Effective Facebook Advertising for Law Firms

If you’ve never tried law firm Facebook marketing, you may be interested in how we’re using highly targeted Facebook ads for lawyers to help our mass tort clients get class representatives for cases.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the ins and outs of class actions, lawyers who want to file class actions often need to find a very specific person who is ready to represent the class—and that’s a tough marketing goal to achieve. Not only do they need a qualified lead who meets their extremely narrow specifications, attorneys need to find someone who is willing to pursue legal action that could take years to resolve and countless hours of meeting with attorneys, giving statements, and more.

There’s probably only a handful of these people for each case they want to pursue so that means using highly targeted attorney Facebook ads to find that individual can make the case a reality.

The same strategies we use to create Facebook advertising for lawyers in the mass tort niche can be used to market other practice areas. Even if your firm doesn’t do mass tort or class actions, you can learn how to promote your law firm on social media from what we’re doing for these kinds of clients.

(And to answer a common misconception, yes, lawyers can advertise on Facebook. There are restrictions to how lawyers can advertise and ads can often be disapproved by Facebook if you don’t use just the right combination of strategies. If you’re struggling to get your law firm ads approved by Facebook, give us a call.)

Two Examples of Success With Facebook Marketing for Attorneys

At Orsanna, we’ve worked with mass tort law firms to locate the ideal clients for class action lawsuits. We’ll explore two notable case studies for our clients.

In the first case study, we were tasked with finding at least one client for a class action case involving the purchase of a particular part for their vehicle from a certain auto care center in Texas. This serves as an example for other class action firms who want to get started with Facebook advertising for law firms.

In the second case study, we needed to get the highest volume of leads possible for a case involving wage fixing in chicken plants. This serves as an example of how to use Facebook lawyer ads for any practice area that needs a higher volume of leads to be successful.

Why Facebook Advertising is Effective for Lawyers

Facebook knows a lot about their users. If you’ve never poked around Facebook’s advertising platform before, you’ll probably be surprised to see all of the demographic information they know about their users. The amount of information available to advertisers on Facebook can be staggering, allowing lawyer Facebook ads to target just the right audience.

What kind of information does Facebook know? Sure, you’d expect Facebook to know you like a certain author because you liked their page. But Facebook probably also knows information about your most recent purchases online, what charities you donate to, what you like to do in your free time, where you work, your commuting habits, and even more.

For law firms, all of this information is at your disposal if you’re ready to use it and set up a Facebook or Instagram ad. And that means you can have a highly targeted marketing campaign that only shows to a very specific individual—your ideal client.

How we used a $250 Facebook Ad to find a Single Class Representative

Our client had already tried conventional ways of getting a class representative, including newswires, earned media, and other strategies. They decided to try Facebook ads as a final effort before the statute of limitations ran out in just 7 days. With a small $250 budget, our goal was to get at least one individual to become a class representative and file before the statute of limitations ran out.

The biggest takeaway from this success story, regardless of your practice area, is to make sure you have absolute clarity on what your ideal clients look like so you can match your Facebook ad targeting to just the right individuals.

For our first case study, we developed the exact profile of the individual the law firm needed to find for their class action based on purchase information, demographics about shoppers of the company we were targeting, and other publicly available information. We used this information to create a targeted campaign that would only show to people who were highly likely to be qualified as a class representative.

We created ads that peaked interest in the right individuals who would want to participate in a class action within that targeted group, including multiple variations to test which ad would perform best.

One of the keys to successful Facebook ads for attorneys is to consistently monitor ads to optimize messaging with variations. We tested ads over a few days and isolated the best of the bunch that were reaching the most people in our target group to put our $250 budget straight into the best ad as quickly as possible.

In just a few days, the Facebook ad reached over 15,000 individuals and attracted a lot of attention and conversions to the landing page.

Thanks to highly targeting with Facebook demographics, we helped our client find a class representative to file the case under the tight deadline.

How We Used a $250 Facebook Ad to Find Over 900 Leads

Sometimes you have to get creative and think out of the box when it comes to Facebook demographics. With the removal of a lot of targeting information because of concerns about elections, Facebook has progressively reduced the number of targeting options law firms can use in advertising campaigns.

The big takeaway from our second success story is that you can easily use Facebook ads to get a high volume of leads, if you design your campaign to be seen by as many people as possible and set targeting options correctly. Keep in mind, Facebook offers many different campaign types that show lawyer advertising on social media differently, optimized for your campaign goals.

In the second success story of Facebook advertising for attorneys that got exceptional results, we had to figure out how to target chicken plant workers who likely didn’t include where they worked in their Facebook profile. Using the same process as the above campaign, we created a demographic profile for our class representatives and ad variations to find the best messaging.

Within two days, the campaign was so effective that our client saw over 900 leads for the class action. The response was so overwhelming that we ended the campaign early and the law firm was unable to keep up with the number of leads for the case.

Unlike other forms of advertising, Facebook ads allow attorneys to highly target the right individuals and create an exceptional response to create a volume of leads even on a small budget.

How You Can Use This Facebook Tactic in Your Law Firm

If you want to obtain new clients with social media advertising for lawyers, setting up a Facebook demographic profile of your ideal client base is the first step.

Working out exactly what your best clients look like to Facebook can help you create a great ad that gets results for your business and better understand what they’re looking for online. The next step is to identify the marketing messages that will best resonate with your audience and monitor your campaigns to better optimize them.

Spending time to get your demographic targeting just right before you launch a Facebook campaign can make all the difference when it comes to getting new clients. On top of that, knowing this information can help other digital marketing efforts be more effective too.

What about Instagram Advertising for Law Firms?

Remember, Facebook is also the parent company of Instagram and the advertising platform for both is integrated into one. Throughout this article, we’ve talked about Facebook in reference to the advertising platform, which incorporates both social media platforms.

The same tactics we’ve covered also apply to Instagram ads for lawyers. The primary differences between Instagram ads and Facebook ads is the formats that work the best. We’ve found that the most effective ads on Instagram are adapted to that platform, instead of using the same ads across Facebook and Instagram.

Need Help With Your Firm’s Facebook Advertising?

Facebook ads can be very difficult to get right and it’s not uncommon for law firms to see no results from their campaigns, not just lackluster results. It’s also common for Facebook ads for law firms to get stuck in Facebook’s approval process.

We’ve developed unique strategies for Facebook and Instagram advertising for law firms. We offer legal marketing services and lawyer ad services as an attorney owned and operated marketing agency that can help your firm grow. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you get more clients with Facebook ads and social media advertising, contact our digital marketing team today

Kim Herrington

Kim Herrington is Creative Director of Orsanna where she leads the production and strategy for clients' marketing and advertising. She founded Orsanna over seven years ago to bring quality marketing services to business owners.