ads often produce these leads that take a little more nurture. Your firm needs to have systems and an intake team and the ability to nurture these prospects, perhaps for a couple of weeks, perhaps for a couple of months, before they actually pick up the phone and hire you, right. So it just can take a little more time to nurture, and the good news is there are some automated ways to do that, and we'll talk about that in a little more time. To nurture and the good news is there are some automated ways to do that and we'll talk about that in a little while.
Speaker 1:Hey, thanks for listening to part one of the Facebook ads. Episode Part two will start debuting on Monday, with some preview episodes and the full episode, as always, debuting on Friday. Have a terrific weekend and we'll see you next week.