The Law Firm Marketing Minute
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The Law Firm Marketing Minute
Facebook Ads, Email Marketing & Everything Between - PT 2
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In Part 2 of this strategic breakdown, Danny Decker walks you through the final steps in building a marketing system that works while you work. From retargeting pixels and ad targeting to drip campaigns and monthly newsletters, this episode is packed with systems you can use to attract and convert leads—automatically.
📌 Key Takeaways
- Why retargeting ads are essential to staying top of mind.
- How to nurture leads with automated emails and regular newsletters.
- What tools, platforms, and formats make this whole system run smoothly.
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Most of the time, your leads are going to take some time and some nurture, and that's okay. The thing is, you want to have a system built so that those leads are being nurtured automatically because you and your staff are not going to be able to keep up with you.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Minute, the go-to podcast for solo and small law firms who want to level up. We're excited for you to join us this episode and remember, if your law firm needs more clients and better clients, be sure to go to growmylawfirmfastcom. That's growmylawfirmfastcom.
Speaker 1:All right, let's get right into the episode we're going to talk more about lead magnets and lead capture in a minute, but I'm going to drop one little breadcrumb for you that we're going to talk about again in a few minutes. You want to have what's called a retargeting pixel on your website and this allows you basically to know if somebody's been on your website so you can then serve them with ads. Please I'm just again curious kind of level of how far you guys have gone with this. Drop a one in the chat if you know that there is a retargeting pixel on your website, and drop a two if you know that there's not a retargeting pixel. And I'm gonna assume that if you don't give me either a one or two, you're just not sure. So give me a one if you know there's a pixel on your website, and give me a two if there's not a pixel on your website and just type not sure if you're not sure. All right, gary, matt, alfonso and everybody else who's in that boat. You guys really wanna have a retargeting pixel on your website. Again, this is something we can help you with. Bottom line, you need to have a retargeting pixel on your website. That's how you continue to stay in front of your website visitors. We'll talk more about that in a second.
Speaker 1:All right, that was a lot, but that's the idea around content. Okay, it starts with just knowing what your clients are asking and then creating content that's going to speak to those concerns. Right, it's really quite simple. Does that make sense? Do you have questions? Give me a one. If you're ready to keep going, feel free to drop questions in the chat. If you've got them. I'm seeing some ones. I'm going to keep going, but so just to kind of refresh step one in this process define your ideal clients. Step two create content that's going to be attractive to your ideal clients. Now, we've got content and we've got a picture of who your clients are. So step three, and this is where it starts to get fun Now we want to use ads to put your content in front of your ideal clients.
Speaker 1:Okay, and there's a few different sort of buckets of content. We just talked about what I would call sort of educational content, right, where you are answering their questions, giving them tips. You might be doing that through blogs, it might be video, it might be social media, right, but you're creating this educational content. That is one type of content that we then can boost on social media, so that we're taking this great content and putting it in front of the right people. There's a few more types of content that we want to pull into this equation.
Speaker 1:The second is something called a lead magnet, and that is something that we're giving away for free, but we want their contact information the ideal client checklist that we just dropped in the chat. We have used that as a lead magnet in the past. Just gave you the link, right, and it's because I know you, right. Many of you I recognize your names. You've been on webinars before. We've already been able to email you in the past, right, so I don't really need your email address.
Speaker 1:But if we were running this campaign to go find brand new law firm owners who are interested in growing their firms, we would absolutely use the ideal client checklist as a lead magnet and what we would do is create a landing page and you enter your contact information and now you get the ideal client checklist. That's all a lead magnet is. It can be a checklist, it can be a webinar, it can be a white paper, a book, an ebook. There's really no end to the formats you can use. But that's what a lead magnet is it's giving some information. It's usually like a little more in depth or a little more specific than you're going to do with a video, and that's why you are, you know, asking for their information so you can send them the PDF or whatever. It is Okay. And then the third bucket is what we refer to as a call me now campaign.
Speaker 2:Right, there are two things that go into legal marketing that you really need to know. The first one you probably already know if you've been a long time listener of the law for marketing minutes, which is that there are so many things that go into marketing. You know there's so many channels, there's so many strategies it can be a headache, I get it. The second thing you need to know is that our listeners actually have access to an exclusive offer. It's one free month of our marketing services, completely free, just for being a listener. How cool is that? So what you got to do to claim this offer basically is to go into the podcast description. There's a link. You can click that link and sign up, get your booking and pick a time that works for you, or you can go to growmylawfirmfastcom. That's growmylawfirmfastcom to get started. All right, let's get right back to the episode.
Speaker 1:So the first two buckets I just talked about are just giving value, giving value, giving value, moving people down your sales funnel. But ultimately you need to book them, and that's what we refer to as a call me now campaign. So you found your ideal clients, you're giving them information that's useful, but you now need to actually book those in the consultation so you can convert them into clients. That is what we refer to as a call me now campaign, and I'm going to show you some visuals. But here's what I want you to understand before I pull up the visuals what type of content works best completely depends on the buyer journey your clients are on, and the way I like to think of this is a spectrum, a level of prospect, urgency On one end you've got a one. Okay, this is somebody who is feeling as little urgency as possible. They don't even know that there's a problem, right? Let's say again, let's use the estate planning example. You know, let's say it's a young married couple, but they don't have kids yet. They're really not even thinking about estate planning. And then, kind of in the middle, we've got this. You know, number five here. They're starting to think about it, right, maybe they are about to have their first kid and they're starting to think about it, right, and then we've got on the far other end of the extreme. They need a solution right now. So the classic example here is like somebody who was arrested and is in jail right, they need help right away. Somebody who was in a car accident probably needs help right away. And so your mission and what we do with our clients and what you really need to be doing as you're thinking about your marketing strategically, is giving the right type of content at the right time. Okay, so when you've got these people who are at sort of a level one don't even necessarily know this is something they should be thinking about, you're really educating them. Like, they're not going to book a consultation right now, they're probably not even going to download a lead magnet because they don't even know why they should be concerned about this, right, and so we're going to use blogs and videos and educational content to like get them thinking about it. Then, as they start thinking about it, as they start maybe feeling the pain or they're fearful or they're excited or whatever the case may be, but now they're more aware of it. Now you're going to start using things like lead magnets webinars, events, right, where it's a little bit more of an ask. You're asking for their contact information. Maybe you're asking for them to show up at an event or a webinar. Asking for their contact information. Maybe you're asking for them to show up at an event or a webinar, and that works really well for people that are sort of in this four, five, six level of urgency. Then, as it ratchets up even further, now you're in nine, 10 territory. Now's where you want to target them with a call me now campaign. Somebody who is sitting in jail is not going to register for your webinar next week, right, and they're probably not going to read your blog entry. They need help now. Conversely, you know somebody who is just in the beginning stages of doing some research about estate planning is not ready to book a consultation yet. So if the only content they're seeing is this call me now level content, they are not going to convert. They're not going to take the bait because that's not where they're at.
Speaker 1:Give me a one in the chat, please, if you're tracking with me. Does this make sense? Do you have questions? Great, drop your questions in the chat if you've got them. Um, but good, I'm glad. Uh, this is making sense. I need to keep the Q and a tab up as well. All right, if you have questions, try to drop them just directly in the chat. Um, that's, that's what I can fit on my screen right now, so, okay, so you've got this level of urgency and, um, part of what you need to be doing with your content and with your ad strategy is making sure you've got content that addresses each stage of this.
Speaker 1:Now I say that recognizing that, depending on your practice area, this may look very different. Personal injury goes from a one to a 10 at the drop of a hat, right In the time it takes somebody to slip and fall and injure themselves. They just went from a one to a 10. Estate planning is on the other end of the spectrum, right, where people know they need to have a will in place. They know they need to have a will in place. They put it off for years and years and years, right Until it's too late, and all of a sudden now they're at a 10 in urgency. Okay, so think this through. You wanna have an idea of what your typical client journey looks like? Make sense, everybody good. Give me one if you're good, and I'm going to keep going, all right.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about the actual format of these ads. We just kind of talked about strategy, so let's talk about format. A paid ad is really simple, okay, it is just. It's formatted like a Facebook post or an Instagram post. It's got some written content, it's got creative, which is an image or some video, and it's got a call to action. So this is an example of an estate planning ad, right, and this is giving away a lead magnet, and the call to action is down here at the bottom. It says download. Okay, that's what the ad looks like.
Speaker 1:But then here's where the magic happens. With Facebook ads and Instagram ads and we sometimes do this on LinkedIn too you get to be real, real specific about who you want to put your content in front of. So this is an example a family law firm here in Charlotte, north Carolina. I know this is a little bit small, so I'm going to run through it and make sure that we're on the same page. The first thing we get to do here is actually choose on the map who we want to reach. So we dropped a pin on this firm's location and they're targeting a 10 mile radius around their firm.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this is demographics, right, they're from. Okay, so this is demographics, right. Age range, in this case, 28 to 45, specifically targeting women, specifically top 25% of household income right, that's really powerful. That's one of the really cool things about Facebook ads is you get to be pretty targeted in terms of who you put your ads in front of. And then here we even took it the next step, and this specific campaign is targeting mothers with children under the age of five right, and so then there can be some messaging that's very specific to moms, that's very specific to moms who have young kids right, and you can pretty quickly like draw the connection there from. You know, moms with young kids. They need to have an estate plan in place Okay, you run this information and then Facebook's ad manager program is going to tell us you know how many people fit that criteria?
Speaker 1:In this case, we've got like 40,000 people that fit that criteria. Boom, that's the audience. That's who's going to see the ad we just created. Makes sense Again. Drop a one. If this makes that's the audience. That's who's going to see the ad we just created. Make sense Again. Drop a one. If this makes sense, drop two. If you need me to explain this a little bit more. Or, if you have questions, drop them. All right, seems like you guys are all tracking, awesome, all right.
Speaker 1:So two types of campaigns. First one is a lead nurture campaign. This is built around a lead magnet, like I told you about earlier. So this is an ad giving away a checklist called five estate planning documents you must have in place by age 50. Ad shows up in the social media feed. It shows up in whoever we told the targeting that we just set up. Those are the people that are going to see this ad.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we get to choose who sees the ad. They click the ad. We take them to a landing page. We don't send them to the homepage of your website. We build a landing page. We build a landing page because we don't want them to get lost on your website. We don't want them reading your bio, yet. We don't want them watching videos or reading blog entries yet. What we really want them to do is fill out the form on the landing page, because that allows us to capture their contact information and then we can launch follow-up marketing. The next thing that happens after they fill out this form is it kicks off a drip campaign.
Speaker 1:We use MailChimp for a lot of our clients. Some of our clients are in Lomatic, some are in HubSpot, but bottom line, we build a drip campaign so that after somebody downloads the checklist, we send them an email and it's like here's the checklist. By the way, if you have questions or if you want to schedule a consultation to talk about this further, click here and then we'll link them to a consult scheduling page, right, and so a drip campaign will happen. Typically, we'll do like anywhere between like three and seven touch points, depending on you know many different factors, but each email is creating, is providing a little bit of value, but is also ultimately driving them to schedule a consultation. So the journey here is back in step one. The social ad just is offering them a free checklist. They click the link, they download it from the landing page.
Speaker 1:Now we kick off a drip campaign and that is driving them to schedule a consultation. That's the flow. Drop a question if you've got it. That's the flow. It's pretty straightforward. There's obviously a lot of moving parts involved in building this all out, but fundamentally it's pretty simple. Works really well. We love running these campaigns on Facebook and Instagram particularly. Works really well, now the other end of the spectrum, right the call me now campaign. Somebody who? We're not trying to give them a lead magnet, because they don't want a lead magnet. They need help now.
Speaker 1:You run an ad, you target that ad to whoever you know fits your ideal client profile and you want to speak directly to the pain point? Right, if it's PI injured in a car accident, click here. We'll give them the option to either fill out the landing page or call directly. Right, simple, quick and easy. By the way, you can do this in just about every practice area. Is it time for divorce? Click here. Right. Did your spouse file for divorce? Click here.
Speaker 1:In estate planning, probate is often the trigger point for these types of ads. So it's like if a loved one passed away and there wasn't an estate plan in place. We're really sorry. We understand how stressful that is. We can help. Click here. Okay.
Speaker 1:So these are the campaigns that are going to get response from those people that are at the nine and 10 level of urgency. Make sense. Give me a one or a thumbs up or something if you're still with me and if you've got questions, drop them in. Awesome Thanks. Thanks for the feedback, guys. Cool, all right. Questions about paid ads. There was a question earlier about budget. Questions about paid ads. There was a question earlier about budget.
Speaker 1:We typically see a cost per lead for lead magnets of in like the neighborhood of like $10 to $30 per lead. Okay, obviously, listen, we have some clients who are getting $2 leads. We have others who their leads might be costing $55, right, but average range is between about $10 and $30 per lead. On the call me now side, those lead costs are a little higher, typically between like $50 and $100.
Speaker 1:If you are running a social campaign, like a paid Facebook and a paid Instagram campaign, we recommend starting with a minimum ad budget of around $750 per month. If you're not willing to spend that much, just kind of wait until you are, because it's really not going to be worth it to go into a campaign spending significantly less than that. As a general rule, if you're thinking about Google or LinkedIn, you're going to want to be able to spend a bit more. With Google, we recommend probably come in with a budget of like $2,000 a month. It takes more money to create more impressions, to get more clicks, to get more leads. So it's just kind of a mathematical formula, one of the reasons why we love running ads on paid social is those costs per leads are often pretty low.
Speaker 1:Also, it really allows you to be picky about who you get your ads in front of. It's harder, a few of you mentioned you really are focused on getting better quality clients. It's harder to be targeted on Google because you don't get to be quite as picky about who you put your ads in front of. Versus Facebook, instagram, you can be a lot more picky. So hopefully that addresses that question. If you've got more questions, drop them in the chat.
Speaker 1:That brings us to fourth and final step. Okay, so let's recap. Step one is get clear on who your ideal clients are. Step two create content that attracts them. Step three create ads that put your content in front of your ideal clients and that generates leads. Step four is now.
Speaker 1:A certain percentage of your leads are probably going to call you right away and convert quickly, right. It's going to usually be a very small percentage. Trust me, I wish that wasn't the case, but the reality is, most of the time, your leads are going to take some time and some nurture, and that's okay. But the thing is you want to have a system built so that those leads are being nurtured automatically, because you and your staff are not going to be able to keep up with it, right, because you're going to be in court or because you're going to have 30 other things that all sound better than following up with your leads. Okay, I get it. I feel that way myself. Completely get it. So you want to have systems to nurture these leads.
Speaker 1:A few ways we go about this. One I told you about a retargeting pixel. You want to have the retargeting pixel on your website so that when someone hits your website and then three days later they log into Facebook, they see your ad. Okay, creates multiple touch points. That's what it takes to get people sort of across the finish line to actually call you or actually book your consultation. It usually takes a few touch points. Two is a drip campaign. I showed you that a few minutes ago. This is a campaign we build in MailChimp or in HubSpot or Lawmatics. Most CRMs allow you to do this.
Speaker 1:The bottom line is you need to send more than one email. You need to email them frequently, especially right after they just downloaded your lead magnet. You want to hit them a few times because you never know what's the right moment. Okay, so you need to hit them a few times. And then three is a monthly newsletter. We highly recommend this to every single law firm.
Speaker 1:I firmly believe every single law firm needs to have a newsletter that goes out once a month at least. Give me a yes in the chat if you've got a monthly newsletter and give me a no if you don't. Just curious, matt, yes, awesome, I really believe. Gary, alfonso, neither of you do yet. That's OK tools for a small law firm because it keeps you in front of your whole database at once. We have some clients that have thousands of names on their email list past clients, referral sources, colleagues and every time we send out a newsletter it goes to all of those people and, predictably, it creates referral opportunities and it's a great way to keep your past clients engaged. It's just easy Once you figure out a system. Again, this is something my team can do for you if you want us to, but either way, whether you do it yourself or whatever, once you build a system, this is one of the highest ROI campaigns you'll ever have, because it keeps you in front of everybody on your list at least once a month. I believe it or not. Not am an advocate for sometimes sending more than once a month, but that's a battle we can fight another day. There are very successful marketers and not just marketers, but professional service firms and others that send daily emails, believe it or not, and it can work really well.
Speaker 1:Bottom line you need to have a newsletter. In that newsletter you're going to want to include the blogs we talked about, some links to your video announcements, right? Like what's happening in your firm. You know what should your clientele be aware of, right? You use your newsletter to communicate stuff like that. I'll put a quick visual up here. I kind of already talked through this, that I'll put a quick visual up here. I kind of already talked through this.
Speaker 1:Bottom line is you want your newsletter to be clean and simple to read. Many people aren't going to read every single word, so you want them to be able to skim it and see your face, see your name, just kind of be reminded of what you do. And you want this to be formatted well for mobile. I haven't seen the very latest data, but a majority of emails are opened on a mobile phone, so you want to use a mobile responsive format. Again, we usually use MailChimp, sometimes HubSpot, sometimes Lomatics, makes it fairly simple to make it mobile friendly.
Speaker 1:Bottom line it needs to be mobile friendly. You do not want to just create a PDF and attach it to an email that you send to your whole list and BCC everybody, right? That does not work very well on mobile, okay, so that's the newsletter, right? Super important because, remember, step four here is nurturing these leads. Sometimes they're going to convert within a day, sometimes it's going to take a week, it might take a month, it might take a quarter. Sometimes it's going to take a week, it might take a month, it might take a quarter, sometimes it might take a year. Right, but the bottom line is, as long as you're continually nurturing those leads, when the time is right, you're in position to get their business. Okay.
Speaker 1:Questions about lead nurture Okay, several of you kind of responded. Most of you, it looks like, are not actively running an email newsletter. Again, I can't recommend it highly enough. Of course, I would love if you had a conversation with our team and we can tell you kind of how we go about this. But listen, whether you engage us to do it or not, super, super important. I highly encourage you to set up an email newsletter. Okay, so we got just a few minutes left here.
Speaker 1:Drop a one in the chat, if this makes sense. If you kind of understand the flow here, remember step one identify your ideal clients. Two create content that is attractive to them. Three use ads to put it in front of them. And then four as the leads come in, nurture them All. Use ads to put it in front of them. And then four as the leads come in, nurture them All. Right, you guys are with me? Cool, I do not want the hour that we spent together to be information that went in kind of one ear and out the other. Right Like information actually doesn't do anything if you can't take action on it. Right. Information actually doesn't do anything if you can't take action on it right. So I want you to walk away from this with an action plan.
Speaker 1:Okay, several ways to get this done. You can do it yourself as an attorney. This isn't how I want you to spend your time. The learning curve is pretty high, but theoretically you can do it yourself. Two is you can absolutely go to I'll drop it in the chat places like upworkcom and you can hire freelancers to sort of piecemeal this. You can find somebody to write blogs for you. You could find somebody to run an ad campaign for you. You can often find low cost contractors. I'm not the biggest fan of going this route, but it's certainly an option and if you're willing to sort of spend the time and provide the feedback, you can get this stuff done using contractors.
Speaker 1:Three is for those of you that have an internal marketing team. Parts of this can certainly be done by them. You want to be clear on what their capabilities are, for example, when we get into retargeting and some of the advanced ad targeting. That's not in everybody's skill set, so you just want to kind of understand does your team have the capabilities? And then, number four my team offers these services, everything that we just talked about today. We have a done-for-you marketing program and we would be happy to have a conversation about what that looks like for your front.
Speaker 1:We'll do this again next month. I got several requests, by the way, that we theme our next webinar around AI platforms and how to get found on chat GPT, because clients are now, instead of going to Google and searching for a divorce attorney, they're going to chat GPT and they're asking um, who's the best family law attorney near me. So that's probably going to be our topic next month, um, but, uh, but we'll be in touch, we'll let you know. Thanks for being here, thanks Aldo, thanks Alfonso. Um, you guys have a great day and we will talk. Uh, talk.