Honestly, if lawyers didn’t have the negative public stereotype, Facebook advertising would probably be really good for lawyers. The reason is that Facebook’s algorithm would be able to detect all kinds of similarities in the people who are most likely to actually hire a lawyer.
Does it sound all bad? Well, it’s not. Let me share what I’ve seen work.
When I’ve Seen Facebook, Ads Generate Tons of Leads
I work with law firms and independent doctors’ offices. One doctor, in particular, advertises a program that helps people with degenerative eye disease. He runs a cash-only practice and people travel from all around the country and world for his therapies. It’s not a cheap program.
Here’s how we promote his practice:
1. People register for a webinar that is available to watch anytime, every day.
2. They are given a chance to request a free phone consultation with his staff.
3. If people don’t immediately sign up, we put the user through a complex series of automated emails.
4. The person gets on the phone for a consult.
5. The individual either declines everything or purchases a supplement, a phone consult with the doctor, or attends one of their programs.
We do not advertise the actual program. We also do not advertise a phone consultation. We advertise the webinar because it is an important first step and gives us a smaller, predictive action that someone can take. If someone registers for the webinar, they are more likely than the general population to be a quality, potential patient.
Over the years of advertising his program, we’ve achieved solid results consistently. However, this year we’ve really honed our skills in harnessing Facebook’s algorithm. (Truly, the algorithm is amazing. If you can harness it, there is tons of money waiting to be made.) Today, we consistently have people signing up for this webinar for a mere $2.00. We’ve also reduced the cost-per-phone-consult request by 60% by optimizing the email automation on the back-end.
Here’s the moral of the story: this ad campaign is harnessing the Facebook algorithm. That’s where the magic is. If you want to do ad campaigns on Facebook for lead generation, you need to figure out how to leverage Facebook’s wealth of data on each person’s behavior while balancing the items in the above section (predictive action, high frequency of action within budget, avoid the negative stereotype).
I do have some legal campaigns which experience success, but they’re not general personal injury nor are they for things like auto accidents. For example, I do work where we target truckers, and we experience a flow of leads each day. We have balanced the three items properly and over the last five weeks have gotten the campaign to a place where it consistently generates these leads.
If you want to do Facebook ads for lead generation, make sure you’re working with an agency that understands the algorithm and the effects of the public’s negative stigma towards lawyers. And make sure you allocate time and resources to give it the best chance of success. This is not something for lawyers to run on a small test. I do test runs in other industries to show proof of concept. However, you most likely will need to test out multiple iterations of your campaign before it will be ready to bring you in the desired flow of clients.
A Few Remaining Thoughts on Facebook Advertising
Does all this mean you shouldn’t use Facebook ads?
No! This was primarily a focus on lead generation. There are many ways to use Facebook advertising other than just to generate leads.
For example, Facebook is a fantastic tool for branding. It’s also incredibly cost-efficient for promoting your community efforts.
If you are engaged in a high-quality social media marketing strategy, then I highly recommend using Facebook’s advertising to get your content out in front of more people in your community.
Also, as I’ve written many times in the past, Facebook is an excellent retargeting tool
(especially since Google generally won’t allow retargeting for lawyers).
What I want you to get out of this is a better understanding of how the Facebook algorithm is an incredibly powerful force that can be harnessed. However, if your campaign isn’t leveraging its power, then you’re likely to end up with a campaign that either, at best, produces sporadic results or, at worse, produces nothing.
